Royal navy Direction If the Great War ends in a White Peace.

To a degree they are inevitable.

Gun caliber has been increasing for 20 years. 16" are in the wild and the English have a first attempt 18". About there physics kick in and larger weapons are impractical in the medium term at least. So you need a ship that can send and receive 18" shells. That is roughly a 50kt hull.

50kt hulls are a problem because of the infrastructure needs. It is roughly the largest the RN can go in the medium term. So you are faced with the question of how to squeeze the most possible out of a 50kt hull. So we get triple turrets and all forward to save weight. All or Nothing because shells are so stupidly big now and coming in at silly angles so more spread out armor is impractical. It is not some magical American invention in 1912. It was just an option that became preferable as big functional AP shells became a thing.
All forward is about optimizing for a gun duel. This is reasonably sensible in 1920 though there are some clouds ahead. Later things like under keel explosives and AA arcs push the advantages to a more spread out armament (and by then improved engine tech absorbs the higher armor cost).

Speed is something the RN has been playing with for 20 years. Fisher's love of it didn't come out of nowhere. The question is how much is practical and enough. It is always worth remembering that fast capital ships had interesting lives while slow ships mostly existed. Even without WWI, fleet exercises are showing the need for heavy scouts. OTL after Jutland the RN still wanted BCs, just with armor. So that requirement isn't going away. But it is smashing up against that hard 50kt hull limit so requires compromises.

None of that is particularly about WWI knowledge. That is things like turret interlocks and magazine positioning. Damage control stuff. Divisional over fleet command (which dovetails nicely with ever larger and more capable capital ships). More squishy and doctrinal stuff.

The shape of a G3/N3 is driven by existing trends hitting physical, industrial, financial, even tactical limits. That isn't going to change.

What is interesting is what everyone else will do. As noted before. The Germans are stuck in a shallow sea and have hard physical limits. The Americans have the Panama Canal, but do they really really care? The Japanese will probably just build big.
Nother to mention the USN will mearly get the larger set of locks that they wanted(and would have built if not for wartime steel shortages) for the Panama Canal not in 1940 but in 1925
 
@Jellico will these physical limitations drive the development of aircraft carriers after the N3/G3 are built? By the time their follow-ons are being conceived it would be mid-late 20s aircraft would be getting close to being able to carry ordnance heavy enough to damage a battleship, especially with the RN doctrine of using carriers to cripple and capital ships to kill.
 
Getting out of my area of expertise but I have to go with "sort of".

Firstly hydro dynamics mean that you can't really push a big ship much over 30-35 knots without going nuclear. So once you get to 30 knots it becomes a case of "why bother?"

Next no one wants a really big carrier. At the end of WWII Midways were considered too big. 20 years later with jets it is a different story but before then the aircraft are reasonably small and all a big hull gets you is too many aircraft to manage. Of course you can go too small too. Essex are probably a good size for a fleet carrier because you can get a manageable air wing with decent bite and you have enough tons to get nice things like armored decks. The important thing there is an Essex is a 30kton ship so you aren't hitting infrastructure (or the bottom of the sea) limits in the same way as a battleship. I suppose there is the length of the flight deck to worry about but you can tweak that too.

So in the 20s and 30s aircraft carriers aren't really pushing the limits in the way battleships are. It is more a case of what do you want your carrier to do and what sort of $$$ do you want to pay. There the RN was looking into slow fleet carriers for the battlships, fast carriers for cruisers, light carriers, armored carriers, Pacific carriers. Obviously all of that isn't going to happen. Depending upon how you feel about keeping those early experimental carriers the RN will eventually build some sort of generic 25kton carrier with space for 60-ish aircraft. Bigger if they want to armor it. When counting $ you don't build small carriers if you can help it because they aren't as efficient. I am sure that they will want to build some big cruiser sized carriers but they need to find the funds and I can't see that happening.

So OTL is pretty close to what I imagine would happen. When the experiments start wearing out you will get Ark Royals. You might see some improved Hermes, but they will cost you a couple of cruisers each. If a need for a Mediterranean carrier comes up there will be no faffing around with triple screws and undersized air wings. With no Treaty limitations you can built an Ark Royal big enough to absorb the armor.
 
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So in the 20s and 30s aircraft carriers aren't really pushing the limits in the way battleships are. It is more a case of what do you want your carrier to do and what sort of $$$ do you want to pay. ...

Sounds to me a Atlantic fleet carrier would be the preference.
 
Considering that the USN is going to be fielding the South Dakotas and Lexingtons, I would think that the RN would have reluctantly completed the Ansons and then go into series production with the G3 type.

Down in the cruiser category, they'd develop the E Class design further, ending up with something resembling the Leanders and do something similar to what they did OTL with the destroyer force.

The 12in ships are going to the breakers and the 13.5in ships are going to end up being the mobilisation reserve.
I largely agree. The continued development of the E will probably happen (perhaps evolving to something akin to the Almirante Cervera class cruiser), and I'm of the belief that the Hawkins' won't become the new British standard. This also means that the British aren't putting OTL £2.1 million per unit on the County class, instead towards other parts of the fleet.

Agree also that anything with 12in are scrapped v/quickly and the 13.5 inch ships are in reserve - although perhaps the remaining 13.5" battlecruisers are kept in better shape as their better speed will help keep them somewhat more useful.

anything coal-fired
The world commitments mean that until the fuel oil storage around the Empire/Dominions is improved (just as in OTL), coal fired is going to remain 'useful' but ought to be solved quickly with the increased funding available.
 
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The world commitments mean that until the fuel oil storage around the Empire/Dominions is improved (just as in OTL), coal fired is going to remain 'useful' but ought to be solved quickly with the increased funding available.

One of the bigger expenses in building out Singapore was the provision of tankage and purchase of the reserve of oil anticipated to be needed once the main fleet is deployed to the Far East. Even with Persia and the Gulf States oil in British hands, I foresee that the RN competes with the civilian economy for oil under wartime usage, something that worsens with time as both the navy and the economy shift from coal to oil. The UK and the Empire both are vulnerable to a disruption to oil supplies. This worsens the need for cruisers to patrol the sea lines, increases the commitments for both troops and aircraft to defend choke points, Sheikdoms and the Middle East. On a side note how interesting the conundrum of DEI oil, the British half of Shell would prefer Japan to buy the oil, deepening its hold over Tokyo, yet how interesting if it is sold to Germany and entangles her supply over great distances, vulnerable to London. Oil is the Achilles heel for the CPs generally, Germany in particular.

I might suggest the RN sees the value in moving to RAS versus tankage at fixed bases, the greater part of both rationale and value for the Empire is those bases, but they are likewise a yoke, with RAS the RN can move, concentrate and disperse, going to thee place rather than having a place from which to go. It might oddly undermine the strategic value of many outposts and recapture the expenditures for ships useful everywhere as opposed to bases useful locally. On the flip side, Germany might get out to sea by means of RAS rather than basing, but perversely giving her colonies chains her to the cost and commitment, mirroring the RN, making her more vulnerable despite the flags on the map.

Longest term I will argue Germany gets interested in nuclear power not for her domestic needs, but as naval warship propulsion, on paper she should be one of the first to swallow the high costs to free herself of the anchor of oil. That means German warships in the farther future will be very much all about quality, they will be gold plated priced, fewer in number and better be more capable per ton than anything else, these are precious eggs. Just as the Kaiser's ghost will fawn over. I do love how necessity sometimes circles us back to the past and return the memes to vogue.
 
One of the bigger expenses in building out Singapore was the provision of tankage and purchase of the reserve of oil anticipated to be needed once the main fleet is deployed to the Far East.
I wonder if you see a more even spread of investment in smaller (compared to the OTL Singapore naval base) around the Empire/Dominions, presuming that the AJA (in some fashion) holds in this scenario, rather than 'most of the card deck at Singapore'?

Australia still lacked suitable sized docks and supporting infrastructure especially if it wants to maintain bigger units by itself to any meaningful degree. This might be influenced if the Germans still have a presence (or can operate) East of Suez or not.
 
Wellington seems to far out of the way for the Brits, but for some reason the USN choose it as the primary port/base in 1942 when told Australia was added to the defend mission. Was it the only game in town, or actually useful as a major naval base.
 
Wellington seems to far out of the way for the Brits, but for some reason the USN choose it as the primary port/base in 1942 when told Australia was added to the defend mission. Was it the only game in town, or actually useful as a major naval base.
In the next 2 years Wellington was not only used as the Amphibian Training Base for the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions but was also used as a bunkering stop for unescorted vessels running between the West Coast of the USA and Australia, India and the Middle East. Wellington had a greater number of ships calling than otherNew Zealand ports as it was more strategically located on the southern route. There was an acute lack of suitable escort ships which required the ships to sail as far south as possible across the Pacific. https://www.nzshipmarine.com/nodes/view/27
 
Aren't aircraft carriers only good as replacements for air fields. If Germany is confined to the continent it would seem that carriers would only be good against nations like japan and (possibly) the united states (in the event Canada falls). Because of this, more traditional navy would seem better suited to bottle up the germans.
 
Aren't aircraft carriers only good as replacements for air fields. If Germany is confined to the continent it would seem that carriers would only be good against nations like japan and (possibly) the united states (in the event Canada falls). Because of this, more traditional navy would seem better suited to bottle up the germans.
Sort of, but everyone's got to figure out what exactly aircraft carriers can do and how to do it. From Yarmouth or Lowestoft flying direct that's a 540 mile round trip to Wilhelmshaven. So from what I've read that's the requirements of something like a Vimy with torpedoes, rather than say the Sopwith Cuckoo which could manage 335 miles. Carriers would probably be seen as the auxiliary to the main fleet, to scout, damage or harass/interfere with the HSF, with the RN then following up for the kill.
 
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