Preserving ships is an expensive business. Apart from HMS Belfast in London the UK has not saved any major warships from the last century.
Worth a new thread to look for candidates and places?
 
Preserving ships is an expensive business. Apart from HMS Belfast in London the UK has not saved any major warships from the last century.
Worth a new thread to look for candidates and places?
Depends what you call major?

HMS Caroline a C class cruiser of WW1 vintage is preserved in Belfast.

HMS Cavalier, a C class destroyer dating from 1944, preserved at Chatham.

Edit:- And does HMY Britannia at Leith count? She was intended as a hospital ship in time of war. https://www.royalyachtbritannia.co.uk/
 
EwenS you make my point for me. No aircraft carrier or battleship has been preserved in the UK. Belfast is the only big gun ship- sorry Caroline even if you are in Belfast!
 
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Warship preservation is a relatively recent phenomena, from the last 60 years or so, when WW1 & 2 were finally seen as being behind us and people could begin to look back with some nostalgia. By then all the BB and WW2 carriers (except for Victorious) in the RN had gone for recycling, leaving only a handful of cruisers from which only Belfast has survived. Between the wars the Treaty system pretty much ensured that any big gun ship not in the active fleet had to be scrapped or otherwise rendered useless.

Look at the US experience. In reality it is not hugely different. It just reflects the postwar size of the two fleets. Most of the big gun ships and carriers that survive today do so because they were in active use, or being preserved for such use in the reserve fleets into the 1970s and 1980s.

Texas is an exception. The USN, just like us, wanted to scrap its BB, with the exception of the Iowas which were still seen as useful, in the late 1950s / early 1960s, and did so. North Carolina, Alabama and Massachusetts survive by reason of, not Govt money, but donations from private citizens and corporate America. Salem survives by virtue of being retained in the reserve fleet (there were plans to reactivate her in the Reagan era). But what of all the Brooklyns, Clevelands, Baltimores? There is 1 survivor.

The US carriers also reflect that changing attitude. Look at the CV-6 Enterprise. If any ship deserved preservation it was her. But when it was proposed in the late 1940s and early 1950s they couldn’t raise the funds to do so and she was scrapped in 1958. The next opportunity was from the 1970s as the Essex class began to be withdrawn from service. So Yorktown, Intrepid, Hornet and Lexington have been preserved but note 3 of those 4 were named after carriers lost in WW2 and have tapped into that history and the nostalgia that surrounds those ships. What of the other 20 of the class? All scrapped, despite playing major parts in 3 wars. Where was the interest in them? Midway then follows in 2004. But plans to preserve various supercarriers all seem to have foundered due to lack of money being raised, and perhaps a lack of interest from the general public outside of her ex-crew members.

And what of those smaller ships that have been preserved in the US? Now that the population of ex-crewmen is fast diminishing so is the pot of nostalgia and money able to be mined. More and more are struggling to raise funds to keep them afloat, let alone preserved

So we will probably see a significant reduction in the numbers of preserved ships in coming years.
 
London has HMS Belfast

Nantes has Maillé Brézé, a 5000 tons T-47 former air defense destroyer.


Bordeaux once had the 12 000 tons Cobert CA moored as a museum near the town center (1993 - 2007) - but it was hated from day 1, the museum went bankrupt, that part of the city was transformed beyond recognizition, and the ship was send to the scrapyard.


Once can wonder, why did Maillé Brézé (Nantes, 1991, warship museum) survived to the present day (I saw it last August) when Colbert (Bordeaux, 1993, warship museum) was gone by 2007 ?
 
For myself, I would have liked to see HMS Vanguard retained as a training/museum ship but as maintenance becomes more and more costly (Check out USS Texas for example) it becomes harder to justify. How many ships will be retained at all in the future?

Bloody sad imho, the future is where these ships should be going to, not the breakers.
 
For myself, I would have liked to see HMS Vanguard retained as a training/museum ship but as maintenance becomes more and more costly (Check out USS Texas for example) it becomes harder to justify. How many ships will be retained at all in the future?

Bloody sad imho, the future is where these ships should be going to, not the breakers.
Warspite is another loss to history. She decided that she wasn't going to the breakers...
 
I caught one of those Look At Life programmes being reshown on Talking Pictures TV a couple of months back, the episode on the scrapping of Vanguard, some really interesting footage of the scrapping process. I'm sure it did say how much the scrap was worth, but can't remember the figure off the top of my head.

Saving Belfast was a massive achievement I think, very few WW2 ships survive outside of the USA.
 
I’ve been reading about DoY recently, including her scrapping.


It seems to be difficult to ascertain exactly what a ship was worth as scrap due to the contractual arrangements.

A ship would be transferred, not sold, by the Admiralty to BISCO (the British steel industry’s raw material procurement agency) who would allocate it to a shipbreaker. The shipbreaker was responsible for breaking the ship, recovering the steel, finding customers for re-useable items. It was paid its direct costs (yard wages, cutting gases & craneage). It received a commission on every ton of steel recovered plus an amount for overheads. It received a commission on non-ferrous & re-useable scrap recovered. BISCO collected all the sales monies (with steel at an internal industry price not involving the shipbreaker) deducted its costs etc and returned any surplus to the Govt.

BISCO figures show DoY returned a net value of £543,499 to the Govt, the highest of all the KGV (but there might have been a few accounting issues between her and Anson broken up at the same time). Vanguard returned about £560,000 a couple of years later.

Ascertaining the profit that Shipbreaking Industries made is even harder. The authors estimate £45,000 for each of Anson & DoY spread over some two years.
 
We need an alt history where modernized Richelieu, Jean Bart and Vanguard beat Sverdlovsks into a pulp...
...To be destroyed by one salvo of ASM's from Project 57 destroyers.
Already wiped out by US and British subs and aircraft, with the few that remain having their missiles shot down by Terrier, Tartar and Seaslug. (If we're playing the alt history game, I'm going to push it in to the hilt.) The SSMs would be prioritized to the carriers anyway.
 
Already wiped out by US and British subs and aircraft, with the few that remain having their missiles shot down by Terrier, Tartar and Seaslug. (If we're playing the alt history game, I'm going to push it in to the hilt.) The SSMs would be prioritized to the carriers anyway.

...But since the carriers already taken out by missile-carrying Tu-16K saturation attacks, and air defense ships are weakened by P-6/P-35 salvos from Soviet submarines and missile cruisers, the destruction of a few missiles means little.

(yeah, I also knew how to play this game :) )
 
Always imagined the RN KGVs and Vanguard would have been ideal for missile conversion, replace the entire secondary battery with Tartar, say up to four Mk-11 or Mk-13 launchers and up to eight fire control channels then fit Seaslug, Terrier or even Talos in the space originally designed for the catapult and hangars with port and starboard launchers. Some, not all 40mm would be replaced with Seacat.

The killer of this fantasy, as always, would have been the crewing requirements, if the RN couldn't afford to crew and maintain a carrier fleet, they definitely couldn't afford to crew and maintain battleships on top of the handful of carriers they did have. If there was the crew and money available, they would likely have built new carriers and modern escorts.
 
....replace the entire secondary battery with Tartar, say up to four Mk-11 or Mk-13 launchers and up to eight fire control channels ....
Is there enough space under the secondary turrets for this?

The 5.25" Mark 1 turrets were "short trunk" where the ammunition passes from the magazine up and then outboard and forward /aft to a handling room one deck high under the turret itself.

Is that deep enough for these missiles?
 
Always imagined the RN KGVs and Vanguard would have been ideal for missile conversion, replace the entire secondary battery with Tartar, say up to four Mk-11 or Mk-13 launchers and up to eight fire control channels then fit Seaslug, Terrier or even Talos in the space originally designed for the catapult and hangars with port and starboard launchers. Some, not all 40mm would be replaced with Seacat.
Not enough space. And you want your missile launchers to have the best fire angles possible. Placing missile launchers into the space between superstructure would limit their fire angles to utterly ridiculous:

1663336835304.png

No, removing the rear turrets is much more practical way to install heavy SAMs. You would have a lot of space to fit magazines and missile readying rooms (both Talos, Sea Slug and early Terriers required manual operations before launch), your fire arcs are much better.
 
Always imagined the RN KGVs and Vanguard would have been ideal for missile conversion, replace the entire secondary battery with Tartar, say up to four Mk-11 or Mk-13 launchers and up to eight fire control channels then fit Seaslug, Terrier or even Talos in the space originally designed for the catapult and hangars with port and starboard launchers. Some, not all 40mm would be replaced with Seacat.
Not enough space. And you want your missile launchers to have the best fire angles possible. Placing missile launchers into the space between superstructure would limit their fire angles to utterly ridiculous:

View attachment 684149

No, removing the rear turrets is much more practical way to install heavy SAMs. You would have a lot of space to fit magazines and missile readying rooms (both Talos, Sea Slug and early Terriers required manual operations before launch), your fire arcs are much better.
Look at the configuration of the Ikara deckhouse on the Perth (RAN Adams) class DDGs, as well as the configuration of the Tartar installations on the Albany Class CGs.

I am not talking centreline for any of the launchers, I'm not even talking about sinking any of them into the armoured deck. I'm talking new structure above the armoured deck, using the deck space and weight freed up by removing and repurposing the volume used by the secondary battery (and aviation facilities on the KGVs) for new structure housing Tartar and the selected long range SAM. The missile stowage would be in a deckhouse between the funnels, the launchers would be on elevated platforms on each beam.

How would this work? In exactly the same manner as the deckhouses used on the USN CLG conversions and proposed for the RN cruiser conversions. The difference is the deckhouse would be on the midriff of a very beamy battleship, instead of on the stern of an 8-10000 ton cruiser.

Ideal, no, doable, yes. Also, it would provide better forward arcs than a stern arrangement, meaning that so long as the directors had 360deg coverage (which the single ended RN and USN missile ships didn't), the course changes required to fire the missiles into the directors' arc forward would not have been as severe.

Would it have been done, not a chance in hell, could it have been done, definitely.
 
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Look at the configuration of the Ikara deckhouse on the Perth (RAN Adams) class DDGs, as well as the configuration of the Tartar installations on the Albany Class CGs.

I am not talking centreline for any of the launchers, I'm not even talking about sinking any of them into the armoured deck. I'm talking new structure above the armoured deck, using the deck space and weight freed up by removing and repurposing the volume used by the secondary battery (and aviation facilities on the KGVs) for new structure housing Tartar and the selected long range SAM. The missile stowage would be in a deckhouse between the funnels, the launchers would be on elevated platforms on each beam.

How would this work? In exactly the same manner as the deckhouses used on the USN CLG conversions and proposed for the RN cruiser conversions. The difference is the deckhouse would be on the midriff of a very beamy battleship, instead of on the stern of an 8-10000 ton cruiser.

Ideal, no, doable, yes. Also, it would provide better forward arcs than a stern arrangement, meaning that so long as the directors had 360deg coverage (which the single ended RN and USN missile ships didn't), the course changes required to fire the missiles into the directors' arc forward would not have been as severe.

Would it have been done, not a chance in hell, could it have been done, definitely.
The deckhouse magazines, associated launchers and radars took up approximately a third of the length of a 600-foot cruiser. That setup (single-ended I might add!) is not going to fit in Vanguard's 108ft beam, and neither are sixteen illuminators for eight Mk 11 or Mk 13 GMLS, let alone illuminators for the Talos or Sea Slug launchers. There definitely isn't going to be room for Sea Cat and it's associated directors on top of that. How you electromagnetic interference between all of these directors (not to mention the ships other radars) is beyond me.

This apparent revolution in naval architecture was somehow missed by the US Naval Architects, who when drawing up missile conversions for the Iowas, put the missile launchers and their magazines fore and aft. Almost as if they knew what they were doing.
 
....replace the entire secondary battery with Tartar, say up to four Mk-11 or Mk-13 launchers and up to eight fire control channels ....
Is there enough space under the secondary turrets for this?

The 5.25" Mark 1 turrets were "short trunk" where the ammunition passes from the magazine up and then outboard and forward /aft to a handling room one deck high under the turret itself.

Is that deep enough for these missiles?
The Albanys appear to have had their Mk-13s mounted on the deck, where the forward port and starboard Mk-38 5@ had been previously, with structure built around them. In fact, when you look at most of the early US missiles ships, even the new builds, their missile magazines were totally above, or only partially sunk into the hull. About a third or a half of the Mk-11/13 on the Adams class was above deck, the Farraguts appear to have their Terrier magazines mostly, if not totally above the main deck, and unless I am totally mistaken it wasn't until the Leahy's and Long Beach that missiles were stowed below decks. Exceptions of course being Boston and Canberra.

Happy to stand corrected as in my brief search I wasn't able to find the layout / config drawing i was looking for to illustrate.
 
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Look at the configuration of the Ikara deckhouse on the Perth (RAN Adams) class DDGs, as well as the configuration of the Tartar installations on the Albany Class CGs.

I am not talking centreline for any of the launchers, I'm not even talking about sinking any of them into the armoured deck. I'm talking new structure above the armoured deck, using the deck space and weight freed up by removing and repurposing the volume used by the secondary battery (and aviation facilities on the KGVs) for new structure housing Tartar and the selected long range SAM. The missile stowage would be in a deckhouse between the funnels, the launchers would be on elevated platforms on each beam.

How would this work? In exactly the same manner as the deckhouses used on the USN CLG conversions and proposed for the RN cruiser conversions. The difference is the deckhouse would be on the midriff of a very beamy battleship, instead of on the stern of an 8-10000 ton cruiser.

Ideal, no, doable, yes. Also, it would provide better forward arcs than a stern arrangement, meaning that so long as the directors had 360deg coverage (which the single ended RN and USN missile ships didn't), the course changes required to fire the missiles into the directors' arc forward would not have been as severe.

Would it have been done, not a chance in hell, could it have been done, definitely.
The deckhouse magazines, associated launchers and radars took up approximately a third of the length of a 600-foot cruiser. That setup (single-ended I might add!) is not going to fit in Vanguard's 108ft beam, and neither are sixteen illuminators for eight Mk 11 or Mk 13 GMLS, let alone illuminators for the Talos or Sea Slug launchers. There definitely isn't going to be room for Sea Cat and it's associated directors on top of that. How you electromagnetic interference between all of these directors (not to mention the ships other radars) is beyond me.

This apparent revolution in naval architecture was somehow missed by the US Naval Architects, who when drawing up missile conversions for the Iowas, put the missile launchers and their magazines fore and aft. Almost as if they knew what they were doing.
The cruisers were severely limited by beam, volume and stability, battleships in general were nowhere near as limited, while later British battleships were configured with very extensive aviation facilities between the funnels. Irrespective of whether they retained them through their lives or were even completed with them, the aviation facilities (heavy weight catapult design for a TSR/ Swordfish and hangars) meant the ships had substantial space and stability that could be repurposed for missile stowage and launchers without having to cut through or modify armoured decks, bulkheads or barbettes.

I do not appreciate the snarky comment in your last paragraph and have reported it.
 
The cruisers were severely limited by beam, volume and stability, battleships in general were nowhere near as limited, while later British battleships were configured with very extensive aviation facilities between the funnels. Irrespective of whether they retained them through their lives or were even completed with them, the aviation facilities (heavy weight catapult design for a TSR/ Swordfish and hangars) meant the ships had substantial space and stability that could be repurposed for missile stowage and launchers without having to cut through or modify armoured decks, bulkheads or barbettes.
The aircraft hangars were on either side of the funnels, so if you want to use that volume, you are going to have to cut through the uptakes.

There also won't be enough room for all the fire control radars. You will want one SPG-49 and at least one SPW-2 per Talos launch rail, for a total of 8 separate radars if you are using a double-edged layout. Given that Talos is beam-riding, you'll also want to ensure that the SPW-2s are close to the launcher so that they can quickly gather the missiles into their guidance beam.

Given this conversion envisions keeping the main armament, space atop the superstructure will be tight if you want to keep both main battery DCTs, and that's not including the other air and surface search radars, and heightfinders. If you remove the DCTs and centerline secondary directors, CRBFD and Bofors, and turn funnels into Macks, you may be able to install these directors, and an incredibly austere radar layout, which will massively limit the utility of the SAMs you are putting on your ship, since you will not be able to use them at full capacity (the Counties were dependent of Data-links with carriers equipped with Type 984 for this), and at this point the main guns are just deadweight unless you want to see if the SPG-49s can do surface gunnery (they were like Type 901, originally intended as a gunnery fire control system, but considering the changes the Type 901 went through to be a missile guidance system, I doubt that either the SPG-49 or Type 901 were capable of gunnery control when they entered service as missile fire control systems).

According to Okieboat, the Mk 7 GMLS weighs 400,000lbs, approximately 178 imperial tons (I don't know is just the magazine system, or if it includes the 1.5" armoured deckhouse, but given that the Mk 20 Mod 0 AEGIS Deckhouse weighed 200 tons, and carried only a pair of SPY-1 arrays and an SPG-62 illuminator, was not made from armour plate and was considerably smaller than the Mk 7 GMLS Magazine, I doubt it), and that is just for a single ended layout. I don't know the exact length of the magazine, but without the launcher, it takes up a little over a fifth of the cruiser's length, circa 120ft (although likely longer), more than Vanguard's 108ft beam.

The magazine is divided into three sections of equal length, Area 1, for fitting the wings and fins of the missiles, Area 2, the ready use magazine, containing 16 missiles, and Area 3, the missile stowage magazine, containing 30 missiles.

Even removing Area 3 (reducing each magazines storage to 16 missiles each), and putting each magazine back-to-back is circa 160ft, and remember that that does not include space for the launchers themselves.

I'll admit I did misread you, and thought you suggested one for replacements of the 5.25 inch mountings with either the Mk11 or 13 GMLS, and in addition to that, one for-one replacement of the sextuple Bofors with Sea Cat. The latter is certainly possible, that is if these were the only changes you were making to Vanguard, although it should be pointed out that Vanguard, even it's original state, had serious problems with radio and radar interference.

The former however is still problematic, as even with 4 Tartar GMLS (whether Mk 11 or Mk 13) you will still need space for 8 SPG-51s, which will be competing for space with 4 SPG-49s, 4 SPW-2s (which will have to be somewhere close to admissions for the reasons outlined above), and however many Sea Cat launchers and directors you want (which will also depend on which version of Sea Cat you want, GWS-22 uses MRS3, which will require below-deck space for a fire control system). All of these fire-control systems will require below-deck volume for fire control computers, as well as the volume necessary for a AIO (which may event take up two decks as was intended for the GW series of missile cruiser designs).

The masts (or Macks) will also be the source of much competition for space, with a Type 992 Target Indication radar and Type 965 Air search radar likely being required (Type 992, Type 965 and Type 278 being the most austere radar out fit you could have, with Type 983 being a more capable heightfinder, for comparison contemporary double-ended US Missile Cruisers had two SPS-30 heightfinders, one SPS-43 long-range radar, and an SPS-39, and the later GW series having a single Type 992 and Type 984, which sounds reasonable until you realise that the Type 984 will be fighting for space with the SPG-49s and SPW-2s), not to mention things like UA-8/9/10 Porker,and possibly a URN-5/Type 957 TACAN Beacon for fighter control (which if you've gone to the trouble of a missile conversion, you'll probably also want to do fighter control for the Task Force as well). There will probably be space forwards for a Outfit AGG HF Discone on the bow, in similar position to where the US put their HF discone on their cruisers and battleships, there will probably be space down the sides of the mast for the Outfit AJE VHF candlestick-shaped antennas, and there will probably be space on the mainmast for that weird HF anntenna that I can't find either a Type or Outfit designation for, but which appears on the mainmast of both Belfast and the Tiger class.

One might also ask where the displaced boats are going to go? In the Original Vanguard design (and on the KGVs and Lions) they were situated on the aft superstructure, before being displaced amidships to where the former aircraft facilities were. Reducing boat complements was deemed unacceptable even in wartime, so I doubt they'll be any ore acceptable in peacetime. I don't have the exact fit for Vanguard herself, but the complement for Lion's 1938 design was three 45ft Motor Boats, one 45ft Motor Launch, there 25ft Fast Motor Boats, one 16ft motor dinghy, two 32ft cutters, two 27ft whalers and two 16ft dinghies.
 
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