Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 207" video.

You're probably right that the attack on Port Stanley was because Spee figured he was doomed and wanted to just get it over with. But beyond that, I suspect his thinking was that attacking right away would give him the best chance to inflict some damage before he's taken out. Without any ability to do maintenance and refuel, his ships' performance was only going to decline more over time even if he escaped detection. That said, I think once he made the decision to attack Port Stanley, he made two core mistakes. First was bringing the light cruisers with him instead of having them disperse and go commerce raiding or try to run the blockade back to Germany as their captains saw fit. They weren't going to make any difference one way or the other. If Sturdee hadn't arrived yet, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau alone could easily destroy the wireless station. And either way he'd be drawing all the attention onto himself and giving the smaller, faster cruisers time to get out of the area. Second was that he was insufficiently aggressive once he realized there were battlecruisers docked at Port Stanley. It took some time for Sturdee's ships to raise steam. With the battlecruisers' superior speed, this didn't give Spee enough of a head start to matter when trying to flee. It would however have given him time to press the attack while Invincible and Inflexible were still at anchor. Two of Sturdee's cruisers were already under steam as guardships, but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were more powerful ships and could likely have forced their way to the harbor entrance. And that point, seeing as the entrance of Stanley Harbour is only about 900 feet wide, he could have maneuvered his cruisers so that they're blocking Invincible and Inflexible from leaving. Even after they sink his ships, the wrecks will still have them bottled up for probably several months. And at such close range he might even be able to inflict some real damage on the battlecruisers.
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The craziest part was that Rodney even ended up with a mix of guns with Mk I and Mk II rifling within the same turret.
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The entrance to Stanley Harbour is slightly less than twice the length of a Scharnhorst-class cruiser. Of which Spee conveniently enough had two. His best option was to have Schanrhorst and Gneisenau make their best speed to the harbor entrance and each of them runs itself aground on one of the peninsulas, with their sterns close enough together than nothing bigger than a rowboat will fit between them. Then fire away for as long they're able to until he's destroyed. At which point instead of a pair of intact cruisers blocking the the harbor it's a pair of wrecked cruisers...which are equally difficult to remove. Sturdee's battlecruisers would've been bottled up until the wrecks could be cleared, giving Spee's light cruisers a few months head start for either trying to run the North Sea blockade or do commerce raiding until they're caught. And deprives the Royal Navy of 2 out of their (at the time) 10 battlecruisers for however many months it takes to clear the wrecks. This also would've probably rendered Inflexible not yet available for bombarding Gallipoli in March 1915, meaning some other capital ship would've had to go in her place.
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Italy actually had 11 triple 12-inch turrets (plus 2 twin turrets) when they were scrapping battleships. 4 triples from Dante Alighieri, 4 triples from the formerly Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff, and 3 triples and 2 twins from the salvaged Leonardo da Vinci. Plus they get 4 more triple turrets by removing the Q turrets from the Cavour and Duilio-class battleships during their 1930s reconstructions. Even if you ignore the 12"/45 Skoda guns and turrets (since they're a completely different design from the Italian 12"/46s), that still is 11 triple turrets. So if they had the budget for it, that would allow for three cruiser-killers with 3x3 armament and a half-sister with 3x2 and 1x2. Probably boring the guns out to 12.6" like on the battleships, for whatever that's worth. Actually if the Skoda guns and their turrets had been kept around, maybe you bore them out to 12.6" as well that would mostly deal with the logistical problems of their Austro-Hungarian origin. Maybe use those guns for a pair of super-Deutschland style cruisers. As for how Italy would pay for such a thing? Maybe Mussolini just decides to spend a lot more money than Italy actually hand and says he'll pay off the debts by plundering his enemies.
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@WALTERBROADDUS The Germans and Soviets both demonstrated that it's not difficult to install an entire battleship turret on a land fortification. Since you're building the fort from scratch, there's nothing stopping you from building a turret ring of whatever size is needed.
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I'm surprised that the French 340mm guns didn't make your list of worst dreadnought guns. I was under the impression that they had pretty poor performance.
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@WALTERBROADDUS I would agree that it's not cost-effective to arm coastal fortresses with full-on battleship-style twin or triple turrets. Aside from Fort Drum in Manilla Bay, off hand I can't think of any place where such turrets were built for a fortress. But when you're dealing with turrets that were removed from a decommissioned battleship, the cost of their manufacture was something you already paid decades ago. That makes it much less expensive than would normally be the case. And such a turret is clearly superior to typical coastal mounts that lacked any protection from air attack.
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