Greetings!
Resurrected from five years deep in the forum like West Virginia was resurrected from the mud in Pearl Harbor, this thread is an attempt to catalog all dreadnought battleships and battlecruisers of the Nationstates world.
Here's how it works: I've put together and will maintain a Factbook section for the lists. Nations are invited and requested to submit their ship designs.
Ship Submission
Realism is highly encouraged, as is originality; just saying "I used the Iowa class" is highly discouraged. Don't know what's realistic? I've put a very basic realism guide below as a reference, and I love answering questions about dreadnoughts, so post a question in thread or shoot me a telegram.
I realize all national histories are subject to revision; if you update your canon feel free to make a new post or send a telegram to tell me to revise the list.
To submit a ship for addition, use the following form. Post in the thread, or telegram it to me:
The "Add my battleship to the list!" Form
- Code: Select all
[b]Class Name:[/b]
[b]Displacement (standard):[/b]
[b]Primary Armament (in inches):[/b]
[b]Maximum Armor Belt Thickness in inches:[/b]
[b]Armor Layout (All-or-Nothing, Incremental, etc):[/b]
[b]Powerplant Type (Turbines, Reciprocating, Expansion, Turbo-electric, Diesel, etc):[/b]
[b]Power Source (Oil, Coal, Mixed, etc):[/b]
[b]Speed in knots:[/b]
[b]Endurance in nautical miles:[/b]
[b]Year in service:[/b]
[b]Year last unit retired or sunk:[/b]
[b]Number of units:[/b]
They won't make it into the table, but putting additional information like secondary weapons, detailed armor layouts, turret configurations, pictures, and what the ship name means to your people in your posts is encouraged!
Quick and Dirty Realism Guide
I'm going to start with a list of technical achievements and dates. I'm focusing on the aspects that appear in the table.
Maximum gun size on a dreadnought:
12" : 1906
13.5" : 1912
15" : 1915
16" : 1920
18" : 1941 (although it likely could have been done in the early 20s, had the Washington Treaty not intervened)
Maximum Speed for BBs:
Standard from 1906 to 1914 across all major navies was 21 knots. Some navies (e.g. Britain) built special fast ships of 24-25 knots to complement their slower line from mid-1910s. The Japanese steadily escalated the speed of their battleline from the mid-1910s until the WNT. 24 knots 1916, 27 knots 1920, ships planned for mid-20s 30 knots but to do it they had to stay towards the weaker end of armor. For the battleships that were new in WW2, there is basically a fast group of ~30 knots (Germans, Italians, French) and a slow one of about 27 (British, Japanese, Americans).
Some navies tacked on a few knots in exchange for losing a couple inches or armor relative to foreign design. These were mostly minor countries that wanted showy ships more than fighting ships, but the Italians were a serious navy and also did this.
BB armor:
Dreadnought and her competitors generally had belts of 10" to 12", which escalated until Jutland, where it was at 12" to 14". After that, belts held pretty steady while protection improvements generally went to decks and torpedo defense systems (Yamato's 16" belt excepted).
The traditional Incremental layout was generally replaced after Jutland (May 1916) with the new All-or-Nothing layout for new construction with two major exceptions: The Americans had switched to All-or-Nothing on its purely theoretical benefits in 1912, and the Germans drew different lessons from Jutland and never did.
Engines:
The world standard prior to HMS Dreadnought was vertical triple expansion engines; the British introduced turbines with Dreadnought. The Germans held out until 1909, waiting for a German firm to be able to build them rather than paying British manufacturers. The Americans, apparently over fuel efficiency concerns, were laying down VTE battleships as late as 1912. The American standards (mid-1910s to early 1920s) used a turbo-electric drive that offered superior damage resistance and stopping/backing ability but less horsepower for the weight. Steam turbines were pretty much universal after 1930, although some planned but never finished German capital ships used marine diesels (better range but less reliability, at least in German practice).
The first oil-fired battleship entered service right at the beginning of 1915; coal fired ships were being built in some countries until the end of World War I, but ships surviving the Washington Treaty were pretty much universally converted to oil. For those of you building BBs into the modern era, the first nuclear powered warship of any size was 1955 and first nuclear carrier was 1958, so late 50s makes sense for a BBN.
Battlecruisers:
There were two schools of battlecruiser design: The British and the German. The initial British battlecruisers had armor to resist cruiser guns (6" to 9"), either one size smaller main guns or one turret less than the contemporary battleships, and very high speed (1908: 25 knots, 1912: 28 knots, 1917: 32 knots). German battlecruisers generally accepted a belt about 2" less than their BBs (but still in the battleship range), and like the British generally either went one gun size smaller or carried one less turret. Their speed advantage over battleships was less, topping out at about 27 knots.
The last British design, Hood, and the unbuilt German plans (which just kept putting larger and larger guns on Derfflinger), essentially converged somewhere in the middle, although the Americans did design and begin but not a finish a ship in the proper British style, with 33 knots, 16" guns, and very poor armor.
The battlecruiser was essentially dead in terms of new construction after the early 20s (planned or actual), with the fast battleship having generally converged with it in the ships killed by the WNT (Lexington excepted).
The Washington Treaty
In 1922, the major naval powers of the world signed a treaty that stopped all new battleship construction (with a couple exceptions) and mandated the scrapping of enough old ships of each to country to get a balance of power that everyone could at least tolerate. The primary motivation was financial; battleships are expensive. There were a number of follow ups. All real world navies were affected by this treaty in several ways, since it wound up defining the fleets everyone went to war with in 1939, the size of the new battleships of the late 30s, it created the heavy cruiser (with 10k tons, 8" being the maximum "not a battleship"), and since it allowed for the conversion of some of the cancelled BCs to CVs, it kickstarted naval aviation.
If you want to build a navy that follows the WNT rules, for realism or whatever, use the following rules:
- If it is larger than 10,000 tons, or carries guns larger than 8", it is a capital ship.
- No ships can be larger than 35k ton displacement or carry guns larger than 16".
- Two capital ships currently building can be converted to carriers of max 33k tons.
Here's the total tonnage of battleships you can keep after 1922, and the total tonnage of carriers you build before the treaty breaks down in the late 30s, including those conversions:
| Rank | Allowed BB tonnage | Allowed CV tonnage |
| 1st (e.g., Britain, USA) | 525k tons | 135k tons |
| 2nd (e.g., Japan) | 315k tons | 81k tons |
| 3rd (e.g. France, Italy) | 175k tons | 60k tons |
You should have no new battleships until the late 30s, and ships begun between ~1936 to 1939 should be about 35,000 tons displacement (USA, Britain, France stayed pretty close, Germany and Italy built 20% bigger and lied about it. Fascists).
Other Business
I am taking nominations for the nation who shall have the honor of being officially recognized by this project as the first to have built a dreadnought battleship. It should be a nation with a long and well regarded history of RP, as well as one that has invested some effort in fleshing out their historical navy.
