Small-tube boilers and the faster ship not taken

The propulsion tradeoff could have improved Queen Elizabeth without sending the same public signal as larger guns. Small-tube boilers would not have alarmed the United States, whose Standard-type doctrine emphasized a unified battle line, armor, and firepower rather than matching British battlecruiser speed. Jellicoe had studied the technology but accepted that it was not yet ready, while the later oil-fuel decision arrived under leaders who did not combine his engineering confidence with Gordon Moore's willingness to challenge Churchill. A clean-sheet oil-fired design might have reached 28 knots, while changing the historical ships during design could still have produced a reliable 25 or 26 knots. That extra speed would have made the class a more effective fast wing at Jutland, but the Admiralty preferred the schedule certainty and established production base of large-tube boilers.