[2] Developed as more compact versions of the preceding Town-class cruisers, the last three were built to a slightly modified design and were sometimes also called the Ceylon class.

The Fiji-class cruisers however, like the Minotaur class that followed in the middle of the war, essentially carried the same armament on a 1,000-tons less displacement.

The Fiji and Minotaur classes were very tight designs, built largely in war emergency conditions with little margin for any great updating postwar.

Due to the limited size of the Fiji class, a number of the ships had their 'X' turret removed to fit additional light anti-aircraft (AA) guns.

[3] By the late 1940s most of the Fiji class had the updated Type 274 'lock and follow' surface fire control radar, which massively increased the chance of hits from the opening salvoes.

Not only did this provide additional accommodation spaces for enlarged wartime crews, but there was no longer the need to carry large quantities of volatile aviation fuel; in 1940, Liverpool had her bow blown off when a torpedo detonated the 5,700 gallons of aviation fuel stored forwards and was out of action for a year.

This allowed the carriage of additional light AA weapons, a quadruple QF 2 pdr pom-pom mounting Mark VII generally being carried in 'X' position.

[citation needed] These ships would have been altered for water sprays to wash off nuclear fallout and received the Type 960 standard long-range air search radar.

These would have stopped earlier WWII low-level or later Falklands War-type attacks, by which time the RN no longer fitted 40 mm, the last were withdrawn with HMS Bulwark in 1981.

All ships of the Fiji class were decommissioned from active service with the Royal Navy by 1962 and began being sold for scrap, though Bermuda was fully operational during 1961 and sometimes ventured to sea in 1962 as flagship of the Reserve Fleet.

[citation needed] The last Fiji-class cruisers were seriously deteriorating due to being in an unmaintained extended reserve status many years.