Why 28 knots mattered in the Mediterranean

The video distinguishes the Mediterranean requirement from the open-ocean battlecruiser ideal. Italy could not use speed simply to avoid combat because access to the wider sea depended on fighting within a confined theatre. A 28-knot battleship could instead choose when to engage and still carry enough armour and firepower to finish the fight. The seven-knot advantage over a 21-knot battle line becomes decisive mobility, and Caracciolo might even have supplied the name and standard for a new fast-battleship generation. The counterfactual then asks whether Britain would still build N3s to seal Gibraltar, although fixed coastal guns might perform that mission without placing a capital ship at the chokepoint. The comparison shows how answering a foreign fast battleship could redirect ship design, basing, and diplomacy toward Spain as well as change fleet speed.