What are some cool warships of the steel era (1859-present) that should have been built?
My lists are :
Planned Dutch battlecruisers (German invasion in 1940 ended all plans of that)
United States class aircraft carriers
Ersatz Yorck class battlecruisers
HMS Lion
H class battleships
CVA-01
Planned Ticonderoga class successor
Graf Zeppelin aircraft carrier
French and Italian WW2 era ship designs never built or completed (French and Italian warships are my favorite
I've got to disagree with a few of these:
Graf Zeppelin was a disaster waiting to happen. And even Hitler realised that. For a country obsessed with "wunderwaffe" it's telling that they never bothered to complete their carrier.
United States was a massive step backwards in carrier design. Yes, she was massive. But she was also flushed decked and had minimal magazine spaces since her one and only mission was nuclear strike.
CVA-01, by the time it was finally put out of it's misery, was a damn near useless collection of compromises that literally no one was happy with. In it's earliest form (a slightly downsized
Forestall class) it would have been an excellent ship. But by the end, it had so many compromises forced on it, it's doubtful the ships would have been very useful.
Which H class do you mean? Because there were 5 different designs mounting everything from 16" guns on 60,000 tons up to massive 20" guns on 133,000 tons. The H-39 was the "best"of the designs, and it was still a dog. It would only mount 8x16" guns on a ship the size of the US
Montana class, which mounted 12x16".
Now, for me, the best ships never built, were the
Montana and
Lion class Battleships. Those would have been some seriously impressive ships. Next up for me would be the
Malta class. The RN with a
Midway sized ship, incorporating the lessons learned from WWII? That would have been interesting. And would even possibly have kept the UK operating CATOBAR carriers up through today.