These ships are alternate-history designs for Great War battleships. They are compatible with the scenario "The Great War: American Front", a series of alternate-history novels by SF/historical-fiction author Harry Turtledove. His concept is an alternate timeline where the Confederate States of America were assisted by England and France during the Civil War and managed to remain independent. The result is a reduced United States with enemies to the south and also the north (British-owned Canada) and a much more turbulent history. By the time of World War I the United States, countering the CSA's alliance with England, France, and Russia, has itself allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary. In Turtledove's scenario the entanglement of alliances causes all powers to be drawn into a Great War even more bloody than the historical World War I, for it involves an American Frontscriptthe USA fighting against the CSA and British forces in Canada as well as on the high seas against the Royal Navy and its allies in the Atlantic and Pacific.
The SMS Yorck was a German armored cruiser in the Kaiser�s Atlantic squadron. Unable to return to Germany after the start of the war, the ship operated with the Union fleet against Confederate shipping and then on the Havana raid which disrupted CS naval operations from Cuba and weakened Confederate control of the Caribbean. Late in the war, the Yorck was involved in the US effort to block British access to the North Atlantic and supported the newly-completed USS Pennsylvania and the USS Delaware in sinking the battleships HMS Malaya and HMS Canada and the light cruiser HMS Southampton off Greenland. After the war ended, the Yorck was given to the newly-established navy of the Ukraine and sent to the Black Sea, but was not maintained and rusted in harbor for a decade before scrapping. [The Yorck's stats in the alternate history are identical to those in Jane's 1914 edition]
The USS New York was a powerful battleship with 14in. guns, a second-generation �uniform big gun� battleship stronger than any British ship and a match for the Queen Elizabeth class. She plated a key role in the annihilation of the British battleships stationed in the Sandwich Islands. In the Battle of Three Navies this ship was singled out for heavy fire from the British, exchanging broadsides with the HMS Australia and HMS New Zealand and the older HMS Exmouth. However, the uncontrolled circling of the USS Dakota distracted the British attention and the New York, although battered, was not critically wounded. Her own guns crippled the HMS Lord Nelson and then the HMS Agincourt which was abandoned in mid-Pacific two days after the battle. The New York also exchanged fire with the approaching Japanese column, scoring hits on the HIJMS Satsuma. Maintaining place in the battle line, the New York made it home despite its scars and was quickly patched up at Pearl before being sent to Chile for the successful operations against Argentina and the British supply lines in the South Atlantic.
The USS Dakota was a �uniform big gun� battleship (dreadnought in the British/CSA terminology) with 14in. guns and the heavy armor typical of American ships. [Note: therefore not a parallel to this reality's USS North Dakota]. She participated in the surprise assault on the British-occupied Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and landed heavy blows on the HMS Collingwood and HMS Implacable, both of which were sunk during the British fleet�s sortie outside of Pearl Harbor. The Dakota was damaged by a torpedo in the same incident in which the USS Denver was sunk. During the Battle of Three Navies, the Dakota was struck by heavy shells and her steering was jammed. Circling towards the enemy and then back through the US navy�s battle line, the Dakota was hammered by both British and Japanese ships, but her heavy armor protected her from fatal damage. Her own guns had scored hits on the British �dreadnought� HMS Vanguard, the Japanese �semi-dreadnought� HIJMS Aki and the Japanese �pre-dreadnought battlecruiser� HIJMS Tsukuba. After limping away among the scattered stragglers of all three fleets (luckily unchallenged by British or Japanese remnants, avoiding the fate of the crippled British battlecruiser New Zealand just a few miles away which was finished off during the next night by a US torpedo-boat squadron), the Dakota managed to rejoin the US Navy battle fleet and was partially repaired at Pearl before being sent to Chile for the successful operations against Argentina and the British supply lines in the South Atlantic.
The USS Missoula was a large armored cruiser, although not as powerful as a battlecruiser. She participated in raids on British and Japanese island bases in the Pacific and the Battle of Three Navies, where unfortunately she was struck by battleship shells (probably from the HMS Vanguard and/or HMS Exmouth) and suffered an ammunition explosion that sank her with most of her crew.
The USS Idaho was an older battleship. Although she was to be sold off, the start of the war instead found her sent to bolster the US Navy fleet occupying the Sandwich islands. The USS Idaho was in the battle line at the Battle of Three Navies and her shells hit the HMS New Zealand and the light cruiser Sydney. The Idaho survived the war but was in poor condition due to wear and tear and was sold for scrap upon its end. [Note: a new battleship was given the same name]
The USS Nebraska was another older battleship distinguised by her "stacked" turrets, an abortive attempt at superfiring guns in which two of the 8in turrets were on top of the main 12in turrets. She participated in the assault on the Sandwich Islands, finishing off a British 'Dreadnought' type battleship that had been disabled by the main US Navy battle line. Later in the campaign, she traded blows with the British Fort William Rufus ("the concrete battleship") guarding Pearl Harbor, suffering two hits from the massive fort's 12-in guns while barely damaging the citadel with her own guns. However, the Nebraska and other US ships did cover the approach of a US Navy combat engineer crew on a freighter who pumped a fuel mix into the ventilation shafts of the fort near its ammunitiuon holds. The resulting detonation obliterated the fortress and the entire garrison inside. The Nebraska remained as part of the defensive force at Pearl Harbor, surviving the Battle of the Three Navies, but after playing a supporting role in the Battle of Wake Island she was sunk by a British submarine with heavy loss of life.
The USS Vermont, another older battleship with a confusing array of secondary guns, participated in the assault on the Sandwich Islands, and then served as part of the defense force for much of the war. Later, she sailed up the Pacific coast of North America, helping the Northwest squadron defeat the British/Japanese force at Whidbey Island and then bombarding towns in British Columbia (and sinking two Royal Navy gunboats/'sloops'). Covering a raid on Russian-held Alaska, she sank the old protected cruiser Askold, but ran into a British torpedo-boat squadron in the Queen Charlotte Sound and was badly damaged. The ship was not considered worth repairing so close to the end of the war and was therefore rated a constructive loss and scrapped.
The USS Denver, a rather small and weak colonial cruiser, was sent to the Sandwich Islands after the US Navy takeover to serve as an escort and support ship. She was part of a squadron drawn out to fend off a Japanese cruiser force and was drawn into an enemy submarine pack. The Denver was sunk and the USS Dakota damaged by the Japanese submarine attacks.
The USS Avenger was a new light cruiser of a type the US Navy had very few of at the start of the war due to its focus on battleships. The only US cruisers aside from a couple of lightly-armed scouts were obselete or slow. When faced with the oncoming war and the prospect of modern Confederate, British, and French commerce raiders, the US Navy started a crash program to build up its cruiser forces. Among the most successful were the Avenger and its sisters, with 5 7in. guns and a speed of 28 knots, designed to overtake and outgun the British C-type light cruisers. The Avenger was assigned to the Pacific and was modified to carry an observation kite-balloon. Surviving the war, she was later inactivated due to budget cuts.
The USS Fort Benton, named after the base of the US victory over British forces in Montana in the 1881 war, was a powerful armored cruiser. She was the successor to the Washington class cruisers, and one of the last and largest of its type (even compared to the British 'Minotaur', German 'Blucher', or the new Russian 'Rurik'). It was also one of the few armored cruisers built with superfiring turrets in the modern US Navy style. The eight 10in. guns, although a less powerful armament than that of a battlecruiser, were high-quality weapons and the Fort Benton was probably the equal of a first-generation battlecruiser. Her construction slowed due to the precedence of battleships and battlecruisers, she was completed during the war and served in the Atlantic against the British, French and Confederates. Her firepower was enough to sink a Confederate battleship off Charleston and a French armored cruiser off Morocco. After the war she was not scrapped like many armored cruisers, but instead modernized, and served as a 'heavy cruiser' (although slower than her direct descendants in that class).
The USS Remembrance was a design for a battlecruiser that was cancelled midway through construction. She was modified into a large 'flat-top' aircraft carrier but was not completed until the end of the war. After the war's end she served first in the Atlantic, including assisting the new Irish Republic against pro-British resistance forces, but was rendered inactive during the Socialist presidency of Sinclair.
The CSS Stuart was based on the British �Victoria� design, and named after the Confederate hero killed by Apaches after the 1881 takeover of Sonora. Her limited dimensions and seaworthiness were mandated by budget and docking concerns as well as the CS Navy�s coastal-defense strategy at the time of her building. Five other ships of the type were constructed, three in England. An old ship by the start of the Great War, the CSS Stuart and her sisters were still used to supplement the CS Navy's coastal defense battleships in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. The Stuart herself operated along the Atlantic coast and raided into the Chesapeake, bombarding US positions and destroying shore batteries. She was torpedoed by a small US navy destroyer but was beached and patched up enough to limp home; however, repairs were delayed by the Red uprising and shortages. While in harbor, the ship exchanged fire with the US armored cruiser Pueblo during its raid, but the duel was indecisive. The Stuart was surrendered after the end of the war and given to the new Republic of Quebec for operations in the St. Lawrence, but the great age and wear on the ship meant she was quickly retired and scrapped.
The CSS Stonewall was a large �dreadnought� built in England and delivered to the CSA just before the Great War started. She was mostly kept in port as a �fleet in being� threat to tie down the more numerous ships of the Union Navy, but several times was sent out with the other Confederate battleships and coast-defense ships to bombard the Union coastal batteries and positions near the shores. After several such missions, the Stonewall was intercepted by the older, weaker USS Ohio; however, the Union ship�s captain had devised a cunning plan, using a spotter airplane and a fast yacht laying smokescreens to enable his ship to target the formidable Stonewall indirectly while being masked from view. The Stonewall�s charges through each smokescreen led the Ohio to retreat into another, and eventually the Stonewall was hit several times by 12in. shells and badly damaged. The Confederate ship had to withdraw after one final exchange of broadsides in clear visibility damaged both ships; 112 were killed on the Stonewall and 46 on the Ohio in the pitched duel. Repairs went slowly due to sabotage and lack of supplies, and the Stonewall was only involved in the final stages of the war as a convoy escort to and from Confederate-owned Cuba. A final attempt by the Confederate fleet to break out and make a 'last charge' was aborted when the Stonewall's sister-ship, the CSS Longstreet, was sunk by an American submarine, finishing off the morale of the fleet's crews and forcing much of the fleet into inactivity to avoid mutinies like those in the French and Russian armies. At the end of the war she was scuttled at Mobile to prevent the ship being handed over to the victorious USA.
The CSS Fort Sumter was a light cruiser with 5.5in. guns based on current British ships, completed after the war had started. She was involved in escort duties between Jamaica and British Honduras to Confederate Cuba and the Bahamas, warding off US Navy commerce raids. Later the ship was sent to Dakar to protect convoys making the run from Argentina up to Europe, helping out the heavily depleted British and French forces. The Fort Sumter was attacked by a US Navy destroyer squadron off the coast of Brazil in the closing stages of the war but survived, sinking one of the attackers. The ship returned to Havana and was surrendered with much of the surviving Confederate fleet to the USA and Germany. The ship was used by the US Navy for a brief period before being mothballed and later sunk in aerial torpedo demonstrations.
The French Navy, long the rival of England, found itself playing the role of England's junior partner as the Entente prepared for the war against the new, powerful navies of Germany and the United States. The French were tasked with control of the Mediterranean Sea against the Austrians and Italians (who fortunately remained neutral), as well as having the secondary role of backing up the Royal Navy in the Atlantic in case the Union and German fleets combined. The Redoutable, although an older ship, was more than a match for the Austrian armored cruiser Saknt Georg at the beginning of the war, and then, in company with several British and Argentine ships, travelled from France to the Lesser Antilles as part of an attempt to draw Union blockaders away from the Confederate coast. Although no enemy contact was made, several CSA auxillary cruisers were able to run the blockade during the operation. After returning to Europe, the Redoutable was badly damaged by the German battleship Helgoland at the Second Battle of Skagerrak and had to be towed to England for repairs. These repairs were never completed, and after the army mutinies and communist uprisings forced France to capitulate to Germany the ship was taken over by the British, only to be surrendered after the war and scrapped in Chile.
One of France's most powerful new battleships, the Bucentaure showed French design style in her multiple turrets (spread out to prevent a hit from knocking out more than one gun at once), high sides, and massive superstructure and funnels (in this and other post-1905 ship classes, trunked together). This ship and her sisters operated against the Austro-Hungarian navy for most of the war. The ship had an active career, trading fire with Austrian battleships several times without much damage, until the overstretched British requested her presence in the Atlantic to replace the Royal Navy ships which had been lost during operations against the Union blockade of Canada. The Bucentaure was torpedoed and sunk off Brest by the United States submarine Pirarucu with heavy loss of life. An escorting destroyer was also sunk by the Pirarucu's attack.
Developing "all-big gun" ships even before the British and Americans, the Japanese built some of the most heavily-armed battleships in the era before the Great War, but like the Royal Navy ships they were less well-armored than the US Navy or German designs. During the war Japan was drawn in as an ally of England, and supported the ill-fated British operations against the United States Pacific Fleet in the Sandwich Islands. The Owari participated in several engagements against the USA, including the Battle of the Three Navies where she was badly damaged and had to be towed back to the Japanese colony of Manila (taken from Spain just after the turn of the century in the Spanish-Japanese War). This ship's luck ran out during the battle of Wake Island when the Owari and the British HMS Emperor of India and HMS Shannon were sunk by the battleship USS Nevada and armored cruiser USS Constellation in a fierce slugfest with heavy casualties on both sides.
- Great Lakes Battleships
- General info on Harry Turtledove's Great War series
- The Great War alliances: England, CSA, France, and Russia, joined by Japan and Argentina, vs. Germany, USA, and Austria-Hungary, joined by the Ottoman Turks, Chile, and eventually other nations.
