Tiger followed Lion and Queen Mary as another incremental enlargement rather than an obvious break with the existing battlecruiser line. No corresponding British archival record was found for the disputed report of a planned sister named Leopard. One possible explanation is that continued talk of battlecruisers obscured Admiralty work on fast battleships, much as gun projects were sometimes hidden behind deliberately vague labels. The steady growth from Lion through Queen Mary to Tiger produced ships similar enough to operate together while official power and speed figures concealed how much capability was changing under the surface.
Notable Point · 8:30-13:17
Tiger's building program and the Admiralty's fast-battleship bluff
The sole battlecruiser of the 1911-12 program may also have helped conceal the Royal Navy's developing interest in fast battleships.