General Social/Chatter Thread

[The Rock Doctor]

I consistently fail to remember how large the 5"/38 gunhouse is when I'm sketching out my own 130mm guns. But I also fail to appreciate that on the Cleveland class cruisers, the centreline mounts are on the same level as the B/X turrets and not double-superfiring.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Just skimming though the design ramblings in US Cruisers, the preceding USS Helena was 'outdated and topheavy'. For CL55 they wanted to expand the beam by 2 feet, and added the centerline 5" mounts.

Looking at the pictures, the aft 5" mount could fire directly aft at 0 elevation, it looks like the fore mount can not as the muzzle is slightly below the roof of "B". The difference looks to be about 1 foot, so it could fire at shallow elevations - like 5 degrees. For our purposes I'd call that double superfiring.

Additional text "The increase in beam had been just enough to restore the new cruiser to the ranks of acceptably stable warships; it would take very little to push her back out. <discusses additional armor desired>.. Estimated stability was now considered dubious."
It continues with the ordering of CL 55 & 56, but changes being considered for CL 57 & 58 to address additional AA needs and a triple bottom.
It goes on for a couple more pages discussing the options explored to fit more light AA,
they didn't like dropping the 5"/38 to singles, or using 5/25s (which fired faster),
and so chose to go with ballast.

Then the naval contractor suggested changing the belt from sloping inward (why inward) 2 degrees to outward 6 degrees, and widening the beam from 61'5" to 63'2", which removed the need for ballast. They also deleted a crane.

So I suspect the 5" guns were superimposed to the absolute minimum necessary to give decent sky arcs.

There's a lack of 0 degree dead ahead fire from the fore centerline 5", but both wing mounts bear.
Further, 0 degree elevation should only matter at very short ranges. The IZ of these were intended to be 9000-21700yards. According to Navweaps, 6.34 degrees elevation was needed for 8000yards. So that 0-7000 yard lack of coverage I would guess was deemed acceptable.