Regia Marina world tour, 1939

This did happen. In 1939, IIRC all or at least two of the threee pocket battleships were overseas.
Emden made several overseas cruises and according to Whitley the captains were ordered to conduct cruiser warfare if war broke out between Germany and another power.

The pocket battleships conducted neutrality patrols during the Spanish Civil War, but AFAIK that was as far from Germany as they got. The newer light cruisers conducted neutrality patrols of Spain too, which revealed the vulnerability of their lightly built hulls (to fit the cruiser limitations of the Treaty of Versailles) to storm damage.

IIRC one of the Italian heavy cruisers was badly damaged in a storm while conducting a neutrality patrol too. It had to go into a dry dock at Gibraltar for emergency repairs. When they were completed the dock was filled with 10,000 tons of water and it didn't float, proving that the Italian heavy cruisers broke the Washington Treaty. Actually they didn't, but the dockyard authorities did measure the amount of water it took to re-float it.
 
A plausible scenario is that one of the later attempts to break out a panzerschiffe is successful and that it is still at sea when Japan enters the war. Instead of returning to Germany, it and its tankers hide in the Southern Ocean and then go to Singapore after it falls to the Japanese. Whether it would be able to do much apart from act as a single ship fleet in being and force the British to maintain a bigger Eastern Fleet than OTL in 1942 and 1943 is another matter.
 
This did happen. In 1939 when war was declared, IIRC all or at least two of the threee pocket battleships were overseas. Admiral Graf Spee was in the South Atlantic, while Deutschland was heading to the Indian Ocean.

Graf_Spee_Fahrten.jpg


While this is only two pocket battleships, or large cruisers, this force represents a full 40% of the German surface navy's heavy ships (3xPBS, 2xBC) in 1939.

It would have been interesting if all three Deutschland class were based at Massawa as you suggest, and then scattered into the Indian Ocean a week before the invasion of Poland. Merchant and troop ships from ANZ, India and South Africa would immediately need protection.


Not precisely, as Deutschland was the only ship in operational shape during teh Graf Spee events, while both Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were still running trials after their rebuilding (Atlantic Bow added) and Admiral Hipper was equally running trials still. Admiral Scheer was decomissioned at the time for a long term full refit, not ready for late 1940. Pracitally teh operational strength at these early days was for all fully available larger ships being deployed at sea, namely the heavy cruisers Admiral Graf Spee in the South Atlantic and her half sisterships Deutschland in the North Atlantic. That is not 40%, but 100%, if ecluding the battleships Schliessen and Schleeswig Holstein, meaning everthing.
 
Then that demonstrates an even larger commitment to getting KM heavy units overseas before hostilities begin. Sending your only active heavies is a big deal. So, if the Germans do it, why not my Italians with 50% of their active battleship force? Imagine an Italian battleship, CA, CL, 2 x DD and.... three German PBS in the Indian-Pacific Oceans.

As for Italy leaving the Med exposed, the RM still has a large submarine force, cruiser, destroyers, torpedo boats, and a large air force. And besides, France will be victorious or defeated on land, not at sea.
 
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Then that demonstrates an even larger commitment to getting KM heavy units overseas before hostilities begin. Sending your only active heavies is a big deal. So, if the Germans do it, why not my Italians with 50% of their active battleship force? Imagine an Italian battleship, CA, CL, 2 x DD and.... three German PBS in the Indian-Pacific Oceans.

As for Italy leaving the Med exposed, the RM still has a large submarine force, cruiser, destroyers, torpedo boats, and a large air force. And besides, France will be victorious or defeated on land, not at sea.

Italy simply had a differnd navy for a differend goal, namely dominance in the Mediterranean and NOT Commercial Warfare against trade and so on. The Regia Marina had no ships capable of operating primarily as commerceraider, such as the German Heavy Cruisers were designed for to perform in such role. The Regia Marina was a classical battlefleet intended to dominate at sea against other battlefleets. Missing half the force in case a naval war was to start was the same as loosing the war before it even started, which was why the battleship and cruisers were urgently needed back in Italian homewaters, to face of the Marine National and British Mediterranean Fleets.

Oversea adventures were for lesser vessels in the case of the Italians, mostly auxilliaries and some obsolete ships considered too old to serve in the Mediterranean. Since the Cavour and Zara classes were their most advanced at the time, after the rebuilding of the first, sending them away was a NO GO. Any officer sugesting such a thing was likely to be hanged for treason, or something simmilar. Weakening the national defenses seen as essential for a maritime nation, as well as a regional power in the Mediterranean hemisphere, like Italy was a non starter, while the continetnal power Germany with no real threats to its own shores, could send out lone raiders into the open ocean to disturb trade to the enemy.
 
It's been established that it can't be done with the OTL Regia Navale, but it might with some jigger pokery. First the base at Massawa has to be expanded so that it can support battleships and cruisers. Not cheap, but it could be done as part of the war in Ethiopia. The second is that the Italains don't scrap the Dante Alighieri and Leonardo da Vinci, which were scrapped for financial reasons in the 1920s IOTL.

In the case of the Dante Alighieri they could instead simply pay her off into reserve and then refit and re-commission her as a training ship in the early 1930s and then send her on a series of world cruises afterwards. It would be harder to find the money necessary to rebuilt Leonardo da Vinci after the ammunition explosion. But if that could be done the Italians would have 3 operational battleships at home and the Dante Alighieri on one of her world cruises.
 
It's been established that it can't be done with the OTL Regia Navale, but it might with some jigger pokery. First the base at Massawa has to be expanded so that it can support battleships and cruisers. Not cheap, but it could be done as part of the war in Ethiopia. The second is that the Italains don't scrap the Dante Alighieri and Leonardo da Vinci, which were scrapped for financial reasons in the 1920s IOTL.

In the case of the Dante Alighieri they could instead simply pay her off into reserve and then refit and re-commission her as a training ship in the early 1930s and then send her on a series of world cruises afterwards. It would be harder to find the money necessary to rebuilt Leonardo da Vinci after the ammunition explosion. But if that could be done the Italians would have 3 operational battleships at home and the Dante Alighieri on one of her world cruises.

Dante Alighieri was indeed decommissioned in the late 20's for primarily financial reasons, thouhgh a more practical one was also very vallid, namely the generally weak design itself, with an internal arrangement made very difficult to allow advanced refitting and modernisation. Compared to the slightly more advanced Cavour and Andrea Doria types, the possitioning of two midship turrets in P and Q possition made intenal arangements very complicated and did frustrate any attempts to modernise her. It was possible however to maintain the ship in a somewhat reduced form as a trainingship for gunnerytraining especially. With a reduced crew and the two midship turrets not longer in use, when in peacetime condition, to reduce personel, she might become somewhat like the OTL HMS Iron Duke as a gunnery trainingship, though still shipping her full outfit, although not all in use. (Removing a turret is a costly thing, so leave it where it is.)

Leonardo Da Vinci was a more complicated thing, as the ship was seriously damaged due to an internal detonation in 1916, deforming the hull as well as rupturing the internal structures of the vessel. Scrapping it was the most logical option, as the ship was not possible to be rebuild on the existing hull, unless you build a new hull first, which is illogical as well, sicne building an entirely new ship is more logical then. For the numbers game the OTL Regia Marina retained the stricken vessel in her inventory, but only as a paper number, not because it was even realistic to bring the ship back into servcie somehow. More logical would have been to retain one, or two of the pre-dreadnoughts as coast defense ships. Especially the old Roma class was very well designed for that sorts of role, being relatively fast at 22 knots, even with coal fired boilers and a powerful secondary 8 inch armament backing up the two single 12 inch main guns. Almost ideal for service in the islandn dotted Adriatic Sea, it seems, making the Dreadnought types free for servcie in the rest of the Mediterranean. One of the old Roma class ships might be send oversea as well as show of force ship in East Africa, since no big ships existed there, other than the few cruisers ocasionally passiong through teh Suez Canal.

What I suggest is to have Italy more likely retain its main forces in the Mediterranean and equip a specialized force for colonial service, namely older "Esploratori" typelarge destroyers as main force, besides a few small ex-destroyers, now likely reclassed as torpedoboats and a flagship in the form of a coast defense ship of the old Roma class, naturally reconstructed partly for more modern servcie and equipment. (such as the inclussion of a few AA guns and possibly newer comminication equipment).
 
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