What if the King George V Class (1939) were completed as originally scheduled?

You just get PoW on time and the butterflies start flapping. Pulling a 4 month gain out of thin air (say missed bomb) and Denmark Straight gets interesting. Use that 4 months to speed up DoY and Force Z gets worse.

Would Hood manage to get a refit with more fast capital ships available?
Hood isn't getting a refit. She will still be needed to make up numbers into 1941. Look at the other BC's service.
 
Would Hood manage to get a refit with more fast capital ships available?
Any time after 1936 the only way Hood gets her rebuild is if she's been badly damaged. She's too useful and too much of a symbol to be taken out of service for the extended period of time it would take. Once war's declared there are too many things that need doing and far too few hulls to do them with.
 
Any time after 1936 the only way Hood gets her rebuild is if she's been badly damaged. She's too useful and too much of a symbol to be taken out of service for the extended period of time it would take. Once war's declared there are too many things that need doing and far too few hulls to do them with.
Actually she had to have some form of rebuild asap as her engines were flat out at the end of their service life not to mention her major condenser issues and if you are going to do the work to replace the engines you might as well do the rest of a rebuild while your at it, and this was the plan once the first 3 and ideally all the KGVs were in service.
 
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Actually she had to have some form of rebuild asap as her engines were flat out at the end of their service life not to mention her major condenser issuese and if you are going to do the work to replace the engines you might as well do the rest of a rebuild while your at it, and this was the plan once the first 3 and ideally all the KGVs were in service.
I'd say running a ship until bits either fall off the engines or seize up counts as the ship being badly damaged (through neglect) and I have to say that short of Hood breaking down I don't see that refit happening with the war expanding into the Pacific. Plans are one thing, desperate times are another, and those were desperate times. I could see the refit being put off again and again until after D Day Hood goes into reserve and never sees service again.
 
Any safe assumptions beyond new engines?
Improved heavy and light AA, Queen Anne's Mansion superstructure, increased elevation for the main guns, improved radar, upgraded torpedo defences, deletion of her torpedoes, improved deck armor, and the swaping of the location of the shell room and magazine were all fairly safe bets on any proposed rebuild of Hood we just don't know the finer details
 
Actually she had to have some form of rebuild asap as her engines were flat out at the end of their service life not to mention her major condenser issuese and if you are going to do the work to replace the engines you might as well do the rest of a rebuild while your at it, and this was the plan once the first 3 and ideally all the KGVs were in service.
Her condensers were retubed in a minor refit in 1940 before operation catapult. Her max speed was noted as limited to 26 knots before that refit but there's references to her operating at 29 knots after the refit.

I don't believe a deep refit of any sort was a foregone conclusion unless she suffered major battle damage. She did after all spend 2 months in refit in 1941 where new radar sets were fitted. I doubt that would have happened at that time if she was getting a deep refit upon the completion of the first few KGV.
 
I'd say running a ship until bits either fall off the engines or seize up counts as the ship being badly damaged (through neglect) and I have to say that short of Hood breaking down I don't see that refit happening with the war expanding into the Pacific. Plans are one thing, desperate times are another, and those were desperate times. I could see the refit being put off again and again until after D Day Hood goes into reserve and never sees service again.
I sadly can that occuring, but the problem was that Hood was not capable of her top speed and it was getting worse in spite of a refit in early 1941 and maybe by the time Japan starts the war in the Pacific Hood has the good luck of already undergoing the beginning stages of her rebuild with major sections of the ship simply put already halfway cut down to the main deck so the rebuild continues. I do agree with you that Hood would have had to been very lucky to get a major rebuild post 1936 hmmm maybe a timeline where a patriotic rich citizen or a group of them pays for Hood and Repulse to be rebuilt starting in 1933 and all three battlecruisers have been rebuilt by the time the war starts.
 
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MatthewB

Banned
I’d much rather the last three KGV were delivered late and Indomitable, Implacable and Indefatigable are completed faster. The RN doesn’t need more battleships. 6 years and 6 six months to complete Implacable is reaching Tsarist levels of capital ship production time.
 
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I’d much rather the last three KGV were delivered late and Indomitable, Implacable and Indefatigable are completed faster. The RN doesn’t need more battleships. 6 years and 6 six months to complete Implacable is reaching Tsarist levels of capital ship production time.
The same problems that plagued British battleship production seriously slowed down their carrier production as well, along with the need to produce landing craft
 
I’d much rather the last three KGV were delivered late and Indomitable, Implacable and Indefatigable are completed faster. The RN doesn’t need more battleships. 6 years and 6 six months to complete Implacable is reaching Tsarist levels of capital ship production time.
Personally I'd have liked at least the last two ships cancelled and replaced with ships with two full height hanger decks. The treaties were dead by then.
 

MatthewB

Banned
Personally I'd have liked at least the last two ships cancelled and replaced with ships with two full height hanger decks. The treaties were dead by then.
i agree, but they were already under construction in 1939, and any design changes will delay them further. Two full length hangar decks is essentially the Audacious class, and you’ll never see those before VJ Day.

The Implacables as they were could operate Hellcats, Tarpons and every British designed carrier aircraft up to the Sea Hornet. That’s good enough for me. The lower half length hangar gives valuable space for maintenance and stores.
 
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Work on them was halted anyway, so the redesign wouldn't have delayed them and they'd have been much more capable ships. Indomitable was advanced far enough that it made most sense to continue with her original plans but the two Implacable class had only just been started, in fact Indefatigable wasn't laid down until November 1939.
 
The delay for the KGV is iirc two fold.

1. Turret issues, a shift from three treble 15 inch guns to two quads and a twin 14 inch gun. This led to a delay of few months.

2. Shifting of manpower to other causes (corvettes merchant ships war time repairs etc).

Fixing item 1 but leaving item 2 might be a more realistic option.

However if fix everything and have all five in service I would imagine that the numbers game would have led to the Germans not sortieing with Bismarck and instead we would end up with Bismarck spending the rest of the war hiding off the coast of Norway with Tirpitz.
I largely agree.

If the British hadn't interfered, the 2nd WNT would have allowed capital ships to have 16" guns, instead of reducing the maximum calibre to 14". Therefore, the POD could be that the British don't have the new treaty reduce the maximum calibre.

However, another POD could be to bring the decisions to change to twelve 14" and then ten 14" forward by a year.

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And re the discussion on the Illustrious and Implacable classes. The WNT and 1st LNT allowed aircraft carriers to displace up to 27,000 tons. It was the British who had it reduced to 23,000 tons by the 2nd LNT (and they wanted 22,000 tons, which is why Ark Royal displaced 22,000 tons).

However, instead of adding a second full length hangar to the first 3 and making the lower hangar full length on the second 3, I think they should have used the extra 4,000 tons to increase the height of the hangar(s) from 14 feet and 16 feet to a uniform 17.5 feet. If there was any displacement after that I would increase the width of the hangars from 62 feet to 65 feet.
 
The dates and figures given here by the as ever brilliant NOMISYURRC, shows how much effect the naval construction programme would have had had the policy of appeasement delayed the DoW by one year, as promulgated on another current thread. Did Nazi Germany hit a sweet spot by attacking Poland in late 1939? And how much difference would another six months of the sitzkrieg have made! Ten shiny new capitol ships in 1941, would have put a huge stress on manpower but completely changes the strategic picture for the RN IMVHO.
 
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