Suezmax Royal Navy?

Delta Force

Banned
What if the Royal Navy had adopted Suezmax constraints (similar to the United States Navy adoption of Panamax constraints) instead of focusing on ensuring that its major warships could use facilities across the world? Would there have been any major changes for Royal Navy warship design?
 
HMS Queen Elizabeth: Draught 11m, Beam 70m, Height above the waterline 63m

Suezmax: Draught 20.1m, Beam 77.5m, Height above the waterline 68m...

Might notice the limits in a few decades but not yet.
 
There's no locks on the Suez and the canal at its narrowest is a bit over 250m, so do you count overall beam, or just waterline beam?
 
besides that, no ship is that wide as the Queen Elizabeth Class CV has a beam of 39 meters on the waterline, not 70. Only the largest supertankers come close to the 70 meter beam.
 
besides that, no ship is that wide as the Queen Elizabeth Class CV has a beam of 39 meters on the waterline, not 70. Only the largest supertankers come close to the 70 meter beam.

Actually since the choke point would appear to be the Suez Canal Bridge I thought it best to include her flight deck rather than her more slender figure at the waterline....the point is though you are going to need one hell of a lot of warship to get stuck in the Suez Canal.
 
Well....
1) the RN can't afford ships that size
2) They'd like to be able to dock somewhere in the world
3) having to avoid the Panama Canal is annoying
4) since the Suez ended up being closed about half the time, why limit yourself to that size, if you've got megalomania?
 
Suezmax is pretty much a non-issue if you control the canal. Why? Because it's just a big ditch in the desert. It can be enlarged at any time pretty much for the cost of dredging - and has been, repeatedly.

As a practical matter, Suezmax is defined by the size of the largest ships planned to use the canal in quantity, and the canal is enlarged to fit. It just happens that that size hasn't changed much in the last few decades.
 
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