Refits

[ston5883]

So a last night I was thinking about the campaign of this game and a question arose. As we research new tech will we be able to refit existing ships we already built or will we have to start from scratch? I know there are quite a few things that you simply couldn't refit but other things like the powder or radar shouldn't be a problem to install into an existing hull. This would help to extend the life of our designs and save some money in the process. It just doesn't make much sense to create a whole new ship just because you invented a better way to propel your shells.

[RedParadize]

Asked myself the same question in here. I do not see much solution to this, not without upgrade applied to models.

[ston5883]

2 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Asked myself the same question in here. I do not see much solution to this, not without upgrade applied to models.

Well in the quick mission design we can have whatever foremast we choose and mount radar so it's not like the one we choose limits us on if we can install it. It just seems to limit us on weight, funds, and size. So no matter what the model looks like, as long as we have the spare weight on the ship I would think we should be able to mount that upgrade. Same with propellants. I think it would come down to what we are trying to upgrade. Some of them don't seem feasible like taking a ship with 6 inch turrets and slapping 12 inch on it but then again I don't know how big of a gun upgrade some ships got historically. 

[NoZaku]

39 minutes ago, ston5883 said:

Well in the quick mission design we can have whatever foremast we choose and mount radar so it's not like the one we choose limits us on if we can install it. It just seems to limit us on weight, funds, and size. So no matter what the model looks like, as long as we have the spare weight on the ship I would think we should be able to mount that upgrade. Same with propellants. I think it would come down to what we are trying to upgrade. Some of them don't seem feasible like taking a ship with 6 inch turrets and slapping 12 inch on it but then again I don't know how big of a gun upgrade some ships got historically. 

Doubling of caliber is a bit ridiculous in a realistic sense, however increase of caliber in exchange for reduced number of guns has been done as refits historically. The most obvious example is the refit of the Mogami class from 15 155mm guns in five triple turrets to 10 203mm guns in five twin turrets. Another would be the refitting of some American submarines to carry 102mm or 127mm deck guns instead of the previously common 75mm guns.

[ston5883]

14 minutes ago, NoZaku said:

Doubling of caliber is a bit ridiculous in a realistic sense, however increase of caliber in exchange for reduced number of guns has been done as refits historically. The most obvious example is the refit of the Mogami class from 15 155mm guns in five triple turrets to 10 203mm guns in five twin turrets. Another would be the refitting of some American submarines to carry 102mm or 127mm deck guns instead of the previously common 75mm guns.

Right which is why I was saying some things I can see new hulls. Do we know how much cutting they had to do to mount those guns or was it a case that the holes in the hull was the same diameter?

[RAMJB]

2 hours ago, NoZaku said:

Doubling of caliber is a bit ridiculous in a realistic sense, however increase of caliber in exchange for reduced number of guns has been done as refits historically. The most obvious example is the refit of the Mogami class from 15 155mm guns in five triple turrets to 10 203mm guns in five twin turrets. Another would be the refitting of some American submarines to carry 102mm or 127mm deck guns instead of the previously common 75mm guns.

That it was done doesn't mean it was a common thing. 

The US subs were given 3'' guns but the mount hardpoint itself was designed to handle up to 5 in guns. It was the result of frontally opposite views on the usefulness of the deck gun by those who were in command at the time (who favored small guns) vs those who were coming up (who favored big guns). In the end the compomise was reached where the submarines would be fitted with 3'' guns, but the mounts would be big enough and stressed to mount bigger ones if needed. So when that change happened during WW2 it wasn't the result of a sudden urge of upgrading those weapons - it had been intended all along that those guns could be easily replaced with something bigger if need arised.


Mogamis are also a similar exception. The japanese didn't want Mogami as anything other than a 8'' armed heavy cruiser. But they had already filled their allotment of heavy cruiser tonnage the London Treaty allowed them to have; so they cheated around the treaty by building those ships with 6'' triples that could be swapped almost overnight by 8'' dual mounts. Both turret designs were intentionally designed for that swap - same turret ring dimensions, similar traversing gear, similar overall tonnage. The ship structures and mechanisms were designed too with the swap in mind: shell handling mechanisms, shell and charge elevators on the barbette, every bit necessary was designed and built so they could handle both a 155mm shell or a 203mm one with the same efficiency.

In essence the mogamis were designed with everything needed to make it a LEGO(tm) experience so you could pop out the 6'' triples and plug in the 8'' duples, and be good to go almost instantly without needing to bother with anything else. And were built that way. And were rearmed that way.

So, it was a case of a class of ships designed with a changeover of weapons in the future, mounting turrets designed for the same purpose of being easy to swap with each other. Not a case of a ship that during a mid-life refit someone came with the idea of upgunning it on the spot without any kind of previous plans for that. Because the Mogamis, by being the exception that did such a swap succesfully, is also a role model why those gun swaps were far more complex and costly than they were worth, in ships that had not been designed for that upgrade in mind since the get go.



Another instance, but out of the other end of the spectrum would be the Twins. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were given 11'' triple mounts, we all know that. But there's a lot of myth surrounding their "proposed" upgunning to the 15'' turrets of Bismarck, a lot of people believing that those ships were built with the specific intention of going through that upgrade. That myth that doesn't resist much analysis.

For one the 15'' turret that later was adopted for Bismarck had not been designed by the time the Scharnhorst design was complete and sent to the yards. It's impossible to account for such an upgrade in your design when you don't even know the final dimensions of the turret you're going to place in those barbettes in a distant future. This is a long way to say that the german designers, unlike the japanese ones involved with Mogami, finalized the Scharnhorst design for 280mm guns, without even giving any thought to any weapon upscaling. 

What really happened is that during the construction process there still were (well founded) concerns about those guns not being big enough. And, once the Bismarck class was greenlighted with 15'' turrets someone actually bothered to do some approximate measurements and find out that the 280mm triple turret ring and barbette structures were of similar enough dimensions (though not identical) to those of the 380mm duple turret's as to allow a not-that-overly-complicated upgunning of the class on a later stage.
But notice several parts. First - unlike with the Mogamis, the Scharnhorsts weren't designed nor built with that turret swap in mind, and the turrets themselves weren't designed to be swappable. By an accident and coincidence they ended up in similar enough turret ring dimensions as to not make the upgunning a not-that-complicated affair, but still a pretty convoluted one. Nothing like the mogamis at all which were designed with two different sets of .... "plug and play" turrets. For a lack of better definition. The process of upgunning a scharhorst to 380mm guns would've involved a quite major project as other than the turret dimensions, nothing else in the design contemplated that upgrade. From the barbette mechanisms to bring shells up and down (that weren't adequate for the 380mm much heavier shell) to the magazines themselves, lots of things needed to be worked on for that weapon changeover to be effective. And the hull itself wasn't deemed big enough for guns that big and all proposals to upscale those ships' weapons needed a complete overhaul of the hull bows. Accordingly even while those projects were considered, and existed, the Kriegsmarine never really fully intended to go through with them. Not at least until Gneisenau got written off by that bomb on her magazine - then the germans decided that if they were going to bother rebuilding the whole fore half of the ship - as it needed to be done after that damage- they might aswell go through with the 380mm upgunning proposals that had happened pre-war.


It all shows very well that the idea of "meh, I'll just upscale my triple turrets with dual ones of a bigger caliber" isn't one that really worked that way. Yes, it was done in some cases, but in the cases where that happened, that upgunning was something that the designers had in mind during the design process of the ships and turrets themselves. If that wasn't the case, "upgunnning" a ship was a tremendously complicated affair, far too expensive, costly, complex, and involved, as to really get it going.
 

so I do expect the game to allow you to do those mid-life refit weapon upgrades if you REALLY want to - but the associated cost should be equal to the actual complication of the task at hand.

 

Edited December 28, 2019 by RAMJB

[roachbeef]

The way to handle this is to send you back to the ship designer when you want a refit, except that you're limited in the hull types you can choose. However, the refit will still be cheaper and less time-consuming than if you were to build a ship from scratch.

[NoZaku]

40 minutes ago, ston5883 said:

Right which is why I was saying some things I can see new hulls. Do we know how much cutting they had to do to mount those guns or was it a case that the holes in the hull was the same diameter?

As I recall it, they slotted in entirely new turret assemblies, and reconfigured the surrounding barbettes. 

 

1 hour ago, RAMJB said:

That it was done doesn't mean it was a common thing. 

The US subs were given 3'' guns but the mount hardpoint itself was designed to handle up to 5 in guns. It was the result of frontally opposite views on the usefulness of the deck gun by those who were in command at the time (who favored small guns) vs those who were coming up (who favored big guns). In the end the compomise was reached where the submarines would be fitted with 3'' guns, but the mounts would be big enough and stressed to mount bigger ones if needed. So when that change happened during WW2 it wasn't the result of a sudden urge of upgrading those weapons - it had been intended all along that those guns could be easily replaced with something bigger if need arised.


Mogamis are also a similar exception. The japanese didn't want Mogami as anything other than a 8'' armed heavy cruiser. But they had already filled their allotment of heavy cruiser tonnage the London Treaty allowed them to have; so they cheated around the treaty by building those ships with 6'' triples that could be swapped almost overnight by 8'' dual mounts. Both turret designs were intentionally designed for that swap - same turret ring dimensions, similar traversing gear, similar overall tonnage. The ship structures and mechanisms were designed too with the swap in mind: shell handling mechanisms, shell and charge elevators on the barbette, every bit necessary was designed and built so they could handle both a 155mm shell or a 203mm one with the same efficiency.

In essence the mogamis were designed with everything needed to make it a LEGO(tm) experience so you could pop out the 6'' triples and plug in the 8'' duples, and be good to go almost instantly without needing to bother with anything else. And were built that way. And were rearmed that way.

So, it was a case of a class of ships designed with a changeover of weapons in the future, mounting turrets designed for the same purpose of being easy to swap with each other. Not a case of a ship that during a mid-life refit someone came with the idea of upgunning it on the spot without any kind of previous plans for that. Because the Mogamis, by being the exception that did such a swap succesfully, is also a role model why those gun swaps were far more complex and costly than they were worth, in ships that had not been designed for that upgrade in mind since the get go.



Another instance, but out of the other end of the spectrum would be the Twins. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were given 11'' triple mounts, we all know that. But there's a lot of myth surrounding their "proposed" upgunning to the 15'' turrets of Bismarck, a lot of people believing that those ships were built with the specific intention of going through that upgrade. That myth that doesn't resist much analysis.

For one the 15'' turret that later was adopted for Bismarck had not been designed by the time the Scharnhorst design was complete and sent to the yards. It's impossible to account for such an upgrade in your design when you don't even know the final dimensions of the turret you're going to place in those barbettes in a distant future. This is a long way to say that the german designers, unlike the japanese ones involved with Mogami, finalized the Scharnhorst design for 280mm guns, without even giving any thought to any weapon upscaling. 

What really happened is that during the construction process there still were (well founded) concerns about those guns not being big enough. And, once the Bismarck class was greenlighted with 15'' turrets someone actually bothered to do some approximate measurements and find out that the 280mm triple turret ring and barbette structures were of similar enough dimensions (though not identical) to those of the 380mm duple turret's as to allow a not-that-overly-complicated upgunning of the class on a later stage.
But notice several parts. First - unlike with the Mogamis, the Scharnhorsts weren't designed nor built with that turret swap in mind, and the turrets themselves weren't designed to be swappable. By an accident and coincidence they ended up in similar enough turret ring dimensions as to not make the upgunning a not-that-complicated affair, but still a pretty convoluted one. Nothing like the mogamis at all which were designed with two different sets of .... "plug and play" turrets. For a lack of better definition. The process of upgunning a scharhorst to 380mm guns would've involved a quite major project as other than the turret dimensions, nothing else in the design contemplated that upgrade. From the barbette mechanisms to bring shells up and down (that weren't adequate for the 380mm much heavier shell) to the magazines themselves, lots of things needed to be worked on for that weapon changeover to be effective. And the hull itself wasn't deemed big enough for guns that big and all proposals to upscale those ships' weapons needed a complete overhaul of the hull bows. Accordingly even while those projects were considered, and existed, the Kriegsmarine never really fully intended to go through with them. Not at least until Gneisenau got written off by that bomb on her magazine - then the germans decided that if they were going to bother rebuilding the whole fore half of the ship - as it needed to be done after that damage- they might aswell go through with the 380mm upgunning proposals that had happened pre-war.


It all shows very well that the idea of "meh, I'll just upscale my triple turrets with dual ones of a bigger caliber" isn't one that really worked that way. Yes, it was done in some cases, but in the cases where that happened, that upgunning was something that the designers had in mind during the design process of the ships and turrets themselves. If that wasn't the case, "upgunnning" a ship was a tremendously complicated affair, far too expensive, costly, complex, and involved, as to really get it going.
 

so I do expect the game to allow you to do those mid-life refit weapon upgrades if you REALLY want to - but the associated cost should be equal to the actual complication of the task at hand.

 

I agree entirely with most of your points here, was just answering a previous post by another user with the (as you've pointed out) few and rather rare examples that did occur. 

[Whomst'd've]

Refits regarding towers/superstructures should definitely be allowed in the complete campaign, as well as the refitting of boiler/engine rooms. That would enable players to pull off what was done to Renown, Warspite, Kongo, Pennsylvania etc. Taking what would be an obsolete vessel and bringing them back up to a competitive state. As for refits regarding main guns, you will notice all the ships mentioned did not have their main weapons changed, exactly for the reasons stated by @RAMJB. Refits regarding main weapons should be restricted to what was done on HMS Vanguard, where her old turrets were cut to give the ability to elevate the guns to 30°, modernized the power and operating systems of the turret and upgraded the rangefinders. The only exception to this would be boring out the main guns to increase the caliber of shell fired at the cost of accuracy and gun barrel life (as what was done to Italian battleship Giulio Cesare, where her original 305mm (12 inch) guns were bored out to 320mm (12.6 inch)), or what was done with the Mogami class cruiser.  

[CenturionsofRome]

Has there ever been a case, real or considered, of replacing a warship's main armament with guns of the same caliber but of more modern construction? i.e. replacing a 12/50 MK1 with a 12/50MK2?

[disc]

It is important to say that the 155mm turrets on Mogami did not have the same dimensions as the previous 203mm turrets. In fact, they were bigger. They had a larger turret ring and a slightly greater overall weight. Neither, from my study, was there much in common in shell handling beyond the basics. When the decision came down to rearm, special turrets were needed to fit the bigger barrettes, a version of the "E" style usually called the "Mogami" or "E2 modified" type.

The Tone class was also originally to have carried 155mm turrets. Midway through construction, it was decided to use 203mm guns. Rather than use bigger turrets, the barbettes were necked down to form a curious conical shape. Their E3 turrets retained the smaller dimensions of the E and E2 turrets on the Takaos and Furutakas.

The Ibuki class, basically a variant on Mogami, was always intended to have 203 turrets and so had smaller cylindrical barbettes. They retained the oddly close positioning of turrets No.1 and No.2, but this may have been for expediency.

The jury is still out on whether the 155-203 change on Mogami and Tone was strictly intended from the start. Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War is fairly equivocal. The Mogami class was designed well before the decision to abandon the Treaty system. One suspects the fairly similar dimensions of the 155 and 203 turrets stems more from a desire to maintain gunpower despite a decrease in gun caliber, rather than a plot to eventually subvert the London Naval Treaty. That tactical homogeneity could be bettered with the 203 refit was probably a happy side effect.

There are persistent claims in general histories that the gun change was always the idea, but I have seen little positive evidence for this idea. 

Then again, the Mogami class was a twisted monstrosity from the start, so it is hard to say what fever dreams of the Fleet Faction were at play even then.

 

The main problem with broad characterizations of refits is the Treaty system. So much of what we did and did not see was a consequence of the Washington Naval Treaty, wjich instituted the "battleship holiday." In earlier years, a navy could just build a new, better battleship, and keep the old unchanged. But the Treaty stopped this, so old ships would have to stay in the frontline. Thus refits were needed.

But the Treaty prohibited changing the main battery on capital ships -- to the extent that the British became very angry when the Americans wanted to increase the elevation limits on their older battleships. Likewise, the refit displacement limit was 3000 tons, so there could not be huge changes.

Still we saw radical reconstructions, though within the Treaty's boundaries. Who can forget the Lexingtons, or the Akagi and Kaga? Had the Treaty allowed, any number of older capital ships may have been transformed to arbitrarily improved designs: but, like the big carriers, it would take a very long time and come at ruinous cost.

The Italians took this idea and ran with the Cavour and Andrea Doria, as has been said. The ships were lengthened, the machinery replaced, the amidship turret removed, the guns bored out, the secondaries replaced, the armor strengthened, and the towers rebuilt. It cost a ton of money, but so it went.

Installed barbettes can limit the size of new guns, but if the expense was accepted, they could be replaced... in theory. Bigger guns add a lot of topweight, so any refit design needs either fewer guns or new bulges, or both.

Smaller vessels could undergo extreme battery changes over their lives. The Royal Navy's C and D antiaircraft cruisers are a nice example, as are Japan's Isuzu, Maya, Kitakami, and Furutaka.

 

19 minutes ago, CenturionsofRome said:

Has there ever been a case, real or considered, of replacing a warship's main armament with guns of the same caliber but of more modern construction? i.e. replacing a 12/50 MK1 with a 12/50MK2?

Yes. The Japanese Furutaka, Aoba, and Myoko classes all upgraded from the 20cm Type 3 No.1 to the 20.32cm Type 3 No.2. Many US cruisers upgraded from the 8in/55 Mk9 to the Mk12, 14, or 15.

Edited December 30, 2019 by disc

[AML]

24 minutes ago, CenturionsofRome said:

Has there ever been a case, real or considered, of replacing a warship's main armament with guns of the same caliber but of more modern construction? i.e. replacing a 12/50 MK1 with a 12/50MK2?

As disc says above the IJN and USN both upgraded their 8in guns but otherwise it was not very common as far as I know. 

Especially when looking at pre-WW1 refits to various cruisers you usually see a larger main gun getting swapped for something smaller, Franz Joseph-I class mounting new 15cm's in place of the old 24cm guns for example.

[disc]

There were a few more same-caliber gun upgrades in our timeframe.

 

On the US battleships New York, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the 14in/45 went through a few iterations, ending up with a bigger chamber and greater muzzle velocity.

There was a great amount of fiddling with the US 14in/50, but I would call this troubleshooting more than anything.

The French Bretagne battleships upgraded from the 340mm Mle.1912 to the Mle.1912M. Unfortunately I do not know what really changed.

There were various guns, like the Japanese 14cm Type 3, which changed from wire-wound to built up or monobloc construction during their production runs. These guns were often functionally identical, though, and accounts tend not distinguish between the variants; often there was no particular "upgrade program."

 

That's it for main batteries on cruisers, battleships, battlecruisers, and carriers, to my knowledge. It was much more common to change shells, propellants, or turret arrangements, rather than the gun itself: this could make great changes to gun performance.

There might be more examples from the big shift from black powder to smokeless powder, but I must profess ignorance there. If you change your criteria to allow secondary batteries and different calibers, then examples abound.

Edited December 31, 2019 by disc

[TAKTCOM]

Something like that, I suppose.

 

[Reaper Jack]

5 hours ago, TAKTCOM said:

Something like that, I suppose.

 

Adjusting engine power/size and armor would also be hard. Engines due to needing to rip out half the ship to get to them, and armor again due to needing to essentially rip the ship apart and rebuild it, with some rare cases (Andrea Doria class, Kongo Class) this was done on a large scale, but not often. And of those two I am fairly sure the armor was barely touched in either case, though the engines were replaced/rebuilt in both classes. Which for the Kongos especially lead to a dramatic increase in speed. 

[akd]

My impression is that adding additional deck armor was easier than altering vertical armor.

[Reaper Jack]

1 hour ago, akd said:

My impression is that adding additional deck armor was easier than altering vertical armor.

In some designs perhaps, adding deck armor to a turtleback would be a nightmare regardless, and adding any armor to the deck would still require ripping out the old armor under the superstructure, barbettes etc. and replacing it, you can't just slap extra plates on top either, that's a half assed job that will throw top stability completely out of whack. 

Belt armor is again, doable but not worth the effort usually. The Deutschland class pre Graf Spee had planned minor upgrades to bring them to the 100mm belt standard of the Graf Spee, though these plans were only realized under construction for the Admiral Scheer, and then only partially, and the Deutschland itself was never upgraded armor-wise post construction. From wikipedia - 'Admiral Scheer and Admiral Graf Spee had some improvements in armor thickness. The barbettes, 100 mm thick in Deutschland, became 125 mm for the two sisters. Admiral Scheer had the belt somewhat improved, and Admiral Graf Spee had a much more improved 100 mm belt, instead of 50–80 mm. The armored deck was improved as well, and some places had up to 70 mm thickness.' 

Some ships did receive changes to their belt armor, but this was exceedingly rare and when done tended to be minor changes at best. 

Edited January 3, 2020 by Reaper Jack

[disc]

External belt armor is fairly easy to change. It's bolted to the ship's structure, and contributes no girder strength of its own -- it just hangs off. British heavy cruisers received extensive upgrades later in their lives. Structurally integral belts (like on IJN heavy cruisers) or internal belts would be much harder to repair or replace.

Per the Washington Naval Treaty, cruisers had to stay within 10000 long tons, or at least within the 10300 ton "gentlemen's agreement" refit limit, so refits couldn't add much more armor. The Americans certainly could have upgraded the armor of the Pensacolas and Northamptons, given their gross underweight, but it seems there was little interest in such refits -- probably it made more sense just to build new ships with better armor.

The Washington Naval Treaty banned alterations to capital ship belt armor, except for France, Italy, and on HMS Renown.

[ston5883]

When I started this thread I didn't realize all the depth different nations put into it or some of the tricks they used to try and stay within the treaty. I am happy it has taken off though because I get to learn and it shows an intrest from the player base. I have not seen one clear "no this shouldn't be allowed" it's been more of what is viable and what isn't. If the developers are reading the forums this puts another option into their idea box and if they have the time and money to develop a refit system it will be interesting to see how they will handle it. Keep the ideas coming guys because the more we talk about it the more things the developers will have to pull from.

[TAKTCOM]

14 hours ago, Reaper Jack said:

Adjusting engine power/size and armor would also be hard.

 Yes, you're right about the engine. So I highlighted it in red. It’s more difficult with armor. Replacing iron armor with Krupp armor is a difficult and expensive task. Add armor to the bridge, or put shatterproof shields for small-caliber guns - very easy. Extra armor on belt, or deck? Depends on the armor scheme, but rather difficult than simple. Try to strengthen the armor of the already built protected cruiser.