Tiger is chosen over the personally favoured Renown because she offers a clearer historical example of the battlecruiser as built and operated before the Second World War. Keeping her through the 1930s might have eased Royal Navy refits and perhaps led to a modernised wartime role, though both possibilities are counterfactual. Her late survival after sale for breaking also shows that scrapping was a drawn-out process rather than an immediate disappearance. A large battlecruiser in a British harbour would preserve a naval type now entirely absent from the museum fleet.
Notable Point · 40:55-45:21
HMS Tiger and the missing battlecruiser type
No battlecruiser survives today, and HMS Tiger is the representative whose loss leaves the clearest gap in the museum fleet.