Escort Carrier Modification

I know, I know!

The "Escort Carrier" Topic itself is a dead horse, but this is a little bit different.

So my idea and also my question is:

Is the pod storage of an pod laying Battlecruiser big enough to act as a LAC Hangar?

If yes, then you need only a little modification to use it as a LAC bay.

- Replace existing tractor beams inside the Pod storage with stronger ones.

- Add docking clmps to connect the LAC with the ship

- Add a few airlocks.

In my eyes all that are only minior modification that you can do to existing ships.

And to make it cristal clear: The Modification add the ability to carry LAC´s, it doesn´t replace the ability to carry Pod´s.

Maldorian wrote:I know, I know!

The "Escort Carrier" Topic itself is a dead horse, but this is a little bit different.

So my idea and also my question is:

Is the pod storage of an pod laying Battlecruiser big enough to act as a LAC Hangar?

If yes, then you need only a little modification to use it as a LAC bay.

- Replace existing tractor beams inside the Pod storage with stronger ones.

- Add docking clmps to connect the LAC with the ship

- Add a few airlocks.

In my eyes all that are only minior modification that you can do to existing ships.

And to make it cristal clear: The Modification add the ability to carry LAC´s, it doesn´t replace the ability to carry Pod´s.

I'm pretty sure a LAC is several time larger than a missile pod.

We don't have a firm size for a pod, but it's carrying 10 missiles which appear to be maybe 15 meters in length (note, there's a diagram out there showing an MDM is 30m; but that's from before "The Great Resizing" so they seem to have shrunk along with the ships).
Maxxq, from BuNine, has some renders of an Agamemnon class BC(P) with it's pods and attempting to scale off the drawing shows a pod to be around 20m x 20m x 5m (though there's definitely some room for error, since that's attempting to count pixels off a render and scale it to the stated height of that class from House of Steel. If the pods are strictly to scale with the ship, or there's any angle to the perspective that could easily be off by 20% or more). Still, that's probably the closest to even a semi-canonical size we'll get until/unless RFC has some reason to mention their size in a post or in a future book.


We do know from House of Steel and elsewhere than a modern LAC is 72m x 20m x 20m. And so, that seems to make the LAC around 15 times larger than a flatpack missile pod! (But surprisingly, that's all due to length, not due to frontal cross section)

However that's just the bare LAC; with nothing to secure it into the pod bay or launch rails.



The render of the Agamemnon does seem to show that their pods are stored with the short side parallel to the sides of the ship. Which makes it seem that the 4 pod doors in the aft hammerhead are large enough to pass a roughly 20x20m object (and the stack pods running about 400m long). So if those really are designed to handle a 20x20m cross section then it seems (to my shock) that you might be able to just squeeze a LAC through that opening and into the pod bay. Due to their length the most you'd be able to fit is 5 nose to tail along each of the 4 launch rails (and that'd completely block your ability to roll the handful of pods you could still fit; at least until the LACs were launched). So at most 20 LACs in a BC(P) at the expense of giving up ~80% of it's pods. (The forward-most part of the pod bay widens out with some extra rows of pods encircling the central 4 straight runs; so you could still have pods in that wide spot even with the main area full of LACs)

Mind you I suspect there would be serious issues with actually mounting and launching them, as the pod rail system isn't necessarily going to cope well with handling a unitary object over 14 times longer that it was designed for.

And you'd have no way to fuel, service, or even access the LACs while stuffed into the pod bay. They'd be lacking all the support equipment and access ways that the LAC hangar/bay in CLAC provides; those add about 10m of all sides of the LAC for clearance, support equipment, maintenance remotes, ammo handling, and passageways. And, without ability to physically access the LAC, if you wanted to launch it with crew aboard they'd have to remain trapped aboard the LAC back in the pod bay for the entire mission.




So I still think, despite my surprise at finding that it might (just barely) physically fit, that it isn't actually practical or doable.

Jonathan_S wrote:So I still think, despite my surprise at finding that it might (just barely) physically fit, that it isn't actually practical or doable.

In other words: if they wanted to make a BC-sized escort carrier, they could, but it would be a complete new build, not a modification of an Agammemnon. A carrier has no business standing in the wall, so it not being able to launch pods is not a big deal. The fact that the LACs could only be launched one by one, or at best two-by-two, from the aft door, could be a big deal.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:So I still think, despite my surprise at finding that it might (just barely) physically fit, that it isn't actually practical or doable.

In other words: if they wanted to make a BC-sized escort carrier, they could, but it would be a complete new build, not a modification of an Agammemnon. A carrier has no business standing in the wall, so it not being able to launch pods is not a big deal. The fact that the LACs could only be launched one by one, or at best two-by-two, from the aft door, could be a big deal.

Seems like it.
Though in a dedicated design you'd probably be better off putting in CLAC style hangars/bays in just one broadside (that basically run nearly the entire width of the ship). That way you have room to maintain and resupply each LAC; and you can launch more at once.
You might not be able to carry quite as many LACs in that arrangement than if you're packing them in nose to tail on real launch rails; but that line of LACs would complicate servicing or re-ammoing them so much that I don't think the trade-offs would be worth an extra few LACs..

But the next question is whether it's worth it to dedicate a nearly 2 mton warship to carry less than 2 dozen LACs. You're carrying less than 50% of the LACS/ton as a true CLAC and it's even worse in terms of crew ratio. (Or put another way a BC(P) is about 1/3rd the tonnage of a Hydra, but it seems like it'd be able to carry less than 20% as many LACs) That inefficiency, due to scaling issues, means such a BC(P) sized escort carrier is far more expensive to operate per LAC carried; and in a lot of cases it's not carrying enough LACs to really help.

But I've no doubt such a ship could be designed and built should there be sufficient justification to do so.

Also, I'd argue that a BC(P) based LAC carrier would be more like the (uncommon) WWII CLV than the cheap and common escort CVE carriers.

The CVL was just the 8 ship Independence-class, modified from light cruiser hulls. They were built to naval standards, and have high power naval power-plants allowing them to reach approximately the same speeds as the full sized fleet carriers; but carrying about 1/3rd the aircraft. However while these could be build in naval slips that weren't large enough to handle a Yorktown or Essex class carrier they still had to be build in a naval yard and still competed with other warships for certain scare resources.
And they weren't massively cheaper than a full sized carrier; it would have been more cost effective to build Essex class ships in their place. They were really only justifiable as a war emergency, as they didn't displace the construction of any other carrier and could be completed sooner; with the US needed all the high speed carriers it could get and as soon as it could get them (until the Essex construction pipeline really started delivering in late '44, after which we had more than enough)


The far more widely built CVEs (over 100 built), on the other hand, were built to merchant ship standards and with more widely available (and far less powerful) merchant ship power plants. For example a Casablanca-class CVE carried old triple expansion reciprocating steam engines and put out 9,000 shaft horse power; driving her to 19 knots. The Independence-class carried geared turbines (and cutting those reduction gears was becoming a major bottleneck constraining warship production), put out 100,000 shp, and could exceed 31 knots. (For comparison the older but far larger Yorktown class fleet carriers put out 120,000 shp and could managed about 1 extra knot over the CVLs, while the Essex class were up to 150,000 shp and about 0.3-0.4 knots faster than the Yorktowns).

The CVEs also had small airgroups, about the size of a CVLs. Though they had some operating limitations around their slow speed (and hence reduced wind over the deck; limiting the weight of aircraft they could launch without catapult assist)


The Honorverse doesn't have the same issues with requiring exponentially more power for slight increases in acceleration. But still, a LAC carrier built on the hull of a BC(P) presumably has the same kinds of military grade drive, shielding, protection, sensors, and defenses that the BC(P) it was based on does. That makes it far, far, more analogous to the expensive (and rare) CVL than the cheap and cheerful CVE. (The later would be more like converting a small freighter with a bunch of LAC hangers; making it more like a relocatable LAC station than a military carrier)

Jonathan_S wrote:(The later would be more like converting a small freighter with a bunch of LAC hangers; making it more like a relocatable LAC station than a military carrier)

I don't know if here and in the previous post you meant "hangar" (an enclosed place where one parks aircraft) or if you really meant "hanger," as in, "the LAC is attached to a hard point and left hanging outside the hull."

So if you suspend aircraft inside a hangar, you have a hangar hanger

Like my start post say´s: If the Pod storage at a pod laying Battlecruiser is not big enough, than are all other disscusions pointless.

Creating a new ship class is out of question. That´s why Escort Carrier called "Dead Horse".

Partwise the new support ships can fullfill the role of a carrier, because they can transport LAC´s, but they are not suited for battle, a Battlecruiser without doubt is.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:(The later would be more like converting a small freighter with a bunch of LAC hangers; making it more like a relocatable LAC station than a military carrier)

I don't know if here and in the previous post you meant "hangar" (an enclosed place where one parks aircraft) or if you really meant "hanger," as in, "the LAC is attached to a hard point and left hanging outside the hull."

So if you suspend aircraft inside a hangar, you have a hangar hanger

I meant enclose place where one parks and services aircraft.
But apparently I can't spell that

[older posted edited]

They already have sort of a light carrier in the David Taylor FSV, which is a ~3 million ton ship and around one-quarter carrier. For that, it has a grand total of 8 LAC bays.

Jonathan_S wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't know if here and in the previous post you meant "hangar" (an enclosed place where one parks aircraft) or if you really meant "hanger," as in, "the LAC is attached to a hard point and left hanging outside the hull."

So if you suspend aircraft inside a hangar, you have a hangar hanger

I meant enclose place where one parks and services aircraft.
But apparently I can't spell that

[older posted edited]

Interesting idea, though: Lose the enclosed hangars and dock the LACs externally. It'd be like those old small carriers which used to store planes on the launch deck permanently.

The biggest downside is losing the maintenance cushion of those luxurious LAC bays, but escort carriers could use fleet CLACs or in-system LAC bases to provide those services.

Maldorian wrote:Like my start post say´s: If the Pod storage at a pod laying Battlecruiser is not big enough, than are all other disscusions pointless.

Creating a new ship class is out of question. That´s why Escort Carrier called "Dead Horse".

Partwise the new support ships can fullfill the role of a carrier, because they can transport LAC´s, but they are not suited for battle, a Battlecruiser without doubt is.

Ok, Let's star by looking at MaxxQ's renders of an Agamemnon BC(p)

https://www.deviantart.com/maxxqbunine/art/AgamemnonVariants-001-487154356

https://www.deviantart.com/maxxqbunine/art/AgamemnonClassBC-P-004-485503922

https://www.deviantart.com/maxxqbunine/art/AgamemnonClassBC-SS006-486663899

As Mentioned in HoS, a Shrike B is 72mx20mx20xm, massing 21,250 Tons. All the RMN LAC variants have the same dimensions, but the rest are slightly lighter.

The Agamemnon class is 815mx118mx110m and masses 1,750,750 Tons.

AS we can see in link 1, the standard pod bay is slightly more than 1/2 the length of the ship, let's call it 55%. The diagram also shows that the back 30% of the ships has pods lined up in a Cross pattern, while the next 25% (in the ship's main body) is more condensely packed.

Looking at link 2, we see that there are 4 pod bay doors, each the size of the broadside of a pod, with a space in the center.

Looking at Link 3, we see the doors (center) with extra pods in the main bay around them. We see that in the 118M width of the hull there are 5 pod spacings, and still about 1/3rd a pod length in hull on the edges. MAking each pod length just over 20m

Breaking the rear into 5ths, the size of each door is ~20 m in height and a LAC might be able to fit - tightly - in each if they were slightly modified.

Each door is followed by a slender pod feed ~240 M deep, then an open bay ~200M deep.

So, volumetrically, you could stack in 3 LACS in each pod feed, and 24, maybe 28 in the pod bay, for a total of 36-40 LACs. However this is tight STORAGE. Maybe the feed tube LACs could launch under battle conditions, but not all of them.

And to do this you geld a BC(p) of all its firepower.