Axis History Forum

This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations, as well as the First and Second World Wars in general hosted by Marcus Wendel's Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Michael Miller's Axis Biographical Research, Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day, Dan Reinbold's Das Reich and Christian Ankerstjerne's Panzerworld.

Skip to content

RN Cruiser availability

Discussions on all aspects of the The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth during the Inter-War era and Second World War.
Hosted by Andy Hill

RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 30 Dec 2008 10:45

Hello,

I'm going on with the study of the availability for operational use of the cruisers of the different WW2 navies.
After the USN (here : http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=147340)
and the KM (here : http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=147373),
here are the RN availability data.

This is only the first part, with only the Counties and the old C & D classes.

The color code is :
Green : available
Red : Sunk
Orange : Combat damage
Yellow : Noncombat damage
Light Blue : Training
Purple : under repair/refit/overhaul ... = unavailable
Brown : withdrawn from active service
Grey : building

Since the Royal Navy had to be in action in almost all seas and oceans, I mentionned the geographica area where a ship was at a given time (since it's not the very useful to have a county available in Singapore if you have to counter a threat in the North Sea). Note that these information are, as everything else, done to the best of both my knowledge and to the extent possible with a time unit of one month.
Here are the codes :
HW : Home Waters (extends in some cases from Halifax to Murmansk)
NP : subclass of HW : it's the Northern Patrol (only present because I was doing specific research on NP recently)
AW : Australian Waters (includes New Zealand area)
A : Atlantic (central)
G : Gibraltar (for ships which acted in both Atlantic and the Med)
MS : Mediterranean Sea (mostly Alexandria squadron, but may also be Gibraltar-based ships if they did not act in the Atlantic)
SA : South Atlantic (from a line Freetown - Trinidad to Durban)
WI : West Indies (Caraibean sea)
IO : Indian Ocean
RS : Red Sea (only for ships based here, ships in transit in the Red Sea do not have such tag)
S : Singapore, includes all East Indies area
CS/HK : China Station, may sometime be overlapping with the "S" tag
P : Pacific ocean
USN : ship under operationnal US navy control in the Pacific.

Anyway, here are the charts :
RN_cruiser_avail11.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail12.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail13.jpg


As usual, all comments are welcome.

More to follow (the files are still in the building yard :lol: ) ...
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 31 Dec 2008 15:42

Hello,

below is the second part of study.
These are the remaining RN (and RAN & RCN & RNZN) cruisers in commission on 03/09/1939.
The color and tags code is still the same.

RN_cruiser_avail21.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail22.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail23.jpg


The last part (the ships commissioned during the war) will follow as soon as available.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby C.GILLONO on 01 Jan 2009 11:07

Many thanks!
User avatar
C.GILLONO
Member
France
 
Posts: 287
Joined: 14 Nov 2004 12:56
Location: Paris-France

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 05 Jan 2009 10:31

And here comes the last part !

Below are the availability charts of all RN cruisers commissioned during the war.
Note however that all ships that did not see any action or have any meaningful role due to late war commissioning are not present (for example, HMCS Ontario).

As always, any feedback is appreciated

RN_cruiser_avail31.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail32.jpg


RN_cruiser_avail33.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 08 Jan 2009 10:24

Hello,

here is another more aggregated view of the availability of the RN cruisers over the course of the war :

RN_charts.jpg


The heavy cruisers are the Counties & Exeter
The difference between "all" and "recent" ships are the C, D and Hawkins classes.

It's interesting that, contrary to the USN which saw a huge growth of the number of its cruisers during the war, the number of cruisers available to the RN was at its top at the very beginning of the war.
The sharp decline after mid-1944 cames from the fact that the needs for cruisers in the european theater greatly diminished, and hence the RN decommissioned or sent to repairs&refit most of the old and battle-worn ships.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby Jon G. on 08 Jan 2009 10:46

Very interesting graphs. Thanks for posting them. You seem to be just as infatuated with graphs, numbers and tables as I am myself - never a bad thing :) Are you familiar with this neat little create a graph program? Just ignore the cute graphics, it's very easy to use.

mescal wrote:...It's interesting that, contrary to the USN which saw a huge growth of the number of its cruisers during the war, the number of cruisers available to the RN was at its top at the very beginning of the war...


Well, don't you think that has something to do with the fact that the USN was still expanding as the war went on cf. the Two Ocean Navy Act, and also that the RN was engaged in the war for longer, against more enemies than the USN?
User avatar
Jon G.
Forum Staff
Denmark
 
Posts: 5463
Joined: 17 Feb 2004 01:12
Location: Europe

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 08 Jan 2009 23:04

Jon G. wrote:Very interesting graphs. Thanks for posting them. You seem to be just as infatuated with graphs, numbers and tables as I am myself - never a bad thing :) Are you familiar with this neat little create a graph program? Just ignore the cute graphics, it's very easy to use.


Thanks for the link.
I currently use Excel, and I also have some tools for more complex graphs.

Well, don't you think that has something to do with the fact that the USN was still expanding as the war went on cf. the Two Ocean Navy Act, and also that the RN was engaged in the war for longer, against more enemies than the USN?


Sure, it was just that of the top of my head I thought that there would have been a sharper declines until mid-1942 followed by a neat increase.
Such synthetic graphs enables to correct those vague ideas.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 29 Jan 2009 17:27

I'm still tinkering with my data on the different navies cruisers'.

Here is a chart which may be of interest, showing the number of ship committed by th RN in different places on a montly basis.

Note :
"Home Waters" includes the USSR Convoy route and Iceland,
"Med" includes the Red Sea and Gibraltar,
"Atlantic" includes West Indies and all Atlantic ocean from CapeTown to Halifax,
"Far East" is Netherland East Indies, Singapore, China Station, Australia, Ne Zealand and Pacific Ocean.

cruisers_RN_commit.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby mescal on 30 Jan 2009 14:34

I forgot to put the unavailable ships in the previous chart.

Please note also that the ships sunk or put in reserve or re-rated as training ships do not appear below.
(in fact the number of unavailable ships for given month is the number of purple cells of said column in the charts in the first posts)


cruisers_RN_commit2.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Olivier
User avatar
mescal
Member
France
 
Posts: 607
Joined: 30 Mar 2008 14:46
Location: France, EUR

Re: RN Cruiser availability

Postby The_Enigma on 19 Feb 2009 15:01

Really excellent stuff!
User avatar
The_Enigma
Member
United Kingdom
 
Posts: 1249
Joined: 14 Oct 2007 14:59
Location: Cheshire, England


Return to The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth 1919-45

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest