Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "The Drydock - Episode 022" video.

I would say that Spee's best chance would've been to charge the entrance of Stanley Harbour with his armored cruisers and have his light cruisers hang back, and then flee if things go badly. Best-case scenario would be that he manages to sink one of the British light cruisers as they'leaving the harbor, which would bottle up the rest of the ships until the wreck could be cleared. Worst-case, of course, would be if one or both of his ACRs start taking 12-inch shell hits. In that case, if at all possible he should've tried to get them into the harbor entrance and block it up that way. Spee ultimately tried to sacrifice his ACRs to give the rest of his squadron an opportunity to escape anyway, and doing it this way would've given him a better chance. His ships were slower than the British ones, so initially attempting to flee was a mistake.
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And regarding angling ships to increase effective armor thickness, IIRC Admiral Holland attempted to do that with Hood in the Battle of the Denmark Strait . But when he decided that he needed to get his aft turrets to bear, either he or his helmsman made the mistake of swinging out too far to port, giving Bismarck a much flatter shot into the belt armor. (And yes, the idea that it was the deck that was penetrated is a myth. Hood and Bismarck were much too close together for plunging fire to be possible.)
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And if Japan had been granted parity with the US and UK under the Washington Naval Treaty, most likely the way this would've happened would not be giving it a 5:5:5 ratio. It would've been more likely a 3:3:3 ratio, with the US and UK being given the same 315,000 tons of capital ships and 81,000 tons of aircraft carriers as Japan got in reality.
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