Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "SMS König - Guide 307" video.

@vikkimcdonough6153 the fourth Mackensen class battlecruiser was to be equipped with Föttinger fluid drives, rather than mechanical reduction gears. My father worked for a company that made fluid drives. The speed of the output shaft can be varied by the amount of hydraulic fluid in the drive. Thing is, seems that reducing the amount of fluid in the drive, to obtain a lower output shaft speed, would be inefficient, which is counter to the objective of reducing fuel consumption in the ship, so there is something about that decision on that one ship that I don't understand.
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@paulgoyne6926 it could be that the "more smaller guns equals more hits" school had it's adherents in the German Navy. In the USN, Admiral Strauss at BuOrd argued in 1915 for putting 12-14" guns on the Tennessees, rather than fewer, 16" guns, as the probabilities say the more guns you have firing, the more hits you will get, and smaller, lighter, guns means you can mount more guns on a ship for a given amount of weight. I have been studying the Admiralty's decision to put 14" guns on the KGVs. The only possible explanation, which is, to a degree, confirmed in the Garzke book, is someone at the top, or above the top, of the Admiralty, was a devotee of the "more smaller guns" theory, some twenty years after it had been discredited.
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@paulgoyne6926 as you said, it is a balancing act, between armor, armament, and speed. Comparing a Kaiser to a KGV, because the displacements are very close, speed and number of guns are the same, but the Kaiser appears to have more armor, a 13.8" belt, vs KGV's 12", according to Wiki, for instance. Using the weights on Navweaps. a set of 10 German 12" weighs 518,500 kg. The 13.8" guns as intended for the Mackensens would give gun size parity, but weighed 73.5mt, so, for the same weight, the Kaisers could only mount 7 of the 13.8", without sacrificing armor or speed. So going 12" on the Kaisers is still a "more smaller guns" choice.
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