Sas ger a ay Pee ee 2 ee Norman Friedman AN ILLUSTRATED DESIGN HISTORY SHIP PLANS BY A. D. BAKER III AND ALAN RAVENU.S. CRUISERS ROS One oO eee steel cruisers in 1883. Today, more than a century later, the cruiser is a crucial part of the naval revitalization program, Reon en one ees a eee Is the subject of this book, the only account of U.S. cruiser development based on internal navy files. It presents a com plete history of cruiser design at a level of detail and accuracy never before approached. Like the other books in Norman Friedman’s design-history series, this one pays attention to all designs, even those that never left the drawing board, since Pa cia LL Loa CIR certain co eRe TS Dea ee ee ee tees design, which culminated in the current series of Aegis missile Pree ere UU RS Connect ear es Sean ene Re ee en ae eG leer keriea er} Because the nature of the cruiser is somewhat ill defined, his book discusses a wide variety of ships, from the battleship: like armored cruisers of the tra of the century and the battle Por eer Ren ete Re Tren acs were, in many ways, enlarged destroyers. It covers the emer- Peer mn emet ee aee Ceeert re boats, and the post—1945 command and missile cruisers. The Dy NU eee ee ee eet! een ee Memon to the latest ultramodern Ticonderogas defines many of the Cert ce ee Cece CSET defense/commerce raiding navy toa navy designed to seize and, exploit command of the world’s oceans, and from a navy of independent cruisers on foreign stations to a battle fleet navy Pr eee ss i oe ewe csr nae enn eae re? ea ec eet eee ce ry of any other category of ship, has beeh affected by the con Se eee A ees ee er cme eer eer lustrated for the first time in this book], an abortive design Derek never crise Sg set SORE Rec umn keke Crm ce a pretense Also carefully examined are the many post-World War I ‘cruiser projects, both those that were built, like the nuclear- Peete metre eee Ceca oa ee cialized command ship of 1968. In every case, the anthor dis- Re reece ec on ee TR Cees ree PW es enr eum enor eae iret ‘outboard and plan views of each cruiser class and of major modifications 10 many classes. The author has provided in- board profiles and sketches of abortive projects. Numerous photographs, many of them never before published, comple- Tecate cee ore ea Mere ee aoe eee RC) CSR Tear NO erent ee Teeny alike will find this the most comprehensive reference available Coe Mn cen are Meee env aay ee ee ears Pa ere Norman Friedman is 2 theoretical physicist and a strategist at Pea ee eee ee Se Or ST Jems in naval and military technology. A frequent consutiant to various federal agencies, he has done extensive research on Peres ee eae ete ere eT cee ee TU er ee a See ee en eer etme) Greets ner etme Un Peter ener eee en RT TaN Pee eee em ee ee Pee erie ea rete eee eee Pe ee ere Ree En ieee tte rn an Neen eS Parte a eee ee eS! Pa en ed Tee er eae eet acy reece Mather Noa Ue appear in the other two books in this design history series. US. Destroyers and U.S. Aircraft Carriers, and in The American Steel Navy. He is the editor of the English-language editions of Com Ca eer a a ne eae Perea esse eacrames na Coee ec eterna acme Meee er eae rer seen en eee cee hhonors graduate of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Per einen ear Uren SOE Baker was recently appointed to the se ws ee ersten eee Tan reo Alan Raven is a British-born naval historian and illustrator, He thas written and illustrated a number of books on British war: See tee Lunes Perera ae Se em OS oy Seen een eee een ere pee er nee a ee een Roo) shipbuilding magazines and writes articles on the history of warship design ete eer ee et oe ead Pree Cerrar eet Screener See ce Pass etsy eedFawime — U.S, CRUISERS = ertmtue rsU.S. CRUISERS AN ILLUSTRATED DESIGN HISTORY By Norman Friedman Ship Plans by A. D. Baker IIT and Alan RavenCopyright © 1984 bythe United States Naval Institute Annapolis, Maryland All rights reserved. No part ofthis book ‘may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher All photographs ae official US. Navy. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Friedman, Norman, 1946- US. cruisers. Bibliography: p. Includes index 1. Cruisers (Warships—United States—History. 2, Hattle cruisers United States History. 1 Title 1, Tile: US crulsers. VB20.3575 198) 39532530973 8414767 ISBN 0-87021-718-6 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 0605 04 03 02 01 1514131211 109Contents Acknowledgments Key to Line Drawings viii Introduction 1 ‘The New Navy, 1883-98 13, The Postwar Cruiser Navy 39 The General Board's Scouts, 1903-21 61 The Treaty and the "Tinclads" 97 Second Generation Treaty Cruisers 131 The London Treaty of 1930: Admiral Pratt's Navy 163 ‘The Brooklyn Class 183 The Second London Treaty 217 ‘The War Programs 253 10 " 2 B 14 ‘The Post-Treaty Generation 287 Cruisers at War, 1941-45 311 Wartime Cruiser De: 349) Into the Missile Age 373 ‘The Command Cruisers 427 Appendices Cruiser Designations 447 Names and Dates List 448 Cruiser Characteristics 456 Notes on Sources 489 Index 493Acknowledgments This book could not have been written without the assistance of many friends over a period of eight years. I particularly appreciate the contributions of Mildred Grissom, Kit Ryan, Philip Sims, and Charles Wise- ‘man in helping me gain access to many BuShips and Navsee files still under navy control. Mrs. Lorna An- derson of Opnav located many of the files of the for- mer Ship Characteristics Board Thanks go to Harry Schwartz, now retired, and to Elaine Everly for giving me access to the facilities of the Navy and Old Army branch of the National Ar- chives, and (0 many others for helping make avail- able to me the wartime BuShips files at Suitland under the National Archives’ control and the navy- controlled files at the Federal Record Center. For assistance at the Naval Historical Center, Lam grate- ful to Dr. Dean Allard and his staff, especially Cal Cavalcante, Gerri Judkins, Kathy Lloyd, and Martha Crowley. Mrs. S. M, Edwards of Navsea, now retired, provided plans on microfilm of many of the cruisers. Alan Raven and Arthur D. Baker IIT helped illu trate the text, and the latter doubled as its critic, catching many errors and making valuable sugges- tions. He also provided many of the photographs. Other good friends deserve thanks for generous as- sistance: Charles Haberlein, David Lyon, Norman Polmar, Larry Sowinski, Tom Walkowiak, Thomas Hone, and Christopher C. Wright. They supplied me with significant material from their own collections as well as invaluable comments and corrections. | thank them, too, for numerous errors caught; any remaining errors are my own responsibility. My wife Rhea deserves special thanks for her pa- tience, assistance, and encouragement, without which this book could not have been completed. It would also have been impossible to write with- out the patience and care of my typists, Helen fa danza and Anne Marsek of Hudson Institute.Key to Line Drawings ADS BOS, BR cB cH cic cM CONN cs cr DG EG ER EVAP FCs Air defense station Boiler operating station Boiler room Crew's berthing Chart house ‘Combat information center Crew's mess Steering position Central (fire control) station Conning tower Diesel generator room Emergency generator Engine room Evaporator Main battery fire control station Fuel oil Flag plot Flag planning center Gasoline Hangar Handling room Internal communica‘ Magazine Main battery target designator Missile check-out space Mine stowage Missile overhaul space Missile magazine Pilot house Powder-handling room Plotting room Powder maga: Radio central Radio I Reactor room Shell room: Secondary conn Weapons control station Wardroom|U.S. CRUISERSIntroduction ‘The modern U.S. Navy was born a century ago with the authorization of the Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago. Cruisers at that time ranged from gunboats effective only against the lowest level of threat to large, fast commerce raiders that could, in theory, outrun any warship they could not defeat. However, once the United States began to build a battle fleet, inter- mediate-size surface combatants were needed for a variety of roles much more closely tied to those of the fleet as a whole and often quite unadapted to the sort of wartime “cruising” that had justified the con- struction of their predecessors. Since that time, there has been a tension in cruiser design between the war- ship designed to “cruise” on solitary missions abroad in peace and in war, and the warship designed pri- marily to support other fleet units, cither by scout or by screening against attack. Current cruisers are far more closely related to the fleet units of the past, than they are to the older independent units, just as current U.S, naval strategy shows a direct descent from Mahan and his concept of sea control rather than from carlier U.S. ideas about commerce-raiding warfare. The most notable attempt to revive the ear- lier concept of a cruiser was probably the strike cruiser (CSGN) of the seventies. Sometimes, too, nuclear cruisers (formerly designated nuclear frigates, or DLGNs, in the destroyer series) are described as suit- able for detached assignments. The definition of a distinct cruiser type often seems at best political or subjective. Current US. cruisers are, in effect, larger and more capable equivalents of ships designated as destroyers. For example, in 1975 many U.S. missile frigates, ie., large surface warships in the destroyer category, were redesig- nated as cruisers. Some saw in this redesignation the admission that these ships were functional sueces- sors of the much larger converted missile cruisers then being decommissioned. Others, however, noted that until that date the U.S. Navy had had many fewer cruisers than the Soviets, and that many Soviet, cruisers were smaller than U.S. frigates. Even after redesignation, the U.S. Navy retained as destroyers ships larger than some of its cruisers and, in the case of the Kidd class, at least as capable in the fast-carrier screening role. This ambiguity is almost as old as the eruiser type itself. For example, the larger armored eruisers built in the United States and abroad about the turn of the century were of battleship size and cost and were closer to fast battleships than to anything else. In the United States they even received the state names otherwise reserved for battleships. Similarly, the fanetions of the battle cruisers of 1916~21 were closely related to those of the scout cruisers. The Alaska-class “large cruisers” of World War II were designed much more along cruiser than battleship lines despite their battleship appearance. Both of these semicapital ship types, the battle cruisers and the Alaska-class cruis- rs, are included in the present volume. Many ships were built not for commerce raiding or fleet operations but for “cruising” abroad, show- ing the flag, and keeping order; later these were des- ignated gunboats. The last such ships, the Erie and the Charleston of the interwar period, were laid down as gunboats, but they show a close affinity to earlier cruisers and in fact were intended to function as small wade-protection cruisers in wartime. They are, therefore, included here. Later, the large antisub- marine warlare (ASW) ship Norfolk was laid down as a cruiser (CLK), and indeed was based in part on an earlier cruiser design, the Atlanta. However, she ‘was completed as a frigate (DL) in the destroyer ries and has thus been included in a companion vol- ume on destroyers. Postwar U.S. design documents sometimes re- ferred toa cruiser as opposed toa destroyer standard of design, Such documents called, for example, for a complete deck, generally the damage control deck, below the weather deck, a design feature typical of cruisers. (In a destroyer the machinery spaces ex- tended up to the weather deck.) The cruiser had a double bottom extending up her side for a modest ‘The modern U.S. Navy began with cruisers. This is the first of them, the Atlanta, raising her anchor in the early 1890s, displaying her original massive top-hamper.2 US. CRUISERS amount of underwater protection. She was designed for greater durability, with a longer nominal work: ing lifetime and therefore with heavier scantlings and heavier machinery than the destroyer had. There were also extensive detail differences be tween destroyers and cruisers. For example, the large ASW ship Norfolk was designed explicitly to cruiser rather than destroyer standards, and those standards were enumerated in a Bureau of Ships (BuShips) ‘memorandum of 23 September 1947. Instead of one, cruisers had two plotting rooms for main battery fire control; they had four rather than two ship service generators, rated up to 1,250 kilowatts, not the 400 kilowatts of destroyers, and 250- to 500-kw emer- gency generators rather than the 100-kw type that was standard in destroyers. They had 450-volt elec- trical systems, whereas destroyers were powered by 117-volt systems fed directly from switchboards. On. the other hand, destroyers, with all-dual-purpose batteries, were to have sufficient emergency electri- cal power for all gun mounts; cruisers had emer- gency power for all secondary mounts but only for selected main battery mounts. Although both cruis- cers and destroyers had a radial type of electrical power distribution, cruisers used subpanels to reduce the number of feeders from each switchboard. Cruisers had about twice the emergency generator running time as destroyers, 3 rather than 1.9 minutes at full power, and their fore and alt generators were sup- plied by independent fuel systems. In a destroyer the tanks and pump were aft and the forward generator ‘was supplied by a cross-connection. Similarly, while the fire main of a cruiser was a loop cross-connected incach machinery space for redundancy, a destroyer had only a single ring main. As for fuel oil, the cruiser had a loop piping system, the destroyer only a single main; the cruiser had four fueling connectors along- side, the destroyer, two; the cruiser had three fuel tansfer pumps which could handle 250 gallons per minute each, the destroyer, two pumps which could handle 100 gallons per minute. For fresh water the r had two systems, each of which could pro- duce 20,000 gallons per day; the destroyer had one system of 12,000- and one of 4,000-gallon capacity. Differences extended to the number of lookouts (six- teen versus eight), the size of the sick bay, even the width of berths in staterooms (36 versus 31 inches). These details, many of them drawn from a direct comparison of recent light cruiser and destroyer fea- tures, combine to form an image of the cruiser as a much more significant unit than the destroyer. As the fast fleet escorts initially included in the de- stroyer series as frigates grew, they came to incor- porate cruiser characteristics, in relative cost as well as in robustness and standard of outfit. More re- cently, while the frigates were still being considered large destroyers, a nuclear cruiser (the strike cruiser or CSGN) was designed, one of its major “cruiser features being a significant amount of armor. Other large ship survivability features included a combat information center (CIC) located well below the waterline and well-separated reactor spaces, The U.S. Navy was almost entirely a cruiser navy from its formation until the 1890s. The early cruisers ‘were clearly below the rank of capital ships and could not stand up to them in battle; nor could they outrun the early steam battleships. At that time the navy’s wartime strategy consisted of raiding the seaborne commerce of its most probable enemy, Great Britain, and it developed large sailing and steam frigates which were at least the equal of any contemporaries short of capital rank. During the Civil War, the Confederate navy followed this classical strategy, and the Union navy built a large flect of steam sloops and fri specifically to hunt down and destroy such raiders as the Alabama, The large cruiser Wampanoag, de- signed to run down Southern commerce raiders, was for some years the fastest ship in the world, and her performance inspired the construction of several large steam frigates by the Royal Navy. After the Civil War the cruiser strategy continued to command support in the United States. Monitors, in theory capable of dealing with foreign battleships, ‘were maintained in reserve, and the few new ships built were wooden cruisers suited to peacetime op- erations and, also in theory, to wartime commerce raiding. When naval reconstruction began in 1881, it naturally emphasized cruisers. The construction of battleships, on the other hand, represented a ma- jor strategic shift, and it did not begin in earnest for about a decade, during which a substantial cruiser force was built up. Each new cruiser was justified largely because of its ability to raid hostile merchant- shipping commerce in wartime and to face the navies of any but the most powerful nations. Proponents of an alternative naval strategy based on battleships (ie., command of the sea) pointed out that such com- merce raiding would be of little avail against an en- emy capable of attacking and invading the U.S. coastline with his own battle fleet Even the organization of the navy reflected the cruising concept. U.S. warships served on stations abroad, spending their time cruising between foreign ports to protect American interests. There was no concentrated battle fleet at all; ships in home waters, in combination with fixed fortifications, were in- tended for coastal defense. For example, in 1902 the ships were distributed among a North Atlantic squadron (then the closest approach to a concen- trated U.S. fleet), an Asiatic squadron, a European station, a Pacific (West Coast) station, and a South Atlantic station, That year the fleet was concentratedfor the first time for Caribbean maneuvers. Early in 1903 North Atlantic and Asiatic fleets were created, the latter to cover the Philippines, and by 1905 the European and South Atlantic stations had been abol- ished. ‘The new tactical concept was the concentration of battleships for maximum striking power, to win command of the sea in a critical engagement with the enemy's battle fleet. It could be argued that the three Asiatic battleships were no more than a good target for the Japanese navy, which in the early years of the century was increasingly perceived as a po- tential enemy, and that it was far better to employ in the Pacific the mobile cruisers that might damage Japan's commerce while yet evading her battle fleet In 1906 it was decided that all battleships would be concentrated in the Atlantic, with cruisers only in the Asiatic fleet and the Pacific (U.S. West Coast) squadron, These two organizations merged in 1907 to become the Pacific Fleet. USS. cruiser construction declined sharply once battleship construction began in 1890, i. once pol- icy had shifted, however implicitly, towards a battle fleet strategy. There was, first, the feeling that the er building had produced enough ships. Resources were scarce, and the battleship advocates ‘could by no means be assured that their victory would be long-lived. However, the 1899 program, inspired by the results of the Spanish-American ‘War, in- cluded both large armored cruisers, in effect fast bat- tleships, and a series of “peace cruisers,” the Denver class, primarily intended to maintain American pres- ence in the areas that had just fallen under U.S. con- trol in the Caribbean and the Far East. The peace cruisers illustrated the ambiguities inherent in the cruiser category. Never intended for service with the battle flect, they were ultimately redesignated gun- boats, Even this partial reversal was short-lived. Once battleship costs had escalated with the advent of “‘all- big-gun” ships, congressional willingness 10 buy cruisers evaporated despite almost constant calls for ‘scout cruisers to support fleet operations. The United States entered World War I with only three modern, scout cruisers, and through the interwar period the deficieney in U.S. cruisers was a constant concern in, naval planning. The sheer size of the 1940 cruiser program was an attempt to overcome this shortage. At this remove it is by no means clear to what extent naval tacticians were able to influence the character of the building programs proposed by the secretary of the navy. He did consult a board on construction, composed of naval officers, and the minutes of board meetings do show some discussions, of alternative programs, but they do not show any tactical rationale. Tactical and strategic considera- INTRODUCTION 3 tions seem to have been more the province of the General Board, formed in 1900. Thus it was the Gen- eral Board that pressed for the type of cruiser most needed by the battle fleet, the scout. Scouting was a task the requirements of which were reflected in cruiser design from 1903 through the interwar pe- riod, and it accounted directly for the Salem. and Omaha-class light cruisers and for the battle cruisers of 1916. There were two distinct scouting roles: distant or strategic scouting, to determine whether an enemy fleet had departed from a base or to obtain news of its arrival in a war zone; and tactical scouting, to contact the enemy fleet at the time of battle and then ‘obtain details of its formation. The first role was particularly important in the standard U.S. war see- nario of the early part of this century, when it was thought that a war would begin with the descent of European fleet into the New World. It was a failure of strategic scouting in 1898 (ihe inability to contaet and then to shadow Cervera’s armored cruisers) that led to a panic on the East Coast. After that, scouting exercises often involved a defending U.S. fleet which had to meet and engage an invading fleet before the latter could secure its prospective base, for example by laying a defensive minefield around it Sometimes tactical scouting used to establish de- tails of the enemy formation was called the service of information; its requirements differed somewhat from that of merely contacting the outer elements of the enemy fleet. Screening was the other side of the scouting function; it generally meant denying an en- emy commander tactical information, at least con- cerning the details of the battleship formation, Only gradually, after World War I, did the role of the cruiser within the U.S. battle fleet begin to shift away from scouting and towards active defense of the battleships against air and surface (destroyer) attack. This shift is evident in debates over the role of the cruiser from about 1934 onwards. By that time aircraft had taken over much of the tactical scouting role. On the other hand, enemy destroyers and cruis- ers equipped with torpedoes represented a growing threat to the battle line, so that the ability to counter them (what one member of the General Board called infighting”) became increasingly important. This protective role continued through World War II and afterwards, and became more important as the bat- tleships, with their heavy antidestroyer and antiair- craft batteries, gave way to aircraft carriers. The need for such protection had been foreshadowed before the war, when heavy cruisers operated as carrier es- corts. In the late twenties and thirties, the rapid-fire 6- in gun was considered better suited than the 8-in gun to the battle line escort role, since it could deal with4 US. CRUISERS fast but lightly armored targets, ic., destroyers whose attacks might be stiffened by light cruisers. In theory, ships so armed would be able to fall back on the battle line if the enemy attacks were backed by more powerful ships. The slow-firing 8-in gun was often considered more the hallmark of cruisers that op- erated independently, since there was the possibility that they would have to engage other cruisers armed with 8-in guns, Treaty and physical limitations made itunlikely that most commerce raiders, which would be converted merchant ships, would mount guns of over 6-in caliber, so the 6-in-gun cruiser was also sometimes advocated as the ideal convoy escort. From 1918 onwards, U.S. doctrine strongly fa- vored the larger gun, and advocates of the 6-in-gun “fleet cruiser” were unsuccessful for over a decade. Led by Admiral William F. Pratt, they did succeed in virtually ending U.S. 8-in-gun cruiser construction, at the London Conference of 1929-30. After that there ‘was a running debate over the relative merits of the two types of gun and, consequently, over the merits of “general purpose” cruisers as opposed to fleet cruisers. The 6-in shell was the largest a man could handle effectively, so that the 6-in-gun cruiser was inherently simpler and less dependent upon me- chanical loading systems. Certainly the European navies appear to have preferred it. The U.S. Navy ‘was, at best, ambivalent, and the same might be said of the Japanese, whose tactical and strategic con- ‘erns were somewhat similar to those of the Amer icans. Indeed, the Japanese found the lighter gun acceptable only for flotilla craft, small cruisers de- signed to work directly with destroyers. (Although the large Mogamis were initially completed with 6.1- in guns, according to the terms of the London Treaty ‘of 1930, they were rearmed with 8-in guns as soon as the treaty terminated.) The United States appears to have reached no such conclusion. During World War II there was some feeling that the 8-in gun fired too slowly to be effective in night action, but that cannot have been a decisive factor in determining the fate of the gun, since virtually the entire cruiser program had been laid down well before the spec tacular nighttime gun actions in the Solomons. Commerce raiding and, for that matter, com- merce protection against surface ships, was a major concern of all the large navies between the wars, in large part because of the general belief that sub- marine warfare such as the Germans had practiced during World War I might well not recur. It had, after all, been outlawed, and all of the navies capable of organizing large submarine forces had much to fear from some new outbreak of unrestricted sub- marine warfare against their trade. The experience of World War I had suggested that surface commerce raiders could operate very effectively against sea- borne trade. They might be particularly difficult to counter in wide ocean areas such as the Pacilie which, unlike the sea exits from the North Sea during World War I, were impossible to seal. The U.S. Navy of the interwar period was particularly hard pressed to provide enough cruisers for the three major roles of distant operations, trade protection (presumably by convoy escort), and fleet support. This insufficiency diminished at the beginning of World War Il as treaty restrictions were relaxed; cruiser production in- creased, efforts to find cruiser substitutes such as merchant ship conversions and heavily armed gun- boats mounted, and interest in small aircraft carriers that could perform cruiser-like “sea control” mis sions grew. That surface commerce raiding would be relatively insignificant appears to have been unsus- pected, not merely in the U.S. Navy, but also in the British, Japanese, and even the German fleets. Cruiser development between the wars was shaped, largely by treaty requirements. First, all of the major powers built lightly protected 10,000-ton ships with Bin guns, the most powerful allowed under the Washington Treaty of 1922, The limitations of ton- nage and gun size were based on the characteristics of the five existing British Hawkins-class cruisers, built during World War [for distant operations against German surface raiders and with considerable po- tential for filling the role of raiders themselves. Sec- ‘ond, the treaty reduced the ranks of the battleships, ‘a provision whose unintended consequence was that the battleships could be risked only relatively rarely ‘once war broke out. As in the Solomons, large cruis- ers often operated in what might earlier have been considered battleship roles. Perhaps the greatest impact of the construction of the “treaty cruisers” was economic. Despite the ban on new battleship construction, the three major na- vies continued their expensive naval building race in large cruisers, ships so much more powerful than the mass of existing cruisers that new cruisers had to be built to counter them. From 1927 onwards, then, the major issue in naval arms limitation was capping the cruiser race. Britain and the United States found agreement difficult at best. since their navies had very different goals. The British needed numbers above all to cover their worldwide trade routes. Sul- {ering from severe economic constraints, they sought torestrict the unit size and firepower of cruisers. The US. Navy preferred large, powerful units better suited to the vast spaces of the Pacific. Not until 1936 was it willing to retreat below 10,000 tons—and it proved entirely unable to design a satisfactory cruiser on that tonnage. Possibly the most lasting fixture of the interwar treaty system, or rather of British attempts to outlaw the 8-in gun cruiser, was a two-tier system of classifying cruisers: ships with weapons of overINTRODUCTION 5 Naval treaties shaped most modern U.S. cruiser designs, either directly or indirectly. The first eight heavy ly armored and turned out grossly underweight. As a result, the Salt Lake City and Northampton classes, were very ruisers, of the designers were able 1o provide considerable protection (0 the next class, one of which, the Sar Francisco, is shown fan 9 September 1940 at Puget Sound. She has just been fitted with four 3-in /50 AA guns, two high in her bridgework and two on her fantail, all in splinter shields. They were later replaced by I-1-in machine cannon. In November 1942 she survived a night battle off Guadalcanal against the Japanese battle cruiser Mief and lesser cruisers. She sustal I4-in-gun hits. 6.1 inches in caliber were termed heavy, and the others, which might well be of the same tonnage, light. ‘Another peculiarity of the treaty system was its establishment of a system of ratios between navies. ‘The famous 5:5:3 tonnage ratio in capital ships was set up at the Washington Conference in 1922 be- tween, respectively, Britain, the United States, and Japan. In theory the ratio gave Japan enough strength, to feel sccure in the Western Pacific without provi ing her with the means to strike the United Stat with impunity. This ratio was extended to cruisers, in 1930. Remarkably, its rationale seems not to have been examined after 1921, yet the need to maintain it reportedly animated U.S. naval construction pol- iey as late as 1940 in the successive revisions of the Vinson-Trammell Act. Limits on total U.S. cruiser tonnage persisted even after the abolition of the Washington Treaty's total tonnage limits in 1936. This was the ironic conse- quence of a legislative attempt to bring the navy up to treaty size in “underage” ships; ie., in 1934 the Vinson-Trammell Act changed U.S. law by author- izing, at one blow, sufficient combatant tonnage to reach treaty limits in all categories. Previously, ships had been authorized one by one and funds for their construction appropriated in a separate process. After the passage of the act, new construction could pro- ced as soon as money was appropriated, as long as ed several it was within the statutory limit, Since the fleet was below treaty strength, the Vinson-Trammell Act was a fleet expansion measure. However, after 1936 the Vinson-Trammell Act was more and more an upper limit on U.S. naval construction, and it had to be amended, in 1938 and then in 1940, to provide for expansion. Note that the requirement that the treaty- size fleet be underage did permit some construction beyond the treaty levels, since there was no require- ‘ment that overage units be scrapped: This feature of the law first became significant in U.S. cruiser con- struction with the Adanta class. Thus the cruiser fleet with which the United States centered World War II was designed at least as much to fit treaty restrictions as to fit any concept of naval tactics. Moreover, once the war began, there could be no question of any radical change in cruiser design tofit tactics. Even though the treaty restrict removed, the need for cruisers could be met only through the mass production of ships only slightly removed from prewar designs. The Cleveland class was probably the most extreme case of a wartime cruiser design severely restricted by its relationship to treaty-limited practice. As the war progressed and aircraft made individ- ual surface ships more and more vulnerable, the in- dependent role of the cruiser faded. With the rise of the carrier task force, the primary surface ship func- tion became fleet escort, the role developed for U.S.6 US.CRUISERS ‘The prewar cruiser force had to be heavily modified to take account of wartime experience and technology. The Pensacola is shown after a Mare Island refit, on 20 May 1944, sill sporting her original tall ripod mast and her original 8-in directors, the big antiaircraft directors are Mk 33s. The whip radio antennas on her superstructure and funnels replaced the eaclier, electrically more efficient, long wire antennas; the whip antennas did not obstruct the sky ares of the antiaircraft battery. ‘The major visible wartime changes are the low open bridge, the Mk 3 and 4 fire-control radars, an SK airsearch radar fon her foremast, and the elimination of her mainmast (the new structure is shown in the detail view), The prominent after funnel cap was also new. The outboard gasoline transfer line was a common feature of wartime cruiser relits, leading from gasoline tanks deer in the fore part of the ship back to the flight deck abaft the catapults. The tall tube alt accommodated an 8-in director, with spotting glasses in the wings on either side light cruisers between wars. After the war surface combatant construction was essentially in this cat- egory: the missile cruiser and large destroyer (frig- ate) categories merged, first informally and then by designation, Surviving all-gun cruisers operated either as flagships or as gunfire support ships, but there was no willingness to build new ships for gunfire support. As for the former, one heavy cruiser laid down during the war was completed as a specialized flagship, but attempts to build a new class of fleet fagships in the sistics failed, and indeed as the cruiser conversions were phased out the U.S. fleet lost its fast flagships. In the seventies, the development of a new’ anti- aircraft missile system, Aegis, scemed to promise the return of the solitary surface warship, the classic ‘cruiser. The strike cruiser was designed to combine firepower, protection, and the flag facilities lacking in new-construction surface combatants. It was, however, expected to be very expensive, and the Ford administration cancelled the project. ASa result, cur- rent cruisers of the Ticonderoga class are more closely related to the missile destroyers of recent construc- tion than to the large cruisers of the past; indeed, the name ship of the class was laid down as DDG 47, rather than as CG 47, For all practical purposes, then, the U.S. cruiser as a distinct type died out at the end of World War II, with cruiser hulls surviving largely because they alone could support the massive anti- aircraft missile systems of the postwar era. (The Long Beach, the sole new cruiser, was in effect a nuclear missile frigate.) With the demise of those systems, the fleet screen was reduced to large destroyers, which are outside the scope of this book. As in every other area of U.S. warship design, ‘cruisers were strongly affected by the evolving r lationship between the professional navy and the ci- vilian secretary of the navy, who was generally un- familiar with the details of naval affairs. In a very general way, Congress resisted attempts to place ex- ecutive authority in military hands, and strong sec- relaries had a decisive influence. For example, the secretary of the navy had, until World War I, sole authority to issue orders for ship movements, al- though commanders in chief were alloat wherever a fleet was concentrated. Before World War I, Scere- tary Daniels personally stopped attempts to build a new class of much larger battleships. There were, of ‘course, exceptions. In 1869, Admiral David Dixon Porter, who as admiral of the navy had important influence through the early years of the new navy, was effectively secretary of the navy for one hundred days. During the Roosevelt administration, Secre- tary of the Navy Claude Swanson was frequently tooill to serve, and the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) often served as acting secretary. During World War Il, Admiral King achieved enormous power in the Department of the Navy, power which extended even, to the theoretically independent bureaus; the sec- retary had far less say than previously. Other im- portant influences were wielded by the congressional ‘committees that specifically dealt with naval affairs, and in particular by long-serving members of those committees, such as Carl Vinson, who developed con- siderable expertise. From 1842 onwards, the navy consisted of a line organization supported by independent specialized bureaus, each responsible only to the civilian sec- retary of the navy. This basic organization persisted until 1966, ie., through the period of primary inter- est in this book. The most important of the technical bureaus were the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R), responsible for hulls; the Bureau of Steam Engineering (later the Bureau of Engineering, or BuEng), responsible for machinery and, later, radios; the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd), for weapons; and the Bureau of Equipment, for electrical and other ‘equipment. The Bureau of Equipment, which had a wide and unrelated variety of functions, was abol- ished in 1910 and its duties distributed among the other bureaus, BuEng taking over electrical equip- ment, including radios. The Bureau of Navigation (BuNav) was responsible for assignments of officers and for routine operational matters; from the begin- ning of the modern navy in 1881 through 1909, BuNay's chief came to be the principal naval advisor to the secretary of the navy, since there was no naval commander in chief, ‘The coordination of the bureaus, which were jeal- ‘ous of their independence, was a major issue almost throughout the period of cruiser design; several de- sign scandals were traced to the lack of enforced cooperation. Probably the most notable result was, the forced merger of C&R and BuEng in 1940 to create the Burcau of Ships (BuShips). In retrospect, it scems remarkable that BuOrd was not also forced into joining them, for the fowa-class battleship de- sign almost had to be abandoned when a gun mount design error was traced to a lack of coordination Only in 1966 were the bureaus reorganized as ele- ments of a strengthened Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (Opnav) and placed under a single uni- formed head. That the desire to do so was an old one is demonstrated by Admiral King’s attempts to con- trol the bureaus as CNO during World War TL Coordination was an issue from the beginning, but it was not until 1889 that a board on construction, comprising the chiefs of the bureaus as well as the director of naval intelligence, was formed to develop warship designs in unison, From time to time this INTRODUCTION 7 standing board was concerned with overall policy in the form of the annual building program and with the characteristics of warships, but the latter seem more often to have been determined by Congress. ‘The board does not appear to have dealt much with naval tactics or their impact on the form of the fleet, although the presence of a war planner (the director of naval intelligence) and of the senior professional officer (the chief of BuNav) may have been of con- siderable significance. As for fundamental naval policy, there was no for- mal mechanism to relate tactics, strategy, and the building program. Instead, the secretary of the navy convened a series of ad hoc committees, the most important of which met in 1881, 1882, and 1889. The first two, called naval advisory boards, planned the regeneration of the navy, which led to the authori- zation of the first ships of the new navy in 1883. Although both boards advocated the construction of battleships, neither addressed the shift in U.S. naval strategy that such ships would involve. However, on 6 July 1889 Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy appointed a board specifically to consider future U.S. naval policy. He and the board were clearly influenced by Captain Alfred T. Mahan’s concept of sea control and the need for a battle fleet. Although Congress im- mediately rejected the large building program the policy board advocated, that program appears to have been the basis for U.S. naval construction during the following decade. Like its predecessors, the policy board wanted specific ship designs, a practice that seems somewhat odd toa modern reader. ‘Not until the Spanish-American War was a strategy organization formed. Called the Naval War Board, or Strategy Board, it helped fight the naval war, an ex- perience that convinced the secretary of the navy that some permanent policy-coordinating board was needed. ‘The General Board was formed at the suggestion of ‘Admiral of the Navy George Dewey, and to a consid- erable extent it was an alternative to the formation of a naval general staff, which Congress would not abide. Note, however, that the General Board had no statu- tory power; it was advisory only. It did not even have statutory existence until the 1915 reonganization, which also established its great rival, Opnav. At that time, in theory, Opnav was to concern itself with current op- erations and readiness, while the General Board con- tinued its studies of longer-term policy issues. In fact, no such separation was possible, and warfare period- ically erupted between Opnav and the General Board, the operators feeling that the planners were unreal- istic. As may be imagined, Opnav gained immense power during both world wars, and in each case the General Board had to fight to salvage its position, Tt succeeded in 1921, perhaps largely because of the departure of the wartime secretary, Josephus Daniels. In 1945,8 US.CRUISERS however, it faced an Opnav that had already gained considerable power before the war and a CNO, Er- nest J. King, who was firmly convinced of the ben- efits of centralization. From a design point of view, the General Board was ultimately a means of coordinating naval strat- egy, tactics, and ship and weapon design. The co- ordination, however, took some time to establish. At first, the board was concerned almost entirely with war planning against a spectrum of contingencies. In 1903 it was asked to propose a building program, and in so doing it also proposed characteristics for the ships it planned, At this time the board pressed suecessfully for the inclusion of scout cruisers in the building program. The growing naval reform move- ment saw the General Board as a progressive influ- cence on U.S. warship design, overcoming the innate conservatism of the bureaus as represented by the Board on Construction. It was deeply involved in the controversy over the all-big-gun battleship in 1904— 5 and in fighting the objections of C&R. The naval reformers had as one goal the transfer of power over ship characteristics from the bureaus to the General ‘Board. This actually occurred after the Newport Con- ference of 1908 on battleship design. The Board on Construction was dissolved in 1909. From then on it ‘was the responsibility of the General Board to draw up the characteristics, or staff requirements, which were submitted to the secretary of the navy as the basis for new warship designs. He did not always accept them, and in some important cases other or- ganizations were able to get the secretary to override the General Board. Even so, the General Board clearly dominated the characteristics process during the great period of U.S. cruiser design after World War ‘Typically, the officer on the board responsible for a new design would ask the preliminary design sec- tion of C&R or BuShips to draw up a range of design alternatives. These sketches, called spring styles by analogy with women’s fashion, would be based on rudimentary characteristics, perhaps on a single sheet, of paper (Single-sheet characteristics). The spring styles were presented at a General Board hearing on characteristics, where they were often discussed not merely by board members but also by representa- lives of the bureaus and of the principal commands afloat. (By the 1930s, there might be representatives from the Scouting Force and the U.S. Fleet, as well as the fleet training and war plans divisions of Opnav and Burd.) The General Board would then formu- late characteristics, in theory as the basis for the. design process but in fact more as a means of rati- fying one or another of the spring styles. In a few cases none of the rudimentary sketches satisfied the board, and the problem was referred back to the designers. Frequently, too, there was informal con- tact, and members of the General Board would quest studies emphasizing particular characteristics during this preliminary period of design. The Gen- eral Board continued to have an important say in the determination of characteristics throughout World War Il, However, in 1945 a new organization, the Ship Characteristics Board (SCB), was formed within Opnav. At first it was responsible for modifications to existing ships under, for example, the big an kamikaze, antiaircraft improvement program of 1945. However, in 1946 the SCB turned to the character- istics of new ships and major conversions. The Gen- cral Board continued to consider these issues as it had in the past but without much apparent effect, and it was abolished in 1951 Until 1932, the General Board consisted of a full- time executive committee and senior ex-officio mem- bers holding current posts of high responsibility and attending only monthly meetings; the most senior of the latter served as the link between the policy- makers of the General Board and the operation of the Navy Department. Until 1909 that position was held by the chief of BuNav; then it was held by the aide for operations in the embryonic staff system instituted by Secretary of the Navy Meyer; and then by the CNO. The executive committee varied from four to six officers who were generally commanders or captains. Service on the General Board was an important step toward promotion, particularly in the years of the board’s greatest prestige. In 1932 the system of having ex-officio members was abolished, and from then on the board consisted of seven to nine full-time rear admirals (the highest permanent rank in the prewar navy). Being a mem- ber of the board was sometimes characterized as a final post for elder statesmen within the navy. Ad- miral King is said to have wept upon being assigned to the General Board in 1939, thinking his hopes of, rising to CNO had been dashed. However, analysis of the careers of officers holding positions on the General Board in the thirties appears to belie the view that lies behind this story. The high rank of its members tended to make the General Board decisive in many intra-navy disputes. Above all, the General Board was able to formu- late fundamental navy policy, since it did not have to concern itself with the day-to-day operations of the Navy Department. Although its proposals were often rejected, the board could outlive any particular secretary of the navy and so could enforce its views over the long run. Thus, analyses showing that only a small proportion of its proposals were accepted may well overlook the fact that proposals could be raised again and again. From the point of view of this book, the most important function of the General Board was the formulation of the characteristics, orprimary requirements, on the basis of which ships were designed. Characteristics were generally estab- lished at the conclusion of extensive hearings. The records of those hearings and the papers of the Gen- eral Board form a basic and invaluable source for the historian, It may even be argued that their avail- ability and concise form induce the historian some- what to overrate the importance of the General Board in the design process. The influence of different members of the board varied immensely. For example, when he was.a mem ber in the late thirties, Admiral Thomas C. Hart was personally responsible for the appearance of the At Tanta-class cruiser and the Marlin-class coastal sub- marine. Admiral King appears to have been largely responsible for the Alaskas. The 6:in cruiser in the U.S. Navy was the product of Admiral William V. Pratt's personal initiative as much as of the London treaty process. And Admiral Moffett of BuAer was responsible for the concept of the flight-deck cruiser Opnav grew out of the same impulse to form a naval general staff that had led to formation of the General Board. Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer tried to establish such a staff in 1909, ap- pointing senior officers aides for materiel and op- erations, but his system did not last. Then in 1915, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels agreed to the appointment of a CNO as the operational head of the navy, reportedly counting on the relative weak- ness of the officer chosen, Admiral William 8, Ben- ‘son, to preserve his own prerogatives. The CNO could issue administrative orders, which the General Board could not. Perhaps even more significantly, he func- tioned as acting secretary in the secretary's absence. In 1916 the CNO was provided with a staff, Opnav, and experience during World War I justified the en- tire arra {. Moreover, Opnav gained enor- mous power during this war. For example, a London planning section under the direct control of the com- mander in chief in European waters, Admiral Wile liam S. Sims, proposed the characteristics that ac- tually evolved into the U.S. 8-in cruisers. After the war, Opnav planners continued to try to encroach con the prerogatives of the General Board. The issue seems to have been decided in the General Board's favor with the departure of Secretary Daniels (who had had a close relationship with Admiral Benson) in 1921. However, warfare between the CNO and the board continued, the CNO benefiting from his direct, access to the secretary and from his frequent sumption of power as acting secretary. Perhaps the outstanding examples of this conflict in the interwar period were the fight over 6-in as opposed to 8-in cruisers in 1929 and the reversal of the General Board position over the characteristics of the North Caro- lina class in 1936-37. INTRODUCTION 9 Following the war Opnav gained responsibility for detailed war planning through its war plans division and for readiness through its fleet training and fleet ‘maintenance division. These divisions influenced the characteristics process. During World War Il Ad- miral King attempted to gather under his authority as NO and commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet (or ‘Cominch, the most senior afloat command) all of the independent bureaus. In particular, Opnay came to control naval war production and therefore resource allocation, under a broad executive order signed by President Roosevelt, at King’s behest, in 1942. In part this was a consequence of the president's continued practice of appointing relatively weak secretaries of the navy; he sometimes described himself as his own secretary, given his personal interest in the navy. In practice that made any CNO extremely powerful, and King was a particularly forceful man. Thus his office came to control some characteristics issues, particularly those concerned with modifications to surface ships. That assumption of power, generally exercised through the vice chief of naval operation (VCNO), Admiral F. J. Horne, led to the formation of the SCB in 1943, The SCB did not really succeed the General Board, because it had none of the broad policymaking role of the earlier office. It had a working staff that met frequently, but important decisions were made on the basis of votes by representatives of the bureaus and Opnav; in this, it resembled the old Board on Construction. Its role was also limited, at least in cruiser design, by the disproportionate importance of ordnance in the new generation of missile cruisers, the only cruisers for which the SCB had extensive responsibility. These ships were actually negotiated between BuShips and BuOrd on the basis of weapon requirements formulated within Opnav. Later char- acteristics organizations had a much greater influ- ence on U.S. carrier and destroyer design, and the reader is referred to the companion volumes in this series for a more detailed discussion The Naval War College at Newport was alsoa vital fluence on U.S. cruiser development. Although it was founded in 1884 as a means of educating senior officers in strategy, it functioned during the 1890s as a war planning agency, and about 1896 it began to stage serious war games. The U.S. Navy tested a wide variety of exotic proposed warships on the gam- ing board, such as the battle cruiser and the flight- deck cruiser, and used the records of war games as a guide to policy, at least through 1940. During the first decade of this century the General Board held an annual summer conference in Newport at which many tactical issues were analyzed by committees of the annual class. These were not academic exer- cises; the 1908 summer conference decided on the10 US. CRUISERS The tr considered a variety of altern ditional cruiser role virtually disappeared after 1945, and ative missions, Missile attack was one of them; here the hea fire a Regulus I land-attack missile from her fantail off the California coast on 22 March 195 mainmast, a modification of the wartime SP, will teack and he United States, with a large force of modern hulls ruiser Helena prepares to The SPO.2 radar atop her je the eruise missile. Aside from the addition of 3n AA uns and the removal of her eatapults, the ship is little altered from her original World War II configuration, naval reorganization that led to the abolition of the Board on Construction and transferred the charae teristics function to the General Board Abstract analysis was particularly important to a navy facing rapid technological change without much combat experience and, indeed, without much of a fleet with which to experiment before about 1906. As one historian, Michael Vlahos, has pointed out, war gaming also served to spread an understanding of US. doctrine and naval concepts." It had one un: fortunate consequence for later historians: after 1919 the games at the Naval War College frequently de scribed a conflict against Great Britain. This was not because anyone considered such a war very likely but rather because it was a more difficult and there: fore sometim trast, [lect training through maneuvers, or fleet prob- 's more instructive ease. By way of con. Blue 8 aval War College Press: Newport, 1981, lems, was almost uniformly directed against the most probable enemy, Japan. Because this is above all a history of U.S. cruiser design, itis concerned only peripherally with cruiser operations. Most U.S. cruisers that fought in World War Il were designed well before the war on the basis of limited or, in some cases, nonexistent operating experience. World War I experience was essentially inapplicable; the large cruisers of the interwar and war period really had no direct forebears. Most of the battle lessons of World War IT do not appear in cruiser design, because th wre were only a very few wartime designs, and because cruiser construction effectively ceased after the war; postwar-built and converted cruisers had little in common with war- time ones. Thus most U.S. cruisers, at least most ation of a modern ones, are the physical represt type of fleet warfare the U.S. Navy never really ex- perienced. Some of this pa parent in adox will be athe account that follows, but its full irony is worthy of special mention. Again, space limitations permit only a brief account of U.S. cruiser combat experi ence. The cruisers were nearly ubiquitous in World War Il, because they had to carry out not only clas- sical cruiser tasks but also many of the tasks a prewar naval expert would have assigned to battleships — of which there were never enough. Nor were there ever enough cruisers, in the U.S. INTRODUCTION II Navy or in any other navy. Midway between the grace of the destroyer and the power and bulk of a capital ship, they had often to perform the duties of cach Described before the waras vulnerable tinclads, they and their crews sometimes took and absorbed im- mense punishment; paradoxically, it was the best- protected of prewar cruisers that succumbed to Jap- Although the prewar cruisers were all decommissioned after 1945, many of them were retained in reserve for over a decade and overhauled every five years. The Minneapolis is shown at the Keystone Ship Engineering and Drydock Company, Philadelphia, in the spring of 1955. Note the covered twin 40mm mount over her no, 2 turret, a feature unique among US. cruisers,The New Navy, 1883-98 ‘The modern US. Navy began with the construction of three steel cruisers and one steel dispatch boat, authorized by an act of Congress on 3 March 1883. ‘They represented a continuation of classic American, strategic naval policy, which would not be modified for another seven years; they were the lineal de- scendants of the wooden steam frigates and steam sloops of the Civil War and post-Civil War era. How- ever, they were also part of a conscious attempt to propel the navy and the industrial base supporting. it into the modern era of steel ships and breech-load- ing cannon. From the beginning, they were adver- tised as the first of a new navy which would break with the wooden-hulled ships of the past. In thisera U.S. cruisers were designed for two very different functions. In peacetime they visited foreign ports, primarily in what is now called the Third World, to protect U.S. interests. This “peace cruising” was effective because America maintained a military as- cendaney over local forces, but this ascendancy van- ished as countries such as those in Latin America began to buy modern warships from European build- ers. War was considered only a distant possibility, and the most probable enemy was the greatest naval power of all, Great Britain, American cruisers could hope to interdict British maritime trade, as in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812; the Con- federate raiders, particularly the Alabama, were often cited as examples of ships that had served in such a role. To a much more limited extent, the cruisers might operate as a fleet against a weaker adversat For example, in the aftermath of the Virginius affair ‘The Newark, the last U.S. sail-rigged cruiser, assure truly global range for a commer of 1873, a seagoing fleet was assembled at Key West However, the cruiser school of naval warfare explic- itly rejected the construction of a US. battle fleet of ironclads. The cruiser virtues were high speed (effective in catching merchant targets and in escaping larger capital ships), great endurance, a powerlul battery, and protection against cruiser weapons. Low unit cost was also important, since both the peacetime system of naval stations abroad and the wartime raiding function required large numbers of ships. However, for peacetime operations at least some of the cruisers would have to be flagships, and that in itself would force up unit size. For the United States, which had abandoned its coaling stations abroad after the end of the Civil War, endurance was particularly important. The inefficient engines of the time could not provide worldwide steaming endurance in any. thing but the largest hull, and the United States was not unique in looking to sail power as a supplement. This solution was the nineteenth-century analog of modern mixed plant systems such as CODOG (com- bined diesel or gas turbine), and had much the same rationale. Several highly emotional issues cloud any eval- uation of the new navy designs. First, there was a long-standing feud between marine engineers and line officers, the former seeing in the latter an ex- cessive fondness for the sailing ships of the past. David Dixon Porter, admiral of the navy, appeared to many to personify this problem. During a brief tenure as, ineffect, secretary in 1869, he closed down U.S. coal- shown early in her career. At the time sail power seemed the best way to e-raiding cruiser. The Newark shows the seeds of a gunnery revolution in the small RF guns visible above the projecting casemates fore and alt. They were designed to beat off torpedo attacks, but within a few years the same technology would be extended to 4.7- and then to 5- and 6-in guns, with the result that no ship like the Newark with a totally unarmored side could be considered effective. The full battery of twelve 6-in guns was ‘mounted on the broadside, eight of them in projecting sponsons providing fore and aft fire, The Newark was modernized in 1898, Her sails were removed and modern 6-in guns were mounted. She survived until June 1913, when she was transferred to the Public Health Service.14 US. cRUISERS ing stations abroad and strictly restricted steaming time in the navy. In the engincers’ view, his greatest sin was to scrap the machinery of the cruiser Wam- panoag, the masterpiece of Chief Engineer Benjamin Isherwood and the fastest cruiser of her time. How- ever, Porter, also a moving spirit in the development of U.S, torpedo craft, instituted marine engineering instruction at Annapolis and strongly favored ad- vanced marine engines during the first decade of U.S. steel cruiser development. He wrote that sail was worth retaining because, in the absence of coaling stations abroad, American cruisers would need some means of returning home from marauding voyages. It was certainly unlikely that any U.S. coaling station abroad would survive through the early stages of the only war then contemplated, the one against Great Britain. In the eighties, however, the issue of steam power versus sail power was presented very much as one of modernity versus reaction, with all of the emotional content that sort of argument involves. A skeptic would have to note that most European cruis- ing vessels of the seventies had considerable sail power, the abandonment of which was associated with the achievement not merely of reliability but of unprecedented steaming efficiency. The second issue was the highly emotional par- tisan politics of the time. The first four ships of the new navy were sharply criticized by the Democratic press in an attack on the Republican administration that had authorized and designed them. It seems likely that the turn to foreign designs in 1885-86 can be explained by this criticism. Certainly it was not the demonstrated behavior of the new ships, none of which had been completed before the shift in policy. Within the navy, feuds between the independent bu- reaus were almost continuous, and there was intense friction between the bureaus and the advisory boards that actually developed the first new navy designs. In 1885 a separate board had to be ereated to develop characteristics for a new cruiser to be designed by C&R and BuEng; in 1889 the Board on Construction was created specifically to achieve coordination among the bureaus, although it did not end the dis- putes. Even C&R was not formally granted primary responsibility for ship design until 1894, and the problems of the period show in periodic proposals for the amalgamation of the design bureaus. The sharp disputes marking the last U.S. armored cruiser de- sign in 1902 show that this tension never did abate. Given the volatile politics of the period, the public record, which is the principal available source in most cases, may be more an attempt to conceal prob- lems than a clear indicator of the reasoning and the ideas that went into the making of the new navy. ‘The new navy program was designed specifically to promote U.S. industrial development. When it be- gan, the only modern yards in the United States were John Roach in Chester and Cramp’s in Philadelphia, with the Union Iron Works in San Francisco a distant third. Newport News was founded specifically to build USS. warships; navy contracts were also responsible for the Bath and Fore River Yards and, later, for the New York Shipbuilding Corporation in Camden Which was destined to build a large fraction of the World War If cruiser fleet. With no warship-building experience, the yards built their first modern cruis- ers relatively slowly, and two or more generations were designed before the first-generation ships pro- vided any great seagoing experience. The navy yards, which had been employed to build and refit wooden warships, were if anything even less efficient. For example, the armored cruiser or second-class battle- ship Maine, laid down at Brooklyn in October 1888, was commissioned in September 1895, only two months before the much more modern Indiana, laid down at Cramp’s in May 1891. Building contracts ‘were among the richest plums the federal govern. ment could award, and charges of corruption were natural in the highly charged political atmosphere of the time. Thus the Democratic administration that entered office in 1885 showed a certain skepticism when examining the four ships that had been awarded to Republican John Roach in 1883, and his biogra- pher charges that the consequent delays in payment drove Roach into bankruptcy. Certainly the navy it- self later showed much more care in handling Cramp's yard, which it regarded asa major national resource Union Iron Works, which ultimately became the San Francisco yard of Bethlehem Steel, received con- tracts for ships that would operate in the Pacific, such as the famous Olympia ‘Specific building programs often originated within Congress. The advisory boards did suggest detailed long-range programs, and secretaries did make pro- posals from time to time, but the regular practice of developing annual programs within the secretary's office began only in 1898. Until 1900 C&R considered itself prohibited by law from preparing detailed de- signs until after Congress had authorized the ships. rr design took advantage of the latest devel- opments in naval technology, and the cruisers of the new navy illustrate the rapid rise of that technology toward the end of the nineteenth century. Machinery weight itself placed a lower limit on the displace- ment of a fast cruiser, since there had to be enough hull to support engines, boilers, fuel, and comple- ment, as well as armor and weapons. The experience of the Wampanoag of 1869 demonstrated that the machinery of the time was not equal to these re- quirements; her displacement was so consumed by engines that she had only a relatively flimsy wooden hull, and so much of the internal volume was filledthat part of her complement could not be accom- modated. At the birth of the New Navy, American machinery builders were offering about 2.5 horse- power per ton, which the secretary of the navy de- scribed as a decade behind the times; he went abroad for designs, and considered 10 horsepower per ton the minimum acceptable. By way of comparison, 1,900 tons bought 23,000 horsepower, or about 12 horse- power per ton, in a large armored cruiser in 1902. Three decades later the same weight bought over 100,000 horsepower, but that required an entirely new type of engine, the geared turbine. Advances in hull hydrodynamics were closely related to improve- ments in the power plant. Until the 1870s the origins of hull resistance in water were not atall understood, and even in the late eighties Admiral Porter could write that, as a rule, a cruiser required a horsepower equal 10 about twice her displacement. In the ar- guments over the armored cruiser of 1902, the chief constructor again and again referred to model ex- periments in his new towing tank to justify the power he considered necessary; the chief engineer disa greed violently, apparently in ignorance of this now- indard technique. Admiral David W. Taylor of C&R ‘was a pioneer in towing tank hydrodynamics. During this period the major advances in marine engineering were the water-tube boiler, particularly during the nineties, and the triple-expansion engine. In one step, the latter raised the standard of cruiser speed from 16 to 20 knots, and American sloth in adopting it was sometimes described by the phrase “ane cylinder behind,” since the earlier compound engine had two rather than three cylinders. In 1882, when the naval advisory board met, there were in existence only eight warships of less than 5,000 tons capable of 16 knots or more. That year, the first suc- cessful triple-expansion engines were designed for the British merchant ship Aberdeen, and by 1885 their usc had become general; the first warships with such engines, the British Orlando-class “belted cruisers,” were laid down. It appears that the effective upper limit for large cruisers so powered was between 22 and 24 knots, although such ships spent most of their time at much lower speeds, owing in part to the intense vibration associated with reciprocating en- gines. One problem of cruiser design that was never solved was the handicap on reciprocating engines, imposed by an armor deck at or near the waterline. In order to gain the deck’s protection, the engine had to have cylinders of limited stroke, which in turn required higher speeds for moving parts to achieve a given propeller speed. That in turn increased vi bration. By way of contrast, the large ocean liners, the natural prey of commerce-raiding cruisers, ex- perienced no such limitations and so could acl much higher sustained speeds. ‘THE NEW Navy, 1883-9815 Improvements in boilers both reduced fuel con- sumption (and hence fuel weight per mile of endur- ance) and provided increased steam power. In- ‘creased efficiency was generally associated with higher steam pressure and therefore with the increased total cylinder volume in which that pressure could be used; hence, the shift from two to three or four cylinders (triple or even quadruple expansion). Efficiency was also the reason for the shift from Scotch fire-tube boilers to a variety of water-tube systems in which boiler area was better employed—the Herreshoff coil boiler, and the Belleville, Niclausse, Thornycroft, and Yarrow water-tube types. For cruisers, probably the most important weapon development was the rapi¢-fire (RF) gun, which could achieve a high rate of fire because it used a metal cartridge case in place of the earlier powder bag. Breech closure was much simplified and much quicker. In U.S. service the common distinction was between the breech-loading rifle (BLR) and the RF un; abroad the latter was often termed a quick-firer (QF). Where a BLR might fire once a minute or once in several minutes, the RF gun could be fired up to ten times per minute. Early RF guns were essentially large machine guns effective at a few hundred yards and useful primarily against torpedo boats and ex- posed gun crews, which is why the first U.S. steel cruisers had shields over their exposed guns. They did not fire shells heavy enough to damage the un- armored portions of ships. The jump from 3- 10 6- pounders (47mm to 57mm guns) occurred only about 1883, and in 1887 Armstrong of England tested a 4.7- in OF, firing ten aimed rounds in 47 seconds. A 6-in weapon then under development was expected to fire eight to ten rounds per minute. These weapons revolutionized warship design. Earlier slow-firing guns made relatively few hits per unit time; each one had to be lethal, an effect that was achieved by penetrating armor and smashing a ship’s vitals. By way of contrast, an RF gun could damage an opponent by smothering it with high- explosive hits that would tear up unarmored_por- tions of the ship's structure and so disable it. For a time, then, until the heavier guns had been greatly improved, 2 fairly small cruiser armed with RF guns could engage even relatively heavily protected shi at least at the short battle ranges, much below 3,000 yards, contemplated during the ninetcenth century Rapid-fire development was paced by the indus- trial development required to produce the brass car- tridge cases upon which successful operation de- pended. The larger the caliber, the more difficult the manufacturing was, and in this the United States lagged behind Europe by several years. That may explain the American predilection for the 8:in gun in 1888-92; although there was a U.S. 6-in RF gun16 us. cRUISERS comparable, in theory, to the foreign 6-in OF, the 8- in gun seems to have been a preferred substitute aboard ships large enough to accommodate it. Cer~ tainly the larger shell of the 8-in gun could make up for a much lower rate of fire, Although the 6-in RF gun appeared in small cruisers of the 1888 program, itdid not appear in battleships until the Illinois class of 1896. Nor was it mounted aboard the big armored cruisers of 1888 and 1892 In 1889, the American 6-in gun, which did not yet exist, had a projected firing capability of live rounds per minute, as against eight to ten for the new Arm- strong gun, However, target practice figures from 1897 show only one round every 40 seconds. The problem may have been an inefficient breech mech- anism. The later 6-in/50 gun, a true RF gun, could make one round every 7.9 seconds (about eight rounds per minute) in 1907, but that was after considerable pressure had been brought to improve naval gun- nery, and the figure may overstate the advance in technology if it reflects the better training of gun crews. Certainly the replacement of 6-in by 5-in guns in the Cincinnati and Marblehead classes of small cruisers suggests some dissatisfaction with the for- mer Weapon ‘Weapon development was matched by changing concepts of cruiser protection. Most of the cruisers of the new navy were “protected,” ie., provided with an armored deck but without side armor. Shells would strike the curved or sloped deck only obliquely, so that it would stop even quite large armor-piercing, projectiles. With a slow rate of fire, an enemy ship would be lucky to score even a few hits above the protective deck, and hits at or near the waterline could be neutralized by a belt of water-excluding material that would expand to fill shell holes. In a few ships, such as the units of the British Orlando class, a narrow belt was provided over the machinery spaces, either in addition to or in place of the ar- mored deck. These belted cruisers can be distin- guished from earlier armored cruising ships, such as the U.S. Maine, which were essentially small battle- ships; the newer ships were much faster and not nearly so comprehensively protected. With the appearance of the RF gun, the rationale of the protected cruiser came into question. Large numbers of hits at or near the waterline could negate the effect of water-excluding material; only side ar- mor could negate the destructive effect of explosive shell hits. The American view, as expressed in the 1888 annual report of the Navy Department, was that in the future armor would have to be much more widely distributed to protect gun batteries and gun crews as well as the waterline and the machinery. The armor did not have to be very thick; in 1890 it appears that four inches was taken as a useful stan- dard, However, it was important to cover not merely the guns proper but also some of the structure sup- porting them below decks, as the new high-explosive shells would certainly penetrate and destroy much ofthe unarmored structure of a ship above the water- line. The United States did not carry to its logical conclusion the idea that the entire side of the ship would have to be covered, as in the French Dupuy de Lome of 1888. Rather it moved trom pure pro- tected cruisers with open, shielded guns to protected cruisers with protected guns, as in the Olympia, and to armored cruisers with waterline belts to protect their buoyancy from the shattering effect of the new ‘weapons, as in the New York. Armor itself underwent radical improvement dur- ing the nineties, with the introduction of Harvey ar- mor in 1893, The new material was about 50 percent more resistant than the earlier compound armor, so that a ship protected by it could save considerably ‘on armor weight, Since that weight could go into hull structure and machinery, it became possible, at least in theory, to design ships with cruiser speeds yet armored against battleship adversaries. That was certainly part of the rationale for the big U.S. ar- mored cruisers of the 1899-1904 programs. ‘The move towards a modern navy is variously attributed to agitation by an increasing number of, forward-looking naval officers and the appointment of Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt, who was particularly determined to reverse the effects of a decade of naval decline. At least one his ‘Swann, a biographer of John Roach, at decline not to the unwillingness of Congress but rather to the inability of the navy itself to agree to any one ‘course of action, Hunt's unique contribution was to form the Naval Advisory Board, which could for- mulate a single program for congressional action. In this he may have been affected by the proposals of the 1870s for navy boards patterned on the British Board of Admiralty and the Board of Navy Com- missioners, which had operated between 1815 and the establishment of the bureaus in 1842. Among those on the Naval Advisory Board were Commander Robley D. Evans, who later commanded the “Great White Fleet’; Lieutenant Edward W. Very, an ord- nance expert; Chief Engineer Benjamin Isherwood: and Naval Constructor Philip Hichborn, who as chief constructor was responsible for the U.S. battleships and cruisers of the nineties. The chairman was Rear Admiral John Rodgers, who as president of the Naval Institute was intimately connected with one of the ‘centers of the movement for revival within the navy. The members of the board were unable to agree. Isherwood and the three naval constructors (Hi born, John Lenthall, and Theodore D. Wilson) dis- sented from the majority's recommendation, whichmight be considered progressive in modern terms, that the new ships be built of steel. They were aware of the limitations of domestic industry and probably unwilling to concede that domestic industrial mod- emization was a major goal of the new navy pro- gram, The majority argued that by foreing the do- mestic industry to build steel ships, even at some added current expense, it would be improving the state of the industry and thus providing for the navy of the future. In addition, Isherwood strongly re- sisted the majority recommendation in favor of full sail power for cruising, arguing that a cruiser could carry sufficient coal and that top hamper was merely useless topweight. Although many merchant ships already in service were capable of 16 knots or more, the board felt that a sea speed in rough weather of 15 knots would en- able a U.S. cruiser to overtake the bulk of the world’s, merchant ships. Sail power was needed, the board believed, to make the new ships independent of for- ‘eign coaling stations. Some tasks, presumably the protection of U.S. citizens abroad in particular, re- quired ships with a maximum draught of 9.5 fect, which the board said would allow a maximum speed. of 10 knots, The board also considered speeds of 13 and 14 knots “very useful in time of peace and of the greatest possible value in time of war,” and perhaps chose these speeds to distinguish its proposed fleet from the existing one of 11- and 12-knot wooden ships, which were not considered sufficient to meet the de- mands of wartime service. The board made the following point: Taking into proper consideration the various re quirements of the different squadrons for surveying, deep-sea sounding, the protection and advancement of American commerce, exploration, the protection of American life and property endangered by wars between foreign countries, and service in support of American policy in matters where foreign govern: ‘ments are concerned, forty-three unarmored cruising, vessels are required constantly in commission, oF twelve more than are possibly available now in case of the most urgent necessity both in commission and A 50 percent reserve would be required, for a total of sixty-five cruisers. However, some of the existing ‘wooden cruisers were in such poor condition that they would soon need to be replaced; the board there- fore added five more ships. Since thirty-two wooden cruisers already existed, that left a total of thirty- eight to be built ‘Taken alone, the figure of thirty-eight may seem formidable, but in the context of the size of the ex isting navy (52 usable ships out of 140 on the navy list) it was not so large. Undoubtedly the growing naval power of the South American countries, which THE NEW NAVY, 1883-98 17 were willing to buy modern cruisers and battleships abroad, was a powerful stimulus to new construe- tion, since the primary missions of the navy, as understood by the advisory board, were to safeguard US. lives, property, and commerce in just such un- stable areas. In any case, the board sought large numbers of what would later be classed as gunboats: twenty 10-knot ships (793 tons, with one 6-in gun and two 60-pounders), as against two 15-knot ships (5,873 tons, four 8-in guns and twenty-one 6-in guns), six 14-knot ships (4,560 tons, four 8-in guns, fifteen 6-in guns), and ten 13-knot ships (3,043 tons, twelve 6-in guns). It also wanted five rams, five torpedo gunboats, and twenty torpedo boats for coastal de- fense. The 15-knot and 14-knot “first rates” and the 13-knot “second rates” were to be built of steel, the 10-knot “fourth rates” of wood. For chasing merchant ships, cruisers would re- quire end-on fire, which the board proposed to achieve by sponsoning guns out over the sides and using re- cessed ports in the bows. All of the designs showed full forecastles for strength and dryness in a head sea, and the two first-rate designs had covered gun decks for more powerful broadside batteries. Thes gun decks would also provide berthing. Aft there would be no poop deck; a single gun on a pivot ora shifting mount would cover the alter arcs of fire. Both first- rate designs showed four 8-in guns in the sponsons; the 15-knot ship had, in addition, two 6-in guns in the bows, sixteen on the gun deck and two on the spar deck above. The 14-knotter would have only twelve guns amidships, with none on the spar deck, and the 13-knot cruiser was limited to a single bow gun and six 6-in guns on the broadside. Engines would be of the horizontal compound type, as in earlier wooden warships, with all machinery below the waterline used for protection. Each ship would have ‘one fout-bladed propeller, and funnels would be either telescopic or collapsible for sailing, The advisory board was well aware of the increas- ing danger posed by small RF guns, which could penetrate an unarmored ship at 300 yards. It there- fore recommended that guns and crews be protected by bulwarks and decks wherever possible, and that stee! shields and manilets be provided to protect against bursting shells and splinters. Moreover, each ship would be armed with four RF cannon of her own, as well as machine guns to protect her from torpedo boats. Congress was sufficiently impressed to authorize two 15-knot and four 14-knot cruisers, as well as one ram and cight torpedo boats, as a first installment in what the Naval Advisory Board envisaged as an eight-year program. Funds were to be raised by lim- iting repairs on existing wooden ships to less than 30 percent of their appraised value, with a ceiling of18 US. CRUISERS ‘The Aidanta class. (A. D. Baker 11) $400,000 for repairs. Since wooden ships, although relatively inexpensive to build, generally required large repairs after the typical three- to five-year for~ eign cruise, the limit on repairs, lowered to 20 per- cent the following year, doomed the old navy. Finally, in its 1882 Naval Appropriations Act, the Congress established a new advisory board of five officers and two civilians to be responsible for the construction of the new ships. The new board scems to have been resented by the bureaus, so much so that the latter submitted no designs for the board's consideration but rather tended to snipe at its out- put. It was chaired by Commodore Robert A. Shu- feldt, and included Chief Engineer Alexander Hen- derson; Commander J. A. Howell, who designed the United States’ first operational torpedo; Lieutenant Edward Very, the sole survivor of the first advisory board; Naval Constructor F. L. Fernald; and two ci- vilians, Henry Steers, a naval architect, and Miers Coryell, a marine engineer. Assistant Naval Con- structor Francis T. Bowles, who became chief con- structor in 1901, served as secretary. He had been ‘educated at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, and was responsible for many features of the new ships. (it is sometimes claimed that Bowles was the de- signer of the Atlania and the Boston.) ‘The new advisory board argued against the largest of the ships proposed in 1882, preferring an initial program of five smaller ones: one of about 4,000, three of 2,500, and an iron dispatch boat of about 1,500 tons. An act of 3 March 1883 authorized all but fone of the smaller cruisers, which led to the con- struction of the "ABCD" squadron, the Chicago, At Janta, Boston, and Dolphin. By this time Secretary of the Navy William E, Chandler—Hunt had been ap- pointed ambassador to Russia—had already adver- tised on 5 August 1882 for skeich designs of two cruis- ers, one of 5,000 to 6,000 tons and one of 4,300 to 4,700 tons. The designs were to be reviewed by the second advisory board. In fact no complete designs were received; the review board had to prepare its own. Inevitably, the bureaus protested that their pre- serves were being invaded, and also inevitably, the board's and the navy’s inexperience in modern war- ship design led to somewhat embarrassing results. When it abandoned the larger of the first-rate cruisers in favor of a mixture of first- and second- rate ships, the second advisory board decided to try toprovide even the smaller ships with some 8-in guns capable of all-around fire. That was impossible on the battery arrangement originally contemplated: 8- in guns could not be mounted on the upper deck of a small cruiser, given their great weight. Bowles compromised, mounting one gun at each end and cutting down the forecastle and poop decks to allow end-on fire. Both were offset, the forward gun to port and the after one to starboard, which allowed the end 6-in gun on the opposite side to add to end fire. This arrangement was at best a compromise; Bowles had to accept low freeboard forward and aft despite the desire of the original advisory board to achieve good seakeeping in the new cruisers. The machinery to operate the 8-in guns also consumed valuable space below, which Bowles reclaimed by enclosing the 6- in battery amidships. Moreover, he had to accept a degree of blast interference between 8-in and 6-in guns, which his mentor at Greenwich, Sir William White, who became British director of naval con- struction (DNC), considered excessive. Two ships, the Atlanta and the Boston, were completed to this de- sign ‘The large Chicago, designed by Fernald, came closer to the concepts espoused by the first advisory board, with four 8-in guns sponsoned fore and aft so as not to interfere with her rig, but with a full poop deck 30 that she had a complete deck covering her gun or main deck, However, rather than the fifteen 6-in/30 guns originally contemplated, she had eight such ‘weapons, as well as a pair of 5-in/30 guns sponsoned outboard aft (on the gun deck). The Chicago differed‘THE NEW NAVY, 1883-98 19 The early cruisers were obsolescent even when they were designed, and all had to be rebuilt. They were particularly important after the burden of U.S. construction shifted to battleships in the 1890s. The Chicago is shown as modernized in 1898, but she is still far from contemporary in appearance. from the two smaller cruisers in having twin screws, a feature strongly advocated by Bowles. She also had a three-masted rig with a bowsprit, Her machinery arrangement was, however, rather unusual and, some suggested, archaic, with vertical cylinders driving walking beams above deck. It had been designed by Coryell, presumably on the basis of merchant ship practice. Naval officers on the advisory board pre- ferred not to differ with him; one argued that de- velopments in machinery, which would certainly oc- cur before additional ships were authorized, would make its obsolescence obvious. The smaller cruisers had plants developed from those of the recent wooden ‘warships. Al three cruisers were completed with two- thirds rather than full sail area. In addition all were protected by a partial 1 5-in armor deck, and all had armored conning towers from which they could be steered. The four 1883 ships were assigned to a single builder, John Roach of Chester, Pennsylvania, and. because of this the Democrats charged corruption. It was Roach’s misfortune that the Democrats en- tered office in March 1885, before any of the cruisers had been completed and well before the dispatch boat Dolphin had been accepted. His biographer blames the inexperienced advisory board for nu- merous change orders that greatly increased costs; Roach was undercapitalized and suffered badly in the shaky U.S. economy of the time, Moreover, the new Democratic secretary of the navy, William C. Whitney, refused at first to accept the Dolphin, claim- ing that her design was grossly defective. Roach soon went bankrupt, and Whitney suffered the embar- rassment of having to complete the new cruisers in navy yards that were ill equipped for such work. Strong links to the existing navy show in descriptions of the new ships. For example, in Oc- tober 1883 the advisory board described the Chicago as an effective replacement for the Wabash, Tennes- see, and Trenton types in the existing fleet. The Chi- ‘cago was superior “in power, efficiency, and com- pactness” and “representative of the fully equipped Cruising fighting vessel, with qualities of speed, en- durance, battery power, and handiness carried to the maximum of development permissible without gain- 1g in one at the expense of the other.” However, such ships were too expensive to be built in numbers; hence the design of the smaller Atlantas, “which, by an alteration in the type made necessary by the re- strictions in the dimensions, maintain{ed] a com- bination of fighting and cruising qualities approxi- ‘mating closely thase of the Chicago at a much reduced cost.” They would replace the Hartford and the Omaha types, “whose service records give the best possible evidence of the great efficiency and absolute neces- sity of this size of vessel in an unarmored fleet.”20 US. CRUISERS ‘The Chicago. (A. D. Baker 111) The Dolphin, which was entirely unarmored and whose engines were above water, had no real equiv- alent in the wooden fleet. In theory, dispatch boats were an essential means of maintaining communi- cations before the advent of the radio; the advisory board commented that her type is considered a very necessary auxifiary 10 the naval fighting force for duties requiring lightness and speed, which could not be performed economi- cally by vessels composing the main body of the fleet. Ofeven greater importance, however, isthe fact that this vessel serves as a basis from which to develop the pure type of lightly armed, high-speed, econom ically maintained commerce destroyers. The special features developed in this vessel, and the require- ments of the fleet brought about by the length and position of our coast lines, lead the Board to rec- ‘ommend that a second vessel of this type and size be built. There remained the essential small-cruiser du- ties—cruising, survey, exploration in peacetime and convoy, blockade, and squadron cruising in war— requiring a ship about the size of the Dolphin but much slower to replace the wooden Juniata, Wachu- seit, and Essex types. Finally, as it had done in 1881, the board sought large seagoing gunboats drawing about nine feet of water and displacing about 750 tons. They had to be seagoing since so much of their ‘work would be performed in foreign waters. In one sense the board's cruisers were far too slow. They could not overtake fast liners. It argued that such ships were only perhaps one percent of the ocean traffic, and that to give the cruisers such high-speed capability would be to accept inordinate size, cost, and operating expenses; it would be better to con: centrate on improving the capabilities of the bulk of oceanic traffic. This point of view would hold through 1890, and the speed of American cruisers through the eighties was determined by the speed of foreign cruisers (potential adversaries), not of foreign mer- chant ships (potential targets). The four ABCD ships formed a “squadron of ev- olution,” which did much to introduce the navy to modern technology. They were the first U.S. war- ships designed with electric lighting, which had been tested in the Trenton in 1883. Obsolescent when built, they were always more significant for their effect on the navy and its industrial base than for their direct contribution to U.S. sea power. The Atlanta was re- fitted in 1895 with her 6-in guns converted to RF operation. Her sister was not modified at this time but received RF guns about 1907. She then went out of commission, serving with the Oregon naval militia in 191116. At that time she had a more mixed bat- tery, presumably to assist in training: the two orig- inal 8-in BLRs, as well as three 6-in/30 RF guns and one 4-in/40 RF gun. She was then earmarked for con- version to a hospital ship but instead became a re- ceiving ship at Yerba Buena, serving in that capacity, as the USS Despatch from 9 August 1940, through 1946. Her sister, which had served as a barracks ship for the Atlantic torpedo flotilla first at Norfolk, then at Charleston, was sold in 1912. The larger Chicago also had a lengthy career. While out of commission in 1895-98, she was fitted with new engines, her funnels were raised considerably, presumably for greater draught, her sails were landed, and her rig was reduced to two pole masts (her main mast was removed). She retained her four 8-in BLRs, but her mixed secondary battery was replaced by fourteen 5-in/40 RF guns. As a training ship with the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania naval militias in 1912-17, she temporarily carried an additional bat- tery of eight 5-in/40 and six 4-in/40 RF guns. She22 US. eRUISERS served as a submarine force flagship, first at Phila- delphia and then at Pearl Harbor, in 1917-23, and was barracks ship at the latter—from 16 July 1928 on as the Alton—until 1935. She foundered in tow back to San Francisco in July 1936. The Dolphin functioned as a peace cruiser in the West Indies after the Spanish-American War, being designated a gunboat, PG 24, before World War I She had never been formally included in the cruiser category. By 1898 she had been rearmed with three 4in RF guns, but by 1916 she was down to six 6- pounders (57mm). In 1919 the Dolphin had one 4-ini 50 gun and two 6-pounders. In October 1883 the advisory board recommended, the construction of an additional large cruiser, an additional small cruiser, another dispatch boat, two cruising gunboats of about 1,500 tons, and two 750- ton gunboats. The following April the secretary of the navy asked for designs for 4,500- and 3,500-ton cruisers and also for an 8,500-ton armored vessel. For its part the board concentrated on the medium cruisers. In November 1884 it reported a 3,000-ton, design, a high freeboard, single-decked, twin-screw 3,500 IHP), bark-rigged cruiser capable of 14 knots in smooth water. Its battery would consist of four 6- in guns in sponsons plus seven 5-in guns, two re- cessed in the bows, four in broadside, and one in the stern. The board did not explain why it had aban- doned the heavy guns of the Atiarta in a ship of about the same size, but seakeeping does appear to have been an important issue in the new design. ‘The cruising gunboats (1,600 tons, 220 by 35 feet) ‘would have about the same speed, on about half the power with twin screws, but would be much more heavily armed, with two heavy and two medium guns. ‘The heavy weapons would be on the centerline, either two 8-in guns or one 10-in and one 6-in gun; the medium guns would be 5-in BLRs on the superstruc- ture deck in forward sponsons. Both cruiser and large gunboat were to have had deck and coal bunker side protection. The smaller gunboat, which came to 800 tons when designed in detail, would have had only coal protection for her single-screw engines; she was, to be capable of about 10 knots under sail, 11 under steam, and to have been armed with six slow-firing, low-powered 5-in BLRs, two at the ends, four in broadside. The use of mild stcel in her hull would save weight, which could be invested in a large coal supply of 150 tons, as well as the heavy battery and substantial barkentine rig. ‘The dispatch boat, had it been built, would have had a most unusual battery: seventeen Hotchkiss re- volver cannon, the two heaviest, presumably 57mm, at the ends, twelve in main-deck sponsons, and one in each top. Thus it would have been a direct pred- ecessor of the all-RF-gun cruisers of about five years later, albeit with much less powerful weapons. At the time the board argued that for the class of work which the armed dispatch boat will beexpected to perform, namely, [attacking] armed merchant steamers, the great number of rapid-firing shell-cannon will be most elective, both when di rected against the buoyancy by firing at the water- line, or disabling the lire of artillery. Studies favor [al number of high-power, rapid-firing cannon as against the single great gun whove fire is slow and inaccurate, when considered in connection with the speed of a modern steamer. As for the larger cruiser, the board considered the 4,500 tons originally contemplated too great, as “the essential fighting qualities of such a ship can be ob- tained at less original and continuing cost in a smaller vessel. ... The only material advantage in greater size is the provision of accommodation for a flag officer and his staff, an advantage not sufficiently urgent at the present time to call for the outlay.” Instead, the board proposed a fast 3,600-ton twin- screw cruiser of at least 16 knots, capable of outrun- ning most ironclads, and armed with armor-piercing guns. It would be protected by a complete armored deck, and “by the adoption of twin-serews, two in- dependent sets of machinery, and the necessary ar- rangements for a forced draft. ... The use of sails as a means of propulsion will be rendered unneces- in 1884 the Senate naval committee reported out a bill embodying the entire advisory board program. However, the Democrats dominated the House of Representatives, and they were determined not to approve any further ships unless the four already building, which they violently criticized, proved sat- isfactory. They went so far as to eliminate funds for the armament of the ships under construction. Even the president's influence had little effect. However, Congress provided for a break in the deadlock by appropriating for only half of the fiscal year ending 31 December 1884. The Republicans included a call for an effective fleet in their electoral platform that year, while the Democrats, as has been mentioned, charged waste and corruption. When Congress re- convened, the Democrats had won the presidency. However, they proved willing to reconsider, and on its last day the lame-duck Forty-eighth Congress voted funds for two cruisers and two gunboats, the cruisers to be of 3,000 to 5,000 tons. Perhaps surprisingly, the new Democratic admin- istration of President Cleveland did not repudiate the movement towards a modern navy, although, as we have seen, the new secretary of the navy, William C. Whitney, was extremely hostile towards Roach and towards the firstfour ships designed by the advisory board. He even went so far as to propose the con-THE NEW NAVY, 1883-9823 The cruiser Charleston typilied attempts to purchase foreign technology. Built to an Elswick design, she was similar to the Japanese Naniwa but had less efficient engines. Also symbol Of the backwardness of US. naval technology near the turn of the century was the need temporarily 10 [it pairs of 6-in guns where her 8-in centerline weapons were intended to go. The Charlesion was the first casualty of the New Navy; she went aground during the Philippine Insurrection on I February 1899, ‘The Charleston. (A. D. Baker Ill) struction of armored sh ., battleships. Al- though there was no explicit shift in U.S. naval pol- icy, the construction of seagoing battleships implied the ultimate formation of a baitle fleet that would be able to contest foreign fleets. Such a policy, di- rectly opposed to the traditional one of dependence on commerce-destroying cruisers, was explicitly for- mulated by only one person, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy, in 1889-90. An act of 3 August 1886 authorized two armored cruisers, actually battle~ ships, of 6,000 tons, a cruiser of 3,000 to 5,000 tons, adynamite gun cruiser, anda torpedo boat. Although termed a cruiser, the dynamite gunship Vesuvius was essentially a platform for the unconventional pneu- matic gun and so needs no further discussion here. As for the other armored ships, Secretary Whitney pooled all the contracts so as to form an order large enough to be attractive to domestie steel companies; in the spirit of the new navy, one of his major con- cerns was the creation of a sufficient domestic in- dustrial base. Although the secretary's annual report for 1885 included no proposed building program, the chief constructor did have one: a 7,500-ton armored ship armed with four 10-in guns; a 5,000-ton belted cruiser armed with two such weapons; a 3,600-ton cruiser (330 feet, two 8-in and six 6-in guns, with twin screws for 18 knots); a 2,400-ton cruiser (250 feet, eight 6- in and two 5-in guns, with four 6-in guns in the spon- sons, capable of 15.5 knots); and a 2,000-ton cruiser (215 feet, eight 6-in guns, four in the sponsons, with a speed of 14 knots). C&R also wanted a pair of 800- ton torpedo gunboats. The 3,600-ton cruiser was pre- sumably the advisory board ship, with the same (wiTHE NEW Navy, 1883-9825 ‘The Newark. (A. D. Baker 111) screw 7,500-hp plant specified for the two larger units, Whitney seems not to have considered domestic designs satisfactory; he looked abroad, particularly to England, for more modern ideas. Commander F. E. Chadwick obtained plans for a modern cruiser, which became the Charleston, from Armstrong. She was similar to the Japanese Naniwa, which had an excellent reputation, Her machinery, however, was Jess modern; it was the last U.S. compound, or dou- ble-expansion, type. Chadwick's plans turned out to be a mixture of those of several British-designed plants, and costly changes were required while the ship was under construction. In her battery, the Charleston matched earlier U.S. cruisers, with two heavy guns at her ends (10-in guns in the Armstrong, design, but 8-in as built) with a 6-in broadside bat- tery. Unlike her predecessors, however, she had no sails, Whitney also bought plans for the Baltimore, based fon an unsuccessful Elswick proposal for a Spanish cruiser that became the Reina Regente. She had tri- ple-expansion engines, and in this case engine and hull plans matched. She was armed with four 8-in guns sponsoned out on the poop and forecastle decks, with six 6-in guns on a gun deck one level below them. The Baltimore had no sail power. The third new cruiser, the Newark, was built to domestic plans. Whitney appears tohave rejected the advisory board design. He called for a design com- petition, but then assigned a new board to determine the characteristics desirable in a new cruiser; in Sep- tember 1885 the board's report was transmitted to C&R and to BuEng as the basis for design work. It appears that the new board emphasized seakeeping and the flagship function, since the new design had considerable freeboard, Rear Admiral Edward Simp- son, president of the advisory board, commented that the Newark was given a 6-in battery because it was impossible to mount 8-in guns in sponsons on a 4,000- ton cruiser. The new cruiser was fitted with a poop deck, under which were cabins for her captain and also for an admiral. Again in contradiction to the suggestions of the board, she was fully rigged. Like the Baltimore, she was powered by triple-expansion engines. All three of the new cruisers of 1885-86 had complete protective decks in accordance with cur- rent foreign practice. ‘The two new gunboats, the Yorktown and the Pe-26 US.CRUISERS ‘rel, were an attempt to reach a minimum cruiser size consistent with seagoing efficiency and a heavy battery. The Yorktown was actually referred to from time to time asa torpedo gunboat or torpedo cruiser, and she displaced about 1,700 tons. She was similar to the Dolphin of 1883 in size but exceeded her in battery, with six 6-in guns. Marine engineering could. not as yet provide higher power in a suitably small weight, and her speed was described as disappoint- ing. The Petrel was smaller at 890 tons and came closer to the gunboat concepts of the advisory board, with four 6-in guns and a speed of only 11.5 knots. Two repeat Yorktowns, the Concord and the Ben- nington, were authorized in 1887, and the last of the series, the Machias and the Castine of 1889, were initially referred to as cruisers, which suggests the ambiguity inherent in their design. Similarly, the 2,000-ton Marblehead-class cruisers of 1888 were au- thorized as “gunboats or cruisers.” By about 1890, however, increases in the speed and firepower of cruisers had made the distinction much clearer. Gun- boat construction did continue even when small cruiser construction did not, with PGs 7-9 author- ized in 1893, PGs 10-15 in 1895, and PGs 17-18 in 1902. In his 1889 annual report Secretary Tracy de- scribed the three Yorktown as “little smaller than the Swatara typeL,] ... in fact twin-screw coal-pro- tected cruisers, with poop and forecastle and open gundeck between”; they had a ¥s-in protective deck at the waterline and were designed to carry six 6-in ‘guns as well as above-water torpedo tubes. The Ma- chias class was originally designed on a displace- ‘ment limited by law to 800 to 1,200 tons; they were to carry an RF battery of eight 4-in guns, two at the cends, two under the forecastle deck, two amidships, and two under the poop, with a speed of 14 knots. They proved overgunned and top-heavy and had to be lengthened by 14 feet amidships after trials. Their armor was removed from their gun sponsons. The Nashville (PG 7) carried a similar battery and had similar protection, but she was never called a cruiser, perhaps because by 1893 the term was obsolete. At 1,371 tons, she was midway between the 1,710-ton Yorktown ships and the 1,177-ton Machias ships. The other two 1893 gunboats, the Nashville type, more clearly intended for shallow-water service, were the last gunboats until the thirties that even approached carly cruiser performance. By 1886, then, the United States had either on, order or under construction six cruisers of widely differing characteristics. The admiral of the navy, David Dixon Porter, proposed some degree of stan- dardization as well as a new emphasis on high speed. He sought three classes of cruiser: a first class of 6,000 to 7,000 tons, capable of reaching 19.5 knots for a few hours; a second class of 4,500 to 5,000 tons, capable of reaching 19 knots for a few hours and suitable as flagships on foreign stations; and a third class of 3,000 tons, capable of reaching 18 knots for a few hours. At this time the 4,400-ton Baltimore was rated at 19.5 knots at forced draft, ic, for a short time, and at 18 knots at natural draft. Porter argued that higher speed was both obtain- able and essential. The fast liners had shown that it could be sustained voyage after voyage, and the suc- cess of the Herreshoft coil boiler, an early water-tube type, convinced him that the unit weight of machi ery could be cut dramatically, so that a 260-ft, 1,600- ton cruiser might be driven at 21 or 22 knots. Since cruiser size was dictated largely by machinery size and weight, the new machinery promised a much lower unit cost. Morcover, Porter argued, a 15- or 16-knot cruiser would be unable to escape from any superior force or, for that matter, to catch anything. {At the same time he vigorously favored the reten- tion of sail power; commerce raiders would have to operate far from home, without friendly coaling sta- tions, and they would be at the mercy even of gun- boats if they could not sail at a good speed. He noted further that most fast European cruisers retained full sail power and strongly discounted the then-current argument that rigging damaged in action might foul a ship's propellers. Porter's influence may well be reflected in the decision to provide the next two cruisers, the Philadelphia and the San Francisco, with il power. Reportedly, the disaster at Samoa in 1889 in which several U.S. sailing cruisers were wrecked in a hurricane helped to discredit this view of the value of sail power; certainly several cruisers de- signed with it were not completed in that form. How- ever, in 1887 Secretary of the Navy Whitney is said to have favored line oificers over engineers, and the decision at this time was probably an example of his inclination. Whitney asked Congress for two more ironclads to succeed the Texas and the Maine of 1886, as well as three more large fast cruisers. He noted that ac- cording to the chief constructor only four of the wooden cruisers would remain serviceable within six years, Several even more ambitious bills were intro- duced, but in the end only two steel cruisers were authorized. They were near duplicates of the 1886 ships, but both had uniform batteries of 6-in guns, opinion having shifted against the 8-in weapon— without, it should be noted, any seagoing experience with the latter, since the ABCD cruisers were com- pleted only in 1886. For the first time Congress di- rected that contracts for the new ships would require 19 knots, and for the first time premiums were of- fered for speed rather than horsepower. The Phila- delphia duplicated the hull of the Baltimore, the Els-THE NEW Navy, 1883-9827 ‘The San Francisco. (A. D. Baker Il) wick design, and was rigged with fore and aft sails, only on her three masts. The principal changes were those incident to the change in battery. The San Francisco duplicated the hull of the Newark, but with change in gun arrangement, with the sponsons for- ward and aft eliminated and the guns placed on the forecastle and poop decks as in the Philadelphia. In retrospect it seems odd that two parallel classes of 19-knot cruisers of about 4,100 to 4,400 tons were built. However, neither of the two potential proto- types had been completed at the time the contract was awarded for the 1887 ships, so a decision be- tween the two available designs would have been Gifficult at best One of these five second-generation protected cruisers, the Charleston, was lost off Guam just after the Spanish-American War. It was the first major loss suffered by the new navy. The Newark was mod- emnized in 1897-98, her yards and topmasts removed and a new RF battery of twelve 6-in/40 guns mounted. ‘She was again partially reconstructed in 1902. Her near sister, the Sav Francisco, was reconstructed in 1899. In June 1908 she was ordered fitted as a mine vessel, and in 1910 she was rearmed with eight 5-in guns. She was formally designated a mine planter only in 1912, and in 1918 she participated in the laying of the massive North Sea mine barrage. The Baltimore was rearmed and partially reconstructed in 1901, emerging with a uniform battery of twelve 6-in/40 RF guns. Converted into a minelayer at Charleston in 1913-14, she was recommissioned in 1915 and participated in the laying of the North Sea barrage. The Philadelphia, her near sister, was little modified except for the replacement of her steel spars by wooden ones to save weight. However, the Phil adelphia’s career as a cruiser was much shorter than the careers of her near sisters. In July 1902 she re- turned from an extensive cruise off the Panama coast requiring extensive repairs. Laid up at Bremerton the following August, she was housed over as a re- ceiving ship in May 1904, In 1888 Congress did authorize an additional ar- mored ship, described in the authorizing act as a 7,500-ton armored cruiser but clearly intended as a follow-on to the Maine of 1886. Congress also ap- proved a new 5,300-ton protected unit, a step up from the earlier ships. There was an attempt to exploit advances in marine engineering to achieve smaller unit size in two 3,000-ton and three 2,000-ton cruis- crs, as Admiral Porter had proposed the previous year. These cruisers were, in effect, direct descen- dents of the Dolphin, attempts to build pure com- ‘merce destroyers to attack unescorted merchant ships. ‘The 7,500-ton ship was originally designed to mount ‘a pair of 12-in guns forward; in August 1889 the Board ‘on Construction was considering enlargement to ob- tain sufficient protection for the 6-in battery, power for 17 knots, and RF guns rather than 6-in BLRs. However, these relatively modest improvements would have increased displacement to 8,300 or 8,400 tons and cost to well above the limit set in the act. Ultimately, displacement was reduced again to 7,500 tons by accepting a lighter secondary battery of six in guns, and a later reduction in side armor, to an 11-in belt and 9-in bulkheads, bought the addition of a single 10-in gun aft. Later in the same month the chief of ordnance proposed instead a uniform main battery of four I1-in guns, a caliber never man- uufactured for the U.S. Navy, which the board adopted. Tc might, then, imagine that it was well on the way to a call for bids and to formal specifications; but the policy board report made consideration of so small an armored ship obsolete. Instead, the 7,500-ton ship became a true armored cruiser, the 8,200-ton New York ‘There appears to have been no such confusion sur- rounding the design of the 5,300-ton cruiser, which was intended to make 20 knots, not the standard 18 knots set for earlier large U.S. cruisers. There was some question about the cruiser’s battery, partic larly about the balance between the 8-in and the RF weapons. Designs were submitted in August 1889 topoAouios SUN UI-g 494 YIM ‘ZO6T UF yINNgaL se wIduidjO OM JO 9IyOXd pacoquy ‘S161 Yaneyy “sacepoulUL e se axounryog a¥p Jo youd pavoquy‘The Olympia was Admiral Dewey's flagship at Manila in 1898; She was conceived as a fast commerce destroy ‘would probably have been the prototype for a large class. She is shown on 27 September 1898, the Board on Construction for two 8-in and twelve Gin guns; ot for four 8-in and thirty-six 4in guns: or for four 8-in and cight 6-in guns. That October the design was still fluid, but there was increasing in- terest in 4-in armor for the guns to protect against the RF gun threat. The design called for a battery of two &in guns in single turrets and ten 4in guns in segmental protection; an alternative 6-in secondary battery was rejected on the grounds of its weight, and the 4-in guns were tentatively arranged so that four could fire ahead and four astern. That was still not entirely satisfactory, and in November there were studies of the relative virtues of two 8-in and four 6- in guns on the upper deck. It appears that the 4in fun was not considered nearly powerful enough, and the 6-in RF gun not rapid enough, which is why the 8-in gun fared as well as it did. Thus in November 1890 the battery was fixed at four 8-in guns in twin turrets and ten 5-in guns; as weight compensation, turret armor was reduced to 3 inches. Union Iron Works was the only bidder. It lengthened her original navy design by ten fect to increase space in the fireroom and bore the cost of this change. In his report, Secretary Tracy described this ship, the Olympia, as a very fast commerce raider, fapable of 21 knots on tal an T9 sustained wa THE NEW NAVY, 1883-98 29 this role she became the most famous new navy cruiser. iot turned in favor of a sea-control battleship force, she a great endurance of 13,000 nautical miles. He con- sidered her RF secondary battery a particularly im- portant feature of her design The Olympia became famous as Admiral Dewey's Aagship at Manila Bay in 1898, Decommissioned for the last time in 1922, she became a museum ship at Philadelphia in 1957. She was reconstructed par- tially in 1901-3, then rearmed in 1917-18 with a uniform main battery of ten 5-in/S1 RF guns. Congress set the speed of the 3,000-ton cruisers at 19 knots. It also limited their cost, and no bidders could be found. They were, therefore, built in navy yards, and thus were unique among new navy cruis ers. An all-RF main battery (one 6-in gun and ten 4- in guns) was considered a notable new feature of these cruisers, and in addition they had six tubes for Howell flywheel torpedoes. They were completed with a new 5-in RF gun replacing the 4-in gun originally planned. In accordance with Admiral Porter's ideas, their design showed both high steam power and con siderable sail area, with a fore-and-aft rig. In fact, it does not appear that either ever had sails. Both ships were criticized after their completion as crowded by their massive machinery, with inadequately venti- lated machinery spaces that became much too hot after sustained high-speed steaming. In 1900-190230 US.CRUISERS a By the early years of this century the Olympia’s 8. removed. She is shown i July 1919, at Split, Yugoslavi uns were no longer co armed with ten idered effective, and they were ultimately igh-velocity 5-in/SIs. She was essentially preserved in this form until 1957, when she was made into a muscum ship in Philadelphia and restored to nearly her original appearance, ‘The Olympia. (A. D. Baker 11) both were refitted with much less powerful plants (5,450 IMP in the Marblehead and 8,500 in the Cin- cinmati instead of the 10,000 [HP in the design), and their 6-in guns were replaced by an eleventh 5-in gun Congress described the 2,000-ton ships as gunboats or cruisers and left it to the secretary to determine their contract speed. He demanded 18 knots, which clearly placed them in the cruiser category. They were “coal protected,” ic., although they had water line protective decks, the latter were only 'Yie inches on their slopes and %s inches on their flat surfaces (% inches at their ends), compared with the 2.5-in slopes and L-in flat surface (2 inches at the ends) of the 3,000-tonners. Coal bunkers would therefore pro- vide much of the protection of the smaller ships. Their battery was to consist of two 6-in guns and eight 4-in guns, again all RF, for which, respectively, five and ten rounds per minute were optimistically claimed in 1889. In fact, as in the 3,000-ton type, they were completed with 5-in rather than 4-in guns. The very heavy battery had to be reduced because the ships proved unstable; the after 6-in gun was removed, and the battery was a uniform nine 5-in/ 40 guns; ballast was added. The Montgomery alone(111 224¢¢"a“V) “S161 IOge ‘sURB UES YIM pou PIawUAIO ay,SU YEN oUUIINED SHE,‘The Montgomery class. (A. D. Baker III) was completed with two 6-in and eight 5-in guns. As, in the 3,000-ton design, these cruisers were also to have six Howell torpedo tubes. None of the bidders was willing to undertake an 18-knot ship on the price limit set by Congress. The Navy Department had to reduce the contract speed to 17 knots, which each ship exceeded by a knot or ‘more on trial with the concomitant bonuses. The 1888 program was the high point of the steel cruiser navy. The following March the lame-duck Congress approved two even smaller cruisers, num- bers 12 and 13, which were soon redesignated as gunboats, the Machias and the Castine. They were probably the most explicit demonstration of the fuzzy boundary between the two classes. Congress also au- thorized a second dynamite cruiser, which was not built ‘Two days after this last authorization, the Repub- licans returned to power. Secretary of the Navy Ben- jamin F. Tracy, impressed with the logic of Captain Alfred T. Mahan's strategic analysis, appointed a pol- icy board to develop a long-range plan for naval de- velopment. The board pressed fora shift in U.S. strat- ‘THE NEW NAVY, 1883-98 33 egy away from cruiser warfare and towards the creation of a battle fleet sufficient to achieve com- mand of the sea or at least command of the sea ap- proaches to the United States. Tracy called for the construction of large battleships, and the 7,500-ton armored cruiser of 1888 could have no place in his plans; it became instead a fast cruiser, the New York. Although its call for thirty-five battleships of var- ious sizes was certainly the most distinctive feature of the policy board's report, cruisers were also im- portant in its program, both for raiding and for work as part of an integrated battle fleet. Thus it called for a total of nine “thin-armored cruisers"; four pro- tected cruisers of 7,500 tons each; nine protected ‘cruisers of 5,400 tons; two of 4,000 tons each; five special cruisers for China service of 1,200 tons each; and fifteen torpedo cruisers of about 900 tons each. Like the naval advisory boards, the policy board took pains to define the ships it proposed to build in some detail. It also discussed the naval tactics of the time. Classic cruiser roles were covered under the head of “cruisers operating singly or in small eruis- ing squadrons”; these roles were to attack or convoy34° US.CRUISERS. . ‘Table 1-1. Cruisers of the Policy Board, 1889 Protected Cruiser Anmored Cruiser Protected Cruiser Normal Disp't (tons) 6250 7,500 5,400 LBP ({t-in) 335.0 372.0 3240 LOA (fein) 345.0 382-5 337.6 Beam ({tin) 57-65 587 53.6 Draft (itn) 23 2315 207 Number of Guns in Main Battery 2 8in(80)* 2 8in(70) 2 8:1n(70) 10 5.in RF (160) 10 5-in (130) 12 5-in(125) 6 6b RF 6 6lb RF 6 6b RF 8 Llb RF 8 L-lb RF 4 Lb RF 437mm 437mm 437mm, oTtt 6 TTS) errs) Belt (in) 4105 = pa Deck (in) 25 204 251045 Number of Boilers 4 8 4 THP 9,600 20,250 12,000 ‘Trial Speed (kts) 9 22 20 Coal (tons) 625(950 cap.) 900(1,600 cap.) 540(900 cap.) Endurance (nm) at 10 Kts 7,000(10,7003 8,600(15,000) 6,700(11,200) * The number in parentheses relers to rounds per gun. 4 Torpedo tubes. 4} The number in parentheses refers to endurance at maximum coal capacity. commerce, clear trade routes of enemy cruisers, rav- age “the enemy's coasts at unprotected or weakly defended points,” or carry “on small naval wars in distant countries, effect reprisals, etc.” The advent of a battle fleet introduced entirely new activities: scouting and cutting off weaker enemy ships, espe- cially his supply ships; keeping touch between the fleet and its base and protecting its line of supply; forming the van and wings of a fleet under way: making first contact and developing the enemy bat- tle line; acting as a mobile reserve within the fleet; ensuring the efficiency of a fleet blockade, including the support of lighter craft; and finally, in the event the fleet were blockaded, “deceiv{ing] and discon- cert{ing] the blockading force and markfing] the op- portunities for sally,” and diverting an enemy force from blockade duty by “ravaging the enemy’s coast and destroying commerce and attacking the supply routes of his squadron.” The board demanded a minimum smooth-water speed of 19 knots and an endurance of 9,000 nautical miles (10,000 preferred) at 10 knots for cruisers. Moreover, it considered 3,000 tons an absolute min- imum for vessels intended to operate alone because of the “impossibility of combining the necessary speed and endurance in smaller vessels, and of fitting the very necessary feature of a satisfactory double bot- tom,” and because of the serious loss of speed in a moderate seaway. Thus it recommended no cruiser smaller than 4,000 tons. Sail power was to be aban- doned. The board's views on protection were mainly determined by the threat posed by the OF guns of foreign warships. In every case, light armor for guns and gun crews would be essential, and where pos- sible, it would have to be applied to waterlines to preserve buoyancy. The board went so far as to prefer protection for the guns to additional gun power. Particular attention was drawn to the need for cruisers with thin belts and local protection for their guns to counter the threatening new OF gun. Such ships would be particularly well adapted to anti- cruiser warfare, to attacks on the enemy coast, and to operation directly with the battle fleet. The board’s sketch design called for a 6,250-ton unit armed with two 8-in guns in single turrets at the ends, as well as ten S-in RF guns, four in casemates and single turrets with local protection. Belt armor was concentrated at the waterline, the local protection of the guns countering the threat to the ship's struc- ture above the waterline. This was similar to the protective scheme later applied to the New York. The first-class protected cruisers, primarily com- merce raiders, were actually to have been larger, expending displacement in much more powerful ma: chinery to achieve higher speed, 22 rather than 19 knots, and a longer endurance at 10 knots, 15,000 rather than 10,700 nautical miles. They possess the greatest endurance, and are intended to capture or destroy the fastest merchant vessels in the world, while they will also be capable of fighting, vessels of their own class. The 5,400-ton cruisers of 20 knots speed presumably based on the Olympia as, then conceived are toserve the same general purpose, being, however, better capable of fighting, having theTHE NEW NAVY, 1883-98 35, The “thinly armored cruiser” of 6,250 tons as envisaged by the policy board, 1889. All of the gunhouses are single mounts, with additional 5-in guns in the end casemates. The heavy shading indicates coal bunkers, the lighter, belt armor same battery, and great, though less, endurance, with greater protection, on a less [sic] displacement, The armored cruisers have the fighting power and pro- tection still further developed, and they would prob: ably overpower any vessel of the cruiser type now built or projected. All three major cruiser classes were to be powered by four engines, two per shalt, a feature realized only in the armored cruisers New York and Brooklyn. For ‘economy at cruising speed, only one engine per shaft could be connected, as in a COGAG system today However, the ‘ship had to stop to connect up both sets for full power; at Santiago the Brooklyn was limited to 16 knots because her forward engines were not connected. In each case, too, boilers were to be grouped in compartments separated by coal bunkers to reduce the chance of losing all power after a single hit. There were to be two compartments (four boil- ers) for the armored cruiser and the 5,400-ton pro- tected cruiser, and three compartments (eight boil ers) for the 7,500-ton protected cruiser. This feature ‘was not realized in any of the ships. The program of the policy board was published, to the embarrassment of Secretary Tracy, in January 1890. 1t was much too large, even for the level of pro- navy enthusiasm already aroused. Even so, it came to serve as a guide for future fleet expansion, and it did justify a shift from cruiser to battleship warfare. However, its call for what amounted to a balanced fleet went unheeded; the navy received only battle- ships and light cralt, except for a very few cruisers, for the next seven years. The program appears, how- ever, to have had several important impacts on US. cruiser design. First, the 1888 “armored cruiser,” or small battleship, was abandoned, and an entirely new, fast, "thinly armored” cruiser was built in- stead. Second, two very fast commerce raiders, which became the Columbia and the Minneapolis, were de- signed approximately after the concept of the 7,500- ton protected cruiser. The policy board report of January 1890 refers ex- plicitly to the small 7,500-ton battleship then in the design stage. However, the design of a new armored cruiser probably began late in 1889, for the minutes of the Board on Construction note that a sketch de- sign of an 8,100-ton protected cruiser was discussed at length with Assistant Naval Constructor D. W, Taylor on 21 January 1890. On 11 February Assistant Naval Constructor Francis Gatewood submitted the sketch of an 8,100-ton armored cruiser, and a week later the chief constructor and engineer-in-chief were making their own final suggestions for the 8,100-ton ship. It became the New York, which in its thin, 4-in waterline belt and substantial battery protection re: alized the suggestions the policy board had just made to overcome the threat of the RF gun, In his 1890 report Tracy described the New York as faster than any more powerful warship and as capable of overtaking 95 percent of all the world’s merchant ships without requiring an excessive dis- placement, Her builder, Cramp, modified the origi- nal navy plans by rearranging her boilers to add more longitudinal and transverse bulkheads for pro- tection against underwater attack by ram or torpedo, She was described as a commerec destroyer, with an unusually great endurance of 13,000 nautical miles, but her characteristics recall the policy board’s de- mands for cruisers to operate with the battle fleet This design originally called for four 8-in guns (twin turrets) and sixteen 4-in RF guns. [t appears that two more 8-in guns, in shields in the waist, were added in place of four 4-in RF guns around November 1890 ‘Tracy described this combination as unequaled among cruisers, giving her chances which are not to be despised should she be driven to a momentary encounter with a battleship.