Britain could not concentrate solely on Japan because the Royal Navy also had to cover Germany, Italy, the Mediterranean, India, and Australia. One counterfactual moves from twelve-gun Lion batches to later ships carrying four quadruple 16-inch turrets after Yamato became known. One such ship in the Home Fleet and another in the Mediterranean could overmatch anything Germany or Italy was likely to complete quickly while the remainder went east. The argument rests on industrial timelines: Germany needed years of infrastructure investment, and Italy planned to finish the Littorios rather than build an endless succession of larger ships.
Notable Point · 1:23:33-1:26:46
Lion batches for a globally divided fleet
A British counterfactual uses successive Lion batches to show how global commitments and rival shipbuilding capacity could shape capital-ship distribution.