World of Warships: Possible alternative Conqueror, Friesland-class destroyer and Ark Royal coming soon

Well, well, well… more teasing today from Wargaming with 3 new ships. The first one is quite easy to guess since it’s a silhouette that we are quite used to see on high tier.

British Battleship: Alternative Conqueror (certainly with 457 mm guns)

The first ship is a British battleship. The only thing that is really visible is the flat stern and the 2 rear turrets.

Let’s immediately remove the smoke/fog.

As you can see, The ship carries 4 turrets, 2 superfiring at the front and 2 superfiring at the rear. Also, you can notice that the turrets have a completely flat face like on Conqueror.

Now, someone had fun superimposing the silhouette of the Conqueror on that one.

The positions of the turrets fit perfectly, the masts as well and, of course, the shape of the hull. There are just these 3 forms that are visible on the stern that don’t fit. It might be additional AA mounts.

Now, you might ask why I keep calling this thing “alternative Conqueror”. Well, let’s go back to the time Wargaming announced the Pobeda/Slava as an alternative T10 battleship for the Russian battleship line. They announced at the same time that it would be the first of the series of ships following the same logic. Pretty much immediately, people including myself looked at Conqueror’s 457 mm guns as this setup was a perfect candidate for a split. Turns out that we might see it sooner than planned.

Pan-European Destroyer: Friesland-class destroyer of the Dutch Navy

The second ship that was teased today was, however, a big surprise. It was a destroyer labeled as part of the Pan-European “nation” that was are still waiting for.

With this picture, the only really visible things were 2 main batteries with 1 at the front and the second at the rear. Some of the radars were also visible as well as an AA mount behind the rear turret.

Once the smoke removed, we could see this:

This picture confirms that the main battery is only composed of 2 turrets on each side of the ship. Also, 2 AA mounts are visible behind each turret and the radars are now much more visible. You can also clearly see a sonar under the bow of the ship. Now, at this point, I had just no idea of what that ship was. Thankfully, I know a lot of people fond of warships and this ended up with 2 candidates, both from the Dutch navy. The Friesland-class and the Holland-class of destroyers both built during the 1950s.

Friesland-class destroyer:

Holland-class destroyer:

Now, when comparing the different ships, the Friesland-class seem to be the big winner. Both classes carried 2 twin 120 mm Bofor main batteries but the Holland-class was only carrying a single 40 mm Bofor mount between the 2 funnels. On the other hand, the Friesland-class was carrying a total of 6 single 40 mm Bofor mounts on similar positions as the silhouette that Wargaming shared. Also, the radar located at the rear of the ship’s silhouette perfectly corresponds to the one on the Friesland-class.

The only part that could indicate that it’s the Holland-class is the Sonar that is visible under the bow but might be a mistake from either Wargaming or from the drawings of the ship that I found.

An interesting thing with the Friesland-class is that these destroyers didn’t have torpedoes. The only exception being the HNLMS Utrecht that during the 1960s was carrying 8 torpedo launchers that were later removed.
Except that, the class was armed with 2 dual-purpose twin 120 mm gun turrets with a rate of fire of 40 to 45 rounds per minutes and could sail at a speed of 36 knots. Last interesting bit, this class was designed for anti-submarine warfare (wink wink).

British aircraft carrier: HMS Ark Royal

Well for that silhouette, it didn’t take much time. The ship had already been teased by Wargaming after the release of Sabaton’s new song “Bismarck”. If you didn’t listen to that song, go do it ASAP, it’s absolutely glorious!

I don’t think that the ship needs to be presented at this point since. THE aircraft carrier that was carrying the Swordfish torpedo bombers that allowed to bring down the pride of the Kriegsmarine, the battleship Bismarck.

My bet is that she will be a tier VI premium carrier with a large squadron of Swordfish torpedo bombers, possibly with a special gimmick to compensate for their awful speed. For the bombers, she was carrying Fairey Fulmar fighters that could carry 2 100 lb. or 250 lb. bombs. As for the attack aircrafts, no idea of what they could use.

That’s all we got today in terms of upcoming ships teasing.

To summarize the situation, right now these are the ships we are potentially waiting for:

• O-class battlecruiser
• Super-Shimakaze (V6 Project) possibly carrying the never built Type 1 127 mm twin turrets
• “Thunderer” (alternative Conqueror with 457 mm gun)
• Friesland-class destroyer (possibly the Utrecht)
• HMS Ark Royal

If all these ships are coming with the update 0.8.5, this will be pretty fun!

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Yuzorah

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