Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 116" video.

  1.  @crazydiamondrequiem4236  One of the designs considered for the KGV class was 15-inch guns in 3 triple mounts. 3 triples and 1 twin would've certainly been possible within Treaty weight limits. The reason for 14-inch guns was that Britain pushed very hard for making that the new caliber limit in the 2nd London Naval Treaty, and Parliament thus insisted on it even though the Admiralty preferred the 15-inch guns. The 14-inch limit was no longer applicable once Italy and Japan confirmed they weren't going to sign the new treaty (thus triggering the escalator clause), but Britain was unwilling to delay construction of the ships to increase their armament. It probably wouldn't have been hard to design a 15-inch triple turret that could use the same barbettes as the 14-inch quads, but getting a 15-inch twin to fit the barbette of a 14-inch twin would've been a lot more difficult. And reverting to the Admiralty's preferred 3x3 15-inch layout would've required completely redesigning the forward barbettes. As such, once the KGVs were already under construction, it really wasn't plausible to increase their armament. The delay would've simply been too long, and the Royal Navy needed modern battleships quickly in order to counter those of the other naval powers. As such, the only way a 15-inch KGV was likely to happen would be if the 2nd London Naval Treaty had used 15-inch rather than 14-inch as the new caliber limit from the start. (Which likely would've had the interesting effect of the US Navy designing a 15-inch gun for the North Carolina class. Since that's a caliber the US never used historically, it'd be interesting to see what the specs of such a gun would've been. Particularly the possibility of a super-heavy 15-inch shell.)
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  2. The Battle of Zanzibar hardly seems significant enough to rank among the Royal Navy's 5 worst defeats. It's just the loss of a single small cruiser, with no strategic implications at all.
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  3. 39:00 What sort of modernization do you think would've been appropriate for the Bretagne-class BBs? Would replacing their 340mm/45 guns with the same 330mm/50 as Dunkerque and Strasbourg have been a viable option? Despite the smaller bore, the 330mm is clearly a better gun than the fairly bad WW1-era 340mm.
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