Shipbucket

Having pinched all of the 4.5" guns for my D class CLA's what do you arm Scylla and Charybdis with?

My thought is to put them in a convoy uncompleted over to the US and like Delhi get the US Navy yard to complete the ship with 5"/38's and Mk-37 directors.

A very nice and one that looks quite good. I think this was doable. Given the US were willing to rearm two D Class, its surprising no-one in the Admiralty hadn't come up with this idea.

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Would a 5-38 conversion require a trip to the US? That may explain why no other conversions were done. I agree with Hood that it's a good concept.

Given that the conversion of HMS Delhi was done in New York, the other conversions would be done in the US as well.
The Americans were quite reluctant in sharing the 5"/38 in 1940-1941, and even the single conversion done, was considered as an experiment. The fact is that it created some logistics problems, by introducing a new gun type with different ammunition size, spare parts, barrels, barrel linings and such.
HMS Scylla and HMS Charybdis received the 4.5" guns because the 5.25" guns were in short supply, and AA cruisers were some what urgently needed.
Also consider the gun mountings weight
The US twin 5"/38 for cruisers was a hefty 49 tons (Atlanta class Mod. 29) and for destroyers was 43.4 tons (Mod.38 which has practically no armor)
The 4.5" Mk.III UD mount was open backed (was not in true sense a turret but a gun mounting), weighed only 31 tons, and so for 4 gun mountings you have some 50 tons of weight high up. This will wreck havoc on any ship stabilty.

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"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Howdy Novice,
That's exactly why I gave the 5/38 conversions only four turrets. These two ships were Dido batch 1 and were meant to carry the 5 twin 5.25" which were even bigger than the 5/38. I thought I might pre-date history a bit by removing one turret right from day one. There were a lot of extra superstructure parts added to S&C to fit the 4.5" into them and that would also have added topweight in addition to the mounting itself.

Maybe both ships should be sent out as part of the Pacific build-up to work with the Aussies and remains of ABDA , Force Z. That would make obtaining ammunition and spares much more readily available. Not that that is very likely, just a thought to overcome the spares problem.

If I recall correctly the 5.25" had a somewhat disappointing rate of fire.