I always thought the Illinois and Kentucky were Montana class. I know they were laid down, one was floated out of the rails and one was on the rails and they were both scrapped. I didn’t realize they were re-authorized as Iowa class battleships, learn something new every day!
While touring the Midway engine room in San Diego, the guide ( a retired chief from the ship) made the statement that the Midways hull was largely copied from the Montana design,
@@AlphaWolf789 No, they were cancelled before they were even laid down. Also, the engineering layout of the Midways were taken from the Montana’s, not their hull design.
@@cousin_x_caps7347 That engineering layout from what I've heard made it difficult to modernize the Midway class carriers. They were so compartmentalized below that it was difficult to move through the lower hull and do basic maintenance. They had other issues but it was mostly the handling in rough weather (due to running low in the water and being top-heavy from the beginning ever before the angled deck conversions) and the engine room design that counted against the Midways. Granted, the last 3 units of the Midway class that were planned (6 in total, 3 actually built) were cancelled for economy reasons and the fact the US Navy felt building 2 Essex class ships for every Midway class carrier made more sense at the time. Regardless, the first and third units of the Midway class outlasted the Essex class by 15 years.
It would have been a sight to see. However, considering the fact the Iowas were modernized with the Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, I am quite satisfied with the historical outcome.
If you have seen the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, this is what resulted when the Navy cancelled the order for the Montana, and the hull became USS Midway, CVB-41. The "B" designator was for Aircraft Carrier, Battleship. The keel had been laid for the Montana as BB-67, and most of the stuff below the waterline remained the battleship design. 12 boilers. four Engine Rooms, widely dispersed about the ship. The carrier design increased to 212,000 shaft horsepower, with a top speed of 32 knots. So, if you ever get a chance to visit the Midway Museum on the Embarcadero, at Navy Pier in San Diego, you see a battleship below decks, and from about the mess deck up, you see an aircraft carrier. When Midway was launched, the Foc'sle (Forecastle to land lubbers) was a Battleship style, with two AAA stations forward. In the 1956 overhaul at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in SF Bay, the Foc'sle was enclosed to Hurricane Style, as the AAA stations were made unnecessary because they would have been shooting at the new end of the flight deck. This overhaul was when the Midway Class carriers (also FDR CVB-42 and Coral Sea CVB-43) were given angle decks which were necessary to allow safe operation of jet aircraft which were bigger and faster, and unsafe to operate off of a straight deck carrier. Here is a remarkable thing. It took only 17 months from the laying of the keel to the Midway going to sea for its first seal trials, and she was commissioned a week after the end of WWII. I sailed on Midway in 1972, the last combat cruise of the Vietnam War. Midway had both the first two MiG kills of the Vietnam War and the very last MiG kill of that war. So if you want to see the Montana, visit San Diego, and tour the Midway. It opens at 10:00 AM and closes at 5:00 PM, you won't be able to see the entire ship in a single day, so if you take two days, it's still a great time.
While I have been fascinated with Battleships since I was a young boy--I love to sit in front of the TV and draw profiles of these ships in pencil, I later realized the sheer lunacy of the thinking behind such monsters. They were built to slug it out with each other on the open seas. Mutually destructive forces. Big boats trying to sink other big boats. I'd would have hated serving on board during a battle. The lucky lived to see another day at sea. The unlucky did not.
I think that greatly oversimplifies what a battleship is meant to be used for. It is essentially a mobile artillery platform, with the ability to fire at any target within their approximately 50 mile radius. A battleship is meant to destroy an enemy's navy, no matter what type of ship, as well as bases or formations on land. No need to fly planes over target or land your troops if you can throw giant artillery shells at it from tens of miles away. It basically was a mobile artillery platform, to be used wherever such a thing is needed.
US steel World War 2 production was immense but not infinite. I have read of the Debate inside the US Navy of battleship vs carrier construction. The Admirals choosing the Essex class was the correct way to go….
My great grandpa virgil and uncle's Mike and Brad served 4-5 years on the carriers. My dad served in the us navy for 20 years and served on the carriers as an AO1 putting bombs and missiles on f18s and f14s. He also been aboard an iowa class battleship in the 80's. I wish I served in the us navy and i definitely would serve on the Iowa class battleships that are either still in commission or brought back in commission in desperate times. I definitely would own those including the montana's as my second, third fourth fifth sixth and seventh homes. And be so filthy stinking rich before I join the us navy and build the last two of the Iowa's and all five of the Montana's and become the first ever seaman to own 7 battleships and I would definitely be making history. I have some of the craziest dreams ever but that would be so cool cause I can build and design my own room right by the admiral's room and he definitely be thinking "I never served on 7 new battleships own by a seaman which is the lowest rank in the us navy. Crazy shit.
NOTE FOR CREW- Lemme say, Ive commented on many videos, and ive offered compliments and critisims.... The most modern videos BB-NJ turns out I wish had more stable video and audio quality, I know you guys are working with a mixed bag, but I think with experience comes understanding and "perfection". Quotes because nothings perfect but I think you guys can standardize these videos more. Anyhow, I just wanted to comment and say - GOD DAMN - Libby is an AMAZING camera person. the few shakes in this video I had to recoil from... just realizing and remembering that she holds the camera for most of these videos and shoots most of all of these videos sooooooo smoothly. Seriously. She is great. Ryan if shes not your wife she should be, and also she needs to be paid MORE ( and so does Ryan ) for these amazing videos. Iam several hours away... and i plan to bring myself and my 7 year old to NJ sometime hopefully in the near future.... but with my current resources and time, these videos are amazing. Thank you all for making them. Ive commented to several other ships including the many video'd channel of midway that they should follow the battleship NJ style. You guys do it right. So much content , so many questions answered, its all... just the right stuff! Thanks again!
I have a video idea: What if the Navy had built Improved Iowa's instead of a Montana class? Possibly nuclear powered for 'unlimited' endurance? Paired with nuclear carriers and nuclear escorts.
Modernizing the Montanas could have been more costly and difficult with the heavier armor. Secondly, they most definitely would have been more expensive to operate. It would also take a larger crew. In my opinion, both classes probably would have made it through today. With what Reagan did, both classes probably would have been brought back into service. It would be a toss up as who would be involved in Desert Storm. As far as the future of the battleships, they may have retained one from each class or two Iowas. With the Montanas costing more in fuel and requiring more crew, I couldn't see the better torpedo defense and thicker armor being that much help. In all reality, you're not going to have a battleship battle. You can use them for shore bombardment or missile platforms. You could also use them as an amphibious command ship that would coordinate with everyone for an invasion.
By the time of the Battle for the Philippine sea didn't we detach the fast BBs as its own task force and try to place them in the path of incoming Japanese air strikes before they could reach the carriers? They did not do that in earlier carrier battles like Santa Cruz islands.
Question... what wouldve happened had they made the montana with modern nuclear power plants, if they were rehashed and built now? I believe cost effectiveness may have been much greater. Plus with railguns being studied heavily by the military, even if its a pipe dream of an idea it wouldve been a beautiful sight to see. I do understand that it sounds ludacris because the cost, especially in the current economy and with the advancements in aircraft and other things its not feasible. As i said, total pipe dream. Albeit she wouldve been glorious. Love the channel and I would definently volunteer to help on board if i was living in the area. However I live in the desert so we dont have much in the way of marine vessels here.
What does 16", 50 caliber mean? I understand the 16", and I thought I knew what a 50 caliber was. But I'm thinking of a large, small-arms weapon. Thank you!
Forgotten Weapons did a video about this and from what I remember, when it comes to cannons, caliber is the based on shell size, so a 16 inch 50 caliber is 50 16 inches, or 800 inches, but a 14 inch 50 caliber barrel would be 50 14 inches, or 700 inches long. I think.
Caliber on guns like the afformentioned 16"/50 caliber guns are the Calibre is the Length of the Barrel, which is explained by the @Battleship New Jersey, Gun Diameter x Barrel Length = Caliber, or Gun Diameter x Caliber = Barrel Length Similar to it, we also have for Rheinmetall 120mm L/44 and 120mm L/55, following it, the 44 and 55 are the Gun Calibre, multiply that with the Diameter of the gun and you get gun length
That funny, I was just thinking about something similar today. Remove the gun turrets (the 5" guns wouldn't even be needed and wouldn't be installed) and convert all possible deck space within engineering limits to VLS. It would be similar to a Kirov, but on steroids. I wonder how many you could pack in. Also, convert the propulsion to nuclear for unlimited cruising range. This would not only make a great offensive weapon, but I imagine you could also use it in anti-aircraft/missle and anti-submarine/underwater drone defense for carrier battle groups.
@@lonnyyoung4285 yea the desil wi incase of the reactors getting taken out since reactors don't like shock and the thorium because it's cheap and the safest of safe nuclear
For homogeneous, ductile armor, such as used in decks and and for most plates under about 4-5 inches thick anywhere, the 1890 De Marre AP Formula for Nickel-Steel, when used with a Quality Coefficient of 1.21-1.22 (modifies upward the minimum average penetration velocity compared to 1890 plain nickel-steel instead of the later improved nickel-chromium steel armors (based on the German Krupp "Type 420" of 1894 used for all later naval armor steels through the 1950s)), gives a rather good penetration value for pointed-nosed shells that remain intact at right-angles impact for plate thicknesses of about 0.25-1.1calibers (projectile diameters). (This 1890 formula does NOT work at oblique angles, however, requiring better, more complex formula, but that is not important for this discussion.) In this formula the total kinetic energy -- KE = roughly 0.5 x Weight (actually Mass) x Velocity-squared -- is used as a unit, raised to the 0.7143 power; that is, for a given shell and various thicknesses of a given version of Krupp-type armor, Penetration Thickness = (about) Constant based on shell design details x [Weight x (Velocity-squared)]^(0.7143) (where "^" means the value in the brackets raised to this power). Note that this is less than directly with the kinetic energy, since much of the impact energy is lost in moving the armor out of the path of the projectile against the resistance of the other armor to the sides of the impact point and this varies with thickness (denting, bending back like a flower petal at the plate back, and sideways compression to bulge the armor thicker ringing the hole). Thus, decreasing the muzzle velocity of the gun and increasing the shell weight, but keeping the same total kinetic energy from the propellant, gives roughly the same penetration (other than air resistance effects on range and angle of fall). So the use of a super-heavy shell and a lower muzzle velocity actually gave BETER RESULTS at long range since the heavy shell, while hitting at a lower velocity at closer ranges, was able to keep more of its velocity at long range due to weaker drag effects from the air and also had a steeper angle of fall on deck/turret roof armor and thus a better penetration performance due to its heavy weight on these decks and turret roofs. This is the main reason for the change over to these very heavy shells: Long-range devastating hits. Against face-hardened side armor (also based on a form of that Krupp steel using a thick hardened face layer (varies by design from 20-80% of the plate being face, though most had 25-55% face)), the penetration changes almost exclusively to "plugging" -- punching out a cork of steel armor, intact or more usually in pieces, out the plate back -- to make a hole to let the shell through the armor, since the hard face does not allow the plate to bend very much or be forced sideways out of the shell's way. This drastically changes the amount of energy needed to penetrate for a given thickness of plate (and usually causes the shell to at least partially break pieces off, hopefully compromising its penetration and explosive capability, which is this armor's purpose) and it turns out that weight only has a rather minimal effect on penetration compared to how important it is against the homogeneous armor. In fact, the weight term is only (Weight)^0.2, so going from the usual 2240-pound 16" shell (US 16" Mark 5 issued in the mid-1930s) used in the WWII version of the older COLORADO Class guns (similar to most foreign shell weights for a gun that size) to a 2700-pound shell (the US 16" Mark 8 used in all of the new battleships built from the mid-1930s on), the penetration for an identical striking velocity only went up by (2700/2240)^0.2 = 1.038 = 3.8% thicker plate, while this same increase in weight against a homogeneous plate would give you (2700/2240)^0.7143 = 1.142 = 14.2% better penetration, much larger. Since the heavier shell lowered the gun's muzzle velocity, something that only at long range was compensated for by the lower drag on the heavier shell, this meant that at close range the shell had a lower penetration than the older COLORADO gun firing its lighter shell. The penetration was pretty good anyway due to the greatly superior strength of all forms of US WWII AP shells minimizing the effects of damage from the hard face, but it is obvious that the guns were for killing the enemy at a distance using superior fire control to get long-range hits (and the US had extremely good fire control aiming systems (radars eventually) and trajectory calculators in all of its new and overhauled older warships in WWII).
Nathan, thanks for all your great and interesting work on this subject (even though a lot of the math is over the heads of us non-engineers!). A couple of questions: 1. Given the fact that the long-range combat for which the Mark 8 shells were optimized never really materialized, do you think the US would have been better off in hindsight using the Mark 5, or something similar with a higher MV and larger bursting charge? Or were the 16”/50 Mark VIIs such monsters that it didn’t really matter? 2. It is well-known that US Class A face-hardened armor performance suffered somewhat at BB-grade thicknesses due to the the greater thickness of the hardened face compared to that of the British, Germans, and Italians. However, I remember reading somewhere that we had realized this flaw by the time the Montanas were to be laid down, and that if constructed, the armor manufacturers would have ditched the “thick chill” method and produced armor with face thicknesses more in line with those other nations. Is this accurate? Thanks if you are able to answer! One day you should really do a video with Drachinifel on his channel!
@@bluemarlin8138 Question #1: The design of the 2700-pound 16" Mark 8 -- similarly, the 1140-pound 12" Mark 18 for the ALASKAs and 335-pound 8" Mark 21 for the several classes of new (with face-hardened armor) US heavy cruisers built starting in the late 1930s and, though somewhat lighter for manual handling, 130-pound 6" Mark 35 shells for all of the US new light cruisers -- was indeed for higher damage at long range (near the maximum reasonable range that hits were likely due to the accuracy of the fire-control gear/range-finders and round-to-round shell spread due to design tolerances, assuming proper gun mount maintenance and reliable manufacture). The lower-velocity, heavier shell combination reduced the effects of drag and caused shells to be falling at higher angles of fall, both partially negating the resistance of horizontal deck and turret/conning tower roof armor. While these shells did cause a slight reduction at point-blank range against vertical face-hardened side armor (velocity is more important than weight when causing brittle fracture effects in this brittle armor type) than a lighter-weight shell, -- for example, the 2240-pound 16" Mark 5 AP used with the COLORADOs which were also given new AP projectiles in the late 1930s -- fired at a higher velocity to the exact same total impact energy, the difference was not all that great (a few percent at best), the heavier shells still had the same PERCENTAGE of Explosive "D" filler, so the heavier shells had a larger explosive charge and, due to their heavier weight, significantly more fragments formed when they blew up. For example, let us compare the 16" AP shells: The Mark 5 and Mark 8 have identical noses (more-or-less, varies somewhat with manufacturer and date made), so the extra 450-pound weight of the Mark 8 is due to its longer body -- 4.5 calibers (72") versus the Mark 5's 4 calibers (64") -- and so that is 460 pounds more fragments thrown when the shell detonates (the nose and base plugs usually only break up into relatively few big pieces with a number of medium-size pieces around them, while the middle body is reduced to many tiny pieces moving sideways -- plus the forward speed of the shell at the detonation instant -- and 460 pounds more of those is a big deal as far as damage is concerned. Also, since the 1.5% explosive content goes up with weight, the Mark 8 has 40.5 pounds of Explosive "D" while the Mark 5 has only 33.6 pounds. This means that the blast will accelerate the fragments in both shells to about the same speeds and the extra 460 pound of fragments is going to be fully as effective as the lesser amount of fragments from the smaller shell, in addition to the greater concussion effects of that bigger explosive charge. "More bang for the buck." Armor penetration is only an important consideration when the penetration of the armor accomplishes something behind the protection, since that is what the armor is for! The extra 5 caliber barrel length on the IOWAs and MONTANs upped the muzzle velocities to 2500 feet/second for the heavier AP shells, which is not much below the 2600-2700 feet/second used in the typical foreign gun and better than the 2475 feet/second used with most British battleship guns since the end of WWI, excepting NELSON and RODNEY with their extremely light, 2049-pounds-only 16" Mark IB APC shells which had a higher muzzle velocity (an experiment in shell design considered a failure by the British and never repeated). These longer guns got the benefits of the heavier shell with minimal loss due to muzzle velocity. And, again, the higher muzzle velocity is only a benefit with lighter shells at close range, since they lose velocity more rapidly for a given nose and body shape and, thus, at even medium ranges the difference in striking velocity may be nearly microscopic.
@@bluemarlin8138 Question #2: I was the one who discovered the scaling rules for face-hardened armor based on face thickness. Scaling was noted in general for homogeneous, ductile armor in many WWII-era documents and even the old De Marre Homogeneous Nickel-Steel Armor Formula of 1890 (when this new type armor was introduced by the French firm of Schneider et Cie.) has a small scaling term built into it. Bur when considering face-hardened armor, no document I have ever read tried to find out if scaling was different for face-hardened armor at all, to say nothing about it varying with face thickness. That I noted in some modern documents about armor penetration when they separated out different failure modes of homogeneous armors hit by various designs of projectiles and noted that the scaling effects were somewhat different depending on the failure method of the plate. This got me thinking about how face-hardened armor fails only by plugging (punching out a cylinder or cone of armor, intact or, more usually, in pieces, out the plate back) since, other than some surface flaking of the hardest thin layer, that is the only way the rest of the face will allow the displaced armor to go. This involved a shearing action around the edge of the hole (plus lots of armor breaking inside the hole, but I just considered averaging this out as part of the basic penetration rules), which is a surface effect, while the energy from the shell went up with its total weight and the energy absorbed in accelerating the plug went up with the weight of the plug, which went up with the plug length (roughly), meaning plate thickness. Thus, the energy on this shearing edge surface was going up much faster due to large shell weight scaled up for a given projectile design as size went up than the surface strength and resisting area was, so less projectile energy was needed to shear out a longer plug when everything was larger (but scaled in proportion). Since the face of the plate was the place where this shearing was mostly done -- the soft back tore free around its edge too but stretched first so its scaling was not as pronounced and I just lumped it in with the face as a minor tweak -- a thicker face had more scaling effect and thus, while a thicker face might cause more projectile damage (only against some AP shell designs, others, like most WWII US Navy AP designs, had high resistance to such damage) this lower necessary energy per thickness increase when the gun size went up was a problem for big guns, though it worked in reverse and US Thick Chill Class "A" armor was the best for cruisers resisting 8" and smaller gun projectiles. There being more cruisers than battleships, the Thick Chill Class "A" armor was a success. The WWII Italian Terni Cemented KC-type armor seemed to also have noted this effect, since their 5" KC-type armor had about the same face layer thickness as their 11" plates did, with the thicker plate merely having more soft back, which is a good approximation for countering scaling increases which hurt the big guns only. I have not seen any details in any Italian document about this, though. I do not know about any specified changes in the armor used in the MONTANAs, but the 22" Class "A" test plates for barbette armor submitted by the various armor manufacturers varied ENORMOUSLY in their metallurgical characteristics and hardening techniques, though all seem to have met the minimum extrapolated specs. If there was any scaling-related changes, I do not know of them.
@@bluemarlin8138 I have a secti9on of my own azt the web site NAVWEAPS.COM. It has a lot of documents I wrote and several BASIC computer programs that run under basic using the associated adapter applications listed (these programs are text/numbers only inputs and outputs). Some of the documents are somewhat dated but the computer programs are all of the latest versions of my current knowledge of how the topic being calculated works. They are not completely covering all parts of this topic, unfortunately, since the detailed effects of changing projectile nose shape when penetrating homogeneous, ductile armor is complicated and my data on this is spotty (I have lots of data on the US Army 15-pound blunt-point (no windscreen or AP cap) 76mm M79 AP Shot Projectile, since the US Navy personnel at the US Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, decided it was a good (that is, very available and cheap) "standard" projectile design for use in tests (including using scaled-down copies for various tests of scaling effects and effects of changing plate hardness on penetration). I also have good data for some flat-nose and tapered-flat-nose AP shot projectiles. All of these three nose shapes have reasonable, if not perfect, computer programs allowing reasonable estimates of their effects on the typical homogeneous, ductile steel armor used in WWII warships (the one with e 1.21 De Marre Coefficient) -- tank armor was usually much higher hardness, which made it stronger against small projectile hitting at high velocity at close range, but no so good against large projectiles hitting it at lower velocities at longer ranges, especially at highly oblique angles). Other nose shapes, from hemispheres (cannon balls, for example) to long narrow sharp points (4-calibers long radius of arc noses of US Army 0.5" M2 AP bullet cores), change their effects as plate thickness and impact angle changes (thin homogeneous, ductile plates resist blunt noses that dent them, even at highly oblique angles, but blunt noses are much better against thick plates that are rigid and thus the blunt nose can peal up the armor in front of them like a wood plane, greatly decreasing the ability to glance off at oblique impact, compared to a sharp nose that cuts the plate material sideways like the sharp prow of a speed-boat and the nose is thus free to move upward and bounce off. The 0.5-caliber thickness is roughly the balance point between the thin- and thick-plate effects, being nearly nose-shape free for hemispheres and more pointed shapes and getting more and more nose-shape-dependent as obliquity increases and/or plate thickness changes above and below 0.5-caliber plate thickness. I don't have enough data to give a good set of penetration curves for these nose-shape effects, so I have not included them in my HCWCLC Homogeneous Armor Program (M79 nose shape with some effects of windscreen and a few AP cap types optional), If and when I find enough information, I will add this factor in some approximate way..
Can someone please explain the difference between 16 inch 45 calibre and 16 inch 50 caliber? I always thought caliber was the diameter of the gun barrel so how can a 16 inch gun come in different calibers?
At the end of WW2 a 60,000 ton ship was huge. Now it could hide behind a mid size container ship or VLCC. I think, given the technical advances in artillery, slide a Teflon bag over the shell and bore erosion nearly disappears, and antiaircraft and anti missile defences, an Iowa or Montana class BB would be a useful addition to the fleet. With rocket or ramjet assist a big gun could have a 70 mile or greater. This allows one ship to have the effective destructive capacity of dozens of carrier aircraft. With the addition of cruise missile launchers the destructive range becomes hundreds of miles. That puts almost every large city within range of one ship. The extensive armor protects the BB class ships from most artillery shells and bombs likely to be used against it. If it is set for Battle Stations the armor plus being sealed may make it capable of surviving a smaller nuclear bomb (kiloton range). It would be much more difficult to sink than an Aircraft Carrier of similar size. Reviving a couple of existing fast battleships and building a couple of new super warships would make our Navy even more intimidating. Intiminadation is the job of a Navy.
We need to build the Montana class. When I think of the 10's of billions the navy has squandered on cost over runs and experimental ships that have gone no where .
If the Montana had a armor belt 16.1 inches over the iowa 12.1 inches that means the Montana could stop a 16inch shell from New Jersey but could not stop a 18 inch shell From Yamato.
I happened to notice on Wiki that the Montanas were to be equipped with a 172k hp powerplant. Why would that class not match the Iowas' 212k powerplant? Oops, shoulda watched the entire video before asking this question. You explained this later on. So . . . nevermind. ;-)
great videos and all, but since you are there editing, cant you just remove the big gaps between sentences? i feel realy akward about the guy just standing there in silence for 4-5 seconds before the next sentence
The Montana-class was developed at the same time as the Iowas. They weren’t successors. It was more that the Montanas were the traditional battleship to their fast-battleship counterparts, the Iowas.
Incorrect, they were viewed as the successors of Iowa's given what they learned from the Iowa's. They were designed with same armament and engineering (minus recombining some of the engine/bolier spaces and reducing boilers). The engineering got cut back after Iowa's deployment. While a massive ship, the design really was not needed given they did not have the bow hull design of the Iowa's. Bigger ship but can hardly keep up with carriers. What is the point of Billions in todays dollars to build them in peacetime.
Well I'm sure the navy could have afforded a Montana, though the decision to focus funds and energy elsewhere was the correct one. Still, how cool it would have been to see a reactivated Montana steam out for Desert Storm.
@@Skiiiiiifreeeeeee when the Iowa's were reactivated they were not used to keep up with the Aircraft carriers but essentially bombardment ships that could stand off shore and use missiles to hit targets further away then their guns ever could. the only exception to this was the Korean War as the missiles had not matured enough to take the place of the guns.
We needed 1 Montana. She would've been escorted by the iowa's, Midway, and the limitless destroyers and cruisers. Who the fuck could've stopped that fleet? Exactly even without her we were the world rulers. No? Here comes our fleet and armed forces. Glad you agree now be peaceful and have some respect. We're still growing stronger. The monty would've been the most incredible, unstoppable, unrivaled. Except that's her weak link right there, no one could've built anything like her beside Yamato. Our wisconsin and missouri would've easily sunk them, never mind the smart game using winged killers
@@bmused55 that's right. Zero reason to argue fine sir, but no she wouldn't of fallen to air craft, that logic is false. If that was the case then our old ww1 battleships would've been sunk, or maybe the north Carolinas, or the south Dakota's, better yet the mighty iowa's. None were because no force on earth could rival american naval might. Even with kamakazi attacks they just couldn't get through in a meaningful manner, but we could deliver air strikes with over 400 air craft not even Britain could wield such power. So again, our force we had cannot be used as an example to sink our own ships. There was nothing and no one in the world which could've sunk an all powerful Montana class battleship.
It was useless. Carriers were the new king of Naval Combat. Kentucky was originally supposed to be the first of the class but was re ordered as a fast battleship and later cancelled.
"Armament? Blows them out of the water" hilarious unintended quip (23:25) New Comer to this battleship UA-cam world - really enjoy your work and presentations - I find your thoughtful casual cadence in speaking calm and helpful actually - time to absorb and process a lot of information new to some of us whose are just diving in to the details of ships we have heard of and revered but knew only superficial information about Very grateful to have found you! Keep educating and educating us Thanks Jeff
Decapping requires a plate of steel 0.0805-caliber thick (for a 16" shell this is 1.29" minimum) using the typical attachment methods for such caps (crimping, low-temperature soldering or both). Krupp of Germany, however, was the one exception that I know of (Italy might also be similar, but I do not have hard data about this) for naval capped AP shells (US Army capped shells were made by rather many smaller firms during WWII and some also seem to have used a stronger solder, but none as strong as the one used by Krupp). This was either due to over-design or perhaps some bad results when caps were first used in Krupp naval AP shells starting in 1902. In any event, Krupp AP shells used such a strong high-temperature solder (rarely used in any form due to the risk of affecting the hardness of the projectile nose during soldering) in all of its AP shells from about the year 1911 ("C/11" type naval AP shells) that the minimum plate needed jumped to about 0.2 caliber (3.2" for a 16" shell), so the 1.5" STS outer hull of IOWA would not be able to decap even a Krupp 8" WWII capped AP shell, though it could decap a YAMATO 18.1" (46cm) AP shell, since that used a rather good solder of unusual composition but not any stronger than the US naval shell solders. The tilted plate had another advantage over a vertical plate, though: The non-zero impact angle, in addition to making the plate act somewhat thicker, also caused the shell to twist physically toward a more right-angle exit trajectory from the plate back due to the uneven forces on it during penetration. This twisting in the hard face layer of thick face-hardened side plating in many cases could actually snap a shell in two or, when the base of the shell rotated around like a baseball bat and hit the side of the hole, even crush or break off the base fuze and/or base plug holding in the explosive filler, reducing the shell to a solid shot, penetrating or not, which has MUCH LESS effect on a huge ship like the IOWA. This "double-whammy" effect is why face-hardened armor continued to be used in thick plating in warships through the end of WWII.
By 1944 when the Montana might have gotten into action, the USN had such an overwhelming advantage in aircraft carriers that only a tactical blunder such as at the Battle off Samar could have put Yamato and Montana into gun range of each other. In that battle, Halsey fell for the Japanese decoy force allowing the IJN Center Force to get within gun range of the escort carriers of the USN Taffy 3. But because the Montanas would have been slower than the Iowas, they might have been more likely to detach and stay behind to cover the landings, while the fleet carriers sped north at maximum speed (accompanied by the Iowas) to chase the Japanese decoy force. But had the Montana and Yamato met at the Battle off Samar, it wouldn't have been a straight matchup, since the USN had ~400 aircraft from 16 (!) escort carriers for that battle. Those aircraft weren't properly equipped to attack ships, since they were tasked to support ground troops, but they did inflict some damage on Yamato in the real battle. In the hypothetical event that a Montana was on hand, all those aircraft could have pestered Yamato enough to hamper her ability to engage a Montana (or even an Iowa). A ship under air attack needs to maneuver violently to become a harder target, and that might have reduced Yamato's broadside time against Montana.
@Surigao 1944 - But probably more terrifying to be aboard the Yamato, since any matchup with a Montana would likely have been an unfair fight. For example in the Battle off Samar, Yamato's anti-aircraft gunners had to be on deck in their mostly exposed positions, to shoot at the ~400 USN aircraft. Imagine your job is to stand on deck to shoot at airplanes, while a Montana is lobbing 12-shell salvos at you with her radar-guided big guns. And of course you're out there exposed when Yamato replies with her 18" guns. The concussion for crewmen on deck from Yamato's guns was probably similar to a nearby bomb hit.
@@anthonylowder6687 . Your comment is one of the most ignorant thing I have ever read🤦🏻♂️.it’s obvious that you have never studied the capabilities of the battleships in a head on battle. Yes, the Iowa’s were designed as a fast battleship, but they also had pro’s against the Yamato class to include speed, radar, better armor material, etc. Also, let’s not forget what the Montano class would have done against the Yamato with its heavier armor and 12 16in guns!!!!
@@anthonylowder6687 the Yamato had primitive radar at best. The Iowa class had the latest radar at that time. At night or cloudy conditions the Yamato would be easy meat for a Iowa.
@@Dvokrilac Yes, they were forced to waste it in an utterly futile operation. Even if it had survived the war, it would have been wasted by the US in the Castle Bravo tests. Such a shame, the Kure Maritime Museum has a huge model of it, but what a tourist attraction if the actual ship had somehow survived and been preserved! yamato-museum.jp/annex/
The Iowa's were the ultimate power in Battleship design. While boasting 16 inch guns compared to the much heavier Yamato and their 18.1 inch guns, I believe the Iowa's would have come out on top for several reasons. Also, you didn't describe the Iowa's as super battleships like Yamato class and Montana class. I believe these were the first survivable superclass Battleships. I mean heck they got reactivated how many times into the 90's. And if you look at any front profile picture of an Iowa (especially the one on USS Missouri's memorial behind USS Arizona memorial with main guns in salute to the war grave of Arizona), they still look intimidating and modern. Reasons I believe an Iowa class would have come out on top over Yamato class: - Iowa's were developed for speed and even in the worst sea conditions. Outrun and create distance compared to a Yamato class. - Iowa's had better radar and fire control than the Yamato's. - Iowa's, while having a smaller shell also had a higher mussel velocity than the Yamato class that could penetrate deep into the hull of a Yamato class if hit right. - Iowa's had a single layer armor belt (aka, not layered and riveted together armor belt). I have read that it was ultimately the layered/riveted armor belt on both Yamato and Musashi that failed and thusly making their armor belts pointless. Water was getting into their citadels after one or two torpedo strikes. Didn't you say that layered armor deck plating was one of Arizona's flaws that allowed that bomb in another video? Montana class would have been awesome! But as you said at the end it would have been pointless to build them. They would be too expensive to operate and maintain, just like the Iowa's were at build and then every reactivation/modernization. Being a Missouri native, I am glad that USS Missouri is still afloat and severed our nation proud for every reactivation. Just glad she is watching over our fallen with her mighty guns at full salute in Hawaii!
First up, the Iowas, while very fast, had bad sea keeping. They would rock and roll badly in bad weather, and in bad storms, her two forward turrets would become disabled because of how badly she rocked. While Iowa’s fire control was vastly superior, Yamato’s fire control, while below average, was not abysmally horrible like many Iowa fans claim. During the battle off Samar, she claimed either a hit or damaging near miss on the escort carrier White Plains, Sunk the escort carrier Gambier bay, and hit the destroyer Johnston six times in a single salvo from almost 20 miles. Also, unlike what some people will tell you she did have radar, but it was very below average radar. She could fight amazingly in good weather, and fight well at night, but her main weakness was bad weather. Also, Iowas could rival Yamato’s guns......from long ranges. From short and mid ranges, Yamato’s guns were completely unrivaled. Finally, against battleship shells, her belt armor was invincible. It was only against torpedoes that some of the lower parts of the armor belt would come loose. Some parts of Yamato, like her 25.5 inch turret armor, was labeled as invincible from reasonable battle ranges. She had the best armor in the history of battleship making Ultimately, it’s a very even battle, . Yamato’s strengths was her godly guns and armor, as well as her great maneuverability, while here weaknesses were her below average fire control and modest speed. Iowa had very great guns, a very high speed, and great fire control, while having below average armor and bad sea keeping
@@metaknight115 Couple of things you left out. First and Iowa could fire a broadside every 30s while the Yamato ran about 45s. Japanese steel was also vastly inferior to both American and British steel, probably for the same reason that German steel near the end of the war was inferior, lack of carbon. If fact I believe Yamato's armor plates were riveted, because something that thick could not be welded, creating weak point in the belt. Your point about seakeeping is correct, the Iowa's were considered wet ships, but no one fights in those conditions.
Before WW 2 the US had done preliminary work on a third series of locks for the Panama Canal. The Great Depression halted that plan. Finally, in 2016, an improved set of third set locks opened for container ships & super tankers.
Yes, the thinkers in the 1960's produced fighters without guns and ships without antiaircraft guns. The Vietnam War caused a rethink of gun less fighters, but I am amazed that no one ever took a serious look at the NVA success rate against US fighters with their twin 37 MM AA guns. The US lost well over 1,200 aircraft to ground fire and the mainstay weapon was the twin 37 MM. I have watched many a video of the Falklands war especially Argentine use of A-4s against RN ships. The RN ships had the same paltry layout of air defense weapons that US ships still carry and it cost the RN dearly. I think we made a great mistake removing AA guns and are continuing to make the same mistake.
@@garyweber1724 True but there only two per side and can be overwhelmed by multiple missiles in an attack. They are also short ranged with a max range of 6,000 yards.
I expect all our U.S. Navy vessels are under-gunned. I have read Navy command officers admit that they could not conduct a worthy shore bombardment for littoral support.
@@DavidRLentz I suspect those command officers know the truth. Most Navy ships have one 5 inch pop gun for conventional artillery and that does not make a shock and awe bombardment. Yes, they have missiles but spending several million per shot does not seem cost effective not I suspect of much value in close support unless the US is attacking a banana republic with no defensive capabilities.
Is it correct to say they were never laid down? Kentucky's bow was complete enough to be removed and replace Wisconsin's after a collision. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66) Thanks for doing these videos. I've only ever been on the USS North Carolina (highly recommend) and am looking forward to touring the Jersey. My Grandfather was served on her during a tour through the med postwar. Oh derp, I see already. They pulled 2 names from the Montana class and moved to expand the Iowa's to 6 ships, and that's how the ship was laid down. EDIT: LOL you get to this exact point at around 7:00. You're just great.
There were actually going to be six Iowa class battleships. The other two being the Illinois and the Kentucky. They were held up in construction because there was more of a need for carriers. Illinois was scrapped during construction and Kentucky was launched but never completed. In fact, Kentucky's bow was removed to fix the Wisconsin after its bow was damaged in an accident. The Montana class would have started with hull number 65.
I live near San Diego where the WWII-era carrier Midway now serves as a museum. The hull has a very battleship profile, and I recall someone in authority saying the hull was designed based on the canceled Montana class battleships.
Yeah he actually said all of that if you took the time to watch the the video. Instead it seems you were just compelled to let people know that you know something and assuming maybe he doesn't however he did. I'm sure he knows much much more than you. Maybe you should create your own UA-cam channel called the interrupting clown knows a couple things about a ship
@@Thom3748 you aren't wrong, they modeled it after the Monty's hull so that the BB dimensions could be attributed by the Carrier= LARGE HANGAR AND AIR WINGS
Another great video and thanks for that. I have had (as a ship modeler) a fantasy about the Japanese sending Yamato and Musashi down the slot to bombard Guadalcanal. If they really wanted to get that job done it would have made sense. Hiei and Kirishima created a lot of grimness for the Marines as it was. The fantasy goes on to imagine that a dud 18" shell had been discovered and that fact would throw the USN into some real panic whether real or imagined. Super heavy 16" notwithstanding I wonder if the Navy would have resurrected their 18" design and attempted to arm Kentucky of Illinois and then go on to build Montana with 8 such weapons. I'm gonna build a Montana and the Illinois with 18". Kentucky is currently getting the BBaa treatment as per Imperial Models parts etc. Besides all of my family are from Kentucky so she has to be different and intriguing. Sooo whaddaya think? It's another angle for BB enthusiasts to chow down on and, I think, worth a look. I also think the BBaa project plan would make some seriously interesting coverage. Keep on keepin on Ryan and good job.
The US Navy at the time considered the 16" 50cal the finest large-caliber weapon to be used on a battleship. They were accurate, and their cycle time was 30 seconds vs around 45 seconds fort the 18" on the Yamatos.
Excellent video! I was always partial to the BB-67-4 design for the Montanas had they gone ahead (shoutout to Drachinifel and his awesome videos on everything naval-related). One thing I do always hear is that the Midway class Carriers' machinery spaces and basic hull design was at least partially based off of the work that had gone into the Montana design. I don't know how true that it; but it's nice to think that, had they been built, the Montanas could have had similar longevity to the Midway.
@@atpyro7920 No, the keels nor any part of the hulls for any of the 5 Montanas ordered were ever laid down; they were put on indefinite hold shortly before then.
Has anyone else ever watched this vid using the automatically generated captions on UA-cam?lol If not and you want a good laugh do. Once again excellent video
I can just. Imagine how much of the ship. That you. Can. Fix up. With enough. Money. You guys are doing a great job on it . I sure you will never let new jerseys get to. Looking like. The. Texas. And I am from Texas. I your the. Texas back in the. 1970. Went I was a. Younger. And I don't. Remember. It. Looking. As bad as it looks now. It.. it needs a. Ton of. Work to get to. The. Quality of the. New. Jerseys.
Can't say for sure, but a big factor would be that they didn't reactivate just one iowa most of the time. The Iowas were also picked because they were the fastest and had room for growth, the montanas wouldn't be as fast but had growth.
A major reason the Iowa class was reactivated during the 1980s had nothing to do with the 16 inch guns. The navy needed a platform for their newly developed cruise missiles. A new class of ship would take a decade to build and the Iowa’s had both space and the required power to deploy the new weapons in less than two years.
So basically, the Iowas and Montanas are designed together to operate as part of the same fleet. One is slow, with lots of guns, and heavily armored. One is fast with fewer guns and armor that cannot reject its own shells. So the Iowas are battlecruisers.
Thats one way to look at two different classes of battleship. There were changes in priorities for both classes, just as there were changes from the North Carolina Class and those that came before them.
@@BattleshipNewJersey I had this whole thing about Alaska being a large cruiser and therefore Iowa was a battlecruiser, but your answer was just too awesome. I'll stop joshing with you. Your videos are really good. Thanks for putting them up. Folks like you are really good for the Internet.
No the Iowa's were fast battleships....a type of Battleship that made battle cruisers obsolete. The Iowa Class armor package could protect it from a 2250 pound AP shell, a shell bigger than ANY other battleship shell other than the Yamato class Battleship AP shell and the 2700 pound Super Heavy AP shell. A Battle Cruiser had battleship caliber guns but was generally only protected against 8 inch AP shells. They had to sacrifice armor for speed, with the advances in propulsion technology designs did not have to sacrifice armor for speed and the fast battleship was born.
It would be cool to see a Montana (and escorts, carriers, etc.) face off with a German H-class battleship and company in an alternate history movie or something.
I didn't know that they planned to widen the Panama Canal. I had assumed they would build some and sail half of them around South America to split the Montana class between the fleets. Very interesting!
The IOWAs (and perhaps the SOUTH DAKOTAs; not sure about the NORTH CAROLINA and WASHINGTON) had a rather unique feature in their two large rudders on either side of the aft centerline directly behind two of the large props. Usually these acted in tandem and turned the ship by both turning in the same direction and using the thrust of the props to deflect on them for a faster turn. However, it was possible to use an emergency stop mode by forcing the two rudders to turn inward simultaneously to 90 degrees, facing one-another edge-on. This reduced the ability of the propeller thrust to move backward except in the narrow gap between the two rudders and created a huge drag effect that could and, when tested, did stop the ship going at flank speed IN ITS OWN LENGTH!!!! The rudders were severely overstrained when this was used, of course, so it is possible that they would need an overhaul to work properly afterwards, but they did work after the test well enough to allow the ship to get back to dock for a detailed examination. How is that for an interesting thing about the IOWA Class warships?!!
its called a barn door stop. Wisky was the only ship to test it, they threw a piece of wood overboard at the bow when they conducted it and the ship came to a stop in 600 feet, landing the piece of wood in the water right around turret 3. Barn door stops were not unique to the IOWAs, any of the supercarriers or larger cruisers with dual rudders can do it as well. www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-054.php
Montana still needed as Command and Control with nuclear propulsion and taking place of Cruiser with support and role as Carrier Command and Control, Support, Defend, Amphibious
What always impressed me is tht USSR also canceled their super. It woudl be such a soviet think to make something so absurd to make the Yamato look tiny.
Question for you, since you have been talking about the Montana Class Battleships in this video. In you opinion, what would you recommend, or like to see as far as engine type in a "Modern Built version of a Montana? A second question is, what do you think would be used as far as armor protection for a new designed Montana. I know that armor design has changed since the 1940's, things like Kevlar and Chatham armors used in modern tanks, but what do you think would work in military warships today. Thanks in advance, Steve.
If you were to convert the battleships to well potected nuclear reactor power, they could be lightee, with more horsepower per shaft, with much smaller crews. That, combined with their size and durability would make them ideal platforms for modern weapons systems. The versatility of a ship that durable, with a multitude of weapons (and defense systems) systems available, and the speed to stay with the fastest carrier task groups, would be difficult to match. A single Iowa, or Montana class, battleship, could carry more weapons than multiple destroyers or light cruisers. Not to mention the longevity of those ships, combined with the ability to survive damage, is actually singular. Sure, each ship would be very expensive. However, the number of ships that they could replace, especially over a period of decades, is actually a long term cost benefit. Iowa and Montana class battleships could literally be the naval equivalent of the B-52, which has outlasted every system designed and built since, and will likely reach the century of service mark.
Honestly, being wide and slow would be the most serious downfall. Being too wide to use the canal would be disastrous. And not being able to keep up with the fast carriers would make them utterly useless. Not to mention being slow would make them extremely vulnerable to air and submarine attack. The 18" naval rifle idea is not really great. Not when you can sling the 16" shells a long way. And having more ships using 16" shells allows a focus strictly on that caliber for development and manufacturing. A Montana class narrow enough to use the canal, and as fast as a Iowa would be far more useful, and length wouldn't be a deal breaker. Four each Iowa and Montana class would be sufficient. And, had they been built, development of modern upgrades for eight ships would be more cost effective. Maybe still cost prohibitive. But maybe not, considering the Montana class would have been more advanced to begin with.
ALL of the WW2 navies soon realised that battleships were outdated by new developments. The aircraft carrier in particular decided the outcomes of the Pacific War and aircraft in combination with jump carriers and anti submarine escorts that of the crucial Battle of the Atlantic. Interestingly it was the case in all of the world’s navies that their Admiralties favoured the Big Gun Battleships based upon their pre war history. As such all of them envisaged battleships deciding confrontations . All of them were proved WRONG.
I believe that a 21st century version Battleship equipped will railguns and long range missiles will be coming in the near future. The cost of F/A aircraft is getting too expensive. Imagine a Montana class BB with railguns that can hit targets 200+ miles away, and 1,000+ mile range missiles.
With the fact the navy is getting into to many big carrier's they should meet the two ocean Navy's with two large new Battle ships today like that Russian dredknot. A middle battle ship with a rail gun and Lazer might make sense today
What would you think of the idea of redesigning the Montana class to be nuclear and rear armed to fit todays warfair in like of what is going on with Russiaand china
I would like to see the full range as well a discussion in detail, or nearly as possible, of the designs for the Montana class and the other super battleships that were proposed.
It’s ships like the Montana that make me wonder what it would be like if things in history happened differently in a way that may have led to them being built, example carriers not being made at all or being a much later invention than they are here.
I know there was a 5th iowa class named the uss Kentucky but unfortunately for her the keel was layed but with the dire need of more modern carriers those resources where diverted from her!
She lived on and part of her forward hull was grafted on the Wisconsin when it was involved in a collision. Thus the Wisconsin's nickname became WIsKY.
Where the Iowas dominated the Yamatos was maneuverability having a 5 knot advantage but also fire control where for every shell the Yamatos put on target the Iowas might put 6-8 on target!
With the repeated reactivation of the iowas it seems the navy still needs a ship similar to them (or three). With lessons learned and technology advances it seems prudent. As far as a show of might guns and missiles are more intimidating than a flat top. I could give examples of female bodybuilders with breast enhancements (haha). Seriously the time it takes to turn and aim a gun vs. Bring a jet up launch it have it find the target, blah blah. The enemy thinks it can get away with a quick strike. Hidden missiles don't get thought of and cost to much to bother with. Mind set of others should be thought of.
I always thought the Illinois and Kentucky were Montana class.
I know they were laid down, one was floated out of the rails and one was on the rails and they were both scrapped.
I didn’t realize they were re-authorized as Iowa class battleships, learn something new every day!
While touring the Midway engine room in San Diego, the guide ( a retired chief from the ship) made the statement that the Midways hull was largely copied from the Montana design,
so maybe the montanas were converted to the midway class carriers?
@@AlphaWolf789 No, they were cancelled before they were even laid down. Also, the engineering layout of the Midways were taken from the Montana’s, not their hull design.
@@cousin_x_caps7347 oh ok
@@cousin_x_caps7347 That engineering layout from what I've heard made it difficult to modernize the Midway class carriers. They were so compartmentalized below that it was difficult to move through the lower hull and do basic maintenance.
They had other issues but it was mostly the handling in rough weather (due to running low in the water and being top-heavy from the beginning ever before the angled deck conversions) and the engine room design that counted against the Midways. Granted, the last 3 units of the Midway class that were planned (6 in total, 3 actually built) were cancelled for economy reasons and the fact the US Navy felt building 2 Essex class ships for every Midway class carrier made more sense at the time.
Regardless, the first and third units of the Midway class outlasted the Essex class by 15 years.
My favourite proposed Montana version was the BB-65-8. A heavily armoured fast battleship with 12 16 inch guns that was about 340 metres long.
I would like to have seen Montana.
1 ping only
Might inspire a few "Yamato who?" comments or thoughts.
It would have been a sight to see. However, considering the fact the Iowas were modernized with the Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, I am quite satisfied with the historical outcome.
If you have seen the USS Midway Museum in San Diego, this is what resulted when the Navy cancelled the order for the Montana, and the hull became USS Midway, CVB-41. The "B" designator was for Aircraft Carrier, Battleship. The keel had been laid for the Montana as BB-67, and most of the stuff below the waterline remained the battleship design. 12 boilers. four Engine Rooms, widely dispersed about the ship. The carrier design increased to 212,000 shaft horsepower, with a top speed of 32 knots. So, if you ever get a chance to visit the Midway Museum on the Embarcadero, at Navy Pier in San Diego, you see a battleship below decks, and from about the mess deck up, you see an aircraft carrier. When Midway was launched, the Foc'sle (Forecastle to land lubbers) was a Battleship style, with two AAA stations forward. In the 1956 overhaul at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in SF Bay, the Foc'sle was enclosed to Hurricane Style, as the AAA stations were made unnecessary because they would have been shooting at the new end of the flight deck. This overhaul was when the Midway Class carriers (also FDR CVB-42 and Coral Sea CVB-43) were given angle decks which were necessary to allow safe operation of jet aircraft which were bigger and faster, and unsafe to operate off of a straight deck carrier. Here is a remarkable thing. It took only 17 months from the laying of the keel to the Midway going to sea for its first seal trials, and she was commissioned a week after the end of WWII.
I sailed on Midway in 1972, the last combat cruise of the Vietnam War. Midway had both the first two MiG kills of the Vietnam War and the very last MiG kill of that war. So if you want to see the Montana, visit San Diego, and tour the Midway. It opens at 10:00 AM and closes at 5:00 PM, you won't be able to see the entire ship in a single day, so if you take two days, it's still a great time.
Go to 110% on the reactor...
While I have been fascinated with Battleships since I was a young boy--I love to sit in front of the TV and draw profiles of these ships in pencil, I later realized the sheer lunacy of the thinking behind such monsters. They were built to slug it out with each other on the open seas. Mutually destructive forces. Big boats trying to sink other big boats. I'd would have hated serving on board during a battle. The lucky lived to see another day at sea. The unlucky did not.
I think that greatly oversimplifies what a battleship is meant to be used for. It is essentially a mobile artillery platform, with the ability to fire at any target within their approximately 50 mile radius. A battleship is meant to destroy an enemy's navy, no matter what type of ship, as well as bases or formations on land. No need to fly planes over target or land your troops if you can throw giant artillery shells at it from tens of miles away.
It basically was a mobile artillery platform, to be used wherever such a thing is needed.
US steel World War 2 production was immense but not infinite. I have read of the Debate inside the US Navy of battleship vs carrier construction. The Admirals choosing the Essex class was the correct way to go….
Another great analysis. Thanks.
My great grandpa virgil and uncle's Mike and Brad served 4-5 years on the carriers. My dad served in the us navy for 20 years and served on the carriers as an AO1 putting bombs and missiles on f18s and f14s. He also been aboard an iowa class battleship in the 80's. I wish I served in the us navy and i definitely would serve on the Iowa class battleships that are either still in commission or brought back in commission in desperate times. I definitely would own those including the montana's as my second, third fourth fifth sixth and seventh homes. And be so filthy stinking rich before I join the us navy and build the last two of the Iowa's and all five of the Montana's and become the first ever seaman to own 7 battleships and I would definitely be making history. I have some of the craziest dreams ever but that would be so cool cause I can build and design my own room right by the admiral's room and he definitely be thinking "I never served on 7 new battleships own by a seaman which is the lowest rank in the us navy. Crazy shit.
The other ship in the class was supposed to be Kentucky, my home state. To think I might have had that museum in Louisville.
NOTE FOR CREW- Lemme say, Ive commented on many videos, and ive offered compliments and critisims.... The most modern videos BB-NJ turns out I wish had more stable video and audio quality, I know you guys are working with a mixed bag, but I think with experience comes understanding and "perfection". Quotes because nothings perfect but I think you guys can standardize these videos more. Anyhow, I just wanted to comment and say - GOD DAMN - Libby is an AMAZING camera person. the few shakes in this video I had to recoil from... just realizing and remembering that she holds the camera for most of these videos and shoots most of all of these videos sooooooo smoothly. Seriously. She is great. Ryan if shes not your wife she should be, and also she needs to be paid MORE ( and so does Ryan ) for these amazing videos. Iam several hours away... and i plan to bring myself and my 7 year old to NJ sometime hopefully in the near future.... but with my current resources and time, these videos are amazing. Thank you all for making them. Ive commented to several other ships including the many video'd channel of midway that they should follow the battleship NJ style. You guys do it right. So much content , so many questions answered, its all... just the right stuff! Thanks again!
When I become president, we're gonna build the Montana class....just because I can 😁
A 12 16 " broadside would be a thing of beauty to behold......
"Battleship Gigantism!" 🤣🤣
I have a video idea: What if the Navy had built Improved Iowa's instead of a Montana class? Possibly nuclear powered for 'unlimited' endurance? Paired with nuclear carriers and nuclear escorts.
Building a 1/350 and a 1/700 scale Montana from very fire, highly recommended.
Modernizing the Montanas could have been more costly and difficult with the heavier armor. Secondly, they most definitely would have been more expensive to operate. It would also take a larger crew.
In my opinion, both classes probably would have made it through today. With what Reagan did, both classes probably would have been brought back into service. It would be a toss up as who would be involved in Desert Storm. As far as the future of the battleships, they may have retained one from each class or two Iowas. With the Montanas costing more in fuel and requiring more crew, I couldn't see the better torpedo defense and thicker armor being that much help.
In all reality, you're not going to have a battleship battle. You can use them for shore bombardment or missile platforms. You could also use them as an amphibious command ship that would coordinate with everyone for an invasion.
By the time of the Battle for the Philippine sea didn't we detach the fast BBs as its own task force and try to place them in the path of incoming Japanese air strikes before they could reach the carriers? They did not do that in earlier carrier battles like Santa Cruz islands.
Question... what wouldve happened had they made the montana with modern nuclear power plants, if they were rehashed and built now? I believe cost effectiveness may have been much greater. Plus with railguns being studied heavily by the military, even if its a pipe dream of an idea it wouldve been a beautiful sight to see. I do understand that it sounds ludacris because the cost, especially in the current economy and with the advancements in aircraft and other things its not feasible. As i said, total pipe dream. Albeit she wouldve been glorious. Love the channel and I would definently volunteer to help on board if i was living in the area. However I live in the desert so we dont have much in the way of marine vessels here.
What does 16", 50 caliber mean? I understand the 16", and I thought I knew what a 50 caliber was. But I'm thinking of a large, small-arms weapon. Thank you!
16in diameter x 50cal = 800in barrel
Forgotten Weapons did a video about this and from what I remember, when it comes to cannons, caliber is the based on shell size, so a 16 inch 50 caliber is 50 16 inches, or 800 inches, but a 14 inch 50 caliber barrel would be 50 14 inches, or 700 inches long. I think.
Caliber on guns like the afformentioned 16"/50 caliber guns are the Calibre is the Length of the Barrel, which is explained by the @Battleship New Jersey, Gun Diameter x Barrel Length = Caliber, or Gun Diameter x Caliber = Barrel Length
Similar to it, we also have for Rheinmetall 120mm L/44 and 120mm L/55, following it, the 44 and 55 are the Gun Calibre, multiply that with the Diameter of the gun and you get gun length
Now if we were to add some thorium reactors and vls this could've Ben a formidable ship in modern day
That funny, I was just thinking about something similar today. Remove the gun turrets (the 5" guns wouldn't even be needed and wouldn't be installed) and convert all possible deck space within engineering limits to VLS. It would be similar to a Kirov, but on steroids. I wonder how many you could pack in. Also, convert the propulsion to nuclear for unlimited cruising range. This would not only make a great offensive weapon, but I imagine you could also use it in anti-aircraft/missle and anti-submarine/underwater drone defense for carrier battle groups.
@@lonnyyoung4285 ide still keep desil because of redundancy
@@chasedean4032 I was thinking multiple reactors for that reason (also more power). Diesels would be kept for auxiliary or supplemental power.
@@lonnyyoung4285 yea the desil wi incase of the reactors getting taken out since reactors don't like shock and the thorium because it's cheap and the safest of safe nuclear
The one time the US did not think with the idea of ‘Murica.
For homogeneous, ductile armor, such as used in decks and and for most plates under about 4-5 inches thick anywhere, the 1890 De Marre AP Formula for Nickel-Steel, when used with a Quality Coefficient of 1.21-1.22 (modifies upward the minimum average penetration velocity compared to 1890 plain nickel-steel instead of the later improved nickel-chromium steel armors (based on the German Krupp "Type 420" of 1894 used for all later naval armor steels through the 1950s)), gives a rather good penetration value for pointed-nosed shells that remain intact at right-angles impact for plate thicknesses of about 0.25-1.1calibers (projectile diameters). (This 1890 formula does NOT work at oblique angles, however, requiring better, more complex formula, but that is not important for this discussion.) In this formula the total kinetic energy -- KE = roughly 0.5 x Weight (actually Mass) x Velocity-squared -- is used as a unit, raised to the 0.7143 power; that is, for a given shell and various thicknesses of a given version of Krupp-type armor, Penetration Thickness = (about) Constant based on shell design details x [Weight x (Velocity-squared)]^(0.7143) (where "^" means the value in the brackets raised to this power). Note that this is less than directly with the kinetic energy, since much of the impact energy is lost in moving the armor out of the path of the projectile against the resistance of the other armor to the sides of the impact point and this varies with thickness (denting, bending back like a flower petal at the plate back, and sideways compression to bulge the armor thicker ringing the hole). Thus, decreasing the muzzle velocity of the gun and increasing the shell weight, but keeping the same total kinetic energy from the propellant, gives roughly the same penetration (other than air resistance effects on range and angle of fall). So the use of a super-heavy shell and a lower muzzle velocity actually gave BETER RESULTS at long range since the heavy shell, while hitting at a lower velocity at closer ranges, was able to keep more of its velocity at long range due to weaker drag effects from the air and also had a steeper angle of fall on deck/turret roof armor and thus a better penetration performance due to its heavy weight on these decks and turret roofs. This is the main reason for the change over to these very heavy shells: Long-range devastating hits.
Against face-hardened side armor (also based on a form of that Krupp steel using a thick hardened face layer (varies by design from 20-80% of the plate being face, though most had 25-55% face)), the penetration changes almost exclusively to "plugging" -- punching out a cork of steel armor, intact or more usually in pieces, out the plate back -- to make a hole to let the shell through the armor, since the hard face does not allow the plate to bend very much or be forced sideways out of the shell's way. This drastically changes the amount of energy needed to penetrate for a given thickness of plate (and usually causes the shell to at least partially break pieces off, hopefully compromising its penetration and explosive capability, which is this armor's purpose) and it turns out that weight only has a rather minimal effect on penetration compared to how important it is against the homogeneous armor. In fact, the weight term is only (Weight)^0.2, so going from the usual 2240-pound 16" shell (US 16" Mark 5 issued in the mid-1930s) used in the WWII version of the older COLORADO Class guns (similar to most foreign shell weights for a gun that size) to a 2700-pound shell (the US 16" Mark 8 used in all of the new battleships built from the mid-1930s on), the penetration for an identical striking velocity only went up by (2700/2240)^0.2 = 1.038 = 3.8% thicker plate, while this same increase in weight against a homogeneous plate would give you (2700/2240)^0.7143 = 1.142 = 14.2% better penetration, much larger. Since the heavier shell lowered the gun's muzzle velocity, something that only at long range was compensated for by the lower drag on the heavier shell, this meant that at close range the shell had a lower penetration than the older COLORADO gun firing its lighter shell. The penetration was pretty good anyway due to the greatly superior strength of all forms of US WWII AP shells minimizing the effects of damage from the hard face, but it is obvious that the guns were for killing the enemy at a distance using superior fire control to get long-range hits (and the US had extremely good fire control aiming systems (radars eventually) and trajectory calculators in all of its new and overhauled older warships in WWII).
Nathan, thanks for all your great and interesting work on this subject (even though a lot of the math is over the heads of us non-engineers!). A couple of questions:
1. Given the fact that the long-range combat for which the Mark 8 shells were optimized never really materialized, do you think the US would have been better off in hindsight using the Mark 5, or something similar with a higher MV and larger bursting charge? Or were the 16”/50 Mark VIIs such monsters that it didn’t really matter?
2. It is well-known that US Class A face-hardened armor performance suffered somewhat at BB-grade thicknesses due to the the greater thickness of the hardened face compared to that of the British, Germans, and Italians. However, I remember reading somewhere that we had realized this flaw by the time the Montanas were to be laid down, and that if constructed, the armor manufacturers would have ditched the “thick chill” method and produced armor with face thicknesses more in line with those other nations. Is this accurate?
Thanks if you are able to answer! One day you should really do a video with Drachinifel on his channel!
@@bluemarlin8138 Question #1:
The design of the 2700-pound 16" Mark 8 -- similarly, the 1140-pound 12" Mark 18 for the ALASKAs and 335-pound 8" Mark 21 for the several classes of new (with face-hardened armor) US heavy cruisers built starting in the late 1930s and, though somewhat lighter for manual handling, 130-pound 6" Mark 35 shells for all of the US new light cruisers -- was indeed for higher damage at long range (near the maximum reasonable range that hits were likely due to the accuracy of the fire-control gear/range-finders and round-to-round shell spread due to design tolerances, assuming proper gun mount maintenance and reliable manufacture). The lower-velocity, heavier shell combination reduced the effects of drag and caused shells to be falling at higher angles of fall, both partially negating the resistance of horizontal deck and turret/conning tower roof armor.
While these shells did cause a slight reduction at point-blank range against vertical face-hardened side armor (velocity is more important than weight when causing brittle fracture effects in this brittle armor type) than a lighter-weight shell, -- for example, the 2240-pound 16" Mark 5 AP used with the COLORADOs which were also given new AP projectiles in the late 1930s -- fired at a higher velocity to the exact same total impact energy, the difference was not all that great (a few percent at best), the heavier shells still had the same PERCENTAGE of Explosive "D" filler, so the heavier shells had a larger explosive charge and, due to their heavier weight, significantly more fragments formed when they blew up. For example, let us compare the 16" AP shells: The Mark 5 and Mark 8 have identical noses (more-or-less, varies somewhat with manufacturer and date made), so the extra 450-pound weight of the Mark 8 is due to its longer body -- 4.5 calibers (72") versus the Mark 5's 4 calibers (64") -- and so that is 460 pounds more fragments thrown when the shell detonates (the nose and base plugs usually only break up into relatively few big pieces with a number of medium-size pieces around them, while the middle body is reduced to many tiny pieces moving sideways -- plus the forward speed of the shell at the detonation instant -- and 460 pounds more of those is a big deal as far as damage is concerned. Also, since the 1.5% explosive content goes up with weight, the Mark 8 has 40.5 pounds of Explosive "D" while the Mark 5 has only 33.6 pounds. This means that the blast will accelerate the fragments in both shells to about the same speeds and the extra 460 pound of fragments is going to be fully as effective as the lesser amount of fragments from the smaller shell, in addition to the greater concussion effects of that bigger explosive charge. "More bang for the buck." Armor penetration is only an important consideration when the penetration of the armor accomplishes something behind the protection, since that is what the armor is for! The extra 5 caliber barrel length on the IOWAs and MONTANs upped the muzzle velocities to 2500 feet/second for the heavier AP shells, which is not much below the 2600-2700 feet/second used in the typical foreign gun and better than the 2475 feet/second used with most British battleship guns since the end of WWI, excepting NELSON and RODNEY with their extremely light, 2049-pounds-only 16" Mark IB APC shells which had a higher muzzle velocity (an experiment in shell design considered a failure by the British and never repeated). These longer guns got the benefits of the heavier shell with minimal loss due to muzzle velocity. And, again, the higher muzzle velocity is only a benefit with lighter shells at close range, since they lose velocity more rapidly for a given nose and body shape and, thus, at even medium ranges the difference in striking velocity may be nearly microscopic.
@@bluemarlin8138 Question #2:
I was the one who discovered the scaling rules for face-hardened armor based on face thickness. Scaling was noted in general for homogeneous, ductile armor in many WWII-era documents and even the old De Marre Homogeneous Nickel-Steel Armor Formula of 1890 (when this new type armor was introduced by the French firm of Schneider et Cie.) has a small scaling term built into it. Bur when considering face-hardened armor, no document I have ever read tried to find out if scaling was different for face-hardened armor at all, to say nothing about it varying with face thickness. That I noted in some modern documents about armor penetration when they separated out different failure modes of homogeneous armors hit by various designs of projectiles and noted that the scaling effects were somewhat different depending on the failure method of the plate. This got me thinking about how face-hardened armor fails only by plugging (punching out a cylinder or cone of armor, intact or, more usually, in pieces, out the plate back) since, other than some surface flaking of the hardest thin layer, that is the only way the rest of the face will allow the displaced armor to go. This involved a shearing action around the edge of the hole (plus lots of armor breaking inside the hole, but I just considered averaging this out as part of the basic penetration rules), which is a surface effect, while the energy from the shell went up with its total weight and the energy absorbed in accelerating the plug went up with the weight of the plug, which went up with the plug length (roughly), meaning plate thickness. Thus, the energy on this shearing edge surface was going up much faster due to large shell weight scaled up for a given projectile design as size went up than the surface strength and resisting area was, so less projectile energy was needed to shear out a longer plug when everything was larger (but scaled in proportion). Since the face of the plate was the place where this shearing was mostly done -- the soft back tore free around its edge too but stretched first so its scaling was not as pronounced and I just lumped it in with the face as a minor tweak -- a thicker face had more scaling effect and thus, while a thicker face might cause more projectile damage (only against some AP shell designs, others, like most WWII US Navy AP designs, had high resistance to such damage) this lower necessary energy per thickness increase when the gun size went up was a problem for big guns, though it worked in reverse and US Thick Chill Class "A" armor was the best for cruisers resisting 8" and smaller gun projectiles. There being more cruisers than battleships, the Thick Chill Class "A" armor was a success. The WWII Italian Terni Cemented KC-type armor seemed to also have noted this effect, since their 5" KC-type armor had about the same face layer thickness as their 11" plates did, with the thicker plate merely having more soft back, which is a good approximation for countering scaling increases which hurt the big guns only. I have not seen any details in any Italian document about this, though.
I do not know about any specified changes in the armor used in the MONTANAs, but the 22" Class "A" test plates for barbette armor submitted by the various armor manufacturers varied ENORMOUSLY in their metallurgical characteristics and hardening techniques, though all seem to have met the minimum extrapolated specs. If there was any scaling-related changes, I do not know of them.
Nathan Okun thanks for the detailed reply!
@@bluemarlin8138 I have a secti9on of my own azt the web site NAVWEAPS.COM. It has a lot of documents I wrote and several BASIC computer programs that run under basic using the associated adapter applications listed (these programs are text/numbers only inputs and outputs). Some of the documents are somewhat dated but the computer programs are all of the latest versions of my current knowledge of how the topic being calculated works. They are not completely covering all parts of this topic, unfortunately, since the detailed effects of changing projectile nose shape when penetrating homogeneous, ductile armor is complicated and my data on this is spotty (I have lots of data on the US Army 15-pound blunt-point (no windscreen or AP cap) 76mm M79 AP Shot Projectile, since the US Navy personnel at the US Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, decided it was a good (that is, very available and cheap) "standard" projectile design for use in tests (including using scaled-down copies for various tests of scaling effects and effects of changing plate hardness on penetration). I also have good data for some flat-nose and tapered-flat-nose AP shot projectiles. All of these three nose shapes have reasonable, if not perfect, computer programs allowing reasonable estimates of their effects on the typical homogeneous, ductile steel armor used in WWII warships (the one with e 1.21 De Marre Coefficient) -- tank armor was usually much higher hardness, which made it stronger against small projectile hitting at high velocity at close range, but no so good against large projectiles hitting it at lower velocities at longer ranges, especially at highly oblique angles). Other nose shapes, from hemispheres (cannon balls, for example) to long narrow sharp points (4-calibers long radius of arc noses of US Army 0.5" M2 AP bullet cores), change their effects as plate thickness and impact angle changes (thin homogeneous, ductile plates resist blunt noses that dent them, even at highly oblique angles, but blunt noses are much better against thick plates that are rigid and thus the blunt nose can peal up the armor in front of them like a wood plane, greatly decreasing the ability to glance off at oblique impact, compared to a sharp nose that cuts the plate material sideways like the sharp prow of a speed-boat and the nose is thus free to move upward and bounce off. The 0.5-caliber thickness is roughly the balance point between the thin- and thick-plate effects, being nearly nose-shape free for hemispheres and more pointed shapes and getting more and more nose-shape-dependent as obliquity increases and/or plate thickness changes above and below 0.5-caliber plate thickness. I don't have enough data to give a good set of penetration curves for these nose-shape effects, so I have not included them in my HCWCLC Homogeneous Armor Program (M79 nose shape with some effects of windscreen and a few AP cap types optional), If and when I find enough information, I will add this factor in some approximate way..
I play War of warships and i unlock Montana.
Can someone please explain the difference between 16 inch 45 calibre and 16 inch 50 caliber? I always thought caliber was the diameter of the gun barrel so how can a 16 inch gun come in different calibers?
For artillery, caliber is a measure of the length of the barrel. So its 16in wide x 50 cals long = length in inches of the barrel.
At the end of WW2 a 60,000 ton ship was huge. Now it could hide behind a mid size container ship or VLCC. I think, given the technical advances in artillery, slide a Teflon bag over the shell and bore erosion nearly disappears, and antiaircraft and anti missile defences, an Iowa or Montana class BB would be a useful addition to the fleet.
With rocket or ramjet assist a big gun could have a 70 mile or greater. This allows one ship to have the effective destructive capacity of dozens of carrier aircraft. With the addition of cruise missile launchers the destructive range becomes hundreds of miles. That puts almost every large city within range of one ship.
The extensive armor protects the BB class ships from most artillery shells and bombs likely to be used against it. If it is set for Battle Stations the armor plus being sealed may make it capable of surviving a smaller nuclear bomb (kiloton range). It would be much more difficult to sink than an Aircraft Carrier of similar size.
Reviving a couple of existing fast battleships and building a couple of new super warships would make our Navy even more intimidating. Intiminadation is the job of a Navy.
No gun has the range of a conventional gun. At 70 miles it's range 1/10, at a minimum, when compared to an F/A 18.
We need to build the Montana class. When I think of the 10's of billions the navy has squandered on cost over runs and experimental ships that have gone no where .
Ohio with 18 inchers in WoWS. Legends doesn’t have them sadly
But soon Montana
Audio quality is bad in that little square room. Make yourself an acoustic room on the ship.
BB-68 would have been the Ohio
If the Montana had a armor belt 16.1 inches over the iowa 12.1 inches that means the Montana could stop a 16inch shell from New Jersey but could not stop a 18 inch shell From Yamato.
Yamato and Montano would have had the same armor belt, so I think she could stop an 18.11 inch shell
I happened to notice on Wiki that the Montanas were to be equipped with a 172k hp powerplant. Why would that class not match the Iowas' 212k powerplant?
Oops, shoulda watched the entire video before asking this question. You explained this later on. So . . . nevermind. ;-)
56th
great videos and all, but since you are there editing, cant you just remove the big gaps between sentences? i feel realy akward about the guy just standing there in silence for 4-5 seconds before the next sentence
Can we take a moment to realize how ridiculous a 18 inch super heavy shell would be
Don't tell the Japanese that. Also, the British I believe had 3 ships equipped with 18" guns at one time.
@@MartyInLa yes, yes they did, Furious was tested with em, and two monitors got them after
@@invadegreece9281 Furious only had a single 18 inch gun, not multiple
@@MartyInLa they used standard 18-in projectiles not heavy shells
@@andrewhilyard7684 actually she had multiple guns made which is why each monitor got one
The Montana-class was developed at the same time as the Iowas. They weren’t successors. It was more that the Montanas were the traditional battleship to their fast-battleship counterparts, the Iowas.
Incorrect, they were viewed as the successors of Iowa's given what they learned from the Iowa's. They were designed with same armament and engineering (minus recombining some of the engine/bolier spaces and reducing boilers). The engineering got cut back after Iowa's deployment. While a massive ship, the design really was not needed given they did not have the bow hull design of the Iowa's. Bigger ship but can hardly keep up with carriers. What is the point of Billions in todays dollars to build them in peacetime.
Well I'm sure the navy could have afforded a Montana, though the decision to focus funds and energy elsewhere was the correct one. Still, how cool it would have been to see a reactivated Montana steam out for Desert Storm.
Too slow relative to iowa class. Probably still would have favored recommissioning iowas over montanas
@@Skiiiiiifreeeeeee but the montanas were bigger thus wouldve had more space for more stuff added like missiles or ciws
@@calliberjoe yeah but the mandate is to keep up with carriers which Montana would not have been able to do.
@@Skiiiiiifreeeeeee when the Iowa's were reactivated they were not used to keep up with the Aircraft carriers but essentially bombardment ships that could stand off shore and use missiles to hit targets further away then their guns ever could. the only exception to this was the Korean War as the missiles had not matured enough to take the place of the guns.
@@richardmeyeroff7397 But they were frequently escorting carriers. Their speed and range was a huge draw as to why they were kept in reserve
I just have to compliment you guys on your responses to people's comments and enquiries, you really engage and are very helpful, 10/10 in that regard.
Thanks!
By the time this ship would have been done WW2 would have been over.
Iowa BB 61, New Jersey BB 62, Missouri BB 63, Wisconsin BB 64. Canceled Illinois BB 65 , Kentucky BB 66. All Iowa class.
I ever get my hands on a time machine, I'll be convincing somebody back then to get the Montanas built! Lol
and fight the yamato ? lets go !
We needed 1 Montana. She would've been escorted by the iowa's, Midway, and the limitless destroyers and cruisers.
Who the fuck could've stopped that fleet? Exactly even without her we were the world rulers. No? Here comes our fleet and armed forces. Glad you agree now be peaceful and have some respect. We're still growing stronger.
The monty would've been the most incredible, unstoppable, unrivaled. Except that's her weak link right there, no one could've built anything like her beside Yamato. Our wisconsin and missouri would've easily sunk them, never mind the smart game using winged killers
@@johnserrano9689 The Japanese probably thought the same RE the Yamato. She fell to aircraft. There is no reason the Montana couldn't either.
@@bmused55 that's right. Zero reason to argue fine sir, but no she wouldn't of fallen to air craft, that logic is false. If that was the case then our old ww1 battleships would've been sunk, or maybe the north Carolinas, or the south Dakota's, better yet the mighty iowa's. None were because no force on earth could rival american naval might. Even with kamakazi attacks they just couldn't get through in a meaningful manner, but we could deliver air strikes with over 400 air craft not even Britain could wield such power.
So again, our force we had cannot be used as an example to sink our own ships. There was nothing and no one in the world which could've sunk an all powerful Montana class battleship.
It was useless. Carriers were the new king of Naval Combat. Kentucky was originally supposed to be the first of the class but was re ordered as a fast battleship and later cancelled.
"Armament? Blows them out of the water" hilarious unintended quip (23:25)
New Comer to this battleship UA-cam world - really enjoy your work and presentations - I find your thoughtful casual cadence in speaking calm and helpful actually - time to absorb and process a lot of information new to some of us whose are just diving in to the details of ships we have heard of and revered but knew only superficial information about
Very grateful to have found you!
Keep educating and educating us
Thanks
Jeff
It does live on in virtual form. The Montana is one of my favorite BB units to use when playing Battlestations Pacific
Decapping requires a plate of steel 0.0805-caliber thick (for a 16" shell this is 1.29" minimum) using the typical attachment methods for such caps (crimping, low-temperature soldering or both). Krupp of Germany, however, was the one exception that I know of (Italy might also be similar, but I do not have hard data about this) for naval capped AP shells (US Army capped shells were made by rather many smaller firms during WWII and some also seem to have used a stronger solder, but none as strong as the one used by Krupp). This was either due to over-design or perhaps some bad results when caps were first used in Krupp naval AP shells starting in 1902. In any event, Krupp AP shells used such a strong high-temperature solder (rarely used in any form due to the risk of affecting the hardness of the projectile nose during soldering) in all of its AP shells from about the year 1911 ("C/11" type naval AP shells) that the minimum plate needed jumped to about 0.2 caliber (3.2" for a 16" shell), so the 1.5" STS outer hull of IOWA would not be able to decap even a Krupp 8" WWII capped AP shell, though it could decap a YAMATO 18.1" (46cm) AP shell, since that used a rather good solder of unusual composition but not any stronger than the US naval shell solders. The tilted plate had another advantage over a vertical plate, though: The non-zero impact angle, in addition to making the plate act somewhat thicker, also caused the shell to twist physically toward a more right-angle exit trajectory from the plate back due to the uneven forces on it during penetration. This twisting in the hard face layer of thick face-hardened side plating in many cases could actually snap a shell in two or, when the base of the shell rotated around like a baseball bat and hit the side of the hole, even crush or break off the base fuze and/or base plug holding in the explosive filler, reducing the shell to a solid shot, penetrating or not, which has MUCH LESS effect on a huge ship like the IOWA. This "double-whammy" effect is why face-hardened armor continued to be used in thick plating in warships through the end of WWII.
The notion that Montanas might have had long barreled, super heavy, autoloading 5" guns AND autoloading 3" guns is a terrifying thought.
This ship fighting a Yamato or her sister would have been awesome!
By 1944 when the Montana might have gotten into action, the USN had such an overwhelming advantage in aircraft carriers that only a tactical blunder such as at the Battle off Samar could have put Yamato and Montana into gun range of each other. In that battle, Halsey fell for the Japanese decoy force allowing the IJN Center Force to get within gun range of the escort carriers of the USN Taffy 3. But because the Montanas would have been slower than the Iowas, they might have been more likely to detach and stay behind to cover the landings, while the fleet carriers sped north at maximum speed (accompanied by the Iowas) to chase the Japanese decoy force.
But had the Montana and Yamato met at the Battle off Samar, it wouldn't have been a straight matchup, since the USN had ~400 aircraft from 16 (!) escort carriers for that battle. Those aircraft weren't properly equipped to attack ships, since they were tasked to support ground troops, but they did inflict some damage on Yamato in the real battle. In the hypothetical event that a Montana was on hand, all those aircraft could have pestered Yamato enough to hamper her ability to engage a Montana (or even an Iowa). A ship under air attack needs to maneuver violently to become a harder target, and that might have reduced Yamato's broadside time against Montana.
@Surigao 1944 - But probably more terrifying to be aboard the Yamato, since any matchup with a Montana would likely have been an unfair fight. For example in the Battle off Samar, Yamato's anti-aircraft gunners had to be on deck in their mostly exposed positions, to shoot at the ~400 USN aircraft. Imagine your job is to stand on deck to shoot at airplanes, while a Montana is lobbing 12-shell salvos at you with her radar-guided big guns. And of course you're out there exposed when Yamato replies with her 18" guns. The concussion for crewmen on deck from Yamato's guns was probably similar to a nearby bomb hit.
It would indeed have been awesome....but the YAMATO would easily reduce the IOWA to scrap metal without ever coming into any danger to herself.
@@anthonylowder6687 . Your comment is one of the most ignorant thing I have ever read🤦🏻♂️.it’s obvious that you have never studied the capabilities of the battleships in a head on battle. Yes, the Iowa’s were designed as a fast battleship, but they also had pro’s against the Yamato class to include speed, radar, better armor material, etc. Also, let’s not forget what the Montano class would have done against the Yamato with its heavier armor and 12 16in guns!!!!
@@anthonylowder6687 the Yamato had primitive radar at best. The Iowa class had the latest radar at that time. At night or cloudy conditions the Yamato would be easy meat for a Iowa.
How I wish a Yamato class had survived so we could see similar museum videos from it and tours
Same for Bismarck. Prinz Eugen is the only capital ship of the Kriegsmarine that survived WW2. Too bad it got nuked in nuke tests and sunk.
I think that Even if Yamato or Musashi survived the japanese would probably have scuttled them anyway so americans dont get their hands on them.
@@Dvokrilac Yes, they were forced to waste it in an utterly futile operation. Even if it had survived the war, it would have been wasted by the US in the Castle Bravo tests. Such a shame, the Kure Maritime Museum has a huge model of it, but what a tourist attraction if the actual ship had somehow survived and been preserved!
yamato-museum.jp/annex/
@@TheFreaker86 Well at least that one is still diveable~ XD
Let's build one! X
Like how they made a moving Gundam in Yokohama~ XD
The Iowa's were the ultimate power in Battleship design. While boasting 16 inch guns compared to the much heavier Yamato and their 18.1 inch guns, I believe the Iowa's would have come out on top for several reasons. Also, you didn't describe the Iowa's as super battleships like Yamato class and Montana class. I believe these were the first survivable superclass Battleships. I mean heck they got reactivated how many times into the 90's. And if you look at any front profile picture of an Iowa (especially the one on USS Missouri's memorial behind USS Arizona memorial with main guns in salute to the war grave of Arizona), they still look intimidating and modern.
Reasons I believe an Iowa class would have come out on top over Yamato class:
- Iowa's were developed for speed and even in the worst sea conditions. Outrun and create distance compared to a Yamato class.
- Iowa's had better radar and fire control than the Yamato's.
- Iowa's, while having a smaller shell also had a higher mussel velocity than the Yamato class that could penetrate deep into the hull of a Yamato class if hit right.
- Iowa's had a single layer armor belt (aka, not layered and riveted together armor belt). I have read that it was ultimately the layered/riveted armor belt on both Yamato and Musashi that failed and thusly making their armor belts pointless. Water was getting into their citadels after one or two torpedo strikes. Didn't you say that layered armor deck plating was one of Arizona's flaws that allowed that bomb in another video?
Montana class would have been awesome! But as you said at the end it would have been pointless to build them. They would be too expensive to operate and maintain, just like the Iowa's were at build and then every reactivation/modernization. Being a Missouri native, I am glad that USS Missouri is still afloat and severed our nation proud for every reactivation. Just glad she is watching over our fallen with her mighty guns at full salute in Hawaii!
I believe you are overestimating Iowa’s strengths, while over stating Yamato’s weaknesses
First up, the Iowas, while very fast, had bad sea keeping. They would rock and roll badly in bad weather, and in bad storms, her two forward turrets would become disabled because of how badly she rocked.
While Iowa’s fire control was vastly superior, Yamato’s fire control, while below average, was not abysmally horrible like many Iowa fans claim. During the battle off Samar, she claimed either a hit or damaging near miss on the escort carrier White Plains, Sunk the escort carrier Gambier bay, and hit the destroyer Johnston six times in a single salvo from almost 20 miles. Also, unlike what some people will tell you she did have radar, but it was very below average radar. She could fight amazingly in good weather, and fight well at night, but her main weakness was bad weather.
Also, Iowas could rival Yamato’s guns......from long ranges. From short and mid ranges, Yamato’s guns were completely unrivaled.
Finally, against battleship shells, her belt armor was invincible. It was only against torpedoes that some of the lower parts of the armor belt would come loose. Some parts of Yamato, like her 25.5 inch turret armor, was labeled as invincible from reasonable battle ranges. She had the best armor in the history of battleship making
Ultimately, it’s a very even battle, . Yamato’s strengths was her godly guns and armor, as well as her great maneuverability, while here weaknesses were her below average fire control and modest speed. Iowa had very great guns, a very high speed, and great fire control, while having below average armor and bad sea keeping
@@metaknight115 Couple of things you left out. First and Iowa could fire a broadside every 30s while the Yamato ran about 45s. Japanese steel was also vastly inferior to both American and British steel, probably for the same reason that German steel near the end of the war was inferior, lack of carbon. If fact I believe Yamato's armor plates were riveted, because something that thick could not be welded, creating weak point in the belt. Your point about seakeeping is correct, the Iowa's were considered wet ships, but no one fights in those conditions.
Before WW 2 the US had done preliminary work on a third series of locks for the Panama Canal. The Great Depression halted that plan.
Finally, in 2016, an improved set of third set locks opened for container ships & super tankers.
Why not just built the Montana class with Iowa's full powerplant?
Damn those Wright Brothers and their stupid aircraft.. we could have had Montana class bbs if it weren't for them lol
Yes, the thinkers in the 1960's produced fighters without guns and ships without antiaircraft guns. The Vietnam War caused a rethink of gun less fighters, but I am amazed that no one ever took a serious look at the NVA success rate against US fighters with their twin 37 MM AA guns. The US lost well over 1,200 aircraft to ground fire and the mainstay weapon was the twin 37 MM. I have watched many a video of the Falklands war especially Argentine use of A-4s against RN ships. The RN ships had the same paltry layout of air defense weapons that US ships still carry and it cost the RN dearly. I think we made a great mistake removing AA guns and are continuing to make the same mistake.
Good Point.
they have equipped the ships now with cannons for anti missiles defense
@@garyweber1724 True but there only two per side and can be overwhelmed by multiple missiles in an attack. They are also short ranged with a max range of 6,000 yards.
I expect all our U.S. Navy vessels are under-gunned. I have read Navy command officers admit that they could not conduct a worthy shore bombardment for littoral support.
@@DavidRLentz I suspect those command officers know the truth. Most Navy ships have one 5 inch pop gun for conventional artillery and that does not make a shock and awe bombardment. Yes, they have missiles but spending several million per shot does not seem cost effective not I suspect of much value in close support unless the US is attacking a banana republic with no defensive capabilities.
Is it correct to say they were never laid down? Kentucky's bow was complete enough to be removed and replace Wisconsin's after a collision.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66)
Thanks for doing these videos. I've only ever been on the USS North Carolina (highly recommend) and am looking forward to touring the Jersey. My Grandfather was served on her during a tour through the med postwar.
Oh derp, I see already. They pulled 2 names from the Montana class and moved to expand the Iowa's to 6 ships, and that's how the ship was laid down.
EDIT: LOL you get to this exact point at around 7:00. You're just great.
There were actually going to be six Iowa class battleships. The other two being the Illinois and the Kentucky. They were held up in construction because there was more of a need for carriers. Illinois was scrapped during construction and Kentucky was launched but never completed. In fact, Kentucky's bow was removed to fix the Wisconsin after its bow was damaged in an accident. The Montana class would have started with hull number 65.
I believe there power plants were used on the Mercy class hospital ships!
I live near San Diego where the WWII-era carrier Midway now serves as a museum. The hull has a very battleship profile, and I recall someone in authority saying the hull was designed based on the canceled Montana class battleships.
Yeah he actually said all of that if you took the time to watch the the video. Instead it seems you were just compelled to let people know that you know something and assuming maybe he doesn't however he did. I'm sure he knows much much more than you. Maybe you should create your own UA-cam channel called the interrupting clown knows a couple things about a ship
@@Thom3748 you aren't wrong, they modeled it after the Monty's hull so that the BB dimensions could be attributed by the Carrier= LARGE HANGAR AND AIR WINGS
Other issue 18 inch shells all handling equipment had to be upgraded for them. Had to make power mag and storage bigger or carried less
Another great video and thanks for that. I have had (as a ship modeler) a fantasy about the Japanese sending Yamato and Musashi down the slot to bombard Guadalcanal. If they really wanted to get that job done it would have made sense. Hiei and Kirishima created a lot of grimness for the Marines as it was. The fantasy goes on to imagine that a dud 18" shell had been discovered and that fact would throw the USN into some real panic whether real or imagined. Super heavy 16" notwithstanding I wonder if the Navy would have resurrected their 18" design and attempted to arm Kentucky of Illinois and then go on to build Montana with 8 such weapons. I'm gonna build a Montana and the Illinois with 18". Kentucky is currently getting the BBaa treatment as per Imperial Models parts etc. Besides all of my family are from Kentucky so she has to be different and intriguing. Sooo whaddaya think? It's another angle for BB enthusiasts to chow down on and, I think, worth a look. I also think the BBaa project plan would make some seriously interesting coverage. Keep on keepin on Ryan and good job.
The US Navy at the time considered the 16" 50cal the finest large-caliber weapon to be used on a battleship. They were accurate, and their cycle time was 30 seconds vs around 45 seconds fort the 18" on the Yamatos.
Excellent video! I was always partial to the BB-67-4 design for the Montanas had they gone ahead (shoutout to Drachinifel and his awesome videos on everything naval-related).
One thing I do always hear is that the Midway class Carriers' machinery spaces and basic hull design was at least partially based off of the work that had gone into the Montana design. I don't know how true that it; but it's nice to think that, had they been built, the Montanas could have had similar longevity to the Midway.
If I recall, the keels of the first two Montanas were reused for Midway and FDR.
@@atpyro7920 No, the keels nor any part of the hulls for any of the 5 Montanas ordered were ever laid down; they were put on indefinite hold shortly before then.
Has anyone else ever watched this vid using the automatically generated captions on UA-cam?lol
If not and you want a good laugh do.
Once again excellent video
Thanks for the tip, I turned it on and watched again.
I didn't know 6 minute guns was a thing, fascinating things.
I can just. Imagine how much of the ship. That you. Can. Fix up. With enough. Money. You guys are doing a great job on it . I sure you will never let new jerseys get to. Looking like. The. Texas. And I am from Texas. I your the. Texas back in the. 1970. Went I was a. Younger. And I don't. Remember. It. Looking. As bad as it looks now. It.. it needs a. Ton of. Work to get to. The. Quality of the. New. Jerseys.
If the Montana was built, does that mean the Iowas would have never been reactivated?
Can't say for sure, but a big factor would be that they didn't reactivate just one iowa most of the time. The Iowas were also picked because they were the fastest and had room for growth, the montanas wouldn't be as fast but had growth.
@@BattleshipNewJersey Just imagine how many missiles that could of fit on Montana!
A major reason the Iowa class was reactivated during the 1980s had nothing to do with the 16 inch guns. The navy needed a platform for their newly developed cruise missiles. A new class of ship would take a decade to build and the Iowa’s had both space and the required power to deploy the new weapons in less than two years.
@@garyf8229 Iowas also had the speed the Navy needed for Tomahawk platforms.
There were so many Montana designs it would make your head spin!!! They have built them !
So basically, the Iowas and Montanas are designed together to operate as part of the same fleet. One is slow, with lots of guns, and heavily armored. One is fast with fewer guns and armor that cannot reject its own shells.
So the Iowas are battlecruisers.
Thats one way to look at two different classes of battleship. There were changes in priorities for both classes, just as there were changes from the North Carolina Class and those that came before them.
@@BattleshipNewJersey I had this whole thing about Alaska being a large cruiser and therefore Iowa was a battlecruiser, but your answer was just too awesome. I'll stop joshing with you.
Your videos are really good. Thanks for putting them up. Folks like you are really good for the Internet.
No the Iowa's were fast battleships....a type of Battleship that made battle cruisers obsolete. The Iowa Class armor package could protect it from a 2250 pound AP shell, a shell bigger than ANY other battleship shell other than the Yamato class Battleship AP shell and the 2700 pound Super Heavy AP shell. A Battle Cruiser had battleship caliber guns but was generally only protected against 8 inch AP shells. They had to sacrifice armor for speed, with the advances in propulsion technology designs did not have to sacrifice armor for speed and the fast battleship was born.
No, they were lightly armed battleships. They had thin armor, but it wasn’t battlecruiser grade armor
It would be cool to see a Montana (and escorts, carriers, etc.) face off with a German H-class battleship and company in an alternate history movie or something.
a video game guy?
my dad was on the uss columbus in the mid 50's. she had 3" AA's
You are fantastic!!! Love your videos my dude
Great video! I love both the technical data and the economic information and the background to them both. Keep up the excellent work! Thanks!
I didn't know that they planned to widen the Panama Canal. I had assumed they would build some and sail half of them around South America to split the Montana class between the fleets. Very interesting!
Basically the same logic as why a Death Star makes no sense.
If you remember what Karl Malone, the Utah Jazz NBA player looked like, I swear Ryan is doing a great impression!
The IOWAs (and perhaps the SOUTH DAKOTAs; not sure about the NORTH CAROLINA and WASHINGTON) had a rather unique feature in their two large rudders on either side of the aft centerline directly behind two of the large props. Usually these acted in tandem and turned the ship by both turning in the same direction and using the thrust of the props to deflect on them for a faster turn. However, it was possible to use an emergency stop mode by forcing the two rudders to turn inward simultaneously to 90 degrees, facing one-another edge-on. This reduced the ability of the propeller thrust to move backward except in the narrow gap between the two rudders and created a huge drag effect that could and, when tested, did stop the ship going at flank speed IN ITS OWN LENGTH!!!! The rudders were severely overstrained when this was used, of course, so it is possible that they would need an overhaul to work properly afterwards, but they did work after the test well enough to allow the ship to get back to dock for a detailed examination. How is that for an interesting thing about the IOWA Class warships?!!
It would be like on a car with just setting off little charges that blow your back axle off so that you drag to a stop. lol
its called a barn door stop. Wisky was the only ship to test it, they threw a piece of wood overboard at the bow when they conducted it and the ship came to a stop in 600 feet, landing the piece of wood in the water right around turret 3. Barn door stops were not unique to the IOWAs, any of the supercarriers or larger cruisers with dual rudders can do it as well.
www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-054.php
@@ObamaTookMyCat What ship class was the first one with this capability?
Montana still needed as Command and Control with nuclear propulsion and taking place of Cruiser with support and role as Carrier Command and Control, Support, Defend, Amphibious
What always impressed me is tht USSR also canceled their super. It woudl be such a soviet think to make something so absurd to make the Yamato look tiny.
Question for you, since you have been talking about the Montana Class Battleships in this video. In you opinion, what would you recommend, or like to see as far as engine type in a "Modern Built version of a Montana? A second question is, what do you think would be used as far as armor protection for a new designed Montana. I know that armor design has changed since the 1940's, things like Kevlar and Chatham armors used in modern tanks, but what do you think would work in military warships today. Thanks in advance, Steve.
If you were to convert the battleships to well potected nuclear reactor power, they could be lightee, with more horsepower per shaft, with much smaller crews.
That, combined with their size and durability would make them ideal platforms for modern weapons systems. The versatility of a ship that durable, with a multitude of weapons (and defense systems) systems available, and the speed to stay with the fastest carrier task groups, would be difficult to match.
A single Iowa, or Montana class, battleship, could carry more weapons than multiple destroyers or light cruisers. Not to mention the longevity of those ships, combined with the ability to survive damage, is actually singular.
Sure, each ship would be very expensive. However, the number of ships that they could replace, especially over a period of decades, is actually a long term cost benefit.
Iowa and Montana class battleships could literally be the naval equivalent of the B-52, which has outlasted every system designed and built since, and will likely reach the century of service mark.
Honestly, being wide and slow would be the most serious downfall. Being too wide to use the canal would be disastrous. And not being able to keep up with the fast carriers would make them utterly useless. Not to mention being slow would make them extremely vulnerable to air and submarine attack.
The 18" naval rifle idea is not really great. Not when you can sling the 16" shells a long way. And having more ships using 16" shells allows a focus strictly on that caliber for development and manufacturing.
A Montana class narrow enough to use the canal, and as fast as a Iowa would be far more useful, and length wouldn't be a deal breaker.
Four each Iowa and Montana class would be sufficient.
And, had they been built, development of modern upgrades for eight ships would be more cost effective. Maybe still cost prohibitive. But maybe not, considering the Montana class would have been more advanced to begin with.
ALL of the WW2 navies soon realised that battleships were outdated by new developments. The aircraft carrier in particular decided the outcomes of the Pacific War and aircraft in combination with jump carriers and anti submarine escorts that of the crucial Battle of the Atlantic. Interestingly it was the case in all of the world’s navies that their Admiralties favoured the Big Gun Battleships based upon their pre war history. As such all of them envisaged battleships deciding confrontations . All of them were proved WRONG.
I believe that a 21st century version Battleship equipped will railguns and long range missiles will be coming in the near future. The cost of F/A aircraft is getting too expensive. Imagine a Montana class BB with railguns that can hit targets 200+ miles away, and 1,000+ mile range missiles.
It could do alot moreknow than back then with missiles, radar, air defense, Anti Ship, Anti everything plus. offensive rail gun, etc
Great video I myself ....toured both NJ and TX
With the fact the navy is getting into to many big carrier's they should meet the two ocean Navy's with two large new Battle ships today like that Russian dredknot.
A middle battle ship with a rail gun and Lazer might make sense today
BB67 Montana
BB68 Ohio
BB69 Maine
BB70 New Hampshire
BB71 Louisiana
better audio
What would you think of the idea of redesigning the Montana class to be nuclear and rear armed to fit todays warfair in like of what is going on with Russiaand china
I would like to see the full range as well a discussion in detail, or nearly as possible, of the designs for the Montana class and the other super battleships that were proposed.
If Montana would only be used in the pacific. It wouldn't need to use the Panama canal.
It’s ships like the Montana that make me wonder what it would be like if things in history happened differently in a way that may have led to them being built, example carriers not being made at all or being a much later invention than they are here.
I know there was a 5th iowa class named the uss Kentucky but unfortunately for her the keel was layed but with the dire need of more modern carriers those resources where diverted from her!
She lived on and part of her forward hull was grafted on the Wisconsin when it was involved in a collision. Thus the Wisconsin's nickname became WIsKY.
That would of been crazy if we would of built these ships
yep, That would of been roughly 130 MILLION pounds of metal. Thats a - lot of cars and toaster ovens lol.
Where the Iowas dominated the Yamatos was maneuverability having a 5 knot advantage but also fire control where for every shell the Yamatos put on target the Iowas might put 6-8 on target!
The answer to the battleship going away. Battlesub. Lets do it.
There is another alternative to the interior armor put the main belt on the exterior and then armor-plated bulkheads on the interior.
Montana, the A380 of the battleship world. 😛
With the repeated reactivation of the iowas it seems the navy still needs a ship similar to them (or three). With lessons learned and technology advances it seems prudent. As far as a show of might guns and missiles are more intimidating than a flat top. I could give examples of female bodybuilders with breast enhancements (haha). Seriously the time it takes to turn and aim a gun vs. Bring a jet up launch it have it find the target, blah blah. The enemy thinks it can get away with a quick strike. Hidden missiles don't get thought of and cost to much to bother with. Mind set of others should be thought of.
I have zero technical ability and have never recorded audio this bad.
Hey mate, could you improve the sound?
What stopped the 2 unfinished iowas from being altered into montanas. Just drop 4th turret.
Was the montana class battleships ever build?
No
Very interesting but I was a bit distracted by what sounds like someone having a very thorough shower.
The air vents in these spaces provide an authentic battleship sound
I so wish at least the USS Montana had been completed
You should remake some of these old videos amongst the release of new ones!
Wish they would of built them just to are navy might
Is that the same model that used to be in the Montana state Capital Rotunda?
Wouldn't have loved to see a squadron of Montanas go head to head with a squadron of H44's
Which version of the Montana? The big big version or the one slated for construction?
@@Yorkington you know the big big version. Go big or go home. There is no replacement for displacement.
@@tjb.7213 BB65-8? The 1,100 foot long design with a 33-knot maximum speed?
@@nicbruv you know it!