Naval Historywith Dr. Alex

Q&A · 1:05:18-1:06:34

Royal Navy priorities with a bigger prewar budget

A future-knowledge budget question turns into a Royal Navy procurement list: dual-purpose guns, destroyers, cruisers, 16-inch KGVs, sloops, fast tankers, and more Unicorn-type support carriers.

CruisersDestroyersFleet CarriersNaval LogisticsNaval ProcurementRoyal Navy
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Question

With future knowledge and a much larger Royal Navy budget before World War II, what would you change?

Short answer

He would fix the dual-purpose gun, build suitable destroyers, upgrade cruisers, alter KGV armament, and add sloops, fast tankers, and more Unicorn-type support ships.

Notes

The program starts with the Royal Navy's dual-purpose gun problem and a suitable destroyer, then moves to cruiser upgrades and a different King George V battleship armament. It adds massed sloops, fast tankers convertible to escort carriers, changes to the Illustrious design, and multiple Unicorn-type aviation support ships. These choices concentrate the larger budget on prewar bottlenecks in escorts, logistics, naval aviation, and heavy-gun design.