I considered doing something similar IMTL as this. Eventually went with a sixth QE with small tube boilers and higher speed.
McPherson
Banned
The Russians had trouble with screw design and milling, sound isolation, rafting and QC in construction. Their nuke boats were built to be fast and deep and were thus biased to engineering solutions that way.
That QC problem meant they built in redundancy, but Americans have always built in redundancy in their own boats, so I do not weight it as much as others might as a reason for the rafting and screw noise problems. Russian reactors have been "problematic" from a design flaw point of view as far as noise is concerned.
See previous comments. Those who think Russian boats are "crap" are "mirroring". The Russians made deliberate design compromises for what they wanted their boats to do; go fast and dive deeply. If your tactics are to ambush and then run after launch, it matters not how noisy one is after the speed burst or if one's reactor designs produces crews who will die of radiation sickness. There is the American way and there is the Russian way. Both work. Both are extremely deadly and effective against their enemies. How they work against each other is the big question.
Yeah I thi k a degree is doctrine is involved as well. If I'm ever ambitious I think I could put my Russian skills to use looking at original documents to shake up the typical narrative.
What was she made instead of? Or did the RN get another capital ship the year that it got the 4 Iron Dukes in otl?
There was a proposal to build a second Tiger so presumably they had the yard space. I suppose if they wanted they could have not accepted the order for one of the export battleships to free up the space.
presumably one of the Royal Dockyards would have built her since they didn't really do export orders.
What are you envisioning here? Increasing maximum thickness or more uniform coverage?
Someone put a hole in the broadside torpedo flat?
Increased maximum thickness over vital areas.
Something like that, given her condition after the battle a couple of extra hits would have finished her off.
Like I said, anything but a flat calm and she wouldn't have made it.
One badly-timed sneeze and she wouldn't have made it. I can't think of any ship that's taken more punishment in one sitting and still got home. Even Franklin.
My grandfather had served on the Franklin, but had fortunately already been sent back stateside before that happened...
Holy shite, now that's a nose job! Think my favourite part of the story is the temporary bow made of coconut logs...
A few of the Trafalgar survivors might be in contention. But if you mean in the *modern* (steel) era...yeah, I am hard pressed to think of any in worse condition.
Trying to imagine Captain von Egidy frantically searching Seydlitz compartment by compartment for Phil Swift on that final leg home to Wilhelmshaven.
It really depends on how you define "punishment". There's no way on Earth Seydlitz would have survived the night after the battle, but the survivors (by definition) obviously did.
Ah - by "survivors," I meant the most damaged British and Allied *ships* still afloat at the end of Trafalgar.