Just a few questions, what was the all up weight of AGS it surely must have been far more than 10,000 tons?
The weight of AGS was 12370ts standard.
Regarding AGS breaking off the fight, many years ago I heard a theory put forward that as she was a ship that had a reletivly light new all welded design for her hull and that by firing her pwerful 11" guns at different targets on either side had somehow twisted the hull and opened some of the welds - could there be any credence given to such a theory or is it just rubbish?
From all documents I have read, that is complete rubbish.
Up fom the Panzerschiff Deutschland, the hull was welded instead of revited. AGS was built from standard St52 steel and mostly wotan hard and wotan soft, which were developed for welding. If this theory would be correct, all german ships from the Deutschlandc lass (Hipper Class, SH Class, BS Class), would be suffer from this problem, because they were all welded with the same steel. The only part which was revited was the main belt of SH/GN and BS/TP, because KC/nA couldn't be welded, but the cruisers and Panzerschiffe had an inclined main belt from woton hard, so the main belt could be welded.