Heavy Cruisers
Cruisers have filled a vital role in navy history, they were built to go into harms way and show the flag in situations that would not warrent or risk a larger captial ship. They decend from the sail frigates such as Nelson's HMS Agamemnon, the deadly HMS Leppord or undefeated USS Constituiton that roamed the worlds oceans enforcing policy, hunting pirates and destorying or capturing enemy shipping, and showing the flag. The design of the Amrican 44 gun frigate would evolve into the armored cruiser of the late 19th century. Commerce raiding was best exampled by the Confederate CSS Alabama and the German KM Graf Spee. Both raiders would reck havoc on the high seas aginst enemy shipping. The design of cruiser went through enormous experimentation during the first half of the Twentith Centry. Althought the size of cruiser would shrink over time, but their role and importance has not. Today, few nations possess a true "crusers." Only the United States Navy, the Russian Navy and strangly Peru field cruisers.
The treaty cruiser of the 1922 Washington Navy Treaty limited tonnage to 10,000 tons and weapontry to 8 inch or 6 inch guns. This limitation forced designs to sacrifice heavy amror and durability for speed and economy of range. Other then the Atlanta class light cruisers, crusiers generally carried four shafts and two rudders. The Pensacola ( CA-24) and Northampton ( CA-26) classes of heavy cruisers carried the 8 inch 55 calibur rifles which class them as "heavy cruisers" but the armor protection was virtually indistinguishable from the protection of light cruisers. Pensacola's armor belt vaired between 2.5 to 4 inches. Not much to keep out 8 inch shell fire much less 6 or 5 inch. Northampton class featured improvments in superstructure configuration but weren't that much more armored. For thirty years cruisers were the back bone of the world battle fleets, cruising the oceans and showing the flag while the dreadnoughts of the era recived more attention and more upgrades. Both ships classes were refitted or redesigned to incorporate new technologies such as radar, and spotting aircraft. Despite this, cruisers would take it on the chin in the brutal combat environment of the Pacific, fighting in engagements and situations beyond their designers wildest dreams. They would fight in virtually every theatre of operation during WWII. Battle cruisers: This is an interesting evolution of the cruiser idea that didn't quite live up to its expectations when tested in combat. At its most base level, the idea of a battle cruiser stems before there really was naval aviation of any kind, and the fleet staff needed to "scout" a head of the battle fleet. A fast cruiser would be dispatched to scout ahead or at any quarter that the fleet admiral would need to know what was out there. The potential enemy fleet would be doing the same thing with its scouts and at some point in time the two scout forces would bump into each other. The concept for the battle cruiser was to over whelm the opposing forces scouts with dreadnought level firepower, thus robbing the opposing feet of intelligence and be able to return to our own fleet with a tactical picture of what lay ahead. Their high speed would allow the escape from the enemy's dreadnoughts response. Despite the unbalanced design of high speed and heavy firepower at the expense of armor protection, there is several battle cruisers class that deserves mention.The Japanese Kongo class battle cruiser are the most successful class of battle cruiser, in both the balances of inherent weakness and strengths, the long successful carriers right up their losses in the Pacific War. They did it all. IJN Hiei and IJN Kirishima escorted the carrier strike force to Pearl Harbor. The provided Naval gunfire bombardment at Guadalcanal, and fought against true battleships in surface actions that are the stuff made of legends.
All four ships of this class were named from mountains in Japan and the Kongo was last Japanese capital ship designed and constructed outside of its native country. When built, Japan and Great Britain were allies and the exchanged of information and ideas were commonplace. The design B-46 ( Vickers Design 472C ) by the Japanese were the featured the first ships in the world to carry the new 14 inch/45 caliber gun in four twin turrets. When built in 1912-13 they were quick ships ( 27 knots at 78,275 shaft horse power for Kongo ) The British realized that they had built a ship superior to many of their capitol ships already in services and quietly redesigned the forth coming HMS Tiger to be a near "fifth" Kongo class ship.
The First Battle of the Falklands, HMS Invincible and HMS Inflexible under the command of Admiral Sturdee destoyed the German Armored Criusers KM Scharnhorst and KM Gneisenau under the command of Admiral Maximilian von Spee. This was a responce to the loss of British shipping in the Indian Ocean and the cruisers HMS Good Hope and Monmouth of the coast of Chile in hte Battle of Coronel by the German squadron. The faster and much more heavly armed battle cruisers was able to bring under fire the German ships while out of range of return fire.
KM Graf Spee - The Battle of the River Platt would have been an ideal mission to send either HMS Hood, HMS Repulse or HMS Renown to hunt down and over whelm the German Raider Graf Spee in the South Atlantic. The three British Cruisers that did engage the Graf Spee gave as good as they got despite heavy damage occurred in the battle. The raider took sanctuary in the harbor of Montevideo, Pauragury until international law forced the combatant back out to sea only to be scuttled by her captain, the exceptional humanitarian, Hans Langsdorff
USS Des Moines stern with Wright Sublette for scale. 1000 X 611 pixels 91K.
USS Des Moines at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard ( now in the hands of the city of Philadelphia.) 16 April 1998. My brother Mark Sublette is the photographer.
USS Des Moines 14 July 1998. Orders yours today, supplies are limited! 1000 X 558 pixels 70K.
USS Des Moines (CA134) and USS Salem (CA139) stern view 594 X 398. 36k
USS Indianapolis - This is worth a look, The Northwest Florida Daily News carried this article
about a Pensacola boy who is crusading to clear the name of Capt. Charles McVay.
USS Albany (CG1O) decommissioned awaiting scrapping 592 X 299 pixels.
USS Albany midships 591 X 382 pixels.
USS Albany's bow 516 X 315 pixels.
USS Macon CA132, Baltimore Class Heavy Cruiser with two Curtiss SC-1 Seahawks on stern. Launched 15 October 1944. (note: Empire State Building in background to the right side of photo.) 1945 New York Naval Review. - 73K 1200 X 611 pixels, B&W.
H.M.S. Belfast on the River Thames, photo by my friend N.T. Miller.
USS Salem (CA 139) Homepage and online museum.
http://www.warships1.com/US_cruisers.htm World War One, Battle of Coronel http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/coronel.htm
