Layout and design drawings of Alternative Hoods

[ar]

Dear Mr GUest,
You are slightly slippery ground perhaps.

[Werner]

I don't recall The Kaiser going on TV and talking about the rich returns on the colonial investments in the Pacific and China.

A late colleague of mine who taught such things once remarked "There was very little demand for precision instrumentation in the colonies at that time".

The truth is the Government invested more in these colonies than it or the German entrepreneurs ever withdrew.

The only real action for Japan was in The Dutch East Indies and in the interior of China. The rest of the Pacific and Asia within their reach was not economically worth the energy to take it

[Guest]

I don't recall The Kaiser going on TV and talking about the rich returns on the colonial investments in the Pacific and China.

It would be remarkable if you can recall the Kaiser going on TV to talk about anything at all.

[Werner]

You're right... I'm not that old.

[Guest]

Dear Mr GUest,
You are slightly slippery ground perhaps.

Perhaps. But no more slippery than certain assumptions RN under 1st Lord Beatty was told by the treasury to make about Japan in the years immediately after WWI.

[Werner]

I think it might have been cheaper for Japan to buy Singapore and Hong Kong from it's friend than spend two decades building a war machine to boot them out.

[Werner]

Just an N.B.:

Differences in the way British and US designers measured calibres tends to deflate British guns a bit. The 15-inch/42 would rate closer to 48-50 US calibres in length. Alternatively, the US 14-inch/45 would rate closer to 40 calibres by the British method.

[Laurence Batchelor]

To answer your original question the only thing I can think of are drawings for an Admiral class battlecruiser found in the Ensign Special by Maurice Northcott.

The drawings appear towards the end of the book and include drawings of how the superstructure would differ. It mentions and shows that the funnels would be closer together, the mainmast would also be close behind the second funnel and the main derrick would point aft. It mentions the superstructure would differ, but doesn't give particulars except 'the shelter deck would almost certainly have had the same plan as the forecastle deck'.

It also shows a body plan and shows how the hull of an Admiral class differs from that of Hood. The hull sections would differ in shape mainly due to the magazines being positioned below their respective shell rooms.
Further, the the top bulge fashion plate would have been of a convex shape instead of concave as on Hood. The crushing tubes would have also been omitted from the bulges.
Finally the hull would differ as the above water torpedo tubes would have been omitted also.

Internally there would also be some major differences.
The 12-inch belt would be reduced to 11-inch and its height to main deck level only.
Barbette armour to be reduced to that of an 'R' class battleship.
The roofs of the 15-inch magazines to 80lb (as in Hood).
Increase the upper deck aft over the magazines to 120lb.
Increase the forecastle deck over boiler rooms to uniform 80lb
Increase the forecastle deck over engine rooms to uniform 80lb
Increase the forecastle deck over A and B magazines to total of 80lb
These amendments making a net reduction in weight of 5tons.

Last, but by no means least, the main armament was to 'have been fitted in turrets of a different design'. There is no more information on this except a small weights table comparison of Hood's 15-inch turret vs her sisters. In summary many of the weights of various armour plates on them would differ and overall the turret would weigh 26tons more on Hood's sisters and have a lower centre of gravity.

Why I've typed all this for you?
Well some of these alterations might also have been included in your 18" Hood derivative?
Food for thought at least

[Dick J]

It mentions the superstructure would differ, but doesn't give particulars except 'the shelter deck would almost certainly have had the same plan as the forecastle deck'.

I wonder how this would have translated into the actual deck shape. Does this mean only that the cutout over the after 3 5.5's on each side would have been filled out to the hull side (with openings on the sides for the guns) or does it mean something else?

[JWintjes]

To answer your original question the only thing I can think of are drawings for an Admiral class battlecruiser found in the Ensign Special by Maurice Northcott.

The drawings appear towards the end of the book and include drawings of how the superstructure would differ. It mentions and shows that the funnels would be closer together, the mainmast would also be close behind the second funnel and the main derrick would point aft. It mentions the superstructure would differ, but doesn't give particulars except 'the shelter deck would almost certainly have had the same plan as the forecastle deck'.

It also shows a body plan and shows how the hull of an Admiral class differs from that of Hood. The hull sections would differ in shape mainly due to the magazines being positioned below their respective shell rooms.
Further, the the top bulge fashion plate would have been of a convex shape instead of concave as on Hood. The crushing tubes would have also been omitted from the bulges.
Finally the hull would differ as the above water torpedo tubes would have been omitted also.

Internally there would also be some major differences.
The 12-inch belt would be reduced to 11-inch and its height to main deck level only.
Barbette armour to be reduced to that of an 'R' class battleship.
The roofs of the 15-inch magazines to 80lb (as in Hood).
Increase the upper deck aft over the magazines to 120lb.
Increase the forecastle deck over boiler rooms to uniform 80lb
Increase the forecastle deck over engine rooms to uniform 80lb
Increase the forecastle deck over A and B magazines to total of 80lb
These amendments making a net reduction in weight of 5tons.

Last, but by no means least, the main armament was to 'have been fitted in turrets of a different design'. There is no more information on this except a small weights table comparison of Hood's 15-inch turret vs her sisters. In summary many of the weights of various armour plates on them would differ and overall the turret would weigh 26tons more on Hood's sisters and have a lower centre of gravity.

Why I've typed all this for you?
Well some of these alterations might also have been included in your 18" Hood derivative?
Food for thought at least

Thanks for the info, Laurence!

The drawing has been reproduced in one of the venerable Airfix mags, but without the design info, which indeed is highly interesting.

Jorit

[Laurence Batchelor]

No problem Jorit,

I have the article in the airfix magazine entitled Admiral class 1919 by Mr M. W. Williams and the drawing is not the same.
The one in the airfix magazine is hand drawn by the author in question and is a profile drawing and then several drawings howing one how to modify the airfix hood kit.
The 2 drawings in the ensign special is a hull body plan and a profile drawing of the two funnels and bridge area drawn by Maurice Northcott.

Are we talking the same Airfix article?
Cheers
LB

[JWintjes]

No problem Jorit,

I have the article in the airfix magazine entitled Admiral class 1919 by Mr M. W. Williams and the drawing is not the same.
The one in the airfix magazine is hand drawn by the author in question and is a profile drawing and then several drawings howing one how to modify the airfix hood kit.
The 2 drawings in the ensign special is a hull body plan and a profile drawing of the two funnels and bridge area drawn by Maurice Northcott.

Are we talking the same Airfix article?
Cheers
LB

Laurence,

ah, my memory. Indeed I'm talking about the article by Williams - somehow I thought it said "taken from" somewhere.

Which makes this all much more intriguing - as I then don't know the drawing by Northcott. If that's not too much of an imposition, might you send me a scan of the drawing? As I have currently about three Hoods in various stages of disrepair lying around and my eyes firmly fixed on Trumpy's 1930s release, I'm highly interested in that.

Actually, all this talking about a 18in Hood already has made me thinking about some nasty things...

Jorit

[Laurence Batchelor]

No problem it still a yahoo email address?

[Filipe Ramires]

The only real action for Japan was in The Dutch East Indies and in the interior of China. The rest of the Pacific and Asia within their reach was not economically worth the energy to take it

Well, sort of. Where there was oil, rubber or any other important raw-materials for the development of the Japanese Empire they would go there in any case, the thing is that to assure, in some sort of way, the security of those territories they had to conquer nearby areas to prevent potential threats to build up forces there against them...for instance the Philippines and hundreds of tiny islands from the Aleutians to the Solomons. Basically they intended to create a large security perimeter to protect the good stuff...that was one of their biggest mistakes...an over extended Empire.

[Guest]

There are a lot of influences beyond administrative control of a piece of territory.

[Rod Ackers]

for werner

All guns from 8inch and above required power handling and loading.
A 6 inch shell weighed 100 lbs and was the limit for any jack to pick up, and even in the RN were only handled in the shell room to the shell bogie. They were then powered up in the shell hoist to the turret where they were tipped onto loading trays and swung into line for ramming into the breech.

[Werner]

for werner

All guns from 8inch and above required power handling and loading.
A 6 inch shell weighed 100 lbs and was the limit for any jack to pick up, and even in the RN were only handled in the shell room to the shell bogie. They were then powered up in the shell hoist to the turret where they were tipped onto loading trays and swung into line for ramming into the breech.

Unlike the RN, the US cruisers and battleships before 1945 were manually fed by a process called "parbuckling". US shells were kept in the ring on both rotating and fixed flats, and were therefore not very far from their hoists.

[Guest]

The fact that almost every caliber of WWII era naval guns that fire ammunition too large for 1 man to handle fire at basically the same rate, ~2 rounds, plus or minus some moderate individual difference of <50%, suggests the the loading arrangement is generally highly scalable. There would be little reason to suppose that an incremental evolution from 16" to 18" will break the scalability, or that going from 2700 lbs to 3300 lbs would involve some quantum leap in difficulty that would make a process that worked marvelously well from 250 lbs to 2700 lbs fail totally for 3300 lbs.

Incidentally, the word parbuckle is generic and applies to any technique to move heavy objects by fixing one end of rope to a stationary anchor, wrapping the rope around the object to be moved, and then pulling on the other end. The power of this technique could easily be extended by putting a pully in the rope path. I would imagine that, if the USN were to adopt a shell too heavy for this sort of parbuckling, it could easily extend the principle of parbuckling by putting a pulley in the rope path.

[Werner]

My understanding is that large US shells were moved by tipping them slightly while rolling the base. In this way the nose follows a nutating arc and the base can be directed by one man tipping the point slightly more or less as the shell wobbles.

Friedman describes the manual arrangements in US Battleships, including a statement from Stanley Goodall in 1919 about how American shell handling arrangements were contrary to British practice.

[Guest]

My understanding is that large US shells were moved by tipping them slightly while rolling the base. In this way the nose follows a nutating arc and the base can be directed by one man tipping the point slightly more or less as the shell wobbles.

I would expect so. If you attempt to move a shell by wrapping a rope around it, anchoring one end and pulling on the other, the shell would naturally rotate by the friction with the rope. Tipping the shell slightly would make it easier to rotate and therefore easier to parbuckle.

One wonders how well this system can work if the ship is rolling severely.