The Royal Navy simultaneously worked on 4-inch, 4.5-inch, 4.7-inch, 5-inch, 5.25-inch, and 5.5-inch weapons. Each program represented a different attempt to balance shell weight, antiaircraft performance, mounting weight, and ship displacement. Pursuing all six consumed money, engineering time, and production effort that a single standardized dual-purpose family could have reduced. The turbine-powered destroyer scenario matters partly because its weight margin makes the high-angle 4.7-inch mounting easier to standardize across several classes.
Notable Point · 1:33:52-1:34:50
Six parallel gun calibres expose a procurement problem
The destroyer-armament discussion widens into a lesson about the cost of developing too many overlapping British naval guns at once.