Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 093" video.

  1. Italian battleships, fascinating topic. The Washington treaty allocated the same tonnage to Italy and France, but the list of ships retained, while having both over their 175kt quota, allowed nearly 40kt more to France. Both retention lists included several pre-dreadnoughts. Hypothetically, lets assume the RM decided to help fund construction of Caracciolo and Colombo, as the two on which significant progress had been made, by an aggressive scrappage program of everything older than the Cavours and abandonment of the attempted salvage of da Vinci, immediately after the war. Neither ship would have been completed at the time of the treaty, however, only having 4 BBs in commission, Italy would cry a river that it was vastly short of it's allowed tonnage, and, as the new BBs were under the 35kt treaty limit, work would be allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, the drawings for the class would be retained, and updated periodically. in anticipation of the new construction as allowed under the treaty, with Colonna being laid down in 27 and Morosini laid down in 29, with the Cavours and Andrea Dorias scrapped, rather than rebuilt, with the funds thus made available used to update the Caracciolos and Colonnas to the latest late 30s standard and expedite construction of the Littorios. Very potent force of fast, modern, ships, only needing fuel and leadership to create havoc for the RN in the Med.
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  2. wrt the Italian Francesco Caracciolo class battleships, it took three weeks, but I think I figured out a scenario where Italy could have gotten two into commission. Immediately after WWI, Italy built 10 new destroyers. So, convince Admiral Giovanni Sechi that they should finish what they started, before starting something else, and divert the funding from the DDs to building Cristoforo Colombo, which was second farthest along when work was suspended in 16, far enough along to be launched. Work actually was resumed on Francesco Caracciolo, launching on 12 May, 1920. Continue working on the two as funding allows, until the Washington treaty intervenes to halt work. As Italy, and France, were allowed to lay down new BBs in 27 and 29, years ahead of any of the other powers, plead that scrapping the 2 existing hulls and starting over in only 5 years is excessively wasteful, and have a clause added to the treaty allowing any signatory power to lay up existing, incomplete, ships, until the treaty allows new construction to resume, if the incomplete ships comply with treaty limits,. As the Caraccilos were designed to displace 34,000T, they would comply with treaty limits. So Italy updates the design of Caracciolo and Colombo, adding more deck armor, deleting the casement mounted secondary armament in favor of modern turrets, and potentially, preparing new, more advanced and powerful boilers and turbines, for when work is resumed in 27 and 29 respectively. With the two Caracciolos built to late 20s standards, they would only require addition of AA armament to be brought up to 1940 standard. That would eliminate the need to rebuild the Cavours, with the funding and material thus freed up, being available to speed the fitting out of Roma and complete Impero. As Drach said, 1941 would find the Brits facing 6 modern BBs that could run rings around most of the British capital ship inventory.
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