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I came up with this ship for War in the Pacific and am thinking about adding it for AE if I have the time to develop my own mod.

The idea is that the Dutch are influenced by the Swedish "aviation cruiser" Gotland and build a similar ship called Celebes. Here is a screenshot of the old WitP ship. It would be refittable as a CLAA armed with British equipment later in the war.

I remember you did that one (way back when). Added it to my own mod.

I'm having trouble getting the screenshot to post.

It was a fun mod. Just lots of little toys, some real, some conjectural.

Let's try again

Remember that the Dutch had the Hazemeyer 40mm Bofors and not the 2pdr.

Yeah, I know...that is a VERY old screenshot I found on my files. The final version had the Hazemeyer

OK, here is the Dutch "Aviation cruiser" Celebes.

Sorry about the too-big sizing there. Here is the Celebes as refitted by the British in late 1942.

The type 279 radar is supposed to be "all sides" of course.

You still have the art work and shills for it laying around?

I never did art work...I just had the game use the artwork for the Dutch Tromp-class CL. Even if I had artwork, I've never figured out how to install new art properly. I need a tutorial with that.

The idea here is that in the 1930s the Dutch took the Swedish Gotland seaplane cruiser idea and built their own version on a Tromp-style hull. It seems like something the Dutch would have been interested in.

If you don't know about the Gotland, check wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Gotland_(1933)

Never read about that ship before. Interesting read, thanks.

I would suggest that the Celebes would probably lose her seaplane capability in the mid- to late-war scheme of things. She would no longer be needed to patrol the DEI (lost to the Japs at this point) and all those planes are a massive fire hazard during air attack. Maybe rebuild her, Tromp-style, into a CLAA? The Gotland became a CLAA after spare parts for her Osprey flotplanes ran out.

If nothing else, there would be no spare parts for the planes. How about converting her into a Seaplane tender? She has all that hanger space aft, would make a great area for repair shops.

BTW, here's the ship art I made for the Celebes waaaaaay back in the day (the blurriness is due to resizing of a normal shipside .bmp and conversion to .jpg):

Here's a new one I just made, perhaps a bit more "in tune" with the ship's stats:

Oh, that's great art!

I have thought about a "complete CLAA conversion" as well. I think I will work on of those up. It would be about mid-1943.

Or there could be multiple possible upgrade paths...a mild refit with radar and extra AA but that retains her CS ability, or a refit that turns her into an AV (using the hangar as Oldman points out), or a full-scale CLAA conversion that strips out the hangar in exchange for British 4inch-DP and extra 40MM, or maybe one that keeps the hangar space but turns it into repair shops and makes her a small-but-fast AR.
 
 

Looks good Terminus, can you post the art work so I can add it to my mod?

Here we are. zip file includes side and shil files.