Mike, The greatest interest seems to be in the more powerful Dreadnought versus either armored cruiser. A Dreadnought hull can also be used for the Bellerophon Class. Mike Deskin is mailing plans for the hypothetical British G3 Class battlecruisers. I'll wait to see what they're like before deciding what hull to make next. That said, my preference is for small hulls that can be air mailed versus big ones that have to be shipped by Fedex or UPS. Bob
I think the Dreadnought/Bellerophon hull would be GREAT in the hobby. That short, with twin rudders and little target area...should just be a beast among the slower ships.
True Mikey, I have the Anatomy of the Ship book on Dreadnought with full hull lines and multiple sections. Another ship I have good hull plans for is HMS Agincourt. That's one Ralph Coles started and abandoned 10 years ago but a ship I've long thought of modelling. Do you think there'd be as much interset in it as in Dreadnought? Bob
Bob, I'd be interested to know your source of plans for HMS Agincourt. I looked and long ago abandoned hope of finding good plans for the Gin Palace short of NMM...
R.A. Burt's 'British Battleships of World War One' (Naval Institute Press; OOP) has several pages of detailed Agincourt drawings. They include outboard profiles in 1914 and 1918, plan view, complete hull profile and 18 hull cross sections (about one section per 3" of 1/144 scale hull length). The drawings are of high quality and more than sufficient to build an accurate hull plug. The book is a gold mine for WWI Royal Navy capital ship information. It has outboard profile and plan views for all but is short on hull cross sections for over half the ships. Agincourt is one of the few with enough cross sections to make a hull plug. Unfortunately there are none for HMS Tiger or Canada. Bob
Id like to see the G.Averof, personally, or the sms Blucher. I know my vote is late, but hey, i voted : )
I just finished a new book called BATTLESHIPS OF WORLD WAR 1 by Peter Hore. This edition is a decent book but the photographs are great. I just finished reading about the Agincourt and Bellephoron. Recommended for Source material or for a good read on the ships in this hobby that you generally don't hear a lot about. Heck it even has the HMS TERROR monitor on the cover.
"Another ship I have good hull plans for is HMS Agincourt. That's one Ralph Coles started and abandoned 10 years ago but a ship I've long thought of modelling. Do you think there'd be as much interset in it as in Dreadnought?" Bob- I doubt there would be much interest outside of Treaty for an Agincourt. Her maneuverability would just be too poor. Treaty captains might like her, but even then, I think it would only be a limited number of captains who were interested.
Agincourt's hull would be quite easy to model and mold but there was little if any interest in it from the IRCWCC captains. That's why Ralph scrapped his plug (and HMS Erin's) in the framing stage. In Treaty there are many other British ships with the same combat units but superior maneuverability due to twin rudders. I can't see anyone putting the effort into making a mold for a hull that's unlikely to sell. Bob
HMS Erin I think is the best ship nobody knows about. With dual rudders and that unholy length to beam ratio, she's probably be the best turning Allied battleship out there. Erin would be a handful for the WW1 German dreadnoughts which make up most of the IRCWCC Axis fleet. As for Agincourt, I agree with you Bob. Aside from looking cool, she doesn't have much of anything in her favor, and would be more of a liability in the IRCWCC. Even the single rudder USN Standard type battleships (Nevada through Coloados and the Texas class, not truly a standard) would turn better due to their shorter length and would still have the same number of units.
I'd think the 12 inchers would be a bit puny using a big gun type rules set...not to mention her sorry armor...
Erin would be a great ship for the Allieds, I don't know if it would be a handfull, but she can match up one on one, better than any other Allied boat out there. But I have noticed most Allieds do not want to give up that 2 seconds of speed, and go 28 sec. But if the Allied's had 3 or 4 Erins in the battle, they could hold their own for sure.
12" guns translate to 7/32" shot, which is a solid battleship caliber. a 9" belt translates to 3/32" armor, middleweight but still strong. And the 7x twin turrets is a huge number of guns. Agincourt will become a very interesting ship in Big Gun in the next few years, as Computer Fire Control becomes more readily available. With a decent CFC in that ship, you could bring all 14 guns to bear on any target in either 90-degree broadside arc. I imagine such a broadside would make for excellent shore bombardment, and score a lot of long-range and medium-range hits on moving targets.
