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East Africa 1930: An ORBAT Quest

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7th Hex said:
I suppose this is a good enough reason to post it, but I've been messing about with a Kutulo refit idea that would make it less combat capable, if that doesn't scare off everyone immediately?

Where I'm coming from is that even if we can pull off a deep enough refit to make a 1907 protected cruiser stand up well enough against late 30s vessels, the most likely scenario IMO is just that it makes whoever is sending a fleet against us toss in another cruiser or two to make sure it won't cause a problem. OTOH for the things the Kutulo is going to be very helpful for it feels somewhat overarmed? Do we really need 8 6-inch guns to scare away foreign trawlers from fishing in our waters, or flag down merchants to inspect them if we think they may be smuggling? We could probably get away with just 3-4.

So what I've been trying to figure out is if we strip off a bunch of the guns to clear up deck space, as well as clearing out their shell and powder storage spaces, how much other stuff could we fit in there? Could we cram in some extra bunk space to make room for a dedicated Carabinieri marines group trained to pull off boarding and inspection of other ships in addition to all the other nessecary crew? Could we fit a better infirmary to better handle medical emergencies or people getting pulled out of the cold water after they fell overboard or their ship went under? If the freed up deck space allows it maybe we could see if we could fit a single float plane or something on board for eyes in the sky during any S&R operation, though that would probably be very complicated and we'd have to purchase the plane from abroad.

Basically just try and refit the Kutulo into some kind of kitbash coast guard cutter. All of this is open water stuff off our coast obviously, we still are going to want good armed river boats.
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I am, for the most part, in favour of stripping the Kutulo to some extent. She's got a lot of very useful constituent parts, but the whole is rather lacking. 6" guns would make excellent harbour defences; the 12 pdr guns are good for anti-aircraft purposes if put into high angle mounts; the armour steel could be useful for, say, armoured vehicles or river boats.

My concern is if a refit is worth the price. Right now she's only making 12 knots or something like that and the engines are extremely worn out. When you're unable to chase down a liberty ship, the coast guard cutter role isn't exactly open to us, which means we need to ask if cutting through the strength deck to swap out the boilers for something more modern is worth the price. If it is, though, I am in complete agreement with how you want to use her.
dreameater said:
The main problem is who we would theoretically be contending with the British, Japanese and Italians all can take on the cost with concern on cost(Japan maybe not but when has Imperial Japan ever done the cautious and not reckless option). We can't even use optimal naval doctrine without airpower, the meta is aircraft carriers(err will be when people stop fetishizing battleships). Fighters are to be honest also pretty useful in their deterrence to other countries airpower.
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Britain is not uncautious or reckless and has a population unwilling to go to war, so if we have a suitable enough deterrent that the government feels diplomatic concessions might get them what they want at a lower price, they'll take that option. If Japan attacks us, they'd have to cross an ocean, and that would skyrocket tensions with Europe while they're simultaneously engaged in the power struggle going on in their backyard. If Italy attacks us, well, we're kinda fucked no matter what; they're a combination of irrational and strong that makes things very bad for us.
Carriers are not meta in our case. We have no need for long range power projection; land-based aircraft are far more capable as long as they're operated under a unified command.
 
DegenWeeb said:
This is unpatriotic behaviour.
We need at least 2 pocket battleships, 10 cruisers and some 20 destroyers to maintain free access to the ocean and to protect our capital.
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We require an even bigger navy! I say we aim for a four-four fleet, with four battleships or battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, and then a to-be-determined number of cruisers and destroyers! Let us rule the waves, and claim victory on the dawn horizon!

That this will require an enormous investment in the industrial complex, will require aid from the Japanese to build-up and will require extensive naval infrastructure that could be used by the IJN is juuust a bonus.
 
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C_Z said:
I am, for the most part, in favour of stripping the Kutulo to some extent. She's got a lot of very useful constituent parts, but the whole is rather lacking. 6" guns would make excellent harbour defences; the 12 pdr guns are good for anti-aircraft purposes if put into high angle mounts; the armour steel could be useful for, say, armoured vehicles or river boats.

My concern is if a refit is worth the price. Right now she's only making 12 knots or something like that and the engines are extremely worn out. When you're unable to chase down a liberty ship, the coast guard cutter role isn't exactly open to us, which means we need to ask if cutting through the strength deck to swap out the boilers for something more modern is worth the price. If it is, though, I am in complete agreement with how you want to use her.

Britain is not uncautious or reckless and has a population unwilling to go to war, so if we have a suitable enough deterrent that the government feels diplomatic concessions might get them what they want at a lower price, they'll take that option. If Japan attacks us, they'd have to cross an ocean, and that would skyrocket tensions with Europe while they're simultaneously engaged in the power struggle going on in their backyard. If Italy attacks us, well, we're kinda fucked no matter what; they're a combination of irrational and strong that makes things very bad for us.
Carriers are not meta in our case. We have no need for long range power projection; land-based aircraft are far more capable as long as they're operated under a unified command.
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Point of fact, due to the limitations of their merchant marine, we're far enough from Japan that they would likely struggle to invade or occupy us. Their logistical capacity for an invasion or occupation across the entire Indian ocean in this era is questionable at best if they cannot find a closer port willing to let them launch from.

But by the same measure, they will struggle to support us should we come under attack.
 
Well if we're going to go telling our dreams of refitting the Kutulo then i would like to remove the 6-inch guns (put em on the coast) and replace them with 2 twin Yūbari style turrets with 14 cm guns and remove the 12-pounders (maybe put em on or in a class of river boat) and replace em with 4 of these 8 cm guns and ad on 4 of those quad 13,2mm mgs.

(of course I'm a gun nut and weapon nerd so anything else involved is not my field of expertise)

Edit: if possible I would also like to buy the Isokaze-class of destroyers from Japan before 1935 (which is when they will be retired and most likely scraped)
 
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Potato Anarchy said:
Ethiopia remains a more consistently likely enemy then any colonial power.
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We are going to get involved in WW2 one way or the other, like either Britain is going to try strong arm us into joining them during their early struggles or Japan will get us, or hell the Japanese get convinced by the Italians too Force us to get involved in there Ethiopia conquest and have us be the main Garrison Force as well.
 
and a likely outcome of that is that no one devotes many forces to the theater except us and Ethiopia and we fight with limited support from our sponsors! You can't just ignore one of our main threat cases because it's smaller.
 
Potato Anarchy said:
and a likely outcome of that is that no one devotes many forces to the theater except us and Ethiopia and we fight with limited support from our sponsors! You can't just ignore one of our main threat cases because it's smaller.
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I'm not saying to stop investing in our military or anything like that, saying that as a African nation with a budding army and Navy that if one side doesn't get us then the other will just for the fact our stuff will be useful for them one way or the other.
 
Roaming_Guardian said:
Point of fact, due to the limitations of their merchant marine, we're far enough from Japan that they would likely struggle to invade or occupy us. Their logistical capacity for an invasion or occupation across the entire Indian ocean in this era is questionable at best if they cannot find a closer port willing to let them launch from.

But by the same measure, they will struggle to support us should we come under attack.
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Yeah, that's more or less what I'm getting at. We're more or less at the limit of Japan's power projection capability, so if we can pose a threat to the first couple divisions of SNLF, they'd have to put forward an extreme effort that hopefully isn't worth the war.
Wilgus04 said:
Well if we're going to go telling our dreams of refitting the Kutulo then i would like to remove the 6-inch guns (put em on the coast) and replace them with 2 twin Yūbari style turrets with 14 cm guns and remove the 12-pounders (maybe put em on or in a class of river boat) and replace em with 4 of these 8 cm guns and ad on 4 of those quad 13,2mm mgs.

(of course I'm a gun nut and weapon nerd so anything else involved is not my field of expertise)

Edit: if possible I would also like to buy the Isokaze-class of destroyers from Japan before 1935 (which is when they will be retired and most likely scraped)
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The refit would likely be to something far less combat capable in this use case. Adding in 14 cm turrets would be incredibly costly, and we might as well just get ourselves a fresh cruiser or destroyer leader that performs better and isn't quite so old. Something like a single 12 cm shielded mount would probably be more than enough for the role 7th Hex was thinking of for fisheries protection. The 8 cm guns you linked are the 12 pounders, just the Japanese designation for them.

Good spot on the Isokazes, we might be able to snag a pair when they get scrapped. They're not quite the ideal ship, and I lack good info on Japanese DDs, but it's probably the best we can hope for.
 
All honesty, our best opportunity for a proper navy will be post world war 2, where we can buy up any of the dozens of destroyers and light cruisers the US chucks to the curb.

Would LOVE to get our hands on some M2 Brownings as well.
 
I thought the Kutulo used these 12-pounders

Edit: I'm stupid or really forgetful one or the other since they are the same (I think) gun just on different mounts and one uses metric the other does not.

Edit 2: in case anyone else has forgotten Kutulo used to be Chikuma I'm pretty sure (i went back to check but and I'm still only pretty sure)
 
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C_Z said:
My concern is if a refit is worth the price. Right now she's only making 12 knots or something like that and the engines are extremely worn out. When you're unable to chase down a liberty ship, the coast guard cutter role isn't exactly open to us, which means we need to ask if cutting through the strength deck to swap out the boilers for something more modern is worth the price
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At the very least, we did choose a shipbuilding industry for Reewin, so it may well be within our means to perform that extensive of a refit that we get at the engine rooms and start pulling out broken-down parts...

And hey, any excuse to add AA guns to a warship is a good excuse!
 
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KlavoHunter said:
At the very least, we did choose a shipbuilding industry for Reewin, so it may well be within our means to perform that extensive of a refit that we get at the engine rooms and start pulling out broken-down parts...

And hey, any excuse to add AA guns to a warship is a good excuse!
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Would be good to add those French AA guns to it, and still think it would be good to get some of our important military buildings and some for the capital.
 
dreameater said:
the meta is aircraft carriers(err will be when people stop fetishizing battleships
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Eh, not quite. Early-mid war carriers could not operate at night or in poor weather and battleships were still extremly useful as they had no such limitations. It was not until around 1944 carriers truly made battleships obsolete.
 
Ojou-Sama said:
Substitute [battleship] with [aircraft carrier], my friend! It works! Well, for the most part, you need some adjustments, but...
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This is straight up heresy and I will be writing a strongly worded letter to the admiralty of Reewiin (which rn is probably 3 random guys in a shed) to ignore this.

There is no elan to carriers, no honour, no cool big guns and most importantly they look like shit when compared to battleships. The only thing better than a battleship is a battlecruiser.
 
DegenWeeb said:
(which rn is probably 3 random guys in a shed)
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Until you build them some dedicated facilities, they're actually officially based in an outbuilding of the Loiyangalani Carabinieri Station, which is also the HQ of the Turkana Patrol. Thanks to the recent completion of the railway, they can now get to their only ship in under a week. In practice, they're mostly working from a hotel in Kismayo.
 
C_Z said:
This is simply another case of an Anglo skill issue; by eschewing any RN-inspired practices our battlecruisers will be unsinkable.
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I'd say it's a matter of skill issue on the part of the Anglos, not the designs themselves as the Kongou class (which were designed by Vickers) performed decently well despite their age (though Hiei and Kirishima suffered major skill issues at Guadalcanal).
 
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