Montana Class

[Timcav]

Oh what a menace this thing would have been if she'd been laid down.

Captcav

[Michigan_Guy]

Yikes, that thing would have enormous!

I believe it was going to carry the same guns as the Iowa's, just more of them. The ship wouldn't have been as fast as an Iowa but it wasn't meant to be a carrier escort anyway.

[Tiornu]

There would have been almost a 20% drop in horsepower. The 16in guns were the same, but the 5in guns were different, the model that entered service aboard the Midways.

[Dreadnought]

Chantry could design some fine looking ships. Basically, he was the father of the South Dakota class, The Iowa Class and what would become the Montana class. Dam shame not one of them were built. They would have been the very pinacle of BB design.

[Rumrunner]

The Montana's were designed (in their March 1941 design) for a 33knot top speed coming from 320,000 ponies. Not bad for a 70,000+ ton monster sporting 12 16-inchers and 20 5-inchers.

Navsource has some pretty detailed stuff on the Montana's including some technical plans and official drawings. This unofficial one is my fav.

[Dreadnought]

The Montanas probably would have ended up with the same enclosed trapazoid Nav bridge that the Iowas recieved after New Jersey tested the round bridge which was found to be unsatisfactory.

[maximusslade]

The MONTANA class inspired a lot of my work. why dont you guys take a look at this to get a better perception of what she might have looked like...


This comes from a game I play all too religiously. A crappy game out of South Korea called Navy Field. In this game you play ships from KM, RN, USN, and/or IJN. You can play anything from FF to CV or BB.

[Timcav]

I love these two illustrations

[Dreadnought]

Excellent model Max, As I can see you also adopted the "trapazoid" very nice job on the modeling. I'm impressed.

*A finishing touch perhaps, add a larger more flowing American flag to that mast and rig your overhead halyards. Otherwise shes georgous.:))

[connaye]

Better worded question... about maintenance

If the Montana class was the "Super ( not supper) BB" and it wouldn't have fit in the locks at the Canal... what Naval yards ( Drydocks) existing at the time ( WW II ) era could of handled these great beasts ?

[RustyBattleship]

If the Montana class was the "Super ( not supper) BB" and it wouldn't have fit in the locks at the Canal... what Naval yards ( Drydocks) existing at the time ( WW II ) era could of handled these great beasts ?

Pretty much all of the Public (Navy) shipyards. The only problem is that the New York yard had to put in tilting or telescoping masts on their ships to clear the Brooklyn Bridge. This was the biggest factor of SECDEF McNamara's targeting that yard to be the first to go back in the 60's.

Philadelphia has two large graving docks. When I was inspecting the Wisconsin there, the Kennedy was in the next dock over.

Norfolk had at least one dry dock large enough as it repaired the Missouri after she got hung up on a rock.

Moving to the West coast, we have Bremerton with excellent dry dock facilities.

Moving on down was Hunter's Point NSY south of San Francisco. Her last major docking before closure was the Enterprise.

Finally there was the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. There were some reports saying we had the World's largest drydock. Maybe. I was assigned to work with a survey team to draw up plans for the exact cross-sectional views (after a lot of modification was done because of subsidence). It turned out we would have no problem at all docking the Nimitz class Carriers. The Eisenhower was wider and we would have to stack the blocks double high so there was a servicable air gap between the bilge keels and the sides of the dock. Double blocking was not unusual as we had to do that on other ships for work we required a lot of standing room for.

Then Pearl Harbor has two dry docks large enough. The Missouri is in one of them right now.

And after lots of debates at BUSHIPS referring to how wide the Montana should be, they finally settled for the 108-foot breadth to fit the Gatun Locks. Originally the Montana was to be something like 130 feet based upon pre-war plans that were to increase the size of the Panama Canal. But funding got cancelled when the war broke out and we had to design the ships to make them fit.

[surfgun]

Long Beach drydocks

I was scrolling around on satellite imaging of what was the Long Beach yard and it appears someone (Chicoms?) decided to fill in the dry docks? They appear to have been erased from the facilities.

[connaye]

[
And after lots of debates at BUSHIPS referring to how wide the Montana should be, they finally settled for the 108-foot breadth to fit the Gatun Locks. Originally the Montana was to be something like 130 feet based upon pre-war plans that were to increase the size of the Panama Canal. But funding got cancelled when the war broke out and we had to design the ships to make them fit.[/QUOTE]

With you separating the details I now understand better the fit to need thinking... :)

[maximusslade]

From what I read from Norman Friedman's book and the finalized drawings posted above she would have still been beamier than the locks of the Panama Canal. IIRC, they couldnt have provided the underwater protection and protection against the 16"/50 firing the 2700lb shell on 108' beam. And before anyone says something, The Iowas were protected the lighter 2250lb shell.

[RustyBattleship]

I was scrolling around on satellite imaging of what was the Long Beach yard and it appears someone (Chicoms?) decided to fill in the dry docks? They appear to have been erased from the facilities.

Reeves Field Naval Air Station, Roosevelt Base and Long Beach Naval Shipyard have been wiped off the face of the Earth. I spent 39 years there and seeing the bulldozers crunch everything up starting from the west end and creaping east like some cancerous rash is when I decided to write a book about it.