page_title: Heavy cruiser
section_title: World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Heavy cruiser / History / World War II
caption_attribution_description: The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Columbus (CG-12), circa 1962. Columbus was recomissioned on 1 December 1962. Note that the AN/SPS-30 radars fore and aft are still missing as are the two 127 mm/38 guns later fitted to the port and starboard of the aft mack.
context_page_description: The heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm in caliber, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930.
  The heavy cruiser is part of a lineage of ship design from 1915 through the early 1950s, although the term "heavy cruiser" only came into formal use in 1930. The heavy cruiser's immediate precursors were the light cruiser designs of the 1900s and 1910s, rather than the armoured cruisers of the years before 1905. When the armoured cruiser was supplanted by the battlecruiser, an intermediate ship type between this and the light cruiser was found to be needed—one larger and more powerful than the light cruisers of a potential enemy but not as large and expensive as the battlecruiser so as to be built in sufficient numbers to protect merchant ships and serve in a number of combat theaters.
  With their intended targets being other cruisers and smaller vessels, the role of the heavy cruiser differed fundamentally from that of the armored cruiser.
context_section_description: Heavy cruisers were still being built, and they could be balanced designs when nations decided to skirt the restrictions imposed by the London Naval Treaty.
  The Germans built their Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruisers of 14,000 tons, although the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was supposed to limit their displacement to the 10,000 tons specified by the Washington Naval Treaty.
  The US built the Baltimore class of heavy cruisers during the war. While earlier heavy cruisers were noted for their powerful torpedo armament (especially Japanese heavy cruisers), later ships built by the USN concentrated mainly on anti-aircraft armament, as their main role was escorting aircraft carriers and troop transports instead of engaging in surface actions. Most Japanese heavy cruisers were sunk by aircraft or submarines, rather than in surface engagements.
  The US built the last heavy cruisers, which were finished shortly after the war. The Baltimore class consisted of seventeen ships, including three of the slightly different Oregon City class. The Des Moines class were the last heavy cruisers built: though based on the Baltimores, they were considerably heavier and longer due to their new rapid-firing 203 mm (8-inch) guns.  Additionally, two aircraft carriers were built on a Baltimore-derived hull, the Saipan-class aircraft carrier.
  The largest heavy cruisers were the Alaska-class large cruisers, which were designed as "cruiser killers". They resembled contemporary battlecruisers or battleships in general appearance, as well as having main armament and displacement equal or greater than that of capital ships of the First World War. However, they were actually upscaled heavy cruisers, as their machinery layout and the possession of a single rudder was based on cruisers rather than that of capital ships. The Alaska-class cruisers lacked the sophisticated underwater protection system of true capital ships, making them vulnerable to shells and torpedoes that hit under the waterline. They also had proportionately less weight in armour at 28.4% of displacement, in contrast to the British battlecruiser HMS Hood of 30%, the German Scharnhorst and the U.S. Navy's North Carolina-class battleships of 40%. Effectively, the Alaskas were ill-protected to stand up against the guns of true battleships and battlecruisers, and as carrier escorts they were much more expensive than the Baltimores while having only slightly better anti-aircraft capabilities. Given low priority by the USN, only two members of the class were completed and they saw little service as World War II ended not long after their commissioning.
  Heavy cruisers fell out of use after the Second World War, with the Royal Navy decommissioning its last three (HMS London, HMS Cumberland, and HMS Devonshire) by the early 1950s. Some existing US heavy cruisers lasted well through the 1970s, with the last all-gun ship USS Newport News decommissioning in 1975. USS Chicago, USS Columbus and USS Albany, which had been converted to guided missile cruisers (US hull symbol CG), were laid up between 1975 and 1980.
  The last heavy cruiser in existence is the USS Salem, now a carefully preserved museum ship in Quincy, Massachusetts.
caption: USS Columbus in 1963. Originally a Baltimore-class cruiser, she was rebuilt into an Albany-class guided missile cruiser.
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