phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) (04/03/91)
From: phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Phil Gustafson) In article <1991Mar27.051532.23159@amd.com> plains!umn-cs!LOCAL!thornley@uunet.UU.NET (David H. Thornley) writes: >The Alaska class was not intended as a battle unit, but rather as a >cruiser killer and super cruiser [16 unnecessary lines of quoted text deleted! --CDR] The Navy insisted vigorously on calling the Alaska class "large cruisers" rather than "battle cruisers", though popular opinion and contemporary Jane's gave them the latter name. The armor deck was 3.25 or 2.8" on 1" STS and the bomb deck 1.4" STS, too close to Dave's numbers to cavil about. The belt was 9.5" sloped 10 degrees and the turret faces 12.8", slightly less and slightly more respectively than the corresponding parts of the last 12"-gunned battleships. Compared to the Arkansas, the Alaska had 4 or 5,000 tons, about 250 feet, and six times the horsepower. There's little doubt that the cruiser would have won a one-on-one fight, and Japanese 8" cruisers would have been dogmeat if they hadn't mostly been sunk by the time the CB's went into service. The Alaska protection was considerably heavier than that on the cancelled Lexington-class CC's (real battle cruisers) but their armament far lighter. My 1943 Bluejacket's Manual, in one of the few editorial passages dealing with tactics rather than the swabbie's lack of rights, first points out that battle cruisers are a Bad Idea with refereces to Jutland. Then it mentions a new class, highly classified, but named after territories, which might be a major improvement in the cruiser type. I mention this only because I think it indicates how much the Navy at the time hated the words "battle cruiser". The class can hardly be called a success. The two commissioned vessels were deactivated shortly after the war. There was a limited need for large gun-armed warships, the cruisers were no faster and less maneuverable than the Iowa-class battleships (they had single rudders, a cruiser characteristic not helpful on a 31,500-ton vessel), and the supply and training needs of a two-ship class were high. The third CB, the Hawaii, was finished to the point where she was afloat and her main battery installed. Suggested ways to exploit this immense, elegant, and expensive hull included a conversion to a humongous command cruiser and rebuilding as a Polaris carrier. Nothing important was done, and all three ships were broken up around 1960. See Norman Friedman, U.S. Cruisers, Naval Institute Press, ISBN 0-87021-718-6. -- | phil@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG | Phil Gustafson | {ames|pyramid|vsi1}!zorch!phil | UN*X/graphics consultant | sgi!gsi!phil | 1550 Martin Ave., San Jose CA 95126 | phil@gsi | 408/286-1749