Commonwealth of Recherche

[Krakatoa]

That was my hopeful quote, Rusel. Everything Oz has had on the east Coast has appeared over NZ about a week later.

High winds, torrential rain, it all puts a dampener on my golf game.

Obsydian Shade: I run an AU SAM I call SuperCat after something Hood told me about. Essentially SeaCat with an extra booster to achieve supersonic speeds. Same quad mounting, latest radar. Seems to do the trick. I have four mountings as the armament on that Atlantean Attack Carrier. I can send Rowdy the Supercat mounting 3/vue I drew if he would like it?

[Rowdy36]

Thanks everyone! If only I had the money for one...

How much for a tour with dive included?

Probably a few million split 20 ways? maybe we could start up a Shipbucket cruise line?

I would be quite happy with a place round the NSW/QLD border.

West coast for me - Kimberley in the dry season, south coast in summer

I don't know how committed you are to Sea Slug, or all-British armament postwar, but personally, I think that Terrier might be a better way to go, and maybe even a bit more aesthetic, though I suppose that point might be debatable.

As for Seacat, I've honestly never exactly understood the point of a subsonic SAM, or why it lasted in service as long as it did. I mean, yes, I understand it's basically replacing the 40mm Bofors mounts, but by the time the thing entered service, it seems to have been obsolete. In your particular position, I'd just create your own AU alternate weapon system. Certainly a nation capable of producing such fine vessels can afford it!

My reasoning behind choosing Sea Slug in later ships is primarily because I wanted to use Sea Dart. I thought that if I went for Terrier or Tartar on early ships then realistically their replacements would likely be armed with SM-1s. I'll give it a ponder on the weekend and play around with some ideas. As for Seacat I guess it's relatively small size and cost combined to make it a 'good enough' weapon in peacetime.

Do you have Whale Sharks migrating through Recherche, and perhaps one of those Hammerhead get togethers?

I'd imagine there would be a few of those around

I can send Rowdy the Supercat mounting 3/vue I drew if he would like it?

I would appreciate that if you could.

[Obsydian Shade]

My reasoning behind choosing Sea Slug in later ships is primarily because I wanted to use Sea Dart. I thought that if I went for Terrier or Tartar on early ships then realistically their replacements would likely be armed with SM-1s. I'll give it a ponder on the weekend and play around with some ideas. As for Seacat I guess it's relatively small size and cost combined to make it a 'good enough' weapon in peacetime.

Sea Slug is such a dead end, that once it becomes time to scrap the missile, you pretty much have to scrap the ship along with it, or heavily repurpose it, meaning helos or classrooms. Terrier, on the otherhand is directly upgradable to SM-1. Probably won't matter to the cruisers too much, but to other, more modern, purpose-built ships the implications to their careers could be rather large, to say the least, especially as they need to be big vessels to even contain it.

You might consider some of the NIGs or SIGs missiles as an alternative, which wouldn't stick you with American weapons, but not knowing the storage arrangements of those weapons, I'm a bit hesitant to suggest them. I do like the SIG-25, as it looks very sleek and capable, perhaps an alternative to Tartar. I haven't been able to find much information on it, but I wonder if you put it on an extended booster like Terrier, if it mightn't work. You'd have to ask one of our British experts (of which the board is well blessed with) about the timeframe, though.

[Krakatoa]

The reason that Sea Slug is ideal for installing on existing ships, is that the ships being installed on will be 5-10 years old before they start converting and installation is going to take 3-5 years. The converted ships could be already as much as 15 years old on conversion completion with about the same length of life left in the ship 15 or so years. At the end of that period both the missile system and the ship will be obsolete and ready for scrapping. What it does do for a Navy is to allow it to have experience with a new system that may or may not work out.

The reason for the Terrier instasllation is as both Rowdy and Obsydian have noted, the system has an upgrade path that will allow the missile system to probably outlive the ship the system is placed on. I actually plumped for Terrier for the upgrade I did on the big Atlantean cruiser for that reason. Ace's help with the details was much appreciated and worth a read if you consider Terrier.

[acelanceloet]

I would like to add to this discussion that nobody knew the real upgrade potential of either of the systems (terrier had next to no upgrade potential before the Mk 10 GMLS came around, for example) during that time. politics threw in a lot more weight then potential upgrade potential in choices like these.....

[eswube]

Very nice work with that MV Howe!

[MihoshiK]

I would like to add to this discussion that nobody knew the real upgrade potential of either of the systems (terrier had next to no upgrade potential before the Mk 10 GMLS came around, for example) during that time. politics threw in a lot more weight then potential upgrade potential in choices like these.....

Hell, a second gen Sea Slug was planned, but iirc it got killed by the politicians.

[Thiel]

Wasn't the magazine layout on the Countys compromised by the need to store at least two missiles with nuclear warheads?

[erik_t]

The real-life magazine layout would be conducive to such, but I do not know of any primary source that says so. It would be very easy to reconstruct such a requirement retroactively, without any actual at-the-time data supporting this conclusion.

In any case, the USN sailed with nuclear-tipped Talos and Terrier with much more sane magazine arrangements. IMHO the Countys were hampered first and foremost by treating missiles more like airplanes and less like rounds of ammunition. Ironically, this meant they were built sort of a half-step in advance of USN practice, much like the radar situation in the imminent-war era. The US studied very similar "missile hangar" sorts of setups, particularly for converting the Alaska hulls, but the missile system advanced rather faster than the shipbuilding program on this side of the pond.

[Rowdy36]

So after over a year and a lot of things going on in the real world, I'm finally getting round to posting some new ships. The following is a somewhat ad-hoc collection of ships that I call the 'coastal series' - basically private venture design studies by the main naval shipbuilder in Recherche (Hunter Shipyards) to appeal to smaller navies. What started as a simple one-off design exercise has rolled into a series of 'what else can I draw?' Some of these designs will be used by Recherche, some by other nations within this AU, and others will not be used at all. There will be more ships to come in this series, as well as more WW2 ships, so stay tuned.

The ship that started it all, a small multi-purpose vessel/combatant:






A heavy landing craft (LCH) design to fulfil a Recherche Navy requirement and the Australian Balikpapan Class replacement:




A simple coastal replenishment tender, with limited underway replenishment capabilities: