(EN) Episode 59 - Battleships of the L20e Alpha class

Germany's defeat in the First World War was already sealed by
late summer 1918. But while the home front collapsed and the navy
mutinied in Wilhelmshaven, Kaiser Wilhelm II, in an almost
surreal gesture, still approved a gigantic construction order on
September 11th, 1918: the battleships of the L20e Alpha class.


This was not a simple successor to the Bayern class. The L20e
Alpha design was a quantum leap and a technological statement:
48,700 tons of displacement, which almost matched the dimensions
of the later Bismarck class, and a planned main armament of eight
42-centimeter guns, the largest caliber ever planned for a German
battleship.


The L20e Alpha class would have represented the pinnacle of
battleship development for the German Empire. But was this ship,
designed shortly before the collapse of the Reich, merely a
desperate pipe dream? Or was it a realistic design that offers us
a glimpse into what the German Navy might have looked like in the
1920s?


Cover-Design: History lost in time & Google Gemini