Chapter CXVIII: Unwanted Suitors.
The Dutch battlecruisers were the biggest warship construction programme by a non-Washington Treaty signatory since the pre-Great War South American dreadnought race. Unsurprisingly it therefore attracted a great amount of international interest with all the Great Powers, and some not so Great, vying to be the ‘foreign technical advisor’ that the Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN) had identified the need for. Of course merely having a navy, or indeed being a signatory to the defunct naval treaties, did not automatically make a nation qualified to advisor on the complexities of warship construction and the field was soon culled down to a far more compact short list for the government to ponder over.
First to fall was the American bid, had The Hague been looking for a warship to be constructed elsewhere then there is no doubt US firms would have been amongst the favourites. However the extended US building ‘holiday’, and withering of the associated skills, combined with the lack of any similar design in the USN inventory (the original design for the
Lexingtons was almost twice the tonnage of what the RNN was looking for) was sufficient to see the American offer politely rejected. Next to be declined, if anything more politely, was the somewhat surprising Japanese offer of assistance, for obvious reasons. It is tempting to dismiss this as the same cheeky audacity that had seen Tokyo attempt to buy a single Spitfire, with a vague commitment to purchase more later after it had been ‘evaluated’. It should be noted however that the offer proposed Japan be paid in oil, rubber and various other physical goods, suggesting a more complex motivation which will be discussed in later chapters. While on the subject of espionage the Soviet efforts are worth some brief discussion. The RNN’s low expectations were duly met as they realised the Soviet team was more interested in what information could flow back to Moscow than in offering details of their still under-development
Kronshtadt class. In fairness the Soviet delegation was not just looking for information, they were also interested to see if Dutch engineering firms could assist in areas of precision engineering that Soviet industry struggled with, such as propeller shafts, boilers and turbine manufacture. While the Dutch trade ministry was keen to discuss those opportunities, and much progress would be made, it was clear that the Soviet definition of foreign technical assistance was not the same as the RNN’s and the Soviets did not make the final shortlist.
Turning now to an offer the Dutch actually considered in detail we ome to the Italians. At first glance this is an odd decision, the Regia Marina had even less tradition of battlecruisers than the USN and worse the Abyssinian War had not left Italian designs with a good reputation. That the Italian proposal survived for consideration was for one very good reason; it was the most open and generous, including a large amount of detail that other powers intended to reserve until after they had been selected, all keen to avoid a repeat of the pre-Great War
Rivadavia affair (The Argentinian government's procurement of the two
Rivadavia-class dreadnoughts had seen trade, and military, secrets from five countries freely swapped around by the Argentines. Keen to get the best ships for the lowest price they had been overly bothered who they offended or what confidentially clauses, or indeed laws, they broke). This open attitude was not due to an uncharacteristic outbreak of generosity by Il Duce, but due to very real fears for the future of the Regia Marina in the Italian high command. With no overseas empire to defend, and even Il Duce conceding it might be ‘some time’ before Italy was ready to challenge for control of the Mediterranean again, the naval budget was being severely squeezed. While this had started with shipbuilding it was only a matter of time before questions were asked about why the fleet had more Admirals than capital ships, an area of debate the naval high command was keen to avoid. Success in the Netherlands was therefore viewed as absolutely vital by the Supermarina, winning the contract would provide jobs for the navy’s surfeit of senior officers and, once the contracts began flowing back to Italy, hopefully free up some funding to accelerate the rebuilding of the fleet. In the service of this the Italian delegation was authorised to be far more open than would ordinarily be the case, the hope being that this would overcome the disadvantages of the Regia Marina’s recent history.
The Italian battleship Littorio launching from Ansaldo shipyard in the spring of 1937. Despite her construction being officially ‘accelerated’ during the Abyssinian War progress she had still failed to meet her original launch date, the bottlenecks of Italian industry could not be removed by a bombastic speech and shouted orders. That she had launched at all was only due to the Supermarina diverting materials, in particular the always in short supply armour plating, from her sister ship the Vittorio Veneto. With the budget tight the Supermarina was facing the difficult choice of picking between starting the fit out of the Littorio and leaving the Vittorio Veneto on the slip, or getting the Vittorio Veneto launched but then having two hulls and no funds to fit out either of them.
That the Italian effort lasted as long as it did was due to a certain amount of disagreement within the RNN. The argument was made that if a ‘fleet in being’ actually has to engage in combat something has gone wrong, in the case of the DEI the primary mission of the battle cruisers was to deter a Japanese invasion not actually fight one off. Following this logic it was arguable that such ships should maximise their ‘visible’ strengths (guns and speed being the more obvious ones) to increase their deterrent value while ‘invisible’ ones (such as the armour thickness and operational range) can safely be economised on. Such a strategy would have favoured the Italian proposal, with considerable experience of producing fast well armed but under-armoured and short legged ships it would have played to all their strengths. Moreover such a plan would benefit from their undoubted talents at misdirection with regards to displacement and tonnage, not the under-stating so typical of the naval treaty era but over-stating so that to foreign observers the ships would have a tonnage consistent with a respectable level of armour. In the end however the plan was rejected and the Italian offer declined. While the very large cost savings of a lightly armoured ship were attractive to the economically minded (armour was typically the single most expensive item on a well armoured warship, 20% of the total cost going on armour plate was not unusual) the RNN were very wary of what would happen if such ‘Paper Tiger’ were ever exposed or forced to fight. This was the very argument used to reject the Italian offer, the fate of their fast but lightly armoured cruisers serving as a very graphic warning of the likely outcome of an Italian style battle cruiser being forced into combat.
With the field clear of the also-rans the RNN was free to concentrate on just three options; Britain, France and Germany. As we shall see it was not the straightforward three horse race that simple listing implies.
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Notes:
I've moved house, sorted many things and now it's back! Just in time for... Valentines Day? I probably should have done a tank one on the alt-Valentine tank, but I couldn't just leave the Dutch navy hanging could I?
Mostly historic, the Japanese were that cheeky about trying to buy a single Spitfire (and single copies of lots of other foreign planes), the Soviets were always looking for foreign advice on warships and did attempt to buy lots of naval propulsion equipment from the Dutch, I think the outbreak of war stopped most of the deliveries though. The Rivadavia affair was OTL, Argentina did play that very well, if at the cost of annoying everybody involved, even the winning US shipyard was annoyed that their design secrets had ended up being given away to their rivals.
The Littorios are sitting on the slips, Italy is spending all it's money on re-building the Army and Air Force and is focused on keeping Austria within the Italian sphere, that makes the navy very low priority. OTL the only Italian involvement was letting the Dutch have a look around the fitting out Littorio and answering vague questions on torpedo protection, so they weren't adverse to technical assistance, they just lacked the necessary motivation.
The 'italian style' battlecruiser is a bit of an invention, the actual specification was always quite fluid so I'm sure the idea came up, I'm equally sure it would have been rejected but I thought it was worth a few words as it's an interesting idea. If your building a fleet just to be a fleet in being how important is it that the ships are actually any good, as long as they look impressive (and no-one ever finds out they're paper tigers)?
