Jellicoe's early Queen Elizabeth ideas included small-tube boilers and greater speed. His possible interest in 16.5-inch guns remains tentative in this account. The 15-inch/42 design is treated as the conservative choice beside other 15-inch and 16.5-inch developments. The Board also hesitated to accept machinery that had not been tried in large cruisers. Testing an innovation in a cheaper cruiser before committing it to a battleship reduced the scale of the initial risk.
Notable Point · 1:13:40-1:15:28
Queen Elizabeth boiler and gun choices under technical uncertainty
Small-tube boilers and alternative heavy guns offered greater ambition than the more conservative machinery and armament choices.