Steam Gun Boat

plenka

Banned
I am interested in Steam Gun Boat, a British WW2 design for a relatively large, well armed ship which was intended to be used mostly in coastal waters and was to be easily mass produced in non-military shipyards. However, it has proven to be to complex, and they were forced to produce them in shipyards that produced various military vessels, thus defeating its reason for existance.

It was relatively fast and well armed for a vessel of its size, in its final configuration it had speed of 30 knots, and was armed with 1x76mm, 2x57mm, 2x20mm and 2x533 torpedoes.

Now, I am interested to know, how would these craft fare in conditions of WW1. They were relatively short ranged, but rather seaworthy as well, so how would they perform and compare to other small craft in various areas, from North Sea, Belgian Coast and Mediterranean.

Also, how would they be used by both sides, by Entante and Central Powers, presuming they can build them.
 
It was one of those simple and clever ideas that rapidly become very, very stupid. They were too big for wooden hulls, like the true MGP/MTB, and so consumed strategically useful materiel and were too big (because of the turbine plant) for small years to build, so they competed with actually useful craft like destroyers, frigates and sloops. They also had all the problems associated with steam turbines, such as slow cold-start times.
This is why historically only a half-dozen were built, not the dozens planned.

In WW1 they would probably be equally pointless, worsened by the lack of familiarity with the small boiler/turbine plant they used and their heavy fuel consumption.
 
Top