Shipbucket

Hi, I'm new here, and these are some of my first designs, albeit mostly mods of other designs. I am open to criticizm so long as it is positive and polite. I'm not certian if these belong in AU, so please let me know what you think.

This first design is an Italian submarine-carrier. I really don't deserve credit for this one, all I did was add a flicht deck and 4" mount to Lazer one's submarine tanker. The torpedo tubes are from his Sirena class 1933 sub.

I will add more as soon as I complete my "other designer's parts used" list.

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"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Welcome aboard Raxar.
Submersible aircraft carriers are an interesting topic, but like many other interesting topics they are mostly far removed from reality.
Yours have several factors working against it.
1. It's slow. That means it won't be able to generate much wind over the flight deck to help with take-off, which leads us to:
2. It's small. You have about 110m flight deck. That's not a lot. Finding an aircraft that can take off with a meaningful payload and range on such a short runway is going to be tricky at best. Coming back down again is not going to be fun either.
3. Low freeboard. That means that you'll get a considerable amount of water on the flight deck in even the calmest of seas.
4. Waterproofing. The elevator forms a very large hatch that you have to keep waterproof. As the boat dives everything is compressed. This in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it can in fact be made to work to your advantage. The problem, however, is that the elevator will be compressed differently from the rest of the hull which will make it leak like there's no tomorrow.
5. Air group. Due to the minuscule amount of space that can be set aside for the hangar the air group is going to be tiny. Remember that the original sub tanker was designed to carry oil in that space and since oil is a whole lot less buoyant than air you'll need to ad large ballast tanks to compensate. Deck parking is obviously not an option.

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@huehen: Thanks a lot for the link.
@ Thiel: Good point point. I never conidered the problem of sealing the elevator, as well as the freeboard being to low. Do you think this problem could be solved with using seaplanes that have small wheels onunder the floats?

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"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

The take-off and landing problems could, but that still leaves you with rest of the problems.
In fact, there's been a least a handful of designs which incorporated float-planes, most famously the Japanese I-400 and the French Surcouf
However the thing they all have in common is that the aircraft were intended for scouting.
The I-400 carried four fairly high-performance float-planes. You're going to need quite a few more, especially because you have to make up for the lower performance inherent in float-planes compared to land and carrier based aircraft.
Submarine carriers also faces a serious and very real problem. Finding them again. Air ops pretty much has to be done during the night since it'll take forever to get them ready to dive. That means the pilot will have to find a small black boat in the middle of the ocean. Radio navigation and deck ligth is not an option since that'll bring the enemy along like bears after honey. If the enemy isn't in a position to catch you, then you don't need a sub carrier since the only justification for a sub carrier is in order to avoid enemy air and naval superiority. If he doesn't have that then you'll be better of building a conventional carrier.

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That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

What era are you looking at, and what size of an airwing are you looking for, because that is going to determine how expensive you need to go. Also, you can't have conventional lifts on a submarine carrier, as the hole in the pressure hull would be too large.

Edit: And I got sniped by Thiel

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Thiel: Thanks for the advice and input, I'll try my hand at a more conventional carrier or some surface vessels.
TimothyC: Mostly I'm looking at 1930's to 40's for this one, although my prefferred era is 1880-1930. Airwing? Propably 5 or less. My original thinking was to have the lift be part of the hangar deck floor, and use wateritght doors to secure the hull, but now that you pointed out the pressures involved, I think I'll scrap this for now.

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"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Next project, pre-drednought battleships.

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"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done." ~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Go for it. There's relatively few predreds in the archive.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.