After reading a few threads where World War I (1914-1918) does not occur I was wondering a few things.
1. What were the existing naval construction plans for the large navies of the world? What I mean is no war the Dreadnought race continues so what was planned?
Let's break it down by country:
France: 5 Normandie-class battleships building were cancelled by the war in 1914. They were also going to lay down 4 Lyon-class battleships in 1915 (2 in January and 2 in April). Going off of the construction times of the other French dreadnoughts I'd expect the Normandies to enter service in 1916 and the Lyons in 1918. The French Naval Law of 1912 called for a fleet of 28 battleships, 10 scouts, 52 destroyers, and 94 submarines by 1920. Mind you, this total includes 6 pre-dreadnoughts so I'd expect a another Naval Law to mandate their replacement with dreadnoughts by, say, 1925. I think France has the industrial capacity to do that.
Russia: There are the 4 Gangut-class battleships set to enter service in late 1914. There's also the 3 Imperatritsa Mariya-class battleships building in the Black Sea which will probably be commissioned around the same time as OTL. So summer 1915. Russia was also building 4 Borodino-class battlecruisers (in the Russian sense which was closer to the German than British type). There were also numerous lighter craft, destroyers, cruisers, and the like, building simultaneously but I don't have numbers on them. I assume they would continue building large numbers of destroyers derived from Novik. These were very good ships. Some of the best destroyers of the war. Now we get into the really interesting stuff. In 1914 Russia was doing studies and asking for design submissions for some 16-inch gun armed battleships and I believe had picked a design with a planned laying down of 8 units in the last half of 1915.
Austria: They'll have the 4 Tegetthoff's of OTL and 4 Ersatz Monarch class battleships laid down in 1915 (that's my guess. I haven't seen any dates for when they were supposed to be laid down.). After that I'm not aware of any specific plans but I know Austria was interested in the idea of battlecruisers and did some design studies to that affect.
Germany: They'd lost the naval race pretty convincingly by 1914. I've heard that they were stockpiling guns and armor to launch a later building "sprint" but I can't attest to the veracity of that. For ships they'd have all 4 Baden-class battleships and likely a very similar follow on class of 4 ships. I don't think they'd increase the gun caliber again that soon. It wouldn't be in character for the Reichsmarine. Similarly, with battlecruisers Germany would have all 3 of the Derfflinger-class but the Mackensens would be butterflied away. Their construction was a direct product of war experience so the next class of German battlecruisers will be to a different design. Again I'd expect them to be similar to the Derfflingers.
Britain: HMS Agincourt would be completed as the 6th QE-class, and Renown, Resistance, and Repulse would be completed as Revenge-class battleships. Canada might fund another three battleships of an "improved QE" type if the government there can change the bill so as to get it passed. Not an unlikely prospect in my opinion. Now things get very, very interesting. I'm not aware of any other concrete plans (and would love to hear any if someone knows them) but the Admiralty intended to keep the newest British ships a step-and-a-half ahead of the competition. That meant being the first to introduce bigger, faster, more heavily armed ships. Fisher especially was pushing this idea. So my thoughts for future British construction after the Revenge class would be 5-6 "improved QEs" (significantly faster, Italy's Caracciolo-class were projected to do 28 knots with the same armament, and bigger to accept the increased machinery). After that the next class would be an attempt to replicate what the QEs were. A whole new level of battleship design. 18-inch guns, battlecruiser speed, battleship armor, and a huge increase in tonnage to permit all of that. This is where Fisher's Incomparable design originated. It was a study from 1912 on how to combine 16 or 18-inch guns with high speed without sacrificing armor.
It often gets confused with a later and similar design called The Citadel which was for a follow up to the large light cruisers. Before the war the Admiralty was also floating a proposal for a class of armored cruisers armed with new 9.4-inch guns and capable of 30-knots. I've also heard there was a proposal to make a battleship a unit of strength equal to a certain number of destroyers, cruisers, and submarines. I'm a little skeptical of that until I see some actual evidence but it would fit with a growing emphasis on submarines and other light craft in the Royal Navy.
I'm getting most of my information off of the Navweaps forum and the Warship Projects forum. Worryingly that website has been down for a few days. I'm concerned it might be gone. If so it is truly a sad day for warship enthusiast as the site had a truly phenomenal archive of transcribed documents and drawings.
