Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "USS New York - Guide 204" video.

  1.  @and15re1  from my reading, the RN sort of backed into the entire idea of a monitor in WWI. The RN was using obsolete battleships for bombardment, as the US did in WWII. The President of Bethlehem Steel, which owned the Fore River shipyard, was negotiating with the Admiralty, in November 1914, for a contract to build 20-30 submarines for the RN, when the Admiralty officials asked if he had anything else useful around. Greece had contracted with a German yard to build a new battleship, but the turrets and guns had been subcontracted to Bethlehem Steel. Bessie could not make delivery to the German yard, due to the British blockade, so the 4 twin turret and 14"/45 gun sets, and 4,000 rounds of ammo, were offered to the Admiralty. The Admiralty snapped them up and threw together the first modern monitors, the Abercrombie class, with shallow draft and huge torpedo bulges. That started the monitor building program, with guns taken from the obsolete Majestic class battleships and Drake and Cressy class cruisers. My suspicion is the US never went that way, because, in WWII, they already had a very large supply of obsolete battleships and didn't see the sense in building new hulls to carry the obsolete guns that were already afloat on the battleships. If the RN had been able to source more turret and gun sets, the way they sourced the sets from Bethlehem, they probably would not have been stripping obsolete warships either. Oh, the submarines? Bethlehem got away with selling the guns while the US was neutral, but, when President Wilson got wind of the submarine deal, he had the subs impounded until the US entered the war.
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