Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "USS Alaska - Guide 105 (Extended)" video.

Count me in the "Large Cruisier" camp, but with some planning and work, these could been instead CBAA class ships. The concept of the Atlanta class enlarged to twenty-two 5"/38 twin mounts for a total of 44 barrels, eighteen 40mm quad mounts for a total of 72 barrels , and somewhere between thirty-six and forty 20mm twin mounts for a total of 72 to 80 barrels would have made these ships a nightmare for Japanese aviators. Deleting the 12" guns and their magazines would have freed up space for installing all the PPI radar screens and plotting tables to enable the Alaska class to be the USN's first true fighter control ships. They could have also been more easily converted to antiaircraft missile ships postwar. [Edited to correct some mistakes between mounts and barrels]
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@maxchan2452 Because the Germans never called them that. Their official name was Panzerschiffe, or "armored ship". By 1940 the two survivors were classified as heavy cruisers. The British press invented the term "pocket battleship". No member of the Kriegsmarine would ever have used that term.
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@xt6wagon That's true except the only role for the AA version of the Alaska wouldn't be just gunfire. It would be as a fighter control ship to vector in fighters to destroy the enemy before they can break through the CAP. A ships needs size and volume to fulfill that role while still being able to keep up with the carriers. Two smaller ships can't do that. The USN kind of used this concept with their "Sea Control" ship of the 60's that never got built.
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@paulhinds4840 You lost me on this. They were designed as scout cruisers with a secondary flotilla leader role. Their main role was always antiaircraft protection for the fleet. They were fitted with sonar, depth charge tracks, and depth charge projectors for a short period of time in early 1942, with the projectors removed by June, 1942 to save weight in a ship of already marginal stability, only retaining two depth charge tracks. The only two lost were because of bad luck being hit by Long Lance torpedoes and gunfire from superior ships. They were never built for a surface ship to ship combat role against anything other than destroyers. Their value as AA cruisers was shown by the Juneau class. They were never fitted with any antisubmarine equipment but had their secondary antiaircraft battery much improved compared to the Atlanta class. There's no question that USN found them far more valuable for their antiacraft role than any antisubmarine role.
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@bigblue6917 Thanks. I fixed it so I wasn't mixing mounts and barrels. The Alaskas could have been really formidable antiaircraft ships if if was recognized early on that a large cruiser platform could have been more effective than the enlarged destroyer types of the Atlanta class.
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@paulhinds4840 They were originally designed as flotilla leaders but the role was changed to an antiaircraft cruiser. They were designated as scout cruisers in the early part of the design work because there was no USN classification for a flotilla leader or antiaircraft ship. However, antiaircraft was seen as their main role from before they were laid down. You don't need eight turrets and sixteen 5" guns to be a flotilla leader. In 1949, the ships were finally given their correct designation as CLAAs. At no time was the class given any type of destroyer designation. The CL designation already set them apart from destroyers. The issue was not the number of 5"guns, apart from stability issues. It was that that the directors were just coming into series production and were behind schedule. The Atlanta and Juneau were scheduled to get the Mark 37 and Mark 51 directors as well as replacement of the 1.1" machine gun batteries with 40mm Bofors on their next overhaul in January, 1943. Regardless of that, the armament of the Atlanta and Juneau played no role in their sinking. Once all the Atlanta, modified Atlanta, Oakland, and Juneau classes got their 40 mm guns along with their Mark 51 directors, and all the ships had the Mark 51 and, by mid-1943, the proximity fused 5" rounds, they proved to be excellent antiaircraft ships. Admiral Mitscher remarked that, other than an Iowa class battleship, he'd rather have a couple of Atlanta class ships protecting his carriers than any other ships.
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@keenanmcbreen7073 and it wouldn't just have been the number of barrels. Deleting the 12" turrets would have allowed an arrangement of the 5" mounts so that 20 or 21 of the mounts would have had a clear field of fire from almost any direction of attack. That says nothing of the concentration of 40 mm guns being at least equal to the Iowas while having the space and excess tonnage available to mount all the radars, and space available for fighter direction facilities. Such a ship may have saved at least a few other from kamikaze attacks.
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@neniAAinen You think a 5"/38 gun is a short range weapon? The Atlanta class was already dangerously overloaded in the ships with 8 mounts on 7,400 tons fully loaded. The biggest problem was finding space for all the crew needed to man these Guns. Atlanta class vessels were already know as some of the most cramped and uncomfortable ships in the modern navy. Using a hull with size and available tonnage of an Alaska would produce an AA cruiser with about twice the firepower of an Atlanta with enough space available for the crew, supplies, electronics, and ammunition, as well as improved armor, something almost totally lacking in an Atlanta . They would only have been valuable in the event an invasion of the home islands took place, but they may have saved a number of our carriers in that event.
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@neniAAinen The 5"/54 did have a theoretically higher A/A ceiling at about 50,00 feet compared to the about 38,000 feet of the earlier gun, but both had ranges far higher than and reasonable attack altitude of aircraft attacking the fleet. The main reason for the development of the 5"/54 was for two sided automatic feed. However, that requirement plus the larger size of the gun itself made the weight of a dingle 5"/54 about as heavy as a dual 5"/38. The complex nature of the feed system required a,manning of 12-20 men depending on mission, also about the same as a dual 5"/38 mount, so the original 5"/54 turned out to be a disappointment. That improved somewhat with the Mark 42, but it wasn't until the Much different Mark 45 that the gun finally came into its own. There wasn't time in WWII to develop some new AA gun. It's a good thing that the 5"/54 wasn't on any ship that served in the war as it wasn't a good gun compared to the 5"/38, with constant jamming problems until the ROF was lowered. The thing with the Alaska class was the keel was already laid by early 942. There was stalk of converting them to carriers, and it was only the very fast building program of the Essex class and all the escort carriers available that caused that plan to be abandoned. Her 12" guns would only be useful for shore bombardment, and we had a multiplicity of BB's and CA" already available for that. They would never have been laid down if the Navy knew in 1941 what 1945 would look like. The 12" guns had already been built and in inventory when the class was under construction. If they hadn't been, a conversion to a carrier or a large CAA may have happened, but the Navy still liked ships with big guns, even if they had no apparent reason to exist. They were not needed to tear apart anything still floating by August 1945. They did serve as de facto CCA's anyway, but they would not have been built in any form if not for the naval panic of 1942. Things change fast in a war.
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@neniAAinen Guided AA weapons in 1943? New on on me. At any rate, you don't seem to understand that the two ships that became the Alaska class were already laid down near the start of the war. At that point, the Navy needed any ships it could get. The still weren't sure if the Japanese had any of the battlecruiser these were built to fight, but build they must. The only question was would they be carriers. 12" gunned large cruisers, or antiaircraft cruisers. The guns and turrets were available so that was the choice once the "carrier panic" of 1942 subsided. The 5"/38 was still the b est heavy AA gun in the war. Until the advent of the 5"/54 Mark 42, they were still the best postwar. The Worchester class was the attempt to build an AA "light" cruiser with heavier AA armament that grew to be larger and heavier than a heavy cruiser and had a main armament that never worked right. The only successful replacement of the Bofors 40mm AA armament was with the automatic 3"/50, and no light armament would ever be used again. By about 19o50, it was clear that missiles were the way forward, but everything looked very different in 1941. You seem to be hung up on looking at things back then through the 20/20 hindsight of today.
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