Speculation Sunday: Almirante Brown

From Redditor kgskippy10

And I’m back with another Speculation Sunday with a little bit of something different and really off the grid compared to what a lot of people see, or, err, care to see. I choose the Almirante Brown because it is a very unique ship, from a country you would not expect to be having warships during the second World War, Argentina.

http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints-depot/ships/cruisers/ara-almirante-brown-c-1-1931-heavy-cruiser.png

General Characteristics

Of Italian design and production, the Almirante Brown was completed in 1929 and commissioned by the Argentinian navy in 1931 after it was delivered. The Almirante Brown was the lead cruiser of the Argentinian navy bearing the C-1 identification. The ships were similarly built to the Italian Trento class, with a few major differences that I’ll talk about later. The Almirante Brown doesn’t have much, or really any, combat history that I can find and was decommissioned in 1961 and scrapped where it all started, back in Italy in 1962.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/42/79/5d/42795d93d1e8ef05aa33bb0a0efed6bd.jpg

Armament

The largest difference between the Italian produced Trento class was the main guns that the Almirante Brown had. The Almirante Brown sported 6 190 mm guns in dual turrets, as well as 6 dual mounted 100 mm guns. Compared to the Trento’s which were the first of the treaty cruisers with 203 mm guns, the 190 mm guns offered a bit of a different package. Apparently, the guns were heavier and that is why only six were mounted on the Almirante Brown against the 8 203mm’s that were on the Trento. I can’t find a ton of information on the specifics of the guns, other than they might have had some similarities to the guns mounted on the British Hawkins class, which could fire about 19 kilometers in real life, had a muzzle velocity of 2770 feet per second and had an elevation of 30 degrees when firing at max range. So maybe some high shell arcs when at long range and flat at closer range? Maybe like the Yorck’s HE and AP shells differentiate.

In addition to the main and secondary batteries, the Almirante Brown was outfitted with 2 triple torpedo tubes carrying 533 mm torpedoes and 6 40 mm AA guns. The 100 mm were also dual purpose.

Armor

So, not too much to go on here between my paper sources and Wikipedia, but the Almirante Brown was really not very well armored. The ship was, at most, 70 mm thick in the belt, and ranged anywhere from 25mm in the deck, to only 50 mm in the turrets. For comparison, the Atlanta’s turrets were only 32 mm thick (Yikes).

Dimensions

Pretty much what you would expect for the size of the ship. Length of 170 meters, beam of 58.5 meters, and draught of 4.7 meters. Puts it on par with size close to the Pensacola’s size. The result was a displacement of up to 9000 tons.

http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz359/KrystyHanezu/Vistadepopadel25DEMAYOFotodelarevistaIbericaEdicioacutende29deagostode1931FotoBranguli_zps7a632721.jpg

Machinery

So this is where there were some more changes from the Trento Class from the Italians. The 6 boilers that the ship had were repositioned so that there was only a single funnel. Even through the change in location of the boilers, the Almirante Brown class was able to output 85,000 hp through two shafts and reach a top speed of around 32 knots.

Other Characteristics

Not much for me to put down here. Maybe the fact that she was named after the father of the Argentinian navy, Guillermo Brown. Oh, and the ship was eventually outfitted with a catapult launcher for planes close to the start of World War 2.

In game Implementation

It is kind of hard where to put this ship right now. the armor is astoundingly weak and the guns are at an in between point of the shift between heavy, and light cruisers. My guess is that it would come somewhere around tier 6, likely be a premium, and maybe play similarly to how the current Russian cruisers play (that are glass cannons).

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/Novgorodsfleet/_DeMayo.jpg