Alaska-class cruiser remain in service.

At that time, the largest ships operated by the PN was the Cannon-class DE. All destroyer and frigate deals fell short. One great achievement of this era is one of our patrol boats sank one unknown submarine and damage another during the 1950s.

Somewhat ironic, given that ship sizes had risen in the interim 30 years to the vicinity of that level, in the form of the Des Moines, various Soviet designs and the larger British GW projects. As a broad rule, there is a sweet spot around 24,000-25,000t.

The original TBDs were 250 tons, but grew and grew over time. By the 1930s, naval bean counters and Churchill alike were complaining that destroyers were pushing the size of cruisers, which of course was based on an idea of what the size of a cruiser was supposed to be.

My point is that change and growth has been a constant since the dawn of the steel warship era, but got interrupted and artificially constrained by the WNT and LNT. By capping the size of destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers, they imposed certain psychological barriers on the size of ships that messed around with their ideal function.

In prewar terms, the best size for an armoured cruiser/light battlecruisers/second class ship of the line would be 25,000t and a general purpose/light cruiser could be built on 12,000-15,000t. You don't really get any real cruisers built after the late 1940s, with only Long Beach giving an indication of the type of displacement you get for a proper cruiser-sized ship. Even then it is worth noting she was (briefly) a CLGN. When CG(X) was still a thing, we saw the 25,000t range rightly bandied around.

Destroyer
Destroyers were growing very quickly to the point that we reached the realm of the Darings and Mitschers by the late 1940s. That is a third sweet spot of ~4800-5000t, but only really for the early 1950s. The ideal 1960s 'destroyer' is actually the DLG that is the size of the Counties and Leahys. The old destroyer was dead. If we look at modern ships, the Sprucans, Burkes, Ticos, Sovremennys, Udaloys, Type 45s and 052Ds all fit in that bracket between 7500 and 9600t. That is what a destroyer is now. The issue is that ~8000t does bring with it a range of compromises and limitations. A fair bit can be gained by growth to the next spot of ~12000t, which is where the Red Chinese have gone with the Type 055. The USN calls these cruisers, but they are really the future of the destroyer.

Frigate
The ocean escort/frigate grew between 1945 and 1965 to hit that old destroyer sweet spot of ~4800t. There are some that are larger, like the Franco-Italian Horizons and Type 26s, but that is a bit of a case of upward creep. 4800-6400t is the best compromise range in my view.

The ones that are under 4000t are too small, including the Anzacs and other Meko variants and are really corvettes in their capability; they are subject to limitations of speed, space, range, sensors and growth potential. You can build a decent corvette on 3200t, but how many states really need that?

I don't think it is purely coincidental that we see a doubling in numbers.

This is where we get to the Alaskas: The next point upwards is ~52,000t, which makes very little sense without aircraft. However, if we double that, we get to the size of a proper modern supercarrier.

50,000t is where you'd see capital ships pushing by 1930 without the WNT and its artificial constraints. We see that in the Iowas, Bismarck and Vanguard at normal displacement, not the 'standard displacement' invented for Washington. The issue for capital ships is that the ultimate 1940 'proper' displacement gives ships the size of Montana, Yamato, Sovetskiy Soyuz, H41 and the latter Lions iterations, which come with accompanying costs of infrastructure and related challenges and also knock out France and Italy from being able to compete at the top rank of naval powers; one could even argue that the Germans are also locked out.

Alaska is a bit above an unrestricted heavy cruiser, yet gets called battlecruiser without justification. Even CA2-D www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/s-file/S-511-6.html isn't a battlecruiser. They can't really compete and that was acknowledged at the time.

Interestingly, the USN wasn't the only navy that fell victim to this 'design creep' with the Soviets starting off with the decent 220mm heavy cruisers and ending up with the underweight Stalingrads.

Yes, they were heavy cruisers that grew too large and confused people as to their role. A 35,000t CB doesn't get a lot of extras that aren't present on a 25,000t CA.

The scrapyards.

Turkey really, really could not afford it. They didn't need it, didn't have the crews and, importantly, it would destabilise the Eastern Med and the Greeks in one fell swoop. Just because the Turks nominally had a ship that was obsolete in 1914 tied up alongside for a few years doesn't put them into the category of major navies. They were and are a destroyer/submarine fleet without the need for any power projection.

Brazil's largest ships post WW2 were carriers and a Brooklyn. The Americans were not interested in any arms race in South America beyond the unimportant.

The RAN was pushed to man its carriers in the 1940s and 1950s and didn't really operate its cruisers. No chance.

There is a bit of a mistaken idea in some amateur wargaming circles that some nations, because they operated large warships in the first decade of the 20th century, were suited to doing so 40 years later.