Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 170" video.

Enjoyed your comments on the Lexingtons. One observation I would make wrt armor, they had armor roughly equal, or better, than anything that could catch them. Their armor is roughly equal to the Kongos, 7" inclined at 11.5 degrees according to Friedman, a bit inferior to Amagi's, but Lexington's guns could punch through Amagi's armor as readily as a Kongo's. Lexington's armor is probably adequate against any 8" cruiser. Reducing armament is one thing I would not do, as the Amagis were designed with 10-410mm guns, so cutting the Lexingtons from 8 to 6 would put them at a further disadvantage, in a battle where the first one who scores a solid hit will probably be the winner due to the vulnerability of both ships. I think the final iteration of the Lexingtons was pretty decent, considering the mission as a scout. Only change I would want to make is get rid of the casemate mounted 6", in favor of the twin turrets used on the Omahas,.
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@ZenkoTheGreat The drawings on Navweaps do not give the diameter of the barbettes, but they do give the diameter of the parts of the turret that fit inside the barbette. The triple 14" as used in the Tennessees is 28ft, 11.5in in dia. The twin 16" as used in the Colorados is 28ft, 5.5in. As the twin 16" is slightly smaller, it should fit within the Tennessee class barbette, by my thumbnail math. However, the change would need to be ordered when the ships were built. The Washington Naval Treaty prohibited up gunning a battleship's main armament, except in the cases of France and Italy.
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@tommeakin1732 that thought crossed my mind. Use a development of the 12"/50 on the Wyomings on the Lexingtons to save weight and size, vs the 16", making the Lexingtons essentially a 1920 version of the Alaskas. Thinking about it, a 12"/50 could punch through the armor of anything that could catch up to a Lexington, and having a sub-battleship size gun would discourage the temptation to put battlecruisers in the battleline against full-on battleships. But the Wyomings were years away from scrapping. What was available in abundance immediately after WWI was the 12'/45, but then you start running into problems penetrating battlecruiser armor. Navweaps gives a penetration for the 12"/50 at 12,000 yards of as much as 12.3" and 10" at 20,000 yards, enough to punch through an Amagi's belt at those ranges. But the 12"/45 could only penetrate 10.8" at 12,000 yards, so punching through Amagi's belt at longer range than that becomes problematic.
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@ZenkoTheGreat Happened on a site yesterday that lists barbette inside diameters. According to that site, and I have no idea if it is accurate or not, the inside diameter of the barbettes of the Tennessees and Coloradoes are identical at 31feet. Armor thickness is also the same at 13". The weight of two 16"/45s is 213,918kg. The weight of three 14"/50s is 244,419kg. Navweaps does not list a weight for the Tennessee turrets. Based on what I see, and as the Navy Department had already moved from the 14" to the 16" for Maryland, which was building at the same time as the Tennessees, I would ask SecNav Daniels why not tag the 14"s that were in production as spares for the New Mexicos, and shift the Tennessees to the 16".
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