The issue with Lexington is the avgas leak after she was hit at the Coral Sea. If someone at either the Bureau of Aeronautics or Bureau of Ships figures out the dangers of leaking Avgas far sooner. Then her sinking is avoided. Although Lexington would still be in no shape to fight at Midway.
Did USN (and IJN) not spend more than RN on its BBs especially before the QE rebuilds? The issue is that they ships are slow, so they just can't really be made that much more useful for WW2 that they were?
Most of Japan’s comprehensive rebuilds were conducted around the same time as Britain’s, though they paid for more of them. And yes, a lot of material from cancelled ships ended up in the rebuilds. The Americans were the ones who did their rebuilds before the British.
The rebuilds were primarily concerned with enhancing protection and gunnery, the WW2 refits also adding AA armament.
It did have the perk of removing the quotas on net tonnage for DDs, cruisers, Capital ships, and carriers Albeit the dumb as hell limits on the later 3 in tonnage per ship was stupid.
And that would be true if it wasn’t being done as a political response to the Japanese doing some more things. Yes militarily from a peacetime perspective there no urgent need, but politically? that’s entirely different story they are proof that the Japanese are doing this and they need to respond.
I read years ago - can't remember where - that the refits, particularly the bulges, reduced maximum speed to about 19kts.
I don't know. If Lexington was saved, why wouldn't she have fought at Midway. Yorktown was more badly damaged but was jury-rigged enough to join TF-17. There were enough aircraft to form an air group for her. With a 4th carrier at Midway, it could make up for Commander Ring leading the Hornet's SBDs on the flight to nowhere. With Lexington's SBDs all 4 Japanese carriers could've been sunk in the morning attack, so the Hiryu wouldn't get off its strike on the Yorktown in the afternoon. So, the Yorktown would've been saved.
Before the explosion I think she was less damaged although I freely admit that I could very well be wrong there.
Well respectfully why spend all that money on the oldest battleships when they were building 6 fast battleships, and were projecting building 6 more? It made more sense to work backwards and update the Colorado's. They were newer, bigger, better protected, with more powerful guns. If you needed to fight an enemy battleship, would you rather have an up dated Colorado, or a Navada? Failing a Colorado, a Tennessee with 12 14" guns was a more powerful ship.
Inland yards on the Great lakes depends on the lock capacity of the Illinois river and time of year and water levels allowing ships to by-pass the locks and dams.
Sorry to nitpick but there were always supposed to be 5 KGVs. After that they would build 4 Lion Class Battleships. The Lions were supposed to be followed by 4 modified Lion II Class. This would let the RN dispose of the R-Class Battleships. With the modernizations of the QE's, the Battlecruisers, and Nelson's would give the RN 23 Capital ships. Without war breaking out this should've been done probable by 1948-50. By then the QE's, and Nelson's might have gone to the breakers, leaving 16. The QE's would be very old, and the RN was never really happy with the gun turrets on the Nelson's, but they liked the BC's for their speed. It's hard to imagine so many battleships when you have carriers with jet fighters on deck.
They built LST's, and DE's in shipyards in Pittsburg Pa, and sailed them down to New Orleans.
That is true, however would they want the Japanese of all people to beat them? For the perspective of the time that would be a pretty bitter pill to swallow.
Lexington took 2 bombs and 2 torpedoes and was only able to resume a max speed of 24 knots before she blew up. Even if she did make it back to Pearl. Nimitz wouldn’t risk her in battle with that kind of damage. Besides, like Saratoga, she was due for an upgrade.
The damage to Lexington that reduced her speed was to a water main that could easily be repaired in the shipyard at Pearl Harbor. The bomb hits caused fires that were put out and didn't cause serious damage. The damage to the aviation fuel tanks would take a day or 2 to repair. All the fuel has to be pumped out, and the air cleared before welders could repair the tanks. If time didn't allow repair of the port tanks, she might have to sail without them, or with some makeshift tanks. There should be enough planes from the Saratoga group to bring her air group up to strength. Midway was an all-hands-on deck moment. From WiKi
Except for the issue that Torpedoes hit the ship underwater. Without a way to patch the holes. The other internal repairs won’t hold and flooding would increase.
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