Constructors could sketch a longer Queen Elizabeth with ten 15-inch guns, Yarrow boilers, and 28-knot speed. Such sketches were cheap because they could omit the institutional and material constraints that turn an attractive concept into an approved ship. Interwar constructors in the Third Sea Lord's office drew similar ideal aircraft carriers without the compromises required for an approved design. An archival dream design proves technical imagination, but it does not show that the navy regarded the design as an affordable or strategically sensible program.
Notable Point · 55:13-56:24
Ideal sketches were not procurement designs
The existence of a ten-gun, 28-knot sketch does not show that the Royal Navy could adopt it without the compromises required by budgets, industry, and fleet policy.