How would the United States and Germany react if Queen Elizabeth and Revenge-class battleships carried twelve 15-inch guns?
Short answerThe United States could answer within its existing twelve-gun design tradition, while Germany would face even greater financial and political pressure in its naval race with Britain.
NotesAmerican Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee designs already carried ten or twelve 14-inch guns, so a twelve-gun British battery would not create an unbridgeable gap. It might encourage a twelve-gun 16-inch Colorado successor, but the Anglo-American relationship made this more a technology contest than an immediate threat. Germany faced the harder problem because the historical Queen Elizabeth class already drove capital-ship costs upward. An even heavier British design would sharpen the political fight between the Kaiserliche Marine and the Army over scarce resources, which was central to Britain's strategy in the naval race.