Richard Anderson wrote:No, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is not workable as a "sheltered harbor" for a ship of "up to 100ft draught". Rich Passage shallows to under 40 feet east of Point Glover
As usual, you need to misrepresent a point to criticize it. "Puget Sound" does not mean "Puget Sound Naval Yard at Bremerton" so Rich Passage leading there is irrelevant.
Richard Anderson wrote: Yes, Provincetown Harbor
Why waste all that time writing? I said Provincetown Harbor and showed a map of its environs.
Richard Anderson wrote:Hampton Roads doesn't work either...all the channels in and out at the time were under 35 feet.
Ok, might need to dredge a few feet there. Or remove a few turrets from MegaBB. Doesn't change the bigger picture.
RichardAnderson wrote:All these areas require massive infrastructure investment for basing
Oh like the $590mil spent on bases 1938-45?
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Bu ... ses-8.html
What you and your gang are forgetting that the U.S. was going to make massive investment in ships, bases, training, weapons development, etc. whether you build megaships or not. By the end of the war we had in commission, in memoriam, on slipways, or in the production line at least ~25 BB's, 35 CV's, ~90 CA/CL, ~500 DD's. Two MegaBB's would cost a small fraction of that fleet to build/man/supply etc.
The ATL/ What If that you're pretending doesn't exist here is: What if the U.S. built to be the global naval hegemon in 1935, instead of just another Great Power? And you're pretending that my proposal is "build MegaBB's only" rather than "MegaBB's plus a (smaller) conventional fleet."
For a given security goal (in this ATL and in OTL WW2 the goal is total naval supremacy) you can build either 1 MegaBB or, say, 10 Iowas. Or one or two balanced carrier/BB/cruiser/DD task forces (with hindsight you'd omit the BB from that mix but not in 1940).
Given 10x Japan's resources, do you build 10x as many CA's, BB's, CV's, DD's etc. as Japan? Or do you maybe build 3x Japan's conventional fleet and fold the other 7x into 4 ships that would cost a fraction of the expense to build, man, supply, and base? And that could destroy Japan's fleet without significant loss, unlike even an unbalanced battle of conventional fleets (See Pacific War, U.S. casualties)?
OpanaPointer wrote:Remember: Mobility + Offense + Defense = 1
Huh? Not following... If you're suggesting there's a necessary tradeoff for weapon systems between these values, I'd say no. Some weapons are just better than others all around.