Alaska-class cruiser

The Alaska-class were six large cruisers ordered before World War II for the United States Navy (USN), of which only two were completed and saw service late in the war. The USN designation for ships of the class was "large cruiser" (assigned the hull symbol of "CB"), a designation unique to the Alaska-class, and the majority of leading reference works refer to them as such. However, various other works have alternately described these ships as battlecruisers despite the USN having never classified them as such, and having actively discouraged the use of the term in describing the class. The Alaskas were all named after territories or insular areas of the United States, signifying their intermediate status between larger battleships (which were mostly named after states) and smaller heavy and light cruisers (which were named after cities). The idea for a large cruiser class originated in the early 1930s when the USN sought to counter the Deutschland-class "pocket battleships" being launched by Germany. Planning for ships that eventually evolved into the Alaska-class began in the late 1930s after the deployment of Germany's Scharnhorst-class battleships and rumors that Japan was constructing a new large cruiser class, the B-65 "super cruiser." To serve as "cruiser-killers" capable of seeking out and destroying these post-treaty heavy cruisers, the class was given large guns of a new and expensive design, limited armor protection against 12-inch shells, and machinery capable of speeds of about 31–33 knots (57–61 km/h; 36–38 mph). Of the six planned, Alaska and Guam were the only two to be commissioned; a third, Hawaii, was close to completion at the war's end and had its construction suspended on 16 April 1947, while the remaining three were cancelled. Alaska and Guam served with the USN for the last year of World War II as bombardment...