I think it would be so cool if your Pykrete battleship was supplied by Ekranoplans, also known as “Wing In Ground” (WIG) aircraft.
Since Squirebob’s HMS Royalist presumably has sea-level stern doors to release its daughter ship, it could probably admit a couple of Caspian Sea Monster -type Ekranoplans.
The Caspian Sea Monster was tested in 1966, weighed 540 tons, and could travel at over 400km/hr. An Ekranoplan launched from HMS Royalist could also serve an attack role, carrying whatever passes for guided missiles in the alterate 1960s universe. The Royalist could stay hundreds of miles offshore, and Ekranoplans could fly closer-in and launch missiles. This would be similar to the Russian Lun (description and picture 2/3 down page).
Of course, Ekranoplans would need fighter support.
Gentlemen, I give you the Freedom Ship concept. At 43 hundred feet long, she’s a bit bigger than the HMS Royalist, but you might find the design of some interest.
By the by, for those 32" guns, you might consider some “special” ammunition…like the Mk. 23 Nuclear Shells that were designed for the Iowas.
And if you’re talking about an Alternate History, you might like to browse Hikoki: 1946 and Luft '46 for some designed, but never built, Axis aircraft.
I ran your sizes through some design software we use in my office. At the moment, it’s just what we’d call “crayon design,” but the software does well at modelling current technology so I thought I’d give it a whack.
Using a (waterline) length of 1600 ft and the same ratios as an Iowa-class ship:
[ul][li]Waterline beam: 200.9 feet[/li][li]Draft: 48.6 feet[/li][li]Displacement: 265319.5 long tons (269579.8 metric tons)[/li][li]For a maximum cruise speed of 20 knots and range of 6000 NM, powering is 4x 30,000 HP diesels driving 2x 25’ propellers[/li][/ul] Before I hear cries of, “no way,” I’ve figured that I’m way underestimating the crew size and armament weight, and unfortunately, there’s no way to regress to 1960’s technology. Also, as Declan suggested, the bending moment on a ship this size would be staggering. The program is predicting required plating thicknesses of 5 inches at the keel and 3 inches on the side shell.
For guns of that size you simply could not support the force of the gun discharge.
I would be interested to see what such a shell would weigh, bearing in mind that 15" shells are over a ton.The double(as on Bismarck) turrets that carried those guns were around 2000 tons.
I would imagine you would not get too much change out of 8000 tons per turret for 32" with the likely armouring required.
You would probably have to have some sort of recoilless system, maybe you would be better off considering guided missiles, this would make it all very much more practical, a very basic guidance system which would possibly burn its propulsion motor for the early flight phase until it reached the required flight velocity.
This could turn into a type of glider bomb and there is potential to have a range of maybe a couple hundred miles, this would be a very powerul strategic weapon indeed given the date you are looking at.
Couple this with the vessel carrying its own aircraft for its own protection, I think this would be not quite beyond the realms of possibility.
The shells on the Iowa class 16 inch guns, were 2700 pounds , this was just the warhead. The bags of powder shoved up behind it would be another story ,but for that german shell, 2000 pounds would be more likely.
Back to topic , keep the 16’s and use nukes as the primary payload.
Need an artist for your book? I’m a naval/ aerospace artist and i’ve done many a battleship, and pleny “biggly huge” ones as you described.
And i could make it as big as you want too.
Well, just look at the last of the Nazi “H” class, in that “Grand Fleet” cite Shorty gave us. They had 21" guns, and were conceivable. So- what you have to do, is figure the Brits got ahold of the plans for that monster, and scale it up by 10%. 23" guns, etc. That’ll work. And, yes, it would bankrupt England, and I COULD seem them doing it- if they thought Germany was going to build that thing. (Have it come out that Germany never did of course!).
First off i like the caspian sea monster idea, as for re-supply I had thought about deep water pontoons or a floating naval base. The power is going to come from oil fired plants, nuclear technology is just begining to be used in my universe.
So back to HMS Royalist (I know the sea cadets have a ship of the same name, well T.S Royalist, but I think its a cool name anyway) She was a unique design, the designer took the problems with earlier battle ship/cruiser designs and bettered them. (Hood was easily destroyed as in real life)
Technology is mid 70’s but more mechanical than computer based.
UK still has empire so vast resources around the world.
Complement of 4000 men (1960’s in what is basically a military dictatorship under the Royal’s so no women)
I seem to remember a decent idea from Harpoon Classic '97 (a computer game). The U.S. made semi-permanent “aircraft carriers” by using big, floating barges, moving them into place, then basically building a floating airfield on top of the barges and anchoring it in a sheltered place.
Jai Alai? You mean the Americanized version of Pelota? A New World variation on a Basque / Spanish game?
This is a Royal Navy Battleship.
It must have a squash court.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, who is the current Prime Minister in Squirebob’s alterniverse, was a keen squash player, as is Prince Philip. According to this site:
As the above site also says, there was a squash court on the Titanic. Fred Wright was the professional on its one and only voyage. The liner Queen Elizabeth also had a squash court. Also:
So, there’s also a historical precedent for a court for the ancient game of Tennis [aka jeu de paume(Fr), Court Tennis(US), Real Tennis(UK), or Royal Tennis(Australia)]. However, at (typically) 100 ft by 25ft, more than three times the area of a squash court, this might be too big even for the HMS Royalist to consider worthwhile.