Shipbucket

I am impressed, I will admit though that when I read the novel I imagined a Battle ship with a single funnel, like the Scharnhorst herself. The Germans made the Admiral Hipper Class cruisers look like the Bismark class battleships to confuse the enemy and whenever an author describes a fictional battleship, I keep that in mind when trying to imagine it.

In the book the battleship is named Attila...

Phillip McCutchan never had much of an imagination, his work was more on quantity than quality. His hero was always taking on monstrous odds and winning. They are like the Commando Comics of old.

A German BB with 9x16" could never work with a single funnel, the funnel would be huge and would make a horrible engine layout.

I've never read him for the stories, but rather to see just what he comes up with for the bad guys...

You might want to have a look at Hoods 'List of ships in fiction' there are quite a few oddities, some from good authors (Douglas Reeman, Minden, a 'mini-Scharnhorst') and others from awful ones (John Watson, Hindenburg, a modified Bismark...)