If you have ever played the old Avalon-Hill board wargame Midway, gaming the battle, you probably remember the Atlanta, a cruiser with half the surface power and double the antiaircraft power of other US cruisers. It had a magic ability to make Japanese airplanes disappear. My 13-year-old self playing the game believed Atlanta and her sister ships had been conceived and built as antiaircraft cruisers. My belief was reinforced by the naval annuals and histories written during the period, dating back to the post-war 1940s. Atlanta and her sister ships were categorized as CLAAs – Cruiser, Light, Antiaircraft – rather than the CL label assigned to other light cruisers.

In reality, their antiaircraft role was incidental and fortuitous, not deliberate, an accident at the right moment in time for them to appear. They were not intended as antiaircraft ships, they were designed and built to be destroyer leaders.

The destroyer-leader cruiser was an artifact of the first two decades of the 20th century, when small light cruisers led the 900-to-1200-ton destroyers of that era on torpedo runs. It was one of the roles the Omaha-class cruisers, which the Atlantas were intended to replace, was designed for. However, the role was becoming increasingly anachronistic by the time the Omahas, designed during World War I but arriving shortly after that war ended, were entering service.

The US Navy abandoned the concept after the 1922 Washington Naval Limitations Treaty was signed. Thereafter the Navy opted for the 10,000-ton-treaty cruiser armed with the heaviest suite of guns possible. Torpedoes were removed from or never added to these cruisers, to optimize their role as gun platforms. A cruiser cannot lead a torpedo run without torpedoes, after all.

Yet the Washington Treaty and subsequent 1930 and 1936 London Treaties led to the revival of the destroyer-leading cruiser in the US Navy. By the late 1930s, the Omahas were “aging out,” approaching twenty years of age. The Navy wanted replacements available when that happened so they could be retired. Due to treaty limitations, replacement cruisers had to displace no more than the 8000 tons of the Omahas they were to replace.

This resulted in the Atlantas. By the late 1930s, when the Navy began design of this new class of cruiser, the threat posed by aircraft was clear. The Navy wanted its new cruisers to have a robust antiaircraft battery. 10,000-ton light and heavy cruisers were carrying secondary batteries of eight 5in/38cal dual purpose guns. With a high rate of fire, a high antiaircraft ceiling, excellent surface range, they were extremely reliable and worked well against surface targets. They had nearly the same hitting power as the low-angle 5in/51cal used in earlier warships.

USS Detroit, an Omaha-class cruiser, which the Atlantas were to replace

As the speed and capabilities of aircraft increased over the 1930s, an eight-gun antiaircraft battery became a minimum. The follow-on Baltimore and Cleveland classes had 12, in addition to their 8in and 6in main batteries. To accommodate these extra antiaircraft guns, the heavy cruisers grew and the light cruisers sacrificed a main turret. The problem with a smaller cruiser, the 7000 to 8000-tons ship proposed for the Omaha replacements, was its hull was too small for adequately sized main and secondary batteries. Designers could only fit a mixed battery with a total of six 6in and four 5in guns or perhaps four 6in and eight 5in guns. Even a six-gun main battery was considered inadequate; and a four gun battery was unacceptable. Both gave the cruiser an unacceptable or barely passable antiaircraft battery.

The solution? Eliminate the mixed battery. Use one gun size, a dual-purpose gun serving both the surface and antiaircraft role for the cruiser: 6in or 5in. The 5in/38 showed large dual-purpose guns were possible. Desiring a 6in main battery, the Navy began developing a dual-purpose 6in gun in 1937. Ten, or 12, mounted in twin turrets, fit an 8000-ton hull. Plans were drawn up.

Development of the new 6in dual purpose gun fell behind schedule. They would not be ready until 1942 or 1943. Four replacements for the oldest Omahas were scheduled for construction in 1940. It typically took 18 months to two years from keel-laying to completion. Gun turrets were the last major items installed. The Bureau of Ships could go with the desired 6in DP battery, gambling on development being completed when the turrets were required for delivery. If they were wrong, they would have four hulls without the main guns.

War was looming. The Navy could not risk it. They reverted to a 5in/38 main battery. These cruisers would operate with destroyers, also armed with 5in/38 guns. Sharing a gun caliber with the destroyers meant simplified logistics. The new design had six superfiring twin turrets centerline and two waist turrets totaling 16 guns.

Plans for a cruiser with six twin dual-purpose 6inch turrets, considered as the Omaha replacement.

But, it had more than guns. Intended to work with destroyers, the new Atlanta class ships carried six torpedo tubes and depth charges, with two racks and six K-gun depth charge throwers (it did lack sonar however). The Navy envisioned them as an all-purpose cruiser, like the Omahas which were being replaced; a triple threat: air, surface and ASW.

Most multi-purpose designs fall short. Competing and contradictory requirements require compromises often leading to different class designs being second or third best at any one task. It proved so for the Atlantas. Size and displacement limits made its top speed slower than the destroyers it was to operate with. It matched other cruisers’ speeds but lack of sonar and a wide-turning radius made it an ineffective ASW vessel. Its high superstructure, required for three levels of superfiring turrets gave it a high profile, a surface-combat liability. It could only fire three torpedoes at once, limiting effectiveness as a torpedo platform. It was top-heavy. While the high superstructure contributed to this, the torpedoes and depth charges on the weather deck made things worse.

Atlanta on its builders trials

It would likely have become another historical example of a failed design, illustrating how artificial treaty limits hamstring design, except for one happy accident: the 5in/38 was the best heavy antiaircraft gun of World War II. The Atlantas carried a 5in battery double that of any prewar US cruiser, matched only by the North Carolina-class battleships entering service in 1941. Since twelve were mounted centerline, it could fire 14 in any broadside direction. (The wartime cruisers could only fire eight and the Iowa-class battleships, with 20 could only bring ten to bare on each side.)

As Atlanta demonstrated at Midway, this allowed these cruisers to shred an attacking formation of Japanese aircraft, even with the primitive radar they had at Midway. Once these ships incorporated radar-directed fire control and began firing proximity-fused 5in shells, they became the deadliest foe the Imperial air forces had among the US Navy’s surface combatants.

The battles of Midway, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz demonstrated the value of the Atlantas as antiaircraft ships. The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal showed their weakness as surface combatants. ¬Two were sunk, Atlanta and Juno. Their high profiles made them obvious targets in surface actions and limited displacement-reduced survivability. The Navy lost half of the then-available members of the class and one quarter of all these ships in one 24-hour period.

Thereafter these ships were kept out of surface actions. They were too valuable protecting carrier groups. They became known as antiaircraft cruisers. In addition to a repeat set of four ships ordered before World War II, the Navy ordered three more during the war – and optimized these ships as antiaircraft warships. For the rest of the war, Atlantas and Oaklands (the follow-on ships) were parceled out among the fast carrier task groups, one to a group. Battle damage and refits meant that there were never more than four in combat at any one time.

The Atlantas at war. Juneau and San Diego at the Battle of Santa Cruz. Hornet is the carrier behind them.

Their time passed as quickly as it came. Jet aircraft with their increased speed and size made the 5in/38 a dated weapon, as effective against warplanes as a wooden ship-of-the-line’s smoothbore 32-pounders were against iron-hulled steamships. Antiaircraft missiles replaced antiaircraft artillery and the Atlantas and their follow-ons were too small to effectively mount them. All but one were out of commission by 1950. That one, the second Juneau, joined its sisters in mothballs by 1955. A second follow-on build was cancelled in 1945.

Few traces of them survive today. Oakland’s mast is preserved in its namesake city. One of Reno’s turrets is at the US Navy Museum in Washington DC. San Diego’s bell is on the current San Diego, LPD-22. Other bits and pieces are scattered elsewhere. Yet during the brief interval of World War II, 1941 to 1945, these cruisers were among the most important ships in the Pacific Fleet.

You can read more in NVG 340: US Navy Atlanta-class Light Cruisers 1940–49.