Battleships and Gun Cruisers of the Major Cold War Navies
Cannon were first used at sea sometime in the 15th century. While various siege engines had been employed by navies for thousands of years, they never had a profound effect on war at sea. Instead, naval combat was dominated by ramming and boarding actions. While these ancient tactics remain in use today, guns fundamentally transformed naval warfare as they allowed a ship to disable or even sink its enemies from a distance.
Guns developed over time from the small manually aimed muzzle loaders of the early days to the massive computer controlled weapons of the World Wars. Range, rate of fire, throw weight, and accuracy all made tremendous strides but the basic principals remained the same for the five centuries when guns dominated naval combat.
The 19th century saw this dominance shaken by the introduction of various forms of mines and torpedoes, but it was not until the introduction of aircraft in the 20th century that the gun was finally replaced as the primary naval weapon. Although battleships and cruisers played a vital role in the naval actions of World War II, it was becoming increasingly that the gun could not keep up in the modern world. However, as the development of missile technology took longer than expected, battleships and gun cruisers soldiered on in every major navy. Even after the widespread deployment of guided missiles in the 1960's, large gun armed warships remained in service until the end of the Cold War.
Note: for this post the term "light cruiser" will be used to indicate an armament of 6" guns. The various cruisers that were armed with main guns of less than 6" are not considered in this post as I do not consider them to be major fleet units.
All of the battleships under construction were also cancelled and only nine of the cruisers were completed. These consisted of three Oregon City-class heavy cruisers and one Fargo-class light cruiser which were commissioned in 1946, as well as three Des Moines-class heavy cruisers and two Worcester-class light cruisers that joined the fleet in 1948-1949. While Oregon City and Fargo were merely improved versions of Baltimore and Cleveland, Des Moines and Worcester were revolutionary ships armed with fully automatic main guns that could fire two to three times as fast as their manually loaded predecessors.
When the Korean War began in 1950, the US Navy had just one battleship, nine heavy cruisers, and three light cruisers in service. This force was deemed insufficient and three battleships and six heavy cruisers were quickly pulled out of reserve and recommissioned (amusingly the cruiser USS Macon was put in reserve in April 1950 only to be returned to active service six months later) for a total force of 22 gun ships. Interestingly, not a single light cruiser was reactivated even though two of them had been decommissioned just months before the war began.
While the intensifying Cold War had increased the Navy's budget, most of that money was spent on guided missile cruisers and nuclear submarines while the number of gun ships again began to dwindle. After the lone Soviet battleship was lost in 1955, the American battleship fleet was drawn down. The last two left service in 1958 after a year as the only operational battleships in the world.
The two Worcester-class light cruisers also left the fleet in 1958, leaving the Navy with 12 heavy cruisers as its only dedicated large gun ships. However, the eight hybrid guided missile conversions entered service around this time, bringing four triple 8" and eight triple 6" turrets with them.
Still, overall the gun force continued to shrink through the 1960's and only the heavy cruisers (the Des Moines-class USS Newport News and the Baltimore-class USS St Paul) survived to see action in Vietnam. In this fight they were briefly joined by the battleship USS New Jersey (recommissioned 1968-1969) and in 1968 the two Boston-class converted cruisers were redesignated as heavy cruisers and assigned to shore bombardment missions after their aging missile systems deactivated.
But these were temporary measures and when Saigon fell in 1975, the Navy's gun force was comprised of only Newport News and three Galveston-class light cruiser missile conversions. The heavy cruiser was decommissioned just months later and the Galveston-class soon followed. When Oklahoma City left the fleet in 1979, the era of the gun appeared to be over.
Ironically, it was the missile that brought the gun back. In an attempt to get as many Tomahawk missiles to sea as possible, the Navy recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships during the 1980's. While the introduction of the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System and the end of the Cold War again rendered the battleship obsolete, their 16" guns were used to good effect against ground targets in Iraq and Lebanon and inspired the Navy to look at putting large caliber guns on modern ships.
This idea culminated in the three Zumwalt-class destroyers, the first of which commissioned in 2016. With her two automated 6" turrets and large size, Zumwalt is a light cruiser in all but name and is the first new vessel with large caliber guns since the British light cruiser HMS Blake commissioned in 1961.
They Royal Navy also made remarkably different choices when it came to which cruisers to retain, preferring prewar light cruisers rather than late war heavy cruisers. The bias towards light cruisers can be explained by the fact that unlike America, Britain only had a small number of older heavy cruisers. The choice of prewar cruisers was apparently because wartime construction had been built to lower standards.
When the Korean War began, the Royal Navy's surface fleet of four battleships and 15 light cruisers was significantly larger than that of the US Navy. However, whereas America recommissioned many gun ships for the war and kept them in service into the 1960's, the British fleet continued to shrink almost every year.
In 1959-1961 the three long delayed (their keels had been laid 1941-1942) Tiger-class cruisers joined the fleet introducing fully automatic 6" guns. Ironically, the much larger and more powerful (18,000 tons and 12 guns against 12,000 tons and four guns) American Worcester-class ships with their similar armament had just been designated obsolete and decommissioned the year before.
The introduction of the Tiger-class was going to be accompanied by rebuilds of several older cruisers. However, as costs mounted and need for modern missile ships became increasingly apparent, only HMS Belfast received the proposed refit and even she decommissioned just four years later. In 1965 and 1967 two of the Tiger-class went into four year refits that replaced half their gun armament with large hangers and flight decks for helicopter operations. The third Tiger-class (HMS Lion), left service in 1972 after her sisters had rejoined the fleet. The two converted cruisers did not last much longer and were decommissioned in 1978 and 1979, marking the end of the gun era for the Royal Navy. While the converted Tiger-class ships were almost recommissioned in 1982 for the Falklands War, the war ended before the work could be completed and the ships were sold for scrap instead.
The oldest heavy cruiser (armed with just four guns) was decommissioned 1947 but a Finnish coast defense ship (Vainamoinen / Vyborg) armed with four 10" guns was taken as reparations. The heavy cruiser force fell to five in 1954 and remained at that number until they were all converted to training ships in 1958-1961
However, it was the light cruiser fleet that served the USSR best in the postwar world. This is somewhat surprising given that in 1946 the only 6" cruiser in the Soviet Navy was the American Omaha-class USS Milwaukee, which was on loan until she was replaced by a captured Italian ship in 1949. But in 1950, the five Chapayev-class cruisers entered service. Laid down in 1939, their construction had been badly delayed by the war. While their service lives were rather short (they were all designated as training cruisers in 1958-1961), they paved the way for the 14 Sverdlov-class cruisers that entered service beginning in 1951.
Armed with 12 manually-loaded 6" guns and an equal number of fully stabilized automatic 4" guns, these vessels were somewhat archaic. Still, they were the Soviet Navy's most numerous large surface vessel for many years. While seven of these ships were placed in reserve, sold, or simply scrapped in the early 1960's, by 1972 the five reserve ships had all been returned to service and the class did not begin decommissioning in numbers until 1978. The final two members of the class (Alexander Nevsky and Murmansk) did not leave the fleet until the Warsaw Pact started collapsing in 1989.
A new battleship, Jean Bart, joined the fleet in 1955 (she had fought in an unfinished state during WWII, suffering damage that delayed her completion), but she spent most of her short life as a training vessel. The small cruiser fleet was also decommissioned during this time and by 1960, only the training cruiser Jeanne d'Arc remained. She was decommissioned in 1964 as the last French gun ship.
The two oldest cruisers decommissioned in 1949 and 1951, with the battleships soon following in 1953 and 1956. A third cruiser (Giuseppe Garibaldi) entered refit in 1953, losing all of her 6" guns and emerging as a guided missile cruiser. When Garibaldi rejoined finally rejoined the fleet in 1961, the last gun cruiser (Duca degli Abruzzi) was retired.
Guns developed over time from the small manually aimed muzzle loaders of the early days to the massive computer controlled weapons of the World Wars. Range, rate of fire, throw weight, and accuracy all made tremendous strides but the basic principals remained the same for the five centuries when guns dominated naval combat.
The 19th century saw this dominance shaken by the introduction of various forms of mines and torpedoes, but it was not until the introduction of aircraft in the 20th century that the gun was finally replaced as the primary naval weapon. Although battleships and cruisers played a vital role in the naval actions of World War II, it was becoming increasingly that the gun could not keep up in the modern world. However, as the development of missile technology took longer than expected, battleships and gun cruisers soldiered on in every major navy. Even after the widespread deployment of guided missiles in the 1960's, large gun armed warships remained in service until the end of the Cold War.
Note: for this post the term "light cruiser" will be used to indicate an armament of 6" guns. The various cruisers that were armed with main guns of less than 6" are not considered in this post as I do not consider them to be major fleet units.
The United States
When the World War Two ended, the United States possessed an incredibly large fleet of 24 battleships and 67 cruisers with many more large gun ships under construction. It was of course impossible to maintain anywhere near that many ships in peacetime and it became a question of which ships should be retained. By this point the US Navy had fully embraced the aircraft carrier and the only battleships that were kept were the four members of the 33 knot Iowa-class. All of the prewar cruisers were also swiftly decommissioned, leaving only the wartime Baltimore-class heavy cruisers and Cleveland-class light cruisers. Of these, the newer ships were preferred and the heavy cruisers tended to remain in service longer. |
| Newport News, the last American gun cruiser |
All of the battleships under construction were also cancelled and only nine of the cruisers were completed. These consisted of three Oregon City-class heavy cruisers and one Fargo-class light cruiser which were commissioned in 1946, as well as three Des Moines-class heavy cruisers and two Worcester-class light cruisers that joined the fleet in 1948-1949. While Oregon City and Fargo were merely improved versions of Baltimore and Cleveland, Des Moines and Worcester were revolutionary ships armed with fully automatic main guns that could fire two to three times as fast as their manually loaded predecessors.
When the Korean War began in 1950, the US Navy had just one battleship, nine heavy cruisers, and three light cruisers in service. This force was deemed insufficient and three battleships and six heavy cruisers were quickly pulled out of reserve and recommissioned (amusingly the cruiser USS Macon was put in reserve in April 1950 only to be returned to active service six months later) for a total force of 22 gun ships. Interestingly, not a single light cruiser was reactivated even though two of them had been decommissioned just months before the war began.
While the intensifying Cold War had increased the Navy's budget, most of that money was spent on guided missile cruisers and nuclear submarines while the number of gun ships again began to dwindle. After the lone Soviet battleship was lost in 1955, the American battleship fleet was drawn down. The last two left service in 1958 after a year as the only operational battleships in the world.
The two Worcester-class light cruisers also left the fleet in 1958, leaving the Navy with 12 heavy cruisers as its only dedicated large gun ships. However, the eight hybrid guided missile conversions entered service around this time, bringing four triple 8" and eight triple 6" turrets with them.
Still, overall the gun force continued to shrink through the 1960's and only the heavy cruisers (the Des Moines-class USS Newport News and the Baltimore-class USS St Paul) survived to see action in Vietnam. In this fight they were briefly joined by the battleship USS New Jersey (recommissioned 1968-1969) and in 1968 the two Boston-class converted cruisers were redesignated as heavy cruisers and assigned to shore bombardment missions after their aging missile systems deactivated.
But these were temporary measures and when Saigon fell in 1975, the Navy's gun force was comprised of only Newport News and three Galveston-class light cruiser missile conversions. The heavy cruiser was decommissioned just months later and the Galveston-class soon followed. When Oklahoma City left the fleet in 1979, the era of the gun appeared to be over.
Ironically, it was the missile that brought the gun back. In an attempt to get as many Tomahawk missiles to sea as possible, the Navy recommissioned all four Iowa-class battleships during the 1980's. While the introduction of the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System and the end of the Cold War again rendered the battleship obsolete, their 16" guns were used to good effect against ground targets in Iraq and Lebanon and inspired the Navy to look at putting large caliber guns on modern ships.
This idea culminated in the three Zumwalt-class destroyers, the first of which commissioned in 2016. With her two automated 6" turrets and large size, Zumwalt is a light cruiser in all but name and is the first new vessel with large caliber guns since the British light cruiser HMS Blake commissioned in 1961.
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| United States battleship and gun cruiser inventory by year starting in 1948 (the Alaskas are counted as battleships and hybrid missile conversions are included as cruisers of their type) |
The United Kingdom
Whereas the US Navy went from 24 operational battleships in 1946 to just one in 1950, the Royal Navy made a greater effort preserve its battleline. While only seven British battleships survived to 1946, a new battleship (HMS Vanguard) was commissioned in 1947 and a full squadron was maintained until 1950. But unlike in the US Navy, after Vanguard decommissioned in 1955 no British battleship ever returned to service. |
| Lion, the last British gun cruiser |
They Royal Navy also made remarkably different choices when it came to which cruisers to retain, preferring prewar light cruisers rather than late war heavy cruisers. The bias towards light cruisers can be explained by the fact that unlike America, Britain only had a small number of older heavy cruisers. The choice of prewar cruisers was apparently because wartime construction had been built to lower standards.
When the Korean War began, the Royal Navy's surface fleet of four battleships and 15 light cruisers was significantly larger than that of the US Navy. However, whereas America recommissioned many gun ships for the war and kept them in service into the 1960's, the British fleet continued to shrink almost every year.
In 1959-1961 the three long delayed (their keels had been laid 1941-1942) Tiger-class cruisers joined the fleet introducing fully automatic 6" guns. Ironically, the much larger and more powerful (18,000 tons and 12 guns against 12,000 tons and four guns) American Worcester-class ships with their similar armament had just been designated obsolete and decommissioned the year before.
The introduction of the Tiger-class was going to be accompanied by rebuilds of several older cruisers. However, as costs mounted and need for modern missile ships became increasingly apparent, only HMS Belfast received the proposed refit and even she decommissioned just four years later. In 1965 and 1967 two of the Tiger-class went into four year refits that replaced half their gun armament with large hangers and flight decks for helicopter operations. The third Tiger-class (HMS Lion), left service in 1972 after her sisters had rejoined the fleet. The two converted cruisers did not last much longer and were decommissioned in 1978 and 1979, marking the end of the gun era for the Royal Navy. While the converted Tiger-class ships were almost recommissioned in 1982 for the Falklands War, the war ended before the work could be completed and the ships were sold for scrap instead.
 |
| United Kingdom battleship and gun cruiser inventory by year starting in 1948 (the converted Tigers are counted as light cruisers) |
The USSR
In 1946, the Soviet fleet consisted of three battleships, seven heavy cruisers (all armed with 7.1" guns instead of the standard 8"), and just one light cruiser. The battleship force did not last long as the two World War I-era ships decommissioned in 1953 and the former Italian battleship Giullio Cesare (Novorossiysk in Soviet service) hit a mine and sank in 1955. |
| Murmansk, the last Soviet gun cruiser |
The oldest heavy cruiser (armed with just four guns) was decommissioned 1947 but a Finnish coast defense ship (Vainamoinen / Vyborg) armed with four 10" guns was taken as reparations. The heavy cruiser force fell to five in 1954 and remained at that number until they were all converted to training ships in 1958-1961
However, it was the light cruiser fleet that served the USSR best in the postwar world. This is somewhat surprising given that in 1946 the only 6" cruiser in the Soviet Navy was the American Omaha-class USS Milwaukee, which was on loan until she was replaced by a captured Italian ship in 1949. But in 1950, the five Chapayev-class cruisers entered service. Laid down in 1939, their construction had been badly delayed by the war. While their service lives were rather short (they were all designated as training cruisers in 1958-1961), they paved the way for the 14 Sverdlov-class cruisers that entered service beginning in 1951.
Armed with 12 manually-loaded 6" guns and an equal number of fully stabilized automatic 4" guns, these vessels were somewhat archaic. Still, they were the Soviet Navy's most numerous large surface vessel for many years. While seven of these ships were placed in reserve, sold, or simply scrapped in the early 1960's, by 1972 the five reserve ships had all been returned to service and the class did not begin decommissioning in numbers until 1978. The final two members of the class (Alexander Nevsky and Murmansk) did not leave the fleet until the Warsaw Pact started collapsing in 1989.
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| Soviet Union battleship and gun cruiser inventory by year starting in 1948 |
France
While the French Navy was largely destroyed in World War II, it operated a notable number of heavy units in the postwar period. In 1946 France had two battleships, three heavy cruisers, and six light cruisers. From 1947-1948, the oldest battleship (commissioned in 1916), all the heavy cruisers, and one light cruiser were decommissioned.A new battleship, Jean Bart, joined the fleet in 1955 (she had fought in an unfinished state during WWII, suffering damage that delayed her completion), but she spent most of her short life as a training vessel. The small cruiser fleet was also decommissioned during this time and by 1960, only the training cruiser Jeanne d'Arc remained. She was decommissioned in 1964 as the last French gun ship.
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| France battleship and gun cruiser inventory by year starting in 1948 |
Italy
The story of the gun ships of the Italian Navy is similar to that of the French. While more of its ships survived the war, many of the most modern were taken by the Allied powers as reparations. This left the Italian Navy of 1947 with two battleships and four light cruisers.The two oldest cruisers decommissioned in 1949 and 1951, with the battleships soon following in 1953 and 1956. A third cruiser (Giuseppe Garibaldi) entered refit in 1953, losing all of her 6" guns and emerging as a guided missile cruiser. When Garibaldi rejoined finally rejoined the fleet in 1961, the last gun cruiser (Duca degli Abruzzi) was retired.
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| Italy battleship and gun cruiser inventory by year starting in 1948 |
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