Time to spin the Wheel of Shipgirls once again and see who we’re covering (uncovering?) this week. Okay, it’s not a wheel, it’s the entirely unscientific process of “Who in my doc is max level, not been written about yet, and would make a good Rule 5 subject?) Today the fates picked HMS Neptune, a Priority Group 2 blueprint ship for the Royal Navy.
As with other blueprint ships, she never actually existed in the real world. If she had come about, she would have been the first of her class, a planned line of five cruisers armed with twelve 152mm cannons in four turrets, a secondary armament of six 4.5 inch cannons in two turrets, and a further twenty 40mm Bofors cannons and twenty-eight Oerlikon 20mm cannons for AA coverage. Oh, and four quad 21 inch torpedo tubes, just for good measure.
All of this was based around the assumption that the war with Japan would last into at least 1946-1947. The British expected HMS Neptune to arrive well before the end of the war, and assumed that the construction of her sister ships (Centurion, Edgar, Mars, and Minotaur) would last until around 1950.
Obviously none of this happened, and a combination of post-war British austerity and questions about the role of a heavy gun cruiser in a modern navy saw the program cancelled without a single hull laid down.
Neptune, however, lives on through Azur Lane. Like many other Royal Navy shipgirls, she’s part of the Royal Maid Team (hence the outfit). As with most blueprint ships, she’s definitely on the higher end of the power scale. She’s a little bit bossy, but works well grouped up with her fellow maids, especially Ajax or Belfast. (Both of those two might be good future Rule 5s in their own right.)
Since this also happens to be the last post before Christmas, I’d like to wish all of my readers a very Merry Christmas!