Shouldn't shipyards accumulate know-how?

[Axe99]

By 1936, I wouldn't put it past Spain, the Netherlands, or Sweden to at least attempt to build battleships

I'd agree with Sweden, but post-SCW (and the SCW always fires - although if it's a quick 'done and dusted' war that manages to get the British technical advisers at SCEN Ferrol back quickly enough then it's an outside chance) Spain took seven years to build basic (and by the time they were finished in 1951, after being laid down in 9144, very much obsolete destroyers). Franco actually looked into the idea of building battleships (with Italian help), and it's something I don't have the full story on, but given how much trouble they had with destroyers, I imagine that it was seen as logistically beyond their capacity. Given this, I'd suggest Spain would need to have a much-better-than-historical run to have any chance, and even then (if we're looking for historical plausibility) it should take them a long time - I doubt they had the ordnance, armour or engine works required to build the components they needed.

As for the Netherlands, as far as I understand it (but I haven't read anything specifically on the Dutch navy of the period, so could well have missed something) the Project 1047 battlecruisers never proceeded past the planning stage, and were to have relied heavily on German industry for completion (and relied heavily on German expertise for design as well).

I'd argue Turkey's capacity at this stage to build a modern battleship in the 1930s was more-or-less non-existent. I'd be very interested in any information on that pre-dreadnought as well - I've read a bit about the stage immediately before the pre-dreadnought era (and the Turkish navy at the time was in a terrible state - much stronger on paper than it was in practice, with numerous ships in a state they couldn't put to sea) but very little between 1890 and WW1.

Of course, this is all in historically plausible land - I'm not suggesting in-game, particularly in vanilla, that minors couldn't build capital ships - HoI4 should be a fun game first and foremost, and not a naval construction simulator .

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

I'd agree with Sweden, but post-SCW (and the SCW always fires - although if it's a quick 'done and dusted' war that manages to get the British technical advisers at SCEN Ferrol back quickly enough then it's an outside chance) Spain took seven years to build basic (and by the time they were finished in 1951, after being laid down in 9144, very much obsolete destroyers). Franco actually looked into the idea of building battleships (with Italian help), and it's something I don't have the full story on, but given how much trouble they had with destroyers, I imagine that it was seen as logistically beyond their capacity. Given this, I'd suggest Spain would need to have a much-better-than-historical run to have any chance, and even then (if we're looking for historical plausibility) it should take them a long time - I doubt they had the ordnance, armour or engine works required to build the components they needed.

As for the Netherlands, as far as I understand it (but I haven't read anything specifically on the Dutch navy of the period, so could well have missed something) the Project 1047 battlecruisers never proceeded past the planning stage, and were to have relied heavily on German industry for completion (and relied heavily on German expertise for design as well).

I'd argue Turkey's capacity at this stage to build a modern battleship in the 1930s was more-or-less non-existent. I'd be very interested in any information on that pre-dreadnought as well - I've read a bit about the stage immediately before the pre-dreadnought era (and the Turkish navy at the time was in a terrible state - much stronger on paper than it was in practice, with numerous ships in a state they couldn't put to sea) but very little between 1890 and WW1.

Of course, this is all in historically plausible land - I'm not suggesting in-game, particularly in vanilla, that minors couldn't build capital ships - HoI4 should be a fun game first and foremost, and not a naval construction simulator .

To be honest, I thought the Dutch battlecruisers had been laid down before the occupation, but it turns out that once ordered, the construction work was just for the slipways to actually build them (meaning there would be a rather considerable delay in construction, given the heavy reliance on Germany for the guns and technical equipment). They were ordered, though, and I still feel that the Dutch at least had primitive capital ship construction capabilities (though definitely not quite enough for a 40,000+ ton battlecruiser like they actually ordered without foreign help).

The Turkish pre-dreadnought suffered serious problems during construction that basically ended the Ottoman's efforts to build their own capital ships, namely from the keel shifting. However, from what I understand it was more a case of politics causing budget problems than a real lack of technical capability (other than the strange issue of not using a slipway):

Spoiler: Details (courtesy of wikipedia)

Rather than use an actual slipway, the builders simply began laying the keel pieces on empty ground near the shipyard, using only a small number of wooden beams to support the structure. The slipway that had been used to build the ironclad Hamidiye was, for some reason, left unused. By 1895, the steel frames for her hull had been erected, but work proceeded very slowly and frequently stopped, primarily due to the chronically tight Ottoman budget. In 1897, for instance, work had been halted for some time, and the contemporary journal The Navy and Army Illustrated predicted that the ship would not be finished. Similar large-scale building projects during this period also fell apart due to lack of funds; a major construction program launched in the aftermath of the Ottoman Navy's poor performance in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 stalled after funds could not be appropriated for the new ships. By 1906, when work on Abdül Kadir stopped for the last time, the hull had been only partially plated. By this time, the blocks that supported the hull during construction had shifted, which destroyed the keel. As a result, the unfinished ship was broken up on the slipway in 1909.

Ultimately, me pointing out the Dutch, Swedes, and Spanish as far as making capital ships is more a case of them being the only minors currently capable of even realistically contemplating the effort; besides gunlaying (which was common enough in Europe to at least make ordering guns a realistic option, particularly with firms in Czechoslovakia and Sweden able to supply guns), the big issue is can you build large hulls and engines. Thick armor, while difficult, can at-least be produced in crude forms to get battlecruiser-levels of protection (inferior to major power armor, but still good enough to beat cruiser protection). That leaves you with three nations that probably could build up the port facilities enough to get the ships. A few minor powers had the ability to develop this sort of shipbuilding (i.e. Portugal), but without any practical experience on other large ships (or large engines), getting the ships done earlier than the 1950s is dubious.

Spain, while they had the only shipyard actually capable of building them, I think was just planning on ordering Littorio-class battleships at this point.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

One last note @Axe99 - I appreciate all the detail you're putting into your posts here. I've studied this stuff casually for a long time, but I definitely don't have the in-depth research that you obviously do in construction and engineering details (doctrine and use is far easier to do, and even there I have quantity of information more than quality).

Getting to receive such a detailed set of responses and answers to random internet posts is really nice.

 

[Axe99]

One last note @Axe99 - I appreciate all the detail you're putting into your posts here. I've studied this stuff casually for a long time, but I definitely don't have the in-depth research that you obviously do in construction and engineering details (doctrine and use is far easier to do, and even there I have quantity of information more than quality).

Getting to receive such a detailed set of responses and answers to random internet posts is really nice.

I always enjoy a good conversation about things naval, and every one we've had I've enjoyed immensely - you shouldn't under-rate your knowledge - you're very well-informed on naval matters, and I enjoy discussing them with you (and others in these parts ). That said, I'd also caution against assuming I know what I'm talking about - I'll always do my best, but my memory's a bit patchy, and my reading isn't terribly structured (it's pretty much all naval, but what it is bounces around a fair bit).

On the Turkish battleship, in case useful, I got my neurons in a knot - I had actually read something about it (but for whatever reason remembered it as an ironclad, conflating Hamidiyeh and Abd-ul-Kadir in my mind). There was an article in the latest (at least, the latest to reach Australia - international post at the moment is all sorts of erratic, understandably given the pandemic) Warship International. In case of interest, I've popped an excerpt from it in the spoiler below:

Spoiler

From Warship International 57/2, June 2020, p. 155 (in an article by Ian Sturton on the Turkish navy of the period, as seen through British naval attache reports):

A successor to Hamidiyeh was planned. The steel-hulled battleship Abd-ul-Kadir was begin in October 1892, not on a proper building slip (the covered building slip used for the Hamidiyeh was left empty) but on a few wooden beams laid in the dockyard mud. The construction work was in public view, but far from the workshops. Light frames were erected but very little work was done before the foundations subsided; no progress at all was reported by naval attaches between 1894 and 1900, and the ship and slipway were cleared by October 1906. It was concluded (1900) that "attempts at building large modern vessels are unreal, and only to show those outside the dockyard that those inside are really doing something, and that of a very up-to-date nature."

The Abd-ul-Kadir was not the last battleship proposed for construction in Turkey. Two were officially projected in 1910, but "contract not yet signed (8 April 1910_". The data listed were: 16,200t; armament six 12in, six 9.2in, twelve 4in, four TT; main armour 9in; 20kts. Instead, two elderly predreadnoughts were acquired from Germany (August 1910).

There's a book, The Ottoman Steam Navy, that I'm keen to track down one day that I presume will have more detail, but there are too many books and not enough time/money, and I haven't gotten around to that one yet