The King George V class is presented as the shape many people would draw if asked for an archetypal dreadnought. Its outline closely resembles the Orion class, although the later ships were larger. The familiar profile is a useful visual reference for early twentieth-century battleship design. It also shows how a class could become shorthand for a type even when the engineering changes from its predecessor were incremental.
Notable Point · 9:50-10:36
The archetypal dreadnought silhouette
Why the 1911 King George V class looks like the immediate visual shorthand for an early twentieth-century dreadnought battleship.