uss-edsall:

In Hornfischer’s Last Stand of the Tin-Can Sailors he calls cannons ‘rifles’

This is technically the wrong term but to be honest I think I prefer ‘naval rifle’ to ‘naval cannon’

Now I’m not a naval historian, but wasn’t having rifled naval guns a big deal?  So someone studying the changeover period would call them rifles to distinguish.  Of course, pretty sure that was long before WW2…