Warships that should never been built?

I'm going to be controversial with this one.

The Hood. Imagine what the UK could have done with the WNT with her tonnage freed up. Perhaps get a 3rd Nelson.
 
I'm going to be controversial with this one.

The Hood. Imagine what the UK could have done with the WNT with her tonnage freed up. Perhaps get a 3rd Nelson.

Not that controversial. Hood was a pre-Jutland design hastily modified to include preliminary lessons from Jutland, resulting in an overweight mess.

Not rebuilding her in the 30s didn't help either, but that's more understandable given that other ships needed it more. Still, if the RN had known the next war would need fully armoured battle cruisers rather than slow battleships, they'd have bumped her up the priority list.
 
I'm going to be controversial with this one.

The Hood. Imagine what the UK could have done with the WNT with her tonnage freed up. Perhaps get a 3rd Nelson.

Hood was the reason there was not a third Nelson. She was so far outside the qualitative limit of 35,000 tons, she was the 'third' ship. In the initial draft of the Washington Treaty's "Ship to be Retained", Maryland was to be the final US ship, Hood was the final RN ship and Nagato was the final IJN ship.

The problem was Mutsu. She had been paid for by public subscription, and the IJN wasn't about to send her to the breakers and squander all that good will with the public. So the IJN kept her, the RN got an option for two new 35,000 ton ships and the USN was allowed to complete 'two more West Virginias' (that's what the treaty called them).

I do think if Hood's proposed Admiral-class sisters had been recast as all-or-nothing armor designs, they would have been very formidable.

As an aside, those of you that visit the BC forum might recognize the user-name Irishopinion. He and I had an interesting conversation offline about Nelsol and Rodol and the F2 and F3 battlecruiser designs. I stated I thought the RN went with the O3 (Nelson) design because of the armor protection after the battlecruiser losses at Jutland. Irishopinion stated that was incorrect, that in the treaty negotiations, the RN wanted to build two F3 battlecruisers, but once the treaty was signed they felt they were obligated to build 16in armed ships. Imagine the World War 2 RN if Nelson and Rodney are 9 x 15in gun and 29 knot ships....

Regards,
 
Okay. I’m going to poke my head up from my dugout. Have a look around. All clear. Good. Right then. Next class of ship that did not need to be built IMHO was.......the Iowa Class. Surely some more of the treaty BBs would have served just as well and in fact building more AAA Cruisers and Essex carriers would have served better. Duck and covvveeerrrrrr 😱
 
In terms of ships not being built, were the Des Moines class cruisers worth the investment? I mean sure they have the auto 8" gun but what purpose did they serve by the time they were laid down?
 
Not sure if it's been mentioned or covered in-depth but I'm nominating the Tegetthoff-class of battleship as a whole. On paper they look rather impressive however, they are pretty damn terrible even by early dreadnought standards. As a design they were far too small and light for the armament they packed in and was compromised in basically every way possible. Their flaws consisted of;

- 30.5 cm/45 turrets could not be ventilated under battle conditions without sucking in the propellant gasses, leaving the crew to survive on the estimated 15 minutes of oxygen they had when the ventilators were shut off or haul in gasses and suffocate.

- Turret design itself is flawed, an unprotected slot exists between the barbette and gunhouse alongside the fact that the rangefinder on the turret roof was too large, making it a huge liability. The turret itself has been described as "likely to peel open like a tin can" if it was ever hit by any high caliber shell of note.

- Main battery turret also had gun coupling problems. On Viribus Unitis, all guns could elevate to 20 degrees either individually or when coupled together. The other ships in the class were able to elevate all guns individually to -4 / +20 degrees, but when the guns were coupled together, the elevation range for the center gun was -3 / +15.5 degrees and the outer guns were limited to -4 / +16 degrees.

- 15 cm barbettes lacked ventilation and would become inhabitable to their crews once propellant gas or smoke entered them.

- The ship listed extremely badly in high speed turns due to excessive top weight and flawed calculations in the design period. Tegetthoff was reported to have listed 19° during a high-speed turn in 1915, coming within 6° of her own righting arm in an undamaged state. This also made her protection system basically completely come out of the water in the process, exposing her "soft underbelly". Calculations carried out after the trials showed a significant difference with the calculations made while the ship was being built. The errors in the theoretical calculations made during construction had led to excess top weight, leading to the ship’s instability.

- Each turret had only two cordite hoists and two shell hoists to serve the three guns, the hoists themselves were also uninterrupted which increased the risk of flash and ammunition stored in the handling room (used as a ready ammunition room) was found to be at risk of detonation as well.

- All ships of the class required stiffeners to be fitted under the turrets to prevent hull distortion alongside at least one ship of the class blowing rivets out of the bottom of her hull when firing the main battery guns.

- Ventilation ducts passed through the watertight bulkheads but could not be secured in case of flooding which meant that flooding could spread between compartments even when the ship was closed up for action.

- There was relatively large opening within the armored deck around the stacks, projectiles up to 7 cm were projected to possibly be able to exploit this flaw and could have sent shrapnel or shells into the walls of the boiler rooms. Funnel uptakes were also apparently unarmored.

- In service speeds varied heavily, Viribus Unitis herself had issues getting up past 17.5 knots in loaded condition.

There's likely more that I missed but I think it gets the point across. Austria-Hungary's extremely broken and outdated naval doctrine also heavily cripples these ships operationally but that's not related directly to the ships. Would have likely served them better to use the two gun turrets from the Radetzky class and not have tried to fit 20 pounds into a 10 pound bag.
 
In terms of ships not being built, were the Des Moines class cruisers worth the investment? I mean sure they have the auto 8" gun but what purpose did they serve by the time they were laid down?

They were actually better at AA than Roanoke and Worcester, hence their longer service lives. They proved a semi-fixed 8in gun was practical, workable solution. Their solution of artillery for Anti-Air work was shortly supplanted by missiles, though. There were several concepts to turn them into Tomahawk shooters in the '80s, this is one of them

DesMoinesclasspostmodernization.png


A lot of hardware gets criticized when it comes at the end of the technology life-cycle. We need to remember the people on the spot had no idea the replacement technology would be successful. We're currently at that spot with drones against manned aircraft. Everything appears that drones can take a significant combat role, but uncertainty lies with their use against a peer opponent. What if half the GPS satellites are disabled and there is a substantial ECM environment for them to operate in?

My thoughts,
 

Sargon

Donor
Monthly Donor
Not sure if it's been mentioned or covered in-depth but I'm nominating the Tegetthoff-class of battleship as a whole. On paper they look rather impressive however, they are pretty damn terrible even by early dreadnought standards. As a design they were far too small and light for the armament they packed in and was compromised in basically every way possible. Their flaws consisted of;

- 30.5 cm/45 turrets could not be ventilated under battle conditions without sucking in the propellant gasses, leaving the crew to survive on the estimated 15 minutes of oxygen they had when the ventilators were shut off or haul in gasses and suffocate.

- Turret design itself is flawed, an unprotected slot exists between the barbette and gunhouse alongside the fact that the rangefinder on the turret roof was too large, making it a huge liability. The turret itself has been described as "likely to peel open like a tin can" if it was ever hit by any high caliber shell of note.

- Main battery turret also had gun coupling problems. On Viribus Unitis, all guns could elevate to 20 degrees either individually or when coupled together. The other ships in the class were able to elevate all guns individually to -4 / +20 degrees, but when the guns were coupled together, the elevation range for the center gun was -3 / +15.5 degrees and the outer guns were limited to -4 / +16 degrees.

- 15 cm barbettes lacked ventilation and would become inhabitable to their crews once propellant gas or smoke entered them.

- The ship listed extremely badly in high speed turns due to excessive top weight and flawed calculations in the design period. Tegetthoff was reported to have listed 19° during a high-speed turn in 1915, coming within 6° of her own righting arm in an undamaged state. This also made her protection system basically completely come out of the water in the process, exposing her "soft underbelly". Calculations carried out after the trials showed a significant difference with the calculations made while the ship was being built. The errors in the theoretical calculations made during construction had led to excess top weight, leading to the ship’s instability.

- Each turret had only two cordite hoists and two shell hoists to serve the three guns, the hoists themselves were also uninterrupted which increased the risk of flash and ammunition stored in the handling room (used as a ready ammunition room) was found to be at risk of detonation as well.

- All ships of the class required stiffeners to be fitted under the turrets to prevent hull distortion alongside at least one ship of the class blowing rivets out of the bottom of her hull when firing the main battery guns.

- Ventilation ducts passed through the watertight bulkheads but could not be secured in case of flooding which meant that flooding could spread between compartments even when the ship was closed up for action.

- There was relatively large opening within the armored deck around the stacks, projectiles up to 7 cm were projected to possibly be able to exploit this flaw and could have sent shrapnel or shells into the walls of the boiler rooms. Funnel uptakes were also apparently unarmored.

- In service speeds varied heavily, Viribus Unitis herself had issues getting up past 17.5 knots in loaded condition.

There's likely more that I missed but I think it gets the point across. Austria-Hungary's extremely broken and outdated naval doctrine also heavily cripples these ships operationally but that's not related directly to the ships. Would have likely served them better to use the two gun turrets from the Radetzky class and not have tried to fit 20 pounds into a 10 pound bag.

I was thinking about mentioning them, but good call and well done for covering their flaws so well.


Sargon
 
The Harry DeWolf class of patrol icebreakers being built for the Royal Canadian Navy. They are slow, underarmed, and not suitable for getting through heavy ice. The money and resources spent on these ships would have been better used on either dedicated patrol boats or dedicated icebreakers. Like the LCS, it tries to do too much.
 
Not sure if it's been mentioned or covered in-depth but I'm nominating the Tegetthoff-class of battleship as a whole. On paper they look rather impressive however, they are pretty damn terrible even by early dreadnought standards. As a design they were far too small and light for the armament they packed in and was compromised in basically every way possible. Their flaws consisted of;

- 30.5 cm/45 turrets could not be ventilated under battle conditions without sucking in the propellant gasses, leaving the crew to survive on the estimated 15 minutes of oxygen they had when the ventilators were shut off or haul in gasses and suffocate.

- Turret design itself is flawed, an unprotected slot exists between the barbette and gunhouse alongside the fact that the rangefinder on the turret roof was too large, making it a huge liability. The turret itself has been described as "likely to peel open like a tin can" if it was ever hit by any high caliber shell of note.

- Main battery turret also had gun coupling problems. On Viribus Unitis, all guns could elevate to 20 degrees either individually or when coupled together. The other ships in the class were able to elevate all guns individually to -4 / +20 degrees, but when the guns were coupled together, the elevation range for the center gun was -3 / +15.5 degrees and the outer guns were limited to -4 / +16 degrees.

- 15 cm barbettes lacked ventilation and would become inhabitable to their crews once propellant gas or smoke entered them.

- The ship listed extremely badly in high speed turns due to excessive top weight and flawed calculations in the design period. Tegetthoff was reported to have listed 19° during a high-speed turn in 1915, coming within 6° of her own righting arm in an undamaged state. This also made her protection system basically completely come out of the water in the process, exposing her "soft underbelly". Calculations carried out after the trials showed a significant difference with the calculations made while the ship was being built. The errors in the theoretical calculations made during construction had led to excess top weight, leading to the ship’s instability.

- Each turret had only two cordite hoists and two shell hoists to serve the three guns, the hoists themselves were also uninterrupted which increased the risk of flash and ammunition stored in the handling room (used as a ready ammunition room) was found to be at risk of detonation as well.

- All ships of the class required stiffeners to be fitted under the turrets to prevent hull distortion alongside at least one ship of the class blowing rivets out of the bottom of her hull when firing the main battery guns.

- Ventilation ducts passed through the watertight bulkheads but could not be secured in case of flooding which meant that flooding could spread between compartments even when the ship was closed up for action.

- There was relatively large opening within the armored deck around the stacks, projectiles up to 7 cm were projected to possibly be able to exploit this flaw and could have sent shrapnel or shells into the walls of the boiler rooms. Funnel uptakes were also apparently unarmored.

- In service speeds varied heavily, Viribus Unitis herself had issues getting up past 17.5 knots in loaded condition.

There's likely more that I missed but I think it gets the point across. Austria-Hungary's extremely broken and outdated naval doctrine also heavily cripples these ships operationally but that's not related directly to the ships. Would have likely served them better to use the two gun turrets from the Radetzky class and not have tried to fit 20 pounds into a 10 pound bag.
Yep the Tegetthoff's really could have used a better turret design and really should have been around 2500 tons heavier and for that matter the Austrians should have hired a few German designers to make sure their first dreadnought design was of decent quality
 
Should have been another Ocean class LHA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFA_Argus_(A135)

I agree the RN could use a second Ocean, and even now a new LPH or two to serve alongside Albion and Bulwark and the QE and PoW carriers. But I think the RN has gotten excellent value for the money with Argus. Even as a conversion, she is roomy enough that as her role has evolved over the years she has been able to handle the changes. She's served longer than Ocean, and I know of no plans to remove her from service.

My thoughts,
 
The Harry DeWolf class of patrol icebreakers being built for the Royal Canadian Navy. They are slow, underarmed, and not suitable for getting through heavy ice. The money and resources spent on these ships would have been better used on either dedicated patrol boats or dedicated icebreakers. Like the LCS, it tries to do too much.

While I completely agree with everything you've stated and would like to add the basically confirmed rumor of god awful hull welds on Harry DeWolf herself, the class of ships do serve a purpose mainly as experience for Irving. Irving and their Halifax location have not (to my knowledge) built any military warships since the Kingtson class coastal defense and even calling those things warships is charitable. Part of the entire purpose of the order for these ships is to hopefully bring Irving back up to building large naval ships before they get handed the entire potentially 15 ship strong Type 26 order. I'd rather them keep most of the screw ups in these ships than the Type 26's.

Although it's Irving so they'll likely still find a way to screw it up if the Government doesn't do it preemptively.
 
I agree the RN could use a second Ocean, and even now a new LPH or two to serve alongside Albion and Bulwark and the QE and PoW carriers. But I think the RN has gotten excellent value for the money with Argus. Even as a conversion, she is roomy enough that as her role has evolved over the years she has been able to handle the changes. She's served longer than Ocean, and I know of no plans to remove her from service.

My thoughts,
In fairness if the RN was guaranteed it could have had a couple LPH's(and ideally a couple extra type 45s)built in addition to the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales I'm pretty sure the carriers would have had a massively different design
 
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McPherson

Banned
Not that controversial. Hood was a pre-Jutland design hastily modified to include preliminary lessons from Jutland, resulting in an overweight mess.

Not rebuilding her in the 30s didn't help either, but that's more understandable given that other ships needed it more. Still, if the RN had known the next war would need fully armoured battle cruisers rather than slow battleships, they'd have bumped her up the priority list.

Too much Foresight War involved. Now strengthening the deck armor and turning the secondaries into scrape offs atop the armored raft? That is a Jutland lesson that should have been and what was NOT applied.

- The ship listed extremely badly in high speed turns due to excessive top weight and flawed calculations in the design period. Tegetthoff was reported to have listed 19° during a high-speed turn in 1915, coming within 6° of her own righting arm in an undamaged state. This also made her protection system basically completely come out of the water in the process, exposing her "soft underbelly". Calculations carried out after the trials showed a significant difference with the calculations made while the ship was being built. The errors in the theoretical calculations made during construction had led to excess top weight, leading to the ship’s instability.

I'm more concerned with the turtling after 1 lousy torpedo.


The TDS was lousy


HMS Barham.
1580407738666.png



The ability to settle evenly was something that some naval architects took into account when they designed superdreadnoughts. The British were not among those groups.

Counterflooding was much harder with longitudinal centerline and trinary compartmentation (Szent Istvan and Barham.) So was magazine fire suppression; though the channeling and blast path a torpedo explosion takes is quite obvious with a centerline division. The bulkhead acts as a pressure mirror and the blast path goes down the center of the ship instead of ACROSS, around and underneath the magazine armored box that sits above the bilge. (KABOOM!, Yamato, Musashi, Barham, maybe even Royal Oak. Notice Oklahoma and West Virginia and Caio Duilo and even Vittorio Veneto did not blow up?)

Rollers after torpedo hits, then big explosion follows with the British scheme. Clever guys, those French. Rest of us? We are SLOW learners. Montana was designed to compartmentation according to the British model. Thank MURPHY those mistakes were never built!
 

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SsgtC

Banned
Hood was definitely not a mistake. You know what’s a mistake? Not modernizing her and putting her into war service immediately.
Honestly, she kind of was. After Jutland, she should have been cancelled and given a full redesign to fully incorporate the lesson learned from the battle
 
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