Large-caliber autoloaders as postwar anti-aircraft weapons

Postwar interest in higher firing rates extended beyond reducing gun crews. Designers could imagine very large guns contributing to air defense if machinery raised their output enough. A renewed Soviet capital-ship program would likely have drawn British and American responses built around increasingly automated loading. Existing assistance in King George V and Vanguard-era mountings meant the Royal Navy was already moving toward what contemporaries might call an autoloader.