Talk:G3 battlecruiser

British Royal Navy
Use of the qualifier 'British' when talking of the Royal Navy is superfluous. The phrase 'Royal Navy' always refers to the British RN, whereas any other nation [sweden, the netherlands etc] use their country name in the title. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psidogretro (talk • contribs) 16:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

Notice
Just to give notice, I'm going to radically overhaul this page. Breyer was working on incorrect information when he described this class in his book, and I'm assuming I'm the only one here with Campbell's excellent set of 4 WARSHIP articles on the class.

And really, where did this G3 idea come from?? Never seen that before, ever. --Harlsbottom (talk) 15:06, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

A rewrite with information from the Campbell articles would be excellent. As for G3, the writer probably confused it with the prewar design notation which certainly did use subscripts (The Queen Elizabeths are referred to as either R3 or RIII, the Revenges as T1 and so forth.) 86.130.186.10 (talk) 23:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Boilers
There seems to be some confusion about boilers.

It was quite normal practice to have auxiliary boilers which were normally used for heating and electrical power etc when the ship was in dock or harbour and the main boilers and engines were shut down. Auxiliary boilers could be fitted in either a main boiler room or in a seperate compartment.AT Kunene (talk) 15:10, 15 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What are you referring to?. There's no discussion of auxiliary boilers in the article whatsoever.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 17:11, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Battleship G3
I'll probably mess this up entirely as I'm totally new to editing - but, if this isn't a photograph of a G3 then what is it? https://i.imgur.com/tHU00ZF.jpg

Source info: http://archive.is/LCAEg#selection-639.33-639.658  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.234.16.103 (talk) 11:30, 16 January 2018 (UTC)


 * It's a hoax, read down to the comments.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 14:55, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Which yards were the proposed builders of these ships and was any progress made on them before the order cancellation?
 * The article specifically states that none were laid down before they were suspended and then cancelled. I'll have to look up what yards they were assigned to.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:55, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

From NJM Campbell Warship Vol. 1 (1977);- 'The orders for the four G3's were placed between 22 Oct and 1 Nov 1921 with Swan Hunter, Beardmore, Fairfield and John Brown.'

From the ships covers prices were around £7.5 million pounds with some variation between the yards.

From what I have seen it's likely that some material was ordered, probably only flat plate sections, as these would be required to commence work on the keel and hull bottom. I very much doubt any was ever worked for these ships as there was such a short time between the contracts being placed and the order for suspension being issued on 18th November 1921. No doubt the steel was used in later vessels built by the yards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.200.157.203 (talk) 22:13, 23 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Only one source (Campbell) claims that the vessels were not laid down, whereas three others note documentation found at John Brown which shows that, at least three weeks prior to cancellation, sufficient material had been ordered for construction to begin. Unfortunately, unless photographic evidence comes to light, this matter will remain open to speculation. Astronomy Explained (talk) 01:06, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Campbell was almost certainly correct that the vessels were not laid down - hence I doubt there will never be any photographic evidence. As I mentioned above in 2013 it's likely material was ordered but I have very good reason to doubt that any steel was ever worked. I even doubt that any detail drawing work was done by the shipyards, but I have yet to look at the shipyard records. (The 'contract' plans are available from the NMM at Woolwich - at a price!) Considering the number of ships built, there are remarkably few remaining photos of UK battleships under construction, most especially during and shortly after WW1. I would be amazed if anyone ever finds a keel laying picture, assuming that at least one keel was laid and I'm 99.999% sure that none of these ships were ever laid down.

What you will find is that around the time of WW1 there was a 'comfortable' relationship between the Admiralty Constructors Department and the major builders. Have a look at the ships covers at Woolwich and the papers remaining at Kew. Sufficiently 'comfortable' that a new destroyers could have material ordered for them before the Admiralty Solicitor had issued and signed the building contract - the V & W destroyers are an example. I have never found a building contact for the G3s and unfortunately the major part of the solicitors papers are missing so I don't know if there ever was one.

As you mention John Brown (who were intimately connected with Firth Brown the steelmakers) placed orders for steel for 'their' ship. Remember if the 4 ships were built there would have been about 200,000 of steel used in their construction. Even the UK steel industry would have to work hard to fulfil orders of that size in 1922-5 and the Admiralty famously wrote penalty clauses into contracts for late delivery. From Brown's point of view ordering a batch of 40lb (approx 1 inch - 25mm thick plate) in advance would have been a 'no brainer' to use a modern phrase. If it was not used for a battlecruiser or battleship, they could still use it for keel or deck plates in a medium/large size merchant ship.

Even with the close relationship with the steelworks I VERY much doubt that John Brown's shipyard would have had enough steel acquired (on site), within three weeks, to make it viable to start work on a large vessel like a G3. Plus they would have to hire a substantial number (maybe as many as 200 men) on an agreed rate to work the steel. These guys worked on 'piece rates' (paid for work completed) and with all sorts of strange clauses and practices. NO shipyard would have committed to a £7.5 million contract until it was in their hands. Anyway there were plenty of commercial shipping companies looking to replace ships sunk in WW1 and using UK Government insurance money to finance the building.

Although I have no doubt that the Admiralty desperately wanted the ships, the politicians were almost in horror of them and even more in horror of the cost of building them. That is evidenced in the papers at Kew. It would have cost £30 million to build them when the UK had roughly £35 million left in gold reserves and the full cost of fighting WW1 had just been totalled up.

If they were ever officially ordered, it was probably more a political move to pressure the USA and Japan (at least from the politicians point of view) than it was a serious move to get the ships built. Again look at the reports into the relative strengths of the respective navies at the time and the almost palpable relief at the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty. There is even a question at one point from the negotiators in Washington as to how much information they can release about the G3s in order to further pressure the Americans.

As a further clue to the political maneouvering going on within Whitehall at this time, have a look at the papers for the N3. "The increase of 500 tons on the displacement of the G3s may be political trouble". The Constructors comment was that "...it should be stated that the battleship has about the same displacement as the battlecruiser..." In reality it would probably have been something like 1500-2000 tons more on completion, allowing for the 'growth' in weights of machinery, armament and other additions.

Remember even though the Royal Navy may have "always travelled first class" (Churchill) The politicians held the purse strings.