A true Courageous-class light cruiser would carry 9.2-inch guns

What if the Courageous class had been built as genuine 18,000-ton light cruisers?

The design becomes a super-sized cruiser with roughly nine to twelve 9.2-inch guns in three or four triple turrets and could have been very useful.

The proposed ship uses its 18,000 tons to produce a powerful cruiser broadside. Triple 9.2-inch mountings would give it far more balanced cruiser firepower than the historical class's few very large guns. Such ships could have been genuinely useful. The answer offers a clean entry point into how displacement and armament choices determine whether an unconventional label corresponds to a coherent role.