Britain's freedom to design the Type 45 hull and machinery offered an opportunity to install more generating capacity than the immediate requirement demanded. Proposals for three gas turbines and six diesel generators would have preserved more power while individual machines were maintained or underperformed. The adopted arrangement left less redundancy when turbine and diesel-generation problems appeared. A larger initial margin would still have been an inelegant workaround, but it might have avoided the later Power Improvement Project and reduced availability losses. Extra machinery would have kept two gas turbines available while one underwent maintenance.
Notable Point · 1:43:35-1:44:15
The Type 45 power margin that could have prevented a later refit
The Type 45 example shows why a new warship should carry generating margin and machinery redundancy beyond the minimum predicted requirement.