N3-class battleship
1920 class of British dreadnought battleships, never built
The N3 class was a battleship class designed for the Royal Navy after World War I, incorporating lessons learned from that conflict. They were similar in design to the G3-class battlecruiser, but had larger guns and thicker armour. They were never ordered due to signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, which limited the size and armament of battleships to 35,000 long tons (36,000 t) and guns no bigger than 16 inches (406 mm).
Background
In 1916 the US had declared its intention to create a Navy "second to none"; Congress had authorized the building of a large number of battleships and battlecruisers. In response, the Japanese government also began a large programme of warship building (the 8-8 fleet). Two improved Revenge-class hulls were rebuilt into the two Renown-class battlecruisers by the Royal Navy during the war. The only new capital ships laid down during the war were the Admiral-class battlecruisers. Their design had been called into question after the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and three ships of this class were cancelled, leaving only HMS Hood to be completed to a modified design.
The US plan had been delayed by the wartime need to build smaller vessels. Nevertheless, estimates by the Admiralty were that by the early 1920s the Royal Navy would be behind in ships.
“N3-class battleship” enters the record as 1920 class of British dreadnought battleships, never built. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what N3-class, battleship and class can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3094296. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1922 and 1916.
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This entry incorporates text from “N3-class battleship” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.