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To: Snake65
The Royal Navy would have had something to say about it.

Excellent point. In any case, the "Great White Fleet" of American battleships would have put most of those German troop ships on the bottom of the Atlantic even if the Her Majesty's navy stood aside.

This episode was pretty well covered in the recent biography of TR, "Theodore Rex".

23 posted on 05/08/2002 7:29:19 AM PDT by katana
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To: katana
In any case, the "Great White Fleet" of American battleships would have put most of those German troop ships on the bottom of the Atlantic

No, the battleship forces were pretty well balanced; if anything, Germany would have had a slight edge; and many of the Great White Fleet ships had some design flaws, including a low "freeboard"...that is, the decks weren't high enough off the water. Serious problems if the fighting occured with high seas. Also, the fleet was not concentrated on the East Coast, but split between the Atlantic and Pacific. And no Panama Canal yet.

And I think the German's smaller quickfiring guns would have ended up being better than our slow-firing larger guns.

25 posted on 05/08/2002 7:35:32 AM PDT by John H K
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