Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "HSwMS Gotland - Guide 316" video.

@MrSerenitysEnd The thing about Gotland is that by WW2 her seaplanes capacity was unimpressive since she could only carry Hawker Ospreys. And her layout was predicated on not going on the kinds of long journeys that a convoy escort requires, hence the lack of a hangar for those seaplanes. You don't want your seaplanes unprotected when dealing with North Atlantic weather. A convoy escort seaplane cruiser would need to be much a more substantial ship than Gotland. At which point it's probably too big and expensive to be relegated to convoy duty. Probably the best bet for such an escort cruiser would've been conversions of the old Hawkins-class cruisers. You've got a 10,000 ton cruiser so there's plenty of size to work with, while their outdated armament (7.5-inch single mounts with only gun shields rather than proper turrets) and sub-30 knot speed mean they're no longer that useful in all the other roles a cruiser has to play. removing some of the aft guns to make room for a hangar and catapult wouldn't have been any great loss. And the result would've still looked like a cruiser, so any surface raider smaller than Scharnhorst would've been deterred.
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