 When designing the latter class, the Japanese followed the doctrine that they had used since the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 of compensating for quantitative inferiority with qualitative superiority.In the words of naval historian Siegfried Breyer, "had [the ships] been completed, they would have been the world's largest and most powerful battleships.Their gun calibre alone would have caused a new and more intensive naval arms race.