phillies wrote:I seem to recall that by the time the Montana was armored to stand up to its own guns, the result was a bit disappointing. Your mileage may vary.
Engage Hobby Horse Mode:Nope, the final design for the
Montana was pretty damned good. The problem was BuOrd's super-heavy shell. Its penetration was very much on a par with other people's 18" shells and, as further developed for the
Montana would have been even more destructive. That being the case, BuShips opted for a lighter main battery than she could have had (i.e., stuck with the 16" instead of upgunning) and still needed a 16" belt (as opposed to the
Iowa's 12") , but she was still good for 28-30 knots, she had an immune zone against her own guns (
with super heavy shells) on the order of 13,000 yards (it was 18,000 yards against anyone else's 16"), she had an anti-torpedo system that
worked (unlike the
South Dakota, Iowa, and
Missouri classes, where the anti-torpedo features had been compromised because of fear of underwater
shell hits at extreme range), and was a
far better seaboat than the
Iowas. With her designed radar suite (and let's not discuss the nuclear 16" shell developed in the 1950s for the
Iowa's main battery, shall we?), she could have kicked the posterior of any other ship in the world once she got into gun range. Of course, that was the rub: gun range as opposed to airstrike range.
The real reason they weren't built wasn't that they weren't superb ships; it was that in 1942 (when they were indefinitely delayed) the USN needed carriers worse and carriers could be built much more quickly) and in 1946 (when the Navy wanted to reinstate frozen programs) no one else in the world had battleships except for our friends and close allies the Brits (the 4 surviving
KGVs and
Vanguard . . . for about three years) and the French (2
Richelieus). Had anyone else had comparable ships, or had there been any prospect of anyone else's
acquiring true heavy surface combatants, they would still have been required if only to protect the flight decks.
Of course, nobody but our friends had
carriers, either, which is the reason the USN had basically been slated for the junk heap in favor of the Air Force until Korea came along and those pesky North Koreans overran all the friendly airfields on the peninsula, at which point the navy sort of cleared its throat and said, "Ahem. We still have
some carriers, you know, despite Louis Johnson, and if no one would mind too terribly, we'd sort of like to explore the possibility of maybe using them to keep our guys inside the Pusan Perimeter from being overrun and massacred. No offense, of course." (That last was just twisting the knife, I fear.
)
Disengage Hobby Horse Mode
