WI R class same speed as QE's

steaming towards the German BC. With at least double the 15 inch guns in action against them, I can see the BC Screen being torn apart. Which would leave the Grand Fleet free to go after the Battlefleet of the HSF without the distraction of the "Death Ride of the Battlecruisers".
If we are dreaming what would stop the QEs being laid down with geared steam turbines and small-tube boilers it would be a risk but they where already in use in DD/CLs? With them they might be able to close the German BCs (especially the older ones) during the run south significantly faster....
 
If we are dreaming what would stop the QEs being laid down with geared steam turbines and small-tube boilers it would be a risk but they where already in use in DD/CLs? With them they might be able to close the German BCs (especially the older ones) during the run south significantly faster....

I think that would probably help make the QE's a true 25 knot ship. Without altering their hull, making them longer to reduce their beam without affecting stability etc would speed them up (See the Admiral class). But if you kept them with the same hull shape and went for geared turbines and small tube boilers a-la Fishers Follies, then you can only do so much with raw engine power. The QE's were said to be 24 - 25 knot ships and they were. If they were light and you flogged their guts out, forcing the engines to do it. And really no captain likes to do that. In reality they were 23 - 24 knot ships (if you pushed them hard). With those changes you propose, they could probably do 25 knots as a true flank speed without whipping their asses raw and flogging the machinery half to death.
 
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with oil so after the first few hrs of an engagement they should be faster than many older BCs even if they haven't loaded with bad quality coal...

I'd have to say 'maybe'. The I's could do 26 knots day in day out, and 27 when pushed hard. A Small tube geared turbine QE could probably do around 26 knots if she was a bit light or was being pushed. With small tube boilers being 'new' on so large a vessel you can bet that there would probably be rules against forcing their machinery, and you'd hear the chief engineer getting new ulcers and going perceptably grey when he gets the order from the Captain to force the machinery.

Again its mainly down to hull shape that would be the limiting factor, you'd have to make them longer and reduce their beam somewhat if you wanted them to really shift, as with the QE's relatively short and dumpy hull 25 knots is probably about the best you could ask for, but with the machinery you propose, they could do and hold 25 knots happily.

I think your being a bit easy on the idiot. If I ever write a full timeline Beatty will be having a nasty meeting with the bottom of an empty dry dock.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. Also make sure he drags his Signals officer down there with him. And I love the fact that when talking about the RN in WW1, when you say The Idiot, people immediately know who you're talking about :D
 
Okay so lets say the empire builds 16 QE class, these are the name list:
Mk.1 HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Warspite, HMS Valiant, HMS Barham, HMS Malaya, HMS Argincount; Mk.2 HMS Revenge, HMS Royal Oak, HMS Resolution, HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Ramillies, HMS Resistance; Mk.3 HMS Erin, HMS Sud Afrika, HMS Acadia, HMS Queen Mary (ex-Quebec). What do you think?
 
Well that would be terrifying to face for one. Re the names Sud Afrika becomes HMS Cape Town, Queen Mary already exists so she'd need a new name perhaps Victoria, and the Erin already exists (assuming we yoinked the Turkish ships) so call her Quebec.
 
Well that would be terrifying to face for one. Re the names Sud Afrika becomes HMS Cape Town, Queen Mary already exists so she'd need a new name perhaps Victoria, and the Erin already exists (assuming we yoinked the Turkish ships) so call her Quebec.

Yeah but HMS Queen Mary battlecruiser is destroyed in Jutland and this new Queen Mary would be commission un late 1917. Also HMS Sud Afrika would be money donation from South Africa, so Capetown won't be.
 
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Okay so lets say the empire builds 16 QE class, these are the name list:
Mk.1 HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Warspite, HMS Valiant, HMS Barham, HMS Malaya, HMS Argincount; Mk.2 HMS Revenge, HMS Royal Oak, HMS Resolution, HMS Royal Sovereign, HMS Ramillies, HMS Resistance; Mk.3 HMS Erin, HMS Sud Afrika, HMS Acadia, HMS Queen Mary (ex-Quebec). What do you think?

Insane...but I'll play ;)

Start with the First batch of 6

HMS Queen Elizabeth
HMS Warspite
HMS Valiant
HMS Barham
HMS Malaya
HMS Agincourt

The the 3 'Canadian' ships - repeat batch 1s

HMS Acadia
HMS Quebec
HMS Ontario

Then use the Rs as batch 2 vessels

HMS Revenge
HMS Royal Oak
HMS Resolution
HMS Royal Sovereign
HMS Ramillies
HMS Resistance
HMS Renown or Repulse

I suspect that had this lot managed to get ordered some of the batch 2s might have gotten cancelled and some/all reordered as 'Renown class' BCs - really depends on who is driving the admiralty / government at any given point between being ordered and actually laid down
 
Insane...but I'll play ;)

Start with the First batch of 6

HMS Queen Elizabeth
HMS Warspite
HMS Valiant
HMS Barham
HMS Malaya
HMS Agincourt

The the 3 'Canadian' ships - repeat batch 1s

HMS Acadia
HMS Quebec
HMS Ontario

Then use the Rs as batch 2 vessels

HMS Revenge
HMS Royal Oak
HMS Resolution
HMS Royal Sovereign
HMS Ramillies
HMS Resistance
HMS Renown or Repulse

I suspect that had this lot managed to get ordered some of the batch 2s might have gotten cancelled and some/all reordered as 'Renown class' BCs - really depends on who is driving the admiralty / government at any given point between being ordered and actually laid down

But would the canadians ship be donations or HMCS?
 

Glyndwr01

Banned
with oil so after the first few hrs of an engagement they should be faster than many older BCs even if they haven't loaded with bad quality coal...
What about the bulbous bow to reduce drag?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow

A bulbous bow is a protruding bulb at the bow (or front) of a ship just below the waterline. The bulb modifies the way the water flows around the hull, reducing drag and thus increasing speed, range, fuel efficiency, and stability. Large ships with bulbous bows generally have twelve to fifteen percent better fuel efficiency than similar vessels without them.[1] A bulbous bow also increases the buoyancy of the forward part and hence reduces the pitching of the ship to a small degree.

Bulbous bows have been found to be most effective when used on vessels that meet the following conditions:

  • the waterline length is longer than about 15 metres (49.2 ft)
  • the vessel will operate most of the time at or near its maximum speed [2]
Thus, large vessels that cross large bodies of water near their best speed will benefit from a bulbous bow. This would include naval vessels, cargo ships, passenger ships, tankers and supertankers. All of these ships tend to be large and usually operate within a small range of speeds close to their top speed.

Models in the Discovery museum, Newcastle upon Tyne, England of several warships built in Newcastle during the last decade of the 19th century (notably in the yards of William Armstrong) show bulbous bows. An illustration of the cruiser USS Albany (launched 1899) which appears in the biography of Armstrong by Henrietta Heald (2010) appears to show a bulbous bow. It may be of relevance that Armstrong was a hydraulics engineer. The bow design did not initially enjoy wide acceptance, although it was used in the Lexington-class battlecruiser to great success after the two ships of that class which survived the Washington Naval Treaty were converted to aircraft carriers.[4] This lack of acceptance changed in the 1920s, with Germany's launching of Bremen and Europa. They were referred to as Germany's North Atlantic greyhounds, two large commercial ocean liners that competed for the trans-Atlantic passenger trade. Both ships won the coveted Blue Riband, Bremen in 1929 with a crossing speed of 27.9 knots (51.7 km/h; 32.1 mph), and Europa surpassing her in 1930 with a crossing speed of 27.91 knots.[5]

The design began to be incorporated elsewhere, as seen in the U.S. built SS Malolo, SS President Hoover and SS President Coolidge passenger liners launched in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Still the idea was largely viewed as experimental by many ship builders and owners.

In 1935 the French superliner Normandie coupled a bulbous forefoot with massive size and a redesigned hull shape. She was able to achieve speeds in excess of 30 knots (56 km/h). Normandie was famous for many things, including her clean entry into the water and markedly reduced bow wave. Normandie's great rival, the British liner Queen Mary, achieved equivalent speeds using traditional stem and hull design. However, a crucial difference was that Normandie achieved these speeds with approximately thirty percent less engine power than Queen Mary and a corresponding reduction in fuel use.
 
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I think that would probably help make the QE's a true 25 knot ship. Without altering their hull, making them longer to reduce their beam without affecting stability etc would speed them up (See the Admiral class). But if you kept them with the same hull shape and went for geared turbines and small tube boilers a-la Fishers Follies, then you can only do so much with raw engine power. The QE's were said to be 24 - 25 knot ships and they were. If they were light and you flogged their guts out, forcing the engines to do it. And really no captain likes to do that. In reality they were 23 - 24 knot ships (if you pushed them hard). With those changes you propose, they could probably do 25 knots as a true flank speed without whipping their asses raw and flogging the machinery half to death.
So what you're trying to achieve is British Kongos armed with 15" guns.
 
So what you're trying to achieve is British Kongos armed with 15" guns.

I guess thats what the end result would be if we went with geared turbines and small tube boilers, making the QE's true 24/25 knot ships, and for the time they would be fast battleships, as most DN's could do about 21 knots. Its like if they had gone with oil burning for the Tiger, she'd have been probably a 28 knot ship.
 
IIRC Churchill proposed William Pitt and Oliver Cromwell as names for battleships while he was at the Admiralty. But King George V vetoed both.
 
IIRC Churchill proposed William Pitt and Oliver Cromwell as names for battleships while he was at the Admiralty. But King George V vetoed both.

Yep, the first because he didn't want a ship named after a chap who had an ancestor beheaded, and Pitt because he knew Seamen would call her HMS Shit.
 
I wonder if you drop oil fired small tube boilers and modify the stem into the best passible version for 1913 of Armstrong's bulbous bow on the OTL R class how fast could they go? Not as good as the QE's I Know but better than the rest of the Dreadnoughts. In OTL an extra QE in the form of HMS Malaya was built, so in an ATL rather than build eight R class, build three more QE's to give two four ship divisions and only build four R's for a total of seven ships in the program. Modify the R's as above before building and you could have three divisions capable of OTL's Fifth Battleship division's fleet speed. Now how they are deployed in 1916 is another matter entirely.
 
Well the 5th BS was deployed to sit with The Idiot and friends because whilst Hoods 3rd BS was away on gunnery training, Jellico didn't want The Idiot to run off and get himself into trouble. So the big guns of the 5th BS would be there to support him. It was basically an attachment to the Battlecruiser Force, not a permanent addition. The R's had a different hull form to the QEs and less engine power, they were more beamy too. So to get more speed out of them, giving them geared turbines and small tube boilers might get another knot, but thats a 22 knot battleship, not what anyone would call speedy. I dunno if the bulbous bow would help much, but i've no way of finding out. To make a 'fast' R you'd need to alter their hulls a lot and basically make them a QE.
 
Quote from the entry on Tigers from Battleships of World War One by Anthony Preston
The DNC claimed that if small tube boilers had been adopted as the Germans had done with the Derfflinger much of the weight allocated to machinery could have been allocated to armour or greater horsepower; he claimed that he could have had the Tiger and Queen Elisabeth capable of 32 and 28½ knots respectively. On the other hand there can be no doubt that the Tiger's contemporary the battle cruiser Derfflinger put the weight saved to better use with 12 inch armour on the waterline.
 
28.5 knots from a QE! o_O Surely it wouldn't save that much weight to allow for more machinery...I don't have springsharp (nor have a fucking clue how to use it) so i've no way of seeing if this is close to true.
 
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