Talk:USS Alaska (CB-1)
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My name is Jene Lowry.My Brother Thomas Albert Lowry served aboard the USS Alaska during the second world war.Does anyone have a crew list of this time frame. He was a gunners mate on a 40 caliber gun mount.
I can receive E-mails at bifstick@hotmail.com
Thanks in advance,
Jene Lowry
[edit] Battlecruiser?
While I agree that it's incorrect to simply state that the Alaska was a battlecruiser and leave it at that, I would say that the Alaska was essentially a battlecruiser, notwithstanding its official designation as a 'large cruiser'.
From the Wikipedia article on Battlecruisers: ...in terms of ship classification they occupy a grey area between cruisers and battleships... They were supposed to hunt down and outgun smaller warships... and outrun larger warships that they could not outgun.
I think that describes the Alaska class pretty well, when it was designed. Also, no other fast 12-inch-gun ship in any navy has been designated as anythong other than a battlecruiser, I don't think.Herostratus 05:57, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
- See Alaska class cruiser, which discusses the point (and which I just clarified a bit). I think the USN designers took some pains to not produce battlecruisers, which in that time period would likely have meant the use of 15- or 16-inch guns. But in any case our job in articles is not to make our own interpretations of the data, but simply what to report what others say, so we call it a "large cruiser" because the USN does, and if some published author says "well, they're really BCs not CBs", that would be a nice quote to add to Alaska class cruiser. (Even better would be a quote or two from the actual designers...) Stan 06:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
The design history of the Alaska class is rather interesting, and is covered in some detail in Norman Friedman's excellent, if dry, U.S. Cruisers. I haven't read that section recently (though I plan to, in anticipation of improving info regarding the Alaska Class) but I recall that the Alaskas were built in response to a rumoured class of Japanese cruiser-killers, which never existed (though some sources indicate the Japanese responded to the Alaskas by designing their own large cruisers). The Alaskas illustrate the problem with cruiser design and why the Washington Treaty was beneficial in controlling the cost of navies in the interwar period. Prewar USN doctrine was for the battle line to be accompanied by 6" gun cruisers (CL) to repel and accompany destroyer attacks, where their high rate of fire could smother and destroy enemy DDs. For scouting, commerce raiding/protection, and independent operations, though (all traditional cruiser roles), an 8" gun cruiser (CA) is needed, since you have to assume it could encounter an enemy CA. Once the treaty restrictions are gone, there is of course a natural desire to ensure that your CA can not only match, but overwhelm enemy CAs...so you upgun your cruisers. Hence, you put a larger main battery, and have superiority until the enemy does the same, which is basically what happened before WWI when the battlecruiser was introduced. Essentially this happened to all the types of cruisers in the USN: the 5" gun CLAAs became the Worchester class with automatic 6"/47s and no secondary battery; the role filled by the 6" gun CLs became the Des Moines class with automatic 8"/55s (10 rpm/gun!); and the role of the slow firing 8" gun CAs morphed into the Alaska class CB. Because by treaty definitions, cruisers were rated as light or heavy by battery, not displacement, it is natural to consider the Worchester as CL and Des Moines as CA, but the roles they were designed to fill was quite different. Anyway this has gone on longer than I intended but it shows that the CB concept was just an outgrowth of the Heavy Cruiser concept, and not a battlecruiser per se. But of course the distinction becomes slightly blurry at that point. I would say that the true battlecruiser is well and truly obsolete by 1944, when you have the Iowas, as fast as any cruiser in the world, armed with 16"/50s, and protected against it's own battery. What ship can outrun or outgun?! The propulsion advances of the 1930s changed a lot. Some sources call Iowa a battlecruiser, in spirit if not in name, saying the Montanas would have been the true BB equivalent (Iowa's armor could not withstand the 16" super heavy AP, which iirc has equal or better penetration than even Yamato's AP). This has gotten slightly off-topic, but I tend to do that. Hoping to add some of this to articles in the future. Sorry for being so long-winded :-P --ThirtyOneKnots 16:13, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
