Q&A · 2:49:10-2:50:17

What reliable autoloaders could do for German capital ships

Reliable autoloaders could make eleven-inch German batteries formidable, but overengineering would threaten combat reliability.

Question

How would secret autoloaders for German eleven-inch capital-ship guns change their ships and engagements?

Short answer

They could produce devastating rapid fire and encourage twelve-gun ships, provided German designers resisted adding crippling complexity.

Notes

A sufficiently high and sustained rate of fire might favor a twelve-gun, 11-inch Bismarck concept over a smaller number of heavier guns. Reliable autoloaders would change engagement tempo by putting far more shells onto a target before it could recover or maneuver. The caveat is institutional rather than merely technical. A German tendency to add refinements and complexity could turn a working mechanism into an unreliable one before it reached combat.