Scharnhorst hull construction on the slipway is given as sixteen to twenty months, with eighteen months used as an approximate cycle. The counterfactual suggests that a programme beginning around 1935-36 could pass through three cycles by 1940. It also avoids some of the reinforcement and preparation required for Bismarck and the larger H-class proposals. Resources would instead go into repeating a hull that the yards already knew how to build. These are estimates for hull production, and they do not establish that every launched ship would be fitted out and ready for service.
Notable Point · 36:48-37:37
Scharnhorst hull cycles and slipway investment
The construction estimate uses repeated Scharnhorst hulls and avoids preparing slipways for successively larger battleships.