Marshall class monitors reborn ww2 new builds

[tigercat]

Now the limit on Monitors tended to be the armament and where to obtain it now by WW2 I don't know how many 13.5 inch turrets were still around and the 15 inch ones were all tied up. However there were several French Dreadnoughts who could have sacrificed their turrets 10 from the 2 Courbet Class in Plymouth and 5 from Lorraine in Alexandria.

So there was a posssibility if they could find a the building slips and the need for them to build 10 - 15 new monitors of the New Marshall class



Courbet sailed for Portsmouth on 20 June. She was seized there, as part of Operation Catapult, by British forces on 3 July and a week later was turned over to the Free French, who used her as a depot and an anti-aircraft ship in Portsmouth until 31 March 1941 when she was disarmed

In the wake of the Armistice, Paris was docked at Plymouth, England. On 3 July 1940, as part of Operation Catapult, British forces forcibly boarded her and she was used by the British as a depot ship and as a barracks ship by the Polish Navy for the rest of the war. On 21 August 1945, after the war had ended, Paris was towed to Brest where she continued in her role as a depot ship.[11] She was sold for scrap on 21 December 1955 and broken up at La Seyne from June 1956


Lorraine was disarmed by the British in Alexandria and recommissioned in 1942 to serve with the Free French Naval Forces. She provided gunfire support during Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, and shelled German fortresses in northern France

[rickshaw]

The limit on building monitors wasn't the availability of guns or even mountings (although those contributed).  The real limit was the availability of gun tubes ("barrels" for the uninitiated, although the actual "barrel" on a naval gun is the entire assembly of an inner, rifled tube and an outer smooth tube to protect and support it.).  When a gun is in service, many, many gun tubes are produced for the weapon because they have a (relatively) high rate of wear.  Erosion to the tube occurs because of the stresses of ramming a big shell's driving bands into the rifling, every time the gun fires, wears the rifling and lands out.   When a gun goes out of service, they stop producing the tubes.  Unless you reinstitute or maintain production of the tubes, they are therefore a limited resource.   The guns chosen for monitors in RL still had a significant stock of tubes or were still in production when they were chosen.   The British could produce tubes for French calibres but they'd tend to be oddballs and significantly more expensive than using British guns.

[tigercat]

Ahh well we can but speculate

presumably even if the British had some spare 12 inch barrels from the Lord Clive class  for example they wouldn't have fitted a French Mounting

How about if they built 2 or 3 ships and cannibalised the other turrets from Paris and Courbet   that would give you 6 guns  with 14 spare barrels?

or one based on Lorraine 2 guns with 8 spare barrels.

Of course theres always the old demolisher of sense and logic political pressure. Now what if he'd been Amiral De Gaulle......

I have decided not to name them after Marshalls but instead French Prize names



Foudroyant
Tonnant
Sans Pareil
Guerriere
Dangereuse
Impetueux
Imperieux
Raisonable
Belleisle
Eclair


are possibilities

So for Monitors how about Eclair , Tonnant , Foudroyant and Sans Pareil

Imagine what matelots would make of HMS Eclair