Characters / World Of Warships United States Of America

Warships attributed to the United States Navy in World of Warships.

The US Navy was one of the two factions to be introduced at the game's launch, with all four main lines available. In June 2018 the line of Cruisers was split into heavy and light cruisers. In October 2020, an alternative line of Battleships was released.

Being one of the two first tech trees in the game, US ships serve as a reference point that all other factions deviate from. They have no real distinctive traits, but also no real weaknesses. Their only truly strong area is good AA defence, thanks to their 5"/38-calibre dual-purpose gun, a weapon that was so good it was mounted on everything from auxiliary ships to aircraft carriers. It doesn't mean that USN ships are the best in AA, mind you. They are good team players, though, with many of their ships having Defensive AA Fire and cruisers mounting radars.

Researchable ships

American Submarines

As is the case for most other classes, American submarines upstage their counterparts in versatility. They have more HP and aft-facing torpedo tubes that allow them to better fight in close quarters - as far as is possible for submarines, at least. They can temporarily boost their maneuverability with Enhanced Rudder Gears, allowing them to dive and ascend faster.

Cachalot

Tier VI American Submarine. The Cachalot was the first of a pair of submarines built under the tonnage limits of the London Naval Treaty. Their relatively small size limited their usefulness, and they saw little use in WWII, being quickly relegated to training duties.

Salmon

Tier VIII American Submarine. Salmon-class submarines were an important improvement over past designs, boasting 21 knots of speed on the surface, which allowed them to operate alongside standard-type battleships. Six boats of the class were completed, all of which survived the war.

Balao

Tier X American Submarine. The Balao-class were a class of American fleet submarines built from 1942-1946. The design turned out to be successful, and a total of 120 units were built, making it the most numerous class of submarines in the US Navy. Nine of them were lost in WWII, and five more in the following years. As of 2022, the last boat of the class is still in commission in the Taiwanese Navy, as ROCS Hai Pao. Balao was commissioned in October 1942 and conducted 10 patrols, all in the Pacific theater. Though frequently hampered by unreliable torpedoes, she still managed to sink 14 ships and damage several more. After the war, she was sent to the reserve fleet before being recommissioned as a training submarine in 1952. She was one of the three submarines that portrayed the USS Sea Tiger in Operation Petticoat, specifically all the scenes in which Sea Tiger is painted pink. She was deemed unfit for further service in 1963 and sunk as a target, though her conning tower and fairwater were removed and are now preserved as a memorial at the Washington Navy Yard.

American Destroyers

At lower tiers, USN destroyers are dedicated gunboats and masters at "knifefighting", with rapid-fire guns that turn fast but have low shell velocity. This comes at the cost of some concealment and very low torpedo range at lower tiers. As you advance up the tiers, they start to become more well-rounded as their torpedoes gain extra range and the ships gain stronger AA and the option for the Defensive Fire ability.

• Jack of All Stats: Especially true in the later tiers, where they are capable of doing multiple jobs at once ranging from anti-aircraft escort to hunting surface ships. Truth in Television, since this was what was intended by their designers and the US Navy.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: All USN DDs suffer from very long shell travel times. This is only for gameplay purposes though, as in Real Life the 127mm guns had very high muzzle velocities.
• Theme Naming: US Navy destroyers are named after heroes of the United States Navy like John Paul Jones, Samuel Gridley, William Halsey, and others.

Sampson

Tier II American Destroyer. One of the "thousand tonner" destroyers in the U.S. Navy. The ship carried very powerful armament for her type, but her speed was rather moderate. Due to impractical arrangement of the torpedo tubes, only half of them could be fired simultaneously during a broadside salvo.

• Starter Equipment: The first USN destroyer players will get their hands on, and a demonstration of the potential that they can do.

Wickes

Tier III American Destroyer. One of the mass-produced destroyers in the U.S. Navy, featuring flush-deck design. The key difference from the preceding Caldwell class was the significantly increased propulsion power, resulting in higher speeds and better maneuverability.

• Fragile Speedster: With a mere 8,800 hp, one of the most vulnerable ships in the game.

Clemson

Tier IV American Destroyer. Developed from the Wickes class, the Clemsons were the third series of the U.S. Navy "flush-deckers". They were identical in exterior appearance and dimensions to the earlier Wickes (Artistic License – Ships is employed in the game to make them easier to differentiate) but used more interior void spaces to store fuel, making them slightly heavier and giving them longer range. They also featured a larger rudder that improved handling.

• Fragile Speedster: Almost as much so as her immediate predecessor.
• More Dakka: The gun upgrade for Clemson improves her battery from four guns to eight. In reality it was only mounted on two ships of the class: USS Hovey (DD-208) and USS Long (DD-209). Not simulated is the slightly more common upgrade (applied to five units of the class) replacing its four-inch guns with five-inch guns.

Nicholas

Tier V American Destroyer. A destroyer leader design based on the USN's 1919 Destroyer Leader proposal. Having kept the torpedo armament of her predecessors, the ship was close to cruisers in terms of dimensions and artillery firepower. The ship's powerful propulsion was intended to produce very high speeds. No ships of this design were ever laid down, but it informed the Farragut class. Named after one of seven destroyers (all of the Clemson class) lost in the Point Honda Disaster of 1923.

• Theme Naming: Though a paper design, it uses the naming theme of "Naval Heroes" that is used for USN destroyers.

Farragut

Tier VI American Destroyer. The first U.S. destroyer of the new generation. She was armed with dual-purpose artillery, which significantly enhanced her AA defenses. The torpedo tubes were placed along the ship's centerline, and thus they could be used more efficiently. The destroyers of this class were modernized to receive automatic AA guns.

• Anti-Air: The first USN destroyer to receive the Defensive AA fire consumable with the C hull, albeit at the cost of one of its 5-in gun mounts.
• Jack of All Stats: The first USN destroyer to more-or-less serve this kind of role, due to having the option to mount either engine boost or Defensive AA fire. She also has access to two upgraded hulls that are specialized for either ship-to-ship engagement or all-round escort duty.

Mahan

Tier VII American Destroyer. Developed from the Farragut class, Mahan carried a more powerful torpedo armament. At the beginning of World War II, these destroyers were modernized with several automatic AA guns to fight enemy aircraft more efficiently.

• Anti-Air: Like her predecessor, she can mount the Defensive AA fire consumable provided that players are using her modernized C hull.
• Stealth Expert: The first destroyer in the US tech tree capable of stealth torpedo attacks, although they have a low speed of 55 knots.

Benson

Tier VIII American Destroyer. A rather large ship for her type. As compared to her predecessors, the ship was much better armed owing to more efficient artillery mounts and a successful arrangement of novel quintuple torpedo tubes.

Fletcher

Tier IX American Destroyer. Fletcher was the lead ship of the most numerous series of destroyers ever produced. They proved to be highly successful ships, combining high speed with efficient AA defenses, quick-firing artillery, and powerful torpedo armament. Captain Arleigh Burke made his name commanding a ship of this class; his name would later grace the US Navy's second class of warship equipped with the Aegis weapon system.

• Anti-Air: The first American destroyer to gain the powerful Bofors and Oerlikon guns without the need to upgrade hulls. As mentioned below, she's special in that she can wield all of this firepower without the need for sacrificing a 5-in gun mount.
• Jack of All Stats: The first USN Destroyer capable of doing pretty much any job from Anti-Air to scouting without the need to sacrifice a gun mount, in comparison to its predecessors. That said, this ship is capable both in terms of firepower and torpedoes, though not as specialized compared to its Japanese and Soviet counterparts.

Gearing

Tier X American Destroyer. Developed from the Fletcher class, Gearing was the largest destroyer built by the U.S. Navy during World War II. The ship was superior in firepower to all foreign counterparts, owing to new dual-purpose twin mounts with a very high rate of fire. Numerous automatic AA guns ensured a respective level of efficiency for her AA defenses.

• Jack of All Stats: While a bit slower and less maneuverable than Fletcher, she has amazing firepower with very long reaching torpedoes (16.5KM). If you take Swift Fish skill and Torpedo Tubes Mod 1,you can get them up to nearly 80 knots! Like Fletcher, Gearing is a gunboat destroyer that in some ways is also a better torpedo boat than the Japanese destroyers.
• More Dakka: Gets an extra gun compared to Fletcher, and they reload in only 3 seconds. With the relevant equipment and skills, this can get down to under 2.5 seconds! While she no longer holds the crown for dakka at tier 10 for destroyers, she remains a potent threat.

American Cruisers - Light

USN cruisers are all about the guns, both against ships and planes. The light cruisers have 6-inch (155mm) guns that can rain shells down on targets, and the 8-inch (203mm) guns of the heavies pack a serious punch with both HE and AP, although they may find difficulty in striking evasive targets due to slower shell speeds. At higher tiers, the AA suites are some of the most fearsome in the game and can be made even more powerful by activating Defensive AA Fire. Torpedoes are an afterthought at best. Only the Phoenix, Omaha, and premium Atlanta have torpedoes and you have to get to uncomfortably short ranges to use them.

• Boring, but Practical: US Navy cruisers have excellent guns that can lay down punishing volumes of fire, but (except for Phoenix and Omaha) they lack a means to inflict a crushing blow against enemies who get too close.
• Theme Naming: US Navy cruisers are named after cities. The general pattern names heavy cruisers after major cities and light cruisers after minor ones, but there are plenty of examples that don't follow that pattern, such as the light cruiser USS Atlanta.

Erie

Tier I American Cruiser. The Erie-class patrol gunboats were designed in 1932 and built prior to World War II as small multipurpose ships primarily intended to guard the Panama Canal, but also capable of performing a wide range of tasks, from artillery support to convoy protection. The ships were built just outside of treaty restrictions and were well-armored and well-armed for their size, being essentially budget light cruisers. They were the first in the U.S. Navy to receive automatic AA guns.

• Anti-Air: She has four 28 mm guns for air defense. But being a tier 1 warship, it's unlikely you'll see any planes to shoot at.
• Starter Equipment: First USN ship available for free at the start of the game.
• Lightning Bruiser: Good speed (fastest of all tier 1 cruisers in fact), gun range and accuracy for her tier.

Chester

Tier II American Cruiser. The 3 ships of the Chester Class were ordered by the U.S. Navy in 1904 and completed in 1908. They were developed to test new steam turbine propulsion and radio technology. Of the 3 ships, the USS Birmingham, Chester, and Salem. Birmingham had a conventional propulsion system, Chester received a Parsons steam turbine, and Salem was fitted with reciprocating machinery. The ships weren't intended to fight ships larger than destroyers, so they had vertical (short range weapon) protection, and were armed with 3-inch (76mm) guns. They were later up-gunned to 5 inch (127 mm) weapons when foreign navies commissioned similar ships. In 1928 Chester was renamed York to free the name for a more modern cruiser that complied with the Washington Treaty. They remained the only turbine cruisers in the U.S. Navy for a long time. All 3 were scrapped in 1930.

• Acrofatic: For the tier. Her large size makes her a torpedo magnet, but she has good speed and rudder shift time.

St. Louis

Tier III American Cruiser. A typical "big" armored cruiser of the pre-dreadnought era. The ship was armed with numerous guns whose rate of fire was quite rapid for their time and an armor belt protecting the propulsion, but featured only moderate speed. As part of three armored cruisers authorized to be constructed in the early 1900s, the USS St. Louis (C-20) was initially constructed as an improved version of the Columbia-class cruiser. Due to this mishmash of improvements deviated from initial design decisions, the St. Louis-class cruisers were considered semi-armored cruisers, in between the class of protected cruisers and armored cruisers. But at the time, the Register of Ships of the US Navy listed them as "protected cruisers." The St. Louis-class cruisers were decommissioned in the early 1920s and sold for scrap in 1930 as per the London Naval Treaty.

• Adaptational Badass: The St. Louis-class cruisers served very undistinguished careers - painfully obsolescent on commissioning, they were generally relegated to training duties during service, with one (USS Milwaukee) suffering the ignominious fate of fatally grounding herself while trying to rescue a grounded submarine. In the game, they're probably the most powerful individual ship at Tier 3.
• Bling of War: St. Louis-A comes with distinct bronze-like exterior paint on the upper half of the ship, which is typical of early-tier USN ships in the game. The white-and-buff paint scheme was the US' post-Spanish-American War scheme, and it largely disappeared after the cruise of the Great White Fleet. The B upgrade, which represents the World War I configuration of the ship, is the haze gray color that dominated USN warship paint after 1910.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: One of the most powerful early-game cruisers, the St. Louis is one of the few cruisers that is capable of going toe-to-toe with many battleships. When skillfully handled, it can dish out many times more damage than it has hit points. Because of this, it's become a popular choice for seal clubbers.^note In-game slang for experienced players who go down to the bottom tiers in random battles to farm credits and XP.
• Made of Iron: Because of its construction, many AP hits will overpenetrate and many HE hits will fail to penetrate, allowing it to survive much more weight of fire than its sheer numbers might indicate.
  • More specifically, a quick glance at the armor layout in port shows the exact nature of its durability. The citadel it self sits extremely low, mostly under the waterline. The part that's above the water, is either flat topped, or armored and angled inward. On top of the citadel is a layer of casemate armor, acting as "turtleback" armor for the citadel. At the water line is 102mm thick casemate armor, meaning there is effectively over 175mm thick armor for shots fired at the citadel from the sides, in a tier where most guns are still well below 150mm or less, with low shell velocity/penetration. Battleship-caliber guns on the other hand, tend to have their shots sail right over top the citadel, through the thinner casemate armor.
• Mighty Glacier: You might be able to catch her, but those guns will teach you a hard lesson before you do.
• More Dakka: This is what she's known for; the ship is practically made of guns.

Phoenix

Tier IV American Cruiser. The Phoenix is based off of a 1916 scout cruiser proposal that was planned as the successor to the Chester-class. Their comparatively high speed was to allow them to act as a scout for battleship fleets, as well as destroyer pack leaders, with armaments that could fend off ant hostile destroyers it might encounter. In contrast to most cruisers of her time, the cruiser's artillery was placed in open mounts. Their comparatively high cost, (as much as four destroyers), resulted in Congress refusing to allocate money for their construction, fearing that they would become obsolete before construction would finish. The First World War proved the viability of a scout cruiser design and resulted in the plans being radically redesigned into the Omaha-class.

• Difficult, but Awesome: Fully upgraded, the Phoenix becomes this. Her armor remains poor, but her fast-firing and accurate guns and potent torpedo launchers make it possible to lay down a withering barrage of fire... as long as you can avoid destruction.
• Glass Cannon: Trades the cannons and armoring for torpedoes and raw speed, making her almost destroyer-like in combat. The large size and poor armoring of her citadel doesn't help, but a fast-firing and highly-accurate five-gun broadside in its fully-upgraded form certainly does.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: With Omaha. Understandable since Phoenix was a design study during Omaha's development.
• Theme Naming: The Phoenix was originally an unnamed proposal. Following the American tradition of naming their cruisers after cities, Wargaming named her after the capital of Arizona. While normally major cities, such as capitals and major centers of commerce, lent their names to heavy cruisers, a few light cruisers did end up with the names of important cities, such as USS Brooklyn, USS Duluth and USS Atlanta.
• What Could Have Been: Phoenix is criticized as being little more than a downgraded version of Omaha. Moving Omaha into tier IV could have cleared up Tier V for the Brooklyn class light cruiser, which set the pattern for all subsequent US Navy cruisers, light or heavy. The problem with this is that Brooklyn and her '15-gun broadside would be ridiculously broken at that tier, which no doubt is why Phoenix was chosen for the tech tree.

Omaha

Tier V American Cruiser. The fully-developed version of the Phoenix, with turrets forward and aft. The Omaha class was the last American "broadside cruiser," with guns mounted in casemates on the hull. It was also only the second class of light cruiser built as such for the US Navy. In game, it shares with its predecessor the attributes of being a light, fast scout cruiser with almost no armor. However, the Omaha's forward turret and improved lines of fire give it 4 guns over its entire forward arc and 6 dead forward.

• Difficult, but Awesome: Even more so than the Phoenix class. The Omaha is armored with pop-can thickness steel over much of its hull with a couple of cast-iron skillets over the vitals. Citadel hits come easy and it's possible to explode with a handful of hits to the core hull. Worse, the increase in hit points over the Phoenix is not sufficient to keep pace with the increased lethality at this tier. However, Omaha has more torpedoes than Phoenix and can finish off battleships that Phoenix would merely grievously wound.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: With Phoenix. Understandable, since Phoenix was a design study during Omaha's development.

Dallas

Tier VI American Cruiser of the Light Cruisers line. A version of a small light cruiser design, the development of which preceded the creation of the Helena-class cruisers. She had the features characteristic of most subsequent ships of this U.S. Navy type: moderate speed, the absence of torpedo armament, and the availability of dual-purpose guns complementing the 152 mm main battery mounted in the turrets.

Helena

Tier VII American Cruiser of Light Cruisers line. USS Helena is a St. Louis (no not that one) class light cruiser, an improved version of the previous Brooklyn class. Helena was present at and survived the Pearl Harbor raid despite being confused for a primary target due to being berthed in the space normally occupied by Pennsylvania on Battleship Row. She was present at the sinking of USS Wasp, where she helped rescue survivors. Helena participated in the battle of Battle of Cape Esperance and helped sink the cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki (yes the ones in the game). She would later also fight at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal but it's unknown what damage she caused due to the chaotic nature of the conflict. She was finally sunk after being torpedoed while engaging Japanese destroyers during the Battle of Kula Gulf.

• More Dakka: She mounts a fifteen gun broadside, tying for the most amount of main battery guns on that ship type.
• Glass Cannon: Zigzagged. She is a light cruiser with a murderous broadside and has the fragile armor you would expect. However her citadel is reasonably close to the water and unusually short so she is actually above average at avoiding citadel hits among her tier.

Cleveland

Tier VIII (formerly Tier VI) American Cruiser of Light Cruisers line. She was the first US Navy cruiser to be built completely free from any treaty restrictions. As of update 0.7.6, she's part of the new USN CL sub-branch, and has been buffed significantly.

• Anti-Air When she was first implemented, she was the first USN Cruiser to gain a significant anti-aircraft loadout. What makes her special is that she gains access to the 5-in 38 dual purpose mounts. For comparison, the next USN cruiser to mount this gun was the former Tier IX Baltimore.
• Boring, but Practical: The bad news: Cleveland has no torpedoes after having them for the last two tiers, rendering her unable to pour out 11,000+ in burst damage like her predecessor.
• Kill It with Fire: Cleveland's potent HE shells combined with her fast-firing 6" guns can set pretty much anything ablaze.
• Lightning Bruiser: The good news: Cleveland's 6" guns are much better than Omaha's, giving her the ability to punish and harry enemies with a constant rain of shells, and the excellent arcs on the aft guns permits over-the-shoulder fire practically until she's close-hauled to the enemy. She can take a reasonable amount of damage for a ship of her tier and type. Even battleships ignore a Cleveland's rain of 6" HE at their own peril.
• More Dakka: Both her antiaircraft guns and main battery are notorious for this. A critical reason why far more Cleveland class cruisers were built than their very similar heavy cruiser counterpart, the Baltimore.

Seattle

Tier IX American Cruiser of Light Cruisers line.

• Power Up Letdown: She's is almost in all regards a worse version of the Cleveland with more HP and a heal. She has a large, vulnerable, and poorly armored (even by light cruiser standards) citadel and poor firing angles. The two bonuses are completely negated by this citadel vulnerability as the Seattle has a reputation for getting devastating striked. Its made several people question wonder why Wargaming chose this fictional class rather than the real Fargo class. Even though the Fargos were essentially slightly improved Clevelands, having a Cleveland at Tier IX with a heal slapped on is seen by most as a major improvement over the Seattle.

Worcester

Tier X American Cruiser of Light Cruisers line.A postwar air defense cruiser, notably one of the last light cruiser designs in the world.

• Anti-Air: While it's far from unusual for cruisers in the US line to have great AA, Worcester was literally unrivaled in the game. Even without speccing any skill points into AA, a Worcester can quite literally vaporize an entire enemy bomber wave before they get any bombs off and still is a very undesirable target with it off.
  • Post CV rework she doesn't shut down carriers in the same way anymore, but remains a very unattractive target for them. Its not uncommon for a strike wave to only get one attack off before she shoots the rest of the planes down.
• Kill It with Fire: Essentially one of the best firestarters in the game with its rapid fire twelve guns. The rework to the IFHE skill made her choose between fire chance and penetration, however.

American Cruisers - Heavy

Pensacola

Tier VI (formerly Tier VII) American Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line. Pensacola is the first USN Heavy Cruiser in the game, and the first of the so-called "Treaty Cruisers" built under the compliance of the Washington Naval Treaty. Pensacola was laid down in 1926 and commissioned in 1930. She spent the prewar years on various stations around the American seaboard, occasionally venturing into the Caribbean and out to Guam. When the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, she was part of a convoy en route to the Philippines which was quickly diverted to Australia. Pensacola served as a carrier escort in the early battles of the war, then fought with the surface fleet in the Guadalcanal campaign. She was hit by a torpedo in the Battle of Tassafaronga that set her afire and nearly sank her, but she was saved through heroic damage control efforts and limped back to Pearl for repairs. She then participated in the island-hopping campaign through the Central Pacific, providing fire support for the Marines and escorting carriers. After a brief stint in the northern Pacific, she fought in the Philippines and provided fire support at Iwo Jima and Okinawa and brought troops home after the end of the war. Now old and outdated, she was used in the atomic bomb tests Bikini Atoll, surviving both detonations. After a few years of study, she was sunk as a target off the coast of Washington in 1948.

• Glass Cannon: Very much so. She's nicknamed the "Pepsicola" for a reason.

New Orleans

Tier VII (formerly Tier VIII) American Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line. Compared to her predecessors, she has a better armor and armament layout, allowing her to take more hits and survive.

New Orleans and her sisters were the last of the "treaty cruisers" built under the restrictions imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty. Originally classed as light cruisers due to their relatively light displacement, they were reclassed as heavy cruisers because of their 203mm guns. All seven ships fought in WWII; three of them were sunk in one night at the Battle of Savo Island in November 1942. New Orleans had her bow blown off by a torpedo at the Battle of Tassafaronga the same month. Incredibly, she not only didn't sink, but was able to return to San Francisco for repairs. She was back in action by summer 1943 and served with distinction for the rest of the war, accumulating a total of 17 battle stars. She was decommissioned in 1947 and sold for scrap in 1959.

• Jack of All Stats: A relatively simple to use cruiser with many good features. Her improved armor piercing shells get better ricochet angles (60 degrees instead of 45 degrees, a features common to all USN heavy crusers from here onwards) and deal decent damage to most targets. Her high explosive is also pretty good. She has better than average bow and deck plating for her tier, allowing her o bow tank lower caliber battleship guns.
• Lightning Bruiser: Compared to her predecessor, she has a far better armor protection and layout, allowing her to tank enemy shells better.

Baltimore

Tier VIII (formerly Tier IX) American Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line.

The Baltimores were the most numerous class of heavy cruiser ever produced; 17 were built from 1943-1947, including 3 of the Oregon City sub-class. Twelve were commissioned before the end of WWII, but only eight of them saw service in the conflict (seven in the Pacific, one in the Atlantic). Baltimore was one of the eight; she saw action in the Central Pacific and participated in the invasions of the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. She was put into reserve after the end of the war, recommissioned during the Korean War, and decommissioned again in 1956 before being scrapped in 1972.^note The Victorious War Museum of North Korea claims that Baltimore was sunk by North Korean torpedo boats in July 1950. The actual battle involved USS Juneau, HMS Black Swan, and HMS Jamaica; they sank three of the four torpedo boats before they could get a shot off and chased the last one away without taking any damage.

• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The US in Real Life had very good radar systems, and this is reflected with the top 3 cruisers getting access to the radar consumable, which can spot targets though smoke or islands.
• Stealth Expert: With everything relating to concealment, she can get down to 9.6km detection, very stealthy for a cruiser especially a heavy cruiser.
• Took a Level in Badass: Technically she actually became slightly weaker after the American cruiser split but she was also moved to tier 8. She retains her super heavy shells, her reload (especially now that Charles Martel's reload was nerfed from 10s to 12s), her AA, ''and' stealth to the surprise of many, making her actually a very solid performer where the former tier 9 Baltimore was considered to be "meh" even after her buffs.

Buffalo

Tier IX American Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line.

Des Moines

Tier X American Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line.

Des Moines was launched in 1946 and commissioned in 1948. She spent her career conducting training exercises and midshipman cruises, as well as showing the flag in foreign ports and during the Lebanon and Suez Crises. She was decommissioned in 1961 and sat in mothballs thereafter. In 1981, the Navy conducted a survey of Des Moines and her sister ship Salem to see if they could be reactivated and modernized as part of President Ronald Reagan's plan for a 600-ship Navy. The Navy concluded that they didn't have the deck space to carry all the weapons and electronics systems needed for a modern warship and that bringing them up to par would cost nearly as much as modernizing an Iowa-class battleship. Des Moines was struck off the reserve list in 1993 and scrapped in 2005 after a failed attempt to preserve her as a museum ship.

• Anti-Air: While all US cruisers from Cleveland up are pretty good at the AA role, Des Moines takes the cake. She has the majority of her DPS able to fire at the edge of her range. While the crown has shifted to Worcester, Des Moines remains a very potent AA vessel.
• More Dakka: A feature representing Des Moines' use of auto-loading assistance for the main guns, translated in game into a mere five-second reload time for her nine 203mm guns, giving her the highest rate of fire for heavy cruisers at Tier X.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The most powerful radar on the US line, lasting 40 seconds and with a range of 10km. For a ship that can fire 9 shells every 5 seconds, this is an eternity to an enemy destroyer.

Annapolis

American Super-Cruiser of Heavy Cruisers line. A "further development" of Des Moines-class, she boasts an additional main battery turret and post-war AA guns.

• More Dakka: She has a special alternative firing mode, that allows her to shoot three salvos with negligible reload time, in exchange for a very long reload after that.

American Battleships - Dreadnoughts

The main line of USN battleships are the quintessential Mighty Glaciers of the game. They all pack impressive main batteries, one of the strongest in their respective Tiers, but suffer from abysmal speed and weak secondaries. Their AA defence, however, is second-best among battleships, losing only to the USSR. The current "main line" was actually added far later than fast battleships, representing a What If? scenario wherein said concept was never picked up. Super-dreadnoughts are made to be more in-line with Tier III-VII ships, building on their gameplay.

• Alpha Strike: This line, starting from Tier VIII Kansas, is all about hammering in devastating strikes of 12 guns and then hiding from retaliation… If there's anything left to hide from. 40-second reloads means that it's impossible for these ships to win a DPM battle, so the player has to place their broadsides carefully.
• Mighty Glacier: The entire line has top speed no more than 23 knots, but their guns pack a punch. Vermont's speed is actually slightly nerfed when compared with the actual design she's based on, but even without said nerf she would have had 25 knots top speed.
• Theme Naming: Battleships are named after US states. The only exception, USS Kearsarge, was a predreadnought decommissioned before World War I.

South Carolina

Tier III American Battleship. South Carolina-class battleships, also known as the Michigan class, were built during the first decade of the twentieth century for the United States Navy. They were the first American dreadnoughts—powerful warships whose capabilities far outstripped those of the world's older battleships. Due to limited dimensions, the ship carried relatively weak armament and had a low speed. Battleships of her class were the first to receive superfiring turrets. This meant she could fire a full broadside with all main battery guns. However, in balancing the congressionally mandated limits to displacement and the inherent design trade-offs between armament, armor, and propulsion, the South Carolina class' speed was severely limited—an ultimately fatal disadvantage that severely limited their utility in a conflict. This relegated them to serving with older, obsolete battleships during the First World War. Thereafter, both South Carolinas were scrapped with the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty.

• Mighty Glacier: Carries hefty armoring, but features atrocious top speed.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Ineffective secondary gun batteries, general sluggishness and high detect-ability range have turned away a lot of players not used to controlling battleships. Thankfully her successor the Wyoming were much better.
  • Like many World War I battleships, she has to be almost entirely broadside to use all her guns, revealing her citadel.

Wyoming

Tier IV American Battleship. The Wyoming class battleships were built in 1910 (Wyoming) and 1912 (Arkansas). Adding two additional turrets and substantial displacement, the class was slightly faster than South Carolina, reaching the same 21-knot standard as their predecessors (and all successors through 1920, the only faster USN battleships were the four 1930s designs, which were except Iowa built to a 28-knot standard), the Delaware and Florida classes. In-game they represent the pattern of USN battleships that will be followed in subsequent vessels through Tier VII, being slow and not very maneuverable, but extremely powerful, with six 11in/304mm guns hurling truly massive shells downrange.

• Artistic License – History: Wyoming was converted in the 1930s to a gunnery training ship, mounting a centerline battery of relatively puny 5in guns to train Navy Anti Aircraft gunners. Also, only two of them were built before the New York class (Tier V), but the game doesn't even attempt to account for this (which is just as well).
• Smash Sisters
• Composite Character: The B hull is more in line with her sister-ship, the Arkansas, despite the latter already being in the game.
• Mighty Glacier: Like other USN battleships from the first fifth of the 20th Century, Wyoming is slow, but packs a wallop.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Has to be almost entirely broadside to use all its guns, exposing its citadel.

New York

Tier V American Battleship.

New York was the lead ship of her class of dreadnought, laid down in 1911 and launched in 1914. She and her sister were the last coal-burning dreadnoughts in the Navy and also the first to carry 356mm guns. New York was hustled down to Veracruz as part of the occupation forces shortly after her commissioning before returning to normal duties. In 1917, she was sent to the UK as part of the reinforcement group for the Grand Fleet; she and her fellow American dreadnoughts became the Grand Fleet's Sixth Battle Squadron and were an object of great curiosity among their British counterparts. Though she never fired a shot in anger, she may have accidentally rammed and sunk a U-boat.^note She was proceeding into Pentland Firth when she suffered a pair of underwater collisions, one of which broke her starboard propeller. The depth of the channel precluded her having struck a shipwreck or shoal, and the general consensus was that she must have hit a submerged U-boat. German records are inconclusive. During the interwar years, New York lived the typical life of a peacetime warship; she also underwent two major refits, including a substantial modernization in 1926-1927. During WWII, she served in the Atlantic Fleet, including convoy duty and participation in Operation Torch. From summer 1943 to summer 1944, she served as a gunnery and midshipman training ship, then was sent to the Pacific in the winter of 1944. She provided fire support for the Marines on Iwo Jima and Okinawa and was refitting in preparation for the invasion of Japan when the war ended. Now thoroughly obsolete, she was used in the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946, surviving both detonations. The Navy took her back to Pearl to study the effects of the bombs on her hull before expending her as a target ship in 1948.

• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: After 6.3, Became the long range compared to Texas.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Has to be almost entirely broadside to use all its guns, exposing its citadel.

New Mexico

Tier VI American Battleship.

USS New Mexico was the lead ship of her class, laid down in 1915 and commissioned in May 1918. She saw no service in World War I, though she did escort the ship that carried President Woodrow Wilson to France for the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. She was made the inaugural flagship of the new US Pacific Fleet in 1919 and spent the bulk of her interwar career there, though she underwent a substantial refit and modernization in Philadelphia from 1931-1933. She was stationed in the Atlantic for neutrality patrol duty when Pearl Harbor was bombed, and was promptly reassigned to her old stomping grounds. She provided fire support for the Aleutian Islands campaign and the invasions of the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, and Philippines. During the invasion of Luzon, she was hit by a kamikaze that killed her captain and 28 others, including British general Herbert Lumsden, who became the British Army's most senior casualty of the war. She continued the fight despite the damage, then returned to Pearl for repairs. She later provided fire support at Okinawa, where she was hit by another kamikaze. She was repaired in time to rejoin the fleet for the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay. She was decommissioned in 1946 and was sent to be dismantled in Newark, NJ, just in time for Newark city officials to announce that they would not permit any more ships to be scrapped along their waterfront. After a brief standoff between the battleship's escorting tugs and the city's fireboats, jokingly dubbed the "Battle of Newark Bay", the city relented and she was duly scrapped.

• Mighty Glacier: Like Arizona, Lots of big guns and very thick armor, although the reload time suffers.

Colorado

Tier VII American Battleship.

Colorado was the lead ship of her class, the last of the "standard-type" dreadnought battleships built in real life. She was laid down in 1919 and commissioned in 1923. After a brief flag-showing tour through Europe, she was assigned to the Battle Fleet, her home for the next fifteen years. She lived the typical life of a peacetime battleship during the interwar years, conducting training and maneuvers and showing the flag in foreign ports. She participated in relief efforts after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 and also went looking for Amelia Earhart after her disappearance in 1937. She was being overhauled in California when Pearl Harbor was attacked, making her the only Pacific Fleet battleship that survived unscathed. She patrolled the West Coast and Central Pacific, then provided fire support for the invasions of Tarawa, the Marshalls, the Marianas, the Philippines, and Okinawa. She was hit and damaged by shore batteries at Tinian, then by two kamikazes a week after arriving in the Philippines. She was then hit by friendly fire eight days after her return from repairs. She got through the Okinawa invasion without further harm and helped bring troops home after the war's end. She was paid off in 1947 and scrapped in 1959. Some of her secondary guns have been preserved on the museum ship USS Olympia.

• Mighty Glacier: As per the standard for a US dreadnought. She was, notably, the last one in the US tech tree before the line split.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Inverted. Used to be considered one of the worst ships, until several series of buffs made it viable.

Kansas

Tier VIII American Battleship of the Superdreadnoughts line.A theoretical 'superdreadnought', Kansas continues the trend set by Colorado'', though with two knots of speed over Colorado's maximum.

• Crippling Overspecialization: Gives up nearly every stat in comparison to the North Carolina in order to gain an extra gun turret.
• Mighty Glacier: Only slightly faster than Colorado, but hits even harder, due to having one more gun per turret.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Her extra gun turret gives her a lot of firepower, but sufferers from ppor dispersion. While slightly buffed over her initial release and the Deadeye skill, most still consider the North Carolina the better option.
• Weaksauce Weakness: like the French, the superdreadnought subline is coated with 32mm of armor. This makes them vulnerable to high explosive spam.

Minnesota

Tier IX American Battleship of the Superdreadnoughts line.

• Mighty Glacier: She's just as slow as Kansas, with the same armament to boot. All she gets is a kilometer boost in her secondary range.

Vermont

Tier X American Battleship of the Superdreadnoughts line. The culmination of dreadnought design, wielding 12 x 457mm guns (for reference, Georgia has 6, Ohio and Thunderer have 8, Kremlin, Yamato, and Musashi have 9).

• Adaptational Wimp: Vermont is acually based on the weakest design of Tillman Maximum Battleship plan - plan I. For reference, the actual final plan, IV-2, called for an even more excessive 15 18-inch guns.
• Alpha Strike: The optimal way to play this ship; because of the 40 second reload you'll never win in a DPM battle, so you need to delete enemy ships with the first salvo before they get a chance to fire back or get into cover.
• A-Team Firing: Has the worst dispersion values among its contemporaries.
• BFG: 18" guns.
• Glass Cannon: Relative to its fellow "Super-Heavy" Battleships, Grosser Kurfurst and Kremlin. Whereas the former is meant to be a close-in brawler with piles of secondary guns and the latter is just meant to be flagrantly overpowered, the Vermont is an alpha-striking sledgehammer that throws enough alpha damage to flatten anything it manages to hit, but has an over-large hitbox and relatively low armor, rendering it much less durable than its high health would imply.
• Mighty Glacier: In terms of mass, Vermont has the heaviest broadside in the game, and is only the 3rd ship to break the 100K HP mark after Grosser Kurfurst and Kremlin; the armor's not bad too. Sadly, the reload is slow and the ship itself moves about as fast as continental drift.
• More Dakka: 4 triple barrelled turrets which, combined with the size of those guns, can result in a lot of damage if you manage to land more than a couple of shells. On the other hand, they are VERY slow to reload.

American Battleships - Fast Battleships

Current "side" line of USN battleships trade guns for speed. With better armor and no less impressive AA, they are Lightning Bruisers, compared to their counterparts' Mighty Glaciers. This is the initial line of US battleships, present in the game as of launch.

• Lightning Bruiser: They are some of the fastest battleships in thr game, outdone only by the French, and yet they all have 406mm guns and serviceable armor.
• Theme Naming: This line is no different from the main one - all battleships are named after US states.

North Carolina

Tier VIII American Battleship of the Fast Battleships line.

The lead ship of her class, USS North Carolina was also the first of the new generation "fast battleships" built between the wars. Laid down in 1937 and commissioned in early 1941, she was technically limited by the provisions of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, though the US Navy invoked an "escalator clause" in the Second London Naval Treaty to swap her planned armament of twelve 356mm guns for nine 406mm. She was still working up when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and initially remained in the Atlantic to prevent against a possible sortie by the German battleship Tirpitz. When no sortie was forthcoming, she was dispatched to the Pacific alongside the carrier Wasp. Her first major action was in the Guadalcanal campaign, where she provided air cover for the carriers and was hit by a torpedo fired by the submarine I-19 that forced her to withdraw to Pearl for repairs. She returned to the Solomons for the rest of that campaign, then went on to provide fire support and anti-air cover for every major invasion in the rest of the war, though she missed most of the Philippines campaign due to an overhaul. After the end of the war, she went into the reserves in 1947. The Navy considered several plans to modernize her, but ultimately decided to scrap the ship in 1960. A committee was formed to preserve her and succeeded in raising the necessary funds thanks to a statewide campaign. She is now permanently moored in the city of Wilmington, NC.

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• Anti-Air: While still having the same Bofors and Oerlikons seen in its predecessors, the North Carolina gains access to the more powerful 5in dual purpose gun, which has a much longer range and harder hitting power than the older version mounted on the New Mexico and Colorado.
• Lightning Bruiser: The first battleship in the USN tree to be faster than 25 knots.

Iowa

Tier IX American Battleship of the Fast Battleships line. The Iowa class were the first US Navy battleships built completely free of any treaty restrictions and were the most powerful battleships the US ever produced. Iowa was laid down in 1940 and commissioned in 1943; after brief service in the Atlantic, including carrying President Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference, she transferred to the Pacific fleet in 1944 for service with the carrier task forces. There, she saw action in the Central Pacific, the Marianas, and the Philippines. In the latter campaign, she missed her chance to go head-to-head with Yamato when Admiral William Halsey took all his ships to engage a Japanese decoy force, allowing the Japanese surface fleet to slip through a now-unguarded strait to attack the American troop transports. Just before they reached the decoy force, Halsey received word of the potential disaster and reluctantly detached Iowa and the other battleships of Task Force 38 to return and attempt to engage the Japanese fleet. The Japanese, in turn, retreated before the battleships arrived. She later participated in the Battle of Okinawa and served as Halsey's flagship for the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay. Iowa was decommissioned in 1949, and then promptly brought back for the Korean War in 1951, where she provided fire support for American and UN troops ashore. She was inactivated in 1958, then recommissioned again in 1982 as part of Ronald Reagan's plan for a 600-ship Navy. After extensive modernization, she put to sea in 1984. In January 1989, she set a record for the longest distance shot by a 406mm gun, lobbing a shell 23.4 nautical miles (26.9m, 43.3km). In April, she suffered an explosion and fire in Turret No. 2 that killed 47 crewmen. The cause of the explosion remains an object of controversy.^note  The Navy's official investigation concluded that one of the sailors killed in the explosion had detonated a bomb in the turret as a means of suicide after his affair with another sailor had gone sour. This explanation was not widely accepted, and allegations of cover-ups and mismanagement began flying almost immediately. An independent investigation in 1991 found that the explosion had likely been caused by an accidental "overram" of gunpowder bags into the breech of the gun (i.e. ramming the bags into the gun so hard that it ignited the powder). The Navy stuck to its own conclusions, though it offered its regrets (not an apology) to the family of the sailor they had accused. The turret was sealed up and never operated again. Iowa was decommissioned again in 1990 and kept in mothballs until 2012, when the Navy donated her for preservation as a museum ship. All four Iowas have been preserved as museums, a unique distinction.^note Iowa is in San Pedro, CA; Wisconsin is in Norfolk, VA; Missouri is in Pearl Harbor; and New Jersey is in Camden, New Jersey.

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• Lightning Bruiser: While all USN fast battleships are considered this by default, the Iowa is special in that she's the fastest battleship, both in Real Life and in-game, at a whopping 33 knots. While other battleships can go faster with engine boost consumable, this remains the highest base speed.

Montana

Tier X American Battleship of Fast Battleships line. She's the only paper design in the main line - five Montanas were ordered and construction on the first ships was to have begun in 1940, but steel shortages caused the work to be delayed into 1942. By that point, the Navy's wartime experiences had definitively indicated that it needed more aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines and amphibious landing craft, not battleships, and the Montanas were officially canceled in 1943. The design work done on their propulsion system was later implemented in building the Midway class aircraft carriers.

• Boring, but Practical: One of the first two tier ten battleships in the game and even then the less interesting of the two. Montana's only real gimmicks are her super heavy shells. However she has strengths in many areas but no real glaring weaknesses.
  • With her unique upgrade installed, she puts out fires and staunches floods very quickly, espcially when she has a captain specced for survival skills. This may not be that interesting, but in the tier X environment she finds herself in, where there are walls of torpedoes everywhere and the air is thick with high explosive spam, this can be very useful for staying in the match longer than other B Bs.
• Lightning Bruiser: Three knots slower than the Iowa class, but actually possessing greater firepower. Unlike the Iowa-class, they were designed to withstand their own 16 inch gun firepower.
• What Could Have Been: These ships were delayed repeatedly, their material diverted to build aircraft carriers and destroyers, and eventually cancelled halfway through World War II without a single keel being laid.

American Battleships - Hybrids

A line of hybrid Battleship-Carriers, loosely based on real-life fast battleships and project 1058, that already existed in the game under the name Kearsarge.

• Artistic License – History: As mentioned, these ships are based on the project 1058, which, however, was never intended to be built for the US Navy. Moreover, project 1058 predates the design of Montana by over a year, while in the game Louisiana (which is most clearly based on project 1058.2, with its quadriple aft turret) is based on its hull.
• The Battlestar: They can launch planes armed with HE bombs, while retaining almost the same main battery as their pure battleship counterparts.

Nebraska

Tier VIII American Battleship of Hybrid Battleships line. She is loosely based on North Carolina-class battleships.

Delaware

Tier IX American Battleship of Hybrid Battleships line. She is loosely based on Iowa-class battleships.

Louisiana

Tier X American Battleship of Hybrid Battleships line. She is loosely based on Montana-class battleships.

American Aircraft Carriers

These CVs are defined by overwhelming power against either sea or air targets at the cost of flexibility. USN plane squads are fewer in number but have five planes in a squad, which can be expanded to six. This leads to fighters that quickly take down enemy strike craft (especially IJN), divebombers capable of heavy damage and multiple fires, and torpedo bombers launching walls of torpedoes that only the most nimble of ships will dodge. However, the lesser amount of squads limits the amount of map the CV can cover at once. In addition, USN loadouts have been changed to be completely balanced, lessening customization but maintaining tactical flexibility. The Essex and Midway get stuck with tier 8 and 9 fighters respectively, and are stuck with Lexington torpedo bombers.

After the CV rework, USN carriers are defined by much better plane recovery, improved rocket planes compared to other nations', and high explosive dive bombers with lower dives than Japanese dive bombers, still retaining their firestarting capability.

• Theme Naming: Fleet carriers are named for famous battles in American history (with the exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt). Light/escort carriers are named after previous ships, bodies of water, even battles (USS Casablanca and Guadalcanal). The experimental U.S.S. Langley was named after aviation pioneer and archivist of the Smithsonian Institution Samuel P. Langley, as part of a government attempt to claim credit for the invention of the airplane. The light carrier USS Wright was later named acknowledging the inventors who won the race to invent the airplane.
• Victory by Endurance: After the 8.00 rework, American aircraft carriers tend to have more endurance than Japanese counterparts. The new AA model isn't really affected by aircraft speed, so Japanese are now noticeably more likely to lose planes than American counterparts. This can easily lead to scenarios when Japanese carriers will be struggling to scrape together squadrons mid-late game giving American carriers the chance to surge ahead in damage.

Langley

Tier IV American Aircraft Carrier. The first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, Langley was converted from the collier USS Jupiter (AC-3), and also the U.S. Navy's first electrically propelled ship. She had low speed and was used as an experimental ship for testing various technical innovations as well as for training navy pilots. The carrier was equipped with secondary armament to repel attacks from enemy destroyers. Despite her age and second-class status, Langley fought in World War II. On 27 February 1942, she was attacked by dive bombers of the Japanese 21st and 23rd Naval Air Flotillas and so badly damaged that she had to be scuttled by her escorts.

• Glass Cannon: In a way. Like most aircraft carriers, Langley has little armor. Her low speed and wide turning radius don't help.
• Jack of All Trades: She is able to deploy all aircraft squadron types at once; fighters, torpedo bombers and dive bombers. Unlike most other aircraft carriers that need to be armed with specialized Anti-Air or anti-surface squadrons.
• Lethal Joke Character: Used to be considered the worst carrier, but after several re-balances she's better than the same tier Hosho in both fighters AND strike capability. At the same time.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Samuel Pierpont Langley, an American aviation pioneer.

Ranger

Tier VI American Aircraft Carrier. The first U.S. aircraft carrier of special construction. The ship carried a large air group. The carrier's speed was quite high for her type. Her drawbacks included a lack of torpedo protection and impractical arrangement of aircraft elevators, which slowed down the handling of air groups.

Independence

Tier VI American Aircraft Carrier.

Built from a Cleveland-class cruiser hull, she's a fast ship, though still suffers from a limited hangar. Independence was laid down in May 1941 as the cruiser Amsterdam, but converted into a carrier mid-construction and commissioned in 1943. After shakedown, she joined the Pacific Fleet and participated in the island-hopping campaign through the Central Pacific, fighting at Marcus, Wake, Rabaul, and the Gilberts. She was hit and seriously damaged by an aircraft-launched torpedo in the latter campaign, requiring her to refit in California. During this time, her pilots began training for night operations, which became her specialty for the rest of the war. During the invasion of the Philippines, she participated in the Battle of Leyte Gulf; her air group contributed to the sinking of Musashi and several other ships. She provided air support at Okinawa and participated in the air raids on Japan. At the end of the war, she shuttled American soldiers home and was then used as a target in the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. She survived two explosions and was later scuttled off the Farallon Islands. Her wreck lies in 790 meters of water and has been investigated several times by underwater explorers and maritime archeologists.

• The Bus Came Back: Independence returned in the 13.0 update as an early access ship, alongside Yorktown and Essex, and was made available on the tech tree in the 13.2 update.
• Put on a Bus: Removed following the 8.0 CV rework and stayed gone until the 13.0 update.

Lexington

Tier VIII American Aircraft Carrier.

USS Lexington was one of the US Navy's first fleet carriers. She and her sister ship Saratoga were converted from a pair of battlecruiser hulls that would otherwise have had to be scrapped to comply with the requirements of the Washington Naval Treaty. This gave them unusually high durability for carriers. Lexington was laid down in 1921 and commissioned in 1927. After her shakedown, she transferred to the Pacific, where she would spend her entire career. Along with Saratoga, she spent much of the interwar period developing and refining carrier tactics in annual fleet exercises. On 7 December 1941, she was ferrying Vindicator dive bombers to Midway when she learned of the attack on Pearl. Her mission was canceled and she was ordered to hunt for the Japanese carriers, though she didn't find them (probably for the best, as six against one is bad odds no matter how you cut it). Lexington then participated in several of the US Navy's early actions in the war, including the attempted relief of Wake Island and the raids on Rabaul and Lae-Salamaua. She was sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 after absorbing two torpedo and two bomb hits from Japanese aircraft, along with further damage from several near misses. Her wreck lies in 3000 meters of water in the Coral Sea, 800km from the Australian coast.

• Battlestar: As close to it as the game currently gets. She boasts a rather stiff array of secondaries for her tier. You probably still don't want to get into any gunfights, but your enemies would be wise to keep their distance.
• Composite Character: Due to the real Lexington having been lost early in the war, during the Battle of the Coral Sea, it's readily apparent that the in-game Lexington is more in-line with the USS Saratoga, both in secondary and AA configuration, as well as the types of aircraft carried.
• Super Prototype: She's actually older than her tier seven predecessor Ranger. Unlike her contemporary Kaga(which is also listed as tier 8), she never had to have her flight deck configuration modernized.

Yorktown

Tier VIII American Aircraft Carrier. One of the first purpose-built fleet carriers of the US Navy and the lead ship of her class, Yorktown was laid down in 1934 and commissioned in 1937. She spent her prewar service conducting exercises and maneuvers in the Atlantic. Upon the outbreak of World War II, she was briefly transferred to the Pacific fleet, then sent back to the Atlantic in 1940 to conduct neutrality patrols. She was still in the Atlantic when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and was quickly sent east to bolster the tattered Pacific fleet. At the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, she was severely damaged by a 250kg bomb that hit her square in the center of her flight deck. It was estimated that she'd need to spend between two weeks to three months in a dry dock to be fully repaired, but when Admiral Chester Nimitz began assembling forces to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet bound for Midway, he ordered that Yorktown be made ready to sail as soon as possible. After 48 hours of round-the-clock work, she departed Pearl for Midway alongside Enterprise and Hornet. The initial stages of the battle didn't go well, as nearly all of the US torpedo planes were shot down by the Japanese fighters; Yorktown lost 10 of its 12 Devastators. Shortly thereafter, though, the dive bombers from Enterprise and Yorktown arrived over the Japanese fleet and pushed over. Yorktown's Dauntlesses scored three hits with 450kg bombs on the carrier Soryu, turning her into an inferno, while the dive bombers from Enterprise smashed Kaga and Akagi. The fourth Japanese carrier, Hiryu, escaped unscathed, and her air group later repaid Yorktown with three bomb hits that knocked out several of her boilers and started raging fires throughout the ship. Heroic damage-control efforts from her crew seemingly saved the carrier to fight another day, but while she was under tow, the Japanese submarine I-168 spotted her and fired four torpedoes. One of the torpedoes sank the escorting destroyer Hammann, while two more struck Yorktown on her starboard side, just behind her island. Mortally wounded, she slowly heeled over and sank the following day. Her wreck now lies in 5,500 meters of water northeast of Midway.

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• Anachronism Stew: Yorktown fields AD-1 Skyraiders, SB2C Helldivers, and F4U Corsairs, none of which were in service with the US Navy until after she was sunk at Midway.^note The Skyraider is especially egregious, because they didn't come online until 1946.
• Smoke Out: Yorktown's dive bombers can lay smokescreens, opening up new tactical options for her captains.

Midway

Tier X American Aircraft Carrier. An experimental carrier with an armored flight deck, Midway and her sisters are considered to be the predecessors to the "super carrier." Though Midway herself missed World War II by a matter of days, she did have a successful postwar career. The demise of the Soviet Union made her (and several other old ships like the Iowa-class) surplus to Navy requirements. As a result Midway was decommissioned, but not before serving as the flagship for Operation Desert Storm. She is preserved as a museum in San Diego, notably the largest aircraft carrier to receive such an honor and the only one that's not from the Essex class.

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• Bigger Is Better: The Midway is huge, easily one of the biggest ships in the game, if not THE biggest. It was designed this way in order to ensure that the USN could field more more planes than the other guy (most likely the Russians at this point), but also built with the knowledge that the jet age was approaching.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Doesn't look like it at first, but the ship was named after a carrier battle in the Pacific War where American carriers (or, rather, their aircaft) were able to sink four fleet carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, also irreparably crippling Japanese offensive capabilities and forcing them to go on the defensive. Considering the she can throw waves after waves of highly advanced planes without worry due to her large aircraft hangar capacity, a Midway on the enemy team list signifies that your battle is not going to be an easy one.
• We Have Reserves: Boasts both the largest quantity of planes and the largest ratio of planes in reserve to planes active. In fact the tendency of her captains to feed their planes to AA after a bombing run just to get faster reloads resulted in the developers instituting a time penalty for having squadrons shot down. This still proved to be insufficient to balance the Midway with the Japanese Hakuryu, so the developers went further and nerfed her hangar capacity.
  • Subverted after the rework, she has the same proportional amount as Hakuryu

Essex

With a total of 24 ships built, the Essex-class was the most numerous class of fleet carriers during World War II in the United States Navy and also the most numerous class of fleet carriers ever built by any nation. USS Lexington (no relation to the in-game T8 carrier), USS Yorktown (no relation to the other USS Yorktown that sank at Midway), USS Intrepid and USS Hornet (again, no relation to the other USS Hornet that sank in the Battle of Santa Cruz) are the four ships still preserved today as museum ships out of the 24 built. Essex was laid down in May 1941 and commissioned in December 1942 after her construction was accelerated due to Pearl Harbor. She joined the Pacific Fleet in May 1943 and cut her teeth in the Central Pacific at Wake, Rabaul, and Tarawa. She participated in Operation Hailstone, the Marianas campaign, and the invasion of the Philippines, where she was struck by a kamikaze on 25 November. After repairs, she rejoined the fleet and attacked targets from Formosa to Japan. She was modernized and recommissioned in 1951 and provided air support during the Korean War. After a second major modernization in 1955 she conducted exercises and maneuvers around the world. In 1961, she sortied in support of the Bay of Pigs invasion, though the airstrikes were ultimately canceled. She participated in the blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later was assigned as a recovery ship for the Apollo program, retrieving Apollo 7 after splashdown. Now superannuated, she was decommissioned in 1969 and sold for scrap in 1975.

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• The Bus Came Back: Essex returned in the 13.0 update as an early access ship and became available to research in the 13.2 update.
• Put on a Bus: Removed following the 8.0 CV rework and stayed gone until the 13.0 update.

United States

American Super-Carrier. Also know as CVA-58, she was laid down as a carrier of nuclear-armed bomber planes. However, due to number of reasons, with Interservice Rivalry being one of them, she was quickly cancelled. In the game she's presented as a traditional attack carrier, armed with reactive planes.

• Crippling Overspecialization: She lacks non-tactical torpedo bombers, and thus her damage output can be lower than Midway's.
• Glass Cannon: She has no armor at all, and is very susceptible to damage, more than any other carrier.
• Multi-Ranged Master: She has tactical squadrons in addition to normal ones. They reload for a very long time and has less planes in a squadron than their common counterparts, but possess powerful weapon and high speed.
• Patriotic Fervor: Without a doubt, with a name like this.

Premium ships

American Premium Destroyers

Smith

Smith — American promo premium Tier II destroyer.The first U.S. Navy destroyer designed to operate on the high seas. Unlike all destroyers built before, she was equipped with a turbine power unit and uniform caliber main guns.

Hill

American promo premium Tier V destroyer. One of the draft designs for a destroyer flotilla leader, production of which started at the end of World War I. Was armed with five main battery guns.

• Highly-Visible Ninja: She has worse concealment than most other destroyers in her matchmaking spread, including some of the French destroyers.
• More Dakka: Gets 5 gun turrets, a feature normally found on much higher tier USN dd's. However she pays for this with poor firing angles on the guns.

Monaghan

Monaghan - American Tier VI Premium destroyer. A Farragut-class destroyer geared towards anti-aircraft warfare. Like her sister, she's armed with dual-purpose guns. Unlike her sister, she receives a hull upgrade that removes two of her main battery guns for more AA guns.

• Anti-Air: Like her sister ship, she gets access to the Defensive AA fire consumable, only this time, she has the option of sacrificing one of her 5-in guns for additional AA guns.
• Crippling Overspecialization: One of her hull configurations sacrifices two of her main battery guns for additional AA mounts. And considering this is a Farragut hull that already has 1 less gun thanks to modernization, this will be a recurring issue when no aircraft carriers appear in matches and this hull is used.

Sims

Sims — American Premium Tier VII destroyer.

A well-armed high-speed destroyer with excellent maneuverability. High rate of fire and excellent aiming speeds for her dual-purpose artillery mounts ensured good firepower and efficient AA defenses for her time.

• Fragile Speedster: She's the fastest of any of the USN destroyers, with a maximum speed of 43 knots on Engine boost. Like all USN destroyers, however, she's still vulnerable to gunfire from enemy ships.
• Memetic Badass: Not in PVP, where she has a reputation as a decidedly average competitor, but she absolutely breaks Operation Dynamo. Sims boasts hilariously strong AA compared to everything else that can compete in the event, even without Defensive Fire active. She backs this up with her rapid-fire guns. While normally this is offset by having a lower Alpha, Sims can still one shot snellboats, the only seagoing enemy in the operation. Having a Sims on your team in the event almost guarantees a five star win. Players have started joking that if she'd been at the real historical event she would have retaken France then and there.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Her 9.2km torpedoes have an awful "speed" of 49 knots, easily the worst in the higher tiers. They've earned the nickname of Water Mines in the community.

Kidd

A Fletcher hull placed in Tier 8, given Damage Repair, an enhanced Defensive Fire consumable in exchange for only possessing a single torpedo launcher.

• Anti-Air: Unlike the other two Fletcher-class hulls in-game, the Kidd is geared more towards anti-aircraft warfare, with one of her quintuple torpedo tubes replaced in favor of two quad Bofors 40mm guns. Also, her Defensive AA fire consumable has unlimited charges, as opposed to the 2-4 charges her sisters have.
• Heal Thyself: She is the only non-Russian with access to the Repair Party consumable, and unlike the ships on the Soviet "Destroyer Leader" line (Kiev, Tashkent, and Khabarovsk), Kidd does not need to sacrifice any of her consumables for it, as its Repair Party is in a separate slot.
• Named After Somebody Famous: With a mix of Tragic Keepsake thrown in; she was named after Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who was on-board the Arizona when it blew up during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, killing him along with 1.176 other sailors.

Black

Black — American Tier IX destroyer.

One of the numerous and very successful Fletcher-class destroyers which boasted a sufficiently high speed, powerful dual-purpose artillery, efficient AA defenses, and decent torpedo armament.

• Armor-Piercing Attack: Her torpedoes have a much larger area-of-effect (known as an "explosion cube") than any other in the game, allowing it to circumvent, to a degree, torpedo protection systems on ships equipped with such. The more protected they are, the more effective these "nuclear water mines" are.
• Game-Breaker: Black has the same fast-firing guns as Fletcher, one of the best gunboats in the game. Along with Fletcher's excellent concealment. But on top of that, Black has radar. Meaning that enemy destroyers can't use their smoke to hide. Alternately, Black can hide in her own smoke and still kill enemy destroyers without needing a friendly ship to spot for it. And on top of that, Black's own detection range is shorter than the range of its radar, meaning that it can light up ships with radar that don't even know Black is there. On top of that, for the most part only top-level players can even get Black, since it's the reward for reaching Rank 1 in Ranked Battles five times. Some have decried the ship as being easy mode.
• Number of the Beast: Her designation is DD-666, which is printed on her hull. This is most likely why she is in the game versus any of the other hundreds of Fletchers.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: Black's torpedoes are powerful, fairly long-range and have short detection range, but are slower than even Sims' infamous "Water Mines" at 43 knots. While the low detectability makes makes them hard to (deliberately) dodge, their slow speed makes them even harder to aim.

Benham

American promo premium Tier IX destroyer. The lead ship of a series of destroyers whose main armament comprised four quadruple torpedo tubes placed along the both sides of the ship, in addition to dual-purpose 127 mm guns.

Somers

American promo premium Tier X destroyer.

A destroyer flotilla leader equipped with eight guns that had the largest number of torpedoes per salvo among all the ships of the U.S. Navy.

• Bribing Your Way to Victory: While a steel ship and not a purchasable premium, she was considered generally better than the Gearing,(being equipped with an extra gun turret with a similar rate of fire) and being a steel ship she would only be in the hands of the best players. This lead to her removal from the armory in patch 0.10.1.

American Premium Cruisers

Albany

American premium tier 2 cruiser, awarded to Closed Beta Test participant or gifted to players during Wargaming's 17th anniversary.

The ship was built in the U.K. for the Brazilian Navy, but was purchased by the U.S. Government for use in the Spanish-American War. When commissioned, Albany was the most successful cruiser in the U.S. Navy. She saw service in the Philippine–American War and World War I. Despite relatively small dimensions, she carried powerful armament (which was a logistical nightmare due to being comprised of British guns carried by no other American ship). Her commission date of 1898 makes her the oldest ship in the game, for now.

• Bling of War: Albany comes with distinct bronze-like exterior paint on upper half of the ship, which is typical of early-tier USN ships in the game. The white-and-buff paint scheme was the US Navy’s peacetime scheme around the turn of the century, with haze gray being specifically referred to as “war paint,” But it fell out of favor by 1910, with wartime gray becoming the permanent standard.
• Close-Range Combatant: She has below average main battery gun range of 8.47 km., just below her detect-ability range. (8.8 km) Not too bad, but tends to be problematic when fighting higher-tier cruisers.
• Mighty Glacier: Rather sluggish (20 knots), but tight turning radius and respectable damage potential of the main battery are something to watch out for.

Atlanta

American Tier VII Light Cruiser. Currently available in the premium shop for doubloons. Atlanta was the lead ship of her class of 8 light cruisers. These cruisers were designed to provide antiaircraft fire support for the rest of the fleet; to this end, they were armed with a main battery of 16 dual-purpose 128mm guns in 8 turrets, letting them hurl tremendous amounts of fire into the air very quickly. Atlanta was laid down in 1940 and commissioned on 24 December 1941, just over two weeks after Pearl Harbor had conclusively proved the need for her and her sisters. After shakedown, she was sent to the Pacific, arriving in April 1942. She fought at Midway and the Eastern Solomons and conducted convoy escort and fire support duties during the Guadalcanal campaign. In November 1942, Atlanta was part of a task force led by Admiral Dan Callaghan that was assigned to protect the supply convoys running to the island. While patrolling the waters off Guadalcanal in the early morning of 13 November 1942, the task force encountered a Japanese strike group on its way to bombard the Marine airfield on the island, and a confused melee ensued. Atlanta was illuminated by the destroyer Akatsuki and promptly tore into her with her guns; the destroyer was overwhelmed and sunk in short order. Unfortunately for Atlanta, she was hit shortly thereafter by a torpedo from another Japanese destroyer, and then suffered nineteen 203mm shell hits from the cruiser San Francisco, apparently in a case of mistaken identity. The shells tore up her superstructure and killed Admiral Norman Scott, who was using Atlanta as his flagship. Daylight found the cruiser still afloat, but in such bad shape that her captain soon yielded to the inevitable and ordered her to be scuttled. She sank in 400 ft (120 m) of water, becoming one of the many wrecks of Iron Bottom Sound. Her wreck was relocated in 1992 by Robert Ballard, the man who found the Titanic and Bismarck, and has since been explored on several occasions by technical divers.

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• Anti-Air: Do not let the rating number for its AA stat fool you. The number is artificially low due to its somewhat lacking short and mid range AA guns. Those 16 dual-purpose 128mm guns will tear apart anything that gets within range in mere seconds. The Atlanta also has unlimited charges of the Defensive AA fire consumable, with the cooldown time being the only limitation. Atlanta was built as an antiaircraft cruiser, after all, and it's what she does best.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: One of three Premium Cruisers at Tier VII to mount a watered-down version of the radar consumable.^note  The radar in question lasts 25 seconds and has a range of only 8.5 km.
• Military Mashup Machine: Atlanta is a cruiser, but exactly what kind of cruiser she is remains a point of argument. She was originally developed as a destroyer leader, which is why she was armed with torpedoes and has such thin armor, but she was ultimately reclassed as a light cruiser (CL) due to her size and tonnage. Because of her intended role, she is occasionally referred to as an antiaircraft light cruiser (CLAA).
• More Dakka: Has 16 128mm dual-purpose guns in 8 twin turrets, with seven turrets on a broadside and four firing ahead or astern, all with about a 3 to 4 second reload. Sequential firing the batteries leads to an almost continuous fire with only a slight pause between the last turret of the previous salvo, and the first turret of the next.
• Series Mascot: Atlanta has appeared in more promotional materials than any other ship and she's reportedly one of the best selling premiums. Her unique nature and the prominence of the Atlanta class in WWII contribute to this.

Indianapolis

American Tier VII Premium Cruiser (yes, the Americans have a LOT of Tier VII Cruisers). An upgraded version of the Pensacola - she belonged to the Portland class, the class of heavy cruisers that set the pattern for every other American heavy cruiser with two triple eight-inch gun turrets in the front and one in the rear. She has very good firing arcs, able to fire all three turrets almost fully forward and still have a nice hard punch in the rear. She is, of course, infamous for two things: having delivered the components of the Fat Man atomic bomb to the island of Tinian for assembly and preparation, and being sunk by a Japanese submarine while returning to the Philippines from that mission. Her survivors spent five hellish days in the water before being spotted and rescued, by which time there were only 316 men left from the 800+ who had survived the sinking.

• Enemy-Detecting Radar: One of three premium cruisers at Tier VII to mount radar. Unlike the one used by the Atlanta and Belfast, she uses a special, watered-down version of the Tier X radar consumable.^note  The radar in question lasts 25 seconds (instead of the 40 seconds for Tier X radar) and has the same range of 9.9 km.
• Glass Cannon: Downplayed. She's just as fast as New Orleans, with arguably better armor-piercing shells, at the cost of slower-loading guns and less armor. Not battleship heavy - anything shooting bigger than the Dunkerque's 13" guns is a guaranteed citadel penetration from the front - but heavy enough to reject most cruiser hits from the front.

Flint

American Tier VII reward cruiser, given to players who have made it to Rank 1 in Ranked Battles. She was later added to the armory for steel, then removed and added for coal at a higher than average price.

• Game-Breaker: She's an Atlanta class that trades a gun turret on each side for smoke. this doesn't sound like much but considering she's only earnable by VERY skilled players who will know how to use it... It lets the Flint actually realize the massive damage potential of the huge broadside of the Atlanta class.
  • Downplayed trope after the commander skill rework. She did not receive the range increase that Atlanta did, and lost several important skills in the rework that she used to rely on.

Anchorage

American promo premium Tier VIII cruiser. A heavy cruiser design created under Project CA-B. The ship outmatched the Baltimore-class ships in terms of size and power, and also carried torpedo armament.

• Enemy-Detecting Radar: Subverted. Unlike all other high tier American cruisers, she does not get a radar.
• Macross Missile Massacre: While she only gets 4 torpedoes per side, the fact that she has them at all is unusual for American ships. They also have a very good range of 10 kilometers.
• Mighty Glacier: while not slower than American cruisers, she noticeably much more sluggish to maneuver.
• Smoke Out: Unusual for an American cruiser, and especially a heavy cruiser, is her smokescreen. It is the same found on American destroyers, and comfortably allows her to fire from concealment.

Wichita

American premium Tier VIII cruiser. A heavy cruiser that inherited architecture and arrangement from the Brooklyn-class light cruisers. Unlike ships of the previous New Orleans class, Wichita had a new design of the main battery turrets which provided a higher firing accuracy. In addition, she had heavier armor and carried more advanced dual-purpose guns.

Alaska

Germany's Deutschland class of heavy cruisers armed with smaller battleship guns sent more than a few waves through naval thinkers of the world. These started a race to develop "cruiser killers", something of a more honest halfway point between heavy cruisers and battleships than battlecruisers.^note Though there is a lot of naval debate on whether cruiser killers count as battlecruisers or super-heavy cruisers. While plenty of nations would draw designs and even start such vessels, only one class of cruiser killers would be completed, the American Alaska class. Unfortunately they arrived when there were few if any enemy cruisers to hunt. That said, they made good carrier escorts and shore bombardment platforms. They were seen as very maintenance intensive units to maintain and were decommissioned shortly after WWII and scrapped decades later.

• Bribing Your Way to Victory: That high effectiveness lead to it becoming too popular, and Wargaming removing it from sale in patch 0.10.1.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: Only slightly less effective than the Des Moines in this department—30 seconds, 10km range (as opposed to 40 seconds).
• Jack of All Stats: She's rather effective against other cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and aircraft carriers.

Salem

The third and final Des Moines-class cruiser completed, Salem is the last preserved heavy cruiser in existence. Completed in 1949 and decommissioned ten years later, Salem had a fairly leisurely service record as can be expected from a peacetime warship.

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• Anti-Air: One of the best AA suites in the game, though overshadowed a bit by Worcester.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Shes one of the few premiums that avert this trope, at least in a positive way. While Salem is indeed deadly, you can not buy her or buy resources that buy her. You simply have to grind to get it.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Much like her sister
• Heal Thyself: Salem has a Royal Navy "super heal" unlike her sister. This allows her to withstand a lot of punishment, provided she can avoid citadel penetrations.
• Last of His Kind: The only heavy cruiser preserved.

Vallejo

Tier IX premium American Cruiser. Vallejo is a paper ship that represents one of the preliminary designs bandied around by the US Navy prior to the development of the Worcester-class cruisers.

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• More Dakka: Vallejo has ten 152mm guns with a 6.1 second reload time, letting her hurl plenty of shells at enemy ships.
• Set the World on Fire: Though the individual per-shell chance to set fires is quite low (only 12%), the sheer amount of fire Vallejo can put out all but guarantees that she'll be starting plenty of fires.

American Premium Battleships

Arkansas Beta

• Point Defenseless: No AA Guns whatsoever which causes Carrier captains to rub their hands together in glee at the sight of this Piñata.

Texas

American Tier V Premium Battleship. Texas is a sister ship to the New York, and the last dreadnought left in the world. She was laid down in 1911 and commissioned in 1914 and immediately hustled down to Mexico during the tension over the so-called "Tampico Incident". She spent the next few years in training until America officially declared war on Germany in 1917. She was dispatched to Britain in January 1918 to join the Grand Fleet as the 6th Battleship Squadron. She spent her war on convoy duty and saw no action. During the interwar period, Texas earned the distinction of being the first American battleship to deploy aircraft and screen a movie onboard. She spent several years with the Pacific Fleet before returning to the Atlantic and undergoing a major overhaul and refit from 1925-1926. When America entered WWII, she escorted convoys to Panama and South Africa and participated in Operations Torch and Overlord. During the invasion of Normandy, she was assigned to provide fire support at Omaha Beach and at one point closed to 3,000 yards from shore to smash the German positions. She continued to provide fire support off France until September 1944, when she returned to New York for refit before sailing to the Pacific. She bombarded shore targets at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, then brought American troops home after Japan's surrender. She was placed in reserve in June 1946 and then sold to her namesake state for preservation as a museum in 1948.

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• Anti-Air: By far the best AA ship in tier 5, even beating out cruisers. She can reliably destroy tier 6 strike waves, and make a dent in tier 7's. Only the Saipan with her tier 9 planes stands a chance of coming away unscathed. The only mitigating factor is the AA guns short range, even fully kitted out they only reach to 5.1km.
  • Following the CV rework, she became much less effective at this role. However she remains one of the few battleships at the tier that can punish carrier players for coming after her.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: A relatively mild example compared to others. She has better turret placement, allowing her to not expose herself so much in a broadside, and the much upgraded AA suite compared to New York.
• Last of Her Kind: The last dreadnought left in the world, and something often brought up when talking about her. Several times the real vessel has come close to being permanently lost to damage.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Type 3. The optional US flag camo. It's as gaudy as you're thinking.
  • After Hurricane Harvey, she had another livery added: the Texas state flag, as part of a charity event.

Arizona

USS Arizona, destroyed at Pearl Harbor, is a unique ship in the game. A Pennsylvania class battleship, she represents the class before her tier-mate New Mexico, and has a differently modeled bow (correctly modeling the actual design; the Pennsylvania class had a bluff bow which was changed to a clipper bow in the New Mexico class). In game she has nearly unprecedented accuracy for her tier, but makes up for it with more sluggish turning, virtually no AA, and a longer reload time. Arizona was laid down in 1914 and commissioned in 1916, the second and last ship of her class. She saw no action in WWI, though she escorted Woodrow Wilson's ship to Europe for the Paris Peace Conference. She was involved in a minor scandal in 1924 when a group of sailors on leave in New York met a prostitute named Madeline Blair who was seeking passage to Hollywood and agreed to smuggle her aboard. When she was caught, the sailors involved were court-martialed and all the ship's officers were issued letters of reprimand.^note  One of these officers was future admiral Arleigh Burke, then an ensign; fortunately for him and the other officers, the letters were later revoked by a new CNO who felt the penalty unnecessarily harsh. After an extensive modernization in 1930, Arizona was sent to the Pacific. There, she provided disaster relief after the Long Beach earthquake of 1933 and was was used to film the James Cagney movie Here Comes the Navy. In October 1941, she collided with USS Oklahoma during maneuvers in heavy fog, which required her to dry-dock in Pearl Harbor rather than proceeding to Washington for a planned refit. She was still there on 7 December 1941 when the planes of Kido Butai descended from the skies. Arizona was attacked by ten Kate torpedo bombers carrying modified 410mm armor-piercing shells. Several of the bombs missed and others inflicted only minor damage, but one punched through her deck by the second turret and detonated her magazines, triggering a cataclysmic explosion that annihilated the interior of the ship's bow, collapsed her turrets and superstructure, and killed 1,177 of her 1,512 crew. The wreck continued to burn for two days. Deemed unrepairable, she was instead extensively salvaged. Some of her guns were installed in shore defense batteries, while the guns from Turret 2 were given to USS Nevada. Her bell hangs in a tower at the University of Arizona and other artifacts are on display in Phoenix. The wreck was declared a national memorial in the 1960s and is visited by millions every year.

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• Mighty Glacier: In common with every class of American battleship up through Tier VI. Twelve 14-inch rifles and fantastically thick armor with good vertical protection, but not very fast. In fact she has lacks the speed retention US battleships normally get during a turn, making her in practice even slower.

Alabama

American Premium Tier VIII Battleship. A South Dakota-class battleship, and currently a museum berthed in Mobile, Alabama. Initially only available as a reward for supertesters, it's now available in the tech tree/premium shop. Alabama was the fourth and last South Dakota-class battleship. Laid down in 1940 and commissioned in 1942, she spent the early part of her war on Arctic convoy duty with the British fleet before transferring to the Pacific in 1943, where she provided fire support and AA defense in the Central Pacific campaigns, including the Gilberts and Marshalls, Operation Hailstone, and the Marianas. At the Philippines, she missed a chance to fight Yamato when Admiral Halsey took her north to engage a Japanese decoy force at Cape Engaño. After an overhaul stateside, she rejoined the fleet in time for Okinawa and the Japanese surrender. After the end of the war, she was inactivated and sent to the reserve. Several plans to modernize her with missile launchers and more AA guns went nowhere, and she was slated for scrapping in 1962. The state of Alabama launched a campaign to preserve her as a museum instead, which was successful. She is now permanently moored in Mobile Bay and has served as a set for movies such as Under Siege and USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage.

• Lightning Bruiser: For players used to the US Tier III-VII playstyle. She's fast (27.5 knots), supremely agile (same 700-yard tactical radius as the previous Standards on that six knot speed advantage) and has a very fast rudder shift.
• Made of Iron: Has an impressive 48% Torpedo belt damage reduction, comparable only to the Yamato. Her armor scheme (as with the actual ship) is impressively tough, with an internal belt and able to absorb a vicious hammering (even from ships well above her tier).
• Weaksauce Weakness: During testing she had a VERY high citadel, making any angling suicide. Fortunately she released with a waterline citadel.

Massachusetts

Another Tier VIII premium of the South Dakota class. Trades even more of Alabama's accuracy (and some of her handling) for long range hyper accurate secondaries. The third South Dakota to be completed, Massachusetts was laid down in 1939 and commissioned in May 1942. She cut her teeth in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa. There, she engaged in a gunnery duel with the incomplete French battleship Jean Bart, successfully knocking out the other ship's main guns. She transferred to the Pacific shortly thereafter; like her sister ships and the rest of the battleship fleet, she provided fire support and AA defense throughout the Central Pacific and at the Philippines, then went on to bombard Japan and Okinawa. She was decommissioned and sent to the reserves in 1947. After plans for modernizing her went nowhere, the state of Massachusetts bought the ship to preserve her as a museum; she is currently moored in Fall River alongside several other ships.

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• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Its secondaries fire extremely quickly and have unprecedented accuracy. She essentially has an Atlanta mounted to each side.
• Nose Art: Like the real deal, she has art of gremlin riding a shell on her B turret.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: With less sigma (meaning you have to get closer to make the guns work consistently) and an unrivaled secondary kit, she's the short ranged compared to Alabama.

Constellation

American Premium Tier VIII Battleship. Constellation is a Lexington-class battlecruiser. The Lexingtons were first ordered in 1911 in response to the development of the Japanese Kongō-class battleships, but their construction was repeatedly delayed for political and economic reasons. They were finally laid down in 1920, but construction was halted in 1921 pending the results of the Washington Naval Conference. After the resulting naval treaty set strict limits on capital ship construction, Constellation and three of her sisters were scrapped to comply with its terms, while two others, Lexington and Saratoga, were selected for conversion into aircraft carriers.

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• Acrofatic: She's a bulky ship with high freeboard and a chunky superstructure, but she's also fast and agile.
• Composite Character: She has the layout and armor scheme of a Lexington-class battlecruiser, but carries Colorado's 16"/45 caliber guns instead of the 16"/50 guns that were originally designed for her.
• Glass Cannon: She can hit hard, but her armor is very thin and easily penetrated.
• Lightning Bruiser: Constellation has a maximum speed of 33.3 knots, making her one of the fastest battleships in her tier, second only to the 34-knot Champagne. She also has good rudder shift time, allowing her to quickly reposition.
• Retraux: She has a permanent camouflage that paints her to look like her predecessor, a 19th-century sloop-of-war that is moored in Baltimore harbor as a museum.
• What Could Have Been: She represents what the Lexington-class battlecruisers would have looked like if they were actually finished, complete with a theoretical early-war refit.

Missouri

American Premium Tier IX Battleship, sister-ship of the Iowa, and the last battleship commissioned into the US Navy during World War II. She is most famous for her role during the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, and is currently moored permanently in Hawaii as a museum ship, watching over the wreck of USS Arizona.

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• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Not so much the ship itself, as its very similar to the tech tree Iowa, but more for the fact that without any sales or discounts, she costs over $100. Yes, for a single ship.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The only BB to get the Radar consumable.
• Game-Breaker: A strange example. Even with her radar, she is merely "good" at actual combat. But her credit earnings make her perhaps the best ship to own in the game. She earns far more than any other ship in the game per battle, so much so that no one who has one is going to have to worry about money again. This, more than her radar, is what got her removed from sale.
• Magic Knight: Obviously not literally but conceptually pretty close. Missouri is a battleship and plays like one most of the time. But she has access to radar, a staple of Squishy Wizard cruisers. While its not quite as effective due to Missouri's bigger detection range than the cruisers who normally wield such a consumable, a ballsy Missouri with support can still ruin a lot of destroyers days, and is devastating to cruisers with their own smokescreens.
• War for Fun and Profit: As one of the first "purchasable" ^note  technically, one cannot pay gold or real money to get Missouri directly, but they have to pay real money to buy doubloons, then use said doubloons to convert free experience then buy her using the converted free experience tier 9 premiums, she makes an impressive amount of credits as you might expect. Results of over a million credits with premium account are possible, and higher amounts are easily achievable by stacking credit camos and signals.

Georgia

Georgia is an early design study of the Iowa class with six 18 inch guns. Available both for real money and for coal.

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• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Proved to be extremely popular, so she was removed from sale and the armory in patch 0.10.1.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Georgia has a lower alpha than Iowa or Missouri, due to having less guns, but can be far more effective when flanking due to being faster and slightly stealthier. Her gigantic citadel means that she's not as built for brawling as Germans, but you can use her secondaries to put extra pressure on a flank. Her speed boost is helpful for effective repositioning, but an early burn means that it won't be useable for a good chunk of the game. While Georgia can be played decently with the standard USN playstyle, a master can effectively utilize her as a mobile surgical strike ship.
• Lightning Bruiser: An early design of an Iowa armed with eighteen inch guns and a French cruiser speed boost. Georgia has the heaviest shells in the game and can travel at nearly forty knots.
• Short Range Guy, Long Range Guy: Much like Massachusetts is to Alabama, though with it's contemporary Iowa-class battleships. Georgia is meant to get in close with it's devastatingly powerful 18 inch guns, which hit like tanks but miss almost as much as the infamously inaccurate Germans, as well as having the same secondary battery and improved heal recharge of Massachusetts. It's speed, even without the speed boost, also encourages flanking or straight up pushing, especially if there aren't any heavily armed targets or destroyers (though her secondaries can be quite effective in dealing with them).
• Weaksauce Weakness: Much like Iowa, she sacrifices armor (especially citadel armor) for her speed. If you can get a Georgia broadside on, it's a fairly easy task of punishing it.
• What Could Have Been: Sort of. Georgia is an early design study of an Iowa class, a very much real battleship class. They ultimately decided to go with a battleship armed with more sixteen inch guns which finalized into the Iowa class. Similarly to the design relationship between Izumo and Yamato, if Georgia's design had been built she would have been called Iowa''.

Kearsarge

Tier IX American Premium Battleship. A unique hybrid between a battleship and an aircraft carrier, Project 1058.1 was a design, proposed to USSR by the American company Gibbs and Cox.

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• Achilles' Heel: Her large, unarmored flight deck does not saturate, so an enemy can spam HE shells here for full damage.
• The Battlestar: Has twelve 16-inch guns, basically Montana's main battery, and can launch five durable planes armed with "Tiny Tim" rockets.

Ohio

American Tier X Battleship, sister ship to Montana.

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• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: She's extremly popular in all kinds of tourneys.
• Composite Character: Basically Montana with Georgia's 18-inch guns.

American Premium Carriers

Saipan

Built from a Baltimore-class cruiser hull. Like the Independence, she's a fast ship and suffers from a similarly limited hangar. This time, however, she balances it out by having a complement of some of the best late-war and post-World War II aircraft available for the USN. Now a tier 8 premium, formerly tier 7 before CV rework.

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• Quantity vs. Quality: Has the smallest air wing of any tier eight aircraft carrier but the planes are tier 10. She especially has this relationship versus the Kaga, which has enormous squadrons of tier six aircraft.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Saipan is not a beginner-friendly carrier in any sense of the word; with her small squadron size, shallow reserves, and painfully long aircraft regeneration time, she will harshly punish any mistakes made and has trouble recovering losses. On the other hand, her Tier 10 aircraft will make mincemeat out of surface targets.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: She's a light carrier, unlike most carriers at her matchmaking spread, but carries deadly tier 10 aircraft.
• Point Defenseless: Saipan has no secondaries and the lack of dual purpose guns also means she has no long range AA at all. Saipan captains are advised to keep moving to avoid attacks and defend the CV with the fighter consumable and drop fighters.
• Weaksauce Weakness: As with the other cruiser-hulled light carrier in the American lineup, the Independence, NO SECONDARIES. Saipan has no dual-purpose guns or specialized anti-surface artillery whatsoever. Unless someone else sinks it or you run away, a nearby destroyer is a death sentence.
  • She retained this weakness after the CV rework, but gained another. Saipan's attackers mount "Tiny Tim" rockets, which do very good damage (especially to larger ships) but aren't particularly likely to hit a destroyer. This means she has to use torpedoes or dive bombers against destroyers and often has trouble defending herself from them.

Enterprise

The most decorated warship in American naval history, USS Enterprise makes her appearance as a premium tier 8 carrier. She carries huge amounts of aircraft in huge squadrons, almost enough to rival Midway's famously large squads, and packs a surprisingly potent punch with her AP bombs, atypical for American carriers. Enterprise was a Yorktown-class aircraft carrier, the second of the class. Laid down in 1934 and commissioned in 1938, she spent her short prewar career training intensively. She was assigned to Hawaii in 1941 and began shuttling aircraft to forward bases in the Pacific later that year. While returning from one such run, bad weather delayed her scheduled arrival at Hawaii, meaning that she was still at sea when the Japanese fleet struck Pearl Harbor. Her Dauntless dive bombers arrived over Pearl in the middle of the attack; several were shot down. Enterprise was hastily redeployed to patrol for Japanese ships and scored the first major kill of the campaign when her dive bombers sank the submarine I-70 on 10 December. From then on, Enterprise was present at nearly every major campaign in the Pacific, from Midway to Okinawa. She was reported sunk no less than three times, earning her the nickname of "the Grey Ghost". Her planes and gunners accounted for 911 enemy aircraft, 71 ships sunk, and 192 more damaged or destroyed, and she was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Unit Commendation, 20 battle stars, and a special pennant from the British Navy. Sadly, Enterprise was deemed surplus to the Navy's requirements after the war, and efforts to preserve her as a museum were unsuccessful. She was scrapped beginning in 1958, though her bell, stern nameplate, some portholes, and other artifacts were saved. Her legacy has lived on through two successive nuclear aircraft carriers named Enterprise and the Star Trek franchise; Gene Roddenberry named the Starship Enterprise in honor of her unmatched war record.

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• Difficult, but Awesome: Despite Enterprise's power she can be hard to master properly with her lower tier planes. Inverted following the aircraft carrier rework, where her quick plane regeneration makes her more forgiving compared to other Tier 8 carriers.
• Meaningful Name: The Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships gives the meaning of Enterprise's name as, "Boldness, Energy, and Invention in Practical Affairs."
  • Doubly so after the CV rework. Enterprise can also be used as a loose synonym for "industry." Enterprise replenishes planes at an unusually high rate, in other words she has good industry.
• Quantity vs. Quality: Similar to the Kaga, the Enterprise boasts enormous squadrons of aircraft but the aircraft themselves are lower-tier than the ship itself. She has this relationship with the Saipan, which features low numbers of powerful higher-tier aircraft. After the CV rework, however, '"Enterprise tends to be superior to both with better quality planes than Kaga, and higher quantity than Saipan''.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The name itself isn't especially intimidating, but her reputation, both Real Life and in-game, certainly is. If your opposing team has an Enterprise in its lineup, the battle just got a lot harder.
• The Dreaded: her AP bomb-carrying dive bombers can erase enemy battlehips in a single pass.
• We Have Reserves: An interesting variant of this following the CV rework; while she has a normal size of reserves, she regenerates her planes noticeably faster than most similar-tier carriers.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

American Tier X aircraft сarrier.

A Midway-class aircraft carrier. The vast scale of the ships of this class allowed them to be equipped with powerful AA defenses, excellent anti-torpedo protection, and reliable flight deck armor.

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• Master of All:Considered the best carrier in the game, with huge squadrons of aircraft with a lot of HP. She has a lot of Alpha Strike potential, and is generally very hard to defend against. While her aircraft are slow, this doesn't really stop her from tearing apart teams. Worse, she's a steel ship, so only the best carrier players will be playing her.

Other

Removed American Ships

Bogue

American tier V aircraft carrier.

The Bogue class was the second most numerous class of escort carrier, beginning with U.S.S. Bogue (AVG/ACV/CVE-9). Preceded by the experimental U.S.S. Long Island and two four-unit classes, forty-one ships of the class were built, half of which were Lend-Leased to the United Kingdom as the Ameer class.

• Put on a Bus: Removed following the 8.0 CV rework, with no plans to return.

Other Ships

Red Oak Victory

The Red Oak Victory is a transport (specifically a Victory Ship) launched by the USN in 1944 and rented out as a cargo ship post war before being made a museum ship right back where she was built in Richmond, California. In-game, containers are collected, stored, and opened aboard the Red Oak Victory. As a result she is present in every port in the game.

Transports

Besides Red Oak Victory a number of other Victory Ships serve as objectives in the game during Scenario mode.

• Non-Player Character: The first ships to truly qualify, as they function as objectives during scenario mode.