Cruiser comparison

Good point, notably the change from hand-worked guns to turrets. Conversely something like a V&W destroyer was not much different from many of her WWII counterparts.

 

One of the obvious differences between WW1 and WW2 warships is in the specialist AA and ASW weaponry to deal with threats that did not exist in WW1. Many Cruisers were optimised as AA ships.

The M Class Destroyer in which my father-in-law served in 1942 had twice the firepower and 50more power and rangewas fitted with radar ASDIC, much more AA armament than any V or W class in 1918 (or even 1938).

The River Class frigates were far superior to the 1917 and 1918 Flower class escort sloops, faster and much better armed and with far better ASW equipment..

 

The surface armament was also quite a bit different at least in layout. Single gun turrets or casemates predominated in WWI where the inter war and WWII light cruisers typically had 3 gun turrets and no casemates.

 

The Omaha were hybrids, nobody else was building casemate "light cruisers" post WW1. British German and Japanese WW1 light cruiser designs all carried their guns in deck mounts, to get something like Omaha in the RN you need to go back to HMS Monmouth that was officially a full blown armoured cruiser not a light.

The original Mogami and Brooklyn are not light cruisers, they are B type cruisers according to the treaty but under all other aspects are 6" heavy cruisers. The European light cruisers grew to nearly 10.000t designs mounting nine or ten main guns but European navies did not go to using the same hull for 8" and 6" ships like the IJN and USN did. The RN made a half hearted move in that direction with the Towns but then reverted to a smaller design with the Colony class.

Rebuilding cruisers was extensively practiced by the USN post war, resulting in some of the ugliest ships ever (USS Albany) what would make no sense was rebuilding a casemate cruiser like USS Omaha that was not a great ship to start with.

The Japanese did some rebuilds, and the Soviets completed Krasnyi Kavkaz to an entirely different design. Italians gave some thought to rearming the first generation condottieri but nothing came of it as there were was no adequate DP gun available.

The British C and D AA conversions proved to be pretty useful ships, and, contrary to the unmodified ships, were often committed to the "hot spots". HMS Delhi as converted was undergunned by European light cruiser standards, but some Japanese light cruisers were not much better armed and she was likely to be a much better gun platform than a DD.

 

True, but the Ls and Ms were not really representative; they were the largest British destroyers until the Battle class, and their twin 4.7" mountings the most sophisticated. Most British and many foreign destroyers would have been familiar to WWI sailors. The A-I classes were incremental improvements on the V&W, and most of the War Emergency flotillas retained the classic four single hand-worked 4.7s (some O and P class ships had 4" Mark Vs of literal WWI vintage, though in updated mountings).

The Ls and Ms had one curious feature; the ammunition hoists were fixed to the hull rather than rotating with the mounting. They were at the center point, with the two shell hoists forward of the powder hoists (or the reverse in an aft mounting). This was fine when firing ahead (or astern), but if the mounting were trained on the beam, both shell hoists were adjacent to one gun and both powder hoists to other, so the loaders would have to work around each other, the path becoming more torturous the further the mount trained.

 

The AA cruisers were credited with 31 kills, almost 1/3 of total 97 for all British cruisers during the war. Most of these were shot down by the original six, with the longest lasting of them, Carlisle, taking the record with 11.

The wartime conversions Caledon and Colombo carried six 4" rather than 8-10 and were used largely as fighter direction ships supporting amphibious operations. Delhi appears also to have served in this role.

 

Italian reports on the Pantelleria battle remark on the high fire rate of the two M class destroyers present so the difference was noticeable in practice not just on paper. But interwar destroyers up to the I class were evolutionary designs.