Mixed mounts made the new turret a controlled experiment

The mixed battery was practical engineering risk management. Enterprise could test a twin 6-inch turret without making her entire fighting value depend on unproven machinery. If the mounting failed, five single guns still left the ship viable and the bow retained enough structure to support a fallback conversion. The balanced E class also sat at the end of a wartime development line running through the C and D classes. Adding more turrets was a different proposition because it would have required moving the bridge and funnels and reorganizing the hull, effectively creating a new class rather than a modest variant.