Royal Sovereign Class Never-Were's

There were several designs that never saw the light of day with this class. These are not necessarily 100% exactly accurate, the details for these designs are not known beyond a few sketches and basic specifications but they do provide an interesting insight into developments at this stage of dreadnought development.

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The original configuration of the what became the Royal Sovereign Class was Design T1
The upper drawing is the perhaps the first T1 design penned by Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Encourt in his notebook. The bottom drawing represents the changes made during the design process, in effect becoming the Royal Sovereign as built.

For the 1914 Building Programme four ships were planned, HMS Agincourt, a revised sixth QE class vessel with Royal Sovereign armour layout and three revised Royal Sovereigns; HMS Resistance ordered from Devonport Dockyard; HMS Repulse from Palmers and HMS Renown from Fairfield. All these ships would have been laid down in early 1915.
For many years it was assumed the repeat R's would have been identical to their five existing sisters (the revised plan for Agincourt was apparently abandoned); however Sir Eustace Tennyson d'Encourt's notebook for these four 1914 ships shows two different designs were drawn up for the three repeat R's.

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HMS Resistance as she may have appeared on completion during 1918.
Resistance was to be built to Design W1, she would be 10ft longer than the standard R and have a wider beam of 88ft 9in and deeper keels. Other features were an enlarged conning tower with better access, a larger torpedo control position aft and an unusual protected spotting position in the stem! Her secondary armament would be grouped into a double-decker casemate. Each main gun now had 100rpg (80 in the original R's) She would displace 26,700 tons but would be slower, reaching only 21kts on account of her lower-rated 31,000shp powerplant. She had 1in less armour on the belt and extra armour added to the deck, 1in was added to the barbettes too. Estimated cost was £ 2.035 million.
In my drawing I've added bulges but its possible she would not have received them.

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HMS Renown as she may have appeared on completion during 1918.

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HMS Repulse as she may have appeared on completion during 1918.

Renown and Repulse ordered from private yards would have been built to Design W2. This was the same length as the standard R but had a wider beam of 88ft 9in. Displacement would be 26,750tons. Armament was the same, but the belt was 13in thickness again with the same thicker deck armour. The same 31,000shp machinery would be used for 21kts. Mixed firing was planned for all three ships.
I have shown Repulse in a slightly different armament layout. Around 1914, Armstrongs began designing triple turrets and some thought was given to giving the modified R's one triple turret for nine guns (3x2 1x3) in X position. Problems with fire-control were identified and the idea was dropped but they may have been a move to complete at least one ship with a triple turret to gain experience. So here I've given the last ship, Repulse such a turret in X position.

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In 1939, Winston Churchill returned to the Admiralty and he devised Operation Catherine to interdict German supplies from Scandinavia. Three R Class battleships would have taken part, one would have been rebuilt with very large 'Super Bulges' increasing beam to 140 ft wide to increase buoyancy and reduce draught by 9 ft. These outer bulges would be bolted on over the original bulges and would have flooding and pumping equipment to alter the draught. Around 2,000 tons of armour would be added with 4-5in added to the decks. Only A and B turrets would be retained but elevation would be increased to 30 degrees. The top speed would have only been about 13-14kts.

Here I have rebuilt Royal Oak in this configuration (Royal Sovereign may have been the ship to be converted, but as Royal Oak was already deemed too slow to be any use and had extra deck armour and bulges already fitted, it seems a logical choice. AA armament is 6x8 and 1x4 pom-poms, 6x4 0.5in Vickers HMGs and 2x1 20mm. An interesting what-if, although it was somewhat impractical. It's easy to imagine had this work been carried out, she would have found herself in the Med, perhaps taking HMS Barham's place for Churchill's other suicidal mission as an expendable blockship in Tripoli or as a floating battery at Torbruk?

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only 2 comments:
- if the draught of the last drawing was changed, would it not be better to modify the drawn waterline?
- awesome work Hood!

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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Wonderful work Hood, seeing the never weres like this certainly gives my mind a few thoughts for Personal Designs.

Thanks guys.

Ace, I haven't altered the draught from the baseline. I don't know enough about the effects of those super bulges. While the draught would be 9ft less with the bugles fitted (quoted on Wiki, I'm not sure I've seen another figure from a reputable source), but they could be flooded to increase the draught too. I assume the idea was she could get into shallow waters when required by pumping her bulges out. Otherwise her belt armour would be well above water (her top of her rudder would only just be below water!!). So I've left things alone to show on the supposition that she would normally sail and roughly normal draught unless the situation required less draught. It was certainly a curious idea!

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Hood wrote:

Three R Class battleships would have taken part, one would have been rebuilt with very large 'Super Bulges' increasing beam to 140 ft wide to increase buoyancy and reduce draught by 9 ft. These outer bulges would be bolted on over the original bulges and would have flooding and pumping equipment to alter the draught. Around 2,000 tons of armour would be added with 4-5in added to the decks (<= dubious) . Only A and B turrets would be retained but elevation would be increased to 30 degrees. The top speed would have only been about 13-14kts. Here I have rebuilt Royal Oak in this configuration (Royal Sovereign may have been the ship to be converted, but as Royal Oak was already deemed too slow to be any use and had extra deck armour and bulges already fitted, it seems a logical choice. AA armament is 6x8 and 1x4 pom-poms, 6x4 0.5in Vickers HMGs and 2x1 20mm.

Few concerns Hood, mainly about AA distribution
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Very interesting and splendidly executed work!

Excellent drawings of some very interesting "never-were`s"!

I read Churchill's modification concept in his history of WWII and in Breyer, and its great to see it laid out here. I would imagine that deploying such a ship so close to German air power would have been chancy at best, and as often is the case (at least for me) leads to wonder how much the former First Lord of the Admiralty really understood about naval matters.

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Royal Sovereign Class Never-Were's

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