List of battlecruisers of the United States The United States Navy began building a series of battlecruisers in the 1920s , more than a decade after their slower and less heavily armed armored cruiser s had been rendered obsolete by the Royal Navy ' s battlecruisers . Construction of these ships was abandoned under the terms of an armaments limitation treaty , though two were completed as aircraft carrier s . The US Navy subsequently ordered six " large cruisers " — which are often considered battlecruisers by historians — in 1940 , of which only two entered service . At first unconvinced of the importance of the superior speed of the British battlecruisers , the US Navy changed its position after evaluating the new type of ship in fleet exercises and Naval War College wargames , and after the Japanese acquisition of four s in the early 1910s . The Secretary of the Navy initially refused the General Board ' s suggested procurement of several battlecruisers , but fleet exercises revealed that the Navy lacked forces that could effectively find and track an enemy fleet in any weather , and a consensus gradually emerged that battlecruisers would be ideal for this role . Battlecruisers were effective when concentrating their fire on an enemy fleet ' s leading ships , as the Japanese armored cruisers had done to the Russians at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 . Another role envisioned was tracking down and destroying enemy commerce raiders . British experience during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in late 1914 and the Battle of Dogger Bank the following year , where British battlecruisers caught and destroyed German armored cruisers , confirmed all these capabilities . So when Congress authorized a large naval building program in 1916 , six s were included . None were completed before the arms - limiting Washington Naval Treaty was ratified in 1922 ; four were broken up on the slipway and two were converted into aircraft carriers . The treaty forestalled any further development of battlecruisers for the next decade and a half , but a number of countries experimented with " cruiser - killer " ships in the late 1930s that were designed to destroy the post - London Naval Treaty heavy cruisers . These designs were formally designated as battlecruisers by the Dutch and Soviets and as large cruisers by the Japanese and Americans , but all were roughly equivalent and all were commonly called battlecruisers . The US Navy ' s main impetus for the " Alaska " class was the threat posed by Japanese cruisers raiding its lines of communication in the event of war . Heavy cruisers were also the most likely surface threat to aircraft carriers making independent raids , so a cruiser - killer was also an ideal carrier escort . Reports of a Japanese equivalent reinforced the Navy ' s desire for these ships . Two were commissioned in time to serve during the last year of World War II , but were decommissioned two years after the war . " Lexington " class . The design of the " Lexington " - class battlecruisers was approved on 30 June 1916 and six were planned as part of the massive 1916 building program , but their construction was repeatedly postponed in favor of escort ships and anti - submarine vessels . The original design mounted ten and sixteen guns on a lightly armored hull with a maximum speed of . The General Board regarded the design ' s firepower as inadequate and took the opportunity offered by the postponement to order a redesign to improve the ships ' armament to include eight and sixteen guns . After the Americans entered World War I in April 1917 , the Royal Navy furnished more information from its analyses of the Battle of Jutland , in which three British battlecruisers were destroyed by magazine explosions , and provided detailed information on the heavily armored design of the s then under construction . The General Board then re - evaluated the design and greatly increased the armor protection , at the cost of reducing the maximum speed to . Anti - torpedo bulge s , additional torpedo bulkhead s and a general increase in armor thicknesses increased the design ' s beam by and increased its displacement by over . While four of the ships were eventually cancelled and scrapped on their slipways to comply with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty , and , the two most advanced ships , were converted into the United States ' first fleet carrier s . In World War II , " Lexington " conducted several raids on Japanese bases before being sunk during the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942 . " Saratoga " sank the during the Battle of the Eastern Solomons three months later , then supported a number of American operations in the Pacific before being attached to the British Eastern Fleet for operations in the Indian Ocean . Though she was torpedoed twice , " Saratoga " survived the war , and was destroyed as a target ship during Operation Crossroads , a series of atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in mid - 1946 . " Alaska " class . The " Alaska " - class cruisers were six very large cruisers ordered on 9 September 1940 . They were known , popularly and by historians , as " battlecruisers " , although the Navy discouraged describing them as such and gave them the hull symbol for large cruisers ( CB ) . All were named after territories or insular area s of the United States , unlike battleships , generally named for states , or cruisers , named for cities . Initial design work for a " cruiser - killer " began in 1938 , although the design was not finalized until June 1941 . Of the six ships ordered in September 1940 , only three were laid down ; two of these were completed , and the third ' s construction was suspended on 16 April 1947 when she was 84 % complete .