The problem the US Navy Bureau of Design had was that no one knew what would be the best size of ship for future building. As can be seen from the design below, various designs had different points of view included in the designs. Sixteen 8" in eight twin mountings was a bit of overkill and would have taken up a lot of space and tonnage that could be better used toward aircraft operations.
.png)
What was decided on was to see what could be done with the least amount of tonnage to get the most out of a design. This would be the US Navies first aircraft carrier designed and built from the keel up. What became the Ranger was a 15,000 ton design that was very lightly built and virtually unarmoured. This would have made the ship very susceptible to damage from the Japanese in the Pacific. The Ranger was destined to spend its war career in the Atlantic where it would do a lot of training missions while a couple of highlights was the support of the Torch Landings and sweeping off Norway to clear out German shipping. One of the reasons given was that the ship was too slow to act with the carriers in the Pacific, but the Wasp was no faster, but crucially was better armoured.
While not considered a failure it is fairly significant that the next Yorktown class were much more capable and battleworthy vessels, built to the treaty limits. But that is in that other unnatural world. Since I have the London Treaty of 1930 being broken by the Japanese, I will have the next class being a Wasp class of two at a bigger and better quality than Ranger, then on to a much bigger, better, faster, etc Yorktown.
Above: as completed with 5" in the bow.
