Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918" video.

With Arkansas and New York being unsalvageable as presented in this scenario, it's a safe bet that during the Washington Treaty negotiations, the US would've almost certainly insisted on being allowed to complete Washington and South Dakota to make up for them. (I wonder what names would've been assigned to BB-56 and BB-57 if those names were taken out of circulation.)
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@Drachinifel Rather than having Seymour shot and dumped overboard, I'd suggest keel-hauling him in that scenario.
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@glennricafrente58 My suspicion is that what he said as an old man was more accurate, and that when he called his retreat a mistake in 1954 he was trying to save face after the widespread accusations of cowardice he'd faced. The fact that IIRC Kurita didn't form any sort of detailed battle plan (IJN battle plans were typically very elaborate) also suggest to me that he only intended to fight as much as he absolutely had to, but obviously couldn't tell anybody that because at best he'd be relieved of command and very likely court-martialed.
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@glennricafrente58 Late in his life, Kurita admitted that he'd retreated once he could find a justifiable reason, because he knew the war was already lost and didn't want to throw away more lives. He wasn't looking for the stereotypical fight to the last man that Imperial Japanese officers had been indoctrinated to seek out.
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The only way a last ride of the HSF could've accomplished anything would be if they managed to avoid fighting the assembled Grand Fleet. Like in that one scenario where the Grand Fleet went in the wrong direction because of a signal error and the HSF mauled some cruisers before retreating home.
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@TheDiablotak It does appear that Task Force 34 and Center Force would've been pretty evenly-matched numerically. Though qualitatively I'd give Iowa, New Jersey, Washington, and Alabama the clear overall edge compared to Yamato, Nagato, Kongo, and Haruna. Yamato was the only modern BB Kurita had, and the fact that Kongos were no match for the North Carolina and South Dakota classes, let alone Iowas, was well established.
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Coming back to this though, if the US had been allowed to complete South Dakota under the WNT, Japan and Britain would have demanded more compensation in return. Such as Britain getting to build a 3rd Nelson and Japan getting to keep Tosa. Given that SoDak would be so far above the Treaty limit (even moreso than Tosa and even slightly heavier than Hood), I could also see a provision to allow her completion requiring a weight reduction. That could result in changes like reducing the machinery to only match the 21 knot speed of the Standards and replacing some of the 16" triple turrets with twins.
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