World of Warships Supertest: Spanish Tier X Freemium Destroyer Álvaro de Bazán

Historical background

Álvaro de Bazán is a fictional design created by Wargaming.

In September 1939, El programa de la Marina imperial (a Spanish shipbuilding program) was approved by Franco. This program should have brought back Spain to a status of great naval power. For this purpose, Spain planned to work on new ships and armaments by using Italian prototypes as a benchmark.

As such, they went with the theory that Spain ordered to Italy a slightly modified version of a Capitani Romani light cruiser to act as a destroyer leader. During the development, German AA guns from the 1940s were installed and parts of the ship’s silhouette were altered, namely the superstructure’s layout, the smokestacks as well as the masts. This was done based on the Spanish light cruiser Mendez Nenez and the Italian light cruiser Pompeo Magno.

In-game, the ship is a weird, budget version of the Attilio Regolo with far more fragile turrets and worse firepower. It’s supposed to have “high-powered” AP shells but as I write this article, it absolutely does not. In fact, her AP performances are very similar to those of the Gearing when it comes to penetration or ballistics.

She does have an alternative fire mode though with characteristics that are as follows:

• Reload time: 40.0 s
• The interval between salvo: 2.0 s
• Number of bursts in a series: 3

Ship’s preview

Ship’s commemorative flag

Ship’s camouflage

For the classic reminder, this is a ship in testing, anything can change so don’t look at her like she would already be released.

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery	Torpedoes
‎Álvaro de Bazán	Propulsion: 110 000 HP	‎‎SCI Mk X Mod. 1	135 mm/45 Model 1938 on a Model 1938 mount	‎533 mm Si 270 it

General Characteristics

Main Armament

4 x 2 135 mm/45 Model 1938 on a Model 1938 mount
Maximum Firing Range	11.620 km
Reloading Time	10.0 s
180 Degree Turn Time	18.0 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	30°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	30°
Sigma	2.00 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	102 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 135 mm granada rompedora HE 1938 it
Alpha Damage	1 950
Penetration capacity	23 mm
Explosion size	0.48
Fire chance	9 %
Projectile Speed	825 m/s
Air Drag	0.29
Projectile Mass	32.7 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 135 mm obús perforante AP 1938 it
Alpha Damage	2 500
Projectile Speed	825 m/s
Air Drag	0.416
Projectile Mass	32.7 kg
Projectile Krupp	2 200
Projectile Detonator	0.01 s
Detonator threshold	23 mm
Ricochet Angles	45° – 60°

Torpedo Armament

Anti-air Armament

Consumables

Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3
Damage Control Party Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 40 s	Smoke Generator Number of charges: 3 Work time: 20 s Cooldown: 160 s Smoke radius: 450 m Smoke duration: 97 s	Engine Boost Number of charges: 3 Work time: 120 s Cooldown: 120 s Speed bonus: +8%

The Armor

Personal Opinion

Welp… With Álvaro, it feels like we will get the Spain experience… except that the S is silent.

With the terrible base reload, she is going to get completely outtraded by enemy destroyers and she can’t rely on the alternative firing mode since you end up naked for 40 seconds after 3 salvos while you would normally be able to shoot 5 salvos in the same time duration. Unless it’s to quickly finish off a target, don’t use the alt firing mode.

For the HE, it’s the same as Attilio but with almost twice the reload time, the AP is mediocre and other than that, the ship just has nothing that would make it interesting or good.

So yeah, painful testing in perspective.

Thank you for reading this article!

Don’t hesitate to subscribe to our notifications to make sure that you don’t miss any future articles.
Have a good one and see you soon!

Also if you are new to the game or want to get back to it, feel free to use my Recruiting Station code for free goodies such as Premium ships, premium time, and more: https://warships.net/yuzorah

Have a good one and see you soon!

About Author

Yuzorah

See author's posts