Best World war two warships?

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carpenoctem1689 said:
Yes, the theory about the guns not being knocked out worked the one time it did happen, buy why take the risk? I mean spreading the guns would eliminate the possiblity of that happening altogether.

Yes she could fire a full broadside at all times ill give her that, but paying the price listed above, and the fact that when running away you couldnt use the main battery. Yes the battle may have been lost due to hits, the wish to disengage, or the thought of enemy reinforcements on the way. BUT, why risk the ships total loss if only the battle is lost? Live to fight again another day, or at least cover your ass as best you can on your way out. Any engagement between battleships depends on many variables, as i said before, however i dont feel bismack and richeleu is really an even match. Granted the Richeleu wasnt horrible, but i would NEVER put all main battery forward.

Richeleus inability to have as suffecient amount of heavy AA forward would become a major hinderance as aircraft became more widely used in attacking battleships. Yes it had adequate Light AA forward, but with that theory, you couldnt shoot at the possible swarms of enemy aircraft (in the atlantic, many ships found themseleves in range of land based attack aircraft or bombers, especially since Richeleu being a french BB, would operate in the mediterranean theater quite possibly). Now that you cant shoot long range Heavy AA to at least brake up the attackers formations, your hit by waves of enemy aircraft and you cant shoot them until you yourself are in range of guns, soon to be bombs and torpedoes.
Click to expand...

I think that you missed the point about having tactical options by having your guns at the front. The Bismark would have much fewer options and that is a disadvantage itself.
 
Ok, now you all have good points, but let me give you a little whiff of how I designed my battleships. I have two classes and they both look quite the same. The First class has three triple 16" gun turrets as main armament that is in the center line of the ship. My secondary armament is 8 11" guns 2 in each turret and two turrets on both sides of the ships hull. Now what you are thinking is that sounds totally insane and the hull would not be able to sustain the weight of the guns, I already solved that problem and look at WW1 designs of Battleships and you would see it is not so stupid or impossible.

Then for the smaller secondary guns there is one triple 5" ins at the back just above the aft turret. There is also missiles that can be fired at ships and land base targets. The AA are so spread that it could cover the whole ship and AA missiles also put down a hail of AA on a attacking aircraft.

Lifeboats are also put in places where they could be lowered quickly and has a smaller chance of getting hit by enemy fire. I have 3 controle spots or bridges with their own radar and everything that is in the main forward bridge. This is to make it so that the ship can carry on when the forward one is knocked out and the ship and still carry on with the battle.

The ship has water tight compartments and fire fighting equipment that will stop a fire dead in its tracks. Pumps make sure that flooding does not take over the ship and it is in the floor of each water tight compartment and pumps the water out of the ship or water can be pumped from the hull to fight fire on the deck.

So why so many largeguns, well my ship has all round protection and will be able to fight of a enemy from all sides.

Everything fits perfectly and the guns on the side is protected from above and can fire in 180 degrees.

That is just a rough sketch of how my battleships look like, but I modify them regularly and still finds flaws and correct them so yes there are flaws but they are not so great and can be corrected.

That is my Perfect BB.

Henk
 
It, with an armor scheme on par with Yamato would easily weigh upwards of 145,000 tons. With so many large guns, the pumping schemeatics, the numerous AA, the large amounts of wiring and technical equipment, storage for the many different types of ammunition needed (rockets, light and heavy AA, 5in shells, 11in shells, 16in shells.) Not to mention the massive propulsion systems needed to move such a creature through the water. How long was it, how wide was it at the beam?


Yes i am aware there are tactical advantages to having the guns all forward, but personally i feel as though the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. Im curious though as how everyone else feels about this? anyone new want to shed some light on opinions...Is all main battery forward a good decision or no?
 
My proposed battleship, if i could choose anything on it i wanted would have the basic layout of the bismarck, with two forward turrets, the foremost one having four barrels, and the uppermost having two, and the same in the rear. It would have Iowas propulsion system and fire control, with Yamatos optical back up in a seperate location (added castle or tower in the rear.) Those main battery turrets would be of 16in calibre. Firing the same rounds as the Iowa class. Armor would be the same as on the bismarck class, but the rudder problem would be fixed. AA armament would consit of two triple 5in turrets on the starboard side, and two triple turrets on the port side, and one dual all the way on the end of the deck at the stern. Five dual 40mm guns on port, and five on starboard sides, and evenly spread 20mm AA guns, 125 of them.
 
Glider I know what you mean:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Wiring is not a problem since you can use the new bluetooth to cut out your wiring and the equipment are made of light weight metals. The thing is that I am stupid when it comes to working out the weight of the ship. Like I said I am not yet so good with this allthough I have been doing it for years now.

Well my main bridge or forward bridge is like the New Jersey bridge. The turret layout is like the Iowa class and is very low and thus can not bee seen from a disstance. The hull I designed my self and made a rudder that would be able to steer this monster. The fact that I made most of the other equipment light weight is to be able to carry so much equipment on such a large ship.

My armour would be like the Italians armour.

The powerplants would be 6 huge V16 Diesel engines that can generate a speed of 30 knots and up.

I do not like all my guns in front and like to spread them so that my ship can fire towards the enemy at all times.

Great idea for a battleship carpenoctem1689 you should get it on paper and also build a model of it. I want to be able to build mine into a model.

I did use things from other Battleships, but only because the fit in with the design and thus I will always give credit to the Battleships that gave me ideas on to use their things for my ship.

Henk
 
Ammo feed problems are expectable with 11" wingturrets. WW1-ships always suffered from ammo-feed problems for them. Either you put the main armour deck on deck 2 or you loose underwater protection because of a very, very narrow TDS at the wingturrets (11" magazines may blew up your ship). This leads to the main obstacle:Stability. With that much weight placed so high in the ship you will almost turn over the metacentric height. Alternatively you would need to protect the bottom of the ship with a considerable amount of armour (5"+) and this will increase the draught and displacement of the ship. SO I would rather expect either a very unstable ship or a very vulnarable or something in the 140-000-180.000 t. class....Very heavy for 16" equipment, isn´t it?
I acknowledge the layout of Richelieu as limitation. While it is correct that it allows more firepower forward (and less secondary), it was recognized by the french as tactical disadvantage (the weight of a raised quadrupel 15" turret is considerable), so that the Gascogne was designed with two quadrupel turrets on the same level, one facing forward, one facing rearward. There are several tactical advantages for this even layout (weight savings, the recognicability of the ships heading is more difficult). From a point of protection, the quadrupel turrets prooved to be good protected except for the use of face hardened armour for the turret roofs (and the scaling effects of them), which isn´t a wise decision at all in view of non penetrating damage. Nethertheless the layout barely plays a major role, most combats -once the contender decided to fight- were broadside vs broadside.
 
delcyros I see what you mean. Do you think I should increase the 16' guns to something higher? The 11" comes in that I were crazy in the beginning of my design process and made them 15", but that is to high. It is not so stupid to have 11" as wing turrets and they are not on the second deck that is above the 11" wing turrets and if you look from far you would not be able to see them. the ammo problem I must still solve. Why do you think the 11" ammo would blow up my ship?

Remember I am not a expert at this so do not think so I am still learning.

KraziKanuK I do not have those books and no I have not visited that site before. I will go into it more. Thanks.

Henk
 
Can I sugest one small addition to your design that would make a huge difference in combat. With 11in and 16in guns all firing at the same target you are going to get huge fire control problems. The French solved this by putting dye into their shells which coloured the water splash. As a result if your ship was firing Green and the next Blue, you knew which were your shots and could control the fall of shot.
In your case the 16in could fire yellow and the 11in blue.

This was copied by the British for their 15in guns but as far as I know wasn't actually used in combat. The French did use this approach and it worked well.
 
That would be a nice addition to that design. your theoretical battleship would be able to dominate mine, but i went for a design that was a tad more feasible an d easier to construct, though still probably considered a super battleship with weight near that of the Yamato and speed between 27knots and 30knots. Not exactly a task force ship. Would, if it ended up fighting in world war two, porobably end up being used mostly for bombardment (like most US battleships) or being sunk by swarms of enemy aircraft (like many japanese ships and german ships). still fun to play around with what ifs though. Ive been toying with trying to design the perfect *treaty compliant* BB. Not so easy to do. Its plain to see why, when doing this, ideas like the nelson and the Richeu came to fruition.
 
Henk, there is a person who uses the nick Tiornu on the net. I don't remember his real name but he has written many books that might be of help for you in your BB designing. A Google search turned up many posts by him.

I would try to get the RA Burt books for they go into why the ships were designed the way they were. Also there are tech specs and section drawings for the ships.
 
Thanks you guys you gave me something new.

KraziKanuK I will try to get hold of him or some of his books which is quite difficult where I am for book shops are f***ed up here and I do not have a credit card:(

The thing is I do this as a hobby and I really love to do this, but to do it as work would just spoil it for me.

Thanks again for everything I will do so.

You guys know so much about Battleships why don't you design your own Battleships? It is great fun to it.

Henk
 
Motor torpedo boat I would have to say with confidence the late war S-100 Schnellboote. Envy of all Allied navies

E
 
S-booten were the largest and fastest, not necessairly the heaviest equipped for arms but quite a competent small craft in the hands of a capable shipmaster. Would have to check my KM files to see how many mines the S-boots could carry but they were a major sore in the Allied butts throughout the war........

E ~
 
A book one should read on the origin of the American PT boats:

Fast Boats and Flying Boats
Adrian Rance
ISBN 1-85455-026-8

The 80' Elcos had their heritige in the 70' British Powerboat design.

The book is a bio of Hubert Scott-Paine.

Henk I don't know how having more data/info would make your 'hobby' more work?
 
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