My Favorite battleship design in1920s-1930s

[charlottep51]

I played with a super-large fleetsize, build her Or her similar version in the 1920s ,
Sank 278 battleships or battlecruisers,
and used it until 1940 without losing any of them.
There are only two types of ships built in my fleet, one is her,
and the other design is a 2000 tons destroyer with torpedoes and 6-inch main gun.Only after the aircraft carrier is available will I build the third type of warship.
The biggest battle was 20 battleships of this type, against 46 enemy battleships or battlecruisers, won, and sunk 41 of 46 ships.



46000 Tons
Speed: 27
Range: short
Freeboard: low

Main Gun: 3x4x 15Inch
Secondaries Gun: 24x 6Inch
Tertiary Gun: 20x 5Inch
AA gun: some

Armor
Belt: 16 (inclined)
Deck: 3.5
Conning tower: 17
Turrect: 18
Turrect top: 5.5
Secondaries: 1


Speed: Dedicated to fleet battle/ battleship engagement . 27kn Enough for the fleet battle. Increasing speed will significantly increase maintenance costs.
27kn is just right for battle line maneuvers , hunting the injured and lagging ships in the fleet battle.
Range: If there are enough bases on the map, Do all the moves before the war , And use only for fleet battle , short range is enough.
Freeboard: I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.


Main Gun:
I tried 16-inch, 17-inch, and 18-inch guns, but they were not as High damage as expected.
Most battles occur and continue between 6000-15000 yard. Enemy AI will not take the initiative to fight in long distance. Instead, i think AI will always try to fight in close range.
The 13-14 inches in the early game is enough, and the 14-15 inches in the mid-late game is also good enough.
Even with the use of the "more ship design mod", those late game heavy armored Giant ships can be sunk by hitting BE/DE/Superstructure/Fore/aft hull , or close range shoot.


Secondaries / Tertiary Gun:
To drive away or kill the DD/CL with torpedoes requires a secondary battery with sufficient range and damage and rate of fire. I will add as many 5-6 inch secondary guns as possible.
In game , After the AON design is used by AI, the BE/DE/Superstructure/Fore/aft hull of their ships are fully unarmored.My 5-6 Inch gun uses 100% HE, it can penetrate and cause damage when hitting these places.
If the secondary guns do not have DD/CL to aim at, they can attack battleships. Since the number of hits is enough, In addition to causing considerable Damage point , there is a good chance penetrate the BE waterline, destroy Bridge, Fire started spreads, destroy damage control (all with HE ammo), ect.
I think this is not realistic Because the armor of the superstructure and BE/DE cannot be designed like reallive AON .


AA gun:
I once tried to join a large number of AA-CLs in a large fleet, and put a lot of heavy anti-aircraft guns on a large number of battleships.
This is useless for defense against torpedo bombers. They can always break through the anti-aircraft gun and hit some torpedoes.
A fairly large full-health battleship with level 4 torpedo protection may be sunk if hit by 3-4 torpedoes, and 4-5 hits are very dangerous.

For dive bombers, The threat of bombs is far less than torpedoes.
if the deck and the top of the main gun are designed to be very thick, it can indeed protect the warship.But this tonnage usage is too big.

Then I found that there is a difference from reality that the fighters in the game can resist bombers very, very effectively.
Professional smaller all-fighter aircraft carriers, or normal aircraft carriers, can provide fighter.

With them, I no longer worry about being bombed, I only worry about whether the aircraft carrier can join the battle.


Belt / Deck armor:
I think 15-inch(inclined) Belt is good enough, and 16-inch(inclined) is a more safer design.
A 3-inch Deck is enough, and a 3.5-inch is a more safer design.
Statistics from after battle damage log , The vast majority of hits are in Superstructure/B/BE/T, and very few hits D.
Since AI tends to fight close range, protecting D is even less important.

My memory tells me the proportion of hitting B is probably 10%-35% .Depending on the hit angle, B's protection capability may also be increased.


Armor and Main Gun:
When hitting B and penetrate , B*, the difference between the damage of 13-14 inch and 16-18 inch is not big enough. This is the reason why I don't use the 17/18/19/20 inch gun.
D* is Very Rare event for the common engagement distance.

In game, As long as the one’s armor is not too far behind the times,
>>when the BELT get penetrated , in most cases, only a damage points Damaged HP in the superstructure and flooding. The worse situation is Rudder damage or slow down.
>>when the Main gun get hit , T , even if it penetrates T*, There is a considerable chance that it just disables the turret,not destroy it. the chance of flashfire is even lower.
>>Even if I designed the armor to be very thick, say 18 Inch inclined=20 Inch, there will still be few shells that penetrate her at a distance that is theoretically impossible to penetrate her.

So I am not so eager to increase the caliber, nor so eager to make the armor fully immune, but hope to increase the number of main guns within a reasonable cost.


Secondaries armor:
It’s common for Secondaries gun to be hit ,Usually hit by the enemy’s main gun.
Even if the secondary battery are destroyed, it will not cause serious damage to the superstructure or flooding.I think it is enough to give a little protection symbolically. It does not need to be completely immune to fragments, or even no armor are ok.

[charlottep51]

Dec 16, 2020 17:44:19 GMT -6 charlottep51 said:

Misoperation edit

[spacenerd4]

I think one thing I would do would go to go up to ~48k tons to go regular range and normal freeboard.

[seawolf]

A 4" deck is actually much better than a 3.5" for stopping bomb hits. IIRC a 4" can completely stop a 2000lb SAP.

[cabusha]

My only comment would be to go 2" of armor over the secondaries, to prevent splinter damage to them.

[stevethecat]

Glad that you're enjoying the boat, there's a few changes I would do but it all comes down to taste and playstyle.

For instance I would heavily drop the secondary guns, reduce the 5" to 4" (they tend to get DP earlier) and try to get that deck to 4".

But if it works for you as is then cool.

[hawkeye]

How reliable are the quad turrets in '27?
I haven't tried quads yet (I usually paly slow tech rate games, so they come up _very_ late, if at all), but my early triple turrets aren't actually much better than the twins, because they are disabled so often, the DPM is basically the same before I can unlock the techs to remove the reliability penalty.

Also, at this point in the game, I'd probably go with 5/4 inch secondary/tertiary guns (I can also swallow 5" guns behind shields a lot better than 6 inchers with less than 2" of armor) and drop the submerged TT (I usually put one in the bow, so the torp-range circle shows up).
Note: I feel 24 x 5" + 24 x 4" sec/ter guns should be enough to keep DDs at bay and if you save enough tonnage, you can turn both batteries to DP guns, which should give you an ungodly HAA factor - then again, I don't have all that much experience with aircraft.

Finally, I've never been a fan of all-forward designs.
For one, I find them ugly as all hell and second, I'm a subscriber of the old "we are surrounded, sir" "good, now we can attack in all directions" thingy

But as stevethecat said above, if it works for you, more power to you.