Why did the Royal Navy return to smaller battleship guns?

Were there problems with the 16-inch guns, and why did the Royal Navy not use them on the next battleship class?

The answer points chiefly to Admiral Chatfield's preference for 14-inch guns and to design conclusions drawn from contemporary gun testing, rather than describing the Nelson weapon as simply unusable.

The answer does not reduce the change of calibre to a single technical failure. Admiral Chatfield's strong attachment to the 14-inch weapon and contemporary German test results both shaped the later choice. Institutional preference and the evidence available to the design staff therefore mattered alongside experience with Nelson's armament. The preferred alternative in this discussion is a 15-inch/50, showing that capable designers could draw different conclusions from the same interwar constraints. The exchange is brief, but it prevents the later 14-inch choice from being misread as proof that the 16-inch system was simply unusable.