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Ok the blueprints I am looking for are for Scharnhorst and Gneisenau as they would have been completed had the 15in. guns been available during original construction, or had been able to go through the conversion at a later time. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks for the help Sub. I have the plans from Floating Drydock, but they are of the ship as finished with 28cm guns. My biggest problem is not knowing how much the beam, draught, and length would have been increased to accommodate the the heavier twin 38.1cm turrets.

Originally Posted by nemisis02

Thanks for the help Sub. I have the plans from Floating Drydock, but they are of the ship as finished with 28cm guns. My biggest problem is not knowing how much the beam, draught, and length would have been increased to accommodate the the heavier twin 38.1cm turrets.

Hi,

I may be wrong... but I don't believe any of those would have beem altered as they are set when the ship is built, to alter the beam and length is a major, major building job. It would probably have been easier to build a new hull rather than do the mods to the fundamental structure of the hull, ie beam , length etc, probably the only thing that would have changed would have been the draft due to more top weight being added, and the obvious deck and under deck modifications.

hope this helps. Sub.

The length and beam would probably been modified as well, not that big of a construction problem had the war gone in Germany's favor. Remember that several American warships built prior to WW2 were modernized, which involved adding length and beam. I do believe the Japanese also enlarged several warships in this manner. Its just a matter of resources and time, neither of which Germany had.

Originally Posted by nemisis02

The length and beam would probably been modified as well, not that big of a construction problem had the war gone in Germany's favor. Remember that several American warships built prior to WW2 were modernized, which involved adding length and beam. I do believe the Japanese also enlarged several warships in this manner. Its just a matter of resources and time, neither of which Germany had.

Well there you go.
Maybe thats why you cannot find any plans of the mods you require, did they actually do them ??

regards.

I guess in the process of changing the ships during construction they may have destroyed the original plans. That would be a shame. I only guess that the hulls as finished were not as large as if they had had 38.1cm guns from the get go, because the twin 38.1cm turrets were almost 400mt apiece heavier then the triple 28cm turrets. Plus considering how wet both ships were forward only up gunning them would probably have made them sink in heavy seas.

No they didn't actually convert the main battery over to the 38.1cm guns, but the ships were originally designed to carry six 38.1cm guns not the nine 28cm guns they ended up with. I am sure that when it was decided to use the smaller weapon the size of the ship was decreased as well to increase the protection of vital areas of the ship.