On 13May2018 0958, Phil Pugliese (via tml list) wrote:
>
> What I find interesting is that, as I recall, the use of turbines was
> considered a critical consideration wrt the design of HMS Dreadnought
> as turbo powerplants were much lighter thus reducing displacement by
> a considerable amount when compared to VTE.

That's correct. However, the Royal Navy, unlike the United States1 Navy,
had a world-wide network of coaling stations, and so long range cruising
performance wasn't nearly as important, so they chose the high-speed
performance, low-speed inefficiency option (turbines). Also England was
the world leader in turbine design and manufacture, so it was far less
of a gamble for them than for the USN, who would've had to import their
turbines from England at that time. Note that the US also had trouble
producing big guns of a reasonable weight at that time (though the
mid-1900s was when they caught up in that area) and thick armour.
Basically the US was still building up their capital shipbuilding
capacity at the time, whereas the UK had a *huge* and mature
shipbuilding industry - at the same time that the UK was in their naval
arms race with Germany, and was thus building 4-8 capital ships a year,
it was also arming just about every navy outside Europe and the US with
battleships (and anything else they wanted, so long as they paid).

The naval treaties of the 20s and 30s were, while good for the UK
government's books, terrible for UK's ship builders, especially those
specialising in large military vessels, as demand dried up completely.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief