Casemates, turrets, and usable firing arcs

Torpedoes and casemate guns survived as design inheritances from the pre-dreadnought era. A casemate can fire only through a limited arc, while a turret can traverse, elevate, and combine its fire with other mounts. Turrets also allow paired or triple mountings to concentrate more weapons against the same target. HMS Dreadnought carried twenty-seven single 3-inch guns and five 18-inch torpedo tubes, yet critics quickly worried that abandoning a fuller range of weapons had gone too far. Those concerns helped bring casemates and progressively heavier secondaries back into British battleships. Britain then took too long to mount those defensive weapons in turrets, sacrificing useful firing arcs and concentration at the point of danger.