That sounds utterly hideous and you have my sympathies - you sound like a lovely dad to have given up so much to help your DD sleep. I can see why you're at the point of desparation.
I'd agree with getting her checked on the caffeine, and reflux. It might be worth checking that she hasn't got too much adrenaline which can cause long spells of wakefulness at night - there was a description of CarGirl's DD who had this on this thread
Have you had any tests done for allergies / food intolerances? I wonder if she could be intolerant to something your wife eats (similar to the reflux issue).
CC is really designed to get them self-settling so that they can get back to sleep once they wake between cycles. That might fix the waking every 2-3 hours.
But the frequent evening waking and being up for long periods in the night sounds like a different problem - I know lots of babies who wake after every sleep cycle (including my 11.5 m.o DS) but who don't do that. Usually the first cycle is 45 mins long, then 1.5-2 hours, so it sounds like there's something unusual going on in the evening.
How many naps does she have in the day? If she's not napping often enough and sleeping a long time, then that could be part of the problem.
I'd agree with JoinScotland's recommendation of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth. I dislike the patronising tone and I hate his one-size-fits-all cry-it-out approach, but it's worth it's weight in gold as far as nap scheduling goes IMO.
At that age, most babies are having a short morning nap and a longer lunchtime one. A lot of babies between 6 and 18 months end up on a roughly 2-3-4 schedule: first nap 2 hours after waking, second nap 3 hours after waking, bedtime 4 hours after waking. My DS wakes at 6.30, sleeps for 30-45 mins at 9/9.30 and then for 2 hours between 1 and 3pm.
If she is having a lot of daytime sleep she won't need so much at night so it might be worth trying for more frequent but shorter naps in the day (if she only has one nap now). Or if she already has frequent naps, try for fewer of them and perhaps shorten them too.
When my DS is overtired he will very often be awake for long periods in the middle of the night. It happens especially often if he misses (a) nap(s) during the day.
Being up for a long while at night is also something that often happens when babies are working on a developmental spurt (often called sleep regressions). In the run up to developmental spurts many babies wake more often, are harder to get to sleep and may be up for long spells at night (my DS always does this). Your DD is at just the age for this - there's a regression in the run up to a developmental spurt at around 46 weeks. I don't think this is the cause of her problems, but it may make them harder to solve till the 46 week spurt is past. There's more info on this here, here and here.
I think it's also worth working out whether you think she's a baby who releases tension by crying or increases tension by crying. There's a really good article on it here. CC seems to work better for tension releasers, without much trauma, whereas gradual withdrawal methods seem to work better for tension increasers. (However, there is likely to be more crying from a tension releaser if they're overtired).
I do hope you find a solution. Do keep us updated.