I thought cruisers were all named after cities. I guess territories are another option.
You are correct that during WW-II cruisers were named after cities and battleships were named after states.
I guess the reasoning was that the treaty cruisers fit in between the two.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
The Alaska class and and the KMS Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were often called “battle cruisers,” but that does not exactly fit the definition as first proposed by Admiral Sir John Fisher. The Alaska class had 12” guns and the two German ships had 11” guns, while the battleships of the era were all fitted with guns of 14” to 18”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battlecruisers_of_the_Royal_Navy
The battlecruiser was the brainchild of Admiral Sir John (”Jacky”) Fisher, the man who had sponsored the construction of the world’s first “all big gun” warship, HMS Dreadnought. He visualised a new breed of warship with the armament of a battleship, but faster, lighter, and less heavily armoured. The first three battlecruisers, the Invincible class, were laid down while Dreadnought was being built in 1906.[1]
This design philosophy was most successful in action when the battlecruisers could use their speed to run down smaller and weaker ships. The best example is the Battle of the Falkland Islands where Invincible and Inflexible sank the German armoured cruisers SMS Scharnhorst and SMS Gneisenau almost without damage to themselves, despite numerous hits by the German ships.[2] They were less successful against heavily armoured ships, as was demonstrated by the loss of Invincible, Indefatigable, and Queen Mary during the Battle of Jutland in 1916. All three ships were destroyed by more heavily armoured German battlecruisers,[3] with the British failure to prevent fires or explosions in the gun turrets from reaching the magazines also playing a role in the losses.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers (also rendered as battle cruiser in some sources) were large capital ships built in the first half of the 20th century. They were developed in the first decade of the century as the successor to the armoured cruiser, but their evolution was more closely linked to that of the dreadnought battleship. They were similar in size and cost to a battleship, but while they typically used the same large-calibre main armament as a battleship, battlecruisers sacrificed armour protection in exchange for speed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_class_cruiser
The Alaska-class cruisers were a class of six very large cruisers ordered prior to World War II for the United States Navy. Although often called battlecruisers, officially the Navy classed them as Large Cruisers (CB). Their intermediate status is reflected in their names relative to typical U.S. battleship and cruiser naming practices,[A 5] all were named after “territories or insular areas” of the United States.[A 6] Of the six that were planned, only three were laid down; two were completed, and the third’s construction was suspended on 16 April 1947 when she was 84% complete. The finished two, Alaska and Guam, served with the U.S. Navy for the last year of World War II as bombardment ships and fast carrier escorts. They were both decommissioned in 1947 after spending only 32 and 29 months in service, respectively.
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq63-1.htm
Ship Naming in the United States Navy
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY — NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER