The proposed sixth Queen Elizabeth, HMS Agincourt, raises the question of what Britain was preparing after the class. The 18-inch guns later fitted to Furious seem to have been cut down from weapons intended for a larger and more stable ship, while small-tube boilers appeared for Courageous and Glorious after Agincourt was cancelled. An alternative interpretation gives Agincourt triple 15-inch turrets, and neither case has decisive archival proof. A few radical ships might have formed the upper tier of the qualitative race while most of the fleet remained armed with 15-inch or 16-inch guns. Developing an 18-inch naval gun system without an intended ship is considered implausible, although the specific connection to Agincourt remains circumstantial.
Notable Point · 1:09:15-1:17:14
Agincourt and the 18-inch gun counterfactual
The closing counterfactual asks whether the sixth Queen Elizabeth might have pointed toward 18-inch guns and a different qualitative race.