RedBear87

Agreed. Not even twenty were sent to the Middle East in support of the Iraqi, Italy received only a handful out of twenty-four requested in 1942 to defend Milan... From the point of view of Goring it would place a completely unacceptable strain on the other operations of the Luftwaffe, Bismarck would better stay in port if it can't otherwise sortie in the Atlantic.

Like when... you have to troll WG's developers with hard, trustworthy data?

I forgot to mention it, but the guns are stated to be 37mm in those Spanish specifications posted by Stefano on Picasa. Likewise I would like to read his opinion about it, anyway.

This is the light cruiser version of the cruiser studies made by Ansaldo for the Franchist navy, I really don't know much else about those studies, but Maurizio Brescia believes that they're probably unrelated from the infamous (and nebulous) Costanzo Ciano, notwithstanding that the silhouette is reminiscent of Abruzzi. A couple of notes about the specifications, according to the data that Stefano made available the deck had a maximum thickness of 120mm (I suppose above the magazines?); probably it was a typo but the armament should be 37mm AA guns, instead of 57mm, the whole suite is standard Italian armament at the beginning of the 1940s. And a minor note about the title, in both this and the previous thread about the 1920s cruiser you've misspelled Ansaldo.

Off-topic? Actually I suppose even the regular Modern Warships section would have been fitting for an effectively quite curious picture.

I agree with Thorontir. Also I have to say that this anime is increasingly exceeding my, admittedly low, initial expectations.

Technically it was a storm to sink that fleet.

Bouclier and Bisson are very similar, while Aventurier was a terrible disaster as far as I know, even after being re-engineered with German machinery post-war she still barely made 26 knots, I suggest Enseigne Roux (in particular Enseigne Gabolde as top preset) for tier III. Tier IV is difficult, my best candidates are the reparation destroyers, French destroyers made a huge jump from pre-WWI to the ones of the middle 1920s, they lack something of comparable to the late WWI destroyers. It would be interesting to know if the lucky engineers that were spared from the front didn't draw/plan something. EDIT: Arabe is probably closer to tier II, but it's not a critical decision at the moment. The torpedo boats La Melpomène and Le Fier could make for other potential low tier premiums.

And I'm the blind one, only now I noticed the credits in the top right corner. Only one note about the premiums, Atlanta appears to be tier VIII and the premium Fletcher tier IX, is it intentional? I don't think the premium Fletcher has been mentioned recently and in the last revision Atlanta had a unknown tier.

Who do we have to thank for the new picture? Did you make it yourself?

There's little to gain from having one main turret back and it appears Gascogne had somewhat thinner armour, she's better as "preset" (alternative hull) or premium. Tier X are 65,000 tons monsters like Yamato and Montana, Alsace is probably tier IX material in its larger (45,000 tons) variation, size-wise is close to Iowa, the weight of the broadside is a little lower, though.

The problem is: which benchmark will we use then? The Japanese tree? It doesn't look that bad, but the Japanese fits well with the kind of progression light cruiser>heavy cruiser that WG applied to the American tree. The former, I think. It's a good idea to aim at a common minimum, otherwise other countries will feature pure fantasy designs. Is the 12 381mm guns version of Alsace competitive enough for tier IX? The version with triple 381mm or 406mm turrets doesn't really seem to be much of an improvement over other tier VIII.

Hello. I actually think carriers and cruisers are the most difficult trees to build, carriers because there are holes and many French projects appear to be pretty obscure, cruisers are difficult for any country as long as Cleveland class will be there teasing everyone else at middle tier. I would definitely say that Clemenceau (the tier X) can't be implemented because of the angled flight deck. Independence class (La Fayette) was said (I think recently) to be tier VI, it's peculiar that you placed her above the Colossus (Arromanches), the British purpose-built light carrier is superior and I think it could remain there. I'm less familiar with the other designs, but Béarn should be fine at tier V.

Well, any system of this kind is made out of convenience, the numbers were used in chronological order. I'm not sure about that repetition, honestly I saw confusion between B64 being given as both an Amagi class variation and an initial design of the Super Heavy Cruiser, Azu, Elouda and others discussed it here. But the existence of two B65 is something I didn't notice before.

Bumping to mention that I noticed the following in development indexes for the proposed September 1941 Maru 5 in Lacroix's Japanese Cruisers (page 605): V-16: Super Type A cruiser (B-65) V-17: Type B cruiser (C-44) V-18: Anti-aircraft cruiser

Well, circumstances can excuse Richelieu, she had been completed during the war, without being allowed to complete fitting out and at Dakar she was using reconditioned propellant charges from Strasbourg since she didn't manage to load enough charges before leaving France. The two Mogador even after their refit in early 1940 were still unsatisfactory.

There's room for doubt in this claim, Capitani Romani class cruisers were intended to be stationed in Italian East Africa, the initial classification of "esploratori oceanici" betrayed that they were intended to be more than an answer to the never-ending series of large French destroyers. A closer match to Fantasque would have been Tashkent, artillery and torpedo armament are almost identical, even displacement is similar. Mogador was a failure with turrets prone to jamming and wasteful torpedo armament layout, I'll have a hard time screaming "French bias" if they will have more than 3-4 RPM.

A cruiser-destroyer should be a hybrid by definition. To be honest Capitani Romani isn't very destroyer-like either, they don't really resemble anything built before actually. I'm still here wondering if they read U.S. Cruisers by Friedman or even simply looked at the related designs on the Spring Styles #3... Without mentioning that Atlanta class cruisers are famous enough, especially because of those that were sunk, to upset some people, I already cringed at the idea of Yubari becoming premium, but at least it was a single-ship class. Also there were not indifferent changes between the ships of the three batches. In one word: meh.

Why do you think this is more like a cruiser than a destroyer? For the 30lb of STS armour?

There's no picture of the 5-in/54 version in Friedman's book, but it's a variation of this design, as it's mentioned in the description; only 40 tons were saved using the 5-in gun.

I still don't understand why they can't use the cruiser-destroyer with 5-in/54 guns as tier X... Is Gearing really a match for Shimakaze?

Well, they're more broadly alternative history anime, a more recent example of this genre was Zipang. The anime has been subbed/dubbed, but it doesn't cover the whole story, while the original manga has been dropped years ago by whoever was translating it...

Another possible premium CLAA is the proposed conversion of Ancona, I don't know much about it but Stefano has the plans here. It could be difficult to implement because I think speed is lowish, 21 knots according to an article of Storia Militare about the proposed conversion in colonial cruiser which used the same machinery arrangement, while the armament is quite heavy, even though it's not terribly modern (they're 100mm/47 identical to the ones of the cruisers).

Yeah, the anime is an adaptation of the ongoing manga, it becomes significantly different starting from episode 4 iirc.