ARA Almirante Brown (CA-1934)

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The Tierra Del Fuego class was under construction and completing at the same time as the Japanese Myoko class with their 10 guns layout and the US Salt Lake City with its 10 gun layout. The TDF's were more than a match for the European eight gun ships, but the Argentine Navy felt that a class equivalent to the Japanese and US ships would negate anything any of the other South American countries might source from any of the major powers. So the follow up class, instead of following the same layout as the TDF class added an extra turret in the Japanese manner.

The Almirante Brown and General Belgrano were laid down in 1930 and completed in 1934. Various portions of the previous class were kept, the ships used the same model SK210-27 L50 8.2" twin turret system. The single 3.4"/88mm AA guns had to be mounted as the 88mm L56 twins would not be available for another 2-3 years. These weapons would be retrofitted in 1938 for the Brown and 1939 for the Belgrano. The extra turret lengthened the ships and extra breadth was required to maintain stability.

By 1938-39 the ships had been through various refits continually upgrading the various fittings, AA weaponry, gunnery control, aircraft, etc. These ships had caused a stir overseas as they were far over the Treaty limits at 15,000 tons standard displacement. As the treaty's did not apply to Argentina, they could build ships like this. It was not until the ships faced battle in WW2 that the ships battle worthiness could be judged.
Long low mean looking ships, the extra 2,000 tons was spent on the extra 40 foot of length and the much larger propulsion system to push the ships up to 34 knots. Fight or flight. With that speed it was these ships choice what would happen.

With the original drawing above I gave it 9x8.2", where it really looks like it would be no better than 6x8.2". Those are twins, not triples.

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