The Courageous Vs The Duetschland

[kriegerfaust]

At first the two cruisers look nothing alike the Duetschland being designed as a high-speed raider and the Courageous as a mobile battery to attack shoreline targets.  If we take weight, we find the Courageous at a heavy 22,000 Tons fully loaded while the Dutschland comes in at a trimmer 14,00 tons.  Courageous 790 feet long 81 wide and a draught of 25 feet while the smaller Duetschland 610 feet in length 67 in width with a draught of 24 feet some dimensions are closer than other. 

We do find one funny quark between the two both ships were built in threes that is three of the Courageou/Furious ships and Three of the Duetschland ships.  If we look at armor, we find even more in common the Courageous has a belt of 2-3 inches a deck of 3/4 to 3 inches and turrets of 7 to 9. The Duetschland has a belt of 3 inches a deck of 1.8 inches and turrets of 5.5 inches of armor a very similar armor scheme between the two ships.  The main armament of the Courageous of four 15-inch guns in two mounts while the Duetschland has six guns of 11 inches in two mounts, In both cases a small amount of main guns.

The Courageous has four inch and three-inch guns used as secondaries with only two torpedoes, while the Duetschland has six inch and three inches with eight torpedoes.  Both ships are fairly fast with 32KN and 28 Knots meaning ironically the Courageous would be easily able to chase down the smaller lighter Dutschland.  Both Ships would have seen a crew of around a thousand people given the German ships smaller size i wonder about the comfort of the crew.

Why do i bring this up while the Courageous were built with 15-inch guns the Furious with a nearly identical hull was armed with two 18-inch guns in single turrets and the two first ships converted into carriers.  What if all three two or even one ship was built to hunt the Duetcshland cruisers what could they have done.  First her main guns would be replaced by six 12/13 inch guns, the12"/50 (30.5 cm) Mark XIVThe Mark XIV was used as a basis for the 14" (35.6 cm) Mark VII guns used on the HMS King George V battleships and the 16" (40.6 cm) Mark II guns for the planned Lion class battleships.

We would also need to replace her secondaries with traditional 6-inch guns in two-gun mounts and a few more torpedoes if the British are feeling like mirroring her potential prey.  There are many fine six-inch guns in the British navy including guns used on Cruisers and Battleships any of which would work fine on a modified Courageous class.  I would name my class either the Resilient or Courageous class and would be a fun ship to play in the game if anyone has anything to add.

We can go even Further and perhaps drop down to 11-inch guns allowing are Reliant class to mount eight guns letting her not only outrun The Duetschland but shot more shells than her.  We could also mount five-inch guns from the Americans if we do not have enough good old British four- or six-inch guns.  Given are large hull we could find room for more spotting aircraft or if in desperation form a small air cap against enemy fighter or land based naval patrols.  I think the idea could be fun a long-range counter raider armored cruiser with long legs, great speed and fast firing intermediate guns that would have been a real threat to the Duetschland.

 

 

 

[invicta2012]

Not enough guns, mate. We already have Repulse / Repulse 44 / Renown in the game and they're OK, but I'd rather play Hood for the extra guns.... so at first thought going down to four guns (or two, in the case of Furious) doesn't like a bunch of laughs.

If you really want to see them in the game, think of them as a hybrid of Champagne and Thunderer, with very accurate guns, good range, on a fast reload (20s?) and tendency to set everything on fire. But they're greyhounds, not bulldogs - they have almost no armour at all (76mm main belt) and they're very large ships. They could be given some additional deck armour to allow them to handle more plunging fire at range, but no-one should be thinking of brawling. Secondaries are ornamental. 

If you're thinking of a 1 v 1 brawl, my money is on the Deutschland every time. That ship could probably take a heavy shell and survive. Courageous emphatically could not. 

[Project45_Opytny]

1 hour ago, invicta2012 said:

Not enough guns, mate. We already have Repulse / Repulse 44 / Renown in the game and they're OK, but I'd rather play Hood for the extra guns.... so at first thought going down to four guns (or two, in the case of Furious) doesn't like a bunch of laughs.

If you really want to see them in the game, think of them as a hybrid of Champagne and Thunderer, with very accurate guns, good range, on a fast reload (20s?) and tendency to set everything on fire. But they're greyhounds, not bulldogs - they have almost no armour at all (76mm main belt) and they're very large ships. They could be given some additional deck armour to allow them to handle more plunging fire at range, but no-one should be thinking of brawling. Secondaries are ornamental. 

If you're thinking of a 1 v 1 brawl, my money is on the Deutschland every time. That ship could probably take a heavy shell and survive. Courageous emphatically could not. 

Even if the protection problem may be mitigated by artificially defining and thus lowering the citadel, a battleship/battlecruiser that can be readily farmed full penetration hits by 8-inch guns from 15km away would be very difficult to balance. That's a reason why they were converted into CVs IRL: the Treaty regime was established, the Courageous sisters are taking valuable capital ship allocation, yet while fast and heavily armed, with only cruiser protection they are no match against any other capital ships, even obsolete first-generation dreadnoughts due to the extremely poor protection, and significant protection scheme modification, even without taking potential penalty caused to the ship's speed, stability, etc. into consideration first, was banned by the treaty (AFAIK). So they became the perfect choices for the CV conversation clause.

And with an unrivaled battlecruiser force (Hood, Renown, Repulse, Tiger) already in existence during the entire 1920s, there is no incentive for the British IRL to develop a class of ship to counter a not yet developed (it took a few years for the Germans to finalize the Deutschland-class design) future rival, that can still be countered by the already existing battlecruiser force.

Edited March 30 by Project45_Opytny

[Ensign Cthulhu]

8 hours ago, kriegerfaust said:

What if all three two or even one ship was built to hunt the Duetcshland cruisers what could they have done.  First her main guns would be replaced by six 12/13 inch guns,

The ship's internal arrangements allow for two barbettes. To give her six guns, you need triple mounts; to give her eight guns, you need quads. Depending on when you're doing this conversion, you may as well modify her to take 14 inch quad KGV or 16 inch triple Nelson turrets. Not sure how structurally feasible that is and how much reconstruction it would require, but it would at least give you an existing mount to work with, as opposed to having to develop something completely new.

Ultimately, the reason the Courageous class were modified to carriers is because treaty restrictions would have demanded their scrapping otherwise. You can't get around that without major historical changes. If those changes happen and the Washington treaty isn't ratified, Britain is going to build at least four G3 battlecruisers (Duncans in game) rather than faffing around modifying Fisher's follies, and any one of the G3s will eat Deutschland for breakfast without breaking a sweat. 

Edited March 30 by Ensign Cthulhu

[Project45_Opytny]

16 minutes ago, Ensign Cthulhu said:

The ship's internal arrangements allow for two barbettes. To give her six guns, you need triple mounts; to give her eight guns, you need quads. Depending on when you're doing this conversion, you may as well modify her to take 14 inch quad KGV or 16 inch triple Nelson turrets. Not sure how structurally feasible that is and how much reconstruction it would require, but it would at least give you an existing mount to work with, as opposed to having to develop something completely new.

Ultimately, the reason the Courageous class were modified to carriers is because treaty restrictions would have demanded their scrapping otherwise. You can't get around that without major historical changes. If those changes happen and the Washington treaty isn't ratified, Britain is going to build at least four G3 battlecruisers (Duncans in game) rather than faffing around modifying Fisher's follies, and any one of the G3s will eat Deutschland for breakfast without breaking a sweat. 

One contributing factor leading to the demise of the Lion-class battleship was that, a new triple mount would have to be developed (as the existing model used aboard Nelson-class was judged very unsatisfactory), yet much of the development efforts in the 30s was spent on developing the two models (twin and quadruple) used by the King George V-class, and the detailed development of a new triple mount was repeatedly postponed and finally cancelled due to shifting wartime priorities and vision of how the navy would be like in the postwar period, according to some sources I've read.

As long as the Courageous-class is rated as capital ships, due to their peculiar design, they would certainly be the ones to be discarded/converted in a world with Treaty regime to free allocated tonnage of capital ships for their more useful peers.

[Yedwy]

When talking about inter-war ship dev and in particular the Curageous class as well as their fate I guess Drach has some quality material on that topic, IIRC TLDR version is - they were too flimsy to handle even their mediocre (at best) main weapons as designed let alone an upgrade to much heavier 3 or 4 gun mounts, also we need to take into account not only the structural integrity issue but also bouyancy issues ie the hull woiluld need massive bulges to handle the extra weight without sinking 2 low to be seaworthy in open water and only after all that we arrive to the protection of the ship systems and the crew which after the lessons of Jutland gained much in importance in RN of the time. Additionally the “fast battleship” concept that gained more momentum made purpose built “battlecruisers” moot besides RN didnt need “dedicated comerce raiders” as the axis powers other then Japan didnt even have a large commertial shipping resources and wide spread lines to begin with, also RN early realised the potential of naval aviation and focused the dev efforts in that direction, that was also the main reason they didnt really build any BBs after KG V sole exception beeing the Vanguard that was basically largely put together with “spare parts lying around in warehouses” US also after the lessons of early war did almost the same barr the Iowas and Alaskas that were in large scale more or less a sidenote to USN CV/DD/CL swarms thwt won the war