What would Italian and German equivalents of the Alaska class look like?
Short answerItaly could use 12.6-inch guns, while Germany would likely build a nine-gun 11-inch super-Deutschland with complex machinery.
NotesItaly might use its 12.6-inch weapons, while Germany's likely route was a nine-gun 11-inch design resembling a super-Deutschland. A sleek German exterior would probably conceal machinery whose complexity made maintenance difficult at sea. A later follow-up notes that Germany could manufacture 11-inch guns more readily than the proposed 15-inch alternative, reinforcing the supply constraint behind the choice. Both answers begin with guns already available rather than inventing an entirely new ordnance industry for a hypothetical cruiser. Engineering elegance has limited value when crews cannot readily maintain the machinery on deployment.