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An Interesting Footnote to History

p3skyking
...About this proposed class of battleships.

I personally think the idea was stillborn since the Navy had met General Billy Mitchell years before.

WWII was fought with battleships because a lot of the participants on all sides were pre Naval Aviation trained and positioned.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/navy-had-plans-build-ultimate-002300000.html
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Date Votes
  • Don McManus
    As noted in the article, the plans for the Montana were only shelved in 1942 after we had begun to understand that the role of the battleship had changed.

    Montana would have been a formidable ship-to-ship weapon, but other than the naval battle of Guadalcanal and of course the Battle of Surigao Strait, there were no battleship on battleship fights in the pacific. The class would have been, as were the Iowas, relegated to carrier protection, which as also noted in the article would have been a problem as they would have had difficulty in keeping up with the Essex Class Carriers.

    The US played it correctly, IMO. The keel of the Essex was laid in April of 1941, well before we were officially engaged in the war, and the keels of the 4 Iowas that were completed were all laid down by January of 1941.

    The point, of course, is that the US Navy was moving towards a Carrier based fleet prior to the start of WWII. General Mitchell played a role, but the Naval Brass were pushed further by the British attack on Taranto, and finally convinced when the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk while at sea in December of 1941.

    It is interesting to note, however, that the keels for BB-65 and BB-66, the last of the two Iowas, were laid down in 1944 and 1945, based upon the proven anti-aircraft performance of the Iowas in the Pacific theater. Construction of the Illinois and Kentucky, therefore was started well after the decision was made to scrap the plans to build the Montana class, confirming to a great degree that the carrier protection role was the future of the battleship, not the ship-to-ship battles envisioned prior to the war.
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  • bobski
    about the same time they scrapped the uss united states carrier.
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  • Don McManus
    quote:Originally posted by bobski
    about the same time they scrapped the uss united states carrier.


    The United States was a Post-War design that was scrapped after the keel was laid in the late 40s due to British testing of an angled deck configuration. While the United States Class was never built, much of the design work was incorporated into the Forrestal class, the lead ship laid down just three years after that of the scrapped USS United States keel.
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