Neptune combined wartime experience into a powerful gun cruiser, but a long design and construction cycle would have delivered it into a changing technological era. Entry into service in the 1950s, around the time of the Daring-class destroyers, could already have made it look old-fashioned. Some observers might even have regarded it as obsolete. The delay therefore weakened the design's case as well as its funding.
Notable Point · 29:40-30:15
The risk of a wartime cruiser arriving obsolete
Even if completed alongside the Daring class in the 1950s, Neptune's wartime gun-cruiser concept might already have appeared old-fashioned in the missile age.