The unbuilt Lexingtons' 16-inch guns

How good were the 16-inch guns intended for the original Lexington-class battlecruisers?

They were good First World War-era weapons, but naval gunnery advanced substantially before the Second World War.

The Lexingtons' 16-inch gun was a sound period weapon rather than a timeless benchmark. Two decades of improvements in shells, fire control, and gun design separated its conception from the Second World War. A weapon designed for the unbuilt Lexingtons and South Dakotas should therefore be compared first with First World War contemporaries. The answer is a useful reminder to judge naval equipment against the technology available when it was designed.