Dido's hull priorities suited North Atlantic operations, while Atlanta's were oriented more toward Pacific conditions. Atlanta crowded a small cruiser hull with as many 5-inch weapons as possible, making it a destroyer-built cruiser. Both designs were wartime expedients for fleets whose treaty-era construction had left too few cruisers and destroyers to distribute screening firepower normally. Concentrating that capability in one hull bought time while fleet numbers grew. This concentration on wartime needs is one proposed explanation for the classes' limited postwar longevity.
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Atlanta as a destroyer-built cruiser
Atlanta packed destroyer-style armament onto the smallest practical cruiser hull to cover a screening shortfall created by interwar limits.