Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 160" video.

@Adam-ns3gg OK, 28kt QEs from the start, then the rebuilt QEs could maintain that speed without any treaty issues. What does that do for the case for building the Renowns and Hood? The QEs would be as fast as Tiger, and all the preceding battlecruisers. The KGVs would not offer any speed advantages over rebuilt QEs either. The KGVs are better protected, but could they modernize Malaya and Barham, and bring Warspite up to 1939 standard for the price of one KGV?
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I posed several alt history questions a few months ago: USN Colorados never built, RN reorders all four of the ships cancelled in 1914 as Renowns, and a couple others. It will be interesting to see if any tickle his fancy. Maybe even a speculation about the UK swapping all it's West Indies colonies to the US in settlement of it's war debt? (the more I looked into that one, the better I liked it)
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QE and Valiant received new powerplants in their modernizations. I'm thinking there was an interpretation of the treaty that the UK observed that prohibited uprating the QE powerplants. Or, could be, that the assertion that the QEs could be uprated enough to hit 28kts was hooey. The only upgrades the WNT explicitly allowed were for torpedo protection, AA armament, and deck armor.
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@stanleyrogouski I would say the Iowas are North Carolinas without treaty restrictions. The SDs are simply misbegotten tubs, but that's only my take. When it looked like the US was heading for war at the beginning of 1917, I would have cancelled all the Coloradoes and Tennessee before they were laid down, and broken up the little bit of California that was on the slipway, for the same reasons the Admiralty cancelled their 1914 battleship building program, because I think they are misbegotten tubs that not only had been passed by technology, but USN decision making in going bigger and faster with the 1920 South Dakotas had rendered the Tennessees and Coloradoes obsolete.
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@stanleyrogouski That opens up an interesting line of inquiry: given the displacement limits the US accepted with the naval treaties, and given how fast the USN's carriers were, should the North Carolinas and SDs have sacrificed armament or armor for speed to keep up with the carriers? When they were designed, the USN didn't know that battleship duels were pretty much a thing of the past, but having some major fleet elements being 5kts faster than the others seems a formula for frustration. Sticks in my mind I read somewhere that, by the end of the war, the engines in the SDs were worn out, because they had to be run so hard to keep up with the rest of the task force at cruising speed.
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@genericpersonx333 I generally agree with your take on pre-war USN doctrine. Seems that US spies would have reported on the lengthening of the Kongos in 35-36, early enough to influence designs for the North Carolinas, giving the US an idea of the speed the IJN was going for. A difference of 2-3kts/hr sounds trivial, but multiply that difference over 24 hours/day, for several days, and it starts to add up. I can't help but wonder how much fuel it took to push an SD into the high 20s, vs a finer hull.
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@adaw2d3222 according to the replacement schedule in the WNT, the legacy ships would have been mostly gone. Assuming everything on the replacement schedule through 38 is scrapped on schedule, the only remnants would be Valiant, Renown, Repulse, Ramillies, Hood and the Nelsons.
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@stanleyrogouski I looked up the AA armament SD had when completed in March of 42: (8) .50 machine guns, (28) 1.1" (I take that as 7 quad mounts), and (16) Oerlikons, along with (16) 5"/38s. That was a substantial increase from what had been originally planned. Prince of Wales had (16) QF 5.25" in twin turrets, (32) 2 pounder pompoms (which I take to be (4) octuple mounts), and (80) UP projectors. The SD's 1.1 mounts can engage more targets at the same time, but PoW's pompoms will do more damage to anything they get zeroed in on. Without the golden BB torpedo hit that killed power to many of the mounts on PoW, there isn't much to choose between the two, and SD had it's own wonky electrical system issues. Repluse had not been modernized like Renown, and was somewhat deficient in AA, by 1941 standards: (8) 4" and (2) octuple pompoms. For the heck of it, I proposed sending the newly rebuilt QE and Valiant as Force Z, with their places in Alexandria being taken by Malaya and Revenge, and Malaya's place in Force H taken by Prince of Wales. Rebuilt QE and Valiant: 20 4.5" in twin turrets, 4 octuple pompoms, and 4 quad .50 machine guns. I could make a case that QE and Valiant, together, could put up more AA than PoW and Repulse, combined, and the QEs might even have an edge on a pair of SDs. Even more interesting: there was a suggestion that Hermes join Force Z, but she was rejected as too slow to keep up with PoW and Repulse. Hermes could keep up with QEs just fine, but I doubt it would occur to anyone in Singapore to make up tail hooks for some of the Buffalos the RAF and RAAF were flying so that Hermes could have some proper fighters to provide a CAP.
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@lukedogwalker Congratulations. Drac responded to a couple of mine months ago. When he was reading the first question, I was thinking it sounded just like what I had been pondering, then backed up the audio as I had not caught the name. My name! Couldn't believe it. He answered a second of mine a week later.
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I don't think you can go by the number of guns being built, because it is routine to produce many more guns than needed to populate the turrets when the ship is built, so that replacement guns are readily available when the original guns need to be relined or are damaged in some manner. Total number of 15" guns mounted in ships: (40) in QEs, (40) in Rs, (12) in Renowns, (8) in Courageouses, (8) in Hood, (8) in monitors, for a total of 116. According to Wiki, 186 were built. Whether Agincourt was intended as a QE, or a proto-Hood, it probably would have used (4) turrets, implying that, from the cancelled Rs plus Agincourt, there should have been (16) Mk I turrets in inventory, but I can only account for (14): (6) on the Renowns, (4) on the Courageouses, (2) on Erebus class monitors and the final (2) landing on the Roberts class monitors in 1940. But that is inconclusive too, because there could have been more turrets in process that were never completed when the four battleships were canceled in 1914.
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@PaulfromChicago true, but I'm thinking there were turrets early in the production process, or planned, but not in production, that were simply canceled. All the ships that came after, Renowns, Courageouses, Erebus and Marshal Ney monitors, were all using leftovers from the canceled ships. The changes in the Mk II turrets seem substantial enough for the Mk IIs to not be Mk Is that were modified during production.
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@stanleyrogouski 130,000hp for the SD vs 75,000 for QE. But SD is porky 680ft x 108ft, vs QE: 643ft x 90'7". Takes a lot of power to push a fat tub like an SD. After their rebuild, the Andria Dorias, with 75,000shp, could touch 26kts: 613ft x 92'.
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@gregorywright4918 Japan gave notice in 34, as the Kongo rebuilds were starting, that it was leaving the treaty system at the end of 36, so they would not have cared what anyone thought of their enhancing the Kongos. Even as much as the Kongos were improved, they actually still came close to the WTN tonnage limit. I think the US and UK had a grip on just how huge Yamato was. Second London had a vague tonnage escalator. The clause said that if a power who was not a party to the treaty (like Japan, which dropped out effective the end of 36) built a ship of tonnage exceeding treaty limits, the powers in the treaty were to negotiate an answering tonnage limit increase among themselves. Yamato was laid down in late 37. By the beginning of 38, the US and UK were arguing about how far to push the new limit, with the UK wanting 42,000, while the US wanted 45,000. The US won the argument, but they wasted six months arguing.
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