I just unpacked the box that had my copy of All the World's Fighting Ships 1903. Of course, I wanted to be able to write about the article by Colonel Cuniberti. His "ideal battleship" has a raised forecastle, with a ram forefoot and a "cruiser spoon" stern. The rudder is balanced, and the deadwood is cutaway, quite radically. The bottom slopes up to the forefoot from the first funnel (the Moltke and Göben were like that. There are two pole masts and four funnels. There are conning towers, fore and aft, with a minimal amount of bridgework around them. The guns are arranged in lozenge fashion. On the raised forecastle is a twin 12inch turret. On the quarterdeck is another. At the forecastle deck level, there are twin 12inch turrets at the deck edge, on either side. They align between the second and third funnels. There are four single 12inch gun turrets. They are at the quarterdeck level and form a square. They are forward and aft of the amidships turrets. There is no "secondary armament", just an anti-torpedo battery of 12-12pounders and 6-"pom-poms" that can be dismounted.
The belt is complete. The thickness is 12-inches, at the waterline. The six amidships turrets are protected by a raised citidal that is 12-inches thick. Forward of the citidal, there is 6-inch armor to the bow.
Colonel Cuniberti's dimensions were:
Length: 521-1/2 feet
Beam: 82 feet
Mean draft: 27-1/2 feet
I have come around to the view that if the form and parameters are only moderately outrageous, it might be possible to have a ship that comes close to these parameters. I suspect that fuel capacity would be small, the hull would be rather light weight, and the machinery to a lighter weight than would be typical in British pre-dreadnought battleships. I did a spreadsheet to try the design, and I must admit it could be done, although it would be pretty radical.
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