Great Britain Fast Battleships Designs U4 & U5

Flashman said "I read that the Naval Aid Bill of 1913 was to fund 3 battleships of the most modern pattern (read, Queen Elizabeth class), but I had assumed they would just be 3 additional vessels!"
Your assumption is nearly correct. The Canadian Naval Aid Bill failed to pass the Senate in late 1913. Churchill describes the problems of getting UK parliamentary approval to 'replace' these 'indispensible' ships by bringing forward a year the building of ships in the 1914/15 programme (the Rs which were cancelled when war broke out, though two were built as Renown and Repulse) [World Crisis Chapter VIII].
What that means for this thread is that the "Canadian battleships" were design U1, with no chance of later Us being paid for by Canada. U3,U4 and U5 date from February 1914. The two pages in the Notebook giving the details of U1 are labelled "Canadian battleship Design U1(coal and oil)"
Other Us have no reference to Canada.
Incidentally, U1 was coal fired (2250 tons carried, oil 200tons), with armament "as Queen Elizabeth" (ie X and B turrets superfiring). 600'pp as QE.
U2 was like U1 but all oil. Both U1 and U2 legends have "Not accepted" written on them in red ink. They are undated, but the following page has Design T4 on it, dated July 1913.
Hood's drawings are very good, but the Notebook inset sketch of U5 shows B turret with the ends of the barrels of the 15in overlapping about a third of the control position, with the 6in immediately below that, rather than slightly forward as in U4.
[Source: Tennyson d'Eyncourt's notebook at NMM, which also contains his very sketchy hand drawings of U3 and partial sketches of the forward turret arrangements of U4 and U5 which were the basis of John Roberts' drawing of U4 in Warship 1995]

Ah, I didn't have the inset sketch of U5, so I'll amend that.
I can remove the Canadian tab too, to avoid confusion.
There was no chance of these being built, but they are an interesting design to show what alternative paths the designers were exploring.

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I have made the edits suggested by Smurf to U5.

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Never-Were British Aircraft

A very small point, but d'Eyncourt's sketch shows the muzzles of B turret, so B is offset to starboard.

Drat, got my port and starboard mixed up!
It's an easy fix though.

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Hood can you draw U2?

Hi ringo, welcome aboard.

Just so you know, it's kind of frowned upon to request a drawing. It's much or fer d of the person has a go at drawing the ship themselves. Give it a go yourself, if you don't think you can manage it start small until you get the hang of it. It's also frowned upon to post in a thread that's old, especially when it is not contributing to the thread.

All the best

Tempest.

Photobucket appears to have re sized the images

Ringo,
I suspect the U2 would look very much like a Queen Elizabeth.

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Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

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