United States Navy 1975 ship reclassification

The United States Navy reclassified many of its surface vessels in 1975, changing terminology and hull classification symbols for cruisers, frigates, and ocean escorts.

Most of the cruiser conversions were performed to rapidly deploy the new naval SAMs while the guided missile frigates were being designed and built.

[2] From 1950 to 1975, frigates were a new type, midway between cruiser and destroyer sizes, intended as major task force escorts.

Destroyers were developed from the World War II designs as the smallest fast task force escorts.

The U.S. frigate classification was not used by any other navy; similar vessels were either cruisers or destroyers in foreign service.

The term "cruiser" included also two large helicopter carriers (Moskva class).

All but two of the Soviet ships were relatively small vessels, roughly equivalent to U.S. frigates and far smaller than U.S. cruisers.

The change from DLG to CG redefined "cruiser" as smaller ships, more like large destroyers.