Earlier fleets had several layers of armored, protected, scout, and light cruisers. The Washington limit used the Hawkins class, originally considered large light cruisers, to define the largest permissible warship outside the capital-ship and carrier categories. The London system subsequently divided cruiser tonnage into heavy and light categories. An unconstrained hierarchy is proposed with heavy cruisers around 16,000-18,000 tons, another tier around 10,000-12,000 tons, and smaller cruisers around 6,000 tons. In this interpretation, Alaska belongs to the cruiser lineage that treaty limits had interrupted.
Notable Point · 3:44:48-3:47:57
Why Alaska fits the cruiser lineage
Treaty definitions based on the Hawkins class interrupted the older hierarchy of cruisers and help explain the argument for treating Alaska as a large cruiser.