The lower-deck 6-inch guns had long been a known flaw because sea conditions made them hard to operate. The speed of the wartime modification suggests that the Navy understood the problem before Coronel provided a convenient justification. The flaw was inherited from William White's design practice and then corrected in later Philip Watts ships. A cautious counterfactual revisits the reported twin-9.2-inch alternative, suggesting that a slightly broader hull and higher deck might have made the 6-inch relocation easier. Operational experience had turned a theoretically useful battery into a liability and prompted a redesign during the war.
Notable Point · 31:42-34:14
The low casemate-gun weakness
The class’s low deck casemate guns were difficult to use outside calm seas, prompting an early wartime rearrangement that exposed a practical design weakness.