I believe that what Admiral Fisher really wanted as a fast battleship

The more I read about Admiral Fisher, the more that I think that what he really wanted was a fast battleship. His favorite pre-dreadnought was the 2nd Class battleship Renown, for example. As early as 1902, if not before, he had concluded that the ideal capital ship would be a fast armored cruiser. The "Perfection" design reflected his ideas circa 1902. That evolved into the "Unapproachable" design by 1904.

The majority opinion at the time, affected by lessons from the Russo-Japanese War, was that you needed the biggest guns on your capital ship, and no one but Fisher was willing to only have an armored cruiser. Captain Bacon apparently was the one who suggested putting 12in guns on an armored cruiser, and the battlecruiser was born.

By 1912, Admiral Fisher had the "Super Lion" concept. It never really became a design, except in my Springsharp report, drawings, and photos. He assumed that to get speed, you needed to sacrifice armor. Down deep, he also assumed that you needed to settle for fewer guns, in order to achieve speed. The Renown, Repulse, Courageous, Glorious, and Furious reflected that belief. I had thought that the reason for the Renown and Repulse had only 6 guns was because of availability, but apparently, it was actually a conscious decision. My friend Cliff and I had made a similar error when we designed ships for our building programs, back in 1971. We also made a similar error to Colonel Cuniberti in that we assumed that we could achieve what we wanted on what now seems to be too small a displacement.

Long term, it was obvious that he was right in believing that the future was with the fast capital ship. That was what was exclusively built after the Nelson and Rodney. After that, a slow fast battleship made 27 knots. The G3 battlecruisers were really the ideal fast battleship, except that the design was marred by the mindset that wanted to do strange things that compromised military characteristics in order to squeeze a bit more out of a particular size ship. The Nelson and Rodney were similarly marred by the same issue. They ended up being underweight by a wide margin that could have been used to give them a conventional gun layout.