CUS Vancouver (CA-1944+)

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With the war in full swing in 1940, the Australis Navy gave to both the CSA and CUS Navies the technology for the autoloading systems that it had produced for its own 7.5" and 4.5" weapons. The CSA already had access to some of this technology through its French connection. The CUS was very grateful to receive this technology as it saved them years of development of their own. The CUS proceeded to design a cruiser utilising all of the technologies for 8", 4.5" and 3" automatic weapons. The 3" was to replace the 40mm and 20mm cannons that were found wanting in knockdown capabilities against the Japanese Kamikaze attacks and the German controlled bombs.

The class was only a few feet bigger than the prior twelve gun Augusta class, but as noted from the table below completely out performed that class. As one commander put it, the Vancouvers were floating magazines. The 8" guns fired a new super-sized 8" shell half as big again as the standard 8" shell 335lb to the standard 260lb shell. The trade-off for the advanced weaponry was that the new 8" turrets were almost twice the size and weight of the previous mark (51.6 tons to 29.0 tons). The magazines (as noted above) had to be almost 3 times as big to take enough shells (250 per gun). The new autoloading guns would have fired the normal 100 shells per gun in about 10 minutes. Though firing the main guns at the maximum rate would wear the barrels out in short order through the heat generated.

As can be seen from the above table, the guns show little difference in range and shell types, it is in the load per gun, and rate of fire per gun that the autoloading weapons excel at. With the much improved Radar ranging and detection equipment available to the weapons by 1944 the Vancouver classes accuracy was phenomenal.

Twin 3" are on board, yet to receive Radar outfit, Bridge superstructure complete as ship nears completion late 1944.

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