Countering Plan Z - What would the Royal Navy have done?

[Music] hello everyone and welcome to this wednesday video kindly sponsored by skillshare you've probably seen or heard of them before but just in case you haven't skillshare is an online learning community which contains a wide variety of skill improving classes that everyone can benefit from if you want to learn a new skill advance an existing one or just see how other people happen to make things work there'll be a video for you for fellow naval enthusiasts such as myself there are topics like illustration photography film and video and many others so whether you want to draw ships photograph ships or make videos about ships there are tips tricks and techniques to discover as some of you will have seen in a few dry docks where i've used some of the footage i have actually been able to operate a camera drone for the last few months and i've been using that on a number of field trips and museum visits where they'll allow me to obviously in order to gain more and better footage for subsequent videos and so unsurprisingly i've been watching this particular series by wild rabbit productions an introduction to aerial videography which of course hopefully will help me get some better shots and better quality footage for you all and when you're down in the bowels of a ship or a bunker where you can't really bring a dslr to bear well i know it says iphone photography but this particular series by dale mcmanus really applies to any phone that has a decent camera to it and so hopefully some of those shots that you'll be seeing in subsequent videos won't look like i took them with a potato with a lens strap to it there are no ads on the site and if you want to go and have a look and see perhaps if there's something you could make use of the first thousand of you that click on the link in the description below will get a one month free trial of skillshare so you can start exploring your creativity today so once again thank you very much to skillshare for sponsoring this video and now on with the show much has been made of plan zed or plan z if you're in america the german plan to build a much larger fleet with which to challenge the royal navy although the original flavor version of the plan was actually abandoned as far too ambitious before world war ii even started and even the um somewhat reduced version would end up being cancelled shortly after the outbreak of war we do have a video on plan zed for more details on that but anyway many attempts to analyze how this new kriegsmarina would face off against the royal navy seem to either look at the royal navy as it stood in 1939 or potentially sometimes the royal navy including the construction that they had completed or had underway during world war ii it doesn't account for the fact that plans ed was a 10-year construction program that presumed that peace would continue until at least somewhere in the region of the mid-1940s with a projected end date of 1948 nor do most estimates account for what the royal navy had actually planned to build in those years rather as opposed to what they were forced to build due to wartime pressures nor the the royal navy would you know actually have to respond to an increase in german shipbuilding not just watch it and go [Music] jolly good old chap keep going [Music] so today we're going to take a look at what the royal navy actually had planned for the early 1940s what contingencies they were looking at and what ideas that they vaguely considered in order to try and give an idea of what a mid to just after mid-1940s royal navy might have actually looked like had germany somehow magicked up the funds the industrial capacity the infrastructure the shipyards the oil the oil storage etc etc etc to complete the zed plan uh which for reference would have included germany's historically built fleet that we all know and well we know um plus six more battleships likely the 16-inch 813 h-39 types maybe the last two would have been slightly modified along with a handful of battle cruisers about a dozen panzerschief four carriers and a suite of new actually seaworthy light cruisers amongst other things for simplicity we're going to look at the five major categories of surface warships battleships and battle cruisers carriers heavy cruisers light cruisers and destroyers we'll make some reference to other smaller ships as appropriate and will leave out submarines as there are somewhat different kettle of fish in this we do have a few problems hence why i said earlier we're going to have to synthesize an idea of what might have been this is simply because the royal navy didn't have a direct plan z equivalent a 10-year plan covering all classes of ships instead programs for some of the larger ships were penciled in granted some years in advance so that long lead items like guns armor and large-scale machinery could be ordered but as you get further down the scale it becomes more and more along the lines of well here's a class of ship that we've designed that fits our needs as best we can within scales of economy etc we need x number of them and we need them over the next y years assuming the treasury will actually let us have them and that is presuming that nothing major comes up and we have to change the design but the number that would be built in any given year would vary depending on what funds they could extract from the treasury what other ship classes or types might have priority that year based on external factors like who was building what and of course changes in political thinking change of government or even change of ministers and naturally of course changes and advances in ship design for example the earlier york class small heavy cruisers had originally been planned as a class of seven ships but by the time that york and exeter were ordered it was clear that the royal navy's perceived needs as well as some advances in six-inch gun technology had shifted and the other five ships were simply not built and six-inch armed light cruisers of a new design were ordered instead one final word before we start the royal navy worked in financial year fleet estimates which can be somewhat confusing at first glance so a fleet estimate for a given year let's say the 1939 fleet estimates would largely be debated starting in 1938 and then depending on the level of argument the approval could come in 1938 or in early 1939 the actual year for laying down of construction that it referred to was april 1st 1939 through to march 31 1940 and so a ship in the 1939 estimates might be approved in 1938 but might not actually be ordered and laid down until 1940 but would still fall under the 1939 plan equally if in another year you might have the ship and the plan approved a couple of months before the financial year start so within the same calendar year and if it's urgent you might then have that ship laid down in a matter of months so you could have anything up to 14 15 months between start of debate and approval and the ship being laid down or as few as two hence the last set of full fleet estimates that we have that actually matter are the actual 1939 fleet estimates because they were decided at the beginning of the year whilst the outbreak of war in september would cause some changes to what was actually built and the time scales on which the ones that were continued were finished it does give one final idea of what the peacetime rearmament program was leading to whilst the 1940 estimates were under discussion to a certain degree before walk war broke out once war came and it came before they could be finalized and approved thus from the 1940 estimates onwards we're looking at war programs and not what the royal navy would have built without the war coming so with all that said presuming that war does not break out in 1939 let's start with battleships as mentioned there was a degree of long-term planning when it came to these units and the idea was that for the 1938 1939 and 1940 programs there would be a pair of line-class battleships laid down each year due to issues with where program dates fall as we mentioned above lion and temeraire the 1938 program ships were not actually ordered and started until february 1939. conqueror and thunderer which were the 1939 program ships were due to be started in 1939 itself just on the other side of the first of april divide whatever the loss to lying class would have been named in this scenario they likely would have been ordered in late spring 1940 given the increased urgency of watering capital ships again in light of the theoretical german threat however the 16-inch guns on the lions were proving somewhat difficult to develop and although the hulls of the first two would likely have been in the water by mid-1941 the original idea to get them commissioned in 1942 was by the outbreak of war already known to have been delayed by at least six to 12 months to 1943 for the first two ships the rest of the ships would have come online slightly quicker than that because the issues hopefully would have been worked out with the first few batches of guns that doesn't really affect the total numbers available at the conclusion of our scenario in 1945-46 but it does inform the rest of the royal navy's actions in 1939 going forward now with this knowledge about the delay and also needing in their minds and on policy to match both the japanese navy and european rivals historically the royal navy started design work in 1939 on a fast battleship that used the 15-inch guns left over from the courageous class which had been kept around in storage this would of course historically become hms vanguard with some delays due to war interruptions but in this scenario it's likely that vanguard would have been laid down shortly after her initial design was given approval to start in mid-1940 with a projected in-service date of mid-1943 maybe early 1944 depending on circumstances historically wartime labor shortages and further design revisions in light of the lessons of war delayed her laying down and then delayed her construction but of course those don't apply here the main restriction envisaged for vanguard was whether or not the uk could manufacture or acquire a sufficient armor plate in time space in the more specialized uk foundries and forges had already been freed up by ordering large amounts of armor for the illustrious class amongst others from czech manufacturers but it must also be born in mind that between april 1936 and april 1939 the admiralty had spent over 12 million pounds which for reference is about the cost of four entire fleet carriers directly on the provision of new plant and machinery for contractors admiralty factories and the royal dockyards so the shortages of the mid-1930s are unlikely to have been replicated in the early 1940s indeed the royal navy had actually factored in this new manufacturing capacity which approximately doubled the uk's ability to produce armor plate and in our original timeline they were already advocating around the time that war started to increase the battleship program to three ships per year in order to take advantage of the new production capability the sole remaining bottleneck was the supply of guns so much capacity in gun foundries having been lost in the wake of the washington naval treaty but of course reusing guns you already had obviated that bottleneck as well thus as a bare minimum bearing in mind you've got the japanese navy bit busily building away over there plus this zed plan german threat the next few years would almost certainly have seen more vanguards ordered as the third ship of each year's program but where would the additional guns have come from for the subsequent vanguards originally back in the mid 1930s the king george v had been planned to replace the r class and the lions would then replace the queen elizabeth's and since there were going to be six of them the last one would either replace hood or one of the renowns whichever one was the most worn out however in the intervening time this plan had in fact changed as was announced to parliament in march 1939 as follows today we have 15 capital ships of which three only are of post-war construction it was our original intention to build new ships to replace the old ones but we have made a recent review of the situation and our decision is now influenced by two main considerations in the first place to retain old pre-war capital tonnage indefinitely is both uneconomical and unsound on the other hand to scrap capital tonnage that is capable of modernization would be equally unwise ships of the queen elizabeth class are capable of considerable improvement and much has been and is being done on them not only in the way of modernization but in the way of reconstruction the ships of the royal sovereign class which were laid down in 1913 and 1914 do not lend themselves in the same way to modernization by 1943 all of them will be over age and though they may give a good account of themselves now against existing ships in the near future they would not compare favorably with the ships now building or projected in these circumstances it has been decided to replace one capital ship of the royal sovereign class in 1942 with the last ship of the 1937 program for viewers reference that's hms hal that is when five new capital ships have joined the fleet again footnote i.e the king george v are completed and to replace one more ship of the royal suffering class in 1943 with the last ship of the 1938 program footnote again that's hms temeraire second of the lion class our capital ship strength by the end of 1943 will be 21. those ships which we intend to keep in the battleline for a number of years have been or are being reconstructed and they will be much stronger and better protected their armament will have been modernized and their boilers and machinery renewed i am glad to inform the house that the valiant of the queen elizabeth class and the battlecruiser renown will have been so modernized and will join the fleet this year end parliament i wish without the pressures of war hms hal would likely have joined the fleet in late 41 early 42 which would free up four additional turrets from whichever r-class was decommissioned and thus as the last king george v and the first lions begin to enter service each year's vanguard would likely have been supplied with their turrets and guns modernized as per the historic vanguard specifications of course this leaves open the question of what to do when the last two lions are laid down in 1940 what would the 1941 and 42 etc fleet estimates call for some guidance may be found in the policy that the royal navy had historically in the late 1930s of wanting to have a one-ship advantage over the imperial japanese navy and a three-ship advantage over the kriegsmarine back home they believe that the imperial japanese navy was aiming for a fleet 16 strong and of course plan zed called for 10 battleships and a handful battle cruisers but their design is slightly odd so ignoring those for the moment that would mean that the royal navy would need at least 30 battleships by the mid-1940s assuming that they kept it to this standard because you'd need 17 available for far eastern service and then a further 13 at home to deal with the germans building vanguard in 1940 plus completing all six lions and the king george the fifths minus the 2r class would leave them with 25 capital ships by the time the last line was completed ships that were built in 1941 42 and 43 would be capable of entering service by or in 1946 which is kind of around about the end of the building program we're going to try and project which would mean that since there was no lion class planned for 41 42 43 and indeed no battleship program as yet penciled in in 1939 at three battleships a year an additional nine ships could be built now obviously the three remaining r-class would almost certainly be decommissioned in fact they would have to be to free up the guns for some of the vanguards so that would leave the royal navy with 31 capital ships which is about what they need according to their pre-war standard and it means they have that two years ahead of the completion of the zed plan which would allow for something like maybe a couple of additional vanguards to be made from the remaining r-class 15-inch guns to cope with the crixmarine's new battlecruisers if they felt that was necessary modernizations would of course take place separately as they didn't require any new guns and comparatively little additional armor compared to building a brand new battleship and you can see that with the modernizations of the queen elizabeth's and the hms renown that had taken place concurrently with the king george v's build times thus a 1946 royal navy capital ship fleet would consist of the five modern ice queen elizabeth's two modernized nelsons the renowns and hood also all modernized alongside the five king george v six lions four vanguards and most likely six lion class successors the big question in the room of course is what would that lion class successor look like simply put it's impossible to say with any degree of certainty the battleship designs prepared in the early 1940s historically were all iterations of the lion class with ever increasing displacement but that's due to wartime pressures assuming that the pacific war doesn't break out at the end of 1941 either or if it does it carries on a level such that carrier losses don't mandate the massive reallocation of resources to essex class cares that happened historically you would have seen the us navy building the montanas and sooner or later somebody would have figured out what the yamatos actually were or at least made a fairly decent guess at it at that point in early 1940s the royal navy would need to respond and a 45 000 ton version of the lion really isn't going to cut it against those two ships now whether they continue the trend started by the lions of just upscaling a basic design slightly and fitting bigger guns such as let's say fitting nine 18-inch guns in the same two forward triples and one aft or if they go the montana route of making the ship longer to slot in a fourth triple 16 inch turret or if someone tries to pull off an original flavor king george v on a massive scale with three quad 16 inch or if they try to revisit the n3 design with modernizations or a nelson layout except scaled up with 18-inch guns it's really impossible to say but they would have needed to do something of one of those sorts the fact that such a vessel should in theory have a handy superiority over the h-39 type of battleship would of course be icing on the cake as might be guessed from the previous fleet listing all of the non-r-class battleships would have been modernized to keep fleet strength up this would not be ideal as the treasury would hate having to spend the money to effectively double the size of the battle line which means it would start to be approaching something like grand fleet levels in the space of a decade but it's difficult to see what other choice they would have had to ensure operational security in both the atlantic and the pacific now of course if some kind of war does erupt with japan in 1941 or 1942 without european hostilities this might well curtail some of the modernizations immediately because they'd be needed on the front lines and presuming that a u.s uk alliance crushed japan somewhat faster than it they did historically because you know no european distractions the subsequent somewhat reduced nature of the imperial japanese navy would mean not as many ships were needed assuming there weren't devastating wartime losses and the queen elizabeths and possibly even the nelsons would be of somewhat less use against the all fast capital ships that the critics marine would have as compared to how useful they would have been against a japanese navy force that still included the fuso's ises and nagatos so in those alternate circumstances where some kind of war with japan is fought those older ships may well have then gone to the breakers and malaya along with barum may never actually have been modernized in the event of such war the lying class successor program may have been curtailed somewhat along with some of the vanguards as a 10 strong german fleet not counting the battle cruisers as a now lone threat perhaps also roping in italy might well be considered to be contained by just using the modern ships so the king george the fifths the lions perhaps two lion class successors and three vanguards which in this case will probably be replacing renown repulsion hood that might therefore then be the retained force which amusingly enough adds up to 16 capital ships thus only one more than the fleet had beforehand of course more vanguards or lion class successors might be built if one or more of the modern capital ships had been lost during a theoretical war with japan that brings us to carriers now in this case the path is actually somewhat clearer than it is with battleships two implacables were in the 1938 program but one was kicked down the road to the 1939 program which brings us to the end of the pre-war fleet programs under wartime conditions a third implacable was planned for 1941 but this ran afoul of enough changes that it became the audacious class whilst the lessons of war would not in this case be available equally the urgency of the need for carriers after the loss of courageous and glorious would also not be quite as present whilst it may seem odd to us on the other side of world war ii that the royal navy wouldn't try and get as many carriers into service as quickly as possible you also have to consider the balance at least as they saw it at the time germany wanted to build four carriers over the following 10 years japan had six large fleet carriers and was building a few more like taiho so in 1940 the threat was basically japan's half dozen plus a few smaller lesser carriers and in the near term perhaps the completion of graf zeppelin to counter that the royal navy already had courageous glorious furious arc royal four illustrious class and two implacables either built or under construction for a total of 10 large flight decks not counting unicorn argus eagle or hermes the last three of which could really use replacement so it's likely that a broadly similar scenario would play out in 1941 the carrier for that year would be cancelled due to redesigned work and to free up resources for the increased battleship program and the audacious class would start instead in 1942 which just about allows the first wave to come into service in our 1945-46 target zone this audacious class would probably be the class of four laid down over 42 and early 43 likely relieving hermes eagle argus and furious which would leave the royal navy with 13 carrier hulls with another class probably something akin to the malta's starting in 1944 not quite getting into service by 1946 but probably with two holes in service by the time of the zed plans target completion date of 1948 probably relieving courageous and glorious which would retain overall whole numbers but significantly up the capability an alternate possibility would be a slightly revised version of the 1942 light fleet carrier program to boost overall numbers instead of building something again to the malta's but to be honest that would probably stress the large slipway capacity of shipyards a bit too far again unless some kind of war with japan was fought which therefore might bring carriers to the forefront a bit more than they would have historically during peacetime and which might then with germany as the remaining primary threat make more smaller carriers seem like a better idea than a couple more larger ones in order to allow wider more comprehensive coverage of trade lanes and convoys since of course the royal navy's fleet carriers would have a massive superiority of numbers over germany's fleet carrier program heavy cruisers on the other hand are an utter rat's nest of what might have been simply put the royal navy hadn't built any cruisers with guns larger than six inch since the two york class of the late 1920s but some simple things to start with that are pretty clear the hawkins class would likely have been disposed of and the artisan upgrading of various counties would continue and one can but hope be somewhat rationalized into something approaching coherency york and exeter would probably receive a similar work over but now we get to the thorny issue the germans would have a couple more hippers on the way and a raft of new panzerschiff japan already had a formidable fleet of treaty-breaking heavy cruisers plans for more and the conversion of the megamis and of course they were also looking at building larger vessels including what at the time were rumored to be 20 000 tons supercruisers we have a wealth of information on what the royal navy was looking at in response at the end of the 1930s and this is in part the problem there were a series of approximately 20 000 ton designs that were considered with armament that ranged from nine 9.2 inch guns in triple turrets to 12 such guns in quad turrets and bizarrely enough the quad turret version was costed as being less than the triple turret version so said the estimates anyway there was also consideration of ships with six 10-inch guns in twin turrets and six 12-inch guns in twin turrets these latter two basically because the guns fell outside the still technically enforced treaty restrictions on cruisers although how long that would have lasted probably not very long at the lower end of the scale a series of heavily protected ten thousand ton designs armed with nine eight inch guns and triple turrets were also considered including one that looked to be at least partially able to protect itself from panzer shift 11 inch gunfire by becoming a miniature nelson with an all-forward battery to allow thicker armor across the magazines and machinery as compared to a conventional layout another design which was effectively the county class but now using technology a decade newer was also considered yet another big design using four triple eight-inch guns was sketched and by the time war historically broke out the three triple eight-inch gun designs with nine guns total at around ten thousand tons were under consideration these vaguely resembled an edinburgh class i.e hms belfast but with a different turret layout these designs were the most advanced and a larger 15 and a half thousand ton version of the same which you can effectively say was a british version of a baltimore class heavy cruiser was developed early in the war and indeed actually indicatively placed on order although none of them ended up being laid down given this welter of confusion and the likely emphasis in 1940 and 41 on capitol ships and lighter craft which we'll come to a bit later i think it's probable that heavy cruisers would have been skipped in at least 1940 with the first orders likely being for four of the fifteen and a half thousand ton eight inch cruisers in 1941 or possibly early 1942 depending on how seriously the panzer shift were considered a threat against this design and also factoring in japanese building efforts a larger class of vessel with the 9.2 inch guns to counter these threats and possibly vaguely match the alaska's may well have followed on but this would likely have been one year's worth of construction probably three or four ships if those japanese and german ships don't quite excite as much fear either because of a temporary glut of fast capital ships the refitted renowns uh refitted hood and the vanguards they're under construction or for whatever other reason then more of the eight inch ships might follow instead in the subsequent years in addition to the counties in yorks these would stand the royal navy in good stead albeit if the 9.2 in ships were taken forward they may have been ordered in two pairs over subsequent years and thus only they and the four 18 ships from the initial order would be available by our 1945-46 deadline once again in the event of a war with japan i find it fairly likely the larger 9.2 inch ships would probably not be built as the primary supercruiser threat was perceived to be from the japanese navy and repeating the existing large 8-inch designs in time of conflict would be faster and cheaper especially since they were considered to be at least theoretically able capable of standing up to panzer schiff light cruisers are almost as fun again starting with the older ships as they're somewhat easier to quantify the better conditioned c-class cruisers plus the d-class cruisers would have been refitted to anti-aircraft vessels with four inch and later 4.5 inch gun mounts as was being done at the time already the e-class were planned to be modernized in 1441 had all been sketched out before the war broke out and that will probably continue without the war actually happening this would then leave the arith users leanders towns and dedos as the fleet's modern light cruiser backbone historically this would be followed on by the fiji or crown colony class either term appears to be contemporary with the ships depending on which sources you're looking at but a wide variety of other deers were also considered including the gloriously amusing k25 series featuring such things as quad stacked 5.25 inch twin turrets sadly with the conversion of many of the smaller older vessels to anti-aircraft vessels it's unlikely that this would have been further advanced indeed the k-25 design series was actually dropped in favor of what would become the fiji's immediately pre-war based on pre-war and wartime plans however i think that the path probably would have been a few years of the cheap and cheerful fijis which were effectively slightly downscaled town class followed on by an improved belfast design which is a substantially larger ship in 1943 as again was actually notionally planned even during wartime 1944 historically saw the consideration of design y aka the neptune class aka a slightly larger belfast style hull except with 4.5 inch secondaries and four triple six inch auto loaders known as the mark 24 mount this design work would later lead to design za aka the minotaur class with five twin six-inch autoloaders of a type that would historically be seen later on on the tiger-class cruisers and that design was considered in 1945. now these ships would have been very capable but also very expensive given the relatively anemic kriegsmarine and japanese light cruiser programs i think it's fairly likely the british light cruiser program would likely have been stopped at the improved belfasts unless either the c-class were getting too long in the tooth and needed to go in which case true dual-purpose rapid-fire six-inch guns would be useful replacements and thus at least the neptunes might be put under consideration or again in the event of war with japan with the japanese navy threat reduced but also probably a reasonable number of losses amongst the light cruisers that may open the way for the arith users and leanders to be ditched put in reserve sold on to other countries or given to other countries to replace warthog losses particularly for the australian navy in which case a few of the new rapid fire designs again might well have been placed under construction with budget control likely depending on what capital ship and carrier programs are doing by 1944. the exact numbers are slightly harder to quantify since with light cruisers there are so many other factors involved including possible export sales the royal canadian navy royal australian navy and royal new zealand navy but it's likely that the historical fiji or crown colony class program would continue and as i said they were considering a batch of four improved belfasts anyway even during wartime so those at least are probably in the bag destroyers and other small craft cover quite the wide range a large number of what would become the hunt class escort destroyers plus the first tranche of flower class corvettes had been ordered in 1939 and orders of these small and cheap ships would possibly continue or they may be staggered as the ships would most likely mostly go straight into reserve if war didn't actually come about the following year however when it came to destroyers as in the big fleet destroyers the royal navy had historically used mostly smaller four gun destroyers they'd then gone big with the tribals and the jkl mnn classes that had followed had been somewhat different again mounting only six guns in three twin mounts instead of eight guns in four but gaining an additional set of torpedo tubes whilst the j k's and n's were a couple of hundred tons lighter than the tribals the l's and m's were actually slightly heavier than the big ships in wartime all of this had then been superseded by smaller cheaper four single gun designs and the 1939 program only included the small escort ships as the n-class had brought up the number of royal navy destroyer flotillas to 16 which was the target number they actually wanted at the time so as with a number of other programs it's likely that the turn of the decade would not have seen any fleet destroyer construction which allows resources to be diverted to the main crunch years of capital ship construction and modernization however also in 1939 the admiralty was proposing matching the three most likely enemies germany italy and japan and in our scenario with several dozen more large german destroyers planned for construction a new set of flotillas would be needed there was some work being done on what was termed an intermediate destroyer which was basically trying to balance the size and power of the six gun designs against the cheapness of the older four gun designs with the intermediate ship having five guns in two twin mounts one four and one aft and a single mount super firing over the forward twin however every time a near to close solution was arrived at with the intermediate design it always tended to turn out that simply repeating the j-class as they had done with the ends would cost about the same and give them a slightly more powerful ship there had been some issues with the l's and m's which had resulted in the repeat ends but that's another story but even whilst the wartime emergency flotillas were historically being built design work on the next fleet destroyer had actually started in 1940 even as i said though it was in the middle of the war this would become known as the 1942 destroyer and finally it would get to use the excellent 4.5 inch dual purpose gun this class is better known to us as the battle class which would then be followed immediately postal by the darings given the timings the demands on resources and the overall soundness of the battle class design it's thus relatively likely that the wartime emergency flotillas obviously wouldn't be built but then after a couple of years of no destroyers something like the battle class would probably start construction in early 1942 likely ordered in large quantities as resources would become available as the older capital ships finish their modernizations and of course destroyers are much quicker to build and much quicker to enter service so 42 43 and 44 flow tillers would be available in peacetime construction rates for 1946. a war with japan alone in late 41 early 42 is unlikely to have sparked wartime emergency flotilla construction because 16 destroyer flotillas just to deal with japan would be something the royal navy would see as possibly even overkill and any wartime losses would probably be made good by increasing the orders of not battle class when they are put under construction so there you have it now of course all of that might seem somewhat fanciful given the sheer expense and commitment of it all but then we're also imagining a world where germany has presumably got dark wizards on their side and magicked up the requisite resources to construct the entire zed plan and managed not to go to war with anyone and not have its economy implode over the early to mid 1940s the fleet that the royal navy at least in this case in theory builds in response is actually far more reasonable than the zed plan since the uk actually does have the money and the infrastructure to build it and you know without major land wars to fight there are probably the men to crew the ships and the primary bottlenecks gun and armor production for the larger ships and fire control units for the smaller ships are either resolved by the investment that had already historically been made in the late 1930s for armor for the larger ships and the reuse of guns off of the r-class in the latter case and in the smaller ship's case they can simply purchase fire control units from overseas such as the us which historically they did or as they also did potentially launch ships completed without their fire control units and then have the fire control units fitted a few months later once production catches up without the mass production of wartime emergency flotillas and other smaller vessels you've also got the fact that you know those ships because they don't no longer exist don't need fire control systems and therefore those systems would be available for subsequent installation on the destroyers and the secondary batteries of larger vessels thus bearing in mind its global commitment so these ships wouldn't all be concentrated in one fleet the royal navy fleet of 1946 as germany is beginning to lay down the last of its zed plan ships is likely to consist of something approaching just over 30 capital ships 13 fleet carriers at least 21 and possibly as many as 25 heavy cruisers about 60 modern light cruisers not including anti-aircraft conversions of older ships and at least 22 flotillas of destroyers and again not counting allied navies such as the royal australian royal new zealand and royal canadian navies of course within that fleet arrangement are a number of possible variations as discussed earlier especially if there is some kind of conflict with japan but hopefully it does give you some idea of why the zed plan was never actually a true threat to the royal navy on the time scale that it was conceived of as covering even if germany had actually had the ability to build it that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry dock questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 370,339

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Plan Z, WW2, Royal Navy, Kriegsmarine, IJN, battleships, Lion class, HMS Vanguard

Id: R89zNg3WYko

Length: 43min 41sec (2621 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021