Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "MN Courbet - Guide 015 (Human Voice)" video.

  1. France had some appalling old tubs still in service in 1940. Pondering how the Brits came to be allowed to build two new, clean sheet designs, (Nelson and Rodney) by the treaty, when the treaty was supposed to be about stopping spending on capital ships, it occurs that the US was crying a river about having 3 treaty compliant ships at 75-80% complete (Washington, Colorado and West Virginia) and the enormous waste of scrapping them, to which the Brits might have replied "everything we have in process exceeds treaty limits, so if you want to complete the Colorados, we insist on being allowed to build new, treaty complaint, ships too, but we only want to build two, so you should only be allowed to complete two of your three." France had four Normandies in the water, in an advanced stage of construction. Seems France could have used the same forbearance offered to the US and UK and had two Normandies completed. But France reportedly took one look at the 28kt BBs Italy was working on, looked at what it would take to push the Normandies to an equal speed, found the cost exorbitant, and that was the end of it. It might be interesting to ponder, if two Normandies had been completed, as originally designed, replacing two of the Courbets, then rebuilt in the 30s to the degree the Andria Dorias were rebuilt.
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  2. Thinking on this a bit more, the Washington treaty allowed France to lay down a new, treaty compliant, BB in 27 and 29. With two of the Normandie class hulls at 65% complete, France could have pressed to have the 1927 and 1929 construction windows revised to allow for completion of existing, unfinished, hulls as an alternate to laying down new hulls. Then France could have closed up the hulls of Normandie and Flandre and laid them up for 5-7 years, while a new, longer, drydock is built. When construction resumes, as their original displacement was only 25,000T, there is plenty of room for doing the work considered in 1919 to make them 28kt ships, along with building a modern superstructure with modern secondary armament. Then scrapping two of the Courbets in 30-31 A Normandie built to late 20s standards, could easily defeat a Deutschland, so the Dunkerques would probably never have been built.
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  3.  @RobJaskula  If the treaty replacement schedule had been revised to allow completion of unfinished hulls, instead of new construction, the USN could have retained Washington too. But Washington, as designed, was a lot closer to the treaty limit, so would have little flexibility to improve speed. Would the USN want a new, 21kt, BB when the treaty would allow them to complete Washington, in 1931.
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