Battleships

[Sauragnmon]

I personally can't help but wonder what a Battleship might look like if given the displacement footprint of, say, a Nimitz.

[Thorvic]

Actually, the Soyuz was only similar to the Iowas in the main battery caliber, possibly a design based on plans bought from the US firm of Gibbs and Cox. Most of the hull design is Italian in origin, and the vessel is considerably larger than the Iowa class, closer in size to the Yamatos.

I do like the Stalingrad class; it would have made the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea more interesting during the Cold War - what would NATO have done to counter one of these?

Combrig are doing the Stalingrad project in 1/700 scale 

http://combrig-models.com/index.php/coming-soon/22-coming-soon-700/288-stalingrad1955

G

[rickshaw]

I do like the Stalingrad class; it would have made the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea more interesting during the Cold War - what would NATO have done to counter one of these?

Use a nuke to vaporise them? 

[Jschmus]

I personally can't help but wonder what a Battleship might look like if given the displacement footprint of, say, a Nimitz.

The Iowas displaced 58,000 tons at full-load, post-1980s.  A Nimitz displaces 100,000-104,000 tons (numbers per Wikipedia).  A battleship at that tonnage would certainly carry a large battery of whatever guns one wanted to stick on it, along with the requisite armor.  Updated to the modern era, some of those guns could be traded out for a missile farm (or several).  For more particular speculation, I yield the floor to those who've studied these things in greater depth.

[Thorvic]

I do like the Stalingrad class; it would have made the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea more interesting during the Cold War - what would NATO have done to counter one of these?

Use a nuke to vaporise them? 

Thats where Green Cheese would have come into it, the RN had assumed the Svedlovs were the Stalingrads, so when a bog standard cruiser appeared they realised it could be countered by exisiting WWII era cruisers and current weaponry. However should the Stalingrad have actually appeared then no doubt we would have carried on with stand off weapons such as Green Cheese.

G

[Thorvic]

I personally can't help but wonder what a Battleship might look like if given the displacement footprint of, say, a Nimitz.

The only trouble was by the time they could build ships of that size the age of the battleship had gone, thus the cancellation of the Montana class, sure they could have designed and built a new battleship of similar size to Midway or Forrestal but not sure if we would have seen 5 or 6 16 inch turrets, 4 18 inch turrets, or just 4 16 inch turrets with a comprehensive radar fit and a mixed secondary and tertiary mix of decent calibre radar tracked AA guns.

[Sauragnmon]

I was thinking modern era, and when I said footprint I meant the waterline hull form - take the dimensions for the hull from there, and think Battleship.  I don't give a flying duck about the whole Carrier vs Battleship debate, I've voiced my opinions and statements on that enough times already, so let's just toss That by the wayside and dream a little.

[Old Wombat]

Why not, for the sake of this discussion, go along the lines of "Aircraft & Aerial Weapons Never Got Past 1920's Technology Levels", so that battleships would still be highly viable; then assume (other) naval technology was not similarly retarded & see where that takes you?

Nimitz-class battleships with 12 22" guns challenging Stalingrad-class ships mounting 10 27" guns, anyone?

[Joe C-P]

A nuke is overkill on a large cruiser when a larger armoured vessel, or a sub, will do. And using a nuke within the Med or Black Sea might make your local allies unhappy.

Battleship guns over 18" will cause significant damage to the ship firing them. The Nelsons, with 16", damaged their own superstructures when the guns were fired too close aboard, and the Yamatos risked the lives of any exposed crewmembers when firing their guns, and had to store their aircraft in hangars lest they be blown overboard.

If you want to see some really impressive maximum battleship designs from between the wars, look up the Tillman designs of the USN. Up to 15 18" guns! 

[Thorvic]

Picked up the Wayne Scarpaci book on Italian Battleships to coinside with my purchase of the new Trumpeter Roma. Interesting book full of ideas such as a 20's Battlecruiser before they developed the Italia class, the intended follow on to the Italia class which Roma was supposed to be but was was built as a revised Italia instead and conversion of the incomplete Imperio to a fleet carrier complete with Lexington style 8 inch cruiser turrets fore and aft of the Island !.

One interesting not is that the Italians in the post war period were desperate to retain the remaining two ships of the class rather than their rebuilt WWI ships that they had which given how they updated their cruisers might form the basis for in interesting post war whiff of the new Trumpeter kits 

[RLBH]

If you want to see some really impressive maximum battleship designs from between the wars, look up the Tillman designs of the USN. Up to 15 18" guns! 

Nah, the versions with twenty-four 16" guns, in four sextuple turrets (!) are far more fun for insanity.

A few years ago there was a drawing doing the rounds based on the idea of a Nimitz-sized hull carrying big guns; IIRC it had three twin 16" turrets (automated, of course, to offer similar firepower to a larger number of old-style guns), something like 256 VLS cells amidships and four SPY-1 arrays on each of the fore and aft superstructures. As is the way of the Internet, I now can't find it anywhere....

[Jschmus]

If you want to see some really impressive maximum battleship designs from between the wars, look up the Tillman designs of the USN. Up to 15 18" guns! 

Nah, the versions with twenty-four 16" guns, in four sextuple turrets (!) are far more fun for insanity.

See here:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f252/CanisD/Misc/MyStarshipFiles/NeverWeres/Tillman_sextuple16.jpg

[rickshaw]

If you want to see some really impressive maximum battleship designs from between the wars, look up the Tillman designs of the USN. Up to 15 18" guns! 

Nah, the versions with twenty-four 16" guns, in four sextuple turrets (!) are far more fun for insanity.

See here:
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f252/CanisD/Misc/MyStarshipFiles/NeverWeres/Tillman_sextuple16.jpg

Those are going to be really crowded turrets while the hoist arrangements are going to be rather difficult.   Be hard to work big guns like that, that close together while the recoiling mass would be phenomenal with all guns firing at once!   

[Jschmus]

Nobody said it was necessarily practical.  The Tillman's were just meant to be the biggest gun platforms that could still get through the Panama Canal.  Practicality be damned!

[pyro-manic]

It's actually quite an attractive silhouette, isn't it? Switch out those dreadful lattice masts and you've got quite a pretty ship. Maybe swap the turrets for one of the OTL 16" triples, and there you go.