New French Battleships

[P3D]

On the beam there might not be enough space for the rotating ring in the shell handling room.

[maddox]

I'm going to comment on the designs in order.

On the first design, you have a ship about 1.5kt lighter then Occitaine, but with three less guns. Is that worth the tradeoff? I'm inclined to think no. Also, do you need a seperate fire control for the secondaries?

The 1500 kton lighter on itself isn't a worthy trade-off for those 3 guns, but the 2 kts faster and the more extensive main armor is.

On the second design, I like it. :) I'm not sure if a triple can fit on the beam, considering that the R-class had a 88.5' beam, and the Vittorio Vento class had a 108' beam, but I'll leave that one to people more knowledgable then me on that. Maybe for more of a quirky French feel, the superfiring turret could be placed aft?

I realise the 94.5' beam poses some problems on the barbette and the TB of the Danton II class.  On the other hand, if I messure the beam just in front of the forward turret of the tripple 16" armed Iowa I come out on 26m.

The fat form, in contrast to all other French BB's , for the Danton II, gives me that same width, or even more.  I believe, with these meassurments, that the beam and hullshape give a good indication of possibility.

Yes, I know that some of the real experts call the Iowa hull form and torpedo defences flawed for WW II norm.
But remember, we're in the Nverse, and the modern French BB's show a reasonable torpedo resilience, after all the experience gathered from all those NS scrapes.

[Guinness]

I think it's close, but close enough that no one could say it wouldn't work, at least short of detailed design. It all depends on exactly where the barbettes are, the details of the torpedo defense system, etc. Also, I suspect that adding a meter to the beam and subtracting the displacement from block coefficient wouldn't necessarily make matters any clearer.