Shipbucket

Hood,
a very small "Bastard-round" (Infortunatly I lack time because I mainly focus on the french ships)
LII & LIII

L2 & L3

M2 & M3


Waiting your next K2, K3, J3, I2, I3, H3a, H3b, H3c, G3, N3, O3, O3 mod, P3, Q3 drawings
and even the F2, F3 designs dating from 1928 ?

A superb series of drawings.

As usual superb work from the master of British Never Were. My opinion is that L2 and Mainly L3 are the most reasonable of this series and could have been built.

Thanks Colombamike, this helps illustrate my point regarding the placement of the turrets and the deck overhead.

On L2 the line behind the 6in mounts is dotted which suggests that is below the upper deck and therefore the outline of the lower superstructure deck. The upper 'boat' deck is a basic lozenge shape. The L3 is a different style of plan and shows both lines as solid but surely the layout would be the same, a lozenge upper deck over the recessed guns below. I am convinced of that. The sideview of L3 clearly shows some kind of bulwark.
I must admit, I'm still not totally 100% convinced those circles represent turrets, they may be placeholders but they seem much more like the kind of layout for casemates to me (for a start there is no room for the turrets to turn!). The enclosing the turrets behind bulwarks and decks makes no real sense, yet we know this layout was part of the G3 too. The explanation is perhaps the designers were used to casemate layouts and at this stage had not really thought about how a turreted secondary battery layout might look and had stuck with that they knew. The N3 for example is a much improved design with clear cut-outs for the turrets.

As for the other comments:
Yes, I think LII had a torpedo room (the two big compartments just ahead of A barbette before the deck slopes down, the plan of LIII is not so clear and I've left the tubes off, but its likely the compartments are there too.
I'm sure LIII would have a mainmast. Every other design did, I think it was simply left off the sketch design.
I was working from a different plan for L3 with only crosses to represent the guns. I guessed wrongly, so I'll switch those guns! What are the two objects in double-circles nearer the mast? I can't quite read the text, I wonder if they are searchlights or directors of some kind?

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I confirm that for the LII (L Twin) these circles represent twin 6" BL guns turrets
PS: you need to reduce bulwarks to scoope with 6" arc of fire in the drawings sources
For me, the double-circles nearer the aft-mast is the top-view of the small circular platform carrying searchlights

I agree with Colombamike, those positions are a possible place for saerchlights.

L II There was a torpedo room. It is the space below the guns of A turret, immediately below the armoured deck.
Colombamike's scan is a little blurred. The wording is "submerged torpedo rooms" one word per line.
L II guns The forward twin 6" is shown on Campbell's plan to be on the same deck level as the 4.7" HA. See below for more discussion.

L3 has 16x6in There are three twin turrets each side, and two more by the mainmast (your 'searchlights') It is clear from the plan and elevation considered together that these are a deck higher than the turrets along the sides. All are labelled "twin 6" B.L. guns" on both plan and elevation. On the elevation the label by the mast has "P&S" (port and starboard) added. That those are a deck higher is confirmed by the positions and labelling of the 4.7in HA guns.
For L2, L3, K2, K3 the text of Campbell's Warship article clearly states "The 6in guns were in twin turrets with 150 rounds per gun"
[At that design stage the twin turrets were still at 40 degrees elevation, not the 60 in Nelson]
The actual drawings on which his article was based would be at least 4' 6" long, and probably 9ft, supplemented by the text in the Ships Covers and ADM reports. That probably the finest warship design team in history might not be able to illustrate the difference between casemates and turrets is to say the least unlikely. The Director of Naval Construction (then Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Eyncourt) puts his name to such drawings. They had put casemates and turrets on the Duke of Edinburgh and Warrior plans some 20 years earlier. It is more likely simply that the design of the turrets had not been finalized.

F2 and F3 battlecruisers: These were the first designs under the 35000ton Washington limit. They were drawn up late in 1921 (not 1928) with 3x2 and 3x3 15in respectively, but abandoned in favour of the slower 3x3 16in Nelson design when it became clear that USA and Japan would complete battleships with 16in guns.
There are 1/16in = 1ft plans (about 4ft long) in ADM 1/9232 and a reasonable representation on p76 of John Jordan's book "Warships after Washington", though F3's funnel ought to be about 50% wider than F2's. See my very sketchy rendering posted by Elouda on
http://forum.worldofwarships.com/index. ... ruiser-f3/
There are several two-funnel drawings on the net but none are correct. All derive from Red Admiral's tidying up of Crystaleye's very rough sketch at http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/i ... pic=1747.0
I have an official TNA scan of the drawings in ADM 1/9232 but the National Archive's copyright rules prohibit posting on websites unless a fairly substantial fee is paid. Sorry.

In 1928 there were two designs of 35000ton battleships. One had 3x3 16in in the Nelson layout. The other had 4x2 16in in R class layout. They were prepared in anticipation of the end of the 10 year Washington 'battleship building holiday' in 1931. Then came the financial crash in 1929, and the first London Naval Agreement in 1930. In 1930 a series of RN battleship designs was drawn up, with the second of the 1928 designs the largest, going down through 8x14in on 29000 tons, 8x12in on 26000 and 8x11in on 23,300 to 8x10in on 22000tons.
There were also a 27000ton battlecruiser design, and small battleship and battlecruiser sketch designs in preparation for the abortive Geneva disarmament talks starting in 1932.

Thanks smurf, you're the voice of sanity once again.
I need to add the torpedo tubes to LIII. I'm sure they should be on that design too. On L3, yes re-reading the labels I can now make out twin 6" BL mount so I will amend that too.
Thanks for the interesting WoW link on the F3 too.

I did not mean to imply the DNC and his team were lacking in skill in any way. I think that as the twin 6in turrets (indeed all the items of armament and DCTs) did not exist even in mock-up form and that the sketch designs were just that, that they did not bother spending too much time on the details, they knew that would come with detailed design work later (hence why the N3 looks so different). The secondary battery layout was probably a placeholder until things were clearer. I'm attempting to illustrate these as if they had been completed, and so some artistic licence is inevitable to make the details fit.

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Fascinating thread.

LIII and L3 updated.

Now back to the N3...

_________________
Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft