On this, the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Coronel, I thought it the best time to bring up an old and oft-discussed question: What if HMS Canopus had been there?
On the one hand is the opinion of many of the old battleship's crew, that the 6" armor would have been almost useless, the four 12" guns had the range of the German 21cm, but could only fire 1 round per minute vs the Germans 3 rpm. So either
Scharnhorst or
Gneisenau alone could put out 24 rounds in a minute to
Canopus's 4. Of course the 12" round was going to do a lot more damage if one did hit. Also the German fire would be divided among three ships rather than two.
On the other side is the opinion of Spee himself, which was that "Against her we could hardly do anything. If they had kept their forces together we should, I suppose, have had the worst of it." But Spee had originally thought he was facing a newer battleship, armed with newer, faster-firing guns and carrying 12" armor. This leaves a third option, which is that if
Canopus had showed up Spee might have simply used his superior speed to run away.
Of course such speculation is always fruitless in the end, but for the wargamer it opens up endless possibilities.
