Pre-1945 Analogue to Present Soviet SSN/SSBN Fleet

Under what sort of circumstances could you get (c. 1940's) a fleet of rusting battleships that, if they were kept up nicely, would be an enormous fleet ranking second in the world, but which are just mouldering at their moorings?

Is there a timeline which sees a few N3/G3 monsters return from rare naval exercises into a Scapa Flow crowded with decrepit Nelsons and QE's which haven't left their moorings in decades? Perhaps one where USS Missouri anchors next to rust-covered South Dakotas and Lexingtons?

Any ideas for how such a situation could occur?
 
Post World War I Gernany is allowed to keep the High Seas Fleet, but must turn over their engines and propellers to the Allies, who have them destroyed.

Hence, on paper Germany has a large powerful Navy, but one that needs a fleet of tug boats to get around.
 
Maybe the BB people in congress push a law saying america needs 20 BBs at all time. But they don't specify that they all need to be in active service.
 
Post World War I Gernany is allowed to keep the High Seas Fleet, but must turn over their engines and propellers to the Allies, who have them destroyed.

Hence, on paper Germany has a large powerful Navy, but one that needs a fleet of tug boats to get around.

Or we just have the Germans not be able to afford maintaining their navy at all, with the groaning reparation they must pay.
 
How about starting with the High Seas Fleet after it was interned at Scapa Flow?

Let's say the crews get repatriated much faster than in the OTL, so the scuttling never happens. Caretakers paid for by Germany and a rotating number of naval officers from the Entente powers end up staying aboard instead.

At Versailles, it's agreed that Germany no longer owns the ships but none of the victorious powers can agree on how to share out the ships. The Treaty goes ahead anyway with the final disposition of the ships left for later. All that is agreed upon is that Germany has to keep paying for the caretaker crews.

Haggling over the share out continues and the Washington Naval Treaty conference occurs on schedule. Now none of the major powers want the ships because they'll count towards their tonnage limits. A few of the small ships, light cruisers, destroyers, and the like, do get shared out to various minor Entente powers, but the capital vessels remain at Scapa.

Four years later, Germany joins the League of Nations and an opportunity presents itself. Obviously, Germany doesn't like paying for the caretaker crews aboard the interned vessels at Scapa, so an effort is made to donate the ships to the League. The excuse is that the League can use the ships for peacekeeping missions. Most members see through the ruse but Germany perseveres. The League finally accepts the "gift" during the final years of the Weimer Republic more as a way to bolster that government than anything else.

The League cuts back on the size of the caretaking crews, not that the ships are still actually seaworthy, and the fleet slowly rusts away until 1939 when Britain seizes and scraps the lot for the war effort.

Pretty far fetched, I know, but the whole idea is pretty implausible despite the actual condition of most of the old USSR's fleet.


Bill
 
Top