U.S. Cruisers; An Illustrated Design History

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1984. Presumed First U. S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. A. D. Baker III and Alan Raven (Ship Plans). vii, [5], 496, [4] pages. Illustrations. Key to Line Drawings. Appendices: A. Cruiser Designations; B. Names and Dates Lies, and C. Cruiser Characteristics. Notes on Sources. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling and a small edge tear near bottom of spine. This fully illustrated series offers detailed descriptions of the evolution of all classes of the principle U.S. combatant types, as well as plans, profiles, and numerous detailed photographs. Norman Friedman, Ph.D., is an American author and naval analyst. He has written over 30 books on naval matters, and appeared on television programs on PBS and the Discovery Networks. Friedman holds a doctorate in theoretical physics, completing his dissertation "Additional Scattering of Bloch Electrons by Simultaneous Imputity and Lattice Interaction" in 1974 Columbia University. From 1973 to 1984, he was at the Hudson Institute, becoming Deputy Director for National Security Affairs. He worked for the United States Navy as in-house consultant. From 2002 to 2004, he served as a futurologist for the United States Marine Corps. A.D. Baker III is a highly regarded naval authority known for his work as an illustrator and writer. His line drawings appear in several books. He is the editor of The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World and a contributing editor to the journals Warship International and Proceedings. Alan Raven is a British-born naval historian, illustrator, and professional ship-model builder whose work frequently appears in modeling magazines. A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles. The term "cruiser", in use for several hundred years, has had different meanings throughout this period. During the Age of Sail, the term cruising referred to certain kinds of missions-independent scouting, commerce protection, or raiding-fulfilled by frigates or sloops-of-war, which functioned as the cruising warships of a fleet. With the advent of the dreadnought battleship before World War I, the armored cruiser evolved into a vessel of similar scale known as the battlecruiser. The very large battlecruisers of the World War I era that succeeded armored cruisers were now classified, along with dreadnought battleships, as capital ships.
By the early 20th century after World War I, the direct successors to protected cruisers could be placed on a consistent scale of warship size, smaller than a battleship but larger than a destroyer. In 1922 the Washington Naval Treaty placed a formal limit on these cruisers, which were defined as warships of up to 10,000 tons displacement carrying guns no larger than 8 inches in calibre; heavy cruisers had 8-inch guns, while those with guns of 6.1 inches or less were light cruisers, which shaped cruiser design until the end of World War II. Some variations on the Treaty cruiser design included the German Deutschland-class "pocket battleships", which had heavier armament at the expense of speed compared to standard heavy cruisers, and the American Alaska class, which was a scaled-up heavy cruiser design designated as a "cruiser-killer". In the later 20th century, the obsolescence of the battleship left the cruiser as the largest and most powerful surface combatant after the aircraft carrier. The role of the cruiser varied according to ship and navy, often including air defense and shore bombardment. During the Cold War the Soviet Navy's cruisers had heavy anti-ship missile armament designed to sink NATO carrier task-forces via saturation attack. The U.S. Navy built guided-missile cruisers upon destroyer-style hulls (some called "destroyer leaders" or "frigates" prior to the 1975 reclassification) primarily designed to provide air defense while often adding anti-submarine capabilities, being larger and having longer-range surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) than early Charles F. Adams guided-missile destroyers tasked with the short-range air defense role. By the end of the Cold War the line between cruisers and destroyers had blurred, with the Ticonderoga-class cruiser using the hull of the Spruance-class destroyer but receiving the cruiser designation due to their enhanced mission and combat systems. Nevertheless, several navies operate destroyers that have many of the characteristics of vessels that are sometimes classified as cruisers. Notably, the International Institute for Strategic Studies has rated the US Navy's Zumwalt-class destroyers as cruisers. Other classes of destroyer, including the US Navy's Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force's Maya-class destroyer, Atago-class destroyer and Kongo-class destroyer, the South Korean Navy's Sejong the Great-class destroyer and the Chinese PLA Navy Type 055-class destroyer-class have many of the attributes of cruisers.