Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Battle class - Guide 187" video.

@bkjeong4302 the entire topic of the KM and carriers offers some interesting possibilities. We can get into it in depth when Drac posts his upcoming piece on the Graf Zepplin, but one bit that comes to mind: the Scharnhorsts would decline to engage a convoy if it was escorted by a BB, even a slow, obsolete BB. But carriers generally don't get sucked into surface engagements. They stand off and let the air group do the fighting. Would the Graf deal with an R-class escorting a convoy by simply staying over the horizon and letting the dive bombers overfly the R-class and bomb the daylights out of the cargo ships?
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@bkjeong4302 another advantage to deploying the Graf comes to mind. From my reading, the German maritime patrol planes were operated by the Luftwaffe. If a Condor saw a convoy, the sighting report was passed up Luftwaffe command to the crossover point to the KM, then down KM command to U-Boat command. That process could take as much as 24 hours, making a lot of the sighting reports useless. If the KM deployed the Graf, with scout bombers with the sort of range the USN and IJN carrier aircraft had, then KM command has total control of sighting reports, so should be able to get reports to U-Boat command a lot faster. Imagine a convoy under attack by a wolf pack, and carrier dive bombers, at the same time.
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The replacement of the Oerlikons with Bofors keys into something I have been pondering: It seems that I have seen pix of single, free mount, 2pdr Vickers here and there. Would such a free mount Vickers be a better last ditch weapon than an Oerlikon? The HV Mk VIII has equal or slightly better range and altitude than the Oerlikon. The Oerlikon used a 60 round drum, vs the earlier, single mount Mk II Vickers using a 14 round belt. The Oerlikon has a much higher rate of fire, so, in spite of the 60 round mag, the Oerlikon runs dry in 8 seconds, vs the Vickers with it's 14 round belt stopping for reload after 7.3 seconds. The Oerlikon shell weighs .271lbs vs 1.81lbs for the HV Vickers. So, while the Oerlikon has a higher rate of fire, the amount of steel thrown by a Vickers over the 7-8 seconds between reloads is greater. Would everyone have been better off with phalanxes of free mount Vickers, instead of Oerlikons?
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