The arithmetic tests whether building below the 35,000-ton ceiling could stretch a 700,000-ton allowance from twenty ships to twenty-one. At about 33,300 tons per hull, it works only by leaving roughly 7,000 tons stranded, too little for another capital ship. Even reaching that figure would require cutting about 500 tons from a Nelson- or Rodney-sized design. Welding instead of riveting might save substantial weight, but whether it could deliver the whole reduction remains an open engineering question.
Notable Point · 50:53-51:48
Why smaller battleships do not automatically buy an extra hull
Reducing each ship to roughly 33,300 tons would permit a twenty-first hull on paper but leave only 7,000 tons unused, making the arithmetic less useful than the headline ship count suggests.