Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 039" video.

  1. Design Y would've been far more expensive than the Revenge and Renown classes, so building 7 or 8 of them seems unlikely. My guess would be that you'd have 4 of them, 5 at most. I figure that this also would result in the Admiral class being delayed by a year. There's be demands from the Admiralty that they be a clear improvement over Design Y, and merely having an extra inch of belt armor wouldn't be enough to meet that standard. So you end up with Hood and at least one of her sisters laid down in 1917 with an armament of 4x2 16-inch guns and a normal displacement of upward of 48,000 tons. With the US and Japan laying down Maryland and Nagato in the same year, and their sister ships soon to follow, the Royal Navy wouldn't have cancelled Hood's sisters. Getting 16-inch capital ships in service to match the other great powers would be a top priority. When the Washington Naval Treaty is being negotiated, Hood and Rodney have already been completed but Anson and Howe are halted. Since Britain is no longer in a situation of lacking any 16-inch capital ships, they don't get the exemption from the building holiday that allowed the Rodney class in reality. With Anson and Howe's hulls still existing, Britain would be in a position of being able to convert them into large aircraft carriers as the US did with Lexington and Saratoga and Japan did with Akagi and Kaga.
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