No Naval Treaties Art

[GaryChildress]

Just dabbling around with ship side art for fictional warships which might have existed if there were no Washington nor London naval treaties.

First up some US cruisers. Instead of 9 x 8in guns we have 12 x 8in designs.





EDIT: NOTE: To give credit where it is due, all these designs will probably be modifications of existing WitP/AE art and not entirely of my own making.

[John 3rd]

Those are quite nice Gary: 4x3 8" would be NASTY!

[GaryChildress]

Some hypothetical Japanese cruisers with some stats and an improved Nagato thrown in. Again just some doctoring of WitP AE art.

[John 3rd]

Really like the Myoko and Nagato designs. Nice work Sir.

For Perfect War we have the final incarnation of the Japanese CA as having four triple 8" guns. Very NASTY!

Do you have anything for a Kawachi-Class BC? How about an Agano CL variant?

[GaryChildress]

I'll post some game compatible files for these ships soon, but can anyone use them? Is anyone doing a no treaties mod? If so, what sorts of ships would you like to see?

[traskott]

Well..I'm making an uber moding using the Juan Ultimate Battleships Mod as base, plus Ryan Art Mod... It would be interesting add all those ships, replacing their "weak" counterpartes...

[GaryChildress]

Has anyone yet composed a list of all the mods out there with a brief description of each? I'd be interested in seeing what has been done.

Here's some "no treaty" carriers. Basically more heavily armored flight decks than historical.

[DuckofTindalos]

9 inch[&:]

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

9 inch[&:]

My understanding of the 8" gun and its prevalence in cruisers was due to the WNT which specified that anything above 8" would count as capital ship tonnage. Had there been no WNT would navies have tried to upgun their cruisers?

[DuckofTindalos]

Not unpossible...

[Shark7]

Terminus, given no WNT, in all probability the CA as we know it would not exist. Naval architects would have stuck more with the Protected Cruiser and Armored Cruiser concepts of essentially mini-battleships. You'd see cruisers with 9-12" guns and 6-9" secondaries while the Scout Cruiser would have continued as they were (which were essentially CLs).

The idea of trying to stuff as much stuff on a 10000 ton hull only happened because of the WNT and LNTs. For a cruiser to have displaced 12k-15k tons would not have been unthinkable had the treaties not put limits in place.

The British Minotaur class Armored Cruiser (commissioned 1908-1909) is a good example of a 20th century example of the class.... 4 x 9.2" guns and 10 x 7.5" guns for secondaries, all guns turreted.

[DuckofTindalos]

The Armoured Cruiser died out in the first decade of the 20th century. It would not have been resurrected.

[DuckofTindalos]

Also, who says that no naval limitation treaty automatically means a building boom? Lots of people lacked lots of money in those days.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Also, who says that no naval limitation treaty automatically means a building boom? Lots of people lacked lots of money in those days.

AMEN! "Termi". These are all "flights of fantsy" design-wise, and "impossible dreams" budget-wise. [8|]

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Also, who says that no naval limitation treaty automatically means a building boom? Lots of people lacked lots of money in those days.

AMEN! "Termi". These are all "flights of fantsy" design-wise, and "impossible dreams" budget-wise. [8|]

Not necessarily a "building boom" but ship designs for what navies could afford to build might have been different.

[GaryChildress]

As far as economics and money, there seemed to be less limit to money and material once it was clear the naval treaties were defunkt. Most of the major nations seemed to have little problem going on a building spree in the late 1930s, during the height of the depression. What if there had been more naval building in the "roaring 20s" when economies were more solvent? Would there have a been a depression had naval building created more demand for workers and material in the late 1920s.

Before WWI there seemed to be little limit on what navies could afford. Between 1905 and 1918, Britain commissioned about 35 dreadnaught battleships. 35 first rate capital ships in 13 years. In the span of 20 years between the two wars Britain commissioned only 8 capital ships. Some of it was the Depression and some was probably war debt from WW1 but the latent capacity for producing large navies was there.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Shark7
Terminus, given no WNT, in all probability the CA as we know it would not exist.

ORIGINAL: Terminus
The Armoured Cruiser died out in the first decade of the 20th century. It would not have been resurrected.

Ya'll are both right in a way.

Absent the treaty, there is no such thing as a CA. Ca is nothing but a response to the Treaty in an attempt to develop a 'teensy weensy" BC kinda substitute thing. It has absolutely no Mission whatsoever, not even today. It is a useless shibolith, pure and simple.

Cruisers have two sparate sources of provenance. The Brit view has them very long legged to service a far flung empire. The French/Italian view is a bit more Mediterranian and sees them as fleet scout units and destroyer leaders. Six of one, half dozen of the other. HP/wt ratios. Physics. 3rd grade mathematics. Want guns, then less armor. Want armor, then less guns. Want either armor or guns, then way less endurance. Want armor, guns and endurance, then lots more money and displacement.

Mahan wrote a crapload more than the book everybody quotes. He has a monograph about cruiser effectiveness costs in terms of deployment radius vs displacement tonnage that is still used today. Cool beans.

Armored cruisers kinda got subsumed in the BB/BC paradigm. But it might not have been too economically extreme to put a couple more inches of Vickers Facehard on some of the more burthensome and high endurance cruisers.

Ciao. John [:D][:D][:D]

[JWE]

I really do have to do an act of contrittion, on this one. There was one honest to gosh, innovative, cruiser design in the War II period. That would be the panzerschiffe concept of the Kriegsmarine. Now this design was not part of an integrated fleet development process; it was a raider design, pure and simple. It had no other purpose. It had no place in the battleline and cost too much to be a nominal power projection cruiser, but it was a booger for a while.

Probably a direct decendent (German version) of Shark's Armored cruiser. The Brit version would be a BC; just as fast (faster, actually), bigger guns, but shorter legs and 21% higher cost. 5 panzerschiffe v 4 BCs, my money's on the BCs; but, hey.

[DuckofTindalos]

The RN wanted three things from its cruisers (in WWI terms): scouting, destroyer leader duties and trade protection. The first two could be accomplished, but the third? Hoo, boy...

If you look at what the Brits had to work with on that front, it's amazing that they managed to stop ANY of the German merchant raiders. Some of their cruisers were substantially less useful than even converted German merchantmen: puny armament, no armour, LOUSY endurance. HMS Highflyer is a good example of this.

The most modern RN cruisers were hoarded by the Grand Fleet to service the battleline and the colonies got the dregs. Jellicoe practically had to have his fingers broken to give them up.

As for the Germans, their missions were the same except that trade protection became commerce raiding instead.

As John says, the French and Italians were basically looking to fight each other in the Med, and when the Brits agreed to guard the French Atlantic coast, the MN shifted everything there.

It's sort of amusing to examine the light cruisers produced by the great naval powers during the latter half of the 1910s. The RN, Germans, USN and Japanese basically produced ships to the same constructive templates...[:D]

[Shark7]

Honestly, the CLs really didn't change much, they just matured. When you look at the CL designs from the first decade or two of the 20th century and compare them with the examples from the 30s and 40s, the thing you really notice is that the guns went from open pedastel or splinter shielded single guns to multi-gun, enclosed turrets. The guns were remarkably similar...ranging from 5.5"-7.5" main guns with 3" to 4" secondaries early with the post-treaty CLs having generally 6" guns with 4-5" secondaries, the mains in turrets and the secondaries some turreted, some not.

The main evoluation in CL (and naval design in general) was the movement away from casemate mounts and more Dual Purpose guns to deal with the growing air threat. So it seems that with or without the treaties, the days of ships with 2 large turrets and a dozen casemate mounted light guns were soon to be over.