Q&A ยท 18:08-18:50

A twelve-gun 16.5-inch battleship counterfactual

A proposal to retain very large guns leads to a compact sketch of the turret arrangement an all-big-gun ship might require.

Question

What layout might carry a Dreadnought-sized battery of 16.5-inch guns?

Short answer

It would probably need triple turrets, perhaps twelve guns in four triples, producing a layout closer to Dante Alighieri.

Notes

The viewer imagines infrastructure adapted to support continued use of 16.5-inch guns and notes that their shell splashes would be easier to distinguish from twelve-inch fire. Such a battery would probably require triple mountings. Twelve guns in four triple turrets would move the design toward a layout resembling Dante Alighieri. Keeping the unusually large calibre would reshape the turrets and the whole battleship arrangement rather than amount to a simple gun substitution.