Six 4-inch guns traded broadside weight for exposed mounts

The BL 4-inch Mark VII was a manually loaded gun firing a 31-pound shell at six to eight rounds per minute, with a maximum range of about 11,600 yards. It served as a main battery on scout cruisers and as secondary armament on capital ships. Later coastal-artillery and defensively equipped merchant-ship service extended its career into the Second World War. On the Boadiceas, two guns were forward, two amidships, and two aft, which allowed four guns on a broadside. Three centreline twin turrets might instead have retained six guns while bringing all of them to bear on either beam. The later twin 6-inch turret on HMS Enterprise shows where this line of development eventually led. Separate mounts could be more resistant to losing several guns from one hit, although their exposed positions reduced that advantage.