Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "The Drydock - Episode 261 (Part 2)" video.

  1. Why did the Kaiserliche Marine rely entirely on second-class battleships for its capital-ship force until well into the dreadnought era? When most nations were building big predreadnoughts with 12-inch main guns, the Germans were relying on diminutive ships with 9.4-inch main guns (after their initial foray into creating a battleship with six 11-inch guns and no secondary battery to speak of); when other countries were building even-bigger, (relatively-)powerful semidreadnoughts with 8-to-10-inch intermediate batteries supplementing the big 12-inchers, the Germans were… going back up to 11-inch main guns and ~6-inch secondaries on still-relatively-small ships. Even the first German dreadnoughts, the Nassaus, still had only 11-inch main guns on a relatively-small-and-cramped ship (recall that Nassau displaced only about as much as Dreadnought despite having thicker armor and an extra main-battery turret as compared to the British ship); it wasn't until Thüringen was commissioned in July 1911 that the Germans had a battleship with 12-inch guns, and their battlecruiser force continued to be made up solely of 11-inch ships until Derfflinger was commissioned in September 1914 (and, even after that point, would remain a majority-11-inch force for its entire remaining lifespan). The 11-inch gun had great difficulty in usefully penetrating capital-ship-grade armor at typical battle ranges (as demonstrated by the battlecruiser action at Jutland, where the British 13.5-inch battlecruisers, despite having armor a couple/few inches thinner than contemporary battleships, were still generally able to tank dozens of 11-inch hits without significant degradation in fighting capability), and the 9.4-inch gun would've been essentially useless against capital ships except in a knife-range nighttime brawl. Even at close range, where the smaller German guns would've actually packed a useful punch, the German ships'd still've been less able to dish out damage than the 12-inch first-class battleships they'd've been fighting, and less able to absorb and withstand damage than their larger opponents. So why did the Germans choose to effectively hamstring their navy by building and operating exclusively second-class battleships for so long?
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