The arms-race cost of Queen Elizabeth Maximus

The Queen Elizabeth Maximus model is a technical maximum rather than a recommended design: five triple 16.5-inch turrets, 28 knots, heavier armor, and roughly 45,000 tons. Its estimated cost rises from about three million pounds for a historical Queen Elizabeth to between three and a half and four million pounds. Such a ship would overwhelm contemporary Bayern-class opponents, but its superiority could persuade Germany to abandon an unwinnable battleship contest for submarines and cruisers. The United States might answer with an 18-inch battleship or switch from a measured qualitative rivalry to a numbers race. Those reactions could raise later naval-treaty gun limits, force wider canals and dockyards, and reshape every successor from Hood to the N3. The counterfactual explains why the historical Queen Elizabeth was calibrated to win while leaving other navies a manageable response.