Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 253 (Part 2)" video.

  1. wrt the question about Force H, in late 41, Somerville's flagship was Malaya. Reportedly he was displeased at having such and old, slow, ship. I worked out a scenario where Prince of Wales put in at Gibraltar to become flagship, while Malaya steamed around Africa, and, with Revenge, relieved QE and Valiant in Alexandria. QE and Valiant then steaming for Singapore as Force Z, but those old QEs were too slow to make the timing work out.
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  2. wrt the Tegetthoff, as Drac said, it appears to have been mostly a matter of cost, for what were not particularly good battleships. After the war, many Austrian destroyers and torpedo boats were allocated to Italy, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia. Many of these ships served their new owners well into the 1930s. Italy did not have a huge inventory of destroyers, like the US did after the war, and embarked on a significant destroyer building program through the 20s. Italy was also putting down a rebellion in Libya. Even if Italy had done some horse trading with France to get both Tegetthoffs, potentially to use one as spares for the other, battleships were not a priority for Italy at the time, iirc, I did read somewhere along the line that the Italians did strip the heavy guns off of Tegetthoff for use as shore batteries.
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