Damned if we do, and damned if we don't. When the shells were canceled and the guns became unusable, "everyone complained." Now, here's a complaint about them even if they'd worked.
You are confusing volume with impact. The Navy did studies after [nearly?] every invasion and they consistently found that 6-inch and below were not effective against fortified targets. Some of those studies are probably on line now. They were in the USMA library.
As we were taught in MS101: Firepower isn't a thousand rounds fired in the general direction of the enemy. Firepower is the one round that blows your enemy' head off.
I am not complaining, I am stating the fact that it was a pure incompetent failure to learn from history that led that Navy to develop a 6-inch gun for shore bombardment when the Navy's own studies had repeatedly found that such a weapon is not large enough for the task.
Smaller guns worked great in suppressing attacks from the other side when their troops are out in the open but that is generally not the bombardment role.
It was only a matter of luck—the shells being too expensive—that this turkey got cancelled.
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