Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "HMS Hood & USS Iowa - Battlecruisers or Fast Battleships?" video.

The entire concept of the fast battleship is a merger of the battleship and battlecruiser roles. That's what Japan was going for with the Kii-class. And it's basically what Britain had achieved with the G3: if built it would've been the best-protected ship in the history of the Royal Navy to date (it's just that Royal Navy battleships in general during the dreadnought era had thinner belts than their American and German counterparts). The only catch is that Britain was simultaneously designing N3, which was slower, better armed, and more armored (and would've been the best-armored ship on Earth until Yamato was built). Just because you've stumbled onto the ideal capital ship, of course, doesn't mean you'll realize you've done so.
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Despite the name "fast battleship", there's a good argument to be made that they're more of an evolution of the battlecruiser concept than they are of the previous slow battleships. Rather than being battleships except faster, they're battlecruisers except without sacrificing any armor. The hull form is closer to a battlecruiser than to a slow battleship, after all.
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@Edax_Royeaux Hood's refit would've expanded the 12" belt's height, but also would've removed a lot of the extraneous bits of distributed armor. So despite being better-armored where it counts afterward, Hood might have lost weight in the refit.
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@Edax_Royeaux The actual reason that the Kongos were classified as fast battleships was that they'd previously been classified as simply "battleships" after their rather half-assed 1928-31 refit. That much less comprehensive refit simply added some armor (thicker barbettes, turret roof, and main deck) and torpedo bulges, while the machinery was unchanged. This reduced their speed to below 26 knots, whereas the Nagatos had a top speed of 26.5 knots. A battlecruiser that's slower than battleships is just silly, so the Kongos were reclassified as battleships. (Almost as silly as Japan's retroactive creation of the "pre-dreadnought battlecruiser" by reclassifying their 12" armed armored cruisers of the Tsukuba and Ibuki classes as battlecruisers in 1912.) So in effect, the Kongos from 1928 until their 1934-40 rebuilds were second-class battleships. Those latter rebuilds brought them back to being proper battlecruisers, since lengthening the hull and installing more powerful machinery boosted their speed all the way to 30.5 knots. A little additional deck armor was added over the magazines and the torpedo protection was improved, but once again the belt remained unchanged at 8 inches. So why did the IJN call them fast battleships instead of battlecruisers at this point? Simple: the IJN in the interim had abolished the classification of battlecruiser because the no longer had any.
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@OrdinaryEXP The thing about Vanguard is that she wasn't a ship with any glorious history. She literally never saw combat (she was available for Korea but wasn't used in the war). There were some calls to preserve Vanguard, but the fact is that she was notable only for what she was (the last battleship), while a surviving Hood would've also been famous for what she did. In addition to having been the symbol of Royal Navy power for decades, she would've sunk the Bismarck. It's also possible that she instead of Duke of York would've been sent to take down Scharnhorst. Hood would have the additional advantage in terms of getting support for preservation that she's simply beautiful. So if she lasted to 1960 like Vanguard did IRL, there's some chance of it happening.
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The Scharnhorsts would've been pretty good battleships relative to their below treaty limits size if built with 6x 38cm guns. And an enlarged Scharnhorst with triple 38cm would've been a much better (though probably less attractive) battleship than Bismarck.
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The problem is that Hood's armor was specifically designed to be equal to that of the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge-class battleships. It was 12 rather than 13 inches, but the outward-angled belt was considered to make up for that compared to the battleships' flat vertical belt.
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@ussarizona2201 Europeans are going to be laughing at you thinking that's a high gas price. (For any Europeans reading this, $4.58/gallon is €0.96/liter or £0.82/liter.) Also, like Quetz said, gas prices will go back down again.
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@michaelkovacic2608 12" belt had been the standard thickness for Royal Navy battleships until the QEs increased it to 13.
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Every British battlecruiser that blew up at Jutland went down at the hands of a German battlecruiser, not a battleship. So does that mean Bismarck was a battlecruiser?
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I'm waiting for World of Warships to do a US Navy battlecruiser line that moves Iowa into that line (followed by BB-65-8 at tier 10). Thus, even more "see, Iowa is a battlecruiser!" arguments.
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Hood however has no such equivalent. (Armstrong did come up with essentially a 10-gun version of Queen Elizabeth that they offered to Brazil in 1914, but that can't really be considered Hood's contemporary battleship since it wasn't a finalized design and was never even considered by Britain.)
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@matthiaseckert4022 Hood's armor is 1 inch thinner, but it's angled while QE's is flat.
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@OrdinaryEXP Warspite's case was in large part a matter of timing. Britain was completely broke in 1945, and Warspite was both obsolete and in terrible condition so there was no prospect of keeping her around for military purposes. Barring massive private donations, there was no way Warspite could've been saved no matter how much she deserved it. Hood would've had a slight chance had she emerged victorious at Denmark Strait for only one reason: her larger size and superior speed mean she might have survived into the 1960s. But even then it would've been a long shot.
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@davidharner5865 I didn't even mention Nagato.
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23:29 I would say that comparing Hood and Iowa to G3 is in fact very instructive. Since G3 is a direct follow-on to Hood, and also has incredibly similar size, speed, armament, and armor to Iowa.
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