How quickly a 16-inch naval gun can fire

What is the fastest practical rate of fire for a 16-inch naval gun?

About one round every thirty seconds with ambitious autoloading, compared with roughly forty seconds for many crewed mountings.

Most crew-served 16-inch mountings achieved roughly one and a half rounds per minute under favourable conditions. That translates to about forty seconds between shots while moving a very large projectile and its propellant through a protected handling system. An autoloader might reduce the cycle toward thirty seconds, but it cannot eliminate the inertia, safety, and loading-path constraints. The comparison with rapid-fire 8-inch weapons shows why scaling an autoloader upward is not simply a matter of enlarging the mechanism.