The Orion-class programme offers the strongest peacetime alternative to a wartime shock. Jellicoe, serving as Third Sea Lord, could have tried to add improved testing for the new thirteen-and-a-half-inch gun and shell alongside the major effort already going into long-range fire control. The comparison also exposes different commercial incentives: Pollen's new system attracted outside backing, while established ammunition firms would have to admit that products already sold under the old tests were inadequate. A credible trial therefore had to reproduce service conditions and demonstrate a systematic defect, giving Vickers or Armstrong Whitworth no room to dismiss the result as one failed batch.
Notable Point · 36:26-39:08
The Orion programme offered a peacetime route to better tests
Jellicoe might have attached realistic shell trials to the Orion class and its fire-control work, but ammunition makers had far more invested in the existing standard than new-system suppliers did.