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As Germany built up its own fleet of dreadnoughts, Britain responded by providing ten further super-dreadnoughts in the 1912 and 1913 budgets – the Queen Elizabeth and Revenge classes, which introduced further evolutions in armament, speed and protection. In contrast, Germany laid down only five battleships; she was now concentrating her resources on building up her ground forces. By the beginning of World War I in 1914, Britain had 22 of the new dreadnoughts in service compared to Germany’s 15. Britain also had another 13 under construction compared to Germany’s 5.

Battleships protected their most important and vulnerable parts inside an armoured box called the citadel, which ran from just in front of the forward gun turrets all the way back to aft of the stern gun turrets. Along the side of the citadel, on either side of the ship at the waterline, ran the main vertical armour belt, which was 11 inches thick in the first dreadnoughts but gradually got thicker with successive new classes of battleship.