INTRODUCTION
It is difficult to define a cruiser in a way which embraces all the ships described in this book. The name implies a ship capable of cruising independently on a foreign station, which in the age of steam machinery entailed an ability to make running repairs far from home, as well as a long radius of action. Behind this name was the idea that the cruiser was smaller or more weakly armed than a battleship, yet still protected against enemy fire to some extent. The second, but not quite the first, attribute can be associated with the fast cruisers built during the First World War, which were to a considerable extent super-destroyers (which is why the big ‘Tribal’ class destroyers were candidate replacements in the 1930s). Although they were initially called armoured cruisers, I have not included the first battlecruisers; they are more closely associated with the last generation of large armoured cruisers, which I hope to describe in a later volume. I have included cruiser minelayers, and I have also included the escort cruisers and command cruisers (culminating in the Invincible class) of the 1960s and 1970s, because they were conceived very much for possible independent operations.
This book describes the British cruisers of the radio or wireless age. Radio changed naval warfare in profound ways, and cruisers operating far from home were changed more than most kinds of ships. British cruisers had three roles. One was to protect seaborne trade against surface raiders. A second was to support the battle fleet, both as scouts and by beating off enemy torpedo attacks. A third was to maintain order in the massive British Empire. During what might be called the preradio age, trade protection entailed large numbers of ships, covering convoys or occupying the focal areas through which most trade passed, and through which raiders, too, would most likely pass. Trade protection by either technique required large numbers of cruisers. In the late nineteenth century, likely enemies (France, Germany, Russia) all began building large, fast armoured cruisers and protected cruisers which might attack British trade. The Royal Navy built its own numerous fleet of large cruisers – each of which cost about as much as a battleship. Cruiser-building to protect trade was ruinously expensive because so many such ships were needed to cover so much trade. In effect the Royal Navy found itself building both a battle fleet and a cruiser fleet of similar or even greater cost. The French went so far as to write about an economic war (‘guerre industrielle’) in which the British would be defeated by being driven bankrupt. This war was deadly because the French (and Russians, and Germans) did not have to build large numbers of cruisers, while the Royal Navy had to place equivalent ships everywhere they might appear.
Radio changed trade protection. It became possible to envisage an intelligence system using radio reports of raider attacks to track the raiders.1 On that basis, fast cruisers could be vectored to intercept them. Although the process was imperfect, it could deal far more economically with any raiders. Initially the expectation seems to have been that fast long-range ships (battlecruisers) would be held at readiness in home waters for despatch against raiders, but by about 1910 it was clear that groups of cruisers would be held on foreign stations awaiting radioed orders. This idea, which could not be discussed publicly, made it possible to imagine protecting British trade using an affordable number of cruisers. That number in turn shaped British cruiser design during the inter-war period, when most of the ships described in this book were built or at least conceived.
Cruisers also operated with the fleet. As scouts, they were expected to find the enemy fleet (and discover its disposition, course and speed) while screening their own fleet from enemy discovery. If the British fleet was blockading an enemy port, British cruisers would operate off that port to raise the alarm when the enemy fleet sortied. To be viable, fleet scouts had to be powerful enough to survive in the face of the enemy’s most powerful cruisers. In a pre-radio age, these scouts had to be backed by ships linking them to the main fleet, each within visual signalling range. With the advent of radio, the scouts could operate much further afield (a discussion in 1913 of fleet organisation mentioned scouts as much as 200 miles ahead) and the numbers in the cruiser force could be reduced dramatically. That became evident in post-First World War discussions of the number of cruisers the Royal Navy required.
Throughout most of the cruiser era, Royal Navy strategists were faced with a terrible problem: they had to defend the worldwide trade of the Empire, its lifeblood, with a single mobile fleet, supplemented by cruisers on remote stations. The encouragement of the Dominion navies was a partial solution, but the cruisers built for and operated by the Dominions were lumped with those of the Royal Navy under the inter-war naval arms-limitation treaties, particularly that signed in London in 1930 (which limited overall cruiser tonnage). Australia is shown between the wars. The two Australian ‘Counties’ differed from their Royal Navy counterparts in having taller funnels. (Photo by Allan C Green via State Library of Victoria)
The inter-war Royal Navy was dominated by the need to protect the seaborne trade which kept the British Empire alive. The big ‘County’ class cruisers were conceived largely to deter Japanese attacks on British trade by threatening Japanese trade during the weeks before the main British fleet could reach Singapore, its base for a war against Japan. The first five ‘Counties’ were therefore deployed to the China Fleet upon completion. HMS Berwick is shown in 1932, wearing tropical livery (white hull and buff funnels). Note the trolley, which indicates that she has been fitted with a catapult.
HMS Kent emerged from a 1931 refit with a catapult, an important feature because an aircraft gave a cruiser a much better chance of detecting raiders. Within a few years the Royal Navy was intensely interested in the offensive potential of catapult aircraft, but the one shown here was limited to spotting duties. Aircraft were included in the design (the ships were completed with a foundation for a catapult) but initially were omitted to avoid exceeding the 10,000-ton Washington Treaty limit.
HMS Norfolk, a later ‘County’ class cruiser, emerged from a 1937 refit with twin 4in anti-aircraft guns, part of a rearmament package proposed by the 1932 Naval Anti-Aircraft Gunnery Committee. The single centreline anti-aircraft director (aft) with which the ship was completed was replaced by a pair of such directors abreast the bridge. Other improvements were a pair of octuple pompoms, the most powerful existing light anti-aircraft weapons, abeam the after superstructure, and a pair of the new quadruple 0.5in machine guns on platforms abeam the gap between the first and second funnels. The inter-war Royal Navy invested more in anti-aircraft firepower than any other, and was air-conscious to the point that additional deck armour for capital ships was justified as a defence against bombing. The 4in gun was particularly important because it was assumed that enemy bombers would attack from medium altitude, hence could be engaged at a considerable distance and their formations broken up. Unfortunately the Royal Navy opted too soon for a fire-control system which depended on the controlling officer’s estimate of the speed of the approaching aircraft. Just before the Second World War the Director of Naval Ordnance wrote that this had been the wrong choice; he was about to test a tachymetric (speed-measuring) system (which, probably unknown to him, the US Navy already used). He expected the new system to enter service in 1941. The ship’s DF array is just visible near the juncture between the foremast and its topmast, just below the crow’s-nest.
Radio made it possible for the Royal Navy to set up a global ocean-surveillance system and to vector cruisers to hunt down surface raiders, something inconceivable before about 1908. In 1909 the Admiralty sought to convince the Dominions to create fleets which could secure Empire trade outside European waters. Only Australia and New Zealand responded, and only Australia created a full ‘fleet unit’. When war came in 1914, HMAS Sydney, shown, participated in the hunt for the German raider Emden. The extent of the force required seems to have been an unpleasant surprise, and it inspired the post-war idea that British raiding cruisers could tie down significant Japanese forces. Sydney is shown pre-war; note the identifying funnel bands standard in the Royal Navy. (RAN Historical Branch)
In addition to their scouting role, the cruisers operating ahead of or with the fleet were expected to shield it from enemy torpedo craft. Before about 1910, the British expected the Germans to send out their destroyers (which they called seagoing torpedo boats) in hunting groups, so British anti-destroyer tactics were to blockade German torpedo boat bases using flotillas of destroyers stiffened by cruisers. About 1910 it was accepted that the Germans would take their destroyers to sea with their battle fleet, and the cruiser anti-destroyer (and pro-destroyer) roles with the fleet became important; the Arethusas and their successors were built for this purpose.
Radio also made it possible to limit the number of scouting cruisers required to operate with the fleet, since there was no need for linking ships to repeat the scouts’ messages to the main force. By 1913 some British tacticians thought that scouts might operate as much as 200 miles ahead of the fleet, but the Royal Navy never had enough cruisers to form a useful screen at such distances. It did emphasise maximum radio range, achieved in part by lifting the ‘flat-top’ radio antenna as high as possible. This pre-war photograph of HMS Bristol shows her tall topmasts, their upper crosstrees supporting the roughly horizontal pair of wires of the ‘flat top’. Neither the wires of the ‘flat top’ nor the vertical wire down to the radio room are visible. This photograph was taken before the Royal Navy introduced funnel recognition bands in 1913.
Radio made it possible to so reduce the number of scouts in the fleet that other cruisers could be assigned to beat off enemy destroyer attacks. After the First World War the ideal Royal Navy cruiser squadron consisted of five ships. By the early 1920s it was assumed that the battle fleet would have a two-squadron scouting line and two more squadrons to deal with enemy torpedo attacks, and to back up attacks by British destroyers. The seventy-cruiser force advocated from about 1924 on consisted mainly of ships assigned to trade protection, either as deterrents or to run down raiders based on ocean surveillance. The Arethusas (of 1913) and later small cruisers were conceived mainly as destroyer-killers. Later classes were given heavy torpedo batteries because, in attacking the enemy’s destroyer force, they might find themselves in position to fire torpedoes at the enemy main body, HMS Danae, shown in 1930, was a mature example of this kind of cruiser, mounting four triple torpedo tubes – twice the battery of a destroyer, or a full destroyer battery on each side (she could not have mounted centreline tubes, hence could not use all of her tubes on either side). The main post-war modification was the addition of three 4in anti-aircraft guns, two abeam her funnels and one abaft No. 5 gun.
The third important cruiser role was protecting the Empire. It was complex partly because shadowing the formal British Empire was an informal one, consisting of close trading partners whose governments tended to benefit from British sea dominance. This informal empire was closely connected to the trading operations of the City of London, the financial centre of the United Kingdom and, before the First World War, the single most important financial centre in the world. The City financed world trade, and it well understood that free trade (free, for example, from anti-trade warfare) was key to British prosperity. It was understood that governments would favour Britain and the City if they understood that British sea dominance helped protect them. China, for example, was part of the informal empire, which explains why the Royal Navy maintained a large and expensive China Fleet through the inter-war period, far larger than the Asiatic fleet or squadron of any other European power. The extent of British investment helps explain why Japanese expansion into China in the 1930s was so threatening to the British. The informal empire seems to have been well understood in the British government, but rarely (if ever) explicitly discussed; it has surfaced in historical discussions only in recent years.2 Yet the requirements of informal empire had profound implications for the British cruiser fleet. A cruiser was a particularly good package for colonial warfare: she combined a powerful gun armament with a substantial landing force of Marines and with command and control. In 1927, for example, HMS Enterprise and her Marines saved Kuwait from a Saudi attack. Kuwait was part of the informal empire, with a British resident, but was by no means a colony (a British amphibious carrier saved Kuwait again in 1961, this time from Iraqi attack). The great convulsion in the British cruiser force just prior to the beginning of this book was the elimination of many small cruising craft on empire-protecting foreign stations, because neither the Foreign Office nor the Colonial Office was willing to pay for them, and in view of the new concept of trade protection they lacked a purely naval role. A few such craft (not true cruisers) survived, and an attempt to replace them, described in this book, failed just prior to the First World War because the demands of the main fleet were too insistent (the inter-war sloops, which are not described in this book, were the true successors to these small cruisers).
The need for numbers of cruisers, mainly for trade protection, was a consuming requirement in inter-war British thinking. The Royal Navy pursued arms-control treaties to reduce cruiser size, hence cost, and its designers sought the minimum acceptable cruiser design. This ideal was reached in the Arethusa class. HMS Galatea is shown at Malta in April 1937, wearing neutrality stripes on ‘B’ turret to avoid attack during the Spanish Civil War. She had not yet been upgraded with twin rather than single 4in antiaircraft guns. (Fahey Collection of the US Naval Institute)
Above and below: British cruiser designers consistently sought to minimise the size, which they associated with the cost, of their ships. They therefore designed for minimum tonnage (weight-critical design practices), often not estimating the need for length or for space until late in the design process. That was possible because very experienced designers could estimate the needs of conventional designs. Unfortunately the situation changed quickly just before and during the Second World War, with dramatically increased needs not only for topweight (to accommodate radars and anti-aircraft guns) but also for internal space and for additional electric power. HMS Manchester is shown, newly completed, in 1938. She displays the first of the electronic devices which would soon proliferate, an HF/DF loop at the head of her foremast. This sensor was relatively common in the Royal Navy by 1939, but no other navy had it. Cruisers had HF/DF in order to detect and run down raiders beyond the horizon, and probably also to assist their aircraft in homing on them.
Informal empire could be expected to work as long as prospective partners could realistically expect Britain, which generally meant the Royal Navy, to help protect them. When someone wrote that ‘trade follows the flag’, what was often meant was that a country shielded by the Royal Navy would feel inclined to support that protection by buying British, and by using British banks to float its loans. In a sense informal empire justified the cruiser squadrons maintained on foreign stations between the two World Wars. The stations were revived after the Second World War, but could not be maintained for long, as the war had destroyed too much of the British economy.
Early in the Second World War (this photograph is undated), Birmingham shows zarebas atop ‘B’ and ‘X’ turrets and on her quarterdeck for rocket launchers (UP projectors), a stopgap adopted in 1940 to make up for slow production of more adequate anti-aircraft weapons. Her main battery director shows the Type 284 gunnery radar, in its original form with separate transmitting and receiving antennas.
The Royal Navy ships in this book were designed by the Department of Naval Construction, headed by the Director of Naval Construction (DNC), who was officially adviser to the Admiralty Board on warship materiel (and as such was sometimes styled Deputy Controller). After a reorganisation in the 1960s, the design and construction organisation became the Ship Department and DNC became Director General, Ships; he figures only in the very last designs described in this book. Machinery was the responsibility of Engineer-in-Chief (E-in-C), and ordnance the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO). During the inter-war period, as electrical machinery became more important, a separate Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE) was created. I have referred interchangeably to departments and to their chiefs. The DNC organisation designed ships up to the point at which bids could be invited, which for the purposes of this book meant to the point of mature designs. By way of contrast, E-in-C and DNO laid out specifications and evaluated designs (they also estimated weights and sizes so that DNC’s designers could produce preliminary designs). DNO was responsible for fire control, but in 1941 a new Department of Gunnery and Anti-Air Warfare (DGD) was created, splitting DNO’s role. There was also a separate torpedo and mine directorate (DTM). During the inter-war period an Anti-Submarine directorate, concerned with Asdic (sonar) was created, and ultimately this Director of Anti-Submarine Warfare (DAS) took over responsibility for torpedoes as well (as DTASW). Finally, between the wars a Naval Air Department (DNAD) was created; it was significant for cruiser design. Departments were reorganised after the Second World War on functional lines, creating, for example, a Director of Air Warfare (DAW) and a Director of Underwater Warfare (DUW). Neither is very important for this book. Director of Dockyards (D of D) was responsible for building and refitting ships, and provided information as to the capacity of the dockyard system.
Policy, including ship requirements, was set by the Board of Admiralty: First Sea Lord, his deputy Second Sea Lord (also responsible for personnel), Third Sea Lord (and Controller) and, at various times, Fourth Sea Lord (logistics) and Fifth Sea Lord (fleet aircraft). Before 1912 the Naval Intelligence Department (NID) functioned as both an intelligence organisation and a naval staff, evaluating various ship design issues, among other things. In 1912, as a result of controversy concerning the navy’s ability to staff war plans, a new War Staff was created, taking over the staff functions of NID. The staff functions became far more important during the First World War, and in 1917 a more elaborate staff organisation was formalised. By analogy with the army’s staff, the war staff was given executive rather than advisory responsibility, and First Sea Lord was made Chief of the Naval Staff, with a Deputy First Sea Lord and Deputy and Assistant Chiefs of the Naval Staff (DCNS and ACNS), each of whom was responsible for parts of the naval staff. A new Naval Artillery and Torpedoes Division was created in June 1918 to decide weapons employment policy and also to develop weapon requirements. This division was also responsible for requirements for ship protection against weapons, which is why its chief became involved in discussions of the ‘E’ class cruiser design. This was Captain Frederic C Dreyer, who had been Admiral Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet gunnery officer. When DNO (Director of Naval Ordnance) tried to shut down his new department, Dreyer argued successfully that DNO was far too involved with details to develop overall policy. In 1920 the new department was split into a Gunnery Department and a Torpedo Department; Dreyer became the first director of the Gunnery Department (DGD). A Training and Staff Duties Division (DTSD) was created in June 1918, initially to help organise the staff and also to consider conditions of entry into the Royal Navy; by way of contrast, the equivalent army organisation developed Staff Requirements, in effect deciding how new technology should be used to meet tactical and strategic needs. In 1918 the existence of numerous technical departments made such a development impossible, although to some extent Captain Dreyer’s division filled them. A further reorganisation in 1920 made DCNS responsible for strategic policy and ACNS for tactical policy (including ship and weapon development); the office of Deputy First Sea Lord lapsed. On this basis ACNS was given a Tactical Section (he also had the Air Section).
Photographed at Scapa Flow from USS Wasp on 17 May 1942, HMS Manchester displays the usual wartime modifications, which had to be squeezed into the ships. She had just completed a refit (18 March – 25 April 1942). Her masts carry the separate transmitting and receiving antennas of the Type 279 air-warning radar. The bridge carries the ‘lantern’ of the Type 273 surface-search radar, abaft the main battery director, which carries the separate transmitting and receiving antennas of a Type 284 gunnery-ranging set. Atop ‘B’ turret is a single Bofors gun. She had received one single Bofors and five single Oerlikons during a 16 January – 29 March 1941 refit, and another three single Oerlikons during a refit at the Philadelphia Navy Yard (23 September 1941 – 27 February 1942). Another two single Bofors were temporarily added for Operation ‘Pedestal’, the attempt to push a convoy through to Malta. During it she was sunk on 13 August.
Above and below: Photographed on 15 September 1943, Birmingham shows further modifications. She had been fitted with gunnery (Type 284) and air-search (Type 291) radars during a 1942 refit, but during a Devonport refit (23 April 1943 – 21 August 1943) she received a large-ship air-search set (Type 281B, with a single antenna for transmitting and receiving) and a Type 273 surface-search set atop her bridge. She was torpedoed on 28 November 1943 en route to Alexandria, and went to the United States for a further major refit.
By this time there was intense pressure to cut the staff as part of the post-war pruning of Royal Navy overheads. For example, DNO continued to see DGD as an unnecessary rival, and there was also a proposal to eliminate DTSD, among other divisions. For a time the new staff organisation survived due to memories of wartime disasters suffered because of inadequate staff work. In a further reorganisation in December 1928, the gunnery division was incorporated into DTSD, and the torpedo division into the tactical division (formerly the tactical section). Until 1939, Staff Requirements, at least for ships, were formulated by the Tactical Division. At that time it was folded into DTSD, which thereby gained full co-ordinating (never exclusive) responsibility for Staff Requirements. Note that these requirements were always a matter of discussion for all interested departments and divisions.3
First Sea Lord wore three hats. He was operational chief of the navy, a role made more important in the Second World War because he and his Admiralty staff had access to the ocean surveillance picture created on the basis of code-breaking and other sources of intelligence. He was also head of the Naval Staff, and he was also responsible for many decisions concerning materiel. In 1942 a new office of Deputy First Sea Lord (sometimes styled DFSL) created mainly to handle materiel. He was assisted by a new Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Weapons) (ACNS(W)); DFSL and ACNS(W) headed a new Future Building Committee, which largely but not completely shaped wartime ship policy. A Vice Chief of Naval Staff (VCNS) was also created. The Future Building Committee was considered successful. After 1945 it was succeeded by a Fleet Requirements Committee and a Ship Characteristics Committee, both of which were involved in the last cruiser designs.
Until the end of the First World War, Controller or, sometimes, First Lord or First Sea Lord asked DNC for a sketch design to meet a very simple requirement, most of what would later figure in Staff Requirements being understood as conforming to standard practice. Later Controller generally formulated an initial set of requirements, DNC producing sketch designs to see what was practicable. Formal Staff Requirements typically reflected one such sketch design, although at times more general ones were formulated. Also, once formulated, Staff Requirements were debated within the Admiralty, as is evident in some of the cases described in this book. Controller was thus usually the key figure in defining what a cruiser should be, although he did not always succeed. The most obvious example is Rear Admiral Reginald Henderson’s failure in 1936 to convince the Board to adopt a ship armed entirely with 5.25in guns as the 8,000-ton cruiser (the Fijis had 6in guns). The only case in which a DNC took the initiative seems to have been the big cruiser eventually built as the Hawkins class. It may have been significant that the DNC involved, Sir Eustace Tennyson d’Eyncourt, came from a major private yard with its own design capacity (Armstrong) rather than from the ranks of the Royal Corps of Naval Constructors. All other DNCs rose through the ranks.
By late 1943, drastic changes were needed to free topweight and space for further additions, particularly for more close-range weapons. HMS Birmingham is shown on 23 November 1944 at Hampton Roads after a refit in the United States (Norfolk Navy Yard, July 1944 – 28 November 1944), her ‘X’ turret having been removed. She retained the two quadruple pompoms atop her former hangar, but the refit added four quadruple Bofors aft plus five single and two twin Oerlikons. She already had two single Oerlikons (seven fitted during a Simonstown refit, 5 March 1942 – 1 April 1942, but five removed during the next refit) and eight twin Oerlikons (added during a Devonport refit, 23 April 1943 – 21 August 1943). Note the short depth-charge track right aft, a standard installation on board British cruisers from the First World War onwards.
Many of the Controllers represented here later became First Sea Lords, and as such sometimes revived initiatives they had started as Controllers. The controversy over the internal arrangements of the rebuilt ‘County’ class is a case in point.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) was created in 1940, but it had little effect on the Royal Navy before its minister Duncan Sandys conducted the 1956 Defence Review. Formal service unification came in 1959, and the Board of Admiralty was formally abolished in 1964 (it continued as a lower-level organisation). Ministry of Defence committees, such as the all-service Operational Requirements Committee, increasingly reviewed navy projects. These changes are peripheral to nearly all the ships described in this book, the only exceptions being the escort cruiser and its successor the command cruiser.
Given the set of Constructors’ Notebooks preserved in the National Maritime Museum’s Brass Foundry, plus the Ship Covers and papers in the Public Record Office, it has been possible to reconstruct (apparently) virtually all British cruiser designs prepared between 1920 and the last missile cruiser in 1956.4 The Notebooks, particularly those left by Sir Charles S Lillicrap (head of the cruiser section in the late 1930s, and later DNC) provide insight into the way in which designs were prepared. The key design tool was the summary weight breakdown typically included in the Legend, the summary of ship characteristics presented to decision-makers. Typically the designer began with a target weight and with demands for particular armament, protection and speed. He could calculate (or estimate) armament weight, and therefore the weight of ‘general equipment’, which depended mainly on personnel and their stores. Displacement suggested overall dimensions, based on previous cruiser practice. Again, based on existing cruiser designs, the designer could estimate how much power was needed. E-in-C could estimate both machinery weight and the dimensions of the machinery box. The constructor could add up what he had and subtract from the total allowable displacement to give available protection weight. For much of the period covered by this book, protection meant a belt and deck over the machinery plus boxes covering magazines and (with reduced thickness) shell rooms. Hence machinery box dimensions gave armour weight or, for a given weight, available thickness. If the combination did not work, the constructor modified dimensions and tried again. Notebooks suggest that a few combinations of dimensions gave a practicable combination, on the basis of which more detailed work began.
The great strength of this technique was that, in the hands of an experienced designer like Lillicrap, it very quickly provided the basis for a cruiser design. It ruled out impractical alternatives. The weakness of the technique was that it did not explicitly account for ship volume. Experience was key, because a designer had a feel for what was wanted. Moreover, as long as ship designs were broadly similar, it was unlikely that a hull of reasonable size would fail to accommodate what was needed along the centreline of the ship: machinery and turrets (superstructure generally fit above a machinery box of reasonable size). If the ship seemed likely to be somewhat tight, the initial designer might add 10 or 20ft to its length, as a surrogate for adding deck space. This practice was unavoidable, because it was difficult at best to estimate deck areas and hence available space. That was done once overall dimensions and weights had been estimated, but it entailed far too much calculation for alternative layouts to be worked out.
Given experience and a long line of ships similarly arranged, designers generally found it unnecessary to work out the lengthwise arrangement of spaces. For cruisers the one exception, until 1939, seems to have been the unconventional aircraft-aft design investigated by Lillicrap late in 1936. However, lengthwise space analysis seems to have been the rule from 1939 on; it was certainly done for the wartime heavy cruiser designs.
British design practices worked because DNC split his organisation into sections, one of which specialised in cruisers (to some extent one might define a British cruiser as a ship designed by the cruiser section). Specialisation is obvious in the Constructors’ Notebooks, which rarely show designs of multiple types (except as constructors moved from section to section). Those in the section worked on preliminary and detailed designs, and they also became aware of how the ships they designed performed. By way of contrast, the US Bureau of Construction and Repair was organised according to stages of design, the Preliminary Design section working on all types of ships (submarine design was somewhat more specialised). Contract Design, for example, was a separate organisation. In 1918 Stanley V Goodall, a British constructor (later DNC) seconded to the US organisation, delivered a lecture in which he argued that the British split according to type of ship made for better awareness of overall design issues.
The split by ship type encouraged a section to develop a style of design with implicit emphases. British designers favoured the tightest possible designs, with limited stretch for in-service modification. That became evident during the First World War, when, for example, extra generator power was wanted for more powerful searchlights. Early post-1918 designs, such as the ‘County’ class, seem to have had more stretch in them, but later inter-war designs were certainly quite tight. The Fiji class suffered particularly because they entered service just as major additions, such as radar and many more close-range anti-aircraft guns, were wanted. British cruisers designed after the First World War also seem to have suffered because E-in-C was more conservative than his foreign counterparts. Early reports of Italian practice seemed to justify his relatively bulky boilers and heavy turbines, but US designers produced roomier ships, probably because they had lighter and more compact machinery. During the Second World War DNC was forced to defend his design practices as British officers saw and admired many US designs. The British cruisers designed (but not built) late in the war were far larger than their predecessors, to an extent which shocked many of those defining requirements. The shock of growth was worsened because ships came to be described by their deep load rather than standard displacements, the difference amounting to several thousand tons in a large ship.
Above and below: Off Guantánamo Bay on 17 November 1952, Sheffield shows relatively simple post-war modifications, in which light anti-aircraft weapons were partly standardised. At this time the ship had four twin 40mm and six single power-worked Bofors guns; she retained her original pair of quadruple pompoms. She had the standard end-of-war radar suite: Type 281B on the mainmast, Type 293 (target indication) on the foremast, Type 277 (surface search and limited height-finding) on a lattice tower before the foremast, Type 274 on the main battery director, and Type 285 on each of the 4in directors abeam and abaft the bridge. (US Navy photos courtesy of Rick E Davis)
