And obviously there's the matter of supply lines. I'd say the RN could beat the USN in the Atlantic before 1942, stalemate them in 1943, and then lose against them in 1944 and afterwards. Overall, the fact of the matter is that the 2 theaters of war had different parameters and concerns, and the USN, IJN, and RN adapted to them accordingly. To move the RN into the niche of the IJN/USN or vice versa would tip the scales in favor of the home team, although after late 1943 I'd say the USN could take the fight to both the RN and IJN and beat them in their home oceans if need be. There are too many variables before 1942 to really decide who would win. It's 'true' that the US could have theoretically won an arms race, but it just didn't want to. However the undertone of Washington is frequently that the US threw away a glorious opportunity for domination, when the realistic picture is of a Congress with little will to vote funds. If you don't get a couple of leaders or some Heavy Cruisers, would the desire have been there for a succession of South Dakota's and Lexingtons? I think also that Japan's overall economic and financial picture is not that happy.
#Cool math slipways series
I agree that the general (relative) reduction in British industry between the wars would include a component of building fewer liners - although they did build the two > 80,000 GRT Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, and the Empress series - among a wide variety of other reductions. The KGV's had some issues although they managed to build in about 4 years and while there were fewer liners built there hadn't been any British battleship since the Nelson in the early 1920's. It would be logical to say that a lack of battleship building was a bigger issue than a reduction in liner building. If you look at what the UK has on the slipways in July 1939 there are -ģx King George V Battleships (2 fitting out)Ģx Illustrious class carriers (1 fitting out)Ģx Yamato class battleships (Shinano lain down in 1940) The capability overall I think remained to build hulls, with the bottlenecks of guns, armor and prioritization of manpower. That's a pretty impressive industrial capability, if poorly supported by delays due to manpower allocation which drew out the Implacables in particular. Manpower is well illustrated by an example in WWI with the Ramillies speed sacrificed in favor of Repulse and time from laying to launch of 34 months for the battleship as against 13 months for Repulse, and 11-18 months for her other R-class battleship sisterships.
Overall I think Britain retained the industrial capability to build Japan into the ground in heavy ships, and despite focusing on lighter ships still shows better than Japan in the actual event. Sure the Lion class get cancelled and the builds draw out, but of those ships listed above Japan will complete the 2 battleships, 3 carriers and 2 training cruisers, and Britain the 5 battleships, 4 carriers, and 16 cruisers. There's plenty of slipways, plenty of turbines, just not enough blokes, guns and armor.įair enough that we are defining 'heavy' units differently, I would usually cut it off at about the destroyer level which would leave the vast array of British corvettes, sloops and frigates as separate 'light' escorts.
I would also disagree on your general assessment that a CL is a lighter or necessarily significantly less valuable unit than a CA. The faster-firing, more numerous gun CL has a lot of advantages and certainly the 9,000-10,000t British Town Class are not lightweight combatants - and the British built 10 of them from 1936 to 1939. There's also a lot of value in a traditional 'fleet' engagement to some of the lighter cruisers.
0 kommentar(er)
