USS Long Beach CGN-9 cruiser

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USS Long Beach was a nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser in the United States Navy and the world's first nuclear-powered surface combatant. Long Beach was originally intended to be a smaller frigate, but was then redesigned and expanded to a cruiser hull, allowing for an open space just aft of the bridge "box". This open space was first planned to accommodate the mounting of a Regulus nuclear-armed cruise missile, but was then changed to four launch tubes for the Polaris missile. However, the space was eventually occupied by the 5"/38 caliber barrels mounts and the ASROC system. Long Beach was the last cruiser built with a World War II-era cruiser hull style, as later new-build cruisers were built with different hull forms, such as the converted frigates Leahy (DLG-16), Bainbridge (DLGN-25), Belknap (DLG-26), Truxtun (DLGN-35), and the California and Virginia classes, or the Ticonderoga-class cruiser that was built on a Spruance-class destroyer hull