Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
– Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, May 8
Here we see the lead ship of an odd class of warships, the USS Alaska (CB-1). This ship would have made an impressive World War One batttlecruiser, but she was designed some 20-years too late and was underutilized.
Designed in the late 1930s, she was authorized under the Fleet Expansion Act on 19 July 1940. These ships were never intended to be battleships, but instead just really big cruisers with 9x 12-inch guns (most heavy cruisers only had 8-inch guns) and a standard displacement of 29,000-tons. Her mission was to mix it up with such large overgrown cruisers as the German Deutschland-class pocket battleships, the twin 29,000 ton/9×11-inch gunned Scharnhorst class large cruisers, the 18,000-ton Admiral Hipper class and the huge 15,000-ton Japanese Mogami/Tone class. Her overall layout was similar to the South Dakota class battleships only smaller (or alternatively similar to a scaled-up Baltimore class heavy cruiser) using the same below-deck machinery as the Essex-class aircraft carriers
Laid down ten days after Pearl Harbor, where a number of battleships that were more heavily armored than this compromise cruiser design hit the bottom, no one really knew what to do with this ship. This delayed her commissioning until the last half of 1944, at which point all of the Mogami, Tone, Scharnhorst, and Deutschland class pocket battleships had been withdrawn or sunk.
Without a mission, Alaska found herself as a fast carrier escort where her 102 20/40/127mm AAA guns helped keep kamikazes at bay and her 12-inch main battery could be used on shore targets if needed.
She served in 1945 off Iwo and Okinawa then was placed in reserve status and decommissioned in February 1947 after less than three years service. Her sisterhip USS Guam was completed September 1944 and only served for 11 months in WWII while the follow-on ships Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Samoa were never finished (and indeed the last three were never even laid down). Hawaii was broken up on the ways when over 80% complete and her machinery was cannibalized and placed in storage for the Alaska and Guam.
In 1960, along with the six mothballed North Carolina and South Dakota class battleships, the Alaska and Guam were disposed of. Big gun ships in an age of missile armed boats seemingly obsolete. Both of these large cruisers were scrapped.
Specs:
Displacement:
29,771 tons
34,253 tons (full load)
Length: 808 ft 6 in (246.43 m) overall
Beam: 91 ft 9.375 in (28.0 m)
Draft: 27 ft 1 in (8.26 m) (mean) 31 ft 9.25 in (9.68 m) (maximum)
Propulsion: 4-shaft General Electric steam turbines, double-reduction gearing, 8 Babcock & Wilcox boilers
150,000 shp (112 MW)
Speed: 31.4 knots (58.2 km/h; 36.1 mph) to 33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph)
Range: 12,000 nautical miles (22,000 km) at 15 knots (28 km/h)
Complement: 1,517–1,799–2,251
Armament:
9 x 12″/50 caliber Mark 8 guns(3×3)
12 x 5-inch (127 mm)/38 caliber dual-purpose guns[4] (6×2)
56 ×40 mm (1.57 in) Bofors (14×4)
34 × 20mm Oerlikon (34×1)
Armor:
Main side belt: 9″ gradually thinning to 5″
Armor deck: 3.8–4.0″
Weather (main) deck: 1.40″
Splinter (third) deck: 0.625″
Barbettes: 11–13
Turrets: 12.8″ face, 5″ roof, 5.25–6″ side and 5.25″ rear
Conning tower:10.6″ with 5″ roof
Aircraft carried: 4× OS2U Kingfisher or SC Seahawk
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