General History: HMS Orion - The Super Dreadnought 

In third grade we had a teacher who told us that as a boy on the west coast of Jutland he heard the Jutland Battle.

The silliest thing about it is that they knew it was an issue back with the Dreadnought, and fixed it with the Bellerophon and St Vincent classes... only to forget about the issue and revert for the Colossus, Orion, and Lion classes, because... a boat handling derrick is apparently more important in a battleship than being able to spot the fall of your fire. Though they got the memo that it really WAS bad early enough in the construction of the King George V class ships to remedy the design oversight, and learned the lesson well enough to not play table tennis with the tripod mast placement any more in future classes of capital ships. I guess a lesson is better learned late than never?

​@@CelebmacilThe poor placement of the the stack vs. tower really came to a head in the HMS Lion battlecruiser as the number of boilers using the stack was double what was in the battleships. At full speed the tower was untenable and Lion had the tower moved forward. All future ships followed suit.

Empree of India was a 13.5 inch battleship of the Iron Duke class😢

@@joemaloney1019 That ship was the Emperor of India , not Empress,

If I recall correctly from DK Brown’s books, it had to do with sighting hoods for the turrets. Even after the British adopted super firing gun turrets, they were limited in the ability of the upper turrets firing forward over the lower turrets. So, in order to have three or even two turrets directly forward, you needed wing turrets. Until the idea of the line of battle became firmly reestablished, wing turrets still made since for end on fire. I believe Brown states that it was not until Hood that British sights were not modified to eliminate issues with blast and end on fire when firing the super firing turrets.

The steam plant required the space amidships.

It was for a chase engagement, but partly also due to engineering constraints and coalition regarding blast effect on the lower turret in a superfiring position.

At least for Dreadnought and the St. Vincents, firing forward was, in fact, the reason for the wing turrets. They wanted to have as many barrels as possible in order to chase an enemy. Since superfiring turrets weren't yet en vogue, wing turrets were the solution. Another reason was that with the coal bunkers for the wing turrets would, in theory, be located further outboard and serve as additional armor. I've never though that this argument really made a great deal of sense, especially if the engagement occurred after the coal had been depleted, but there it is. It is mentioned specifically in Admiralty papers so they clearly though the idea possessed merit.