shark bait wrote:That is the perfect demonstration of how hard it is to make big ships go fast. Looking at all these figures there is clearly something wrong about the Tide class figures.
I think the fact that HNoMS Maud, a sister ship of the Tides (admittedly a smaller one, but using the same AEGIR hull form from BMT that the Tides use), with similar machinery achieves 18 knots should give everyone pause for thought.
The Fort Class AOR's do 20 knots. The Bay Class do 18 knots. Pretty much every RFA vessel's max speed is c18-20 knots. It's clearly an organisational choice to have an efficient cruising speed with commercial standard machinery. It's the same for every auxiliary in any Navy on earth.
e.g.
The USNS Henry Kaiser Class are roughly the same weight as the Tide Class, and have a combined 25MW powerplant. To all intents and purposes they are the USNS analogue to the Tide Class. Their top speed is 20 knots, there just isn't some secret sauce that will get the Tide Class to 27 knots. That is unless the RFA has secreted away a couple of MT30 GT's in the design....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_J._ ... ment_oiler