The counterfactual considers a Royal Navy that standardized on the 5.5-inch gun after its use in HMS Hood. In that path the weapon might have become a dual-purpose destroyer gun and the common secondary battery for carriers and battleships, avoiding the later mix of 5.25- and 4.5-inch systems. The limiting factor was manual handling, because the 4.7-inch gun could be fired faster. Fleet commonality still had to compete with crew workload and practical rate of fire.
Notable Point · 1:51:03-1:52:07
A 5.5-inch standard could have reshaped British batteries
A counterfactual 5.5-inch standard promises commonality across destroyers, carriers, and battleships but loses on manual rate of fire.