The Ship Model Forum

Immediately after WW.I. Gibbs & Cox came up with a design for a thru-deck passenger ship for the La Havre - New York run. The airplanes would load priority mail and parcels and deliver them to Long Island at least 8 hours before the ship docked.

The Germans actually put this idea into service briefly in the 1930s, although they used a catapult and a modern seaplane.

Sorry guess I was still asleep this morning

Duly corrected

I also have a small Japanese paperback about hybrid and never were designs, thats good also.

Ehm, Laurence,

I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but I'm pretty sure the through-deck cruiser, so to say, is an American design...

By the way, I can only recommend the book - it's the best thing on hybrid warships I've ever come across.

Jorit

The Gibbs & Cox design for the Russian government you mention is this fellow:-

There was also a design c which was a scaled down version.

I actually think the best hybrid design ever put on paper was the American attempt of a flying-deck cruiser, this drawing by John Roberts shows it well:-


The book you should all get with loads of them draw in (including the above) and many whacky things from Japan and less famous designs from Germany is: The Hybrid Warship : The Amalgamtion of Big Guns & Aircraft by R D Layman & Stephen Mclaughlin.

I notice this book is around �120 on Amazon!
There's a mint one for �15 on abebooks!

Francis Gibbs is the Gibbs of Gibbs & Cox. Kind of a Webster Hubble to FDR.

They were also responsible for Atlanta and some destroyers, I think Somers. The unique chine on Atlanta is attributed to Gibbs and Cox, as was the rumour that she did 42 knots on trials.

Sorry, Gibbs and Cox. Aging memory is failing me.

Francis and Gibbs, that was the design firm. Responsible later for the passenger ship SS United States.

In fact, the hull shape of that hybrid super battleship was very close to the Montana, right form the clipper bow to the counter stern. Only it was sustantially longer and broader.

Of course all battleship-carrier hybrids are total nonsense unless one could somehow make the guns shoot about as far as the reach of its airwing.

That American design for a 80,000 ton battle carrier was impressive, thou.
It was designed by the same firm that later designed SS United States. The name of the firm escapes me for the moment.

It was designed to meet a Soviet need for a nucleus of a far east fleet that could enable the Soviets to compete with IJN on more equal terms. It was not entirely clear if it had been a soviet solicited design, or if it was designed on a speculative venture. It was also unclear how it was imagined that the US Government would have ever allowed an American firm to build a 80,000 ton battleship for a foreign power when itself was still nominally limited by treaty to 45,000 tons.

It featured 4 triple 16"/50 cal turrets, 2 forward, 2 aft in Montana like arrangement, a long, low flat topped super structure topped by a hanger deck and a flight deck the size of a good escort carrier. The hanger and flight decks are slightly offset to port. The normal battleship upper superstructure, including conning tower, foremast, other fire control directors, and smock stacks are all there, but offset to starboard side. it had 7 5"/38 cal turrets on each side, above main deck but below flight deck level.

It's not clear if the Soviets ever received the design, or what they thought of it. But the design is still in the archives of the American firm in the late 1970s.

I hope to build a scratch 1/350 scale model of it one day.

The vessel was over 1000 feet long, and broad of beam. It was propelled by no less than 6 shafts and over 300,000 shp.

Anonymous wrote:Regarding heavy armament on carriers on a later date I could also cynically bring up Magomi, Tone, Chikuma, Ise and Hyuga, the contemplated conversion of Richelieu and Lion class BB to half-carrier, half battleship configurations, and last, but certainly the most, that infamous design by a famous American naval engineering firm for Soviet union which involve a 79,000 ton battle carrier with 9X16" guns on a hull driven by 6 shafts.

Of course, none of the true hybrids (to which you can add the German Gro�flugzeugkreuzer) were ever built.

Mogami, Tone and Chikuma are no carriers by any sensible definition, and Ise and Hyuga are rather floating flying-off platforms than "carriers".

Jorit

Regarding heavy armament on carriers on a later date I could also cynically bring up Magomi, Tone, Chikuma, Ise and Hyuga, the contemplated conversion of Richelieu and Lion class BB to half-carrier, half battleship configurations, and last, but certainly the most, that infamous design by a famous American naval engineering firm for Soviet union which involve a 79,000 ton battle carrier with 9X16" guns on a hull driven by 6 shafts.

Anonymous wrote:

JWintjes wrote:
What I meant was that in the case of Kaga and Akagi these casemates are essentially from an earlier design stage; newer Japanese carrier designs don't show casemate guns.

Jorit

They had a few casemates from before 1934. They added more during the major refit after 1934.

Only on Kaga...

Jorit

JWintjes wrote:
What I meant was that in the case of Kaga and Akagi these casemates are essentially from an earlier design stage; newer Japanese carrier designs don't show casemate guns.

Jorit

They had a few casemates from before 1934. They added more during the major refit after 1934.

Werner wrote:Actually, these ships had main deck casemates as completed with turrets on the flight deck.

When rebuilt with one deck, the four guns in turrets were relocated to further casemates.

In Shattered Sword a survivor describes the destruction aft as extending down to these casemates.

What I meant was that in the case of Kaga and Akagi these casemates are essentially from an earlier design stage; newer Japanese carrier designs don't show casemate guns.

And I maintain that a casemate gun is fundamentally flawed if on the hangar deck like in GZ (incidentally, I'm actually rather fond of casemate guns... ).

Jorit

Actually, these ships had main deck casemates as completed with turrets on the flight deck.

When rebuilt with one deck, the four guns in turrets were relocated to further casemates.

In Shattered Sword a survivor describes the destruction aft as extending down to these casemates.

Anonymous wrote:

Akagi and Kaga. Casemates is actually a much better solution if you really want 8" guns on a carrier. Blasts from firing 8" turrets on deck would have demolished much of your airwing around them through overpressure.

Uhem - Kaga and Akagi are post-1936 designs?



And - going back to GZ - casemates on the hangar deck are a really, really poor idea. Particularly if you have twin casemates with only one ammunition hoist, but that's a differnet story...

Jorit

Anonymous wrote:BTW, the H-class of battleships looks really bad on the basis of weight of both main armament and secondary armament, and weight and thickness of armor, when compared to its very large displacement.

They packed what is effectively a 35,000 - 40,000 ton battleship's armament and armor into a 56,000 ton hull. Admittedly they were intended for non-traditional battleship roles, but Germany was nevertheless building tremendously large and expensive ships of quite modest tactical combat power. If their non-tradition roles do not pan out, they would be white elephants indeed.

Here we totally agree.

Jorit

I remember reading somwhere than the USN was very interested and watched closely the loss of Glorious.

As a result they wanted some sort of heavy gun armament on their fleet carriers incase they got caught with their pants down!

JWintjes wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Akagi and Kaga and Lexington carried cruiser armament to their graves, and Saratoga carried them well into 1942. The notion that cruiser armament was useful to a carrier, so long as she was large enough to carry them, was very much current in contemporary carrier thinking in 1939.

Show me an international post-1936 design with a main armament in casemates.

Jorit

Akagi and Kaga. Casemates is actually a much better solution if you really want 8" guns on a carrier. Blasts from firing 8" turrets on deck would have demolished much of your airwing around them through overpressure.

BTW, the H-class of battleships looks really bad on the basis of weight of both main armament and secondary armament, and weight and thickness of armor, when compared to its very large displacement.

They packed what is effectively a 35,000 - 40,000 ton battleship's armament and armor into a 56,000 ton hull. Admittedly they were intended for non-traditional battleship roles, but Germany was nevertheless building tremendously large and expensive ships of quite modest tactical combat power. If their non-tradition roles do not pan out, they would be white elephants indeed.