Confederate Ship Designs: 1919 and Beyond...

[Carthaginian]

My first 'official' post as the CSA's player.
Well, my drawing is still far and away worse than Guinness's and my ideas might be a bit dated with all the things going on in the world- but here we go again. :D


After developing several successful floatplane designs, the CSA has finally embraced the idea of an aircraft carrying scout. The initial vessel is converted from a passenger ferry intended for the Tampa/Key West run, which was purchased by the CSN for her long range at fleet speed and her ample open decks (which were easily converted to handle the hanger deck). The vessel will initially operate out of Pensacola, Florida for testing. Her utility will determine the future of such operations.

*NOTE: This ship has no 'flying-off' deck. It can only launch and recover floatplanes from the water's surface in 1-3 foot seas. The aircraft can carry a single 18" torpedo or several bombs; if the aircraft are so loaded, they can only launch in 'light chop' conditions.

Pensacola, Confederate States of America Seaplane Carrier laid down 1918 (Engine 1916)

Displacement:
   3,100 t light; 3,204 t standard; 3,879 t normal; 4,419 t full load

Dimensions: Length overall / water x beam x draught
   390.00 ft / 375.00 ft x 45.00 ft x 16.00 ft (normal load)
   118.87 m / 114.30 m x 13.72 m  x 4.88 m

Armament:
      6 - 4.75" / 121 mm guns in single mounts, 50.00lbs / 22.68kg shells, 1918 Model
     Quick firing guns in deck mounts
     on side ends, evenly spread
      6 - 1.00" / 25.4 mm guns (3x2 guns), 0.50lbs / 0.23kg shells, 1918 Model
     Machine guns in deck mounts
     on side, all amidships, all raised mounts - superfiring
      1 - 1.50" / 38.1 mm guns in single mounts, 2.00lbs / 0.91kg shells, 1918 Model
     Anti-aircraft gun in deck mount
     on side, 1 raised gun
   Weight of broadside 305 lbs / 138 kg
   Shells per gun, main battery: 150

   Air Wing:
   2 Lougheed O2L (1919 trials)
   6 Lougheed O2LA (1920 service)

Armour:
   - Belts:      Width (max)   Length (avg)      Height (avg)
   Main:   3.00" / 76 mm   224.00 ft / 68.28 m   14.00 ft / 4.27 m
   Ends:   Unarmoured
     Main Belt covers 92 % of normal length

   - Gun armour:   Face (max)   Other gunhouse (avg)   Barbette/hoist (max)
   Main:   1.00" / 25 mm         -               -

   - Armour deck: 1.00" / 25 mm, Conning tower: 3.00" / 76 mm

Machinery:
   Oil fired boilers, steam turbines,
   Direct drive, 3 shafts, 18,000 shp / 13,428 Kw = 23.93 kts
   Range 2,000nm at 23.93 kts
   Bunker at max displacement = 1,216 tons

Complement:
   245 - 319

Cost:
   £0.473 million / $1.893 million

Distribution of weights at normal displacement:
   Armament: 41 tons, 1.1 %
   Armour: 645 tons, 16.6 %
      - Belts: 404 tons, 10.4 %
      - Torpedo bulkhead: 0 tons, 0.0 %
      - Armament: 16 tons, 0.4 %
      - Armour Deck: 209 tons, 5.4 %
      - Conning Tower: 16 tons, 0.4 %
   Machinery: 671 tons, 17.3 %
   Hull, fittings & equipment: 1,244 tons, 32.1 %
   Fuel, ammunition & stores: 779 tons, 20.1 %
   Miscellaneous weights: 500 tons, 12.9 %
      200 tons: up to 6 aircraft
      100 tons: fuel and munitions
        50 tons: additional flight crew quarters
        25 tons: machine shops
      125 tons: expansion

Overall survivability and seakeeping ability:
   Survivability (Non-critical penetrating hits needed to sink ship):
     6,385 lbs / 2,896 Kg = 119.2 x 4.8 " / 121 mm shells or 1.4 torpedoes
   Stability (Unstable if below 1.00): 1.21
   Metacentric height 2.1 ft / 0.7 m
   Roll period: 12.9 seconds
   Steadiness   - As gun platform (Average = 50 %): 70 %
         - Recoil effect (Restricted arc if above 1.00): 0.11
   Seaboat quality  (Average = 1.00): 1.71

Hull form characteristics:
   Hull has a flush deck
   Block coefficient: 0.503
   Length to Beam Ratio: 8.33 : 1
   'Natural speed' for length: 19.36 kts
   Power going to wave formation at top speed: 55 %
   Trim (Max stability = 0, Max steadiness = 100): 41
   Bow angle (Positive = bow angles forward): 12.80 degrees
   Stern overhang: 10.00 ft / 3.05 m
   Freeboard (% = measuring location as a percentage of overall length):
      - Stem:      22.00 ft / 6.71 m
      - Forecastle (20 %):   18.00 ft / 5.49 m
      - Mid (50 %):      16.00 ft / 4.88 m
      - Quarterdeck (20 %):   16.00 ft / 4.88 m
      - Stern:      16.00 ft / 4.88 m
      - Average freeboard:   17.02 ft / 5.19 m

Ship space, strength and comments:
   Space   - Hull below water (magazines/engines, low = better): 78.9 %
      - Above water (accommodation/working, high = better): 144.6 %
   Waterplane Area: 11,272 Square feet or 1,047 Square metres
   Displacement factor (Displacement / loading): 138 %
   Structure weight / hull surface area: 63 lbs/sq ft or 306 Kg/sq metre
   Hull strength (Relative):
      - Cross-sectional: 0.90
      - Longitudinal: 2.42
      - Overall: 1.00
   Hull space for machinery, storage, compartmentation is excellent
   Room for accommodation and workspaces is excellent
   Ship has slow, easy roll, a good, steady gun platform
   Excellent seaboat, comfortable, can fire her guns in the heaviest weather

[Guinness]

she's got a lot of armored belt and deck for a converted ferry.  ;)

Seriously though: If the ship is to be armored, I wonder if it wouldn't benefit the CSN more to turn to a modified version of an existing cruiser design for this? Even going back to say a Charlotte hull, but with improved machinery, might prove a useful ship for this role.

The relatively high freeboard would provide ample space for accommodation and workshops, etc., but I suspect you might want to lower it somewhere amidships or aft for a length to make tending to and hoisting the aircraft a bit easier. Aircraft are fragile, and it's hard to hoist them up on deck without banging them in to things, so the shorter the hoist, the better (at least in my mind).

What's the arrangement of the 50-pounders?

Also a minor point of CSA continuity: A while back I wrote a story rejecting the manually trained and elevated twin 1" MG for AA use, so the last few of my CSA ships got a combination of 50-cals and single 2-pounder mountings instead. I'd kicked around the idea of some sort of power operated multiple 1" mount, but decided it was probably too futuristic for the time being, and I really wanted to adopt historical designs for light AA just for simplicity's sake later. This is all a long way of asking: is the twin 1" (or for that matter the single 1") back in favor?

[Sachmle]

Guinness beat me to the armor thing, but if you want an armored ship for you experimental seaplane carrier/tender why not convert the ex-Arminius, which TexanCowboy bought for $7 as his last action as CSA about 4 days ago.

I recommend this for many reasons:

1) Passenger Ferry's won't have turbines in 1918 IMHO and
2) I'm sure the ferry the CSN buys wasn't just laid down, it's probably a few years old (1908ish maybe?) and
3) Will have older turbines IF it had any to begin with, most likely it
4) Came with VTE's, which are ok for a tender anyway, but
5) Probably aren't doing 23+ Knots

Oh, welcome back!! :) ;)

[Carthaginian]

LOL... see, told you my design philosophy might be a bit outdated. ;)

The single 1" will remain a constant in my designs. It was a choice the world over for many years for an AA weapon, and I see no reason to drop it. The manually trained twin 1" is a bit heavy and ineffective- but massive 'back stocks' would exist, and being as this is a second-line ship (like all seaplane carriers) I figured that they would be used instead of more 'high demand' AA weapons. Just some 'flavor' for the ship.

I can certainly un-armor the design- but to do that would make it (honestly) MASSIVELY cheap to produce (like 2600 tons light). I can either change the design or the back story- more likely the backstory will be changed to make the class based on a modified ferry that is converted. And this IS a historical design- minus the armor. The Royal Navy thought it was solid enough... even for the CSA's floatplane currently in use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ben-my-Chree). So all the tech matches very, very nicely for my back story.

[Guinness]

The single 1" will remain a constant in my designs. It was a choice the world over for many years for an AA weapon, and I see no reason to drop it.

A while back I went looking for examples of 1" MGs (or maybe more accurately, auto-cannon) which were loosely contemporary with our period, but couldn't find any. The Japanese, of course, fielded a 25mm AA gun shortly before WW2, and the Russians developed on of their own at about the same time, but other than that, there wasn't anything else I could find. Since WW2, 25mm has become a more common auto-cannon caliber, of course, and probably is a good compromise between size/weight, hitting power, and RoF. In our period, the RN (for instance) seemed to favor the 2-pounder simply because it would punch bigger holes in fabric aircraft wing coverings.

The 1" calibers seems to be relatively common in the Nverse, so I don't have a problem with it's employment in general. I always assumed that was because guns 1" and smaller need not be researched.

At any rate, I think you and I seem to both agree that such a weapon in our era is an imperfect anti-aircraft gun. The CSA certainly has lots of them, so their employment is reasonable. You could also explain it's reintroduction in character a number of ways, including potentially a change of who's in charge of Ordnance for the CSN, or maybe an improved mark that solves some of the original twin mountings issues.

Or you could just let it hang around until you can build a powered triple or quad AA mounting for it. :)

[Carthaginian]

LOL... I was just going to use the 'old ships decommissioning, second-rate guns for second-line ships' excuse. Someone new will likely be installed in the BuOrd, and he will cite 'thriftiness and good uses of resources' as the excuse for it's re-use.

The CSA's 1" machine gun originally came about because the 1" was the largest gatling-style gun employed on older CSN vessels. It was a common caliber and many Confederate companies would have made the guns. When the more modern machine came into being, the CSA took a cue from the Russians and their 37mm Maxim-type gun and began building a large machine gun of the same bore.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNRussian_37mm-30_maxim.htm
This really is the only 'contemporary' example of a large bore MG and it was designed in 1883.

[Walter]

With the 1 inch, I'm thinking more of this 1880 one. :)

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Due to some N-Verse rule at some point I ended up with an odd 1,25" one pounder "maxim" weapon. I should have checked better and used 37mm calibre, but over time I got used to this c.32mm thingy ...
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_1pounder_mk1.htm
So I have no issues with the CSA one-incher.

Borys

[Guinness]

Ah, the Nordenfelt gun! Surely that's obsolescent in the nverse by 1918? Of course, OTL Nordenfelt merged with Maxim anyway...

I still think there is a reason that calibers that large were superseded either by smaller caliber machine guns, or larger caliber autocannon at the beginning of the twentieth century. 37mm guns and larger can fire usefully sized exploding rounds for instance.

Another question comes to mind: for SS2 purposes, do multiple barrels == multiple "guns"? Ie, would a 3 barrel 47mm Hotchkiss revolver really need to be simmed as 3 weapons? I've got a ship carrying those coming, and so far I've simmed them as one gun....

[TexanCowboy]

Three guns is what we do at WW.

[Walter]

Ah, the Nordenfelt gun! Surely that's obsolescent in the nverse by 1918? Of course, OTL Nordenfelt merged with Maxim anyway...

Obsolete or not, it's still 1", right? :)

Another question comes to mind: for SS2 purposes, do multiple barrels == multiple "guns"? Ie, would a 3 barrel 47mm Hotchkiss revolver really need to be simmed as 3 weapons? I've got a ship carrying those coming, and so far I've simmed them as one gun....

I sim the 10-barreled gattling guns as 10 guns in one mount. Seemed to be the obvious thing to do...

[Guinness]

Judging by the RoF data on navweaps, it seems like multiple barrels probably doesn't help that much anyway (because of difficulties with manual ammunition feeding). Actually, I'm able to rework that particular design with a pair of 6 pounders instead, which makes me happier. :)

The only reason I have the question is that judging by stated gun weights, multiple barrels certainly don't individually weigh nearly as much as a whole gun. The mechanism and mounting are a large chunk of weight.

[Carthaginian]

Well, multiple barrels won't help you fire any faster than the mechanism can rotate them.
The hand-cranked 37mm guns of the 1800s were much slower than our modern single-barrel autos. A modern electrically powered .30 caliber gatling can, however, beat the fastest single barrel machine gun ever by about 9000 rounds per minute. ;)

[Tanthalas]

Well, multiple barrels won't help you fire any faster than the mechanism can rotate them.
The hand-cranked 37mm guns of the 1800s were much slower than our modern single-barrel autos. A modern electrically powered .30 caliber gatling can, however, beat the fastest single barrel machine gun ever by about 9000 rounds per minute. ;)

True True, which always made me wonder why they never built a 50 cal minigun for equipment mounts, Maybee the Army has one but I know we dont in the Corps.

[maddox]

What would you shoot with a .50 gatling, what you can't shoot cheaper with the BMG .50?