Shipbucket

my thoughts ?

- considering the longest hits in WW2 are around 26,000 yards (HMS Warspite and KM Scharnhorst) does a max range of only 30,000 matter ? (at least v a moving target and with only 6 guns ranging well at that distance will be hard from a smaller lower ship ?)

- Is 50/50 not OK ? when you consider that the raider (KM) will then have to survive making it back to Germany afterwards, the USN/RN ship can afford to be damaged and ask for help to slowly get home (and it will need more smaller DDs/CLs/CVL to help it find the raider anyway so being equal would almost certainly result in a win (or a KM declining battle if it has the speed to run)

So I would suggest that you only want to match as anything more is wasteful (unless you go full BB killer) and just build for numbers (you will need then for finding the raider anyway), this would be a super CA with say 12 x 8" guns and 3" deck (for immunity under 28,000y) and a 6" belt (we can angle the ship anyway) you would want at least 32Kn to have a 4 Kn advantage over your opponent, maybe 16,000-18,000t (a pre Des Moines-class cruiser) it would also be very good v CAs or CLs (maybe even try to drop it to just under 15,000t maybe only 9/10x8" if you only need to be 50/50)

Everybody seems to forget that the Deutschland's were purposely built and armoured against 8" cruisers. In a one-on-one battle against an 8" cruiser the Deutschland has a better than even chance of beating it. The 8" cruiser needs to be armoured to take 11" hits. That means armouring it with a minimum of 6" and 7" would be better. (ask any woman) Your 8" cruiser ends up having to be bigger than the Deutschland to have a chance of beating it. To make certain of a win you would still need two or three of them. Which is a win to the Germans on the waste of resources to beat a Deutschland. It is doing its job even before the ship is built.

Yes JSB, damaging a raider enough that it is no longer effective and easy meat for whoever catches up with it next is the required end result. But losing ships doing that only enhances the reputation of the raider. The raiders job beside sinking merchant ships, is to tie down as many of your enemies naval forces as possible. Graf Spee did that probably better than expected. It still took three cruisers (22,000 tons) to damage the Graf Spee enough for it to seek harbour. They did not sink it. If the Spee had stood and fought what would have happened, the Spee's main armament was still intact.

Krakatoa wrote:The drawing is ok Nighthunter, but I am not sold on it being a Deutschland killer, I would rate its chances as only 50/50 in a one on one battle.

The Wichita is credited with a 6.4" strake of belt armour, but as you can see from your drawing, that armour only covers the boilers and engine rooms and is very narrow. Reading the service record in Wiki, the Wichita was hit with a 4-5" shell 5 foot below the waterline which pierced the side and damaged a fuel tank. Taking that further it would mean that the magazines are not heavily protected and are a vulnerable point. The Deutschlands 11" guns would be capable of penetrating about 95% of the available target. Your 12" would have the same penetration ability on the Deutschland. However the range of the 11" on the Deutschland was 40,000 yards. The original twin 12" on yours only fired 24,000 yards, and even with increasing the elevation a bit you might make 30,000 yards. That's 10,000 yards you could be under fire for, before your guns could open fire. You had better hope for some bad weather and 25,000 yard ranges. Also the extra weight of the 12" gun installation would slow your ship down. The Wichita is credited with 100,000 for 33 knots, that would probably reduce to 30-31 knots. Add some extra armour and that speed would drop to the point where your ship is not much faster than the Deutschland, and thus the amount of time you could be under fire without reply could see your ship sunk without firing a shot.

For a Wichita type hull and 12", I would increase the length of the hull (and breadth), fit 8x12" (new mark of gun and turret for better range) to give a firepower superiority, enlarge the armour scheme by a lot, increase the propulsion systems to take the extra weight, use the extra length to improve your secondaries to 4 a side minimum. Lots more of that 6.4" armour belt.

None of the guns on any of the ships in this thread (except possibly the French 16") can match the Deutschland for range. So they need to have a marked speed advantage, better armour, and better firepower to be able to sink a Deutschland and not take too much damage themselves.

Hi! My first post.

First of all, let me say the artwork of the ship under discussion (Wichita AU ) is beautiful.

Second of all, the (technical) commentary back and forth is quite good. All I want to do is raise some points that I think might further that discussion a wee bit.

With that in mind I would like to suggest the following addenda;

a. I assume the proviso that this will be pre-radar era hunters and this is a USN ship, the omission of spotter plane scouting and gunnery and the importance of that asset is somewhat surprising to me as a consequence. US warships (cruisers and above) were trained in aircraft spotter co-operation for long range fire against surface targets. This would be over the horizon type shooting. The results of fire director restricted gunfire observed beyond 20,000 meters (OTH) and 30+ seconds flight time was that an alert maneuvering target was almost impossible to hit as you could not predict which way it would zig or zag to dodge your shell ladders. The first long ranged shots had better hit and they better cripple. With that lesson in mind, the Americans designed tight turning warships and only required guns mounted (cruisers and below) that were effective to the observed ship's fire director horizon. Any gunfire 35,000 meters range (~50+ seconds flight time) simply gave an enemy ship too much time to dodge, the second salvo. You had to have aircraft to correct by looking top-down.

b. Part of a USN spotter plane's drill was to feed observation corrections via radio to the firing ship of the target ship's turns and course changes to dodge. This improved accuracy marginally enough to make OTH shooting to cripple worth it. So putting a plane up when encountering suspicious smoke or an RRR signal was almost axiomatic.

c. Given the paucity of long range hits and the penny pinching Congress insisting on long barrel liner wear for the artillery, this would tend to make American naval rifles above 20.3 cm bore of the era to have lower muzzle velocities than Italian, French, or German artillery of similar class. To compensate, the Americans did two things. They designed for the higher working gas pressures anyway as a safety cushion, and they used the higher energies to drive mass instead of achieving velocity for added range. So, if you do use a post 1925 designed gun, you will also use a heavyweight shell (about roughly equivalent kinetically to an early British 13.5 inch bore WWI naval rifle's projectile, but with significantly better accuracy over the length of the effective range, which for the expected Mark 8 30.5 cm gun was about 35,000 meters maximum and about ~25,000 meters effective.

d. Which brings me to my final point. The Lutzow class ships carried an inferior naval rifle whose ballistic performance in the shells was no better than the Pre WW I Krupp design it replaced. According to Nathan Okun, the shell fired would have been ineffective at long range (+20,000 meters) in scoring a single crippling hit against a treaty cruiser. The battle of the River Platte seems to confirm that observation. Of course no-one prior to armed contact with a German panzer ship, would know about this model German naval rifles' inaccuracy or of mutual shell interference in flight that added to the surprising single barrel shot inaccuracy or the lack of punch in their shells. Except maybe the Germans would have known that fact, which accounts for instructions to the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to avoid engagement with anything larger than a heavy cruiser.

While that does not mean the relatively unarmored "Wichita" could or would seriously engage in a single ship duel with a Lutzow, since American hunter groups would have adopted British style tactics to ensure a kill, it does mean that the Lutzow would not actually have the ten thousand meter cushion assumed at all. Not even against American heavy cruisers whose own heavyweight shells would have pierced and entered the German panzer ship's belt armor easily as the ranges fell between 17,000 to 5,000 meters, the purported panzer ship's immunity zone and the effective artillery engagement range those American cruisers' naval rifles were actually designed to fight.

After doing my own research, I have to agree with Tobius. The "Wichita AU" is just like a Wichita class in looks, she was laid down several months later, using the same type of hull but with more armor and I didn't show that. Her speed could be kept near 30+ knots with the correct machinery. Radar was added to just find the Deutschland, then aerial recon and gunnery spotting with the spotter planes.

The original idea was to send out a Hunter-Killer team of two "Heavy Cruisers" to hunt down 1 Enemy (Deutschland) Heavy Cruiser/Raider, not that a single Olympia couldn't do the job, but rather like the English sent the HMS Hood & HMS Prince of Wales to hunt down the SMS Bismark & SMS Prinz Eugen. The teams were to be USS Olympia (CA-46) & USS Montgomery (CA-47), USS Des Moines (CA-48) & USS Chattanooga (CA-49), USS Seattle (CA-50) & USS Bozeman (CA-51).

Also, slight update on what the Olympia Class would have looked like circa late 1940.

Krakatoa wrote:Hunter Killer Groups.

When the Deutschland appeared in 1933, the biggest problem was not really how to sink it but how to find it, then sink it. In 1933, the mark one eyeball was still the main detection facility. The eyes may have been added to by binoculars and a directors optics but that still did not enlarge the horizon that could be seen around a ship. The introduction of catapult launched aircraft enlarged the possible search area but these aircraft could only be used in reasonable sea conditions, otherwise you could write-off a valuable aircraft and an even more valuable pilot. The RN pondered this problem and kept coming back to the same solution, the aircraft carrier. But that was another problem, the RN did not have enough of them. The RN could not afford the tonnage (CV's were tonnage limited) to build more of the large carriers they wanted to build. There was enough tonnage left in 1934 to lay down two 14-15,000 ton light carriers. The ships were based on a cruiser type hull of 600x70 feet. The ships were remarkably like the Hermes with updated equipment that 10 years of advances bring. They were fitted with a standard 72,000shp propulsion installation which produced an adequate 29 knots. The hangar could take 20-22 aircraft depending on size and type. Aircraft complement on out break of war was, 8 Gloster Griffon fighters, 4 Skua divebomber reconnaissance, and 10 Fairey Swordfish.



Eventually six of these extremely handy vessels were laid down. The first two Albatross and Osprey were laid down in late 1934 and were completed in late 1937 and early 1938. These two were followed by two more laid down in 1936 on the failure of the treaties, and with another two in 1937. They were then replaced in production by the Unicorn class which led to the Centaur class.

This gave a large search area facility from the aircraft on the carriers. The aircraft could be used to damage and slow the German ship, direct ships to the target, act as spotters for the big guns. Watch the ship sink beneath the waves.

These ships were the centrepiece for the hunter killer groups formed to hunt for the German Armoured Ships that were at sea at the out break of war. The Albatross, Osprey and Hermes were paired with the Warrior, Minotaur and Tiger (my Tiger) battlecruisers, each with a light cruiser and two destroyers. The French supplied the Bearn, Lorraine two light cruisers and two destroyers. These four groups looked after the Central Atlantic (France) and South Atlantic search areas.

Again a beautiful drawing.

Let's discuss that air-group, shall we? I want to look at what a light carrier in the assigned role of commerce defense might use.

a. I've never heard of the Gloster Griffon fighter. I think the closest match I could find was the Gloster F-5/34, a real aircraft that appears to have the low speed handling characteristics that might have qualified it for deck-landing service. The aircraft was circa 1938 and a Hurricane competitor. Aside from its landing characteristics and its base low speed handling (which was fair to good), it's a death trap having the faults of its American equivalent, the Brewster Buffalo. Low rate of climb, being underpowered and under-armed make it non-competitive against likely competitor aircraft if it operated close to shore. In this case I'm thinking Italian and American aircraft being flown by unfriendly South American governments. Falcos could outturn, and Severskys (P-35s) could outclimb and out dive it

Why not scrap that idea and go with the actual historical solution, the Blackburn Roc as a starter? Only SK the ridiculous tail gunner turret and mount 4 wing guns only (as in the Skua) properly for a proper fighter/scout? It will be still be slow (radio operator, navigator), but commonality with the Skua makes logistic sense and it can tangle with CR-42s if it has the need. Plus with a bit of fiddling it can be made to carry a 240 kg bomb like its Skua brother. An alternate universe refit with the Hercules 14 cylinder radial engine gives a marginal performance improvement across the aircraft energy envelope. You would have to lengthen the fuselage by about three feet (.8 meter) to the tail for CG issues.

It's role would be to scout, and with a proper US style drop tank that can be at least 800 km out in a pie wedge fan search...

b. That brings me to the Fairey Swordfish. Now I know the legend of the Stringbag and how it crippled the Bismark, but if it went up against a Richelieu or a Roma, where the navies had actually installed modern decent AAA fire directors that plane becomes a deathtrap. Much like the Devastator torpedo plane, it would be fine until a proper enemy defense appears, and then its shortcomings become evident. The plane needs to be replaced soonest by a more survivable type, which the British did not develop. The Barracuda comes too late and is itself something of a flying duck. I don't see an AU alternative. You are stuck with it.

c. And that arrives at scouting. Swordfish really should not scout. In that era, those were your primary carrier attack weapon and would be held back until a target was found and tracked. Then they would be guided on to the target by the scouts operating in relays. Ten of the Swordfish would barely be enough to hit a single moving undefended target (Bismark again, the Swordfish steered to the last reported position the British had by radio fix and by cruiser shadowing contact reports. They still almost missed the RV point and were lucky to get the one crucial hit they did.). For scouting you want Skuas and Rocs, and you want as many of those as you can put into a pie wedge fan search pattern. Here's the dicey trick. If you don't know your threat axes and you conduct a standard single pass pie wedge search, you are not going to be able to cover a 360 degree search arc search plan out to 500 km with less than 24 aircraft! You need two carriers to do that. Search is 3/4 of a carrier's job in battle. The attack (alpha strike) is the easy part.

d. British practice of the era was to park the carrier at the rear of the surface squadron and use the carrier as the air search asset. It was not supposed to be the primary ship killer or crippler. But it's implied here that these single carriers would have that role in raider hunter groups. Not enough scout aircraft is my personal opinion. I would suggest that the scouting be considered as per historic British doctrine, and that you reduce the Swordfish complement to a reasonable rump squadron (6), one that can be used to make opportunity attacks on secondary or crippled enemy surface vessels while you beef up the scouts a bit (4 more Roc AU types). Also lengthen your hull by fifteen meters and improve your beam by five meters (sacrifice some of that hanger armor). That widens your top-heavy flight deck on a beamier longer hull and adds a knot of speed on your rated horsepower. It will also take care of the Atlantic yo-yo that occurs when your roll period coincides with swell. It also adds the benefit of allowing hardstand space ON DECK for anywhere from 5-15 more aircraft to be stowed. Don't be afraid to Americanize where it works.

e. And don't be afraid to treaty cheat a little on the tonnage like the British admiralty were afraid to do. Everybody else including the Americans (USS Ranger) did.

To add to it, my Olympia-class "Heavy Cruiser" is just as much a treaty cheater as the Deutschland-klasse heavy cruisers.

Unfortunately Tobius you have come in rather late in the piece and may have missed some of the earlier discussions on FAA aircraft types. The original F5/34 had an 890hp radial, same powerplant as the Skua/Roc. For AU use I use an uprated 1100-1200hp radial in both to enhance performance (that is equivalent rating to the Zero). With the named Griffon I also upgun it with 6x13.2 Brownings in place of the 303's. The introduction of the Griffon allows the Skua to be used as a divebomber / reconnaissance machine that can look after itself - extra range for reconnaissance being by drop tanks on the bomb hardpoints. All my AU FAA aircraft use the 13.2mm Browning for its better knockdown capability (equivalent to the 0.50in in US service). From 1942 the FAA goes to US aircraft on their carriers.

Nighthunter:
What breadth have you given the Olympia to take into account the larger 12" turrets and barbettes?

Krakatoa wrote:Unfortunately Tobius you have come in rather late in the piece and may have missed some of the earlier discussions on FAA aircraft types. The original F5/34 had an 890hp radial, same powerplant as the Skua/Roc. For AU use I use an uprated 1100-1200hp radial in both to enhance performance (that is equivalent rating to the Zero). With the named Griffon I also upgun it with 6x13.2 Brownings in place of the 303's. The introduction of the Griffon allows the Skua to be used as a divebomber / reconnaissance machine that can look after itself - extra range for reconnaissance being by drop tanks on the bomb hardpoints. All my AU FAA aircraft use the 13.2mm Browning for its better knockdown capability (equivalent to the 0.50in in US service). From 1942 the FAA goes to US aircraft on their carriers.

The Gloster F5/34 plane, unlike the later modified Spitfire or the Hurricane is not actually built to take the shock of half inch Brownings mounted in the wings and it cannot be modified to do so. (This is actually reflected historically in the reworked Spitfire universal wing for that plane.) There is no way in anyone's competent reckoning that the Gloster could ever match the performance of a Zeke. Not ever. The airframe as tested is not good enough to translate that 1100 horsepower imagined into thrust, lift and corner speed to compete. With that said, you have to find other virtues and qualities in the aircraft you have available. The Roc/Skua as an alternative may be slow, but it is rugged enough to function against the expected Atlantic opposition and it is good enough to be modified into a realistic AU candidate for the FAA.

And that brings me to the concept of AU imaginings. It is fun to imagine things as they might have been, or you might think, why didn't the people at the time do this obvious thing?

When you second guess, as to why didn't the people of the time do something a little different you find you come up against doctrinal reasons and mechanical problems they encountered. The British FAA insisted that navigators passenger in their scouts while the pilots flew the plane. They had good cogent reasons for such doctrine. USN fighter pilots were expected to self-navigate (as were their Japanese counterparts) and as a consequence many of them navigated themselves into a shark's belly. The British approach seems a bit more sensible.

Did you ever wonder about the wing folding mechanism for the modified Gloster? It started as a land based fighter in competition against the Hurricane. How about the tail-hook or the landing gear midification? This is not a simple modification for a land based plane, such as the Gloster F5/34 (which is why the Sea Hurricane and the Seafire were also less successful than the purpose designed Hellcat and Zeke.), and why that plane, the Gloster, never was never FAA slotted, nor suitable for carrier operations. The weight added would kill it

Now for the carrier... I have mentioned the rather narrow flight deck for the Albatross class and inferred its short takeoff run. It can be argued that American slow CVEs were perfectly capable of handling burdened Avengers, but those juggernaut planes had huge wing areas designed for tremendous lift and those same planes had huge engines and propellers with the efficiencies to enable take off with short take off runs powered by a lot of thrust from their adjustable pitch propellers. None of the British planes specified except the Swordfish matches those Avenger flight characteristics in particular, nor should the British planes have to do so. The Indomitables and other light British carriers had better longer takeoff runs than the Princetons and much better wind-flow over deck to substitute for American brute force aircraft takeoff capability. This is what I meant by lengthening and widening your flight deck of your proposal a bit to reflect British historic practices.

These are not criticisms at all, but rather what I hope to be helpful observations to gell an AU concept within historic real rationales for why the British decided on some historic choices as opposed to other possibilities.

Nighthunter:

What breadth have you given the Olympia to take into account the larger 12" turrets and barbettes?

If it comes to that, he can do what the Americans actually did for the Clevelands for the Independence class to work in the hanger. Just bulge the hull square with blisters at the midmark. It's not ideal at all, but you can cram the turrets in without too much detail work as long as you know these are throwaway units with short hull lives. They will be rollers. But as the original cruiser hull design (Brooklyn) is a seakeeper, it will remain a stable gun platform.

Or they can be purpose built modified hulls, using a good seakeeping hull as a basis, and be command cruisers for a cruiser group after all the "pocket BB's" are dealt with.

Purpose built modified hulls sounds good. One of the reasons I am trying to point you that way is at present you only have the 6x5" secondaries which is fairly weak for a US cruiser of the time. If you push the hull out from the 62 foot original out to 76-80 feet (South Carolina/Michigan were 80 feet with 8x12") that will give you enough breadth of hull to exchange your single 5" for twins, and give you enough reserve to be able to add all the extra 40/20mm guns and electronics which were fitted to WW2 ships without compromising your stability. That would also go for the extra armour you have added, the hull will take the extra weight better.


I was not going to bother but I suppose I can take some of my time to enlighten Tobius.

In the real world the FAA does not come back to RN control till mid 1939 - far too late for the FAA to be able to make any real improvements before wars start, RN are left with obsolete aircraft and ships that have been designed to work with obsolete aircraft (Illustrious). In the AU's I have been running the FAA is reconstituted in 1930 under RN control. This allows the FAA to put out its own tenders for all forms of aircraft, fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers. It no longer needs to accept hybrid aircraft trying to do two or three jobs badly. It no longer needs to design its carriers to survive because they did not have the modern aircraft to protect them.

Therefore F5/34 is in response to an FAA request, and all those points you raise about navalising what becomes the Gloster Griffon have already been accounted for in the original design specs, same with the armament. The RN already uses the 0.5" mg ammunition so keeping the logistics tight is a worthwhile exercise. I have used the profile design of F5/34 only - the rest of the aircraft is built up in response to the FAA request - not the real life time line.