British construction capacity raises the possibility that the R class served as a conservative insurance design while more ambitious capital ships were contemplated. The projected HMS Agincourt appears here as a sixth Queen Elizabeth derivative armed with either more 15-inch guns or new 18-inch weapons. In that interpretation, the R class could replace early dreadnoughts quickly while larger super-dreadnought ideas pushed the battle fleet forward. Agincourt was never completed, so the relationship remains a counterfactual rather than a demonstrated Admiralty plan. Replacement ships and experimental capital-ship designs could still coexist in Britain's unusually large construction pipeline.
Notable Point · 19:59-22:58
Agincourt and the super-dreadnought path
A speculative R-class answer asks whether HMS Agincourt and later super-dreadnought ideas were meant to move beyond the cheaper wartime battleships.