Bruships 150: Naval History Questions Answered, Boxes Packed & July Patreon Suggestions Kicks Off

It would concentrate on gun loading, centralized fire control, protected control positions, and other systems that reduced crew requirements.

The exact total is disputed because Pellew could claim both a captain's share and a squadron commander's share, but it made him a multimillionaire in modern terms.

Courageous and Glorious likely do not survive as conversions; the Royal Navy probably iterates from Hermes toward larger purpose-built carriers.

He frames Warspite as command control as much as firepower: the admiral wanted to go in personally and keep aggressive destroyer captains from overextending.

Present it as enthusiasm to be shared, not a sermon delivered from a position of superiority.

His ships would probably have suffered badly in their rigging, but the attack could have been renewed later; instead, he ignored a defensible order and won.

Yes; that is a strong possibility.

It was effectively identical apart from minor stylistic differences.

The extra displacement would chiefly buy length, four-shaft machinery, and roughly 28 to 30 knots, depending on the balance among speed, range, stores, and accommodation.

They would still be about 1,000 tons because the design starts with the minimum escort equipment and the smallest hull merchant yards can build quickly.

Yes; the conversion is straightforward, and the potential result is comparable with Lexington and Saratoga.

The distinction is not simply tonnage: sloops are built to naval standards, corvettes to civilian standards, with frigates in between.

The additional modern battlecruiser would place the Ottoman Navy in an extremely dangerous strategic position.

Not necessarily; it meant 70 cruisers capable of carrying out required modern roles, including older ships that could be converted for useful service.

He places practical deployment in the late 1930s under treaty conditions, but says a no-treaty world with larger carriers and better lifts could move it into the late 1920s.

The joke was that heavy Atlantic weather would sweep aircraft from their decks before the Royal Navy had to defeat them directly.

In 1937 he would prioritize a reliable 4.5-inch dual-purpose mounting and armor production, but says investment in 1932-33 would have transformed capacity far more.

A follow-up connects interwar naval investment with skilled employment, industrial resilience, and the political choices that sustain a domestic arms sector.

Partly: many engineers came from major shipbuilding centers such as Glasgow, Newcastle, Portsmouth, and Chatham, reinforced by family-service traditions.

An engine-development aside proposes rewarding a tested capability instead of betting public money on the manufacturer hindsight later made famous.

Yes; he suggests the Royal Navy could aim around 27,000 tons for fleet carriers while using 15,000-ton light carriers to increase overall coverage.

A continuously building Royal Navy could field newer, faster, heavier capital ships that leave Germany far behind in battleship science.

He warns against imposing later US labels and suggests the Royal Navy would think in fleet-carrier and cruiser-carrier or trade-protection-carrier roles.

They were ocean-going Royal Navy sloops built to withstand Atlantic and North Sea conditions, which also made them suitable for the Indian and Pacific oceans.

Its exceptional purity made consistent high-quality alloys easier to produce, although the United States, Britain, and other countries also possessed useful deposits.

The boom let the crew control the sail's lower height and move it clear of work taking place on the whaler's deck.

The cheapest route is to continue the post-Nelson heavy-gun program without interruption; restarting from scratch would need to begin around 1933.

It can matter for states lacking yards, but visible ships usually deter more effectively than latent production capacity.

They would remain while useful for experimentation or distant fleet support, but the slowest ships would probably disappear by the mid-1930s or earlier.

Probably not; a limit around 10,000 tons is more likely despite earlier attempts to fit the light-cruiser role into about 6,000 tons.

Greece, China, or one of the Dominions might show interest, but their worn condition makes scrapping a strong possibility.

With a new class about every two years and a displacement jump every three generations, Britain could pass through roughly three major size bands before 1939.

Prewar exercises reinforced false assumptions about which ships aircraft would attack, while Force Z also violated standing doctrine that an independent force in that situation should have carrier support.

Probably; both the United States and Japan might accept a 10-inch weapon despite its 12-inch-like rate of fire and limited advantage over a 9.2-inch gun.

It could be reused while metallurgically viable, sometimes after reheating, tempering, or reshaping rather than being installed unchanged.

A methodological aside shows why failing pom-pom ammunition belts belong under logistics and procurement rather than AA doctrine alone.

Tracer would have improved aiming and affected attacking aircrews' morale, but it would not certainly have saved the ships.

A Colorado already displaced about 33,100 tons, so a triple-gun variant could remain under 40,000; the harder case is reducing a 43,000-ton South Dakota design.

No; both navies already valued large air groups and rapid mass launches, and their strategic planning pushed them toward bigger carriers.

Yes; if machinery could reduce crew numbers and tonnage no longer constrained the design, the Royal Navy would pursue it.

Probably Implacable, because sensors, protection, usable weapons, and Royal Navy night-fighting experience outweigh Akagi's larger guns.

Navies might retain 4.5-, 5-, or even 6-inch carrier batteries far longer, producing ships that blend modern supercarriers with heavily armed Soviet-style concepts.

It was classic Vauban-style siege warfare applied to the Confederacy, with blockade and advancing forces serving as enclosing and contracting lines.

No; a completed Joffre class would remove the need, while France without those ships could welcome the American transfers.

He would rather see the US Navy build cruisers to protect Lexington than put eight-inch guns on a carrier whose real weapon is aircraft range.

A French carrier discussion shows how yard politics and national prestige can outweigh a purely technical verdict.

The larger weapons add excessive topweight; her existing 4-inch armament is sufficient.

No ship design could compensate for meeting three British battleships, a carrier, cruisers, and destroyers at knife-fighting range; any survivors were fortunate.

Their orders could lower shared costs, encourage Britain and other Dominions to build more, and give the empire a much larger cruiser baseline in treaty negotiations.

They would quickly create their own auxiliary organizations or participate in a combined imperial support service.

A procurement reflection warns that excellent American systems are optimized for American ways of fighting and may not fit another navy's missions.

Roughly a cruiser squadron, two destroyer flotillas, a similar number of sloops, and a substantial submarine force without intolerable financial strain.

Naval history can inform strategic missions and hub-and-spoke organization, but the physical design of space systems will diverge sharply.

Probably; the postwar government would likely accept a scrap-value offer rather than reconsider preservation at home.

It would add another battlecruiser and more tactical options, depending on the refit schedule, while Beatty would likely have served in the sister rather than Tiger.

They fulfilled the flotilla-leader role well.

Yes; a larger naval aviation community would become more self-sustaining and harder to treat as a peripheral component outside the navy.

Their larger hulls make modernization and retention more likely, but the total depends on how many active flotillas still require dedicated leaders.

No; it reflects Japanese efforts to work with allies and harmonize organizational practices.

India could join Australia as a major regional military base, provide larger naval forces to imperial defense, and possibly mitigate wartime supply and famine pressures.

No; Tiger's protection was better, while Fisher's visionary use concepts often outran his grasp of the engineering needed to realize them.

It was a collective failure: competence as a captain or subordinate squadron commander did not prove he could lead the Royal Navy's most important operational formation.

It is a better fit for Singapore because it was designed around that navy's actual missions, whereas the LCS did not fit US Navy needs.

Cruisers would grow much larger, and four triple torpedo launchers would use weight and deck space more efficiently than six twins.

Miniaturizing the loading, training, and supporting machinery was difficult.

Not by much: triple turrets require more beam, and shortening the hull would damage the length-to-beam ratio unless machinery power rose.

About a month if they avoided sustained high-speed maneuvering and remained near economical cruising speed.

Keeping the large yard active would add cruiser and destroyer output as well as engine and boiler capacity throughout the war.

Most would follow a similar cycle of active use, reserve and second-line duty, then disposal after roughly 15 to 20 years.

Not exactly; earlier classes were already moving that way, but the M class marks a commonly recognized point at which the torpedo-boat destroyer had matured.

The added beam, hull length, magazine capacity, and ammunition would bring it to roughly Tiger's displacement or somewhat higher.

Britain would have to balance full Home, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean or Eastern fleets, increasing interwar capital-ship strength by at least half and adding cruisers and destroyers.

Vietnam taught the navy and government many lessons, but it also demonstrated the predictable cost of entering a war without a firm plan for victory or a clear grasp of the conflict.

Yes; more boiler capacity could plausibly produce about 26.5 knots, enough to remove most German battlecruisers' range-control advantage.

A simple machinery total is misleading because the rooms also displaced other systems and shaped the surrounding hull layout; answering properly requires a full redesign comparison.

The age of sail contains countless ships lost with all hands and no surviving account of what happened, making catastrophe almost an everyday feature of maritime service.

It might endure several hours of hard fighting, but the Channel Fleet's battleships, cruisers, and destroyer flotillas would probably destroy it.

Yes; the submarine force would undertake the same kind of imperial demonstration.

It is technically possible, but the vehicle needed to carry the naval gun and ammunition would grow far beyond the scale normally desired for a tank.

Yes, but it rejected the concept quickly because the curvature of the Earth severely limited a submarine's low-mounted radar horizon.

Probably; Tiger was more heavily built than Renown and Repulse, but a reconstruction on that scale would likely replace her guns, perhaps with 14-inch weapons.

Britain would avoid the Bermuda and might place no orders with Brewster at all, including the large Buffalo order.

Yes; newer fighters would push it toward reconnaissance, strike escort, and anti-submarine duties.

If modernized to about 30-33 knots with radar-directed 14-inch guns, the two Tigers would control the range and overwhelm Scharnhorst's twelve 11-inch guns.

The immediate naval result still favors Japan, but Britain effectively enters the war, France must navigate competing Russian and British ties, and weak Admiralty staff work leaves the navy poorly placed to shape policy.

They could and should be ready, but construction delays like those affecting some Revenge-class ships make their presence uncertain.

Not without major reconstruction because its deck and supporting structure were not designed for the weapon's weight and firing loads.

Yes; they were intended for the Joffres and probably for Béarn as well.

German claims of victory would become much harder to sustain because equal capital-ship losses hurt Germany far more than Britain, whose replacement pipeline was much stronger.

No; Malta's terrain, layered fortifications, mines, submarines, artillery, and prepared command structure make siege and starvation more plausible than assault.

Another First Sea Lord might arrive earlier and the King George V class would probably abandon Chatfield's 14-inch preference for a compromise 15-inch gun.

Warspite's uncontrolled turn before the High Seas Fleet became legendary because the battleship survived an episode that could easily have become infamous.

Their 72 heavy guns, stronger ranging salvos, and 26-knot speed would improve accuracy by roughly 10 to 20 percent and prevent German battlecruisers from controlling the range.

The United States would likely jump toward twelve 16-inch guns and South Dakota-scale ships, while triple turrets spread into Hood and perhaps Renown and Repulse, complicating later treaty limits.

Its primary target was Italy, within a triangular Mediterranean rivalry in which Italian building reacted to both France and Austria-Hungary.