Could HMAS Australia have been saved from scrapping ?

[T. A. Gardner]

A warship's job is to be lethal to the enemy. Repeatedly coming off as second best against enemy ships of similar size, age, and expense means there is a problem, a problem that cannot be explained away. Battlecruisers designed and built in Germany shrugged off the single torpedo hits and handful of heavy shells that for British battlecruisers would be crippling, or worse.

With Britain in the WW 1 and 2 era, their major concern wasn't so much being the best as it was being present. For the Royal Navy, the #1 mission was defending commerce in a guerre de course of commerce raiding. Britain had a worldwide empire to run and shipping was the means to make commerce and the economy work. Defending that shipping was the top priority.

Yes, Britain needed a large battle fleet too if they were to engage in a war with another naval power like say, Japan or the US. But against all of their most likely opponents, defending merchant ships at sea and hunting down raiders was going to be job #1.

This meant they needed large numbers of cruiser-type ships that could successfully take on a merchant raider, and by the end of WW 1 escort ships that could defend convoys and hunt down submarines.

With the WNT, Britain at first tried to build expensive 8" cruisers. These were seen as a necessity for use on the Asia stations where they'd be facing similarly armed IJN cruisers. But these were too expensive and consumed too much weight to build in quantity. Thus, the RN reverted to 6" cruisers that were smaller and far more austere. Keeping as many older cruisers as possible, however marginal, in service was equally important for their numbers. They didn't have to be capable of fighting in a fleet action so much as being able to fight and win against a single armed merchant raider.

You have to keep that perspective for British cruiser construction in the interwar years. The same goes for destroyers where numbers were considered far more important than having top notch quality ones in terms of their fitting.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Or re-arm them with 8-inch turrets.

I thought that the point was the big guns of those ships, not just the good armor.

Side question: what armoring scheme did the UKRN follow? All-or-nothing?

 

[Dilandu]

I thought that the point was the big guns of those ships, not just the good armor.

Well, would the 9.2-inch/50 gun be so much better than later 8-inch/50? The shell weight difference is about 40% at most, and the 8-inch/50 gun have much better projectile design anyway.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Well, would the 9.2-inch/50 gun be so much better than later 8-inch/50? The shell weight difference is about 40% at most, and the 8-inch/50 gun have much better projectile design anyway.

Better projectile design isn't a fair comparison, as the 9.2" would also continue to develop.

The 8"/50 Mk9 was throwing a 290lb SAP shell and a 256lb HE shell. The 9.2"/50 was throwing 380lb shells, HE or AP.

Considering the performance improvement the US got from 335lb AP shells in an 8" gun over the "standard" 260lb shell, I'd think that the 9.2" with their 30% heavier shell would be an equivalent improvement.

 

[Dilandu]

Better projectile design isn't a fair comparison, as the 9.2" would also continue to develop.

Rather doubt that. The 9.2-inch/50 wasn't common weapon, only a few ships used it (the coastal defense 9.2-inch/47 were, AFAIK, incompatible). A development of a new shell design for rarely-used guns isn't exactly most practical solution. Most likely Australians would be stuck with old WW1-era pattern.

 

[Owens Z]

The only way it could possibly work is if the powers that be decided that the max cruiser caliber gun was 9.2".
Then the Tiger Cubs could simply be heavily armored cruisers, but I'd suspect that allowing 9.2" guns on cruisers would see all post-treaty ships armed with such.

Or re-arm them with 8-inch turrets.

The attraction for Australia of a hefty, speedy 'Tiger cub' with eight, nine, or ten 9.2-inch guns would have been that it was distinctly superior to a treaty cruiser, even those of navies like Japan's and Italy's which cheated on the tonnage restriction. The trick is so that the Royal Australian Navy can have two or three such ships, but nobody else can. It was the UK that had offered the 10,000 tons, 8-inch gun limits during Treaty negotiations in Washington DC, which France, Italy, Japan, and the United States approved with little discussion. As mentioned in post #187, bigger limits would have harmed the UK's interests as those were then understood (TA Gardner reminds us above that the UK later tried to get agreement on an even lighter weight). And an increased gun limit for non-capital ships would not be negotiated at exactly 9.2 inches (233.7mm), a caliber used by no one else, but at France's own standard of 240mm, or perhaps the USA's and Italy's and Japan's 10 inches (254mm). So a general change to the Washington Naval Treaty would gain Australia nothing. A change to the Treaty that grants Australia alone special privileges would have been most unlikely. I said there was goodwill back then among the victors of WW1—but not that much goodwill.

Dilandu repeats his earlier suggestion to squeeze down a Tiger cub to fit inside the Treaty's 10,000 ton, 8-inch limits. But this is more or less what was done in real life to build heavy cruisers HMAS Australia and Canberra, or similar riffs on the theme like the proposed Cockatoo design. So what's the point?

The halfway-believable alternatives seem to be completing the Tiger cubs before the Washington Naval Treaty takes effect, or Australia entirely opting out of the Treaty for its navy. Let's see whether Volkodav and/or Oberon have any thoughts.

 

[Owens Z]

Side question: what armoring scheme did the UKRN follow? All-or-nothing?

As far as I know, while British designers and naval officers knew of the US Navy's all-or-nothing armoring schema (as begun in the Nevada class laid down in 1912) during the close relationship of 1917-18, nothing was done until a 1921 test shooting against seized SMS Baden demonstrated that the German battleship's portions of intermediate-thickness armor served no purpose against 15-inch AP shells other than to trip the fuze. All-or-nothing was thereafter incorporated into the Royal Navy's N and G capital ship designs, of which the two Nelson-class battleships resulted.

So all-or-nothing armoring would be yet another good-thing-to-have which a Tiger cub or similar vessel designed and laid down before Jutland would necessarily lack.

 

[Dilandu]

Dilandu repeats his earlier suggestion to squeeze down a Tiger cub to fit inside the Treaty's 10,000 ton, 8-inch limits. But this is more or less what was done in real life to build heavy cruisers HMAS Australia and Canberra, or similar riffs on the theme like the proposed Cockatoo design. So what's the point?

Basically it would allow Australia to keep those ships without having additional problems with treaty system. Otherwise, it would create significant problems - especially with Americans, who didn't have any battlecruisers, and would view the situation as "Britain wanted to have even more super-cruisers while we have none". Japanese would likely not be happy, too; for them, Australian super-cruisers would be a significant military factor.

To summarize; three Australian semi-capital ships with 9-inch guns would make everyone unhappy. Changing their main guns to 8-inch would solve the problem, because FORMALLY it would go even beyond requirements.

 

[Scott Kenny]

As far as I know, while British designers and naval officers knew of the US Navy's all-or-nothing armoring schema (as begun in the Nevada class laid down in 1912) during the close relationship of 1917-18, nothing was done until a 1921 test shooting against seized SMS Baden demonstrated that the German battleship's portions of intermediate-thickness armor served no purpose against 15-inch AP shells other than to trip the fuze. All-or-nothing was thereafter incorporated into the Royal Navy's N and G capital ship designs, of which the two Nelson-class battleships resulted.

So all-or-nothing armoring would be yet another good-thing-to-have which a Tiger cub or similar vessel designed and laid down before Jutland would necessarily lack.

Thank you.

And, well, crud. So much for that idea. I was hoping that it'd be possible to make Tiger Cubs with all-or-nothing armor and at least 8" guns.

Since getting the 9.2" guns is impractical and likely to piss off all the other nations at the Treaty conference, going to something like the USN superheavy 8" shells would be a great help.

 

[Dilandu]

And, well, crud. So much for that idea. I was hoping that it'd be possible to make Tiger Cubs with all-or-nothing armor and at least 8" guns.

Since getting the 9.2" guns is impractical and likely to piss off all the other nations at the Treaty conference, going to something like the USN superheavy 8" shells would be a great help.

That's quite possible; the 8-inch shells are in active production, and Australian order for development of superheavy ones would be of interest for gun-making companies; they won't risk much of their own money, and there would be a clear possibility of more orders from RN, if desgin would looks promising.