Kriegsmarine 1946, second approach

Ashley wrote:

The Maine was to become the US-answer to european monstrosities like H44- and Superb-classes. Once it was clear, the Yamato-class would outtake any existing battleship but the planned ultraBBs, the US Navy went for her members of the 1st class fighting vessels.
The planned 20"-gun was mainly a simply enlarged 16"/50 Mk. 7-gun, the goal was to deliver enough punch to counter anything existing or planned. Further the ship should be fast.
The Design 1 was much like the late CC-1 (Lexington) design three time pumped up to 115.000 tons empty and stretched to a ridiculous 401m length. The stern still had four shafts and two rudders, but all somehow oversized.
The 12 20"-guns where installed in four triple-turrets. Also unusual was the amount of 5"-turrets. Eleven Mk.28 turrets per side was seen as a need to protect the big vessel against air raids and the ship was expected to run without any escort shield sometimes. So that much aa and directors were planned.
The Design 1 would have been the lightest of the ultraBBs. But also the fastest one. The hull was very sleek, it was more something like a ultraBC, what is not really correct, due to the fact she still would have outtaken any smaller battleship.
The battlecruiserish look was the reason the design was rejected.

In that case I have two things:

1.) A reduction of your 5-inch armament by a quarter or third would still result in a devastating AA/secondary battery. And upon second look your other AA armaments, particularly 40mm's, are if anything woefully underrepresented for a ship facing potential self-escort. And that kinda brings me to:

2.) If this is going to be a new design anyway you might as well make it a true clean-sheet. I'd start with looking at how to improve your AA-arcs especially with those funnels, and it'd probably use a tower structure closer to Montana.

Honestly, the answer to the huge battleships isn't a battleship, but further spamming of improved version of existing types (think the possibilities of a dozen Midways). The Montanas (or some Montana analog) might go into production.

If you are going to have a very large battleship, you're probably better moving to more modern turrets like the 5"/54 Mk 16 that was mounted on the Midways, or the twin that would have gone on the Montanas. You're also going to start seeing a push to get the 3"/70 to work right as an Anti-aircraft mount. If you want a really heavy secondary, look at the turrets on the Worcester class. That's a 6"47DP twin. When paired with a 3"/70 that has had the bugs worked out, it would be a nasty combination. All of the above were real turrets except for the planned (but not built) 5"/54 twin.

You've established that the Pacific War still happens (even if you ignore the industrial disparity or that fact that anything other than the total Surrender of the Empire of Japan is out of the question), so the US is going to have the incentive to start the Project Bumblebee - and possibly accelerate it even further. If the US knows that the Germans are working on this, that is an even greater incentive.

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Plus those 6-inchers are so big you won't have any excuse whatsoever to have such a ridiculous turret spam of them.

Well it's been a while since anybody's made a post so I'm assuming Ashley is still tweaking his Maine, but since we've been having a little bit of a supership fad going on I've put some thought into some pointers. This isn't a directive, but just what I would think about how I'd design Ashley's Maine (and heck, maybe I will after all). Consider it food for thought. But the way I would go about it would be to:

- use a hull roughly the same length as Lexington's final design
- Probably keep the same main battery armament he's used
- definitely go with Timothy's secondary suggestion
- I wouldn't try to copy the Iowa-style superstructure so much. You'd be designing the superstructure around your secondary battery, essentially. It would have the equivalent of three Iowa funnels but likely they'd be trunked down to at least two, though one sounds a bit unwieldy (imagine two Forrestal funnels). Also I'd copy more off Montana's tower than Iowa's (which I already mentioned)

The second design for the US-ultraBB was still a giant but shorter, with more compact engines, less 5" turrets, reduced to two funnels any many other details. Nearly good but still rejected.

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The final design, again changed in many details, optimized hull structure, as launched in 1945.

This is still not the end of development. I will do a followup realizing your useful advices.

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This is a serious forum. Do not laugh. Do not post nonsens. Do not be kiddish. At least, not all the time.
Current work list:
go on playing dead

The BuShip and C&R would have striven to eliminate much of that bulky superstructure amidships, between the funnels, both for combat efficacy reason as well as weight consideration. Other than that it is shaping up handsomely. Available names, if I may suggest them could be Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, Florida and New Hampshire, in addition to your Ohio.

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My Avatar:Петр Алексеевич Безобразов (Petr Alekseevich Bezobrazov), Вице-адмирал , царская ВМФ России(1845-1906) - I sign my drawings as Ari Saarinen

Considering that the Oregon was being scrapped at the start of WWII, purchased from that State where she was serving as a museum ship, I think it might be cool to name one of them Oregon- and to include, say, a signal gun or something from the old ship.

That actually is a thing I'd be doing, so that's a cool idea. Maybe even the old ironclad's bow scroll?

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