Nelson and Rodney as the wrong ships for a mobile fleet

Where does naval history show the danger of not asking what a ship is meant to do?

Nelson and Rodney are strong examples: formidable ships whose speed and battle-line concept did not fit emerging mobile task-force needs.

Nelson and Rodney were powerful ships, but British thinking after the First World War already anticipated highly mobile task forces. Their battle-line concept is criticized as a political preference that did not match those expected operations. An F3-derived alternative with greater speed is proposed as a better fit. The desired speed was at least 28 knots, although the roughly 1,200 tons left below the treaty limit would buy only limited improvements on its own. The criticism concerns whether the design suited its intended operations, even though the ships proved useful.