alternatehistory.com

WI the French and Italian navies switched the manner in which they modernized their battlefleets in the interwar years?

In OTL Italy spent a lot of time upgrading her old battleship classes until they emerged as faster battleships with low, sleek profiles and upgraded weaponry, while France put in "bare" modernizations for her old battleships and built two brand-new battleships/battlecruisers (Strasbourg class).

What effect on the naval campaigns of WW2 (assuming it happens on schedule) would a modernized group of French battleships (Courbet and Bretagne classes) and an old, clunky Italian battlefleet possessing two new battlecruisers have?

I suppose you really have to answer two questions first:

1. How do the French battleships get modified? My stab at it is that the Courbet class mostly gets upgraded guns (cramped 13" twins in place of 12", with side turrets removed?) and machinery while the Bretagne class either gets new machinery and new 13" guns or loses the middle 13.4" turret, gets new 13" guns, and gets some seriously nice speed put in in place of the missing middle turret.

2. What do the Italian battleships that were unmodified look like, and what do the new BCs look like? The now unmodified Italian battleships have probably the same rough statistics as the old French battleships, and this Italian 1933 BC design leaves us with a slower and weaker ship than the Strasbourgs:

26,500 tons
8-13.4" in four twins fore and aft
12-6" in six twins, three on each broadside
29 knots
250mm belt, three separated 50mm decks

I hope to get some good stuff from my fellow Battleship Brothers, but anyone's thoughts are welcome!
Top