How closely did anyone read the fluff?
Rather closely.
In 1919-21 the German Navy via the Versailles Treaty had to reduce its complement not only of ships but also of men. That's all types of staff from the top down. What happened to all those unemployed people? If Argentina offered to transport you (and your family) to be employed and help set up the Argentine navy from a two ship wannabe to an integrated battlefleet, would you accept the offer rather than starve or die from the Spanish Flu? How its paid for in an AU is always easy. Some good commodity(s) is available to fill the coffers to obtain the ships.
Alpha; The migration of top brains did take place RTL, to the US, Sweden and Switzerland, where all those German Wunderwaffen were born. In the case of the US, that ended in the atomic bomb and the Ford buzz bomb. End of Argentina. That is RTL.
Beta: No steel industry.
Gamma: In a more recent example, the Soviet Union's navy sort of died at its piers. All those admirals drew pensions. The US then swooped in and made sure the Red Fleet stayed scrapped. Russia still has not recovered. Part of that process was a healthy dispersal of the rank and file into Russian private enterprise so they could not form soviets like the Tsar's navy and the German Kriegsmarine did post WW I in the RTL. Those guys did not emigrate. They stayed home and raised hell.
Ipsilon: No Cochrane, no Colbert, no MAHAN!
Yes JSB the opponent for Argentina will be the Commonwealth, but if the Commonwealth is at war with Germany when Argentina takes over the Las Malvinas/Falkands (say November 1939), where do these mythical Commonwealth battlefleets come from? The Commonwealth I use is my Fisherless version. The end result is some close battles with the Commonwealth prevailing. But it is actually Brazil that makes the difference by its land forces entering Argentina and forcing a surrender.
Zeta: No Sims and no FISHER!
Zeta sub nought: Paraguay is the reason Brazil did not a'conquering go. The Atacama is why Chile is the bad boy on the South American Pacific coasts. The War of the Pacific and the War of the Triple Alliance are must studies for anyone trying to AU South American history.
The Washington treaty does take place. The only ships that Argentina builds that abrogate the Treaty are their first two cruisers. Not enough to break the treaty. By the time the second pair of cruisers is built and join the fleet in 1935 the Japanese have already said they are withdrawing and the Treaties are dead anyway. The only class of ship that Argentina could have built that would have worried the Major powers was 45,000+ ton battleships, like the Japanese did. They would have had to build monster battleships 1930-35 to break the Treaty.
Why do you need a Washington Treaty if you don't have a three cornered naval arms race? Why do you think the three carrier using powers became the carrier using powers?
Carriers? When the first carrier is converted 1921-27, nobody knew much about carriers (including the Japanese), so whichever nation I choose to provide the ship with a conversion is going to learn about carriers. I could have had the Columbus towed/steamed across to the US who would probably have done the job (Argentina is a BB customer). For all anybody knew in the early 20's they were creating white elephants. Why did I want Germany in particular to have some early knowledge of carriers? So that Germany could build better carriers than what they did design in the late 30's.
1. By 1918 the USN knew what an aircraft carrier should look like. They'd known since 1911, (Eugene Ely experiments) but a few things got in the way like the Panic of 1911 and WW 1. Once Wilson was safely out of the way, Moffett and company, took a collier named the Jupiter and turned her into the Langley (1921). Meanwhile, after playing around with the Wakimaya and bombing the Germans at Tsingtsao from it, the Japanese laid down Hosho (1922). The British did them both better by laying down HMS Argus as an ocean liner and turning it into a functioning aircraft carrier during WW I (1918).
2. If you have never operated a seaplane component from ships, (and the Germans didn't, they used land bases in WW I) then you don't know enough about ship to plane handling to understand how cranky ships are, what aviation at sea means and why Glenn Curtiss is so important to all three carrier using navies of the era.
Now then guys and Tobius. Rather than making uninformed comments, how about you supposedly adult people ask some intelligent questions. I know that most of you prefer to tear things down rather than help people so why don't you try again with your comments/questions?
a. Where is the great Argentine naval aviation pioneer? Moffett for the US. In the case of Japan, it was William Forbes Sempill, an RN officer, Japanese spy and British TRAITOR, who if the Americans could have caught him before WW II, they would have killed.
The British of course had George Bertram Cockburn and the "gentlemen's flying club" et al. Refer to Sempill.
b. Where is the money to come? Carriers, unlike battleships, are evolving warships. They have to be as the planes they operate change faster than the hulls do. This makes ships like Lexington four times as expensive to operate as say a Colorado. And here Argentina has THREE of them, when the US was struggling to operate two.
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Addendum: While I have taken some liberties with Mister McKinley's Navy, especially with submarines [Plongeur is the start point] and dirigibles (Solomon Andrews; US aeronaut 1870s), I've tried to be mindful of such things as political movements, social trends, technology limits (no metal link belt fed machine guns for Spain or the US as an example.)
A South American confederation has to emerge from the first Paraguay War Triple Alliance to have any hope of equaling France, much less an extremely hostile United States.