This week in Close Quarters, to mark the arrival of the American Cruiser line split, we will be looking into the historical significance of and justifications behind Cruiser design.

What is a Cruiser?

As is reflected in World of Warships, different warship designs stemmed from the contrasting roles they were expected to play. The Cruiser, while maintaining some of the speed of the Destroyer, also had the sufficient size and armament to be able to operate independently from a fleet. In this capacity, the Cruiser could raid enemy trade routes, scout ahead for a fleet, or indeed incorporate itself in a fleet to engage enemy fleets along with Destroyers and Battleships.

USS Wichita. Scapa Flow

Historical Backdrop

In order to have a working understanding of naval ship design in the mid-20th century, we must first cast our gaze upon the end of World War I and the geopolitical consequences derived from the perpetual friction between competing military superpowers. After the prolonged destruction and carnage of the Great War, world leaders expressed a desire to create political mechanisms and paper fail-safes so as to prevent a global conflict on such a scale from ever being repeated. The crippling conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, the division of Austro-Hungarian Balkan territories, and the creation of the League of Nations are some such examples.

Despite the desire for peace of all parties involved, as it turns out, military expansion would be mostly dictated not so much by an appetite for domination, but by a desire to remain cautiously competitive and always one step ahead of other world powers. To that effect, in order to prevent a naval arms race, meetings between representatives of the victorious nations of the war would be convened and treaties would be signed in the following decade, most notably the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922.

Washington

The Cruiser Arms Race

With this intention in mind, remedies to naval escalation were at first found in the scrapping of some of the existing tonnage of warships by all parties, and most notably in the restrictions on size and armament, as well as the maximum number of Battleships in a navy. It was agreed upon that Cruisers would be defined as warships that could not surpass 10,000 tonnes of displacement and could not carry guns of a greater calibre than 203 mm. With these guidelines in place, the heavy cruiser came into fashion during the 1920s and 1930s, as naval powers across the globe began competing to construct large fleets of ships that would come as close as possible to the previously mentioned limits. 

These maritime nations would walk the line of the treaty and sometimes discreetly violate the imposed limits, and it is under these circumstances that we can begin to see ships like the German Pocket-Battleships such as Admiral Graf Spee, or the Myoko class Japanese Heavy Cruisers. The Cruiser craze would be addressed in the 1930s with the London Naval Treaty, which would put forward limits on Cruisers -as was previously done for Battleships a decade earlier- and would also make a clear distinction between light and heavy Cruisers based on gun calibre:

•Heavy Cruiser: up to 10,000 tonnes of displacement; gun calibre above 155 mm and below 203 mm.

•Light Cruiser: up to 10,000 tonnes of displacement; gun calibre below 155 mm.

Admiral Graf Spee

These new limitations would lead to the construction once again of ships that would tightly meet the requirements to be recognised as the newly designated class of Light Cruiser. These Light Cruisers would sport the same large hulls as a Heavy Cruiser, but with a greater number of (smaller calibre) guns. This new type of arrangement proved to work effectively and would be amply adopted by the US Navy with the Cleveland, Brooklyn, and St. Louis class Cruisers as clear examples. The increased number of barrels firing on a hypothetical enemy ship also boosted the chance of scoring quick early hits in an engagement, which could arguably give the Light Cruiser an advantage when facing more heavily armed foes. The Imperial Japanese Navy, on the other hand, was not so keen on the new specifications as their investment in a Heavy Cruiser development program had been very intense. Proving to be an obstacle to its aspirations, Japan would end up withdrawing from the treaty in 1936.

The End of the Cruiser

With the beginning of World War II new naval tactics and technologies would be quickly developed and put into practice. The advancement and perfection of submarine technology, along with the fast development of Aircraft carriers and naval aviation tactics would reveal that the role of Battleships and Cruisers alike as gunships would become increasingly obsolete. The raiding role of the Cruiser could be more efficiently taken over by stealthy submarines and fast aircraft. Eventually, the use of missiles would become standard practice after the war as the main ship vs. ship weapon, thus making the speed of a Cruiser as a means to disengage less important. Since missiles can be equipped on any size of ship, the need for large vessels disappeared and navies would adopt large fleets of smaller, more versatile ones.

In the present day, the classification of warships has become obscured, with most offensive ships being designated as Destroyers even when their size specifications sometimes match up better with the old concept of Cruiser. 

To find out more about the new tech tree split of the American Cruisers in World of Warships, check out the link below!

AMERICAN CRUISERS

Or watch our video guide for us cruisers here

Missed the last Close Quarters?

Z-39