Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 162" video.

It's utterly bizarre that even when informed by the British of the how they'd gotten the headspacing wrong on their version of the Hispano, the US stubbornly refused to fix the problem. They just kept makign Hispanos with too-long chambers.
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@Karl Dubhe Prinz Eugen was a bit over 2,000 tons heavier than Graf Spee, and they had similar armor. Eugen also had a 32 knot top speed, same as Exeter. Meaning that unlike with Graf Spee, the British cruisers would get to dictate the engagement. The German 20.3cm gun was also longer-ranged than the British 8" (as well it should be, given that it's a longer-barreled gun designed a decade later), and quite a lot longer ranged than the British 6". Now whether Eugen would actually be able to hit anything while firing from outside the British' ships range is questionable. You don't normally score hits from beyond Exeter's 28km max range, let alone at Eugen's 33.5km max range. But just shooting from that range would encourage the British cruisers to maneuver rather than chasing in a straight line, further allowing Eugen to flee with impunity. Her mission is commerce raiding, not duking it out with warships, so running away is clearly the choice Captain Langsdorff (presuming it's still him in command when we swap out Graf Spee for Prinz Eugen) would make.
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I mean in theory, that could certainly be done. It's all a matter of how much time, effort, and money you're willing to put into an old ship. Arkansas was similar in age, size, and armament to the Italian Conte di Cavour and Caio Duilio classes, and only 1 knot slower than them. And in the 1930s, the Italians rebuild those ships to be capable of 27 knots, and upgraded their guns from 305mm to 320mm. But for the US, such a rebuild would never have been worthwhile. The Cavour and Duilio classes were the only battleships Italy had from 1928 until 1940, so doing a massive refit to increase their capabilities as a stopgap until the Littorio-class battleships could be built made some sense. Whereas in the 1930s US Navy, Arkansas was the oldest and least capable out of 15 operational battleships, so it would've been seen as a waste to do any major refit.
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My thought is that the salvage of Leonardo da Vinci with an eye toward restoring her to service was a very expensive operation, and the money turned out to be entirely wasted since she was scrapped anyway. If Italy had deemed the recovery of a capsized battleship a lost cause and just raised her upside down for scrapping, that might have been enough to complete Caracciolo. As for guns, I suppose if swapping out guns with the Army to get all 9 Ansaldos in Navy hands wasn't possible, you'd have to either make some additional guns or settle for having both forward turrets having guns from a given manufacturer and the same for both aft turrets. The torpedo protection and deck armor would likely be improved in the 1930s as with the Cavour and Duilio classes. Since Caracciolo is already fast, the rebuild wouldn't need to be anywhere near as extensive (or expensive).
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@stevevalley7835 I suppose I was overestimating how much they spent on salvaging da Vinci. I'd never seen any numbers, just talk about how it was an expensive process.
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