The counterfactual needs a shock early enough to leave roughly eighteen months for design, testing, manufacture, and fleet issue before Jutland. Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank either supplied no German capital ship for inspection or failed to produce a decisive institutional lesson. A peacetime Orion-class test could also be compromised by manufacturers supplying unusually careful trial shells. The scenario therefore changes a British order in the pursuit of Goeben and Breslau so Indomitable and Indefatigable can damage Goeben without sinking her. A forced refuge in a neutral Greek or Italian port would leave a foreign hull whose damage could expose how little British shells had achieved.
Notable Point · 33:48-39:10
A Goeben encounter as the reform trigger
Because Heligoland Bight and Dogger Bank offered no usable German capital-ship evidence, an altered pursuit of Goeben and Breslau provides a plausible route to inspect battle damage.