Shipbucket

It is compensated by keeping the original design draft. Irl the Hood was weighted down so much that water swamped the quarter deck. By slightly increasing the Hood's overall deck height by roughly one meter (3pxls,) I can have the draft a little bit deeper than in real life. Some drawings have the Hood at 113 pixels at the stem, others at 116. I originally drew it as 113, but increased it to 116 by adding another 3 pixels over the waterline, thus, increasing the freeboard.

3 pixels is less than 1/2 a meter. not enough to really make a difference. Add the other 3 pixels to get the 3 foot increase and it would help with swamping aft, but you would need to increase the breadth and lower your speed expectations. Everything is a compromise.

That is a very nice rendition of Hood.

Three pixels is 1.5 feet, so not a massive increase but probably would have some effect. Six pixels at 3 feet would be about half a deck higher. Of course if you were willing to let speed slip a little and add more tonnage would could make the Admirals a flush deck and not worry.

What kind of armour are you proposing for this AU Hood?

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English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Armor? The same. I did consider making the armor increase uniform, instead of just adding it to the front half, but that would add far more than "just" 5000 tons of extra armor. I've thought about doing that, and adding bulges straight away, sacrificing 2 knots in 1920 is better, and gain a couple of thousands tons of armor to better protect the ship.

Also, in regards to the increase in height, the Hood had a metacentric height of 1,3 meters, making it a very stable ship. Increasing it by a few feet wont change it that much.

1,3 meters would make her an average stability ship for her size. Heightening the center of gravity directly changes the metacentric height so heightening this by a few feet (which you seem to imply is no problem) would make this metacentric height about 0,7 meters, which would be on the low side.

That said, heightening the deck a few feet would not heighten the CoG by a few feet. However, every change you make changes the margins in the design. You heigthened everything, from the conning tower to the turrets. Would it not be sensible to instead change the arrangement to a flush decked one or reduce the weight some way so the ship does not lie deeper as it did IRL?

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
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So, I've started working on a light cruiser class for the US. Seeing as how the US entered the WWI period without any modern cruisers, I naturally, must correct this. Seeing as there are no actual designs for such a ship, I have to come up with everything my self. I would like some of your input on my current work so far, that being, a light cruiser armed with 6 inch guns, the exact number to be changed based upon feedback. It naturally has virtually no armor, and a high top speed.

So, here it is gents, the current WIP for the USS Omaha SCR-4:

I think its a feasible design, looks much like the British and German light scout cruisers of the time.
Eight 6in is probably the most guns you would want, depending on the date of design you might want to swap a couple of those for 3in QFs. Overall the armament layout looks good.

Are you going for higher range and oceanic duties you might want to make the hull larger. It wouldn't be a bad thing to increase the hull size, it wouldn't be difficult to imagine the Americans going for something closer to the British Hawkins in size.

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

As for size, I think it looks good, although considering some of the scout "cruiser" designs the US came up with around 1914/15/16 period, this is rather small. I reckon a commisioning date around 1913/14, although I could make it earlier, let's say 1912, without having to change any features. As for 3 inch guns, I've been thinking about them, but rather as the DP guns that would be mounted on the BBs. If this ship turns out to be a success, I might do follow up designs, that will get progressively bigger, and I can use the vast ammount of Spring Styles designs for later cruiser designs.

An American Hawkins-class...I like the concept!

I think it's an interesting design...be a heck of an opponent for one of the WWI merchant raiders.

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

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