British battleship autoloader concepts from F2 to King George V

F2 and F3 studies, Nelson and Rodney, and later King George V thinking all reveal interest in reducing turret size, crew, and armored volume. Concern about whether a full autoloader would survive battle damage helped push Nelson and Rodney toward extensive mechanical assistance. One unpublished interpretation discussed here connects lighter British shells with the limits of machinery then under consideration. Smaller turrets and ships also mattered because the Royal Navy had to fit vessels into an established worldwide base and dockyard network. The repeated design studies still fall short of proven hardware: the records examined for this discussion have not revealed a full-scale British capital-gun autoloader prototype.