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Subject: And now for something completely different...RAAF chooses EE Lightning over Mirage.
Volkodav    5/24/2009 4:55:42 AM
The Lightning was a contender for RAAF how serious a contender I don't know. The main choice always seemed to be between the Mirage and the Lockheed Starfighter with the Phantom and Lightning being only bit players. The Lightning was apparently ruled out due to it's lack of ground attack capability, not that the Mirage was a wiz in the air to ground department either. The RR Avon and Ferranti Airpass radar of the Lightning were actually considered for the baseline Mirage III EO as they would have offered significantly improved performance. Imagine now that the RAAF had selected an evolved derivative of the Lightning. Would we have used it in Vietnam? What modifications and improvements would it have incorporated? What upgrades would it received during its life? What weapons would it have been certified for,i.e. Sidewinder, Paveway? What would the sale to Australia have meant for the program as a whole and then for the British and Austrlaian aviation industries?
 
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Volkodav       6/29/2009 7:16:49 AM

A simple modernisation for the 'gift' cruisers would be the replacement of B turret with a Mk13 Tartar while keeping A and X for NGS.

Where do you stick the radars again? An air director center goes with such a set up.. If you are going to gut that much superstructure and rebuild it to fit one into a "gun" cruiser, double end the ships, and go whole hog AAW. Save your gunfire line in your destroyers since they should do well enough for shore fire gun support, and don't do a DDX "battleship" debacle forty years too early. Let Uncle make that mistake all by himself.
In answer to this I will quote a knowledgable contributer to this site who has suggested a radar fit for the Tigers.

"With a barbette ship (Tiger) the framing that you have to chop out, and rebuild is much less; and if you can gut the barbette cylinder and fit the Terrier launcher revolver magazine inside it, you get an armored magazine as well as a reduced top-weight problem that allows you to fit a huge 983 3 D radar and the Type 83 Yellow Rivers for missile guidance. 
"
 
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Herald12345       6/29/2009 10:34:06 AM

A simple modernisation for the 'gift' cruisers would be the replacement of B turret with a Mk13 Tartar while keeping A and X for NGS.


Where do you stick the radars again? An air director center goes with such a set up.. If you are going to gut that much superstructure and rebuild it to fit one into a "gun" cruiser, double end the ships, and go whole hog AAW. Save your gunfire line in your destroyers since they should do well enough for shore fire gun support, and don't do a DDX "battleship" debacle forty years too early. Let Uncle make that mistake all by himself.


In answer to this I will quote a knowledgable contributer to this site who has suggested a radar fit for the Tigers.



"With a barbette ship (Tiger) the framing that you have to chop out, and rebuild is much less; and if you can gut the barbette cylinder and fit the Terrier launcher revolver magazine inside it, you get an armored magazine as well as a reduced top-weight problem that allows you to fit a huge 983 3 D radar and the Type 83 Yellow Rivers for missile guidance. 
"


Clever, but then you forget what I also said. "Where does the RAN get the six hundred additional men, and where doers it get the money to extensively rebuild the superstructure to fit the radar? 
 
Herald
 
 
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Volkodav       6/30/2009 8:33:31 AM
Didn't forget, deliberately ommited for dramatic effect. http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Images/emwink.gif" align="absMiddle" border="0" alt="" />
 
To be honest if we had accepted the gift fleet the best way forward would probably have been to leave modernisations to a minimum and start looking for new carriers and escorts to enter service in the late 50's early 60's after 15 or so years service.
 
If the RAN went for a new design carrier something about the size the French Clemenceau would be ideal. It could operate modern aircraft while retaining a crew of around 1300. There were a variety of concept designs produced for the RN during the 50's (which I don't have much info on) including a 35000t design that may have been ideal for the RAN.
 
As for the escorts a pair of DLG's for each carrier would have been a good start, be they modified Counties, or one of my favorites, Leahy class DLG's. The remainder of escorts would likely be Type 12's.
 
The gift carriers and cruiser would pass to reserve and be available for recall to service for Vietnam.
 
 
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Herald12345       6/30/2009 3:28:27 PM

Didn't forget, deliberately ommited for dramatic effect. http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Images/emwink.gif" alt="" align="absmiddle" border="0" />

Still clever. Credit due and given. 

To be honest if we had accepted the gift fleet the best way forward would probably have been to leave modernisations to a minimum and start looking for new carriers and escorts to enter service in the late 50's early 60's after 15 or so years service.

Maybe, but with first generation rockets and radars, I'd just be as happy to use long life hulls like the Minotaur/Swifsure/Tiger mods, buy three and load up on Type 12s or Leanders for the standard ASW  patrol frigate. That puts you into the missile cruiser business as soon as Terrier comes on (1958?)  but still allows you hulls that you can use the New Threat Upgrader onto  in the 1970s. The threat is not so major that you cannot evolve to meet it as we did. Plus you get an actual ten year jump on us with the better color program British radars..       

If the RAN went for a new design carrier something about the size the French Clemenceau would be ideal. It could operate modern aircraft while retaining a crew of around 1300. There were a variety of concept designs produced for the RN during the 50's (which I don't have much info on) including a 35000t design that may have been ideal for the RAN.

 If you do that, then buy an SCB-12 Essex. We nixed that on manpower, though. 

As for the escorts a pair of DLG's for each carrier would have been a good start, be they modified Counties, or one of my favorites, Leahy class DLG's. The remainder of escorts would likely be Type 12's.

 Shrug. We are a long way from the BAE Lighhtning, but that suggestion works too.

The gift carriers and cruiser would pass to reserve and be available for recall to service for Vietnam.

 I hope not like what just happened to HMS Invincible. You have to turn the engine plant over ever so often, you know.


 
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FJV    Not sure you can actually do that unpunished.   7/1/2009 1:22:03 PM
"With a barbette ship (Tiger) the framing that you have to chop out, and rebuild is much less; and if you can gut the barbette cylinder and fit the Terrier launcher revolver magazine inside it, you get an armored magazine as well as a reduced top-weight problem that allows you to fit a huge 983 3 D radar and the Type 83 Yellow Rivers for missile guidance.  "

I've read that during one phase in warship design the entire ship on paper gets "sliced up" like a sausage.
 
Then of each slice the center of gravity, the center of bouyancy and the weight gets calculated.
This is done to prevent any rapid/sharp variations in these parameters between slices.
Sharp variations that cause additional stresses in the hull and influence seaworthyness.
 
The annoying thing is that I cannot find the article on the internet anymore.
 
 
 
 
 

 
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Herald12345       7/1/2009 2:14:49 PM



"With a barbette ship (Tiger) the framing that you have to chop out, and rebuild is much less; and if you can gut the barbette cylinder and fit the Terrier launcher revolver magazine inside it, you get an armored magazine as well as a reduced top-weight problem that allows you to fit a huge 983 3 D radar and the Type 83 Yellow Rivers for missile guidance.  "

I've read that during one phase in warship design the entire ship on paper gets "sliced up" like a sausage.
 

Then of each slice the center of gravity, the center of bouyancy and the weight gets calculated.

This is done to prevent any rapid/sharp variations in these parameters between slices.

Sharp variations that cause additional stresses in the hull and influence seaworthyness.

The annoying thing is that I cannot find the article on the internet anymore.


That is done to prevent flex and bend in the hull. (hogging) which goes for steel ships just as much as it does for wooden ones. You don't want the hull to have too much weight (I refer to this as its understood in gravitation, acceleration and INERTIA) in some segments and not enough in others to induce massive changes in force loading over the length of the ship. This is true for any LONG object in a fluid medium (aircraft for example) so I understand the principle as it causes unnecessary BEND and TWIST. 
 
In this Swiftsure/Tiger case we look at the heavy radars and the lightweight missile launchers and we apply ballast load correction, segment by segmnent. We cut down superstructure where needed and use masts where we install the radar instead of towers and add steel ballast load where we need it, to make up for the lost turret gun house mass in those sections where we remove it.
 
Shipwrights became very good at this (witness the rebuilds of Tennessee, Maryland, and West Virginia), possibly the most fantastic rebuilds in history for the IMPROVEMENT of a ship class type.  The British also became outstanding at this (though no-one ever credits their remodeling of the Type 12s into the Broadbeam Leanders as the CLASSIC example of a hull rework). The critics prefer to remember the Type 22/23 debacles that followed.. 
 
The US SCL and SCB carrier rebuilds show  where you have to be careful when you do a segmented section rebuild. The Essexes were already well desugned so the angled flight decks which were float tank tested on scale models to check calculations were easily fitted. Not so were the Midways.  The Midways were almost ruined because the Brooklyn Navy Yard nitwits put too massive a flight deck on a badly modified Iowa hull originally, and didn't do their buoyancy calculations properly. The carriers were NOSE heavy in aircraft trim parlance. Compounding the problem with a HUGE angled flight deck and deck edge lifts in the rebuilds, drove that poor ship (Midway) almost five feet deeper into the water, made her stern heavy, and made her continuously WET. By godfrey, though, they solved that bow heavy problem!
 
The Princetons also show what bad design loading means. Hogged out and actual death traps while in service, they never should have seen service in a peacetime Navy. Its a miracle we only lost one of them to a bombing.. In that case there was too much end loading with the flight deck overhangs over bow and stern. They bent and twisted in the middle.
 
Just TIDAL gravitatiom forces can ruin ships; never mind slamming them into waves. (Arleigh Burkes) http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Images/emsad.gif" align="absmiddle" border="0" alt="" /> 
 
 
 
 
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