#2Historians Special: @Drachinifel comes to chat Dreadnoughts that Almost were P1 of ?

Mikasa and other preserved British-built warships in Estonia, Thailand, and Canada show how much British naval heritage survives overseas.

Drachinifel selects two: the Dreadnought arrangement he calls Dread Lantern and the more practical triple-turret St Vincent alternative, which he thinks should have been built.

A proposed Dreadnought with three stacked twin turrets at each end promised twelve guns on the broadside, at the cost of severe stability problems.

South Carolina's eight-gun broadside matched the first dreadnoughts, but a more heavily armed HMS Dreadnought could have left the American class outside the category.

Five triple turrets could have given a hypothetical Dreadnought fifteen guns, while a longer centreline layout offered a possible speed advantage.

A serious St Vincent alternative offered a nine-gun centreline broadside, saving weight and improving firing arcs compared with an echelon arrangement.

A larger early dreadnought programme could have increased Britain's margin over Germany and made experimental St Vincent designs easier to accept.

Advanced designs competed with Treasury limits, the ability to support ships in service, and Japan's access to foreign currency.

Brazil's pursuit of an exceptionally powerful successor to Minas Geraes could have mattered in a regional race where fleets contained only a few capital ships.

The Royal Navy repeatedly considered fast battleships for imperial deployment but usually selected a ten-gun, 21-knot compromise.

An eight-gun Queen Elizabeth could combine speed with an affordable class size and still throw a heavier broadside than ten 13.5-inch guns.

Private British firms financed heavy-gun development for export customers, giving them alternatives beyond the weapons commissioned by the Royal Navy.

Goodall's unrealized prewar ambitions and Fisher's Incomparable show how private heavy-gun development offered possibilities beyond the Royal Navy's approved ships.

The breadth of Britain's prewar armament companies let customers buy infrastructure, machinery, weapons, and complete warships from the same industrial networks.

Agincourt's missing design papers leave its technical difficulties unexplained, while surviving correspondence proves that other Queen Elizabeth alternatives also existed.

Transferred boilers, a six-gun study and heavy-gun development support one reconstruction of Agincourt as a 28-knot fast battleship with three twin 18-inch turrets.

Drachinifel favours that reconstruction because it fits 15-inch standardisation and saves internal space, while Clarke favours larger guns in familiar twin turrets. Missing design papers prevent either proposal from being proved.

Alongside the Anglo-German contest in ship numbers, Britain, America, Japan, and Italy competed for prestige through guns, boilers, turbines, and design performance.

Italy's fast Francesco Caracciolo class appeared unusually advanced because World War I froze many rival design cycles around slower ships.

Before the fast-battleship era, American designers prioritized protection and firepower because a defensive fleet expected its opponent to come to it.

A widely drawn lesson from Tsushima favoured a cohesive line coordinating long-range fire, helping explain the preference for common battle speeds.

Treaty-era limits reduced fleets from long battle lines to small groups where a few fast ships could maneuver around an enemy formation and change the outcome.

Small navies could change doctrine with one fast class, while the Royal Navy could sustain specialist fast units because its main battle fleet remained enormous.

Britain could absorb three battlecruiser losses at Jutland while retaining a powerful battle line, whereas comparable losses would have crippled Germany's smaller scouting force.

Ships in dock or still working up gave Britain replacements after Jutland that the smaller German fleet could not immediately match.

Seydlitz returned from Jutland only because her crew stripped away weight and kept the badly damaged battlecruiser afloat until she reached harbor.

The prewar American battle line lacked enough modern cruisers and destroyers to scout, maintain communications, and protect it in a realistic fleet action.

The United States had to import an armour-plate press and British instructors before rapidly developing the industry that built its early twentieth-century battleships.

The High Seas Fleet possessed a screen, but cruiser shortages and smaller torpedo boats reveal the compromises required to preserve German battleship numbers.

The preference for large American warships left their supporting screen neglected in this assessment of Mahan's naval influence.

The Omaha cruisers and mass-produced destroyers show the limits of building battleships first and assuming a modern screen can follow once war approaches.

Flower and Hunt orders allowed several years to prepare for war, while the specialised sloop Starling illustrates how escort construction continued after hostilities began.

Treaty-exempt sloops offered Britain a cheap path to a large, trained anti-submarine reserve before World War II, but the opportunity was not used at scale.

Lexington's original 35-knot scouting requirement drove extreme machinery arrangements and difficult protection compromises.

The features that made Lexington a vulnerable 1920s battlecruiser could have made a rebuilt ship a fast, heavily armed escort for Pacific carriers.

The cancelled 1920 South Dakotas paired twelve 16-inch guns with traditional American battle-line priorities and might later have excelled at shore bombardment.

Japan's projected fast capital ships could not match British or American totals, so the fleet emphasized speed and concentrated firepower to support an attritional strategy.

No. Britain and the Dominions also had the infrastructure to produce heavily in a war against Japan, so changing opponents would not remove the industrial imbalance.

Drachinifel likes the overall design but considers its protection insufficient to fulfil both battleship and battlecruiser roles. It makes more sense as an improved battlecruiser serving beside a more heavily protected battleship.

Armour coverage, subdivision, firepower, and speed provide a more useful classification of fast capital ships than gun calibre or an official label alone.

The Kaiserliche Marine never commissioned an aircraft carrier, but it was building one when World War I ended.

Eight 18-inch guns, 30 knots and substantial protection on 47,500 tons made Number 13 the Japanese design singled out as a potential trigger for a British response.

Machinery and mounting weight savings gave late-1920s designers more room for armour and weapons without proportionately larger ships.

Hiraga's octagonal citadel illustrates the unconventional layouts explored to fit 16-inch guns and adequate protection within treaty displacement limits.