The Lords of T110, Doomdark's Revenge.

The_Chieftain: I wonder if part of the Alaska problem is that the US Navy had a dramatic change of opinion as to what they considered to be the designations of ships. Remember those ten thousand ton nuclear powered frigates? That the Alaskas were considered something other than bog standard cruisers is obvious both by the CC and CB designations, and the fact that unlike both CAs and CLs, they were given names other than of cities. It seems fairly reasonable to conclude that the "B" in "CB" was derived from the "BB", even if CC was the official designation for the type. That the US Navy finally settled on the type "large cruiser" is instructive, but not definitive. There are plenty of examples of ships officially named one thing despite their effectively being something else. (Invincible class ASW cruisers being a wonderful case in point).   Ultimately, there is no international standard on how to name a type of ship. Some go by size. Some by role. Even manning levels can be used (Germany does that today, defining ships by the presence or not of a first officer). If one defined by role instead of characteristic, then arguably "being able to beat up on cruisers but not battleships" could lead people to categorise the ship as a battlecruiser. It's a very nebulous area, I would wager that the only definitive statement which could be made was "it was on the naval list as a Large Cruiser"