Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Drachinifel"
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Another suggestion I've seen is that the "Saints" would've been the names assigned to the N3 battleships, and that the G3 battlecruisers would've been named Invincible, Inflexible, Indomitable, and Indefatigable.
At any rate, if the Washington Naval Treaty had never happened, I strongly suspect that the G3 and N3 designs would've been been revised before construction to place the third turret forward of the bridge, as was actually done with the Nelson-class. That all-forward layout was universal to the different designs considered for the Nelsons, both the O3 design that was actually adopted and the F2 and F3 treaty-compliant battlecruisers (with 3x2 or 3x3 15" guns) that were considered.
Incidentally, I consider the F3 to be something of a masterpiece of capital ship design. On a displacement of only 35000 tons it would've had armor close to that of the much later 45000 ton Iowa-class battleships, and a design speed of 29 knots. And given the broad similarities to the Nelsons, I'm fairly confident it would've exceeded that design speed. Even with engines in need of an overhaul, Rodney was able to make 25 knots (design speed was only 23) in the rush to intercept Bismarck.
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Regarding Tiger vs Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the reason for Admiral Lütjens refusing to engage Convoy HX 106 because it was escorted by Ramilles wasn't that he doubted his ships' ability to take Ramilles. It was that he was under very strict orders from Hitler not to engage capital ships at all. The same would've applied to Tiger.
Had Lütjens defied those orders and tried to fight Ramilles, even given the inferior guns on his ships I suspect that he would've won that engagement. He did after all outnumber Ramilles 2 to 1, and his ships were 11 knots faster and also better armored.
Thus, I disagree with the assessment that Tiger would've had less utility than an R-class early in the war. Even if she had a very limited refit, her speed would've allowed her to be used in duties other than just convoy escort. And Revenge herself did little of any importance during WW2, so discarding her to keep Tiger (or keeping her as the training ship instead of Iron Duke) would've been no big loss.
And in terms of the logistics of keeping the BL 13.5-inch Mk V gun in service for a single ship? That would be somewhat of an issue, but remember that those guns were still in use as land-based artillery in railway mounts as well. Three of them were brought to Dover as part of the battery of cross-channel guns. So it's not as if Britain discarded their stores of shells and charges for guns of that caliber. And if Tiger's refit came in the late 1930s, it's possible that she could've had her 13.5-inch guns replaced with the same BL 14-inch Mk VII used on King George V. IIRC, those guns were designed so that they could work with the turrets, cradles, and shell hoists of the 13.5-inch Mk V, because initially there was consideration of using Iron Duke's remaining turrets to test-fire the new gun design.
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Many of the British destroyer classes were so closely related that it's a matter of interpretation how many classes they actually had. For example, are the J/K/Ns three classes of 8 ships each or just one class of 24 ships, given that they were for all practical purposes identical?
At any rate, Britain's desperate need for more destroyers resulted in the 112 ships of the War Emergency Programme, which were smaller and less capable than the Tribals, J/K/Ns, and L/Ms. They could be considered anywhere from one to 14 classes depending on how you define it, since they all used the same basic hull design but were constantly improved during construction. It wasn't until the Battle-class (only one of which was completed in time to actually fight in WW2; an additional 25 were built and 18 were cancelled and scrapped partially built) that Britain went back to full-sized fleet destroyers.
The US, on the other hand, had the industrial capacity to meet its needs by just spamming out Fletchers, followed by Sumners and Gearings rather than reverting smaller designs. The British "emergency" scaled-down destroyers, like I said, added up to 112 ships. The Fletcher-class? 175 ships.
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Regarding a triple turret version of the QEs? Your notion of a rebuild that removes the aft superfiring turret so that they can end up with useful speed in their 1930s refit has another implication going forward. You now have something a lot more interesting than the Courageous-class's twin turrets to put on HMS Vanguard. If we assume that as in reality, only Warspite, Valiant, and Queen Elizabeth went through full rebuilds since the outbreak of WW2 interrupted the schedule, that leaves three triple turrets to work with. Which means that Vanguard wouldn't need nearly so much redesign work relative to the Lion-class as she went through IRL, because she doesn't need to be lengthened to make room for a 4th turret. This would likely mean she would be given the same thickness of belt armor as the KGVs rather than having it thinned to 14 inches to make up for the longer hull. The simpler process of simply redesigning the Lions to use smaller turrets rather than having to accommodate an AB-XY layout also likely would've sped up the entire process, potentially allowing Vanguard to be laid down in 1940 instead of 1941.
The question then is, would that result in Vanguard being completed before the war ended? At one point her construction was prioritized out of hopes that she could be completed in 1944 by diverting resources from other ships, but labor shortages made that impossible and she dropped back down the priority list. But even given said labor shortages, if her construction had begun a year sooner that might actually have been an achievable goal. Not that it really would've mattered much, since there weren't a lot of surface ships left to fight at that point.
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There's also the fact that in this scenario, Hood would likely be in much better material condition than Warspite was. Warspite was in terrible shape after taking that Fritz X hit, and would've required extensive repairs to be preserved as a museum ship. A Hood that emerged victorious from the Denmark Strait would've already been repaired and unlikely to have encountered anything that could inflict that level of damage (her speed and range would've certainly brought her to the Pacific as a carrier escort, and kamikazes don't have the armor piercing power of a Fritz X).
Given that a refitted Hood would have very similar capabilities to Vanguard, it's also possible that at the end of the war Vanguard would've simply been cancelled to save money. When Vanguard was retired, there was little interest in preserving her even though by that point the British economy had recovered. But then, Vanguard had never really done anything. If Hood had built up a distinguished war record at Denmark Strait, North Cape, and in the Pacific, along with her status as the symbol of the Royal Navy, there probably would've been more interest in her preservation.
Maybe some wealthy Briton with an interest in naval history offers the funds. Or maybe the surviving Admiral Holland has enough clout to organize private fundraising efforts to save his old flagship.
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If the High Seas Fleet were completely wiped out, even if they badly mauled the Grand Fleet in the process, that would've resulted in the war ending sooner because it would've meant that there was little to stop the rest of the Royal Navy from sailing all the way to the German coast.
The only German dreadnought that didn't make it to Jutland was König Albert. Combine that with Bayern being completed a 45 days later, that gives Germany only 2 dreadnoughts. Baden wouldn't be completed until March 1917 and Hindenburg until May 1917. No matter how badly the Grand Fleet had been mauled, you have Royal Sovereign that was fitting out at time of Jutland, with Queen Elizabeth, Emperor of India (Iron Duke-class), Dreadnought, and HMAS Australia under maintenance. And Renown and Repulse would both be ready before October 1916. Even if Jutland had been the mutual annihilation of both fleets, Germany would be doomed. Just the handful of capital ships that Britain had under maintenance or near completion would've been enough to steamroll the few major German warships that weren't at Jutland, let alone if Britain decided to ask France and/or Japan if they could spare a few ships. Once the Grand Fleet was reassembled, there'd be basically nothing between them and Wilhelmshaven.
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For starters, I imagine the Renowns (laid down a month and a half after the Falklands) would've immediately had their construction delayed long enough to do away with the bizarre design decision of a 6" armor belt. At an absolute minimum, they'd revert to a 9" belt like the Lions and Tiger already used. ie what they historically were given in 1920s refits. Or possibly even the Design Y battlecruiser (the "Super Tiger", with 11" belt and 4x2 15" guns) would've been built instead.
Possibly the funding that went to 2 Renowns and 3 Courageouses historically would've gone to 4 Super Tigers. Or just 4 up-armored Renowns. Aside from Indefatigable being in immediate need of replacement, there'd be a perception that her sister ships are inadequately armored, while Germany's own battlecruiser fleet would still need to be countered. Adding 4 instead of 2 15" armed battlecruisers would allow Australia and New Zealand can be sent to safer duties than directly confronting their German counterparts, while still directly upgrading the fleet's strength. Though of course Jutland would happen before any of the new ships would be complete, so this plan wouldn't have a chance to be put into practice.
When it comes time for Jutland, the 2nd and 3rd Battlecruiser Squadrons would probably have been rearranged to account for Indefatigable's loss. Most likely it would be the now under-strength 3rd (consisting only of Australia and New Zealand) that gets detached to the Home Fleet, leaving the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron (the 3 Invincibles) at the tail of Beatty's battle line. No way to know whether the collision between Australia and New Zealand would still happen when they're up at Scapa Flow, but it's possible that New Zealand will be the only battlecruiser attached to the Grand Fleet at Jutland. This would actually be an upgrade to Beatty's force, though whether he'd gain any advantage out of this is questionable, since it's Beatty.
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You're probably right that the attack on Port Stanley was because Spee figured he was doomed and wanted to just get it over with. But beyond that, I suspect his thinking was that attacking right away would give him the best chance to inflict some damage before he's taken out. Without any ability to do maintenance and refuel, his ships' performance was only going to decline more over time even if he escaped detection.
That said, I think once he made the decision to attack Port Stanley, he made two core mistakes. First was bringing the light cruisers with him instead of having them disperse and go commerce raiding or try to run the blockade back to Germany as their captains saw fit. They weren't going to make any difference one way or the other. If Sturdee hadn't arrived yet, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau alone could easily destroy the wireless station. And either way he'd be drawing all the attention onto himself and giving the smaller, faster cruisers time to get out of the area.
Second was that he was insufficiently aggressive once he realized there were battlecruisers docked at Port Stanley. It took some time for Sturdee's ships to raise steam. With the battlecruisers' superior speed, this didn't give Spee enough of a head start to matter when trying to flee. It would however have given him time to press the attack while Invincible and Inflexible were still at anchor. Two of Sturdee's cruisers were already under steam as guardships, but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were more powerful ships and could likely have forced their way to the harbor entrance. And that point, seeing as the entrance of Stanley Harbour is only about 900 feet wide, he could have maneuvered his cruisers so that they're blocking Invincible and Inflexible from leaving. Even after they sink his ships, the wrecks will still have them bottled up for probably several months. And at such close range he might even be able to inflict some real damage on the battlecruisers.
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@TheKingofbrooklin Had the Germans continued building of Salamis for their own use, there were three potential options. Use the 35cm SK L/45 intended for the Mackensen-class battlecruisers. Buy the similar Škoda 35cm K14 guns intended for the Ersatz Monarch-class battleships from their Austro-Hungarian allies. Or much less likely, go against typical German practice and try to create a 28cm or 30.5cm triple turret that would fit into the barbettes intended for American 14"/45s. But in all cases, the work required to adapt a turret would've been more trouble than it was worth, because Salamis simply wouldn't have been that great a battleship. Her armor was quite thin, especially by German standards, but at only 23 knots she wouldn't have anywhere near the speed needed to operate as a battlecruiser. Had the American turrets and guns been delivered before the outbreak of war, no doubt the High Seas Fleet would've made use of her anyway, because a mediocre dreadnought is better than no dreadnought at all. But Germany had much better ships also under construction, like the above-mentioned Mackensen-class battlecruisers (which would've had the same armament as a completed Salamis adapted to German guns, yet would be 5 knots faster and have 50mm thicker belt armor). Had some extra effort been put into naval construction during WW1, they'd have been much better off trying to get SMS Graf Spee (the closest to completion of the Mackensens) into service.
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Regarding Mutsu and the Colorados, I think you're a bit mixed up on the timeline. If Japan had agreed to scrap Mutsu, there would only be one Colorado completed, USS Maryland. The other two (Colorado and West Virginia) were completed a full 2 years after Mutsu. And in that case, it's unlikely that Britain would be able to get a provision for any early Treaty battleships, so they get no Nelsons at all, be they O3 or F3 designs. So it could come out to Britain gets to keep Hood grandfathered in, the US gets Maryland, and Japan gets Nagato, and that's it. Which based on the 5:5:3 ratio would be a bit unbalanced in Japan's favor.
That said, the US was being incredibly dishonest by putting Mutsu on the list of ships to be scrapped in the first place. The premise was that all capital ships still under construction at the start of the Washington Naval Conference were to be scrapped (with an option of each nation to pick two such ships for conversion into aircraft carriers). But Mutsu was already complete by that time, having been commissioned on October 24, 1921. Three weeks before the conference began on November 12, 1921.
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In 1940 there were design studies for post-treaty heavy cruisers with 3x3 8-inch guns, comparable to the US Navy's Baltimore-class. And even super-heavy cruisers with 3x3 or even 3x4 9.2-inch guns (it's unclear whether this would've been a new gun design, or the the old 9.2"/47 from WW1 armoured cruisers and coastal artillery batteries). During his time as First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill was the driving force behind the latter concept.
But even without treaty limitations, Britain's shipbuilding capacity was finite and there was a large demand for both cruisers and destroyers to patrol their vast empire. The (nominally 8,500 ton) Crown Colony-class cruisers and the follow-up 8,800 ton Minotaur/Swiftsure-class could be built cheaper and in greater numbers than any post-treaty heavy cruiser, so that's what Britain went with.
Toward the end of the war, the Royal Navy was looking to build 15,000 ton cruisers, but these would've still been "light" cruisers because they'd successfully developed a dual-purpose 6-inch gun, the QF 6 inch Mark N5. World of Warships players know those designs as Neptune and Minotaur, which were in fact the names the Royal Navy planned to use for them. But then the war ended and the Royal Navy no longer had the budget to afford them. Several of the turrets had already been built, though, so three incomplete Swiftsure-class cruisers were fitted with 2 turrets each as the Tiger-class.
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Regarding Yamato's 5-inch secondary guns...bear in mind that the Japanese used a completely different gun on their battleships and cruisers than they did on destroyers. Destroyers carried the 12.7cm/50 3rd Year Type, which from the Ayanami-class onward were given high enough elevation to be nominally dual-purpose, but were really bad at it.
Battleships and cruisers, on the other hand, used the 12.7cm/40 Type 89, which was designed as a pure AA gun. "Dual-purpose" capability for it was purely incidental, simply a result of 1.9kg of Shimose powder being adequate to damage unarmored surface targets too. Six twin turrets per side (incidentally, what the real Yamato ended up after her final refit, so very much doable if the 15.5cm triple turrets had never been part of the design) is therefore a pretty decent heavy AA battery. Not as good as the US battleships achieve with five twin turrets per side, because the 5"/38 is just plain better than the 12.7cm/40 (higher rate of fire, better velocity, better fire control system), but above average for the 1930s.
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@ozone-xv7hk If the shell that took out Hood had simply missed, or if the fuse had failed like the one that penetrated Prince of Wales below the waterline, there's a very good chance that they would've stopped Bismarck. The firepower being brought to bear by Hood and PoW wasn't that much less than what Rodney and King George V delivered three days later.
Thanks to poor design decisions for the Nelson-class's guns, the 16-inch AP Mk IB shell didn't actually hit harder Hood's 15-inch AP Mk XIIIa. The 16-inch shell had a bursting charge of 23.2kg of TNT, while the 15-inch had 22kg of Shellite. In addition to this being a mere 1.2kg difference in explosive mass, Shellite is a slightly more powerful explosive than TNT. As such, the only advantages of the British 16-inch guns over the older 15-inch were flatter trajectory and better penetration. But at the range that Hood and Bismarck were fighting, that was pretty much a non-issue. The ships were less than 14km apart, and Hood's guns were entirely capable of penetrating Bismarck's 320mm belt at that range. The only significant different in firepower for Hood compared to Rodney was that Hood had 8 guns to Rodney's 9.
There was certainly enough firepower on hand to cripple Bismarck. And there's no doubt that Lutjens would've tried to flee if the battle was going poorly for him. Hood and PoW being to his south, this would've mean turning around and trying to get back to Norway. Bismarck was faster than both Hood and PoW, so the big question would be whether the damage taken in the opening stages would slow her down enough to negate that advantage. Especially since Hood and PoW weren't going to come out unscathed either and might also be slowed by flooding. But turning north also would've left Bismarck heading in the direction of Norfolk and Suffolk, allowing the cruisers to get involved in the battle.
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Now if it was the Renown and Courageous classes that got cancelled while all 4 Admirals were built, that would indeed give 4 very large and powerful capital ships with tonnage well beyond the treaty limits to get grandfathered in. At the same time, the raw number of capital ships in British service would have to be less because the limit was a combined 525,000 tons for all British capital ships. Hood's full 42,670 ton standard displacement counted toward Britain's limit, and the same would be true of her 3 sister ships. Which probably would've been slightly heavier due to improvements made to their design before they were cancelled. While this would have some obvious disadvantages (fewer hulls to spread around, while the Empire hasn't gotten any smaller), it was really only in terms of cruisers that Britain was looking to build relatively smaller ships than other nations in order to achieve greater numbers. When it comes to sending capital ships around the Empire, 4 Admiral class would actually be ideal due to their greater speed allowing them to get across the empire in less time.
However, one issue is that the British might not get the concession to build the Nelson class. That concession of being able to build 2 battleships during the "building holiday" was to compensate for Japan keeping Mutsu and the US keeping Colorado and West Virginia. The Royal Navy didn't have any of their own partially completed capital ships at the time that could similarly be allowed to finish, and also lacked any 16-inch gun vessels. But if they've got 4 43,000 ton behemoths with 15" guns instead of just 1 like in reality, I doubt Japan and America would be so willing to let the Royal Navy also build 2 new BBs while nobody else is allowed to.
Another thing this scenario brings up is, what would be the impact on British aircraft carrier development? Furious in particular was fairly important to the Royal Navy's early development in that field. On the other hand, even with resources freed up by not building the Renowns I'm not sure if it would actually have been possible, given when construction on the class started, to have all 4 Admirals already complete by the time the treaty negotiations began. In which case a likely scenario is that in addition to Hood, only Rodney gets completed as a battlecruiser while Anson and Howe potentially get converted into aircraft carriers. In which case this is actually very beneficial to to Royal Navy aircraft carrier development, since they get their own counterpart to the American Lexington class. In reality the Royal Navy was unable to take advantage of the treaty provision that allowed conversion of incomplete capital ships into 33,000 ton carriers (the limit on carrier size otherwise being 27,000 tons) the way America and Japan did, because they lacked any suitable hulls under construction to convert (the G3 class had only been ordered, never laid down, and it might not have been possible to reduce such a large ship's displacement all the way down to 33,000 tons anyway). But if a pair of half-built Admiral class are sitting there on the slipways, that becomes an incredibly obvious choice.
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If Wargaming still had any interest in low-tier ships, it'd be quite easy to add Desaix (of the Dupleix-class small armored cruisers, armed with 4x2 164.7mm guns ) at Tier 2 and Edgar Quinet at Tier 4. Since they have uniform main batteries and thus wouldn't need any special mechanics to be viable.
Similarly, Scharnhorst '06 and Blücher strike me as workable Tier 4 and Tier 5 cruisers. Preferably as part of a tech tree "large cruiser" line for the German tech tree that would include Deutschland at Tier 6, D-class at Tier 7, the late 3-turret D-class (immediately before their full redesign into the Scharnhorst-class battleships) at Tier 8, and an O-class variant at Tier 9. At Tier 10, there's a fairly obscure paper ship called KW45 that would work. (The Russian-language version of Wargaming's wiki used to have a lot of pages hidden on it with all sorts of information about both real and paper ships. They were all deleted last year, presumably a result of WG cutting its ties with the Russian studio, but most of it's still archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20210714163133/https://wiki.wargaming.net/ru/Navy:%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%82_%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B9%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE_%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0_%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BC%D1%8B_Kriegsmarinewerft_1939_%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0 )
And honestly I think the British 9.2-inch gun is strong enough that ships like Georgios Averof and Minotaur '06 could work as Tier 5 cruisers even with only 4 guns, so long as the secondary batteries got gimmicked out with good range and accuracy and SAP shells. Or better yet if WG was willing to make the 190mm guns also player controlled, so you could just switch to the secondaries during the main gun reload. But that's more effort than they're likely to be willing to put forth for something that would only be applicable for low-tier ships.
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As I recall, the Kongos were actually first redesignated as battleships not after their major refits in the 1930s, but after their late 1920s refits. Because in those much smaller refits, deck armor was added but nothing was done with their machinery. This cut their top speed to 25.9 knots, which made them too slow to be battlecruisers. After all, Nagato was capable of 26.5 knots. Having battlecruisers that are slower than your battleships would just be silly. So at that point, they're considered to just be poorly-armored battleships. This also explains why, around 1930 whenJapan was looking to replace the Kongos with treaty-compliant new construction instead of rebuilding them, almost all of Hiraga's "Kongo replacement" designs were for 25 to 26.5 knot battleships and not 30+ knot battlecruisers.
And when the 1930s rebuilds happened, the Kongos were designated as "fast battleships" rather than battlecruisers, because Japan had simply stopped using the latter designation.
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Primarily, it was that the light AA consisted entirely of the 25mm Type 96. Which which was too heavy and not fast-firing enough to be a counterpart to guns like the 20mm Oerlikon or Flak 38. Not only was the cyclic rate of fire lower, the 15-round magazine (compared to 40 for the Flak 38 and 60 for the Oerlikon) was way too small and left it with an effective rate of fire similar to the 40mm Bofors (which had much better range and more explosive filler in the shells). While the Bofors used 4-round clips, the fact that loaders could constantly drop more clips in while the gun was firing made up for that. There was no mid-range AA weapon comparable to the 40mm Bofors, 2-pdr pom-pom, 37mm Breda, 37mm 70-K, etc.
For larger AA guns, the 10cm/65 Type 98 (used on the Akizuki-class destroyers and the aircraft carriers Taiho and Shinano) was quite good. The 12.7cm/40 Type 89 on most battleships, carriers, and cruisers was pretty decent. Neither was a truly dual-purpose weapon; they were dedicated AA guns with limited utility against surface targets. And since destroyers (with the exception of the Akizukis) had surface combat as their primary role, most of them had the 12.7 cm/50 3rd Year Type, which had only nominal AA capability.
Meaning that while American destroyers with their 5"/38 main guns and 40mm Bofors were legitimate AA escorts, the vast majority of Japanese destroyers could only protect the capital ships from air attack by offering an alternate target to soak up some of the bombs and torpedoes. And even the Akizukis (the only Japanese DDs with proper AA guns) were limited by having only timed fuses instead of a proximity fuse for their 10cm guns.
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@monarch3335 Montana would have the clear advantage over Yamato, being being able to put out about 24 shells per minute while Yamato would fire 15 to 18. Yamato's 46cm shells would have more penetration (though at long range this difference would be relatively minor) and do significantly more damage with a penetrating hit (33.85kg bursting charge, compared 18.55kg for the American 16" shell), but by firing significantly more shells Montana would be more likely to score hits in the first place (and that's even before taking into account superior radar-directed fire control). Montana's also slightly faster, which helps to dictate when and where the battle happens.
As for H-41, both Montana and Yamato would have a huge firepower advantage over that ship. 8x 42cm guns is no match for 12x 406mm or 9x 46cm. And in terms of protection, H-41 fares just as badly. Yamato has a 410mm belt and Montana has 409mm, while H-41 only has 300mm. The deck armor comparison is similarly lopsided. 50 to 80mm upper deck and 100 to 120mm main deck (with 120 to 150mm slopes forming a turtleback, but at long range that's actually a disadvantage since it gives a flatter surface for any plunging shells to hit) for H-41. 57mm weather deck, 179 to 187mm main deck, and 16 to 25mm lower deck for Montana. And a 200mm main deck plus 50 to 80mm lower deck for Yamato. The only recourse for H-41 against either Montana or Yamato would be to run away. And hope they don't score any hits that slow her down. Because she wouldn't be escaping very quickly; the finalized H-41 design was expected to have the exact same 28 knot top speed as Montana, which would be a mere 1 knot faster than Yamato. Meaning that there could be a long time during that escape when she's still within range of their guns. Yamato's 46cm guns had a max range of 42km and she's known to have scored a near miss (as in, near enough that the target was damaged by the underwater explosion) at 34.5km. Montana's 16"/50 guns would've had a max range of 38.7km, just like the Iowa-class. Montana's guns could piece H-41's belt from over 32km away, and Yamato could probabl do so from even further away (though I can't find penetration tables for her at ranges longer than 30km). And from that point all the way out to their max ranges, both could easily penetrate H-41's decks. I don't know how close H-41 would've needed to get to have a chance at penetrating Montana or Yamato's thicker belts, since the 42cm gun never actually existed. But H-39 (with the German 40.6cm gun, 12 barrels of which actually were built) would need to get inside of 25km to do so. Which is suicidal range to be fighting either ship at.
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With regard to the idea of keeping Tiger in service, the London Naval Treaty did require another capital ship to be scrapped, so something else would need to be sacrificed no matter what. Sacrificing Renown or Repulse to keep a slightly older and less powerful battlecruiser was for obvious reasons a stupid idea, and the Royal Navy was quite right to not consider it. But I still think it might've worked out better to scrap Revenge instead.
This is of course with the benefit of hindsight, but Revenge was probably the least useful capital ship in the Royal Navy in WW2. Even compared to her sister ships, which were at least in better material condition. Her speed alone would've given Tiger far more utility, even given the logistical issues of having to keep the 13.5" shell in stock. And again the benefit of hindsight, we also know that Britain would within the next 6 years be adopting a 14"/45 gun that was very close in size to the 13.5"/45 and IIRC was even designed to be able to use the old turrets (since there was consideration of Iron Duke, demilitarized as a gunnery training ship, having at least one of her three remaining turrets fitted with the new guns for testing). Meaning that the logistical headache could potentially be a temporary one, depending on whether Tiger would've been able to complete a major refit before WW2 broke out.
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Germany wasn't subject to the Washington and London Naval Treaties. Those treaties applied only to the British Empire, United States, Japan, France, and Italy. And anybody who was having their ships built by one of those five; one of the stipulations was that ships built for export were still subject to the limits.
So the only rule Germany was actually breaking was lying about the tonnage and claiming they met the 10,000 ton Versailles limit. It was only in 1935 with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that Germany was subjected to the London limits (and proceeded to still cheat).
In theory, any other nation was still allowed to build cruisers bigger than 10,000 tons, and to use guns of any caliber they felt like on them. In practice, very few other nations had the shipbuilding capacity to make their own warships at all, let alone super-heavy cruisers. As far as I'm aware, the only other nations that built cruisers at all in their own shipyards were the USSR, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. Sweden never built any warships larger than around 7,500 tons, but the Netherlands and Spain both each built a pair of10,000 cruisers. In their cases it wasn't a question of whether they could build a super-heavy cruiser, but whether they could afford it.
In the Dutch case, they opted to put their money instead into full-on battlecruisers (Design 1047, which would've been essentially a lighter and faster Scharnhorst with thinner armor), but a German invasion rudely interrupted those plans. Some of earlier concepts considered during the design process had been for 16,000 ton super-heavy cruisers with either 3x2 or 3x3 240mm guns.
Spain designed a 19,000 ton cruiser in 1939 that would've been armed with 3x2 305mm guns (using the coastal battery guns previously salvaged from the battleships España and Jaime I) or 2x3 283mm (of the same type as Scharnhorst, which would've been imported from Germany), but nothing came of it. Likewise with the 17,500 version of the design that was simply a big heavy cruiser with 4x3 203mm. Probably because Spain in the aftermath of the civil war didn't have the money. Franco had big naval ambitions, up to and including buying Littorio-class battleships from Italy (and I vaguely recall that he offered to buy Gneisenau from Germany when Hitler had given up on his surface fleet), but not enough money to actually do it.
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And with regards to SMS Blücher, her size wouldn't have been an issue in the Treaty era had she survive the war. Existing ships that exceeded size limits were grandfathered in. For example, the US Navy was able to keep the Tennessee-class armored cruisers, which were 1000 tons lighter than Blücher but still almost 50% above the Treaty limit. And they also had 10" guns, far larger than new cruisers were allowed to have. For precisely those reasons, the US Navy gave serious consideration in the mid-1920s to modernizing the three surviving ships of the class, though they decided against it on the basis of cost, difficullty improving on their slow speed, and the fact that modernizing them would give Congress an excuse to stop authorizing new cruisers. Likewise, France and Italy kept a few of their larger armored cruisers around in the Treaty era.
All of this presumes an alternate history where Germany is a signatory of the Washington Naval Treaty, of course. I'm not sure whether Germany would've been allowed to keep her under the Treaty of Versailles. Blücher was after all bigger than the Braunschweig- and Deutschland-class pre-dreadnoughts that Germany was allowed to keep. On the other hand she had smaller guns and thinner armor and she was thoroughly obsolete by that point, so it's possible this would've been allowed in exchange for postwar Germany only getting 4-5 pre-dreadnoughts instead of 6. If that were the case, Versailles certainly would've placed a limit on how soon she could be replaced by a new-construction ship, which could've given Germany an impetus for a significant rebuild. Depending on when such a rebuild happened, they'd have to worry about whether the Inter-Allied Commission would approve the plans. Naturally Germany could (and almost certainly would) make efforts to cheat their way around Versailles restrictions, but having to make sure it wasn't obvious would mean they probably couldn't go to the extent of rearranging the turrets to a more efficient superfiring layout. The post-refit Blücher would need to look like she'd had only minor changes made.
The other potential scenario for a Treaty-era refitted Blücher would be if she was handed over to France or Italy as war reparations. Neither nation had that many cruisers operational at the end of WW1, both kept some of their armored cruisers in service for quite some time (Italy even still had San Giorgio in active service in WW2) and Blücher was a superior design to those cruisers. As such she might've been seen as more worthwhile to rebuild to modern standards than the likes of San Giorgio or Waldeck-Rousseau.
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N3 was chosen because compared to L3 she's 9 meters shorter and nearly 3000 tons lighter, while having the same armament and armor. Even when you don't have any treaty-imposed size limits, if you can reduce weight without any change to combat ability, that's worth doing because the smaller ship will cost less and take less time to build.
As for if an L3 had been built (either there's no treaty, or Britain somehow managed to pull a Dreadnought by laying her down immediately in 1920 and having her already in service by the time the Washington Naval Conference began in November 1921), she'd probably have been refitted along similar lines to Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Renown, with new boilers and turbines, a line of QF 4.5" BD Mk II twin turrets down each side of the superstructure, etc. Given that she probably wouldn't need to add large torpedo bulges, what with her postwar design already having better torpedo protection than the QEs, I imagine that L3 might gain some speed in that refit. Probably not quite able to keep pace with the KGVs when they're steaming at full speed, but 27 knots wouldn't be out of the question.
This would definitely be a ship that Bismarck doesn't want to run into.
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Not if you build a giant cruiser with part of your capital ship tonnage.
Which is something that France actually considered doing. One of the early design studies that eventually led to the Dunkerque-class was for a 17,500 ton "battleship" with 305mm guns in two forward quad turrets, a top speed of 35 knots, and armored to protect against 203mm guns (it doesn't seem to have been listed exactly how thick this armor would be, but a belt of around 180mm seems likely). They ended up deciding that while this would do quite well in chasing down and destroying Italian heavy cruisers, the armor was insufficient to guarantee stopping the Deutschland-class's 283mm guns. As such, Dunkerque ended up designed at 26,500 tons (still far below the 35,000 limit), with two quad 330mm guns, 29.5 knot top speed, and 225mm belt. (In practice, Dunkerque actually achieved 31 knots.)
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@basembenyamin2965 If not for that lucky hit, there's a good chance that Hood and Prince of Wales would've won the battle. Each of them was individually inferior to Bismarck (Hood in terms of armor, though aside from the deck not by as much as most people think, and PoW in terms of armament), but the two of them together should've had the advantage.
Though the best chance of victory would have been if Vice-Admiral Holland hadn't been in such a rush to engage, and instead had continued shadowing Bismarck until more capital ships could arrive from the south. Or even just waited until the cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk could catch up and weather could improve enough for his destroyer screen (Electra, Acates, Antelope, Anthony, Echo, and Icarus) to get involved. Sadly, Holland pulled a Beatty and screwed it all up by rushing into battle and putting his best-armored ship at the back instead of the front.
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@nathanbrown8680 Goeben is also the most historically significant ship that most people have never heard of. WW1 would've probably been much shorter had she not managed to reach an Ottoman port (since while an alliance already existed on paper between the Ottoman and German empires, the Ottoman government was pretty much split down the middle on whether to actually join the way). Without Ottoman forces freeing up more German troops for the Western Front, Germany's defeat would likely have been rather more decisive, perhaps forestalling the "stab in the back" mythology that helped the Nazis come to power.
Staying out of WW1 also would've extended the life of the Ottoman Empire, and whenever the inevitable collapse came it wouldn't have left the Ottoman territories under British and French occupation. Meaning that the disastrously drawn borders that gave us the modern Middle East wouldn't have happened.
The war also would've ended before the US would've entered, and before the Russian Revolution would've happened. Thus, the US would've had less influence on the world stage going into the 20s, and it's possible that Communism never would have become a major factor in the world. (There's a strong possibility that the February Revolution would still happen, but without the Provisional Government having a war to pledge they'd keep fighting and without Germany sending Lenin back to Russia to cause trouble, the October Revolution
becomes unlikely.)
In short, if Goeben had been sunk in 1914, the world today would be almost unrecognizable.
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@toddwebb7521 Britain got to hold onto both Tiger and all of the Iron Dukes during the Washington Naval Treaty era. It was under the London Naval Treaty that all 5 of those ships had to be disposed of.
Had they sacrificed Hood in order to get a 3rd Nelson, it's possible that Britain would've chosen to keep Tiger and instead scrap HMS Revenge in 1931, since with the big scare over the Deustchland-class cruisers it probably would've been seen as necessary to have 1 battlecruiser for each of Germany's panzerschiff. Though this would produce the logistical issue of keeping the 13.5-inch gun in service for only a single ship, so who knows.
Another possibility is that if Britain agreed to dispose of Hood in order to get 3 new post-Treaty ships instead of 2, they might have opted to build at least 1 of the F3 battlecruiser (35k tons, 3x3 15-inch/50 guns in a similar layout to the O3 design that would become Nelson, 12 to 13 inches of belt armor and 3.5 to 7 inches of deck armor, top speed of 29 knots), since that would result in a design with capability similar or better than Hood on a smaller hull. IMO their best choice would actually be to build 3 of the F3 battlecruisers. They'd be an overall much more useful design than the Nelsons because of their speed, and the firepower would be nearly equivalent given that it would use the same shells as the existing 15-inch/42 guns on the Queen Elizabeth, Revenge, and Renown classes (also thus simplifying logistics) and not the flawed design of the BL 16-inch Mk I which had shells too light to take proper advantage of the larger caliber.
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@johnfisher9692 The problem is that would've resulted in another 1-2 years of work. France was presuming that obsolete battleships would still be better than no battleships at all.
In practice, this was a poor decision, as the Courbet-class dreadnoughts couldn't be laid down until after the Danton-class were launched, resulting in an even greater delay.
France also foolishly refused the suggestion to alter the Dantons during construction by replacing the twin 240m guns with single 305m turrets. This would've resulted in a subpar dreadnought, but still a dreadnought. There was an insistence that the Dantons must displace no more than 18,000 tons, and this would've put them over that limit. In practice, they weighed in at almost 19,000 tons anyway at normal displacement. There had also been proposals to use steam turbines in the Dantons, but France didn't yet have any factories capable of making them and importing the turbines from Britain was deemed too expensive.
Probably their best option would've been to cancel at least half of the Dantons, building only 2-3 of them in order to get a couple of BBs quickly while also leaving multiple slipways available to lay down the first dreadnoughts as soon as their designs were finalized.
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@stevevalley7835 My thinking, though, is that Britain historically had a single non-compliant ship that they got to grandfather in (Hood), while in this scenario they get at least 3 such monsters (2 Leopards and Hood). And there's a significant chance that if the Leopards and a 10-gun slow version of the Queen Elizabeths already existed, there would've been a requirement that the Admiral-class design be a meaningful step above what Leopard already achieved. As such, we're likely talking about a 10-gun Hood displacing close to 50,000 tons standard. Or perhaps a 9-gun Hood with triple turrets. Which sadly would result in a less attractive ship, but a pretty monstrously powerful one by 1922 standards.
If Britain has 3 Treaty-busters that they get to grandfather in, even if "only" mounting 15" rather than 16" guns, I doubt the US and Japan would be anywhere near as favorably inclined toward letting Britain also get that exemption to the 10-year holiday for the Nelson-class. For the Nelsons to still exist in some form, Japan would probably demand to get some additional concession beyond just getting to keep Mutsu, and America in turn would want more than just keeping Colorado and West Virginia. At a minimum, I figure America would also get to keep Washington and Japan would get to build a single 35,000 ton BB in the 20s.
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@liladoodle If Langley had never existed, most likely Lexington would have been CV-1. The reason USS Washington was cancelled was the Washington Naval Treaty, which allowed for only two capital ships per navy to be converted into 33,000 ton aircraft carriers. Any further conversions would have to comply with the normal 27,000 ton tonnage limit as purpose-built CVs. That substantially greater size allowance was what make Lexington and Saratoga worthwhile, despite the technical challenges involved in the conversion.
Not only would Washington not get that advantage, out of all the US capital ships that were cancelled to comply with the treaty, she was by a wide margin the least suitable for conversion. Look at Japan's experience with Kaga, which proved to be a significantly worse carrier than Akagi due to her shorter hull resulting in both a shorter flight deck and a lower top speed. Kaga was only chosen for conversion by necessity, after Amagi's keel was broken on the slipway by the Great Kanto Earthquake. Now consider that Kaga's hull before the conversion was already 144 feet longer than Washington's. They best you'd be able to get out of a conversion of Washington would be something similar to HMS Eagle. Frankly, even a bad carrier like USS Ranger is better than that, because at least Ranger was decently fast and 145 feet longer than a Colorado-class hull.
The other thing to remember about the treaty limits is that they didn't just limit the individual tonnage of warships, but also the collective tonnage of the entire fleet. The US Navy was allowed a total of 135,000 tons of aircraft carriers. Which means you really want to avoid inefficient designs that waste tonnage if you can help it. And thanks converting Washington into a 27,000 ton carrier would result in a far less efficient than any conceivable purpose-built carrier of the same tonnage.
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The reason why I can't see any Anglo-American War happening is the lack of any actual points of contention between the US and UK in the 1920s. Combined with the fact that the British population had no appetite for further war less than a decade after WW1. Plus, the UK had already decided to shift from alliance with Japan to alliance with the US even before WW1 ended. This was why, for example, they literally provided the complete blueprints of HMS Hood (at the time the most powerful and advanced warship in the world) to the US Navy and recommended that they should build similar ships.
Regarding torpedoes on cruisers, given how bad the American torpedoes actually were in the late 1930s, the USN didn't really lose much by ditching them from cruiser designs. While the Japanese "long lance" torpedoes, those were a double-edged sword since they had a tendency to explode catastrophically if hit while still in their tubes. That's how Choukai was lost, for example. At the hands of an escort carrier's 5"/38 AA gun, which is a pretty embarrassing way for a heavy cruiser to be disabled.
Also, you left out USS Wichita from pre-war cruisers. She would have better armor than both Takao and the Towns, and also better guns.
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@Karl Dubhe Prinz Eugen was a bit over 2,000 tons heavier than Graf Spee, and they had similar armor. Eugen also had a 32 knot top speed, same as Exeter. Meaning that unlike with Graf Spee, the British cruisers would get to dictate the engagement. The German 20.3cm gun was also longer-ranged than the British 8" (as well it should be, given that it's a longer-barreled gun designed a decade later), and quite a lot longer ranged than the British 6". Now whether Eugen would actually be able to hit anything while firing from outside the British' ships range is questionable. You don't normally score hits from beyond Exeter's 28km max range, let alone at Eugen's 33.5km max range. But just shooting from that range would encourage the British cruisers to maneuver rather than chasing in a straight line, further allowing Eugen to flee with impunity. Her mission is commerce raiding, not duking it out with warships, so running away is clearly the choice Captain Langsdorff (presuming it's still him in command when we swap out Graf Spee for Prinz Eugen) would make.
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A refit replacing the 6" twin turrets with 5.25" dual-purpose mounts (or 4.5" BD as on Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Renown for that matter) would've been fairly unlikely, just like how it was for the real-life Nelsons. Because as the newest capital ships, they'd be near the back of the line for getting a major refit.
That said, even with fairly minimum refits pre-WW2, the F3s would've been extremely useful ships, on account of being easily fast enough to keep pace with the KGVs. Plus, it would've been a great help to logistics, since the 15"/50 would've used the same shells as the existing 15"/42. And given the highly questionable lightweight shells that were chosen for the IRL Nelsons' 16"/45, the reduction in firepower by using the 15"/50 instead is isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect from an inch smaller caliber. The British 16" shell is only 110 lb heavier with 2.7 lb larger bursting charge compared to the new 15" shell that the Royal Navy adopted in the interwar period.
The other potential impact of the Nelsons being built to the F3 design is that with another pair of impressively well-armed fast capital ships to send around the world, Hood's workload should probably have been reduced during the interwar period. Meaning she both would've have gotten as worn down and would've probably gotten an additional refit at some point pre-WW2.
Oh, and also the potential impact on the King George V class. If 15" was already the only caliber used by the Royal Navy's capital ships, I wonder if there would've been significantly harder push to adopt one of the designs with 15" rather than 14" guns. If that did end up happening, that removes the considerable teething problems that the KGVs' quad turrets had. Which might have led to much better performance by Prince of Wales at Denmark Strait, since the new 15" guns and triple turrets would simply need to be refinements of the by then well-proven weapons of the F3s. And if Hood were also replaced in that battle by an F3, with its superior firepower and protection? Bismarck would've probably fared very poorly, having no viable option other than using her 2 knot speed advantage over PoW in an attempt to flee.
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@5peciesunkn0wn Agincourt's turrets could've easily been designated A, B, P, Q, X, Y, Z or A, B, P, Q, R, X, Y (depending on what you wanted to call the #5 turret, since it's well to the aft but can't fire to the aft). Presumably the British simply decided that even though this would conform with their normal turret naming scheme, that was just a stupid amount of letters and went with numbers instead.
Though I wonder if perhaps they'd already been designated by number during construction back when Brazil first approved the design, and the British just decided to stick with that.
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Did Britain actually have enough large slipways available (ie not already building something else) to build the 3 Canadian QEs at the same time as the 5 historical QEs? It seems as if to get them laid down as soon as possible, we'd see HMCS Acadia, Quebec, and Ontario occupying the slipways that were historically used for the first 3 Revenges. Meaning that they get delayed in their laying down until some time in 1915.
With such a delay I wonder whether those 3 ships would be built at all. By the time slipways would be available again, Jackie Fisher is back in place as First Sea Lord. Isn't it fairly likely that he would've decided that since haven't actually been laid down yet, they should be reordered as battlecruisers in the same way that the final pair of Rs were? In which case the only R-class battleships will be Royal Sovereign and Royal Oak, and there'd be as many as 5 15" armed battlecruisers (Revenge, Ramillies, Resolution, Renown, and Repulse).
Though possibly only 4 such battlecruisers would be built. After all, HMS Resistance was simply cancelled rather than being reordered as a battlecruiser like Renown and Repulse. A battlecruiser is after all generally more expensive than a battleship. So 3 fewer Revenges leading to 2 more Renowns seems somewhat plausible. If that's how it turns out, the Treaty impacts are fairly obvious. When the London Naval Treaty comes around, Britain (plus Canada) has 1 fewer capital ship than they did historically but overall better ones. The ships disposed of would obviously be Tiger as the only 13.5" ship left in the fleet, and Royal Sovereign and Royal Oak as the least useful of the remaining battleships.
On the other hand if all 3 of the delayed Rs get reordered as battlecruisers (meaning 5 Revenge-class battlecruisers), the same number of ships need to be disposed of for London as were done historically. Leaving Britain with a hard choice. The final ship disposed of would have to be either an R-class battlecruiser or one of the QEs. All of these are very useful ships, so it'd very tough to choose which one has to go.
Back to the Canadian QEs, another interesting prospect with them is that since they would've presumably been homeported in Canada, it's possible one or more of them sailed to New York to be refitted by an American shipyard (either before the war, or during it in the same way that Richelieu was after defecting to the Free French). Imagine a QE getting the sort of refit that Nevada, California, Tennessee, and West Virginia did, with a South Dakota style superstructure and 8 twin 5"/38s for the new secondary armament.
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@bkjeong4302 While the rate of fire would be far faster than an Iowa, the weight of explosives being delivered would be 1,923 lbs per minute for Des Moines compared to 2,765 lbs for Iowa. Bigger, heavier shells contain bigger, heavier bursting charges. An Iowa also had the ability to fire much further inland, 41,622 yards vs 29,800 yards.
That said, there would be times where a larger number of smaller shells would be more useful. It allows for spreading the fire over a larger area, or attacking multiple separate targets at once if needed.
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With regard to 29,000-ish ton battleships...did any of those British design studies consider making what amounts to a larger Dunkerque with a pair of 14" quad turrets? That seems like by far the best option to create a useful battleship on such limited tonnage.
The up-armored Strasbourg was a 30 knot battleship with 11" belt armor and 8x 13" guns on 28,000 tons. The British 14" quad turret is only about 110 tons heavier than the the French 13" quad. While getting a 14-15" belt like the actual KGVs probably isn't happening on 29,000 tons, the fact that Britain considered 28 knots an acceptable speed (thus not needing quite as much length or as much machinery space as the Dunkerques) suggests to me that 12-13" belt would've been doable in the 29,000 ton range. A small battleship with 8x 14" guns, 12-13" belt, and 28 knots seems like it still would've been enough to be useful. You've only got 2 fewer guns than the real-life KGVs, and 2" thinner armor. Such a ship doesn't seem like it would've been insane to send alongside Hood to fight Bismarck. She'd have better armor than Hood, after all. And fitting sufficient secondary battery on the smaller hull could be handled by the expedient of using the lighter 4.5" turrets...which were better AA guns anyway. The biggest downsides to a ship like this are more limited space to put light AA mounts, and the problems with the British 14" quad turret. The latter of which applied equally to the 35,000 ton KGVs.
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The ships would've been divvied up among the allies as part of the war reparations, just like what was done with the ships that either were prevented from scuttling (like SMS Baden) or simply weren't among the ships interned at Scapa Flow.
Britain wanted the entire High Seas Fleet scrapped. They had no interest in incorporating ships with non-standard equipment and insufficient range for Pacific operations into their fleet, and they weren't keen on the diluting their naval dominance in Europe by letting France and Italy instantly add a bunch of modern battleships into their fleets. But that's exactly what France and Italy were keen on doing. As such, it's unlikely that Britain would've been able to secure an agreement from the rest of the Allies that the ships should be scrapped, and there would've been quite a lot of squabbling over who gets what ships.
In particular, everybody would want to get the two Bayern-class battleships, since those are the most modern and powerful ships in the German fleet. In all respects except speed, they were at least as good as the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, and they were plainly superior to the Revenge-class. With ships like HMS Hood, the Colorado-class, and the Nagato-class not yet in service, they could be argued to be the most powerful ships in the world in 1918. In reality, only Baden survived, and the UK claimed her, using her as a gunnery test target after studying her systems. Beyond that the only surviving German capital ships were the Nassau-class and Helgoland-class battleships, all obsolete first-generation dreadnoughts whose only value was as scrap metal. But if the whole German fleet was available to be distributed, there'd be a lot more difficulty in reaching agreement on what constitutes a "fair" distribution of the ships.
It seems like there's a good chance that France would be able to get one of the Bayern-class. They'd be able to make some very strong arguments that the should get priority ahead of the US. France had been in the war from the very start and suffered the most casualties of all the western Allies, and three of their own battleships had been sunk by the Imperial German Navy (albeit those were pre-dreadnoughts). As such, France could say it's only fair that they get their losses replaced by German ships.
France receiving SMS Bayern would heavily tilt the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and as such Italy would desperately want to receive either SMS Baden. But Britain would obviously have first dibs, so Italy might instead of tried to get their about 3/4 complete sister ship SMS Sachsen. In reality, all of the incomplete capital ships in German shipyards were scrapped after WW1. But if "equal" distribution of the ships to the Allies had become a more pressing concern, that might not have been the case. And Saschen was probably far enough along that she could've been sailed to Italy and completed there.
And then the same arguments would've happened regarding the two surviving Derfflinger-class battlecruisers, the next strongest of the completed German warships. Again, France and Italy would be the main ones competing for the ships. The UK, US, and Japan probably wouldn't care all that much about which particular ships they get, because they'd just be turning around and selling them for scrap or sinking them as targets. Though another interesting factor is that there'd be enough battleships (19 of them, 20 if Sachsen is counted) being passed around that Serbia might be able to claim one of the older Kaiser-class.
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00:53:30 The WNT treated the entire British Empire as a single nation, though. Hence HMAS Australia having to be disposed of to meet the treaty limits on capital ship tonnage. Anything built for the Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Australian Navy, etc fell under Britain's tonnage limits.
That question seems to have been more about the treaty restricting Britain's building of warships for customers outside the empire. Like the battleships built for Brazil, Chile, Japan before they established the industry to build their own, the Ottoman Empire, etc. Which of course would've been a loophole in its own right that neither the US nor Japan was going to allow (since neither of them had anywhere near as much of an industry in building warships for export). Everybody remembered how when WW1 broke out, the Chilean and Ottoman battleships were promptly taken into the Royal Navy.
So if the treaty limits hadn't included ships for export, that would've allowed Britain the possibility of building G3 battlecruisers, N3 battleships, or other blatantly treaty-busting warships for sale to friendly nations like Greece, Chile, etc (with British banks giving loans since those nations blatantly couldn't actually afford to pay upfront for such large ships)...and then at the last minute abrogating the treaty and "buying them back" from the ostensible customers.
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I mean in theory, that could certainly be done. It's all a matter of how much time, effort, and money you're willing to put into an old ship. Arkansas was similar in age, size, and armament to the Italian Conte di Cavour and Caio Duilio classes, and only 1 knot slower than them. And in the 1930s, the Italians rebuild those ships to be capable of 27 knots, and upgraded their guns from 305mm to 320mm.
But for the US, such a rebuild would never have been worthwhile. The Cavour and Duilio classes were the only battleships Italy had from 1928 until 1940, so doing a massive refit to increase their capabilities as a stopgap until the Littorio-class battleships could be built made some sense. Whereas in the 1930s US Navy, Arkansas was the oldest and least capable out of 15 operational battleships, so it would've been seen as a waste to do any major refit.
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With regard to your Greek cruiser idea, there's a clause of the Washington Naval Treaty you're overlooking: "No vessel of war constructed within the jurisdiction of any of the Contracting Powers for a non-Contracting Power shall exceed the limitations as to displacement and armament prescribed by the present Treaty for vessels of a similar type which may be constructed by or for any of the Contracting Powers". So British shipyards would not be allowed to build a cruiser hull that exceeds the Treaty limits, not even for export purposes.
There are two possible ways I can see to get around this. The first would be (since Greece certainly had no shipyards capable of building the hull themselves) to contract the hull out to a non-Treaty nation. The only other options I can think of that were physically capable of building a cruiser hull would be Spain, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union. And Germany, but I don't think Versailles would allow it and you have good reason for not wanting a Germany in a position to screw up your design.
The other option would be to stick with having the hull built in Britain (you obviously want that high-quality British armor), but make the ship technically a small Treaty-compliant battlecruiser. France had a 1926 study that contemplated using their allocated capital ship tonnage in this manner, known as the "Navire de Ligne de 17500-tonnes", which would've had a top speed of 35 knots and been armed with 2x4 305mm/55 guns. This design evolved in to the significantly larger (but still small by Treaty standards) Dunkerque-class.
So change your cruiser's armament from 4x3 8-inch to 4x2 12-inch (already a caliber in Greek service, on the fairly useless pre-dreadnoughts Kilkis and Lemnos; perhaps even those ships' turrets could be scavenged to arm the new ship, and scrapping them would free up some money), and increase its displacement a bit. It's well over 10,000 tons and carries 12-inch guns, so it's obviously a capital ship and not a cruiser. Thus Britain isn't violating the treaties by building the hull.
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With regard to preserving one of the Standard-type battleships, my first inclination would actually be USS Nevada, the original Standard. She was similarly refitted to West Virginia as well.
But realistically, the best chance of getting a Standard preserved would've been choosing a ship named for a coastal state. You'd have a much easier time fundraising for preservation of a ship from people in the state it's named for and if it can actually be brought to that state for permanent mooring. Which is a bit of a problem since most of the Standards were named after inland states. This criteria would narrow it down to just Mississippi (New Mexico-class), California (Tennessee-class), and Maryland (Colorado-class).
Mississippi can be counted out right away because her conversion to a gunnery/missile test ship made her too ugly for a museum ship. California would've probably been the best candidate on account of her namesake being a huge and wealthy state. However, both California and Maryland would have the huge downside of being on the wrong coast when they were decommissioned, greatly increasing the expense of bringing them to their states. California was put in reserve at Philadelphia, while Maryland was in Bremerton, WA. Mississippi was in the most convenient location to tow her to her namesake state (being based in Norfolk), but again she looked like this: http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/014103.jpg
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@iancarr8682 They were not.
The original KGV designs had either 3x4 14" or 3x3 15" guns. The former layout was adopted for largely political reasons. Parliament pushed hard for it because of the 2nd London Naval Treaty, and revising the caliber upward after the escalator clause kicked in would've resulted in delaying the ships' construction (as happened with the US North Carolina class, which were also originally to have 3x4 14"). The argument was also made that 3x4 14" provides a heavier broadside than 3x3 15", regardless of whether the individual shells are less powerful.
The reason for the final revision from 3x4 to 2x4 + 1x2 14" was that KGV was estimated to be IIRC over a thousand tons above the 35,000 ton limit. The Royal Navy was by far the most scrupulous in obeying treaty limits, so they had to drop some weight. Either by reducing the armor or reducing the armament. Since KGV would have the smallest guns of any modern BB regardless, it was considered essential that the armor not be sacrificed. The armor would be needed to allow safely pushing in to closer range where the reduced penetration of the main guns would become irrelevant. And since weight savings was the entire point of replacing one of the quad turrets with a twin, reducing the diameter of the barbette had to happen. That provides a significant weight reduction, probably more reduction than removing two of the barrels did.
Thus, reverting to 3x4 14" was not a plausible option after the ships were built, even with the expiration of the treaties meaning that weight limits no longer applied.
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1:45:20 I'm pretty sure you're mistaken here. There is no strictly date-based cutoff that lets the US keep Colorado while Japan has to scrap Mutsu. Mutsu was completed well ahead of Colorado.
In fact, it was kind of complete bullshit that Mutsu was ever on the chopping block at all. The Washington Naval Conference convened on November 12, 1921. This was when the US proposed that all incomplete capital ships be scrapped. But Mutsu was already complete, being commissioned by the IJN on October 24, 1921. Colorado, on the other hand, wouldn't be completed until August 30, 1923. The US was blatantly negotiating in bad faith by on one hand insisting that the cutoff was based on the date of November 12, but on the other hand including a ship that had to be scrapped despite already being complete before that date.
It's also not really accurate at all to say the Japanese were rushing to complete Mutsu. Mutsu's construction was actually slightly slower than Nagato's, and Nagato certainly wasn't a rush job. And she was completed before the conference had even be called, let alone before the US proposed that all capital ships not already completed be scrapped. So there's really no basis for suggesting they were rushing to beat a deadline that didn't exist yet.
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@F-Man There actually was a successor fast battleship design drawn up, one of the alternate concepts for Montana called "BB-65 Scheme 8" (this being before Illinois and Kentucky were ordered, so it had been presumed there would only be 4 Iowas). It was meant to maintain the 33 knot speed of Iowa while still adding a 4th turret.
This design wasn't chosen because its size (and therefore cost) was considered simply absurd. 70,000 tons standard displacement, (7,000 tons heavier than the finalized Montana) and 1,050 feet long at the waterline. This is size that wouldn't be reached in an actually-built warship until USS Enterprise (CVN-65) in 1961. And the propulsion was equally insane. 320,000 shaft horsepower would've the highest output of any ship in history until USS Gerald R. Ford in 2017. That's why the ship would've had to be so long, to fit so much machinery. And since late 1930s technology couldn't produce a shaft capable of handling 80,000 horsepower. BB-65-8 would've needed six shafts.
And while the belt armor wouldn't be as thick as the 16.1 inch chosen for the finalized Montana, 15.3 inches is still nothing to sneeze at, and a massive improvement over the 12.1 inch belt on Iowa, 12.2 inch on South Dakota, and 12 inch on North Carolina.
All of this illustrates what an insane ship is required to improve on Iowa's firepower and protection without sacrificing any speed.
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