Alternate warships of nations

How did Tirpitz, Raeder, Doenitz, and Gorshkov do again? If you do not understand seapower, your investment into a "botched" navy, because you got Mahan wrong, is flushing irreplaceable marks and rubles down the loo.
They didn't do well because their organizations were inefficient, their designs were inferior, and/or their countries put too much funding into the army (in general resources were put towards the wrong areas).

That depends. How did the USN do off Guadalcanal and later Okinawa? How did the RN running convoys to Malta and later do off the Falklands? How did the Indian Navy do off Karachi? Air superiority is "squishy". Surface combatants are still kind of important.
Pretty much in accordance with my comment; they did well under friendly air superiority, and always failed against enemy air power. Their surface ship strength was almost irrelevant in those cases (and therefore unnecessary).
 
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McPherson

Banned
They didn't do well because their organizations were inefficient, their designs were inferior, and/or their countries put too much funding into the army (in general resources were put towards the wrong areas).

They were the architects of their naval requirements. They formatted their navies according to their individual psychotic concepts instead of appropriate sea-power doctrine in support of national goals. (Risk Fleet for Tirpitz. Plan Zed from Outer Space for Raeder. Starve England by sinking 750,000 tonnes a month for Doenitz. Target service American aircraft carriers with an updated version of the Japanese Kamikaze gimmick combined with surface raiders for Gorshkov. Their landlubber countries made their Mackinder choices also and were trounced because 3/4 of the Earth was beyond their reach and economic use. MAHAN.

Pretty much in accordance with my comment; they did well under friendly air superiority, and always failed against enemy air power. Their surface ship strength was almost irrelevant in those cases (and therefore unnecessary).

Henderson Field was knocked out on 13 November 1942. Willis Lee was outnumbered 2.5 to 1 on 14th November 1942 in surface ships and the Japanese had absolute aerial superiority that date. How did Abe do? Not too good. It turns out that when your air force is smashed and scattered on a shell cratered runway and your one aircraft carrier left has a nasty hole in her and dare not come within RIKKO range, that an American battleship or two is probably going to be quite important because it turns out that American battleships are hard to sink, especially as they sneak in at night to block a repeat performance of First Guadalcanal.

Or to put it another way, if you are the Indian Navy, and you want to put the Pakistani Navy which has been shelling your nation's coast with what amounts to the same kind of terroristic criminal coastal bombardment raids the British Royal Navy used to do against other nations in the era of imperialist colonialist criminality in a practice that was justified as "gunboat diplomacy" (Alexandria 1882): out of business, you might want to sneak some frigate-towed Osa missile boats in close to Karachi, right under the noses of the Pakistani Navy and Air Farce and send them a shower of Styx missiles as a happy birthday present. (Operation Trident)
 
Henderson Field was knocked out on 13 November 1942. Willis Lee was outnumbered 2.5 to 1 on 14th November 1942 in surface ships and the Japanese had absolute aerial superiority that date. How did Abe do? Not too good. It turns out that when your air force is smashed and scattered on a shell cratered runway and your one aircraft carrier left has a nasty hole in her and dare not come within RIKKO range, that an American battleship or two is probably going to be quite important because it turns out that American battleships are hard to sink, especially as they sneak in at night to block a repeat performance of First Guadalcanal.

Is that so???
US post treaty period BB's were known to lack a good underwaterprotection system, as especially the South Dakota and Iowa classes had their vulnerabilities, mostly as a result of the inclining of the main belt armor, which also was build inside the hull, where an outside main protective belt as on the preceding North Carolina class offered a bit more internal space to play with. Couple with the almost paranoid stability on the post treaty USN BB's, any damaging underwater hit, causing enough list, of flooding would seriously hamper the ship, if not leading to its destruction outright. Foreign battleship designs normally did not fear much better though, except when having a much wider beam, like the Bismarck and Yamato classes, allowing a far deeper internal anti-torpedo defense system (which the Japanese for some reason did not exploit in their Yamato design)

Of the post treaty design BB's the ones produced by the USA were possibly the best gunboats in general, but certainly not the toughest, as they had the thinnest belt armor of all, one of the thinnest deck armor (opposing BB's of the same age had almost one inch more in general), as well and no reserve stability, mainly as a result of the lack of beam, and relatively overloaded hull. So the USN BB's did have only Yamato outgunning them, but had almost all outarmoring them, just as several decades ago Lord Fisher proposed to design the battlecruiser with the biggest guns and highest speed, at the expense of protection. Unlike opposing contemporary designs, the new breed of USN BB's was not protected against its own guns, where the opposition was designed to offer protection against a similar opposing design.

The 2nd battle of Savo Island could have shown this, but it did not, mostly due to Japanese failures. USS South Dakota was hit only one to three times by 14 inch shell's (One officially creditted, two proppable). Had the Japanese been alerted and ready for a surface engagement, Kirishima would not have needed time to change ammunition in the guns and turrets from landattack to anti shipping, which took her several minutes and use AP from start of the engagement early on. At the range the fight was fought, Kirishima's 14 inch AP round could have easily outmatched South Dakota's protective belt, inclined, or not did not matter at such close range. (even the 8 inch AP round could have done this at such ranges, though the majority of 8 inch hits were on the superstructure though)
 

McPherson

Banned
HMS Warspite wrote:

US post treaty period BB's were known to lack a good underwater protection system, as especially the South Dakota and Iowa classes had their vulnerabilities, mostly as a result of the inclining of the main belt armor, which also was build inside the hull, where an outside main protective belt as on the preceding North Carolina class offered a bit more internal space to play with. Couple with the almost paranoid stability on the post treaty USN BB's, any damaging underwater hit, causing enough list, of flooding would seriously hamper the ship, if not leading to its destruction outright. Foreign battleship designs normally did not fear much better though, except when having a much wider beam, like the Bismarck and Yamato classes, allowing a far deeper internal anti-torpedo defense system (which the Japanese for some reason did not exploit in their Yamato design)

USS South Dakota is the actual battle example. How did she fare? Against the kind of pounding that sank Prince of Wales, the SoDak survived. USS North Carolina, another example, took torpedo damage that killed a KGV and scuttled a Littorio. US design armor package choices were Panamax restricted and not because of any inherent faults in competency. Where one sees American design flaws is in the electrical system, as was also seen in the KGVs, and these once revealed in battle were quickly American resolved. US ships flooded even keel due to transverse sectioning. like the French did. British and Japanese ships because of the longitudinal compartmentation design tended to roll into the sinking condition and they turtled and went down in spite of counterflooding, so there is that design choice that could be considered by those naval architects with regard to the float bubble, reserve buoyancy and damage control that was less than optimal by American designers. British naval architects should also have paid attention to shaft alley and overall hull shock damage issues, but they did not.

So which navy's BBs were actually more vulnerable to underwater damage? The British BBs were, not the Americans. Battle results indicate these factors, not personal opinion, not guesswork, actual events and post battle damage assessments, sometimes decades after the event upon diving the British wrecks.

===================================================================
Of the post treaty design BB's the ones produced by the USA were possibly the best gunboats in general, but certainly not the toughest, as they had the thinnest belt armor of all, one of the thinnest deck armor (opposing BB's of the same age had almost one inch more in general), as well and no reserve stability, mainly as a result of the lack of beam, and relatively overloaded hull. So the USN BB's did have only Yamato outgunning them, but had almost all outarmoring them, just as several decades ago Lord Fisher proposed to design the battlecruiser with the biggest guns and highest speed, at the expense of protection. Unlike opposing contemporary designs, the new breed of USN BB's was not protected against its own guns, where the opposition was designed to offer protection against a similar opposing design.

===================================================================

Lots of wrong myths to correct.

Protection? What did the evidence show?

1. Yamatos were sunk by 457 kg SAPPY bombs and puny 240 kg TNT equivalent torpedoes. Their protection scheme was not too good.
2. KGVs ditto. They sank quickly to damage US ships, especially American aircraft carriers, to which the Americans did not succumb all that easily. See above remarks about compartmentation and shock and float bubble and reserve buoyancy as the key factors in a protection scheme.
3. When Japanese 35.5 cm shells bounced off USS South Dakota, it proved that despite the actual armor design defect, which was deeper than prudent face hardening of the Class A plate, it was good enough to defeat Japanese Vickers type 14/45 SAPPY shells easily. Refer to 1 and 2.
4. Again US design Panamax choices were not the result of incompetence but the result of the desire to fight off the float bubble as being the most important consideration for damage battle control and ship survivability as well as the treaty tonnage limits per unit. If the Americans could punch into their own ships that was also because the Midvale Unbreakables could also PUNCH into British and Japanese ships, INCLUDING the Yamatos as US postwar tests proved against the thickest Japanese plate. Not opinion, but actual events are the evidence. Refer to 1 and 2.

========================================================

The 2nd battle of Savo Island could have shown this, but it did not, mostly due to Japanese failures. USS South Dakota was hit only one to three times by 14 inch shell's (One officially credited, two probaable). Had the Japanese been alerted and ready for a surface engagement, Kirishima would not have needed time to change ammunition in the guns and turrets from land attack to anti shipping, which took her several minutes and use AP from start of the engagement early on. At the range the fight was fought, Kirishima's 14 inch AP round could have easily outmatched South Dakota's protective belt, inclined, or not did not matter at such close range. (even the 8 inch AP round could have done this at such ranges, though the majority of 8 inch hits were on the superstructure though)
========================================================

1. It is Second Guadalcanal, NOT Second Savo Island. The winners get to name the victory.
2. Kirishima did have her ammunition issues as described, but her shells should not have skipped off US plate even as SAPPY. US tests showed this post battle because they, the Americans, were mystified by the actual battle results and wanted to know why it happened the way it did. US SAPPY shells cracked the Class A plate as was expected. So there is that evidence for what it is worth.
3. Japanese 20.3 cm at those ranges failed against US cruisers. Refer to 2.
4. South Dakota's guns went tango uniform because of the Prince of Wales moment she had when an incompetent engineer shorted out her portside main electrical distribution and the breakers tripped and fried the bus. See above remarks about that design flaw. She was hammered while helpless. The armor and compartmentation held. Meanwhile her sister ship, the Washington shot the Kirishima full of holes, set that Kongo afire, and did it while she, Washington, Mexican hat danced through enough Japanese Type 93 fish fired at her to prove again that the Japanese incompetence first seen at Java Sea in a night brawl where torpedoes were wildly launched, willy nilly, and not effectively salvo fired, as was American practice, was not a fluke, but actually endemic to the IJN wrong way of doing things. Plus the IJN RAN after Kirishima was rearranged to suit American tastes.
5. Maneuver and shoot is also a form of protection which is important when discussing Americans and their ship design choices. British and Japanese fire control systems could not do the track solutions while dodging enemy straddles. They had to sail straight. The Americans could dodge and weave while shooting. Refer to 4 and the DEADLY results.

These are not opinions, but observed historic events.

McP.
 
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They were the architects of their naval requirements. They formatted their navies according to their individual psychotic concepts instead of appropriate sea-power doctrine in support of national goals. (Risk Fleet for Tirpitz. Plan Zed from Outer Space for Raeder. Starve England by sinking 750,000 tonnes a month for Doenitz. Target service American aircraft carriers with an updated version of the Japanese Kamikaze gimmick combined with surface raiders for Gorshkov. Their landlubber countries made their Mackinder choices also and were trounced because 3/4 of the Earth was beyond their reach and economic use. MAHAN.
That might be, but it wasn't because a navy was out of their reach- if they planned well and were efficient about it, most major powers could build a world-class navy if they needed.
 

McPherson

Banned
That might be, but it wasn't because a navy was out of their reach- if they planned well and were efficient about it, most major powers could build a world-class navy if they needed.

Goes to mindset. Seapowers think about things differently than landpowers. Example India is a seapower (Operation Trident). China is not. (Denial of West Pacific access PLAN psychosis; without really understanding how one goes about doing it properly.)

It is Mahan. Think about the way seapowers act?
 
USS South Dakota is the actual battle example. How did she fare? Against the kind of pounding that sank Prince of Wales, the SoDak survived. USS North Carolina, another example, took torpedo damage that killed a KGV and scuttled a Littorio. US design armor package choices were Panamax restricted and not because of any inherent faults in competency. Where one sees American design flaws is in the electrical system, as was also seen in the KGVs, and these once revealed in battle were quickly American resolved. US ships flooded even keel due to transverse sectioning. like the French did. British and Japanese ships because of the longitudinal compartmentation design tended to roll into the sinking condition and they turtled and went down in spite of counterflooding, so there is that design choice that could be considered by those naval architects with regard to the float bubble, reserve buoyancy and damage control that was less than optimal by American designers. British naval architects should also have paid attention to shaft alley and overall hull shock damage issues, but they did not.

So which navy's BBs were actually more vulnerable to underwater damage? The British BBs were, not the Americans. Battle results indicate these factors, not personal opinion, not guesswork, actual events and post battle damage assessments, sometimes decades after the event upon diving the British wrecks.

===================================================================


===================================================================

Lots of wrong myths to correct.

Protection? What did the evidence show?

1. Yamatos were sunk by 457 kg SAPPY bombs and puny 240 kg TNT equivalent torpedoes. Their protection scheme was not too good.
2. KGVs ditto. They sank quickly to damage US ships, especially American aircraft carriers, to which the Americans did not succumb all that easily. See above remarks about compartmentation and shock and float bubble and reserve buoyancy as the key factors in a protection scheme.
3. When Japanese 35.5 cm shells bounced off USS South Dakota, it proved that despite the actual armor design defect, which was deeper than prudent face hardening of the Class A plate, it was good enough to defeat Japanese Vickers type 14/45 SAPPY shells easily. Refer to 1 and 2.
4. Again US design Panamax choices were not the result of incompetence but the result of the desire to fight off the float bubble as being the most important consideration for damage battle control and ship survivability as well as the treaty tonnage limits per unit. If the Americans could punch into their own ships that was also because the Midvale Unbreakables could also PUNCH into British and Japanese ships, INCLUDING the Yamatos as US postwar tests proved against the thickest Japanese plate. Not opinion, but actual events are the evidence. Refer to 1 and 2.

========================================================


========================================================

1. It is Second Guadalcanal, NOT Second Savo Island. The winners get to name the victory.
2. Kirishima did have her ammunition issues as described, but her shells should not have skipped off US plate even as SAPPY. US tests showed this post battle because they, the Americans, were mystified by the actual battle results and wanted to know why it happened the way it did. US SAPPY shells cracked the Class A plate as was expected. So there is that evidence for what it is worth.
3. Japanese 20.3 cm at those ranges failed against US cruisers. Refer to 2.
4. South Dakota's guns went tango uniform because of the Prince of Wales moment she had when an incompetent engineer shorted out her portside main electrical distribution and the breakers tripped and fried the bus. See above remarks about that design flaw. She was hammered while helpless. The armor and compartmentation held. Meanwhile her sister ship, the Washington shot the Kirishima full of holes, set that Kongo afire, and did it while she, Washington, Mexican hat danced through enough Japanese Type 93 fish fired at her to prove again that the Japanese incompetence first seen at Java Sea in a night brawl where torpedoes were wildly launched, willy nilly, and not effectively salvo fired, as was American practice, was not a fluke, but actually endemic to the IJN wrong way of doing things. Plus the IJN RAN after Kirishima was rearranged to suit American tastes.
5. Maneuver and shoot is also a form of protection which is important when discussing Americans and their ship design choices. British and Japanese fire control systems could not do the track solutions while dodging enemy straddles. They had to sail straight. The Americans could dodge and weave while shooting. Refer to 4 and the DEADLY results.

These are not opinions, but observed historic events.

McP.
Here you are completely wrong in your facts, Read before writing i my advise in cases you mention.

1st: Single torpedohit on USS North Carolina was forward, where there are no propellorshafts or rudderequpment. The hit actually did a lot of daage the shi coul compensate for to safely return to Pearl Harbor and eventually the West Coast for a months long repair, to make the ship battleworthy again. See:

Any hit aft, where HMS Prince of Wales had been crippled, would have done the same to any warship, where the British BB with a better designed underwaterprotective system, compared to the less developped USN system in the contemporary North Carolina and the even worse one in South Dakota and Iowa classes, did not have enough reserve bouyancy to counter the amount of flooding caused by the breaking of the shafttunnels. The problem is the length of the shafttunnels hre, which in an Iowa and South Dakota is pretty long as in a King George V class coupled with teh internal subdivissioning of the hull, which favours the British hull with a larger number of watertight compariments. Counterflooding would not help much, except the ship sinking faster as the larger compartiments were then flooded with a larer amount of water. Combined with the paranoid level of stability and bouyancy on the post Treaty USN Designs, they would propably be better of as very large sumbarines then.

Your quoted battleresults are flawed as you turn a blind eye on factual information about shipdesign, with all the critics on the USN designs being vowed away. As such your comments are irrelevant untill you show any sign of having learned about these comments and do something with it.

See some reading:
,

and also:
JOURNAL ARTICLE
BATTLESHIPS—Vulnerable Anachronism?
Strafford Morss
Warship International
Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984), pp. 211-221 (11 pages)
Published By: International Naval Research Organization



So the Post treaty USN BB's were a mixed bag of succes, being more heavily armed than most opposing post treaty BB's, but inferior in levels of protection and reserve bouyancy.
 
How did Tirpitz, Raeder, Doenitz, and Gorshkov do again? If you do not understand seapower, your investment into a "botched" navy, because you got Mahan wrong, is flushing irreplaceable marks and rubles down the loo.
++Snip++
Doenitz?

That guy would have won the war for Germany if he had been listened to.
He wanted 300 submarines before war with England. With 100 he brought England to her knees. With 300? I shudder to think.

Plus all current day submarines are direct descendents of the XXI Type, one Doneitz was pushing for since 1940, but production delays and planning delays pushed back and back and back.....

The UK got very lucky due to outside factors. What was it Churchill said? Our Greatest asset in Germany is Hitler.
 
Here you are completely wrong in your facts, Read before writing i my advise in cases you mention.

1st: Single torpedohit on USS North Carolina was forward, where there are no propellorshafts or rudderequpment. The hit actually did a lot of daage the shi coul compensate for to safely return to Pearl Harbor and eventually the West Coast for a months long repair, to make the ship battleworthy again. See:

Any hit aft, where HMS Prince of Wales had been crippled, would have done the same to any warship, where the British BB with a better designed underwaterprotective system, compared to the less developped USN system in the contemporary North Carolina and the even worse one in South Dakota and Iowa classes, did not have enough reserve bouyancy to counter the amount of flooding caused by the breaking of the shafttunnels. The problem is the length of the shafttunnels hre, which in an Iowa and South Dakota is pretty long as in a King George V class coupled with teh internal subdivissioning of the hull, which favours the British hull with a larger number of watertight compariments. Counterflooding would not help much, except the ship sinking faster as the larger compartiments were then flooded with a larer amount of water. Combined with the paranoid level of stability and bouyancy on the post Treaty USN Designs, they would propably be better of as very large sumbarines then.

Your quoted battleresults are flawed as you turn a blind eye on factual information about shipdesign, with all the critics on the USN designs being vowed away. As such your comments are irrelevant untill you show any sign of having learned about these comments and do something with it.

See some reading:
,

and also:
JOURNAL ARTICLE
BATTLESHIPS—Vulnerable Anachronism?
Strafford Morss
Warship International
Vol. 21, No. 2 (1984), pp. 211-221 (11 pages)
Published By: International Naval Research Organization



So the Post treaty USN BB's were a mixed bag of succes, being more heavily armed than most opposing post treaty BB's, but inferior in levels of protection and reserve bouyancy.
You forgot to add the one about Shinano's armour trials.

I like the Final Comments section best personally.

 
Manpower in 2032: 300,000

Inventory 2032:
That's ridiculous. Ignoring the completely unbalanced nature of the force (what are all those escorts escorting) and unaffordably vast size you have a navy with 4 times as many ships but fewer sailors than the USN, you would need at least 1.4 million sailors to actually crew that force.
 
That's ridiculous. Ignoring the completely unbalanced nature of the force (what are all those escorts escorting) and unaffordably vast size you have a navy with 4 times as many ships but fewer sailors than the USN, you would need at least 1.4 million sailors to actually crew that force.
And a fleet of that size is well beyond the ability of European Naval shipyards to build in the revelant time period. And then you have the fact that there's nowhere near enough Naval bases in the EU to maintain or base such a force. Also with the existing European nuclear arsenals the SSBN fleet would literally have a dozen warheads per boat on patrol at most
 
He wanted 300 submarines before war with England. With 100 he brought England to her knees. With 300? I shudder to think.

Plus all current day submarines are direct descendents of the XXI Type, one Doneitz was pushing for since 1940
No, German codes were broken so 90% of convoys and ships were routed around the submarines so they would not have encountered any submarines no matter how many there were. Secondly, the Type XXI was not proposed until 1942 so it was impossible to push for it in 1940.
 
No, German codes were broken so 90% of convoys and ships were routed around the submarines so they would not have encountered any submarines no matter how many there were. Secondly, the Type XXI was not proposed until 1942 so it was impossible to push for it in 1940.
And Doenitz did have the codes changed when it was suspected they were broken. Naval cyphers were harder to crack than land ones, and if memory serves, they had to crack the weather codes first before operational ones...

My dates may have been wrong for the XXI, but Doneitz still pushed for advanced submarines and production issues plagued them all the way...

He wanted 300 submarines in 1939, he had about 40. At the height of German naval strength in 1942 he had 100 subs, 30 in the ocean on operations. With those 30 he pushed England to her knees. If he had 100 at that time.....
 
With those 30 he pushed England to her knees.

Actually he didn't, there were several months when convoy losses were "unsustainable" in the sense that ships were being sunk faster than they were being built but
a. At no point did the volume of goods arriving in the UK ever drop to the point that it started restricting production levels of British industry or the food system.
b. Even highest level of losses could be sustained for a double digit number of months before shipping capacity, i.e. number of hulls dropped into the red zone.
c. Britain could have reduced it's Atlantic convoy requirements in 1942 by 20% via the simple expedient of stopping expanding the food reserve (which got to a ridiculously large size by early 1944) and by cutting rations to the same level as in Germany.
d. Britain could have tightened up the convoy system as any time, fewer, bigger, more heavily defended convoys. It would have come at a cost in efficiency but they could have done it.
Basically the Battle of the Atlantic wasn't actually all the close.
 
Actually he didn't, there were several months when convoy losses were "unsustainable" in the sense that ships were being sunk faster than they were being built but
a. At no point did the volume of goods arriving in the UK ever drop to the point that it started restricting production levels of British industry or the food system.
b. Even highest level of losses could be sustained for a double digit number of months before shipping capacity, i.e. number of hulls dropped into the red zone.
c. Britain could have reduced it's Atlantic convoy requirements in 1942 by 20% via the simple expedient of stopping expanding the food reserve (which got to a ridiculously large size by early 1944) and by cutting rations to the same level as in Germany.
d. Britain could have tightened up the convoy system as any time, fewer, bigger, more heavily defended convoys. It would have come at a cost in efficiency but they could have done it.
Basically the Battle of the Atlantic wasn't actually all the close.
mmm... My reading says otherwise, so let's agree to disagree on this.
 
He wanted 300 submarines in 1939, he had about 40. At the height of German naval strength in 1942 he had 100 subs, 30 in the ocean on operations. With those 30 he pushed England to her knees. If he had 100 at that time.....
Even if they had completely ignored surface ships in favour of Submarines (which would have been a heck of a message to the British) I don’t think they could have built 300 submarines in the time they had. They probably would have had to cut into Production of other war materials which could mean they could not defeat Poland and France, thereby rendering the U-boat fleet somewhat useless. That’s assuming they could overcome the bottlenecks of expanding u-boat production by almost 10 times.

It’s a catch-22 with improving Germany’s early war effort. Prepare for fighting Britain and you may never get to the point where it is useful.
 
mmm... My reading says otherwise, so let's agree to disagree on this.

Bringing to their knees might be a bit over the top, but the U-boote certainly were a big nuisance even with just about a hundred around. Operationally a submarineforce can operate a maximum of about 33% on (war)patrol, with another 33% en-route to, or from an operational area an d the remaining 33% in dock, refitting, repairing and fitting out. Do with about 100 boats, the maximum number of boats actively capable of engaging the enemy is around 30 boats, or so. This could be enough to create a strong presence in a rather large area, like the North Atlantic, but not enough to completely blockade an entire island nation the size of the UK, with its many trade routes and ports, meaning a lot will still get through. To shut down merchant and supply shipping completely, more is needed than just this 30+ operational boats, such as a combined operation of these 30+ boats with strong air and surface pressure at the same time, or with no surface pressure present much more U-Boote and very dominant airforce pressure on British ports, like about boats 100 at sea at a given time, indicating Dönitz was quite correct in his calculation to get 300 boats in all.
 

Sargon

Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm not sure about posting this here as I'm hesitant to think it really belongs given the context it has been done in, but if anyone's interested, I have done a complete reconstruction of the battleship HMS Canada (Almirante Lattore) for my Naval Warfare story. You can find the story in the first link in my signature, and can use the index to find the particulars.

Here's a taster:

Design A would be to keep all the main armament but do a thorough rebuild, which would also entail lengthening the bow and stern and other hull modifications, replacement of significant amounts of amour with higher grade Gerinian standard types, and the removal of parts of the outdated armour scheme. New machinery in a unit arrangement, shafts, and propellers would be installed as well as a more efficient and updated superstructure. Modifications to the capabilities of the main armament and replacement of the secondary armament, upgrades to electronics and addition of new anti-aircraft weaponry was also included. A much improved underwater protection scheme based upon a modified version of the US one utilised in the Tennessee class battleships would be used. Speed would be raised by approximately 5.5 knots.

Design B would be to remove Q turret and using the weight and space saved to perform the same general rebuild as A, but to raise the speed to over 30 knots overall, have a larger secondary and AAA suite with further improvements to the armour scheme, and even better compartmentalisation with the machinery spaces being narrower still, enabling ample width to employ a French style underwater protection scheme.

Sargon
 
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