Dilandu wrote:There is no direct analogue to the "King Haarald" class in Earth XIX-XX century navy. Due to her size and characterstics, she have some similarities with the russian armored cruiser "Rurik", build by Vickers in 1906. "Rurik" have four 254-mm/50 guns, eight 203-mm guns in four wing turrets and twenty 120-mm quick-firing guns in casemates.
Actually, "King Haarald" is smaller than "Rurik" by 5000 tonnes, but has a heavier armament, so she probably would be top heavy, and in heavy wether the KH may have some problems.
The main problem, is the "King haarald"'s powerplant. The 300000 HP only on two machines are possible, but the strain on shafts and components would be enormous. The only armored cruiser with 320000 HP - the SMS "Blucher" - has three shafts and engines. Maybe the "King Haarald" should have three or even four too? Or her top speed would be... mostly theoretical.
Not necessarily. Turbines' advantages over last-generation reciprocating engines are often exaggerated. I'm not saying they didn't have a lot going for them or that they didn't ultimately prove a far superior powerplant, but they have their drawbacks (especially early on) and triple-expansion engines were more durable than many of the turbine's armchair proponents will acknowledge. With forced lubrication, the USN was able to run USS Texas' TE reciprocating engines at full power for a period of almost 24 hours without breaking down or needing to reduce power. That was before World War I; by the 1920s, her power plant was old enough it was no longer capable of that level of performance.
The USN's adherence to reciprocating engines in its first dreadnought-class (and the reason it reverted to them in the New Yorks and Oklahoma) without embracing the "innovation" of turbines as enthusiastically as Europe did has often been used to "prove" the Americans' "backwardness" in areas of propulsion design, but that wasn't the case. It's true that US turbine makers took a while to get their hands in, but the real reason the Navy stuck with reciprocating engines as long as it did was fuel economy. The USN had to plan on operating at longer ranges from home (without supporting bases) than any other major navy, and reciprocating engines were retained in no small part because they allowed much greater endurance on the same bunkerage. The operating radius of the early US turbine-engined dreadnoughts was significantly lower than on their reciprocating-engined consorts.
Turbines caused less vibration, were far quieter, could generate and sustain a higher rate of rpm than reciprocating engines, could produce more horsepower in a more compact package, and made for safer engine rooms, but until geared turbines were perfected (which wasn't until about 1912, IIRC), they had to be direct-coupled to the shafts, and that was their Achilles' heel. Turbines work most efficiently at high rpm; propellers turn at relatively (note that I did say "relatively") low rpm. What that means is that turbines were wasting a lot of their power when ships moved at less than high speeds, and low speeds were necessary for economical cruising. IIRC, Oklahoma was the last US battleship to use triple expansion machinery, since geared turbines had become available about the time she and her sister Nevada were being laid down. They were given different power plants in order to evaluate their comparative performance, and the advances in turbine development had finally brought their fuel efficiency up enough to provide the operational radius the Navy wanted.
As for the strain on the King Haarahld's shafts, I think you are overestimating it. The dangerous amounts of strain would be on the moving bits and pieces of her engines, not the shafts themselves, and those are doable. Mind you, no one would want to subject them to that kind of strain for any lengthy period the, and the possibility that King Haarahld is going to spend any extended time cruising at her maximum speed is ludicrous. She can probably sustain 20 knots (Old Earth style) for quite a while, but the maximum speed listed is her trial speed, at maximum power, not her service speed, which always tends to be lower.
That's a point a lot of people seem to lose track of. For example, even though the USN's pre-World War One battleships were criticized as "slow" with their 21-knot trial speeds, they operated with the Grand Fleet's fast wing after the US entered the war. That's because the USN ran trials at normal load whereas other navies tended to run speed trials at reduced draft. According to some sources, the British Queen Elizabeths were capable of as much as 26 knots; actually, they never reached 24 in service, even with clean bottoms. Their designed speed was only 23 knots, although in theory they were supposed to be able to reach 25 at an overload rating of 72,000 shaft horsepower. In fact, at 76,000, they could attain about 23.5 knots. Again, that would be with clean bottoms; a few months at sea would drop any ship's speed. And at full load, it's questionable that the Queen Elizabeth could reach even 23 knots, partly because the designs came in overweight even before their weapons' mix was modified with the passing of time.
As far as Dreadnought's fire control is concerned, I'm well aware of her rangefinders, the data transmission, et cetera. My point was that, even granted all of that, without director control, genuine "long-range" gunnery was still not really possible. With each turret firing individually, however good its range and bearing data might have been, spotting splashes at long ranges and making the proper corrections would be virtually impossible. If I recall correctly, she was never good for much beyond 16,000 yards range (admittedly more than anyone's going to manage without good rangefinders and director control but far short of the 23,000-24,000 yards range of the later British dreadnoughts) because her guns lacked sufficient elevation to reach much farther than that, and her originally intended range was considerably lower than that. In fact, it's pretty obvious that Jackie Fisher wasn't really thinking about long-range gunnery when he rushed her into construction. There are several aspects of her design which indicate that, ranging from the arrangement of her boats to the location of her spotting top where it was guaranteed to be smoked out in action.
And as far as the King Haarahld being top-heavy, where, precisely, does that come from? You are comparing her to Rurik, but you seem to be overlooking the fact that Rurik's weapons (10" and 8") were mounted in turrets, which contributed materially to top weight. The King Haarahld's 10" are mounted in barbettes, with 6" shields (not full turrets with 8" faces), and the 8" are mounted in casemates, which leads to a very significant reduction in weights high in the ship. There's a reason I specified barbette and casemate mounts, and that was — specifically — to reduce top weight and improve stability. She also has more freeboard forward, which will further contribute to seaworthiness.
You really don't like these ships, do you?
They are unfair. They were given to Charis by almost Mary-Sue (ok, well explained Mary-Sue, I admit) style intervention, not by genuine progress like, for example, "Apollo" in Honorverse. They are too powerfull. The enemy simply couldn't done anything about them. We read about Thirsk and other opponents preparations, ideas - their own, not directed-from-above ideas - and think "what the difference? They already lost. All their energy and intellect are simply wasted, because they couldn't do ANYTHING about this new warships, that Charis build without any real progress".