Second World War at Sea:
Modern American Battleships
By Mike Bennighof,
Ph.D.
December 2013
Like the other naval powers, the United
States halted battleship construction during
the 1920s and most of the 1930s. The first
modern American battleships, the two North
Carolina class, entered service in
1941 but did not become combat-ready until
1942.
North Carolina went to the Pacific
theater, and her sister Washington followed
after brief service with the Royal Navy’s
Home Fleet.
North Carolina came off the drawing
board with two alternate designs, one with
twelve 14-inch guns in three quadruple turrets,
and one with nine 16-inch guns in three triple
turrets.
North Carolina had been designed
to resist 14-inch shellfire. The next class
of American battleship, the South Dakotas,
had improved protection. Their speed was no
greater than North Carolina. One
of these (South Dakota herself) appeared
in SOPAC. All four of them are present
in Leyte Gulf, in their late-war configurations
(with very heavy anti-aircraft armament). In 1938, the United States invoked the “escalator
clause” of the 1936 London Treaty allowing
the maximum size of battleships to rise from
35,000 to 45,000 tons. Rumors said the Japanese
had begun building 46,000 ton battleships;
in reality the Yamato class displaced well
over 60,000 tons.
 
American designers produced a ship with
some marked advantages over the much larger
Yamato. The Iowa class were as fast
as cruisers, in order to be able to run down
the Japanese Kongo-class battlecruisers.
They had new-model 16-inch guns, with 50-caliber
barrels (meaning the barrel was 50 times as
long as it was wide), compared to 45-caliber
in North Carolina and South Dakota.
Four Iowa-class ships were completed
during the war, serving in the Pacific as
fast carrier escorts. They were reactivated
for the Korean War, and one of them (New
Jersey) saw action on the gun line off
Vietnam. Missouri, slated to join her there,
suffered repeated machinery breakdowns.
In the 1980s all four were modernized with
missiles and electronic warfare gear and re-joined
the fleet, with New Jersey shelling
Lebanon in 1983 and two of her sisters bombarding
Iraq in 1991, the last time a battleship would
ever fire her guns in earnest. All four now
serve as museum ships, officially available
for re-activation but unlikely to see further
service.
Two additional Iowa-class ships,
Illinois and Kentucky, were
begun in 1942 but neither was completed, despite
some outlandish plans to complete Kentucky
as a missile ship during the Cold War.
With their high speed (only a handful of
ships in the series are faster, and those
are much smaller, like the Italian Capitani
Romani class cruisers or British Abdiel
class fast minelayers), their heavy armor
and large number of hull boxes, and massive
firepower (equal to the Japanese Yamato-class
superbattleships), these are the most powerful
warships represented in the Second World
War at Sea series. Players will of course
want to try them against the mighty Japanese
super-ships in tactical combat.
Some of the Navy’s admirals did not
like the Iowa design at the time,
however, and longed to return to the South
Dakota’s concepts of greater protection
at the cost of speed. The Montana
class was designed to provide armor sufficient
to stop the newest shells for the 16-inch/50-caliber
rifle. They would have carried twelve 16-inch
guns in four turrets (early designs show three
turrets with four guns each).
Five of the monstrous ships — 60,500
tons, compared to 48,000 for the Iowa
class — were ordered in July 1940; part
of the same program included the last two
Iowa-class ships. None of the Montana
class had been laid down when President Roosevelt
ordered them cancelled in April 1942 and resources
redirected to more useful warships.

Official Navy view of
Montana
As completed, the Montana class
would have reverted to the South Dakota’s
speed of 27 knots. They would have been slightly
longer than the Iowa class, and this
huge size would have allowed the emplacement
of massive numbers of anti-aircraft weapons.
Thus, Montana has the largest anti-aircraft
factor in the Second World War at Sea
series. She has more firepower than an Iowa
(though because of the diminishing returns
evident in this game series, a 33% increase
in number of gun barrels is not matched in
gunnery factors) and is even tougher to sink,
with the largest number of hull boxes seen
in the game series as well.
Check out our Second World War at Sea lineup |