The prewar Greenboy shell counterfactual

A longer Jellicoe tenure probably would have produced an early counterpart to the Greenboy armor-piercing shell. The later programme implemented many of the testing and design steps Jellicoe had already urged, although a prewar shell would have benefited from less manufacturing experience. Even a version short of the mature Greenboy's performance could have changed the results of early clashes. At Dogger Bank and in other encounters with the German scouting force, more reliable penetration and detonation might have turned damage into ship losses. The counterfactual matters because cumulative German attrition before Jutland could have altered the forces available for the decisive fleet campaign.