Phoenix_jz

Implying that no one else was having their construction held back by other projects? Both Japan and Britain were conducting major carrier programs at the time of their modern battleship construction - in fact, their carrier programs were both larger (the same as with the Americans) than their battleship programs. It's a simple fact that battleships require many longer lead-time items than carriers and other types of warships. It's one thing to assemble a certain amount of steel and bolt it together, but one can't simply alter the amount of fixed time needed to produce a type of cemented plate. American industrial advantage weighed in heavily on the volume that could be produced, but some things simply cannot be altered to that degree. Actually responding to the construction of Japanese superbattleships would demand serious time investments to develop new heavy guns, set up specific infrastructure around their construction, and then actually go through with it. The above chart is actually indicative of the advantages of not doing this - American battleships shared so much in regards to their designs and what went into them that they were able to to take advantage of the efficiencies of such production, which saw construction time (time on slip and fitting out period combined) drop from ~3.5-3.7 years to 2.4-2.5 years by the time it came to the latter members of the South Dakota-class, and this contiuned to where even the larger Iowa's were only 2.7 years - though the latter pair rose to 3.4-3.4 years due to the lower priority battleship production started to have in the US after 1942, and thus spend about ten months longer on the slips than their sisters (though their fitting out time was just as rapid). Any super-battleships, on top of being greater resource sinks than any of the 406mm battleships built by the Americans, would not have benefited from this, and would have incurred a whole new set of fixed costs for larger guns and larger amounts of thicker cemented plate. This would have only driven the production time of American battleships up, not down. Keep in mind, most of the battleships built by the Americans did not have their time on slips overlap with the construction of many of the new fleet carriers. The first Essex-class carrier was laid down only in April 1941, with two more following in July and September and another pair in December. Another four followed in 1942, while the true cascade of fleet carriers being laid down didn't start until 1943 (9). The North Carolina-class (laid down in 1937 & 38) were already largely completed by April 1941, and all but one South Dakota-class battleship had been launched by the end of the year (Alabama, laid down in 1940 while her sisters had been laid down in 1939). The first pair of Iowa's were laid down in 1940 and both launched before the end of 1942. This places them more contemporary to the Wasp and Hornet rather than deluge of Essex-class carriers. The ships that truly would have been competing with the carriers for resources would have been the second and third pairs of Iowa-class battleships, and the Montana-class battleships, had they not been cancelled - with this competition, or, as you put it, "being held back", being the reason - the US wanted to avoid it. Even with its terrifying industrial capacity, the US couldn't afford to print out Essex-class carriers at the same time as building large numbers of new battleships (even discounting steel shortages, there were yard capacity limits, as there were 'only' 19 slips capable of building modern capital ships in the country). It is interesting to note, meanwhile, that in Japan, the Yamato-class (~4.2 years, 1937-41 & 38-42) were being built at the same time as both Shokaku-class carriers were under construction (1937-41), as well as Hiryu (1936-39). If anything, given Japan was building two 'super-battleships' alongside three fleet carriers in the period 1936-1941, versus the Americans in the same period working on 5-6 battleships alongside two fleet carriers, it's pretty plain that Japan was sinking more tonnage into carriers than battleships versus the Americans - 126,400 tons of 'super-battleships' and 68,650 tons of fleet carriers versus 188,878-226,848 tons of battleships (give or take a SouDak) and 35,627 tons of fleet carrier. This is especially remarkable given the disparity in industrial capacity between the two nations. -------- In regards to Italian battleship construction - it's important to note that Littorio and Vittorio Veneto have exaggerated construction times, about a third of which is down to resource issues as you cited, but a good 2/3rds of which stems from political concerns and extensive design modifications. The date both ships were laid down - 28 October 1934 - was largely a political choice, and the designs for the ships weren't even complete (the first 'final' version of the design was in fact not completed until May 1935). As it was, work on the battleships only began in April 1935, tacking on 6 months to their on-paper construction time (which thus would more accurately be 27 months and 26 months respectively, rather than 33 and 32). As it was, expected dates for launch slipped by another two months thanks to extensive design changes (adding some 3,048 tonnes of displacement to the ship) made in the intervening time, making the total 'excess' time on the construction slips eight months each, and, notably, had little do do with resource issues. Design changes continued to then dog the ships during their fitting out-period, though notably this time material issues also began to weigh on them, namely shortages in high-strength steels caused by the number of projects under works at the time that demanded it (the new battleships Impero and Roma, the reconstruction of Duilio and Andrea Doria, and the new expansion in submarine production). Combined, these added some 5-6 months of additional delays. In total, the two battleships suffered from 12-14 months of delay or excess time, and turned what should have been 50-54 month builds into ~65 month builds. Impero and Roma, which notably did not suffer from the same delays (at least until Impero was moved from Genoa to Brindisi), correspondingly had a much more rapid construction time - their designs were finished before they were laid down (minus minor modifications), had work start as soon as their keels were laid, and didn't suffer from major material shortages. Impero only spent 18 months on the slips, and Roma 20/21. Roma spent two years fitting out, and Impero, had she not been moved, would have spent 20 months fitting out, with her completion coming in August 1941. This is, for the two sisters, 3.2 years and 3.8 years respectively, which is notably faster than any other battleships in Europe save for the much smaller Scharnhorst-class (3.3-year average versus 3.5 years), and about a third to a year slower than the averages for the American battleships (3.2 years for the NC's, 2.85 for the SouDak's, and 3.0 for the Iowa's).

I really don't care to bat around accusations about WG's level of Russia bias around, I'm sure that conversation's been had exhaustively around the internet, but in regards to your second and third points... There is plenty of information available as to what the VMF and Soviet government were intending to achieve pre-war, and how those actually turned out. The idea that someone writing in 2020 wouldn't possibly have read about that and couldn't possibly know what they were talking about is very presumptive, especially given the number of books that have been published on the subject. I will not speak for another user - they have more than enough agency to defend themselves on their own. However, I can very much vouch for the fact they're not factually wrong with what they're saying. Like many of the pre-war Soviet designs, the Projekt 23 battleships were the fruit of excessively optimistic assumptions based on likewise overly optimistic economic plans. The success of the first five year plans lead the Soviet Union to believe their economic output would be much more in the late 1930s than it actually was, and this likewise applied to the level of technology that was available to them. One of the best examples of this is the fact that the Soviets expected, in 1937, to be able to build and commission fifteen Projekt 23 battleships by 1947 - which was simply impossible, given the limitations of Soviet production, and the percent of production that was actually usable due to wildly varying quality. The fate of one of the four battleships - Sovetskaya Belorussiya - is a golden example, as the entire ship had to be scrapped after six months of construction, thanks to the fact a whopping 70,000 faulty rivets were found in the design. The soviet naval industry was simply not up to the task of building such large warships, nevermind four at once - and fifteen by 1947 was a pipe dream. The point of the above user on the machinery isn't off at all, either. In this era, shaft loading generally did not exceed 55,000 shp on full normal power, and even on overload going past 60,000 shp was generally a no-go, since even the best 1930s and 1940s propeller technology would start to suffer heavily from cavitation at these loadings. At 70,000 shp this would be extreme. But the Projekt 23's? They wanted to get up to 77,000 shaft horsepower per shaft in order to hit 28 knots (231,000 shp total). All, keep in mind, on six boilers. This is far beyond the best turbines and propeller designs of the era. The designs are highly questionable on paper, considering what was possible in the period, and this is made worse by the material conditions of the ships and the Soviet naval infrastructure of the era. Their list of issues is fairly extensive, and there are numerous sources that can back this up. Stephen McLaughlin's Russian and Soviet Battleships is probably the best English-language source on Russian capital ships of the big-gun era, and Jurgen Rohwer's Stalin's Ocean-Going Fleet is an excellent look at Soviet naval policy during his reign.