[Llarry]

Before 1946 or so, heavy and light U.S. Navy cruisers were designed and built with two rotating floatplane catapults on the stern, along with a large aircraft crane. By the time of the Korean War in 1950, the floatplanes and the catapults were gone. The crane held on for a few years more but its days were numbered.

The replacement for the floatplane was the newfangled helicopter.

Here's a Sikorsky HO3S operating from the stern of the heavy cruiser USS Saint Paul (CA 73) near Wonsan, Korea, in 1951. The superfluous crane would soon be gone.