Q&A · 51:50-53:08

A Queen Elizabeth with twenty 11-inch guns

Five quadruple 11-inch turrets would turn the ship into a fast, exceptionally high-volume battleship whose broadside could unsettle every rival navy.

Question

How effective would a sixth Queen Elizabeth-class battleship armed with five quadruple 11-inch turrets be?

Short answer

Very effective: about 28 knots and twenty guns would create an unusually fast capital ship with a daunting volume of fire.

Notes

The counterfactual gives the sixth Queen Elizabeth-class ship twenty 11-inch guns. Combined with small-tube boilers and geared turbines, the design could reach nearly 28 knots while delivering an enormous volume of fire. It sacrifices individual shell weight but gains so many barrels that other navies would regard it as a formidable machine-gun battleship. Gun count, machinery, and rate of fire create a different kind of capital-ship overmatch.