Twentieth-century warship design missteps

Which twentieth-century navy built a warship that made you wonder what it was thinking?

Several did: German light cruisers, Britain's proliferating submarine designs, and America's over-specialized scouting concepts are highlighted.

The panel points to German light cruisers whose layouts and machinery produced questionable operational value. Britain is criticized for designing a submarine for nearly every occasion instead of standardizing. American fixation on a scouting-fleet concept likewise encouraged ships optimized around a narrow institutional idea. These examples show different paths to the same problem: specialization crowding out commonality and general-purpose usefulness.