Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "HMS Daring - Guide 189" video.
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@nullanonsonemmenoiocosascr6676 There was a mention of the Caracciolos in the Q&A on battleship hulls of a few days ago. I'll repeat a couple points; the Caracciolos were criticized for inadequate torpedo protection. The Pugliese system apparently was invented in 1917, after the Caracciolos were designed. Construction of the hull of Caracciolo was advanced beyond where the Pugliese system could have been installed at construction, so considerable rework would have been required to provide sufficient internal space in the hull for the system. Ansaldo had not made as much progress on the hull of Columbo, so less rework would have been required. The Odero and Orlando yards had hardly made any progress on their ships. I covered in the previous post how the guns built for the Caracciolos had been repurposed during the war, so more would have had to be built if construction of the ships had continued. Italy did not have the finances to support a capital ship building program, without shortchanging something else. Immediately after WWI, Italy continued building destroyers. As the Caracciolos were intended as a response to the British QE, I will assume their cost was about the same as a QE 3M GBP. I will further assume that the cost of an Italian DD is about the same as a British DD: about 100,000 GBP. So to clear the cost, after the war, to build two Caracciolos, assuming Caracciolo was 50% done and Columbo was 5% done, the cost to complete wold be roughly 4.35M, or the cost of 43 DDs, or almost all of the DDs the RM laid down through the 20s, and that doesn't include the cost to rework Caracciolo to incorporate the Pugliese system. The delays in construction would put the ships in the clutches of the Washington treaty. Italy could argue that, as the US and UK were both allowed to complete 2 new BBs in the early 20s, the treaty should offer the same courtesy to Italy, so only two Caracciolos could have been built. Because Italy chose not to complete two Caracciolos, they were given two BB building windows opening in 1927 and 1929, that were good until used. Italy used those two windows to build the first two Littorios. If two Caracciolos had been built, Italy would not have had those new construction windows. so the first two Littorios could not have been laid down until 1937. If Littorio and Veneto were not laid down until 37, Veneto would probably have been completed, but Littorio not completed for the same reason Impero was never completed. Littorio was built by Ansaldo, in Genoa. Due to Genoa's proximity to France, Littorio would probably have been moved to a perceived safer location in an incomplete condition just before the war broke out, as Impero was, and the disruptions to work that Impero suffered would have been visited on Littorio. As it turned out, Italian concerns about the exposed position of Genoa were well founded as both the French and UK fleets showed up and shelled the daylights out of Genoa harbor. These visits didn't end until 42, when the Italians installed 4-15" shore batteries on the heights above Genoa. Ironically, the 15" guns installed had originally been built 25 years earlier, for the Caracciolo class ships. Bottom line, the cost to Italy to complete 2 of the Caracciolos would be 43 DDs that were needed to escort convoys to North Africa, and two Littorio class BBs being available in 1940, Littorio never being completed and Roma and Impero probably never laid down. The RM was vastly stronger without the Caracciolos.
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