[67][68], Maine was to be the third Montana-class battleship. These 17 battleships were authorized after the treaty agreements from the Second London Naval Conference expired on 1 January 1937, A third set of even wider locks—these ones 180 ft (54.86 m) in width, as opposed to the preexisting 110 ft (33.53 m)-wide locks and the 140 ft (42.67 m)-wide locks proposed by the WWII-era expansion project—, These would have been the heaviest warships in the US Navy at the time of their commissioning; and would have remained the class with the greatest displacement until the commissioning of the, Mathematically this conclusion can by arrived at by dividing the overall broadside for the, During his investigation of the wreck of the, As the class was never completed, the true speed these battleships would have reached during trials remains educated predictions; 27–28 knots has frequently been cited as the probable speed based on the known speed of the, This was the result from revised model basin tests that showed additional drag from skegs, in contrast to the conclusions from the earlier basin tests for the, Sailing battleships around South America was unusual, but had been done by the battleship. The design displacement figures were 63,221 long tons (64,236 t) standard, 70,965 long tons (72,104 t) full load, and 71,922 long tons (73,076 t) emergency load. The Jupiter -class Starship Montana was constructed at Starbase 117 's Fleet Construction Yards, in the Annex System. 1 History 2 Ship's personnel 3 Appendices 3.1 Background information 3.2 Apocrypha 3.3 External link In 2278, this starship was commanded by Captain Morgan Bateson. [64] The first flight of a prototype XSC-1 took place on 16 February 1944 at the Columbus, Ohio Curtiss plant. The "fast" design evolved into the Iowa class while the "slow" design, with main armament battery eventually settled on twelve 16-inch (406 mm) guns and evolution into a 60,500-ton design, was assigned the name Montana and cleared for construction by the United States Congress under the Two-Ocean Navy Act in 1940; funding for the new ships was approved in 1941. [7][12][33] Work on the new locks for the Panama Canal also ceased in 1941 owing to a shortage of steel due to the changing strategic and material priorities. It would have been glorious--but obsolete. armor mounted on 1 in (25 mm) Special Treatment Steel (STS), inclined at 19 degrees. [55] The Montanas were designed to carry 7,500 long tons (7,600 t) of fuel oil and had a nominal range of 15,000 nmi (27,800 km; 17,300 mi) at 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph). When coupled with hydraulic couple drives to reduce salt contamination and the Mark 51 director for improved accuracy, the Bofors 40 mm gun became a fearsome adversary, accounting for roughly half of all Japanese aircraft shot down between 1 October 1944 and 1 February 1945. In the early 1940s, the U.S. Navy still expected to need huge, first rate battleships to fight the best that Japan and Germany had to offer. [37], The turrets would have been "three-gun", not "triple", because each barrel would have elevated and fired independently. kms sharnhorst. In conjunction with the Montana class, the Navy also planned to add a third set of locks to the Panama Canal that would be 140 ft (43 m) wide to enable ship designs with greater beam; these locks would have been armored and would normally be reserved for use by Navy warships. Each turret would have required a crew of 94 men to operate. [23] Although freed of the beam restriction from the extant Panama Canal, the length and height of the BB65 designs had to take into account one of the shipyards at which they were to be built: the New York Navy Yard slipways could not handle the construction of a ship more than 58,000 long tons (59,000 t), and vessels built there had to be low enough to clear the Brooklyn Bridge at low tide. When a nuclear submarine, the USS Montana, crashes into an underwater cliff and sinks into an abyss, the US Navy asks the workers on the Deepcore, a nearby submersible oil drilling platform, to investigate. The exact design and placement of the armor, inextricably linked with the ship's stability and performance, is a complex science honed over decades. She was to be named in honor of the 23rd state, and was assigned to the New York Navy Yard. hms king george v. hms rodney. Reaching port, it received repairs for the damage caused in the fighting and from the collision. Leaving Gibraltaron 23 July, sh… [37] They fired 2,700 lb (1,225 kg) armor-piercing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of 2,500 ft/s (762 m/s), or 1,900 lb (862 kg) high-capacity projectiles at 2,690 ft/s (820 m/s), with a range of up to 24 mi (39 km). [14], The Navy had been considering large battleship design schemes since 1938 to counter the threat posed by potential battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty and furthermore refused to provide details about its Yamato-class battleships. Five were approved for construction during World War II, but changes in wartime building priorities resulted in their cancellation in favor of continuing production of Essex-class aircraft carriers and Iowa-class battleships before any Montana-class keels were laid. 2 turret on the battleship USS Iowa mysteriously exploded, killing dozens of American sailors. [N 1]. While operating with the Special Service Squadron, Montana departed Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba on 2 April for the Mediterranean to protect American interests during the aftermath of the Turkish Revolution of 1908. "Rearming in a Vacuum: United States Navy Intelligence and the Japanese Capital Ship Threat, 1936–1945". The main reason for this was logistical: the largest US shipyards were located on the East Coast of the United States, while the United States had territorial interests in both oceans. Consequently, since the USN determined that it would struggle to find a job for the Montanas even if they entered service before the war ended, it decided to cut bait, even before the keels of the ships were laid. [58], The main batteries were designed to have very heavy protection, with turret faces having 18 in (457 mm) Class B mounted on 4.5 in (114 mm) STS, resulting in 22.5 in (572 mm) thick laminated plate. Montana was planned to be the lead ship of the class. Muir, Malcolm Jr. (October 1990). 23 nuclear naval shells with an estimated yield of 15 to 20 kilotons. The Montanas didn’t drop all the way back to 23, but they did represent a step back to the precedent established by the North Carolina and South Dakota classes. The first, Montana, recycled a name that was originally intended for the first South Dakota class of battleships, which were cancelled in the wake of the Washington Naval Treaty. The buttons were given to crew members who worked on the film with all three showing the films logo and one of them … For other uses, see Montana. Samuel E. Morison, "The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II," Volumes XII and XIV, Ammunition data is taken from Garzke and Dulin, pp. To protect against potential underwater shell hits, the ships would have a separate Class B homogeneous Krupp-type armor lower belt, 8.5 in (216 mm) by the magazines and 7.2 in (183 mm) by the machinery, that would also have served as one of the torpedo bulkheads, inclined at 10 degrees; this lower belt would taper to 1 inch at the triple bottom and was mounted on 0.75 in (19 mm) STS. This page was last edited on 5 February 2021, at 16:52. [35][36], The Montana design shares many characteristics with the previous classes of American fast battleships starting from the North Carolina class, such as a bulbous bow, triple bottom under the armored citadel, and twin skegs in which the inner shafts were housed. The belief in the connection between… The North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa class battleships all involved design compromises. Five ships of the Montana class were authorized on 19 July 1940, but they were suspended indefinitely until being canceled on 21 July 1943. The Montanas were designed to fight a different World War II than the one that happened. Unlike the three preceding classes of battleships, the Montana class was designed without any restrictions from treaty limitations. Contrary to popular belief, the ships would not have moved sideways noticeably when a broadside was fired. The USN bumped that to 28 when it realized foreign navies were building ships that could make closer to 30 knots. The turrets would have rotated about 300° at about 4° per second and could even be fired back beyond the beam, which is sometimes called "over the shoulder". They were also the only class to rival the Empire of Japan's immense Yamato-class battleships in terms of tonnage. Over the magazines, the splinter deck would be replaced by a 1 in (25 mm) STS third deck to protect from spalling. The large caliber guns were designed to fire two different 16-inch shells: an armor-piercing round for anti-ship and anti-structure work, and a high-explosive round designed for use against unarmored targets and shore bombardment. As the class was never completed, determining the actual aircraft that would have been used aboard the battleships remains, at best, educated guesswork. The guns proved adequate for the carrier's air defense, but were gradually phased out of use by the carrier fleet because of their weight. The first production aircraft were delivered in October 1944, and by the beginning of 1945 the single-seat Curtiss SC Seahawk floatplane began replacing the Kingfisher. However, they could only make 28 knots. The shells entered development around 1953, and were reportedly ready by 1956; however, only the Iowa-class battleships could have fired them. © Copyright 2021 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved, the U.S. Navy still expected to need huge, first rate battleships to fight the best that Japan and Germany had to offer, Advances in radar fire control and range finding, Imagine a U.S. Air Force That Never Built the B-52 Bomber. [51], These guns are air-cooled and use a gas blow-back recoil system. The floatplanes used in World War II also performed search and rescue for naval aviators who were shot down or forced to ditch in the ocean. All involved design compromises Rearming in a Vacuum: United States Navy Intelligence the! 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