Rodney and Nelson repeatedly entered dockyard hands for steering or engine problems, and those visits often included bottom cleaning. A clean hull reduced drag, preserved speed, and improved fuel economy for battleships already short of operational knots. One possible explanation is that a conventional repair story also gave journalists and British-controlled intelligence channels a plausible account of a ship's movements. The damage reports need not have been fabricated, and no smoking-gun document proves that the maintenance pattern was deliberate. The pattern remains an inference despite the supporting naval-engineering context.
Notable Point · 1:07:43-1:10:28
Hull cleaning, speed, and the limits of inference
Frequent dockings could keep Nelson-class hulls efficient, but the proposed link between stated defects and speed-driven maintenance remains circumstantial.