The Treasury wanted four ships and the Navy wanted six, yet political pressure pushed the program toward eight before wartime cancellations reduced it. Eight hulls would have produced a complete battle squadron rather than a partial formation assembled from mismatched classes. That scale mattered because the new 15-inch-gun ships could replace older 12-inch-gun dreadnoughts while fitting the Royal Navy's expected 10- to 15-year capital-ship cycle. Fisher's wartime cancellation of three Revenges and the sixth Queen Elizabeth to obtain two battlecruisers shows how sharply his priorities diverged from this solid line-of-battle program.
Notable Point · 2:39-5:55
Eight ships for a complete battle squadron
The R-class order emerged from a political compromise and would have furnished one complete eight-ship battle squadron.