No pocket battleships, but large cruisers / cruiser killers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_B-65_cruiser
But getting back to cruiser business, was it really necessary to construct all those different RN / USN cruiser and destroyer classes during 1930`s and 1940's? True, the technology was improving and overall the Allies won the war, but was there never really a situation in which, for example, 8" cruisers were definitely needed over 6" cruisers (given that 6" had technological capability to used also for AA role)? Considering that new ship classes are always very expensive, was constructing Iowas instead of, say, additional series of BB-57 -class ships useful at all?
In different time, USN managed 1970-2000's practically by constructing four ship classes (Spruance, Ticonderoga, Arleigh Burke, Perry) of which three first mentioned share a definite ancestry (Kidds were a fluke). I just wonder, with hindsight, if there would have been theoretically a way to manage WW II era navy with perhaps four different surface combatant ship classes (Escort hodgepodge, DD, CL, BB)? Certainly in area of armaments the USN showed the way by using just a single medium DP gun instead of cacophony of RN, for example...
Actually, the
Kidd design was what the USN wanted ALL the
Spruances to be,a design optimized for both ASW AND Surface Warfare, the ship that the U.S. used throughout the last part of the Cold War started out as a Congressionally mandated economy measure (showing that sometimes ham handed meddling can work out from time to time).
The inter-war cruiser types were interesting, particularly in the way that they demonstrated the difference in the institutional thinking of the RN and USN. British cruisers tended to be less heavily gun armed
(RN
York Class 3x2 8", 4x1 4", USN
New Orleans 3x3 8", 8x1 5"/25)
, with greater range and with torpedo tubes (RN light cruisers as late as the
Dido class carried two triple mounts with 5x2 5.25" guns while the comparable USN
Atlanta class carried 8x2 5"/38 and no torpedoes, but a number of 40mm AA guns) and fairly light to non-existent armor, while American designs tended toward lots of secondary battery DP guns (generally 4x2 5"/38 in "Treaty" light cruisers and 6x2 5/38 in the post Treaty ships), heavier armor, and no torpedoes. American light cruisers carried armor closer to battle cruisers in other fleets than to other light cruisers (inside of 22k yard a
Brooklyn class CL was able (on paper) to handle plunging hits from the
Scharnhort class 12" main battery.
In the case in the U.S. DD designs in the inter-war period they were very much a matter of evolution. If you look at the progression of USN DD designs starting with the
Farraguts through to the
Fletchers you can see the shaping of what was THE U.S. DD design of the war (with 175 built), and was arguably the most balanced DD design of the entire war (the later
Sumner class pushed the design envelope a bit too far, with stress damage to the forward hull from the extra weight of the two twin 5" mounts very common, something that was mostly corrected in the very late war
Gearing ships).
Once the war began, the U.S stayed pretty much pat, with the
Fletcher & Sumner DD,
Cleveland class CL, and
Baltimore Class CA. The two biggest advantage of the CA design vs. the CL were in the throw weight of CA's 8" gun, which had the ability to penetrate the
KM Scharnhorst BC/BB deck armor at ranges where the German ship's main battery would not do the same to the USN deck plating and in the additional capacity to carry medium/light AA (12 40mm on the CL vs. 48 on the CA). The 8" gun was also a more useful shore bombardment gun. The ability of the 152mm (6") to be a true DP gun was more in theory than in fact, at least before the rather disappointing
Worcester class CL due to shell loading requirements, ammunition handling, and turret tracking speed.
Lastly, the
Iowas were an entirely different warship than any that came before it, or was even planned to exist after it (the true
successorto the
South Dakotas would have been the
Montanas with their 28 knot speed and balanced design). While not specifically designed to act as a carrier escort, it was able to do so. It was almost 8 mph faster than any battleship yet was better protected than any BB ever floated, effectively a battle cruiser without the battle cruiser's limitations. In short, it was a warship built with only a singe limitation allowed to interfere in its design, that it be Panamax (fit through the Canal locks). The naval world changed literally while they were on the slipways, but the changes actually benefited them more than any of their BB cousins since they fit very nicely into the CBG concept while still having the ability to reach 30 km inland with aimed fire (3 salvos from any of the "fast battleships" was equal to the bombs of an entire squadron of carrier bombers and the salvos were not limited by time of day or weather as long as someone could call the fall of shot, something that opponents learned across the Pacific in three different wars).