Righto, I wanted to be working on Lexie!Quest, but let's get this headed off before a mod needs to hop in...
In order:
1. The Sherman is a perfectly satisfactory design. The Firefly, to use an example, is better at killing tanks. But the basic Sherman has a better HE round, which makes it more versatile. This is the classic catch-22 situation. You can have a dedicated tank killer, or a more multi-purpose vehicle. You know what the US chose? Both.
We have tank destroyers for hunting tanks. The Shermans can fight enemy tanks, but they're much more meant to be the jack-of-all-trades vehicles, while the TDs (Wolverine, Hellcat, so on) hunt tanks explicitly. You can upgun a Sherman, the various modifications show this. But it's an arguably practical option when getting more of them on the field quicker is a goal.
Leaving out that Thompson is a naval officer to begin with and any and all suggestions related to land combat are going to be suspect at best. Even if he did pull the future knowledge thing and not get tossed in the loony bin.
Furthermore, the Germans built something like 1300 Tigers. Take most of those and stick them on the Eastern Front, so you've probably got somewhere between 5-700 Tigers at best on the West. I'm not as familiar with the land side of things, so I can't say for sure. The point though, is that even if you lose three Shermans for each Tiger...
You only need a few thousand of them to win anyway, leaving out all the other tanks and TDs and guys with bazookas and artillery and airpower and...
The point should be obvious, yes?
Also, the Matilda was a perfectly functional infantry tank, but a breakthrough tank it is not. It worked for early war, but it would be bad to try and push that design.
2. Hood refits. I'm not going to say exactly what she's going to get, clearly. But it's not going to be a total and complete rebuild along the lines of the Kongous. Remember, the Brits sent Hood to FREEDOM LAND because they wanted her back in service as quickly as possible, but couldn't do it at home without using up valuable dock space...
...remember, Hood is about the length of a Yamato...
...that was needed for other ships. It was a question of repair Hood and fix her myriad of issues, while leaving Renown or Repulse unable to go in for maintenance. Or sending her to America, who is not in the war, to fix her up and leave the space clear for keeping ships fit for combat...well, fit for combat. The Royal Navy made the practical choice of keeping their active ships active, while letting the bloody Yanks fix up their flagship.
They're still, as Harrington and Patterson commented on, going to want her back in action as quickly as humanely possible though. They know they need Hood to counter Bismarck, even if they don't know the full capabilities of said battleship. It's safe to say they'd rather the KGVs do the job, but this is the WW2-era RN. They sent Hood out even in her historically bad shape to hunt Bismarck, even if they hoped she wouldn't run into the German. Because Hood is the only ship fast enough, with strong enough guns, to make a difference. Renown and Repulse don't have the armor to do it reliably.
As such, trying to do something as radical as upgunning Hood or completely stripping her down (LEWD.Haruna.jpeg) to rebuild her from the ground up isn't going to fly. Everyone involved knows that. Everyone involved also knows that the Admirals aren't going there to actually make suggestions on refitting her, of which only Richardson is really qualified to do. And his engineering experience (remember his time on Delaware that let him see Utah) is tilted to boilers, turbines and all that than anything else.
Hood will be refit, but it won't be as dramatic as some of these suggestions.
Finally, we don't know what actually sunk her. There are many theories, and all are pretty much impossible to prove because of the violence of her end. Was it the fire set by Pringles touching off her secondary mags, that then set off her nearby primaries? Was it a direct hit to her mags by Bisko? Was it unsafe powder in either secondary or primary mags? Was it her fuel going up (this one definitely happened, the state of her wreck confirms the explosion blew out her starboard fuel tanks)? All we know for sure is her aft magazines blew, that then blew her starboard side clean open.
So any argument of increasing her safety against Bisko is going to be hypothetical, at best.
3. Changing designs. There have been good points brought up before of monkeying around with the Essex design, and that is something that Thompson could suggest without being out of left field. But as I've said before, he can't do much more than suggest things. If I made him an engineer who could point at the Essex and say 'hey, angle the deck like this and do it this *insert engineering jargon here* way and you'll make a better ship!' then he'd be verging on Sue territory.
The man can make suggestions, but he can't do them himself. And the validity of his suggestions to anyone comes down on how much they are willing to listen. Tactics are one thing, engineering is an entirely different kettle of fish.
He could say that the ships need more anti-aircraft guns, and to fast-track Bofors production. This is reasonable.
He could say that the torpedo bulges that Sara and E historically got are needed, which would do a lot of good for Hornet and Yorktown.
He could even say that we need more escorts for the carriers, or more carriers in general.
But if Thompson starts going off on funky tangents and trying to push for things that don't make sense in the time period, he's going to run into trouble. One could say it would push people to look at the designs, and maybe it would. But it would also get our Admiral committed to a loony bin at worst, constantly looked at with suspicion and mistrust at best. Going out of your way to try and do a bunch of radical things and only being able to say 'umm...well...this may work...?' when pressed is not a good thing.
In other words, don't expect him to start sprouting random things that don't make sense with the '40s tech base. Even if theoretically, and I emphasize the theoretically, possible.
Now, this is WoG on the subject.\
EDIT: Also, Hood is already the next best thing to a fast battleship. No amount of work is going to change that, fundamentally.
), but I'm reminded of the Malay saying: "for he that eateth of the chilli shalt taste the heat upon his tongue."