Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock -- Episode 165" video.

  1. It's entirely possible that the Royal Navy might have ended up with only 2 Revenges in the first place in this scenario. Adding 3 Queen Elizabeths to the production schedule could easily have meant delaying 3 of the Revenges until those slipways are freed up. Which in turn means that those 3 Revenges won't be laid down until late 1914 at the earliest. Historically, this is when Jackie Fisher became First Sea Lord for the 2nd time, and one of his decisions was to cancel the final 3 Revenges (Resistance, Renown, and Repulse) that hadn't been laid down yet, reordering 2 of them as the Renown-class battlecruisers. If 3 more Revenges had their laying down delayed to make way for the Canadian QEs, he might well have cancelled them as well, in favor of 2 or 3 more battlecruisers. In which case the Royal Navy ends up with an overall much faster fleet, and the 2 remaining Revenges would be scrapped in the early 1930s. At which point Britain's slowest capital ships are the Nelsons.
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  2. 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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  3. Oh, and something else that occurred to me. With Britain having overall a much faster fleet in this alternate timeline, I wonder how that might have impacted the Nelson-class battleships. Is it possible that Britain would've decided to transition to an entirely fast battle line, and choose the F3 battlecruiser instead of the O3 battleship design for the Nelsons? The F3 was still quite well-armored despite being a "battlecruiser".
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  4. 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, or would it result in either them or the first 3 Revenges getting delayed? I've made a separate post with some of my own speculations about how that might turn out.
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