Bought it, reading it now and it is very interesting.
Not as much on the technical side of their development as I would have liked but a fair bit on the thinking behind them and the involvement of Henderson in pushing the concept of a general purpose "fighting" destroyer or "back pocket cruiser".
A number of interesting titbits, including Henderson's belief that there was no point fitting guns that significantly outranged the effective range of the fire control systems, and that rate of fire was more critical than the damage done by individual rounds. This is the reason why the Tribal's had eight 4.7" (later six plus a twin 4") verses the smaller numbers of slower firing 5 to 5.9" guns on many other nations navies large destroyers.
The book went on to discuss the development of the Battles and the selection of the 4.5" BD twin, primarily because it was the available DP type available. Mention was made of the 4.7" being effective in all but high angle AA, and of course about the replacement of the X 4.7" with a 4" twin making the design much better all round ships.
There is a lot of discussion on how they were effective across destroyer, cruiser and other specialised roles.
I have been thinking a bit on the concept and I can't help but wonder if, based on Henderson's thinking, the Tribals would have been even more effective with an all 4" main armament. I know the performance of the 4" in surface fire is not much less than the 4.7", but superior in high angle AA fire. The final pair of Canadian Tribals were completed with four twin 4".
The mountings are sufficiently lighter, so much lighter in fact that five 4" twin mounts could be fitted for the weight of the four 4.7", with more than enough weight left over for a second quad 2pdr Pompom. Possible arrangement could have been 4" twins in A, B, Q, X, and Y and a quad 2pdr in place of the quad .50cals on each beam. Structural strengthening would be required for the beam positions to switch from .50 Cal to 2pdrs.
