Comments by "Todd Webb" (@toddwebb7521) on "The Drydock - Episode 180" video.

@cobbleturd6978 you generally needed a 1.5-2" increase for the upsides to be worth the downsides of going up so it wouldn't have made sense for someone making 16" to make a 16.5" or 17" If you had 15" as your previous generation a 16.5" or 17" could make sense. the British looked at 16.5" in some pre Washington treaty paper designs and so did the Kaiserlich Marine with the L20 EA and the KriegsMarine also looked at it for H41
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@bkjeong4302 well 3 quads is probably what you'd have to do if you was using the historical Yamato hull. Also if you decided you wanted 12 16s instead of 9 18s at the design phase it may have had a different hull than historical.
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Well if hypothetically the Japanese had done the Montana approach for Yamato and had 12 16.1"/50 instead of messing around with the 18.1" they could possibly have put some of those barrels on Nagato and Mutsu
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Although it's made for combat and not just bombardment the Deutschland class would be something of a better bombardment ship than a similar size conventional ship. It's 11" guns are going to go further and carry heavier charges than 8" conventional heavy cruiser. Also it's 6" secondary battery is going to hit harder and go further than a 4" or 5" secondary on a conventional cruiser and is even the same as the main battery on a light cruiser.
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@pavelmateja4822 possibly and they definitely could have figured it out from a dud shell that didn't go off
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