Why the Tiger light cruisers were not inherently a bad idea

Were the Tiger-class light cruisers a terrible idea?

No. The concept and six-inch autoloaders had promise, but the class was too small and its systems were not made to work reliably enough.

The concept and execution of the Tiger class deserve separate judgments. An automatic six-inch battery could have been powerful if the machinery worked reliably. Building only three ships made it harder to absorb development problems and sustain a useful class. A later answer estimates that a useful force would have required six to twelve ships, making procurement scale part of the failure.