Originally posted by Widewing
Well, the term Dreadnought is just so appropriate for this class of ship. Reminds me of a favorite Bible passage, "Fear God and dreadnought".
American Naval designers were on the cutting edge since the 1840s, and have remained so ever since. Britain, on the other hand, didn't build a truly world class dreadnought after the Queen Elizabeths. Nearly everything after these were inferior to the QEs or were governed by the Washington Treaty. Their focus on Battlecruisers didn't help. As late at 1945, the Royal Navy had nothing capable of standing up to the South Dakota class, much less the awesome Iowas. The King George V class was under-gunned and under-armored and especially vulnerable to hits below the armor belt. The old Nelsons were never much more than large ocean going monitors. The one-off Vanguard wasn't commissioned in time to see service in WWII. Even so, she was still no match for the Iowas.
My regards,
Widewing
The Washington Treaty nixed a lot of really good designs though, Widewing. As a matter of fact, the
Saratoga and the
Lexington were origanally laid down as Battlecruisers, armed with 16" guns, in four Twin turrets-with somewhat more armor than contemporaries' aroung the world. The Brits' had plans for ships with Triple 18"s and 30+ knot speed, but these were cancelled under the treaty. I think it would be fair to say that the Royal Navy's plan's were good, It's just that they lost the race against time.
I won't argue that they made mistakes' with the ships' they did have afloat(Furious and Glorious, The Quad mountings' on the
King George V's The failure to modernize ships' like the
Hood) But with the economic situation after the First world war, I don't believe things' were so easy to implement for them later.
