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The Royal Navy Committee on Designs was responsible for HMS Dreadnought. They made a lot of good decisions around this time but they made two bad decisions in my opinion.

1. On the layout of armaments. The committee chose to go for 3 turrets on the centre line and 2 wing turrets for an 8 gun broadside. The committee rejected supervising turrets on the basis that they didn't think it work and that the most likely result would be to damage the hull with every broadside. They could have made the ship a couple of meters shorter and a meter or two less wide saving costs of guns and armour. Saving weight too allowing them to cut the horsepower slightly or increase the max speed to 22 knots. Keeping the ship a 21 knot design would have saved about £175,000, increasing the speed to 22 knots with supervising turrets would have saved about £150,000. Either arrangement would have been cheaper than HMS Lord Nelson and HMS Aggemenon.

2. Upon completion of the design of HMS Dreadnought they discussed cancelling the yet to be laid down HMS Lord Nelson and HMS Aggemenon and recording the ships as sisters of HMS Dreadnough. They chose not to on the basis that it would have involved explaining to parliament and asking parliament to vote on the cancellation.

In my opinion these are two mistakes. Going for super firing turrets would have been cheaper and been a saving for the next few classes of ships too. The Orion class was the first that had super firing guns historically.

This may result in Britain having 6 dreadnought battleships in commission before the Germans commission their first which could be considered an unassailable lead in a naval arms race. What do you think would the psychological effect of this be on the Imperial german Navy. Could it effect French thinking and their Danton class?
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