New update time – this time I’ve been doing Royal Navy Town Class light cruisers. Several of the ships had very interesting careers.
The town class is actually divided up into five different sub-classes based on slight differences. They’re fundamentally the same design, but they differed in aspects like the length of the forecastle and their main armament layout. The first group were the Bristol subclass. One of those was present at Jutland – HMS Gloucester. They were armed with two 6” guns in single mounts, one forward, one aft, and ten 4” guns in single mounts along the wings.
The second group were the Weymouth subclass. They lengthened the forecastle slightly and swapped all of the 4” guns for a handful more 6” guns for 8 in total. I have built HMS Yarmouth from this subclass. Yarmouth is notable for having a plane launched off one of her gun turrets in 1917, the first time a plane had ever been launched that way.
The third group were the Chatham subclass. They retained the same main armament but lengthened the forecastle deck significantly, stretching past the funnels. They also adopted a different bow shape. From this group I’ve done HMS Southampton. She had a very active career, and at Jutland she managed to sink SMS Frauenlob with a torpedo.
The fourth group were the Birmingham subclass. They were identical to the Chathams aside from adding one more main gun side-by-side with the forward gun. I’ve done HMS Birmingham from this group. In August 1914, she successfully rammed and sank U-15, the first U-boat loss to an enemy warship.
The final group were the Birkenhead subclass. They were originally built for the Greek Navy before being taken over by the Royal Navy at the start of the war. As far as I can tell, they were very similar to the Birminghams aside from the main armament, mounting 10 5.5” guns. From this subclass I’ve done HMS Chester. She’s notable for having one of 4 Victoria Cross recipients from the battle, a young 16-year old sailor named Jack Cornwell who was manning the forward gun. The ship was hit by withering fire that didn’t threaten to sink her, but wreaked havoc with the people on deck. After they retreated, Cornwell was found still manning his gun, the rest of the gun crew all dead, with shrapnel sticking out of his chest. Still waiting for orders. He died a couple of days later and was awarded the VC posthumously.
So, five subclasses. This means that in order to ‘complete’ my set, I needed to model one ship from each subclass. So I’ve got five screenshots here. They’re very similar but with minor differences. I’ve taken the screenshots from different angles so they’re not too repetitive! I’ve also added them to the first post, as usual.
I'm attempting to make a modern Aircraft Carrier ship; without Creative rights. O.o I'm following your other post on how to build ships like the one above, and I have to say you're an expert at building these. Kudos to you, good sir.
I'm attempting to make a modern Aircraft Carrier ship; without Creative rights. O.o I'm following your other post on how to build ships like the one above, and I have to say you're an expert at building these. Kudos to you, good sir.
Thanks.
It must be quite a huge project to do that without creative. Especially if you've got to fight against the water to do the below-waterline parts. I'm very thankful for World Edit!
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New update, Germany's Kaiser class battleships. I've produced two screenshots here. The choice of which ship to name my model after was easy, since SMS Friedrich der Große was the fleet flagship, but I also needed to make a slight modification for SMS Prinzregent Luitpold. I'm doing all of the ships which I find differed slightly from the rest of their class, since ultimately I want all of the ships. The one I've labelled as SMS Friedrich der Große also represents SMS Kaiser and SMS Kaiserin.
The Kaisers were the first German ships equipped with steam turbine engines, with three shafts. They wanted to experiment a bit more with Prinzregent Luitpold, putting the steam turbines on the outer shafts and putting a diesel engine on the central shaft. The diesel wasn't ready, so she completed with just the two shafts.
I've added the screenshots to the first post already. The lack of a central shaft is the only difference to Prinzregent Luitpold, and obviously you won't see it in the screenshot. So I thought a dusk shot would be a nice one to go for.
This is so cool! I wish I had a ship like this at my 19th century based server Really amazing
Thanks! If you feel like building one, I did a tutorial on how I do it with HMS Dreadnought as an example. Battleship Tutorial. Or if you fancy one of these, I plan to put a download up eventually when I've finished the project. Still some way to go yet!
I've been building a few more ships, which I've added to the first post. Two types of German light cruiser - the Gazelle class and the follow-up Bremen class, which were effectively an enlarged version of the same thing. Then I added two new classes of British Battleship, the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes which were effectively repeats of HMS Dreadnought with the mast layout altered. Which meant that I could modify my HMS Dreadnought build to get the Bellerophons and St. Vincents done really quickly.
Out of curiosity, what is the reason you started making all these?
Hmm, good question!
I got hooked on building sailing ships a couple of years ago, then one day I decided to build a steel battleship for a bit of a change - and I built a ship which was heavily based on HMS Iron Duke. Then I went back to sailing ships. After a while, I built a few more early 1900s ships, and eventually realised that I had a few that were present at Jutland. That was when the idea started. I thought I might try to build the entire British fleet from the battle, then I guess I must have just thought "why not the Germans too?"
The idea sat around in my head for a while before I decided to go for it. Seems to be coming along nicely. Out of the 249 ships that were there, the models I've built so far can represent 100 of them. 100 exactly. It's a milestone!
I've also started building what's going to be the centrepiece of the map - I'm calling it the Jutland Memorial. I'm building in a superflat map with the Water World preset turned on. I've built a forest of stone columns and arches rising up through the water with a large square platform on top. There's going to be a wall around the outside with a walkway on top, and a memorial building in the middle topped off with a baroque style dome. Then, around the outside of the memorial building there's going to be a garden. If I've calculated correctly, there should be enough space to plant a poppy in the garden for every man who died in the battle.
There's going to be wooden jetties heading off from the memorial in all four directions, and each one will have one of the four fleets docked along it - Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet, Scheer's High Seas Fleet and Hipper's Scouting Force.
There were three classes of scout cruiser at the battle, the Boadicea class (HMS Boadicea and HMS Bellona) the Blonde class (HMS Blanche) and the Active class (HMS Active and HMS Fearless).
All three classes were fundamentally the same. The Blonde class were repeats of the Boadiceas but just slightly larger and with more main guns. The Active class were repeats of the Blondes, but with a 'plouigh' instead of a 'ram' bow. The RN stopped building scout cruisers after the Active class, because their roles were being taken over by the light cruisers such as the new Town class - which I've already posted higher up the page.
All of these scout cruisers had a very uneventful battle, and although they were present they were towards the back and were barely involved.
So, three very similar screenshots coming up.
I've added the screenshots to the first post. My count is now at 105/249 ships. That number will shoot up a bit more rapidly if I start building more destroyers!
Coming from a person who has mostly disregarded this important time period in naval history, these ships make me want to embrace the era.
Seeing these makes me want to get into building older battleships as well XD
I've turned out with about 8 different world war 2 ships, all modified for the movecraft plugin (So me and a couple of friends can smash eachother with long range tnt cannon blasts) as well as carriers. One could say it's just a phase, but daaaang post-dreadnought ships are looking terrific these days.
Coming from a person who has mostly disregarded this important time period in naval history, these ships make me want to embrace the era.
Seeing these makes me want to get into building older battleships as well XD
I've turned out with about 8 different world war 2 ships, all modified for the movecraft plugin (So me and a couple of friends can smash eachother with long range tnt cannon blasts) as well as carriers. One could say it's just a phase, but daaaang post-dreadnought ships are looking terrific these days.
Thanks, and very well put.
I remember as a kid, I had very little idea of the Dreadnought arms-race and First World War era. It was before I had the internet, and my interest in battleships was stoked by a little Jane's Fighting Ships book of WWII era. Just one tiny double page for each ship class, and the only thing I knew about the WWI era ships was the super-dreadnoughts which were still going strong in 1939-45. I suppose I liked the WWII ships because they were the 'best' battleships, the most advanced and most powerful before the battleship ceased to be a part of modern navies.
But in more recent years I've read much more on the dreadnought era, and it's really captured my interest. As somebody who absolutely loves naval history, I'd be hard pressed to choose my favourite period between French Revolution/Napoleonic and 1906-1918. I love the Dreadnought/WWI era as perhaps the true end of the battleship era. With the Naval Treaties in the interwar years, the battleship era was drawing to an end, it's just that people didn't realise yet. It only started to become obvious with the British aerial attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940.
But then I think the enduring popularity of the WWII battleships comes down to a few things. The same as I thought as a boy, they were the biggest and most powerful battleships ever built, and they generally saw a lot of action during the war. Their era of dominance was over, but the battleships refused to admit it. They had one last chance to shine.
The great WWI fleets spent their whole war playing cat-and-mouse around the North Sea. Jutland was the only time they clashed at full strength, and Scheer withdrew as soon as he could manage. There were no great decisive battles to capture people's imaginations. At times I think it's a shame that there aren't more interesting naval battles of the period to read up on, but truly that would have meant thousands more men losing their lives. I think a lack of major battles to read about is a small price for us to pay for the sailors of the time to get out of the war with their lives intact.
And so we're left with the great battlefleets, dozens of battleships built for a decisive battle that never came. A war spent vainly trying to bring their enemy to a decisive battle on their own terms, then returning home disappointed when it didn't happen. And then perhaps the saddest thing of all, the huge number scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Many of these great battleships, barely ten years old, scrapped to try to prevent the crippling expense of another arms race. It's strange to think that we see these ships almost as personalities and regret their scrapping, even though I suppose it's the almost inevitable fate of any ship which survives long enough to see the end of its useful life. Sad to think that just ten years earlier, the shipyards were building them as fast as their governments could allocate funds, the designers were surpassing themselves with each new class. Then the war came but the battle never did, and the breaker's yard beckoned.
I'll be pleased if anybody sees these builds and gains more of an interest in the WWI era ships as a result.
---
As for plans for what I'm doing next, it's been a long time since I've done an armoured cruiser, and I've still got three classes of RN armoured cruiser to build. I think I'll go with HMS Hampshire very soon, the only Devnonshire class ship present at Jutland. I also fancy doing some more destroyers, since I've barely done any so far.
New update time - I've done the armoured cruiser HMS Hampshire and the Laforey class destroyers.
HMS Hampshire was the only ship of the Devonshire class at Jutland, and the oldest of the British armoured cruisers at the battle. She's more famous for the events immediately after the battle where she departed on a diplomatic mission to Russia carrying the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, and very quickly hitting a mine and sinking with the loss of all but twelve men.
The Laforey class destroyers were the last pre-war class of British destroyer, and there were four at Jutland. I've got two different models of the Laforeys, since a handful of the ships were completed with two funnels rather than the usual three. I reckon my count is now up to 110/249 ships.
This really seems to have potential, however, I can't really help. I will be watching this, so keep up the astonishing work.
Thanks, and don't worry about not being able to help; I wasn't looking for help anyway. It's always been my plan to build all the ships myself.
I've just added a new battleship to the first post, the oldest battleship to take part in the battle, the German Braunschweig class pre-dreadnought SMS Hessen.
I was able to make her fairly quickly by modifying my Deutschland class build (Schleswig-Holstein), since the Deutschlands immediately followed the Braunschweigs and were almost identical. I've changed the shape of the forward superstructure, changed four of the secondary guns from casemate-mount to individual turrets and edited the masts and searchlights a bit. Braunschweig class done!
Is it possible if you could show us a ship which is out of the water?
I really want to see more of your hullwork
I've taken a few screenshots of my shipyard. Lots of hulls out of the water!
I've just started work on the German Königsberg class cruisers, though for some reason in my plans that I'd drawn up in GIMP I made the ship much too short. I have no idea why, because I remember telling it to scale the image to the correct length. I only realised once I'd blocked out the hull in minecraft and thought it looked really small, so I scrapped that and started again. I'll probably try to get her finished in the next couple of days.
I've added the Königsberg class cruiser to the first post. There were two ships of the class at the battle, Stuttgart and Stettin.
I'm now at 113/249 ships, approaching the halfway point.. And as I've said before, those numbers will shoot up when I do some more of the Destroyer/Torpedoboot classes, since they're quick to build and there were lots of them. The Admiralty 'M' class alone will add 37 ships to the group when I get around to building those.
I won't be doing anything on this now until the new year. I think the first build for 2015 will have to be something fairly substantial, so I'm going to say at this point that I'll do HMS Lion. She was the flagship of the Royal Navy Battlecruiser Fleet under Vice Admiral Beatty.
Hey everyone, first update of the new year; I've been doing the "Splendid Cats".
The Lion class (consisting of HMS Lion and HMS Princess Royal) and their near-sister HMS Queen Mary led the British battlecruiser line. Lion was Vice Admiral Beatty's flagship. She led the line and duelled with Hipper's flagship Lützow, and was nearly destroyed when Lützow scored a hit on her Q turret. She was saved by the mortally wounded turret commander who ordered the magazine flooded to prevent an explosion.
Her sister ship Princess Royal was second in line, and fought against Derfflinger, though for large parts of the battle she was obscured by smoke from hits on Lion. That caused Derfflinger to switch her fire to Queen Mary, soon destroying her in a magazine explosion. Queen Mary sank with 1,266 deaths. Only 20 men survived.
I've got two screenshots. One represents both the Lion class ships (I've named it after Lion since she was Beatty's flagship), and the other one is Queen Mary. Queen Mary differed from the Lions in that she was just slightly larger, the arrangement of her secondary armament was a little different and the officers' quarters were moved back to their traditional place in the stern instead of the current trend of putting them near their action stations amidships. Having the officers' quarters in the stern is probably the reason why Queen Mary was the first battlecruiser fitted with a sternwalk.
Interestingly, I used to think they looked weird. It was because of Q turret placement in between the second and third funnels, when it makes much more sense to me if they had grouped the funnels together and put that turret as a superfiring turret aft. But after having looked up lots of reference pictures and spent quite a while building them, I've grown to appreciate the beauty of these ships. Don't get me wrong, I still think it was a daft design choice. And when they fixed it on HMS Tiger, well, she was one lovely looking ship. I love HMS Tiger enough that I think I'll save her for last; an extra little motivation to finish the whole project. I can't not do Tiger!
I've added them both to the first post with a similar explanation to above.
I think next I'll do some more destroyers and/or torpedo boats. I reckon the next capital ship I do will probably be SMS Moltke, though I'm also tempted to do another of the British battleships that I can convert from my Orion or Iron Duke.
I've decided that I didn't really like the screenshot that I had up for SMS Lützow, so I've taken a new one and replaced it in the first post. I figured I'd put it here as well as a follow up to the Lion class post, since this is the ship which was duelling with Lion and nearly sank her.
HMS Canada was originally built in Britain for the Chilean Navy as the lead ship of the Almirante Latorre class, which was a fairly common arrangement at the time. In the years before the First World War lots of nations wanted modern battleships, but it was only really the European powers and the USA that had the expertise and industry to design and build them. So those countries placed orders abroad, mainly with British and American shipyards.
A dreadnought arms race had taken off in South America. Brazil ordered ships from Britain, followed by Argentina ordering ships from the USA. Chile then ordered a pair of ships from the British company Armstrong Whitworth. They based the design on the new British Iron Duke class, with some alterations. The forecastle was shorter but the quarterdeck was longer, and the ship was a bit longer overall. The funnels were larger, an aft mast was added and the secondary armament laid out a litle differently.
Almirante Latorre was nearly finished when war broke out. Britain bought her from Chile and commissioned her into the Royal Navy as HMS Canada in 1915. She served in the Grand Fleet through the rest of WWI, including at Jutland. After the war, she was sold back to Chile where she served under her original name until the 1950s. Her sister ship Almirante Cochrane was a long way from being finished when the war started. Britain bought her too, and eventually converted her into an aircraft carrier named HMS Eagle. She served with the Royal Navy until she was sunk in WWII.
I used my HMS Iron duke as a base for conversion, but there has had to be a substantial remodelling. I've kept the basic hull, but adjusted it slightly and lengthened it. I also kept the main turrets and the basic structure of the main mast and funnels. But most of that has been at least tweaked and modified. As always, I've added her to the first post.
Lol, this is awesome, I love seeing these huge naval projects from eras I'm interested in. I applaud you for dedication and wish you the best. Meanwhile, my lazy ass still hasn't gotten around to finishing the USS Tennessee I started on August 14th xD
The town class is actually divided up into five different sub-classes based on slight differences. They’re fundamentally the same design, but they differed in aspects like the length of the forecastle and their main armament layout. The first group were the Bristol subclass. One of those was present at Jutland – HMS Gloucester. They were armed with two 6” guns in single mounts, one forward, one aft, and ten 4” guns in single mounts along the wings.
The second group were the Weymouth subclass. They lengthened the forecastle slightly and swapped all of the 4” guns for a handful more 6” guns for 8 in total. I have built HMS Yarmouth from this subclass. Yarmouth is notable for having a plane launched off one of her gun turrets in 1917, the first time a plane had ever been launched that way.
The third group were the Chatham subclass. They retained the same main armament but lengthened the forecastle deck significantly, stretching past the funnels. They also adopted a different bow shape. From this group I’ve done HMS Southampton. She had a very active career, and at Jutland she managed to sink SMS Frauenlob with a torpedo.
The fourth group were the Birmingham subclass. They were identical to the Chathams aside from adding one more main gun side-by-side with the forward gun. I’ve done HMS Birmingham from this group. In August 1914, she successfully rammed and sank U-15, the first U-boat loss to an enemy warship.
The final group were the Birkenhead subclass. They were originally built for the Greek Navy before being taken over by the Royal Navy at the start of the war. As far as I can tell, they were very similar to the Birminghams aside from the main armament, mounting 10 5.5” guns. From this subclass I’ve done HMS Chester. She’s notable for having one of 4 Victoria Cross recipients from the battle, a young 16-year old sailor named Jack Cornwell who was manning the forward gun. The ship was hit by withering fire that didn’t threaten to sink her, but wreaked havoc with the people on deck. After they retreated, Cornwell was found still manning his gun, the rest of the gun crew all dead, with shrapnel sticking out of his chest. Still waiting for orders. He died a couple of days later and was awarded the VC posthumously.
So, five subclasses. This means that in order to ‘complete’ my set, I needed to model one ship from each subclass. So I’ve got five screenshots here. They’re very similar but with minor differences. I’ve taken the screenshots from different angles so they’re not too repetitive! I’ve also added them to the first post, as usual.
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Thanks.
It must be quite a huge project to do that without creative. Especially if you've got to fight against the water to do the below-waterline parts. I'm very thankful for World Edit!
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New update, Germany's Kaiser class battleships. I've produced two screenshots here. The choice of which ship to name my model after was easy, since SMS Friedrich der Große was the fleet flagship, but I also needed to make a slight modification for SMS Prinzregent Luitpold. I'm doing all of the ships which I find differed slightly from the rest of their class, since ultimately I want all of the ships. The one I've labelled as SMS Friedrich der Große also represents SMS Kaiser and SMS Kaiserin.
The Kaisers were the first German ships equipped with steam turbine engines, with three shafts. They wanted to experiment a bit more with Prinzregent Luitpold, putting the steam turbines on the outer shafts and putting a diesel engine on the central shaft. The diesel wasn't ready, so she completed with just the two shafts.
I've added the screenshots to the first post already. The lack of a central shaft is the only difference to Prinzregent Luitpold, and obviously you won't see it in the screenshot. So I thought a dusk shot would be a nice one to go for.
Thanks! If you feel like building one, I did a tutorial on how I do it with HMS Dreadnought as an example. Battleship Tutorial. Or if you fancy one of these, I plan to put a download up eventually when I've finished the project. Still some way to go yet!
I've been building a few more ships, which I've added to the first post. Two types of German light cruiser - the Gazelle class and the follow-up Bremen class, which were effectively an enlarged version of the same thing. Then I added two new classes of British Battleship, the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes which were effectively repeats of HMS Dreadnought with the mast layout altered. Which meant that I could modify my HMS Dreadnought build to get the Bellerophons and St. Vincents done really quickly.
Hmm, good question!
I got hooked on building sailing ships a couple of years ago, then one day I decided to build a steel battleship for a bit of a change - and I built a ship which was heavily based on HMS Iron Duke. Then I went back to sailing ships. After a while, I built a few more early 1900s ships, and eventually realised that I had a few that were present at Jutland. That was when the idea started. I thought I might try to build the entire British fleet from the battle, then I guess I must have just thought "why not the Germans too?"
The idea sat around in my head for a while before I decided to go for it. Seems to be coming along nicely. Out of the 249 ships that were there, the models I've built so far can represent 100 of them. 100 exactly. It's a milestone!
I've also started building what's going to be the centrepiece of the map - I'm calling it the Jutland Memorial. I'm building in a superflat map with the Water World preset turned on. I've built a forest of stone columns and arches rising up through the water with a large square platform on top. There's going to be a wall around the outside with a walkway on top, and a memorial building in the middle topped off with a baroque style dome. Then, around the outside of the memorial building there's going to be a garden. If I've calculated correctly, there should be enough space to plant a poppy in the garden for every man who died in the battle.
There's going to be wooden jetties heading off from the memorial in all four directions, and each one will have one of the four fleets docked along it - Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet, Scheer's High Seas Fleet and Hipper's Scouting Force.
New update: Royal Navy scout cruisers.
There were three classes of scout cruiser at the battle, the Boadicea class (HMS Boadicea and HMS Bellona) the Blonde class (HMS Blanche) and the Active class (HMS Active and HMS Fearless).
All three classes were fundamentally the same. The Blonde class were repeats of the Boadiceas but just slightly larger and with more main guns. The Active class were repeats of the Blondes, but with a 'plouigh' instead of a 'ram' bow. The RN stopped building scout cruisers after the Active class, because their roles were being taken over by the light cruisers such as the new Town class - which I've already posted higher up the page.
All of these scout cruisers had a very uneventful battle, and although they were present they were towards the back and were barely involved.
So, three very similar screenshots coming up.
I've added the screenshots to the first post. My count is now at 105/249 ships. That number will shoot up a bit more rapidly if I start building more destroyers!
Seeing these makes me want to get into building older battleships as well XD
I've turned out with about 8 different world war 2 ships, all modified for the movecraft plugin (So me and a couple of friends can smash eachother with long range tnt cannon blasts) as well as carriers. One could say it's just a phase, but daaaang post-dreadnought ships are looking terrific these days.
Thanks, and very well put.
I remember as a kid, I had very little idea of the Dreadnought arms-race and First World War era. It was before I had the internet, and my interest in battleships was stoked by a little Jane's Fighting Ships book of WWII era. Just one tiny double page for each ship class, and the only thing I knew about the WWI era ships was the super-dreadnoughts which were still going strong in 1939-45. I suppose I liked the WWII ships because they were the 'best' battleships, the most advanced and most powerful before the battleship ceased to be a part of modern navies.
But in more recent years I've read much more on the dreadnought era, and it's really captured my interest. As somebody who absolutely loves naval history, I'd be hard pressed to choose my favourite period between French Revolution/Napoleonic and 1906-1918. I love the Dreadnought/WWI era as perhaps the true end of the battleship era. With the Naval Treaties in the interwar years, the battleship era was drawing to an end, it's just that people didn't realise yet. It only started to become obvious with the British aerial attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940.
But then I think the enduring popularity of the WWII battleships comes down to a few things. The same as I thought as a boy, they were the biggest and most powerful battleships ever built, and they generally saw a lot of action during the war. Their era of dominance was over, but the battleships refused to admit it. They had one last chance to shine.
The great WWI fleets spent their whole war playing cat-and-mouse around the North Sea. Jutland was the only time they clashed at full strength, and Scheer withdrew as soon as he could manage. There were no great decisive battles to capture people's imaginations. At times I think it's a shame that there aren't more interesting naval battles of the period to read up on, but truly that would have meant thousands more men losing their lives. I think a lack of major battles to read about is a small price for us to pay for the sailors of the time to get out of the war with their lives intact.
And so we're left with the great battlefleets, dozens of battleships built for a decisive battle that never came. A war spent vainly trying to bring their enemy to a decisive battle on their own terms, then returning home disappointed when it didn't happen. And then perhaps the saddest thing of all, the huge number scrapped under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Many of these great battleships, barely ten years old, scrapped to try to prevent the crippling expense of another arms race. It's strange to think that we see these ships almost as personalities and regret their scrapping, even though I suppose it's the almost inevitable fate of any ship which survives long enough to see the end of its useful life. Sad to think that just ten years earlier, the shipyards were building them as fast as their governments could allocate funds, the designers were surpassing themselves with each new class. Then the war came but the battle never did, and the breaker's yard beckoned.
I'll be pleased if anybody sees these builds and gains more of an interest in the WWI era ships as a result.
---
As for plans for what I'm doing next, it's been a long time since I've done an armoured cruiser, and I've still got three classes of RN armoured cruiser to build. I think I'll go with HMS Hampshire very soon, the only Devnonshire class ship present at Jutland. I also fancy doing some more destroyers, since I've barely done any so far.
HMS Hampshire was the only ship of the Devonshire class at Jutland, and the oldest of the British armoured cruisers at the battle. She's more famous for the events immediately after the battle where she departed on a diplomatic mission to Russia carrying the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, and very quickly hitting a mine and sinking with the loss of all but twelve men.
The Laforey class destroyers were the last pre-war class of British destroyer, and there were four at Jutland. I've got two different models of the Laforeys, since a handful of the ships were completed with two funnels rather than the usual three. I reckon my count is now up to 110/249 ships.
Thanks, and don't worry about not being able to help; I wasn't looking for help anyway. It's always been my plan to build all the ships myself.
I've just added a new battleship to the first post, the oldest battleship to take part in the battle, the German Braunschweig class pre-dreadnought SMS Hessen.
I was able to make her fairly quickly by modifying my Deutschland class build (Schleswig-Holstein), since the Deutschlands immediately followed the Braunschweigs and were almost identical. I've changed the shape of the forward superstructure, changed four of the secondary guns from casemate-mount to individual turrets and edited the masts and searchlights a bit. Braunschweig class done!
I've taken a few screenshots of my shipyard. Lots of hulls out of the water!
I've just started work on the German Königsberg class cruisers, though for some reason in my plans that I'd drawn up in GIMP I made the ship much too short. I have no idea why, because I remember telling it to scale the image to the correct length. I only realised once I'd blocked out the hull in minecraft and thought it looked really small, so I scrapped that and started again. I'll probably try to get her finished in the next couple of days.
I'm now at 113/249 ships, approaching the halfway point.. And as I've said before, those numbers will shoot up when I do some more of the Destroyer/Torpedoboot classes, since they're quick to build and there were lots of them. The Admiralty 'M' class alone will add 37 ships to the group when I get around to building those.
I won't be doing anything on this now until the new year. I think the first build for 2015 will have to be something fairly substantial, so I'm going to say at this point that I'll do HMS Lion. She was the flagship of the Royal Navy Battlecruiser Fleet under Vice Admiral Beatty.
The Lion class (consisting of HMS Lion and HMS Princess Royal) and their near-sister HMS Queen Mary led the British battlecruiser line. Lion was Vice Admiral Beatty's flagship. She led the line and duelled with Hipper's flagship Lützow, and was nearly destroyed when Lützow scored a hit on her Q turret. She was saved by the mortally wounded turret commander who ordered the magazine flooded to prevent an explosion.
Her sister ship Princess Royal was second in line, and fought against Derfflinger, though for large parts of the battle she was obscured by smoke from hits on Lion. That caused Derfflinger to switch her fire to Queen Mary, soon destroying her in a magazine explosion. Queen Mary sank with 1,266 deaths. Only 20 men survived.
I've got two screenshots. One represents both the Lion class ships (I've named it after Lion since she was Beatty's flagship), and the other one is Queen Mary. Queen Mary differed from the Lions in that she was just slightly larger, the arrangement of her secondary armament was a little different and the officers' quarters were moved back to their traditional place in the stern instead of the current trend of putting them near their action stations amidships. Having the officers' quarters in the stern is probably the reason why Queen Mary was the first battlecruiser fitted with a sternwalk.
Interestingly, I used to think they looked weird. It was because of Q turret placement in between the second and third funnels, when it makes much more sense to me if they had grouped the funnels together and put that turret as a superfiring turret aft. But after having looked up lots of reference pictures and spent quite a while building them, I've grown to appreciate the beauty of these ships. Don't get me wrong, I still think it was a daft design choice. And when they fixed it on HMS Tiger, well, she was one lovely looking ship. I love HMS Tiger enough that I think I'll save her for last; an extra little motivation to finish the whole project. I can't not do Tiger!
I've added them both to the first post with a similar explanation to above.
I think next I'll do some more destroyers and/or torpedo boats. I reckon the next capital ship I do will probably be SMS Moltke, though I'm also tempted to do another of the British battleships that I can convert from my Orion or Iron Duke.
I've decided that I didn't really like the screenshot that I had up for SMS Lützow, so I've taken a new one and replaced it in the first post. I figured I'd put it here as well as a follow up to the Lion class post, since this is the ship which was duelling with Lion and nearly sank her.
HMS Canada was originally built in Britain for the Chilean Navy as the lead ship of the Almirante Latorre class, which was a fairly common arrangement at the time. In the years before the First World War lots of nations wanted modern battleships, but it was only really the European powers and the USA that had the expertise and industry to design and build them. So those countries placed orders abroad, mainly with British and American shipyards.
A dreadnought arms race had taken off in South America. Brazil ordered ships from Britain, followed by Argentina ordering ships from the USA. Chile then ordered a pair of ships from the British company Armstrong Whitworth. They based the design on the new British Iron Duke class, with some alterations. The forecastle was shorter but the quarterdeck was longer, and the ship was a bit longer overall. The funnels were larger, an aft mast was added and the secondary armament laid out a litle differently.
Almirante Latorre was nearly finished when war broke out. Britain bought her from Chile and commissioned her into the Royal Navy as HMS Canada in 1915. She served in the Grand Fleet through the rest of WWI, including at Jutland. After the war, she was sold back to Chile where she served under her original name until the 1950s. Her sister ship Almirante Cochrane was a long way from being finished when the war started. Britain bought her too, and eventually converted her into an aircraft carrier named HMS Eagle. She served with the Royal Navy until she was sunk in WWII.
I used my HMS Iron duke as a base for conversion, but there has had to be a substantial remodelling. I've kept the basic hull, but adjusted it slightly and lengthened it. I also kept the main turrets and the basic structure of the main mast and funnels. But most of that has been at least tweaked and modified. As always, I've added her to the first post.