HMS Renown (BC-1916 (1937-mod))
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The two Renown class battlecruisers were originally part of the R type battleship class. With Admiral Fisher at the Admiralty he had two of the R type battleships redesigned to get 15" guns to sea in battlecruisers. The original design shows a ship with 3 twin 15" with a long lean hull for maximum speed. What always amazed me is that an enlarged Queen Elizabeth design was not preferred. Longer and leaner QE hull with the same 4 turret arrangement and boilers rooms and engine rooms for 110,000shp for 30 knots in place of the 75,000shp for 25 knots. Armour reduced from 13" side to 11" to allow for the enlarged area to cover. This should give a reduced sized Hood with the same armament but less speed by 2 knots. The amount of propulsion required to get that extra 2 knots is the difference in size between Hood and Renown in my ships (144,000shp for Hood for 31 knots on 42,000 tons standard).
My New drawing of HMS Renown is based on the real Renown class hull.
Repulse and Renown and their half sister Australis all proved to be excellent investments and well worth spending the money on to rebuild them during the 1930's. One of the early classes to be rebuilt these ships closely followed the King George Battleships in their layout with a 5.25" dual purpose armament replacing the mish-mash of single 4" AA and triple 4" low angle weapons. Enhanced AA weaponry with 40mm single mounts replacing the single and twin 20mm fitted to other ships. New propulsion of slightly more power to keep the speed at 30 knots on a slightly heavier tonnage was fitted. New deck armour cured one of the ships major concerns over plunging fire.
Building a completely new class means that I can not get any supporting photos to show what the ship might look like. I also figure that if the Renown type proved ok in service, would they need to go to an enlarged Hood or just order more Renowns? If their were leftover hulls from the extra Renowns would they be better to convert to aircraft carriers than Agincourt/Van Diemen or Eagle which were less than 700 feet and much slower.
| Displacement | 32,500 tons std, 39,440 tons full load |
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| Length | 801.5 ft | |
| Breadth | 92 ft | |
| Draught | 31 ft | |
| Machinery | 4 shaft geared turbines, 120,000shp | |
| Speed | 30 knots | |
| Range | 6500 at 16 knots | |
| Armour | 11" side, 5.5" deck, 11" turrets | |
| Armament | 8 x 15" (4x2) 16 x 5.25" (8x2) 64 x 2pd (8x8) 16 x 40mm (16x1) |
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| Aircraft | nil | |
| Torpedoes | nil | |
| Complement | 1400 | |
| Notes | HMS Repulse 08/1916 HMS Renown 09/1916 HMS Hood 11/1918 HMS Howe 01/1919 HMS Kitchener (conv to CV) HMS Gambier (Conv to CV) |
HMS Repulse showing triple LA 4" with single 4" AA outside B 15" turret
The old drawing is based on a reduced Admiral class hull.