Atlanta-class cruiser
1941 class of American light cruisers
The Atlanta-class cruisers were eight United States Navy light cruisers which were designed as fast scout cruisers, flotilla leaders, or destroyer leaders, but which proved to be effective anti-aircraft cruisers during World War II. They were also known as the Atlanta-Oakland class. The Atlanta class originally had 16 × 5-inch (127 mm)/38 caliber guns in eight two-gun turrets, arranged with three superfiring turrets forward, three more superfiring aft and two waist mounts, one port and one starboard, giving the first four Atlanta-class cruisers the heaviest anti-aircraft armament of any cruiser of World War II. The last four ships of the class, starting with Oakland, had a slightly revised armament with a reduced main gun battery - the waist turrets being deleted - as they were further optimized for anti-aircraft fire in light of war experience.
The Atlanta class saw heavy action during World War II, collectively earning 54 battle stars. Two ships of the class were sunk in action: Atlanta and Juneau, both at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The other six were decommissioned shortly after the war and were scrapped in the 1960s.
Specifications
As built, the original main gun battery of the first quartet of the Atlanta class was composed of eight dual 5-inch (127 mm)/38 caliber gun mounts (8 × 2 5-inch guns). This battery could fire over 17,600 pounds (8,000 kg) of shells per minute, including the radar-fuzed "VT" anti-aircraft (AA) shells. Fire control was by two Mk 37 fire control systems located on the centerline atop the superstructure. As built, these ships lacked radar but from the spring of 1942 they were re-fitted with FD (Mk 4) fire control radar and SC-1 and SG search radar. From 1943 the FD (Mk 4) radar was replaced by the improved Mk 12/Mk 22 combination.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Atlanta-class cruiser” as 1941 class of American light cruisers. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q756125. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1942 and 1943.
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This entry incorporates text from “Atlanta-class cruiser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.