The Hypothetical American Cruiser Anchorage

The U.S. Navy's history of seafaring innovation yields a tantalizing counterfactual: if the CA-B heavy cruisers were equipped with torpedo tubes, their efficacy in naval combat could have significantly improved. This idea forms the basis for the imagined heavy cruiser, the Anchorage—an embodiment of potential technological advancement that never saw the light of day.

Torpedo Armament

For many naval historians, the absence ...