Other navies refined established design lineages even when their ships retained weaknesses. Treaty restrictions and interwar economic damage already constrained German naval construction, making continuity especially valuable. Changing mission requirements instead encouraged German designers to start again and absorb fresh development costs. That habit helps explain why the Admiral Hipper class could display considerable engineering effort without becoming an efficient cruiser. Repeated reinvention cost a resource-constrained navy both standardization and accumulated design experience.
Notable Point · 6:22-7:46
The cost of reinventing each German warship design
Germany's habit of treating each new mission as a reason for a fresh design forced a resource-constrained navy to solve the same development problems repeatedly.