The Admiral-class comparison moves from HMS Benbow's 16.25-inch guns to the 18-inch weapons mounted on HMS Furious. Furious was too lightly structured for those guns, which is cited as evidence that they were intended for a more powerful platform. That observation supports a hypothesis about the cancelled sixth Queen Elizabeth-class battleship, though the identification remains tentative. Calibre, recoil, hull strength, and construction capacity appear here as parts of a single design problem.
Notable Point · 9:50-12:08
Extreme gun calibres demanded stronger hulls
A comparison with 16.25-inch and 18-inch weapons shows why mounting an exceptionally large gun was also a structural design problem.