Nelson as the product of Britain's capital-ship research program

Nelson and Rodney's odd-looking silhouettes reflected deliberate design choices. Their arrangement emerged from what the episode describes as the world's largest, longest-running, and most comprehensive capital-ship research and development program then in existence. The class drew on British experience with First World War capital ships while answering the Washington Treaty's displacement limit. Its appearance becomes a clue to how the designers compressed that institutional knowledge into a treaty battleship. The same design logic later explains Ernest King's irritation when American yards examined the ships' water-based protection.