Editing Battlecruiser (section)

===Large cruisers or "cruiser killers"===
{{Further|Design 1047 battlecruiser|Alaska-class cruiser|Design B-65 cruiser}}
{{See also|List of cruisers of the United States Navy#Large cruisers (CB)}}
[[File:USS Alaska (CB-1) off the Philadelphia Navy Yard on 30 July 1944.jpg|thumb|{{USS|Alaska|CB-1|6}}, one of the [[United States Navy]]'s two "large cruisers"]]

A late renaissance in popularity of ships between battleships and cruisers in size occurred on the eve of World War II. Described by some as battlecruisers, but never classified as capital ships, they were variously described as "super cruisers", "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers". The Dutch, American, and Japanese navies all planned these new classes specifically to counter the heavy cruisers, or their counterparts, being built by their naval rivals.<ref>Chesneau, p. 388; Garzke & Dulin, p. 86; Friedman 1984, p. 288; McLaughlin 2006, p. 104</ref>

The first such battlecruisers were the Dutch [[Design 1047 battlecruiser|Design 1047]], designed to protect their colonies in the [[Dutch East Indies|East Indies]] in the face of Japanese aggression. Never officially assigned names, these ships were designed with German and Italian assistance. While they broadly resembled the German ''Scharnhorst'' class and had the same main battery, they would have been more lightly armoured and only protected against eight-inch gunfire. Although the design was mostly completed, work on the vessels never commenced as the Germans overran the Netherlands in May 1940. The first ship would have been laid down in June of that year.<ref>Noot, pp. 243, 249, 268</ref>

The only class of these late battlecruisers actually built were the United States Navy's {{sclass|Alaska|cruiser|0}} "large cruisers". Two of them were completed, {{USS|Alaska|CB-1|2}} and {{USS|Guam|CB-2|2}}; a third, {{USS|Hawaii|CB-3|2}}, was cancelled while under construction and three others, to be named ''Philippines'', ''Puerto Rico'' and ''Samoa'', were cancelled before they were laid down. The USN classified them "large cruisers" instead of battlecruisers.  These ships were named after territories or protectorates, while battleships were named after states and cruisers after cities. With a displacement of {{convert|27000|LT|t}} and a main armament of nine 12-inch guns in three triple turrets, they were twice the size of {{sclass|Baltimore|cruiser|2}}s and had guns some 50% larger in diameter. The ''Alaska''s design was a scaled-up cruiser rather than a lighter/faster battleship derivative, as they lacked the thick armoured belt and intricate torpedo defence system of contemporary battleships. However, unlike World War I-era battlecruisers, the ''Alaska''s were considered a balanced design according to cruiser standards as their protection could withstand fire from their own caliber of gun, albeit only in a very narrow range band. They were designed to hunt down Japanese heavy cruisers, though by the time they entered service most Japanese cruisers had been sunk by American aircraft or submarines.<ref>Friedman 1984, pp. 288–89, 296, 301–02</ref> Like the contemporary {{sclass|Iowa|battleship|0}} fast battleships, their speed ultimately made them more useful as carrier escorts and bombardment ships than as the surface combatants they were developed to be.<ref>Whitley 1995, pp. 278–79</ref>

The Japanese started designing the B64 class, which was similar to the ''Alaska'' but with {{convert|310|mm|1|adj=on}} guns. News of the ''Alaska''s led them to upgrade the design, creating [[Design B-65 cruiser|Design B-65]]. Armed with 356&nbsp;mm guns, the B65s would have been the best armed of the new breed of battlecruisers, but they still would have had only sufficient protection to keep out eight-inch shells. Much like the Dutch, the Japanese got as far as completing the design for the B65s, but never laid them down. By the time the designs were ready the Japanese Navy recognized that they had little use for the vessels and that their priority for construction should lie with aircraft carriers. Like the ''Alaska''s, the Japanese did not call these ships battlecruisers, referring to them instead as super-heavy cruisers.<ref>Jentschura, Jung & Mickel, p. 40; Garzke & Dulin, pp. 86–87</ref>