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Some good data, thanks.

Lenton gives 50,000 ton lift for AFD-10 but the dimensions don't seem right for that. 391 x 62 x 17

AFD-9 is given as 55,000 lift, 857 x 126 x 40.

AFD 17-22 (and others) are listed as 2,750 tons, 380 x 50 x 19 ft.

It's looking like the data for AFD-10 is out of kilter. Lift should be circa 3,00 - 3,500 tons, not 50,000.

17, 18, 20, and 22 were all in the Pacific, although your data is better than anything I have for arrival dates.

Lenton gives AFD-26 as 2,750 ton lift and completed at Calcutta in 2/44, but it is not listed in the Indian Ocean or Pacific Fleets as of war's end. But something is missing, as the only replacement for AFD-23 (50,000 lift) is AFD-22 (2,750 lift) and maybe AFD-26 (also 2,750). I note that AFD-27 was sold at Batavia in 1947 ?!?!?. It is listed as 59,000 ton lift but is 477 x 63 x 19. I obviously do not understand the relationship between floating dry dock size and lift capacity.

Lenton also has a 5/46 completion date for AFD-35, with sections built at Karachi and assembled at Bombay. This is a 50,000 ton lift dock.

Lenton (my best source) also gives AFD-42 assembled Karachi 1/46, AFD-43 assembled Bombay 11/45, and AFD-44 assembled Vizagapatam 11/45. All are tiny, just 750 tons lift.

AFD-17 I have at Sydney with an arrival date there of May, 1945. It left Reykavik 9 months earlier, leaving Gibraltar late September 1944, and travelled via Colobo and Cochin.

AFD-22 left HMS St.Christopher,Fort William, Scotland, for Trincomalee in December 1944.

The operation which moved AFD-26 in 47 also moved AFD-22 (which was waiting at Aden), AFD-35 and AFD-36 (or AFD-46?) for what little that's worth.

Was the floating dock at Tsingtao which was destroyed in the siege of Russo-Japanese war ever replaced?

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen


Some good data, thanks.

Lenton gives 50,000 ton lift for AFD-10 but the dimensions don't seem right for that. 391 x 62 x 17

I wonder if thats a misprint and it was ment to be written in meters. What data I found on the Siagon docks was all in meters.

Here are my sources for 'AFD-10'.

(2)- The Sabang Floating Dock has been acquired in the Dutch
East Indies' at a cost of 760,000 guilders and will
shortly be towed to Singapore, This will take destroyers
and small cruisers if lightened.

Footnote equates cost to "£95,000 at the current rate of exchange."

Source: 1st Monthly Report submitted by the First Lord of the Admiralty. (CAB 68/1/25)

Sabang Floating Dock is expected to leave Sabang, in
the Dutch East Indies, for Singapore on November 10th, in tow of
a Dutch tug. It will provide docking facilities at Singapore
Naval Base for Destroyers and Submarines which at present can
only be docked in the existing Floating Dock or Graving Dock,
both of which are of a size to accommodate the largest warships.

source: 2nd Monthly Report submitted by the First Lord of the
Admiralty, covering the month of October, 1939 (CAB 68/2/37).

November's report (3rd Monthly Report submitted by the First Lord of the
Admiralty (CAB 68/4/1) ) says that it arrived on 28th November 1939.

A Dutch source from 1921 says, "A floating-dock, with a practical lifting capacity of 2,600 tons was brought from Soerabaja [to Sabang] in 1893." The Ports of the Dutch East Indies by Mr. Wouter Cool (President of the Board of Directors of the Dutch Indies Railway, Semarang). This may be the floating dock which the British bought.

Hope that's of use.

Excellent.

"For destroyers and lightened cruisers", combined with the size similarities, would make me guess about 4,000 tons (maybe 5,000). That would be the C and D type light cruisers.

I would wager that at least one of the floating dry docks at Surubaya would have been pressed into service by the Japanese, since USS Stewart was salvaged and repaired after it was *destroyed in that drydock.

There were 2 steel floating docks in Sabang in 1939. There was also a graving dock in Samerang apparantly.

Also, there appear to have been 3 Civilian floating docks at Surubaya.

Source: http://astilleros1939.blogspot.com/2009 ... _5625.html

If you can't read Spanish you can run that through a translator with no problems.

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I would wager that at least one of the floating dry docks at Surubaya would have been pressed into service by the Japanese, since USS Stewart was salvaged and repaired after it was *destroyed in that drydock.

There were 2 steel floating docks in Sabang in 1939. There was also a graving dock in Samerang apparantly.

Also, there appear to have been 3 Civilian floating docks at Surubaya.

Source: http://astilleros1939.blogspot.com/2009 ... _5625.html

If you can't read Spanish you can run that through a translator with no problems.

Thanks, I'll check it out. No puedo leer español but I can figure it out.

Aware of three floating drydocks at Soerabaya due to ships that were lost/scuttled in them when the port was evacuated. Maybe the same ones.

Do you think the two at Sabang were still there? Not 100% sure what a graving dock is. Floating? Fixed? Funereal?

Did some more digging, and I think Churchill's second report may be closer to the truth about size. The only floating dock at Sabang was the one in private ownership which the British bought in 1939, which was rated at 3000 tons (and fits in with the 1921 comment about 'practical lifting capacity' of 2600).

According to the Dutch source previously cited, the floating dock at Batavia (later moved to Tjilatjap) was only 4000 tons in capacity (although he does seems to be conservative in his figures in comparison to other sources). Whether this was the same floating dock which was sent from Holland in the 1880s and rated at 5000 tons I don't know. Cool also places two floating docks (one government and one privately owned) at Soerbaja at this time period [ie 1921], rating them at 14000 tons and 3500 tons respectively.

There was a floating dock at Wellington harbour - the Jubliee dock. It was towed from Britain to there in 1931. Here's a pic of it in the absence of info (5000 tons?): http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/shipbuilding/2/5/1

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

ORIGINAL: Shark7

I would wager that at least one of the floating dry docks at Surubaya would have been pressed into service by the Japanese, since USS Stewart was salvaged and repaired after it was *destroyed in that drydock.

There were 2 steel floating docks in Sabang in 1939. There was also a graving dock in Samerang apparantly.

Also, there appear to have been 3 Civilian floating docks at Surubaya.

Source: http://astilleros1939.blogspot.com/2009 ... _5625.html

If you can't read Spanish you can run that through a translator with no problems.

Thanks, I'll check it out. No puedo leer español but I can figure it out.

Aware of three floating drydocks at Soerabaya due to ships that were lost/scuttled in them when the port was evacuated. Maybe the same ones.

Do you think the two at Sabang were still there? Not 100% sure what a graving dock is. Floating? Fixed? Funereal?

Graving Dock: The classic form of drydock, properly known as graving dock, is a narrow basin, usually made of earthen berms and concrete, closed by gates or by a caisson, into which a vessel may be floated and the water pumped out, leaving the vessel supported on blocks.

So in game terms, its the 'Repair Shipyard' device.

Also note that if you run that site through google translator, you can find info on basically every drydock and shipyard in theatre.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graving_dock

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
There are a lot of references to a Kings Floating Dry Dock in Singapore, apparently used by the Japanese after capture of Singapore. Both AFD 9 and AFD 10 are listed as scuttled. Does anyone know anything about Kings Floating Dry Dock? Is it –9 or –10 raised/repaired? Or another one?

KG-VI was ordinary drydock it did not float. It was built into land on the north shore. It is still used today at Sembawang. It was real drydock, not just graving dock. a graving dock takes ships to work on cleaning the bottom. A real drydock has cranes on railroads and has a lot higher freeboard and work shops and can do more work than a graving dock.

Regards, MO

I think there was a time when graving docks only did bottom cleaning and minor hull repairs, but any more the term dry dock and graving dock are interchangeable.

ORIGINAL: oldman45
I think there was a time when graving docks only did bottom cleaning and minor hull repairs, but any more the term dry dock and graving dock are interchangeable.

Yes and this is true but these things happend 70 and 80 and 100 years ago when they were built. To look at KKM datas shows a difference of language for a launching dock, a graving dock, a shipyard dock, and a floating dock. So I asked JWE and he says
" Even into the 1930s there was a differential in capability between graving docks and 'drydocks'. Graving docks were quite limited, since their primary function was to expose a ship's bottom for cleaning and refurbishing. They were relatively shallow, had very low depth sidewalls, little shoreside capability, and nothing that could extend to deck 2, or above.

Fully functional drydocks had considerably more depth and sidewall height, as well as sidebar railways and cranes that allow for topside work. It's a cup saucer v a soup bowl kinda thing.

Launching docks were 'technically' of the graving variety. Enough water to float the bastard, but nothing on the hard to really flesh it out.

Hope this helps."
I think this is good input and makes much sense to me.

MO

Thanks to Mike, by the way, for providing some excellent data on Dutch floating drydocks in the NEI. So detailed we might not be able to use all of it.

Nearly done with the Floating Dry Docks now. Very happy with in. There will be a wide range of floating drydocks available, both mobile and static, in historical locations (as best we can find). Not necessarily every unit, but a good representative sample that will give players tools to play with.

Currently thinking about everything from the largest units (as in stock) down to those used for corvettes and minesweepers.

Never too late for more data though...

There is no such thing as too much info, thanks for the lesson Osterhaut

ORIGINAL: oldman45

There is no such thing as too much info, thanks for the lesson Osterhaut

TY oldman45, and there is never too much info [:)] but I do not know enough to teach anything. all I know is sometimes who to ask [;)]

Don,

I will admit that I have NEVER tried to repair ships in Bombay, but apparently it was THE repair dockyard of the SE Asia theater after the fall of Singapore. History of the Royal Indian Navy by Bisheshwar Prasad ,D. Litt (Ed) notes on pp. 222 - 24:

"With Singapore and Hong Kong lost, it became almost the only naval drydock in the northern hemisphere, east of the Suez......"

"The first big action damage repairs were carried ou on the Cruiser HMS Capetown, after being torpedoed off Massawa in April 1941. The destroyer HMS Kimberly, which had her stern blown off by an enemy submarine in the Mediterranean in January 1942, was towed through the Suez Canal to the Bombay Dockyard where a completely new stern was built into her and her nine ton main gear-wheel was trued up...."

The new "Torpedo" dock which would take Bangors, Bathursts, Bassetts, and up to "S" class submarines, eased the docking position in 1944.

I assumed that they were talking about drydocks though the account seems to mention them using the term "dock".....

Do some ports reflect improved drydock capabilities at certain dates as the Bombay narrative might imply?

ORIGINAL: HistoryGuy

Don,

I will admit that I have NEVER tried to repair ships in Bombay, but apparently it was THE repair dockyard of the SE Asia theater after the fall of Singapore. History of the Royal Indian Navy by Bisheshwar Prasad ,D. Litt (Ed) notes on pp. 222 - 24:

"With Singapore and Hong Kong lost, it became almost the only naval drydock in the northern hemisphere, east of the Suez......"

"The first big action damage repairs were carried ou on the Cruiser HMS Capetown, after being torpedoed off Massawa in April 1941. The destroyer HMS Kimberly, which had her stern blown off by an enemy submarine in the Mediterranean in January 1942, was towed through the Suez Canal to the Bombay Dockyard where a completely new stern was built into her and her nine ton main gear-wheel was trued up...."

The new "Torpedo" dock which would take Bangors, Bathursts, Bassetts, and up to "S" class submarines, eased the docking position in 1944.

I assumed that they were talking about drydocks though the account seems to mention them using the term "dock".....

Do some ports reflect improved drydock capabilities at certain dates as the Bombay narrative might imply?

From both the AE perspective and reality, there are two types of drydocks - built ins and floating. The built in type are reflected in the Repair (etc) shipyards are the various ports. These can be increased (I believe) by building during the game (costs supply). Floating ones are just a specail type of AR to us. I think the Bombay Dock is a "built in", so it can be built up.

Don, I am not sure the allied repair yards can be increased, at least I have not seen it.

Is there a built-in drydock in Hong Kong in AE ? Not in witp as far as i remember but i don't have the game on my office PC to check for AE.

(edit)
I checked and there was one in witp as well...

ORIGINAL: Skyland
Is there a built-in drydock in Hong Kong in AE ? Not in witp as far as i remember but i don't have the game on my office PC to check for AE.

Hong Kong has a rather large Repair Shipyard, Shanghai has a rather large Repair Shipyard, Singapore has a rather large Repair Shipyard, Soerabaja has a moderate sized Repair Shipyard. If a base has a Naval Shipyard, Merchant Shipyard, Repair Shipyard, they all have drydocks up the wazoo, whatever name you want to call them by. When the Japanese capture them, they all become Repair Shipyards. This is the nature of the game abstraction.

We are introducing Floating Drydocks to certain of those places that are not designated as having "shipyards" in the game, so as to model certain repair capabilities, that would not otherwise be captured, without requiring the addition of "shipyards".

If those places had "shipyards", no matter how small, a gamey player could eventually build them up to unacceptable sizes: thus Floating Drydocks. They can be sunk, they can be scuttled, they have no impact on the "shipyard" model.

Just think of them as nice little garnishes, to far away places, that will be eaten along with the main course.