Section F.11: Alaska class: large cruisers or battlecruisers?
There is great controversy over whether the Alaska class ships (CB 1-6) should be considered “battlecruisers” or “large cruisers”. These ships, and some Russian, Dutch, and Japanese designs of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s were larger than the 8-inch-gunned heavy cruisers of the era and smaller than contemporary battleships, which carried 14″ to 16″ guns. The disputed ships were all of roughly the same size and all carried 9 11″ or 12″ guns as the main armament. One side of the issue says they were exactly what the USN classification says: large cruisers. They are claimed to be simply the next step in heavy cruiser design, free of treaties which had limited the main armament to 8″. This side points to the cruiser-like design features and missions of the ships. By this argument, they were “big cruisers”, not “little battleships”. The other side of the issue says they were the WWII incarnation of the WWI battlecruisers. Their missions are claimed to be similar to the missions envision
