Shipbucket

I love it! About the only thing I would change would be to put the aft turret on the main deck.

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MS State Guard - 08 March 2014 - 28 January 2023

The Official IJN Ships & Planes List

#FJB

Thanks emperor_andreas,

I would say that it was done like that with the rear turret, for the penetration into the hull. As it is it would not interfere with the shaft arrangement.

Same problem arose with the proposal to give Hawkins class three twin 8in turrets. The aft turret had to be at forecastle deck level to keep clear of the shafts, and then the displacement exceeded 10,000tons - not by much, but politically unacceptable soon after Washington. It's an aspect of the different problems met when designing a new ship compared to converting an existing design. In the latter case you have to judge how much can be changed, and what needs to stay the same. Remember Krakatoa's 3x2 7.5 design is two steps away from Emerald.
Hood's comment is of the same kind. " A flush deck design with the forecastle extended all the way back would actually look pretty much like a County..." It would, but extending K's ship's deck aft would not produce a County. Even though it would displace over 9000tons it would still have only six 7.5in, and the extra topweight would probably need the beam increasing again, which would reduce speed.
IMHO the Counties are often much under-rated. Their design was in fact a significant departure from previous RN cruiser practice. A full length flush deck was adopted, instead of a forecastle design. This was chosen so that the resulting deep but relatively narrow hull with continuous strength deck provided a strong girder in the hogging and sagging conditions but an overall lighter hull, further aided by the use of high tensile D steel. It had the further advantage of providing long ships with high decks and so good seakeeping and good accommodation space. They were designed for overseas service protecting trade, with long range.
Emerald was a 'stretched' D, itself a stretched C, originally designed for North Sea operations against destroyers, and (Es) fast small cruisers.
Compare Counties 80,000shp cruiser machinery weighing 1850 tons, range 12,500+ Nmi;
K's E two sets of destroyer machinery for 80,000shp, weighing 1640 tons, range about 7000 Nmi
Counties 4x2 8in; K's F 3x2 7.5in (though if Counties had 4x2 7.5in instead of keeping up with the American Jones's 8in, and introducing very complex high elevation turrets, they could have been better protected) Nevertheless RN had 7 Kent and 4 London in service by 1928, while USA and Japan had hardly started.
If worried about large Japanese cruisers with no Washington Treaty, the views of the Committee iof Imperial Defence might have had more sway. They wanted numbers of ships of about 7-8000tons, backed up by some really large 18000ton ships with 4x2 10in. But the other factor affecting both navies with no Washington was simply the cost of what the navies wanted. (Also, with no Washington, the Anglo-Japanese naval alliance could well have lasted much longer. Even with W. a very detailed plan of one of Thurston's 1923 8in cruiser designs turned up in the Hiraga Archive, done several years later.)
But we are into Alternative History territory with this.