Q&A ยท 1:55:14-1:56:50

Lord Nelson turbines and a different Dreadnought

A machinery change for the Lord Nelson class becomes a design-history counterfactual about what HMS Dreadnought would need to do differently.

Question

How useful would Lord Nelson-class battleships have been with turbine machinery?

Short answer

Earlier turbine adoption could make superfiring turrets or another design change the next major step in Dreadnought's development.

Notes

Turbines in the Lord Nelson class would remove one of the major innovations later associated with Dreadnought. The counterfactual therefore asks what other change the next battleship might introduce. Larger guns are mentioned, but a superfiring arrangement receives more attention because British designers already had proposals using it. One possibility combines superfiring positions with retained wing turrets to produce a six-turret ship. Another keeps five turrets in an arrangement compared with the Orion class and produces a longer, narrower hull. The greater length-to-beam ratio might allow 22 or even 23 knots with the same power, rather than Dreadnought's 21 knots.