beautiful ships. built to counter rumored Japanes super-heavy cruisers, but really on par with German pocket battleships and perhaps they could be considered the last of the battle cruisers.
I to thought of the German "pocketbattlerships" so I looked up the specs on the Graf Spee.
Graf Spee had 6 x 11" guns; Alaska 9 x 12"
Graf Spee had 8 x 5.9" guns; Alaska 12 X 5" guns
Graf Spee had 6 x 4.1" guns; Alaska nothing comprable
Based on these spec I would have to give the Alaska Class a slight edge based on the Main Gun battery.
The Alaska had about triple the armor of the Graf Spee on the deck and the armor belt and twice the arnor on the turret face. Alaska also has a 6 knot speed advantage over the Graf Spee as well. So in a slugging match the Alaska would have a substantial edge over the Graf Spee, in my opinion
The one advantage that the Graf Spee did have was that it was armed with 8 21" torpedo tubes. However torpedoes don't typically have that much effective range, especially if you are trying to stay out of 12" gun fire.
Regarding a battlecruiser designation I think that the main gun battery of the Alaska Class would fall just short of that catagory as typically a battlecruiser carries battleship guns with out the battleship armor.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}