Cruiser

A cruiser is a warship of significant, but not the greatest, power. The term goes back into the age of sail, although the usage differed from even the 20th century. Beyond that basic statement, the characteristics and roles of cruisers have varied greatly since the beginning of the 20th century, when the term was applied with some degree of formalism.

The word "cruiser" was first used in English in 1651. Cognates in Dutch, Portuguese, and French meant "crossing", as in crossing back and forth across the entrance to a harbor to enforce a blockade, or crossing an ocean.

One of today's challenges is that the definitions of three warship types — cruiser, destroyer, and frigate — have had changing and overlapping definitions, and even overlapping realization. The "frigate" of the age of sail had a role comparable to many modern cruiser roles, but a modern frigate is an escort vessel lighter than a destroyer or cruiser. Literally the same hull is used for the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the retired land attack and antisubmarine-optimized Spruance-class destroyers, and for the multirole but extremely strong antiair Burke-class destroyers.

The U.S. and Russia are the only navies with ships designated as cruisers, and only the U.S. has actively discussed building new cruisers.

Classic Roles

Classic roles included:

• Foreign station ships, independently deployed, looked out for national interests around the world. In addition to an extensive gun armament, the station ship had self-repair capability, long range, and "first-responder-to-disorder" equipment such as small arms for the crew and an extensive boat outfit. The disorder could be a revolutionary situation or a natural disaster.
• Sea denial ships, using their pre-deployed location, attacked other nations' trade routes. Counter-raider merchant ship escorts would, in turn, try to stop enemy sea denial ships.
• Scout vessels, fast enough to run from what they could not fight, and heavily armed enough to defeat what they can catch.

Cruiser is certainly an older term than destroyer. As destroyers emerged, as well as light cruisers, one of the classic distinctions was that a cruiser had some armor but a destroyer had none.

Evolved roles

Reconnaissance

Scouting is a traditional role. In WWII, the UK used cruisers, with radar and greater speed than battleships, to shadow capital ships and coordinate strikes. The Soviet Union assigned some of its cruisers, in the fifties and sixties, a similar role against U.S. carrier battle groups.

The scouting function is reflected in the U.S. ship type code, CV, for aircraft carriers. Some of the early aircraft carriers had 8 inch/203mm guns for self-protection against other ships, that being considered a caliber fit for a heavy cruiser. As it became obvious that carriers would always be escorted, the heavier guns were removed from carriers with them, to make more space for aviation functions. Most subsequent carriers, through WWII, did have 5" dual-purpose guns; the latest carriers have, at most, autocannon for defense against speedboats or perhaps final point defense against air threats.

New Japanese "destroyer" designs will carry more than the usual two helicopters of a cruiser. Italian Andrea Doria class cruisers carried 6 helicopters. Discussions of ship designs underway also considering carrying a mixture of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, the latter in both unarmed ISR and armed combat configurations.

Sea denial role

The idea of an independent balanced ship, or at least a small formation, has gone in and out of style. For blue water operations, however, air and space sensors are far more capable than anything on a surface ship.

Threats, of course, have changed. There are few scenarios where there would be blue-water commerce raiding, but there very definitely are littoral threats from pirates and terrorists. These threats, however, come from nothing larger than a fast attack boat.

Anti-air warfare

In WWII, the CLAA type, a light cruiser with an exceptionally large number of 5" guns, met with only limited success. Had radar control been more advanced, they might have had a chance. The most significant advantage of this design was that it was larger and had better sea-keeping characteristics than a destroyer, so it could escort carriers under any weather conditions.

A high-end modern destroyer could be as strong an anti-surface threat as a WWII heavy cruiser, and immensely more in anti-air warfare. For a time, however, a distinction was that cruisers had area air defense capability, while destroyers had local capability, more than self-defense but only extending to ships in close company.

Modern cruisers are the key escorts and escort command vessels in CVBGs. The group anti-air warfare officer is usually on a cruiser, which has both AEGIS battle management that a carrier does not, and more space for task group command functions than a destroyer.

It seems a given that new-generation U.S. cruisers will have a significant theater ballistic missile defense role. Nevertheless, any AEGIS ship potentially can use the SM-3 ABM; the Japanese Kongo-class destroyers are adding TBMD capability. Kongos are modified copies of Burke-class destroyers, not cruisers. A

Command ship

• Group
• NCA

Land attack

Gunfire support was long a role of cruisers, where many believe their 8" and 6" guns were superior to the larger guns of battleships. The cruiser guns were faster-firing, as or more accurate, and their smaller shell size allowed them to fire in closer proximity to friendly forces.

With the advent of the Vertical Launch System on U.S. Ticonderoga class (i.e., CG 52 and higher), the ships gained a significant, if expensive, land attack capability using the BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile.

Ballistic missile defense

• TBMD
• SM-3

Experimental variants

Perhaps the most common experiment of the past was a gunship-aircraft/floatplane carrier, a concept that has revived significantly with helicopters.

Sailing cruisers

The Royal Navy categorized sailing ships (i.e., three-masted_ from the most powerful 1st rate to the light 6th rates; smaller fighting vessels, such as sloops and brigs, were not "rated". Parliamentary documents of 1694 show that 5th and 6th rates were detached to "cruise" to protect friendly shipping, and to find hostile vessels. Ships of these rates had long endurance and high speed. They held to the general principle that they could run from any vessel heavily armed enough to defeat them, but were armed well enough to pursue and neutralize pirate and other commerce raiders. Their captains had sufficient rank to be trusted on independent operations.

While they could not survive in line of battle, they had important roles in fleet operations, as couriers, rescue vessels, scouts, and, after the Battle of the Saintes (1782), were often used as command ships that would not be tied to the line or a tempting target.

First World War

Scouting remained a role, independently, in small cruiser units, and for a fleet. Cruisers did not take on a significant antisubmarine role, even though one of the first actions in the war involved three British cruisers being sunk by a German submarine.

In the balance among speed, armament, and armor, cruisers favored speed above all. Cruiser armor did not meet one of the contemporary definitions of a battleship: armor proof against shells the same size as its main battery. There were continuing discussions during WWI about "battlecruisers" and about "large cruisers" afterwards; it did become clear that using battlecruisers as part of a battle line, in the presence of battleships, was extremely unwise. A battlecruiser might find a battleship, but never fight one.

Cruisers under interwar treaties

The London Treaty of 1930 is one point of reference, as it defined a heavy cruiser, also known as an armored cruiser (CA) or first class cruiser, as having a 6.1/155mm to 8/203mm inch main battery. They are generally a post-First World War design. A few examples of "first class protected cruisers" or "semi-armored cruiser" existed; they had the armament of heavy cruisers but lighter armor.

Designs for, and operations in, WWII

U.S. WWII cruisers were extremely valuable, but in roles different than had first been conceived. One role centered around destroyers attacking with torpedoes; the U.S. saw the cruisers as leading U.S. attacks or defending against enemy attacks of this type. They were also expected to operate independently, both in raiding and in presence on the lines of communications in the Pacific.

They actually had little independent role, but screened the carrier task forces primarily against aircraft, and bombarded shore targets both in raids and in amphibious support.

U.S. Baltimore Class

The U.S. commissioned the USS Baltimore, a 14,500 ton heavy cruiser, in 1943. There were 17 ships in this class, several of which were converted to guided missile cruisers after the war.

WWII actions

Battle of the River Plate

The German "pocket battleship", SMS Graf Spee, was an advanced design 16,200 ton design, heavily armed with (6×11 inch/280 mm, 8×5.9 inch/150 mm) She had a long run of commerce raiding, but was eventually confronted by three British cruisers:

• heavy cruiser HMS Exeter (heavy) (8,400 ton 6×8-inch/203mm)
• light cruiser HMS Ajax (7,000 tons, 8×6-inch/152mm)
• light cruiser HMS Achilles (7,000 tons, 8×6-inch/152mm)

Raids

By early 1942 American cruisers screened the first fast carrier raids against Japanese held islands in the Pacific

Battle of the Java Sea

The cruisers Houston, Marblehead, and Boise fought with the American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) command under Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman in a vain attempt to stop the victorious Japanese advance into the Java Sea in February 1942.

Battle of Savo Island

In the Battle of Savo Island in August 1942 three American cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes as well as the Australian cruiser Canberra were lost in a Japanese night attack.

Postwar

U.S. Des Moines class

Three heavy cruisers, modified from the Boston-class, were commissioned after WWII: Des Moines (CA-134), Salem (CA-139), and Newport News (CA-148). They were larger (17,000 tons) than the Baltimores, and had a new type of semi-automatic 8-inch/203mm gun.

Discussions of postwar cruisers tend to focus on the conversions to guided missile cruisers and new-construction guided missile cruisers, and ignore the last of these gun cruisers. Since they had a far higher rate of fire than earlier heavy cruisers, they provided exceptional naval gunfire support to ground troops.

the three-ship class was admirably suited as fleet flagships and for shore bombardment. All three ships served as flagships of the Sixth Fleet. Only Newport News (CA 148), commissioned in Jan 1949, used her big guns extensively, and that was on the gun line in Vietnam. Newport News and Salem (CA 138) were air conditioned; the name-ship Des Moines (CA 134) was not.<

Experimental designs

• Long Beach
• Kara

1950 to 1975

Designations get extremely confusing during this period, both because the Soviet Union and the U.S. might well have different names for a ship with the same basic capabilities, and there were also some new concepts that did not fit into any designation of the past.

While there were occasional revivals of battleships, principally in gunfire support roles, the U.S. Navy defined cruisers as its primary surface combatants. As with current definitions, such a vessel had a long-range area air defense capability, which would be based on the Talos. A cruiser was to be assigned, as a major escort, to each carrier battle group.

During some of this time, there was a perception of a "cruiser gap" between the U.S. and U.S.S.R., because, using certain U.S. terminology, there was a time that the U.S. called six of its ships "cruisers" while the Soviets used the term for 19 of theirs. In actuality, 17 of the Soviet vessels were comparable or weaker than a U.S. group of 10 ships, which were redesignated several times.

A difference between the cruiser and other new construction was that the cruisers could carry deep-strike nuclear missiles, either the Regulus "pilotless-airplane" old-style cruise missile or the same Polaris used as a submarine-launched ballistic missile. No surface ship, however, was ever fitted with either of these deep-strike systems.

United States: DLG 6 / DDG-37 Farragut / DLG 9 Coontz

The truly confusing vessel designation from this period which was a "frigate", a task force escort between the size of a WWII destroyer and cruiser. Frigates would not carry deep-strike weapons, so would be less expensive than the cruisers. Rather than the longest-range Talos, their SAM system would be the mid-range Terrier. As built, however, the first was

One cruiser was to be assigned to each carrier group. There were relatively few of these ships, due to their cost and because the Frigates could carry almost as many weapons as a Cruiser.

From 1950 to 1975, what the Navy called, for a time, "frigates" were a new type, a 5800 ton ship. The first hull laid down was the USS Farragut, followed by her sisters USS Luce and USS Macdonough. Their armament of these three started out as three dual 5"/38 mounts, two in the forward "A" and "B" positions and one in the astern "X" position. In these three ships, the "B" gun position was converted to a Terrier launcher, and the "X" position to an ASROC launcher.

USS Coontz was to be the fourth of the 5800 ton hulls, but was actually commissioned before the Farragut. Schedules worked out that the Coontz not converted from three gun positions, but immediately had the "A" gun, "B" Terrier, and "X" ASROC.

Soviet

The Soviets stayed with more traditional types, and never hesitated to have a clear difference between destroyers and cruisers. Remember that the U.S. Farragut/Coontz were called everything but cruisers. So, by 1974, the U.S. had only six ships called cruisers, while the Soviets had 19 ships called cruisers.

In actuality, most of the Soviet "cruisers" were comparable to the Farragut/Coontz vessels, not the much larger vessels the U.S. called cruisers. The Soviets also had all-gun Sverdlovsk light cruisers, while the U.S. had the Des Moines heavy cruisers.

All but two of the Soviet ships were relatively small vessels, roughly equivalent to US Frigates and far smaller than US Cruisers. The differing US and Soviet definitions of "cruiser" caused problems when comparisions were made between US and Soviet naval forces. A table comparing US and Soviet cruiser forces showed 6 US ships vs. 19 Soviet ships,

Major missile combatants

• Ticonderoga
• California and sisters?
• Kirovs
• Slavas