The Florida and Wyoming classes continued the move toward turbines while American industrial capability expanded. The closing question asks what would have happened if North Dakota's machinery had failed badly enough to discredit the technology. Her real success provided practical justification for the Navy's transition, which was not inevitable. A failure might have kept triple- or quadruple-expansion machinery in American battleships as the Navy moved toward the standard-type era. A more elaborate expansion-engine proposal is mentioned, with its attribution explicitly left uncertain. Institutional confidence in turbines was therefore closely tied to North Dakota's service results.
Notable Point · 37:28-40:48
Could a failed North Dakota have delayed the turbine navy?
The closing counterfactual asks whether a bad North Dakota experience might have kept the US Navy with ever more elaborate expansion engines instead of moving into the turbine-powered standard battleship era.