Leahy-class cruiser

The Leahy-class cruisers were guided-missile cruisers built for the United States Navy, originally designated destroyer leaders (DLG) and reclassified as guided-missile cruisers (CG) in the 1975 cruiser realignment. They were a new double-ended design with Terrier launchers, later Standard ER, fore and aft, and the first and only frigate class designed with no main gun battery for shore bombardment or ship-to-ship action, because the gun armament was cut to carry more missiles. Like the Farragut class before them, they formed part of the anti-air and antisubmarine screen of carrier task forces. They kept the Farragut propulsion plant in a longer hull with a knuckled bow, and used combined mast-and-stack structures called macks to carry radars clear of smoke. Bath Iron Works in Maine built three of the nine ships.