Shipbucket

The plan I used was pretty sketchy apart from showing the belowdeck spaces and armour. The bridge is a bit of guesswork, you can see the origins of the towers (probably based on the Nelson experience) used in York, Exeter and the Leanders and Arethusas. the open bridge I have shown on the plan is a basic box and the top-view was vauge but I've assumed it is an open bridge rather than an enclosed bridge. The masts are very short, the foremast may have been cropped on the original drawing.

BB1987's comment is very apt, it was the Japanese cruisers and Special destroyers that was the driving force behind the Admiralty wanting these vessels.

Ace, apparently all the A-E designs were 515 ft (wl) x 52 ft so I assume the basic hull would be unchanged. I could guessitimate them basing them off the Leanders and the style shown here. The long forecastle would be odd and I guess the forecastle break and funnel would be more forward too compensate, the 3x2 design D would look a little under-gunned I think. I'll have a bash, it will make a nice break before I turn to the Super Darings.
I was struck by the location of the bridge and D.K. Brown's statements on dry bridges and the effect of the relative location from the bows in sensing motion. I feel it would be a very dry bridge, probably a very workmanlike design and C mount has pretty good arcs, probably much better than the midships mountings on the C and D classes.
I agree with blackbuck on the AU potential. Had Britain found herself in a major war circa 1930-1933 then these might have been built more rapidly without waiting for the new turrets.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

James, I think your rendition of a never-was design is pretty darn good for a ship that no one has ever seen but only read about. And we all know how inaccurate those preliminary/legend drawings be. Well done mate, indeed.

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Keep well and keep drawing,

Monty

Thanks for kind comments Monty.
The drawing I based this on was supplied by Smurf over at Warships Discussion 3.0 back in 2007 to answer a question had on the 1929 cruiser designs. Luckily I copied the drawing then because most of the old photobucket linked images there have gone now. I'm not even sure where he got the information from originally, I assume it was a published source. Here is the drawing so you guys can compare. My B-E speculations will be sketchier but based on the A.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Huh. Amazing picture of an amazingly ugly warship. Still, it's not a pagoda

And yeah, if trouble had started earlier, we probably would have seen this. IMHO it actually looks like you could put a fair amount of more modern AA on it, it's got a lot of room on top, especially once the catapult is removed.

Excellent drawing.

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Would you please not eat my gun...

Design C is by far the best looking one.

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My Worklist
Sources and documentations are the most welcome.

-Koko Kyouwakoku (Republic of Koko)
-Koko's carrier-based aircrafts of WWII
-Koko Kaiun Yuso Kaisha - KoKaYu Line (Koko AU spinoff)
-Koko - Civil Aviation

Edit: my speculative designs for B to E are on page 1. I've not had to change too much of the layout, there is ample room in the hull even allowing for increased magazines for twin turrets etc. The E has a forward tower based on that from the cancelled Surrey class heavy cruisers cancelled in around this time, and which were modified and fitted to the Leanders.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

I find it quite odd that these designs are twin screws, while the Leander class as built had four screws. IMHO design C was the basis for what became the Leander class and as such would it be more logical to do it as a 4 screws ship?
IIRC most of the RN cruisers were 4 screws ships (apart from the C class and D class of WW 1 vintage, as these were originally designed with destroyers' engine plant)

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Thank you Kim for the crest

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

Actually, if you look closely, there ARE four screws in the lineart picture. Oops...

Oooh Hoood, you made a bit of a mistake...

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Would you please not eat my gun...

In the 1997 Ed of Warship these designs are describe in the Article "Eight Six inch guns in Pairs" by Ken McBride gestation of the Leander design a very interesting article

These drawing real put a bit of meat on the article, good stuff Hood
Graham

Yeah, I had wondered about the four screws myself. The second set of screws weren't obvious on my computer screen until I looked at the attached image above! So... further revised images with four propellers can be seen on page 1.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft