> > If we talk function rather than class name, I'd also call a Spruance a
> > Light Cruiser - it carries Harpoon missiles.
> >
>
> Funny you should say that.  According to a story I was told by one of the
> instructors at pre-comm school the Spruance was originally supposed to be a
> cruiser and sport 8" guns. Congress didn't want to buy cruisers but wanted
> to buy destroyers.  Ingals Ship Building took the blueprints, erased all
> referencing Cruiser and wrote in Destroyer. Jacked the price up by a
> million US dollars a piece and Congress bought them.

I seriously doubt that story, especially since a major criticism of the SPRUANCEs was their relative lack of weapons compared to their size.

Only one DD was ever fitted with an experimental 8" gun, which was not continued because of the lack of space for a sufficient number of rounds.

ObTrva: I am still confused over how Traveller gets the displacement tons from the mass and vice versa, for a ship design.  I always thought that going to a pure mass system (A la David Weber's Honor Harrington.) might be less confusing.

C.T.