ABSTRACT
The Japanese decision based on information gathered in the Russo-Japanese War, to commence building two 20,000-ton ships naturally affected Fisher's decision to lay down the first "super" battleship. The Dreadnought displaced 17,900 tons and was the first major warship propelled by turbines. Fisher's Dreadnought and Invincible "leaps", coupled with the other reforms affecting personnel, training, gunnery, tactics, and fleet concentration, effectively blunted the German naval challenge of 1900. In contrast to the Dreadnought, the chief designer, Hans Burkner, placed greater stress on protection than on armaments, and accordingly established the general principle that the thickness of the belt armour was to be equivalent to the calibre of the heavy guns. The plans for the third generation of German Dreadnoughts, the Kaiser class, had been drawn up by 1907 before the Helgoland class vessels were completed. In 1907 Admiral Fisher had predicted that Germany could not have the North Sea-Baltic Sea link operable for Dreadnoughts before the late spring of 1914.
