[Don Boose]

You certainly turned that JSC kit into a superb model of Helena. I love the lines of the Treaty cruisers. The Brooklyns, St Louis/Helena, and Wichita were the transition to the modern Baltimores and Clevelands. These powerfully armed ships served the United States well in both Europe and the Pacific. I recently addressed this in a review to be published soon in Global War Quarterly:

“. . . actual discussion of the impact of the treaty is limited to the statement that “the disarmament treaties . . . had virtually stripped the U.S. Navy of any meaningful offensive power . . .”[1] This is debatable, for the treaties had beneficial as well as deleterious effects. The strictures of the 1930 London Treaty, for example, led to the development of “light” cruisers that were indistinguishable from “heavy” cruisers except for their six-inch gun armament. As a result of Navy efforts to maximize the firepower of these cruisers within the treaty limitations, the U.S. Navy entered the war with a class of light cruisers each mounting fifteen six-inch guns, roughly equivalent to a battalion of 155mm artillery. These ships provided outstanding service as naval gunfire support ships throughout the war. Ansel commanded one of those formidable light cruisers, USS Philadelphia, when it helped suppress German artillery at Anzio and Southern France. Daugherty notes that “Ansel applied the lessons on naval gunfire he had written about fourteen years earlier at Quantico with deadly effect,” but fails to mention that Philadelphia with its deadly armament was in part the result of the naval limitation treaties.[2]”


[1] Leo J. Daugherty III, Pioneers of Amphibious Warfare, 1898-1945: Profiles of Fourteen American Military Strategists (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2009), p. 302.

[2] Ibid., p. 317. For a synopsis of the complex interrelationship between the naval treaty restrictions and the development of U.S. warships in the 1930s, see Thomas C. Hone and Trent Hone, Battle Line: The United States Navy, 1919-1939 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006), pp. 1-18, and Norman Friedman, U.S. Cruisers: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), pp. 4-5, 109-111, 163-168, and 217-18. For the development of the Brooklyn and St. Louis class heavily-armed light cruisers (of which, Philadelphia was one) see Friedman, pp.183-198, 203-207. Friedman argues that “It is clear from contemporary documents that there never would have been any Brooklyns had it not been for a radical change in treaty rules occasioned by the London Treaty for 1930” and that the major wartime cruisers (designed and built free of treaty restrictions) “were evolved directly from the Brooklyn design.” Friedman, p. 183.