History can be boring when you know exactly what is going to happen. It is
much more fun picking a start point and seeing what your mind can come up with
to make a different part of the world come alive and be more than what it was
and is. Using the strategic games to create a time-line for your alternate
universe is one way of giving the background to your country a kick start. Using
special points in history as start points by giving them a different outcome is
another way to start your world. Then all you need is a bit of time and patience
to make it all come alive.
This is my first try at creating something like this, so all the mistakes are mine. Remember that any mistakes may have been made on purpose to support some idea of mine in the unreal world I have created. More of these alternate countries allied to the Australis timeline will be added as I get to them. They will be like Australis in that it will be the naval side of the new world that I focus on. Control of the seas is paramount to trading interests.
I'm happy to answer questions that these worlds may raise. Contact me at nigevids@gmail.com
A note for all.
While all of these battleships and cruisers guns could fire 25,000 yards out to
45,000+ yards, the longest ranged hits achieved were by the
Warspite's 15"
on an Italian Cavour class battleship in the Mediterranean at about 26,000 yards. The
same distance approximately (26.500 yards) was achieved by the
Scharnhorst
against the Glorious off Norway in 1940. The Warspite's 15" fired 29,000 yards at
30 degrees elevation (Navweaps) while the Scharnhorst's 11" guns fired a maximum
of 44,760 yards at 40 degrees elevation (Navweaps). Capital ship actions after
1940 were mainly night actions (Guadalcanal, Matapan) or bad weather
(Scharnhorst-v-Duke of York) where distance was not a factor. Later (1944-45)
where the advances in RADAR made achieving a hit at longer ranges than 26,000
yards a possibility, there were few or no enemy battleships left to try out the
new equipment on. Most well known actions started at 20,000 yards (River Plate)
out to 25,000 yards (Denmark Strait) but hits were not achieved till the ships
were closer together. By 1944 battleships had been reduced to fire support ships
or big AA escorts. It is a sad fact for battleship lovers that the Japanese
developed an 18" AA shell for
Yamato.
In searching for a map that I can rotate I have run across this mans work:
https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/rotate/
My own personal 'parts sheet' where I keep all of the odd turrets and other
equipment I use on my drawings: Parts Sheet
23/11/2024 (open, right click and 'save image')
updated and added to regularly.
Updates
(See Updates page for complete list)
29/07/2024 - Happy Birthday to me! You guys get the present - Added FAN Gloire (CL) to to Special Cruiser Projects
03/08/2024 - Added HMS Lion (BC) to the Special Projects page.
06/08/2024 - Added INS Saint Petersburg (BC) to the Russian Navy Page (Filling in some odd spaces with drawings as I find them)
10/08/2024 - Added USS Puerto Rico (Mon) to the United States Navy page
13/08/2024 - Added USS Gearing (DDL) to the United States Navy page
16/08/2024 - Added USS Gleaves DD to the United States Navy page
24/08/2024 - Added USS Porter (DDL) and USS Mahan (DD) to the United States Navy page
26/08/2024 - Added USS Benham to Fletcher group destroyers to the United States Navy page
31/08/2024 - Added USS Evarts to USS John C Butler to the United States Navy page
05/09/2024 - Added USS Akron (CML) to the United States Navy page
08/09/2024 - Added USS Meteor (CML) to the United States Navy page
12/09/2024 - Added USS Jaguar (CML) to the United States Navy page
15/09/2024 - Added USS Auk (MS/ASW) to the United States Navy page
23/09/2024 - Added GNS Kothar-Wa-Khasis to the Greenland Navy page
26/09/2024 - Added GNS Hamilcar to the Greenland Navy page
27/09/2024 - Added GNS Malchus to the Greenland Navy page
30/09/2024 - Added GNS Dido to the Greenland Navy page
06/10/2024 - Added GNS Hannibal to the Greenland Navy page
09/10/2024 - Added GNS Sydyk to the Greenland Navy page
12/10/2024 - Added GNS Azizos to the Greenland Navy page
18/10/2024 - Added GNS Gisco to the Greenland Navy page
22/10/2024 - Added GNS Marquad to the Greenland Navy page
24/10/2024 - Added GNS Chemosh to the Greenland Navy page
30/10/2024 - Added GNS Hadad to the Greenland Navy page
01/11/2024 - Added GNS Shacar to the Greenland Navy page
03/11/2024 - Added GNS Tanit to the Greenland Navy page
06/11/2024 - Added GNS Melqart to the Greenland Navy page
10/11/2024 - My other great passion in life is Golf. I had the pleasure to be involved with one of the Clubs top competitions on the 2nd. Shootout 2024!
13/11/2024 - Added GNS Aircraft to the Greenland Navy page
17/11/2024 - Added GNS Mago to the Greenland Navy page
19/11/2024 - Added GNS Shapash to the Greenland Navy page
21/11/2024 - Added GNS Quadeshtu to the Greenland Navy page
23/11/2024 - Added GNS Hasdrubal and GNS Hercules to the Greenland Navy page.
25/11/2024 - Added GNS Maweth to the Greenland Navy page.
26/11/2024 - Added GNS Shadraf to the Greenland Navy page.
28/11/2024 - Added GNS Tallai to the Greenland Navy page.
29/11/2024 - Added GNS Qos to the Greenland Navy page.
01/12/2024 - Added GNS Pidray to the Greenland Navy page.
10/12/2024 - Added
Greenland Navy
Missile conversions to the
Greenland Navy page.
If you do happen to find a broken link, or a link to the wrong page, could you please e-mail me and tell me thanks. I am only human and I do make mistakes.
Thanks to you all, for your continued support of my Site.
Major Powers - (those countries that produce capital ships of their own, these are the real life Major Powers.)
Europe - (Iberia, Netherlands, Scandinavia, Hellenic Republic, etc)
South America - (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay)
Other Countries - (Unaligned Minor powers not noted above - Thailand, etc)
Battleship of the 21st Century: My idea of what a battleship/battlecruiser built this century may look like.
Maps of my World: Maps of Europe, South America and North America, Africa showing the changes I have made.
Whittles World: Where jet engines arrive early and mean aircraft carriers need some new parts.
SB Challenges: Unaligned drawings done for Shipbucket challenges.
The Sea Battles. This is where I will put the battles pages of the various participants and the results.
Updates:
the list of updates from above will be saved to this page. Readers
can follow the update sequence.
Fictional Empires: those
countries I have created and built ships for.
Special Cruiser Projects
Special
Project Ships - Battleships and Battlecruisers of mixed
countries.
Hole in one: Oh what a feeling!!. The other side of golf: Boo hoo!
My original intent for this site was as a display
for the 1/700 scale ship models I had designed and built as 'never built' kits.
Lots of variation on standard kitsets. The photos of these in conjunction with
'Shipbucket.com' drawings were to create pages in my Alternate Universes.
Unfortunately the photos made the site too big. My ISP only gives 50mb space for
homepages. A good quality photo of my alternate USS Kentucky can be well over 250kb, you
do not get many photos onto a site at that size when you have 80+ ships to
display. Hopefully one day I will be able to afford a bigger site. Until then
you will just have to put up with what is here so far. The Shipbucket drawings
suffer from the same problem I have with the 1/700 scale kitsets, the scale you
are working with does not provide accurate drawings no matter what they may
believe. At a scale of 2 pixel to the foot the Shipbucket drawings have a
problem with their weapons. A 20mm gun drawn as 1 pixel line gives a barrel 6
inches in diameter which would be more appropriate for a gun of 70-80mm size.
The Shipbucket drawings have pretty little add ons like stanchions down the
sides of the ships to carry the guard rails - both of which are also the 1 pixel
- 6 inch sizing. The drawings look pretty and are good to look at but cannot be
taken as 'correct' as per my points above. To get to a 'True' scale drawing the
Shipbucket drawings would need to be at least 3 to 4 times their current size.
These would be huge. This is not a criticism of Shipbucket.com, the drawings
done in the scale they use are awesome, I have had a wonderful time using them
for my Alternate Universe creations.
(See below for Freehosting.com ballsup.)
My apologies for the site
having been down (20/07/2018 -to- 08/11/2018). Unfortunately, my previous host, Freehosting.com, were
absolutely useless. There is no such thing as customer service at that company.
My account was paid up to date, and the Domain Name was not due to expire till
the 26th of October 2018. Freehosting.com expired my Domain Name three
months early so that they could hold me to ransom for my Domain Name. They are a
bunch of rip off Artists I would not recommend to anyone (economic Terrorists). On a scale of 1-10,
they measure at the 'rot in hell' end of the scale. (see below for more details)
08/11/2018 - What a battle it has been. The Prats
from Prague (Freehosting.com) just did not want to let go. It took an order from
Public Domain Registry to unlock my Domain Name from them.
The transfer from my old host to my new one has finally completed, and after 7
hours of FTP uploading the site is finally back.
As of 1.30pm NZ time the site is up and running again.
It will be great to finally be able to get back to just creating pages for the
site, rather than what felt like battling for its survival.
25/08/2018 -
My website started as a homepage through my Internet Provider until they
canceled their homepage system. So I had to find a cheap alternative. Mr Google
helped and I went with a Hosting site called "Freehosting". I pay for my Domain
name registration on an anual renewal basis, about US$15 a year. First two
years, no problem, send me the bill, I pay and away we go.
Unfortunately this year, no bill to pay has been sent, first I hear is from a
regular user of my website who e-mailed me to tell me the site was down. I
figured it had to be a hardware failure and e-mail my host "Whats happening?".
No reply. I go to the client maintenance section and check that I am still
financially up to date, which shows that I am paid through to 26th October 2018.
But my Domain name shows as being "Expired". I send a couple of e-mails to my
Host asking what the problem is and...... nothing. Black hole... No response.
In the two years I have been with this Host I have never received an answer to
any e-mail I have sent them. They have never acknowledged there is a problem on
their site when they have been down. In fact their customer service has been
Zero. Not good for what is essentially a service company.
So, I had two options:
1/. Pay the latest statement showing on my account to get my Domain Name back
up, even though it is paid for through to 26th October. What I call Economic
Terrorism, having to ransom my Domain Name or have my site down for 3 months at
least. With the same problem likely to happen next year. Something I found when
talking to other Domain Name Hosts, was that the only way I could transfer my
Domain Name away from Freehosting was to get an 'EPP' number from Freehosting
that would allow me to transfer the Domain Name to another Host company.
Needless to say I received no answer to my two requests for this number.
2/. Take the pain and wait till my Domain Name comes free in three months time
(now two months). That is what I have done. I have a 'purchase' order with my
future host to grab my Domain Name once it comes free at the end of October so
that nobody else can steal it out from under me and I get held to ransom all
over again. What I have done is to use a future host that is based in New
Zealand where I live. That way I can go thump some desks if a similar strategy
is tried in the future. Bit hard to go to Prague where my current host resides.
I can't see any authorities being interested in chasing up after what is
essentially a US$4.00 event.
I have used a lot of four letter words and probably invented a few more over the
last six weeks. One of those times when going cheap has cost me dearly.
I have a tracking button on my page that tells me how many numbers of visitors
have been on my site, also tells me where they are from etc. Current number is
up over 70,000 which is pretty good for an unadvertised 'homepage'. What has
been funny are the three people from Russia who seem to be able to still access
my website where no one else can. My own personal hackers!
22/08/2018 - We moved house about 3 years ago and
it has taken me this long to get my 'hobby' room set up with my model collection
unpacked out of its boxes. Once I have got things ready I will start taking pics
of the kitsets that a lot of my original ideas came from for my Alternate
Universe ships. (September 2018) Her indoors has decided she wants to paint the
room first.
Thanks to Martijn de Jongh for his tip
on how to get my Header banner working.
Thanks to Hugo Tomsby for help with the Scandinavian AU naming conventions.
16/04/2016 - Apologies to all. I have exceeded my homepage limit and will need to learn to how to hotlink the images/pictures I use on this site from my Dropbox account. Then I will have to go back through and change over the pictures which will take some time. I will be working at reduced limits till I get this done.
17/04/2016
- Looks like we have worked out the syntax for the linking the drawings/photos
to Dropbox. A big thank you to John Christini for his invaluable help.
27/10/2016 - Transferred site from ISP homepage to new Alternate Universe
Warship page.