Three triple 9.2-inch turrets would give the hull enough guns for ranging and sustained cruiser combat. The resulting ship would be a sensible large heavy cruiser rather than a conventional battlecruiser. Courageous was about 10,000 tons lighter than Tiger and falls outside the normal growth of Royal Navy battlecruiser design. Changing the battery makes the cruiser identity clearer, but it also creates a different ship from Fisher's specialized Baltic design.
Notable Point · 3:51:48-3:53:13
Nine 9.2-inch guns turn Courageous into a heavy cruiser
A design tangent shows that replacing Courageous's sparse capital-ship battery with three triple 9.2-inch turrets creates a coherent heavy-cruiser concept.