Best British battlefleet for ww1

At the risk of being a crashing bore, I note that Great Britain did win World War One, and the Royal Navy did win strategic victory at sea, with the ships it had. If I was going to improve the World War One Royal Navy Battle fleet, and I include the Battlecruisers and Cruisers in Home Waters, I would keep the same ships and do the following:

Improve signalling and use of wireless so that the Dogger Bank signalling fiasco does not happen again, or even the first time.

Give the battlecruisers based at Rosyth a range to practice shooting, so they can shoot properly and do not feel the need to boost their rate of fire by reckless ammunition handling.

Replace Cordite with something more like the propellant the Americans or Germans used, so that when a magazine is hit a turret is blown off, the whole ship does not burst at the seams.

Spend extra attention making sure watertight bulkhead penetrations for pipes etc, are properly sealed.

Spend more R&D on British Armour Piercing shells for Capital ships, so they are more killy.

Strongly enforce the existing rules regarding the shelf life of propellants, so that stale dated propellants are not sitting in magazines waiting to explode.

This is very much the result of hindsight, but get rid of all the old Armoured Cruisers in Home Waters, perhaps even the new armoured cruisers as well. Spread them around the globe to counter commerce raiding cruisers and armed liners, or enforcing the distant blockade of Germany. Instead of putting Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue on submarine patrol in the Chanel, put them 1000 miles away from the nearest submarines in India or China or Africa or South America.

With the above changes, Queen Mary likely does not explode at Jutland, Vanguard and Natal do not spontaneously explode, and Audacious does not sink from a single mine hit. Dogger Bank and the Battlecruiser action at Jutland are more deadly, so more German Battle cruisers are actually sunk rather than almost sunk. The blockade and commerce protection (the actual purpose of the Royal Navy) are more effective, and a few thousand fewer British sailers die.
 
Campania is sent to Beardmore's for conversion into a seaplane carrier instead of where she was originally sent due to Beardmore's earlier 1912 carrier proposal. She emerges in 1915 a little different to how the Admiralty expected.

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HMS Campania in 1916, after practical experience leads to a few modifications.

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Have Vickers build Kongos for OZ and NZ in 13.5"
Better armor, Guns, and not that much more money, and Vickers is all set to build more
Australia and New Zealand never serve in the Pacific because there is no where to dock them. Australian people complain/ask about the lack of the Fleet Unit they paid for.

In other news the QEs had a good WW2 because 3 got decent refits. If you build 9 QEs 3 will get decent refits and 6 will have a R level war. Possibly one sunk in Scapa. Probably the biggest butterfly will be a 30,000 ton hole in the UJ budget for WNT. Probably fewer ships for everyone else. God forbid someone tried to save Tiger.
 
For the Queen Elizabeths, what if instead of deciding that a 25kn top speed was good enough, the Royal Navy decided to try making their battleships faster, but also hedging their bets by building a battlecruiser as well? Thus, build 3x Queen Elizabeths, (QE, Warspite, Valiant), plus a fourth funded by Malaya (Malaya) and instead of Barham, a scaled up Tiger (Leopard) armed with 8 x 15" and a 30 kn top speed. She'd without a doubt be a big girl, something like 31 000 t standard, and around 800' long, but using all oil firing, she'd still be able to make her speed on direct-drive turbines with steam supplied by large-tube boilers.

ETA: And, instead of the Revenges, a repeat of the above, another 3x Queen Elizabeths and 1x Leopard.
Design Y for Leopard?
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So basically we're doing this with a degree of hindsight and with a POD of the ordering of HMS Dreadnought, and assuming that whatever changes won't really affect the beginnings of WWI... Well then.

-treat HMS Dreadnought as the huge experimental ship that she is, and not fucking rush building clones of her.
-actually spend some time digesting the lessons learned from her, also see previous point.
-realizing that the pandora's box as far as capital ship sizes (both hull & gun) are concerned, this requires a degree of hindsight, but honestly, what else do you expect from such a oneupmanship?.

The trick now is to preemptive the huge size increase, in a sense future-proof battleships.
-order development of both the 13.5in gun as well as 15in gun
-go for a series of standardized designs (much like what the USN will do within a decade)
-wait a few years for the research to bear fruit (see below for what should be built in those years)
-once resume building battleships, build the earlier classes with 4 triple 13.5in gun turrets...
-... with later classes having 4 twin 15in gun turrets, the triple 13.5in and twin 15in turrets being of the same diameter and similar weight, this means that earlier ships could be upgunned when there's enough guns and turrets available.
-stress deck armor, even only assuming the lessons of the Russo-Japan war.
-director firing and all that jazz
-only building battlecruisers with 12in guns, if nothing else to remind their captains that they are not fit for the damn battleline

While the whole few gap years in capital ship construction was going on...
-build more light cruisers and destroyer leaders
-build larger destroyers
-research more into anti submarine warfare
-fire sale older armored cruisers, they're just too manpower heavy to be useful enough
 
So basically we're doing this with a degree of hindsight and with a POD of the ordering of HMS Dreadnought, and assuming that whatever changes won't really affect the beginnings of WWI... Well then.

-treat HMS Dreadnought as the huge experimental ship that she is, and not fucking rush building clones of her.
-actually spend some time digesting the lessons learned from her, also see previous point.
-realizing that the pandora's box as far as capital ship sizes (both hull & gun) are concerned, this requires a degree of hindsight, but honestly, what else do you expect from such a oneupmanship?.

The trick now is to preemptive the huge size increase, in a sense future-proof battleships.
-order development of both the 13.5in gun as well as 15in gun
-go for a series of standardized designs (much like what the USN will do within a decade)
-wait a few years for the research to bear fruit (see below for what should be built in those years)
-once resume building battleships, build the earlier classes with 4 triple 13.5in gun turrets...
-... with later classes having 4 twin 15in gun turrets, the triple 13.5in and twin 15in turrets being of the same diameter and similar weight, this means that earlier ships could be upgunned when there's enough guns and turrets available.
-stress deck armor, even only assuming the lessons of the Russo-Japan war.
-director firing and all that jazz
-only building battlecruisers with 12in guns, if nothing else to remind their captains that they are not fit for the damn battleline

While the whole few gap years in capital ship construction was going on...
-build more light cruisers and destroyer leaders
-build larger destroyers
-research more into anti submarine warfare
-fire sale older armored cruisers, they're just too manpower heavy to be useful enough
Let Germany out build you...

I am not sure there is a way out of that trap. Dreadnaught reset the game and the RN had to build numbers.

The RN had been doing serial builds for literal decades if not centuries. The RN had been through the "standards" in the 18th Century and instead settled on a batch of 5 or so. Follow up with a cheaper inadequate batch. Then a new improved batch with lessons learnt and costs brought down by technological progress.
The USN standards were not a good thing and the WNT pulled them out of the fire.
 

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Banned
Let Germany out build you...

I am not sure there is a way out of that trap. Dreadnaught reset the game and the RN had to build numbers.

The RN had been doing serial builds for literal decades if not centuries. The RN had been through the "standards" in the 18th Century and instead settled on a batch of 5 or so. Follow up with a cheaper inadequate batch. Then a new improved batch with lessons learnt and costs brought down by technological progress.
The USN standards were not a good thing and the WNT pulled them out of the fire.
The problem with the Standards weren't that they were bad ships. They were, quite frankly, excellent battleships for the time they were built. Their problem was that they would suffer from block obsolescence as they aged. They were just too similar.
 
The problem with the Standards weren't that they were bad ships. They were, quite frankly, excellent battleships for the time they were built. Their problem was that they would suffer from block obsolescence as they aged. They were just too similar.
Well that and they put the main guns way to close together in the turrets slowing down their rate of fire and massively reducing accuracy.
 
Let Germany out build you...
It's not gonna happen...
I am not sure there is a way out of that trap. Dreadnaught reset the game and the RN had to build numbers.
The Dreadnought escalated the race to the extent where it became a milder version of the clusterfuck akin to the 1880s, where without hindsight you could no longer assume that each class wouldn't be utterly outclassed within a half decade or so. (you could probably pit a Majestic class against a King Edward VII class and it wouldn't be too bad a match, now try that with HMS Dreadnought vs one of the QE class). My plan will leave the RN with a battleline that's superior in quality, and while the number of hulls might be lower than OTL, the weight of broadside would not be, and with a bonus that said broadside would be more homogeneous. The most important thing will be that the post war fleet will have more ships that still have potential for upgrades/rebuilds, rather than hopelessly obsolete.
The RN had been doing serial builds for literal decades if not centuries. The RN had been through the "standards" in the 18th Century and instead settled on a batch of 5 or so. Follow up with a cheaper inadequate batch. Then a new improved batch with lessons learnt and costs brought down by technological progress.
The USN standards were not a good thing and the WNT pulled them out of the fire.
The USN standards were pretty good all things considered, as it give the US a homogeneous battleline without having higher performance ships having their higher performance wasted. The WNT was a better deal for the UK than the USA, mostly because by that point only the US has the financial resources to keep on pouring into military spending (and while congress was always loath to spend money... unless events forced their hand).
 
It's not gonna happen...
It will if you stop building Battleships for two or three years while you analyse Dreadnought's strengths and weaknesses and Germany goes all out. Sure Britain will catch up in another couple of years, but those are years Britain is unacceptably vulnerable at sea. The Sentiment of the public was "We want eight and we won't wait". If the navy opted out of the Dreadnought race for a time the outcry would be enormous and could topple the Government.
 
The USN standards were not a good thing and the WNT pulled them out of the fire.
Eh?
In WWII they were slow, but fine in WWI as one of the first of the US 'SuperDreadnoughts'
A Pennsylvania or New Mexico would chew up a Baden and all previous German Dreadnoughts. Oil fired, so less visibility, better armor layout and the USN 14" was as good as the German 15", and had more of them.
 
Fisher was brought in to cut costs. He laid down 1 Dreadnought and 3 BC so why not 3 23,000 ton ships, Neptune style layout 10 12” guns and 23 knots as a fusion ship. Replace the 6 follow on Dreadnoughts with 4 27,000 ton super-Neptune’s 26 knot 8 12” guns. Then for the We want 8 campaign build 8 29,000 ton 26 knot 8 13.5” and then follow with 8 33,000 ton 26 knot 8 15” armed ships.
 
It will if you stop building Battleships for two or three years while you analyse Dreadnought's strengths and weaknesses and Germany goes all out.

Germans from 1907 took three years to build the four Nassaus. So British builds Dreadnought as a test ship in 1906, and the two Lord Nelson P-Ds
Then waiting til 1908, skipping the Bellerophon and St. Vincent classes, goes with the superfiring Neptune class, and builds six of them by 1910, surpassing the Germans, while Orion class are being built from 1909 onwards

The Royal Navy really loses nothing (and saves millions of Pounds)by not having 8 not so great early Dreadnoughts, while the Germans have the almost useless Nassaus by time the War starts, and the RN are building KGVs and Iron Dukes, with QEs around the corner
 
What about the BC's?
If the goal is to avoid a building race with Dreadnought, that's one thing, but Fisher also wanted the Invincibles as the next thing to replace armored cruisers.

As OTL, these come out, and the Germans find they guessed wrong with Blücher
 
Burn the plans for the Indefatigable class and build more of the Lion class instead and give the blasted things better turret and barbet armor say 11" to 12" and a 10" belt

Or just keep them as what they were meant to be, a heavily armed, fast Cruiser to kill older Armored Cruisers, and scout for the Dreadnoughts, not stand in the battle line with them.

In some ways, would have been better for them had they been named Frigates, rather than Battlecruisers, to make the intended role clear
 
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