WWI Royal Navy QE and R follow on Battleship Designs


Tzoli, As the post you referenced was about the W series and the latter war time designs, not the X1 or X2, what are you trying to say here.


You seem to only check the pictures which the forum for some weird thing shows. but if you check the post better or to be precise the end of the post, you can see I posted the X1 and X2 papers as well! It's just the forum not shows a preview of them:


 
I even put them in as links not as images. Yet only 3 shows as links out of 8 the rest are as images....
And now as I quoted my post the last two shows here as image, but remains links in the original...
 
Talking of the cancelled R class ships, material for which went into the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse, with the boilers, I assume they were they still designed for oil and coal at this time?
 
There was an 'X4' hull tested at Haslar:

Table of Ship Dimensions.
ModelConditionLength
(ft)
Beam
(ft)
Draught
(ft)
Displacement
(Tons)
VT & VT1
VT & VT1
VT & VT1
VT & VT1
VP
YG & YN
Normal Draught
10% light…
10% deep…
20% deep…
Normal Draught
Normal Draught
680
680
680
680
680
680
110
110
110
110
100
93
25.00
22.73
27.30
29.34
27.60
28.75
28,000
25,200
30,800
33,600
28,000
28,000
The above length figures are ‘Between Particulars’ (B.P. or P.P.). https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/all...nal-design-study-for-hms-agincourt-t8887.html
The QE was 600ft (P.P) and 93ft beam, Tiger was 660ft (P.P) and 90ft beam. The above hull forms are bulged and have very shallow draft. This was seen as improving protection against flooding and pre-dates Fisher's 'Baltic ideas'.

In the 1914-15 Estimates, Churchill referred to Agincourt as a Queen Elizabeth 'type' suggesting a fast battleship but not necessarily a QE 'class' ship.

‘in every respect normal — four battleships, four cruisers, 12 destroyers, a large number of submarines, the usual subsidiary craft, and the seaplane ship. Three of the battleships will be in principle Royal Sovereigns, completing, with the five now under construction, another homogenous squadron of eight vessels. The fourth battleship will be a faster vessel of the Queen Elizabeth type, and will burn oil only. All these ships will be armed with 15in. guns and a heavy and numerous anti-torpedo-boat armament …’

As noted above, Agincourt was to be built by Portsmouth. Portsmouth Naval Dockyard only ever built one ship at a time, the lead ship of every new battleship class. The QE's were overweight and wouldn't make their designed speed. This would be apparent when QE runs her trials at the end of 1914. Agincourt can't be laid down till Royal Sovereign clears the slip. There is plenty of scope to design a better QE.

Prior to WW1, First Rate Navies built Battlesquadrons of 8 ships each. The 'fast wing' was to be split 4 in the van and 4 for the rear. Churchill was considering dropping one battleship from the 1915-16 Program (an election year but also the same year as the next Hague Peace Conference and would be an example of a building 'holiday' that Churchill was fond of) to ease the estimates for the Exchequer. Conceivably these 3 ships could be repeat Agincourts to round out the QE + Agincourt fast wing battlesquadron.
 
Hood said:
Agreed on the lack of a conclusion, with a planned laying down date in early 1915 there was still time to finalise a design before lead-times dictated approval of the final design.

Sultan Osman I was seized on 31 July and commissioned on 7 August, Reşadiye was also seized on 31 July and commissioned on 22 August.
Agincourt, Resistance, Repulse and Renown were not formally cancelled until 26 August.
The Admiralty had re-assigned Agincourt's name before it had been officially cancelled but its clear it was already was a 'vacant' name by the end of July. It could be argued that it was a ready-to-use approved name, but in the same vein why did Reşadiye simply not become Resistance?

It doesn't look like either Resistance or Agincourt were ever formerly ordered. Guns and mountings for them never seem to have been, only for Renown and Repulse, which is why the Marshall Ney class and Glorious used the turrets from Ramillies, which were subsequently reordered and a delay accepted in Ramillies delivery. Courageous used the unused fourth turrets from Renown and Repulse.

So there may have been nothing to cancel, and Churchill was a fan of all things Agincourt, thus potentially making the use of the name a shoe-in. It would be interesting to know the actual reasoning behind the Canada and Erin names though.

Working back from the planned 25th January 1915 lay down date for the two 1914/15 ships also supports the idea that no final decision was made because it didn't need to be. It was possible to issue contracts almost immediately after receipt of the board stamp. Time between contracts being issued and ships being laid down varied significantly between a range of approximately 2-6 months which makes late July the beginning of that window in this case, but the process could have gone on into early autumn in extremis.

Building on the above, it seems the first two ships, the contract ships, of the 1914/15 programme were accelerated and ordered as soon as possible while the two ships to be built in the Royal Dockyards had to wait for available slipways. The available time ended up being used for a pair of extended debates, one about substitution and one about the exact design of at least one of the ships, only for the whole process to come to an end with the outbreak of war. I highly doubt that Churchill would have been able to convince the Board to drop the two capital ships in favour of submarines and his torpedo cruiser concept.

As to the actual designs, X4 is fascinating and it certainly seems logical to assume that it is from the same sequence as the X1 and X2 designs from mid 1914 and that it was being worked up following the rejection of X1, X2 and Y by the board. What I find most interesting about that model testing is the similarity with the A,B,C,D designs from Autumn 1915, almost as if once the Fisher inspired battlecruiser work was out of the way DNC picked up battleship design where it had been left twelve months earlier. This strongly suggests that Agincourt may have ended up being such a ship, and if not the 1915/16 ships certainly could have been. I have always been impressed by design A from 1915, has anyone ever attempted to draw it?

As far as I can make out, part of the trade for accelerating the two contract battleships from the 1914-15 programme was ordering the dockyard ships later as a means balancing expenditure, in combination with the availability of shipyards that would have given plenty of time for developing designs. Also, worth noting that Churchill seemed to be moving the fourth ship from the 1915-16 programme into the 1916-17 programme rather than abandoning it outright.
 
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I thought it worth adding some of the notes Friedman reproduces on design Y. He references some optionality in the design:

1) An alternative arrangement of the aft 6" battery in which it was mounted on the upper deck, X and Y turrets would be raised by 5ft for an additional 365 tons and 5ft in length; would this have made the ship almost flush decked?

2) Oil firing instead of coal would save 300 tons and reduce draft to 28-29ft or allow for a 5ft reduction in length
 
1) An alternative arrangement of the aft 6" battery in which it was mounted on the upper deck, X and Y turrets would be raised by 5ft for an additional 365 tons and 5ft in length; would this have made the ship almost flush decked?

Agreed that would make it flush deck - I seem to remember reference to a similar scale of raising X and Y turrets on another design for a flush deck.
Seems a very sensible approach and seems to indicate that the QE-class's low stern casemates were already viewed as being too low.
 
Talking of the cancelled R class ships, material for which went into the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse, with the boilers, I assume they were they still designed for oil and coal at this time?
The Renown & Repulse were designed to be completely oil fired from the outset. No coal.
 
Lol!
A chinese guy watermarked the photo I've uploaded somewhere and which have taken by a friend of mine? XD
 
Talking of the cancelled R class ships, material for which went into the battlecruisers Renown and Repulse, with the boilers, I assume they were they still designed for oil and coal at this time?
The Renown & Repulse were designed to be completely oil fired from the outset. No coal.

Yes, oil only but were the boilers originally coal/oil and modified for oil only or were they designed from the outset as oil only?
 
Lol!
A chinese guy watermarked the photo I've uploaded somewhere and which have taken by a friend of mine? XD
I get it here ,internet link us………

but how about top view of U5? very strange………
 
Ahh partially my mistake I thought I've already posted these but a fellow naval enthusiast already posted them on the Battlecruisers forum:

Still this Chinese guy watermarked it...

U5: as stated: at echelon forward and normal centreline aft: (Only shipbucket style I've found)
 
There were many designs between Revenge and Admiral of 1913/1914 and the G3/N3/Nelson series of 1920/22
Battleships:
Design 1914 an improved but slower Revenge
Designs U1-U5 for Canada 4x2 15" ranging from QE/Revenge layout to all on the deck - 1914
Designs W1, C1,2 slow BBs
Designs X1,2 A,B,D fast BB's
all with 4x2 15" - 1914/15
Designs A,B fast BB's with 4x3 15" - 1918

Battlecruisers:
Designs A-D, modified Admirals with 4x2, 4x3, 2x3 2x2, 3x3 15" - 1916
Design 1919 3x3 15"

I can provide more data if required.

Apart from these there were large number of export designs from Vickers and Armstrong between 1914-1920 for Brazil, Chile, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Spain
I'd be very interested in the U1-5 designs for Canada
 
There were many designs between Revenge and Admiral of 1913/1914 and the G3/N3/Nelson series of 1920/22
Battleships:
Design 1914 an improved but slower Revenge
Designs U1-U5 for Canada 4x2 15" ranging from QE/Revenge layout to all on the deck - 1914
Designs W1, C1,2 slow BBs
Designs X1,2 A,B,D fast BB's
all with 4x2 15" - 1914/15
Designs A,B fast BB's with 4x3 15" - 1918

I'd be interested in seeing more about Designs A,B fast BB's with 4x3 15" - 1918. It might inform discussion of some other strange topics.

DRW
 
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