Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnought
Yes, In brief.. After realizing that both Germany and Japan were shrouding the real displacement of their new Capital ships as well as refiiting other ships to upgrade their armament, the U.S. invoked the escalator clause of the contract and produced the Iowa class battleship designs.There is a more detailed story I have read about the displacement clause.
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That is correct. Studying the drawings of all four ships of the
Iowa class you can see where extreme attempts were made to keep the Iowa's within the 45,000 standard tonne Treaty limitation.
But remember, the keels were laid for all four
Iowa's BEFORE Pearl Harbor.
While inspecting the ships, as you go higher up in their construction after Pearl Harbor you can identify some hurried installations. Also we found some plans with extreme changes. Some plans that should have had changes done were skipped over as being too minor to delay launching. One such plan was the one on Bhd 36 that was originally issued on Friday, December 5, 1941. It wasn't until years later a weakness was found in the upper outboard corners.
Changes were then made on
Missouri and
Wisconsin that thickened the Class A armor on bulkheads 50 and 166. It also increased light armor (splinter deck, gun shields, etc.) from 5/8" to 3/4".
That was another thing I found fascinating about those ships when I worked on them. I was re-living WW II again but in much greater detail than when I walked Block Warden duty with my Grandmother during air raid drills.