Battleship Montana: What Would We Have Done Differently

[miletus12]

What would the New Jersey Museum curator change?

a. Make the Montanas faster.
b. Remove weight.
c. Remove the armored conning tower, so that the topweight reserve is improved for antennas and aerials.
d. Improve the AAA with automatic 3 / 50s. Add gun directors. Use quad "Thunderbolt" 20s.
e. Compactify the superstructure and trunk the funnels to improve the AAA sky-arcs coverage.
d. Improve the flag facilities and communication suites.

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What would I have done? Razor blades and skyscrapers in peacetime. Armored divisions in WWII. Or what actually happened...

[lordroel]

Jan 15, 2023 11:32:48 GMT miletus12 said:

What would the New Jersey Museum curator change?

a. Make the Montanas faster.
b. Remove weight.
c. Remove the armored conning tower, so that the topweight reserve is improved for antennas and aerials.
d. Improve the AAA with automatic 3 / 50s. Add gun directors. Use quad "Thunderbolt" 20s.
e. Compactify the superstructure and trunk the funnels to improve the AAA sky-arcs coverage.
d. Improve the flag facilities and communication suites.

===============================================================================

What would I have done? Razor blades and skyscrapers in peacetime. Armored divisions in WWII. Or what actually happened...

Move this to CanisD shipyard for Cancelled, & Never Weres ship designs as it is about a class of battleships that never entered into service.

[belushitd]

This all depends on when the hypothetical Montanas became active. If its in 1944, when originally planned, very little changes. The AAA battery would be the same DP 5 inch guns used on virtually every other US capital ship of the era. The use of proximity fuses on the shells pretty much made this a world beater. The quad 20's are only useful as long as the opposition is using torpedo planes and then only at the end of the torpedo run.

Come the 1950's and the advent of the Jet age, you pretty much can remove any AAA that is guided by the human eye. People are not fast enough in their reactions to be able to shoot down jets with AAA. Sure, you can get lucky, but when the speed of the opposition doubles from around 300 MPH to over 600 MPH, you're in a lot of trouble with your slew rate, even with hydraulics. AAA doesn't really regain ability until the CWIS of the 1980s. At this stage, missiles are in their infancy, and are not really useful.

Once missiles are able to kill planes, you can start reinstalling them on the Montana class, assuming its not been scrapped in the meanwhile.

"Make the Montana faster" and "removing weight" are the same thing. Where are you going to get the weight from? Ok, you can scrap the conning tower (Making a through c the same thing) but you then need to create an armored space inside the hull. I suppose you could add utility to the CIC and con the ship from there, but that's going to make it VERY crowded. Now, I may not understand exactly what one does from the conning tower, but as far as I know, you con (read steer) the ship. Most of the time, its not an issue, particularly when under air attack. However, I don't think you can assume historical circumstances prevail. (the US is the only country to maintain anything that can pretend to be a battle fleet). In particular, if the US holds onto the Montanas, you have to assume that the USSR probably completes at least one of the Sovetsky Soyuz class and in that case, you need to keep an armored platform to steer the ship during surface combat. Sure, drop the armored steering box (aka conning tower) down in the superstructure to do both things you said (clearing arcs {not as important, depending on the timeframe} and opening space for aerials) but you still need something that will withstand heavy gunfire.

Not entirely sure how well trunking the funnels would work. At some point when trunking, you end up in a position where your flue gasses no longer exhaust on their own, and you end up needing additional fans to continue to provide draft, even if you're under forced draft from the front end. There's also only so much trunking you can do before you're constricting your exhaust, as well. And, again, after the late 1940's the threat you're facing doesn't really need AAA arcs.

Flag facilities? I'm not entirely certain how large the flag facilities were supposed to be for the Montana class. It is my understanding that they were already pretty large, and the accompanying communication facilities were also large. As the conversion of the USS Hawaii would have been a better choice because by the time the Montanas came online, you don't need your admiral in the same ship that is fighting broadside to broadside with the enemy. The command ships that exist today have very little in the way of armament.

Belushi TD

[miletus12]

Feb 2, 2023 17:50:51 GMT belushitd said:

This all depends on when the hypothetical Montanas became active. If its in 1944, when originally planned, very little changes. The AAA battery would be the same DP 5 inch guns used on virtually every other US capital ship of the era. The use of proximity fuses on the shells pretty much made this a world beater. The quad 20's are only useful as long as the opposition is using torpedo planes and then only at the end of the torpedo run.

The 3 inch AAA was already a thing in the USN in 1939. What was not the thing was the VT or radio proximity fuse. That was 1943. The 5 inch bore VT fused ammunition was in 1943 and it was fitted into the inventory at that time. The 3 inch automatic was built to replace the 40s because it was found the 40s were no0t good enough and this started in 1945.

40s and 20s are still used today if the planes are low enough. Human reaction time is good enough with cueing to saw the patch of sky through which a jet or helicopter flies. See photo.

Feb 2, 2023 17:50:51 GMT belushitd said:

Once missiles are able to kill planes, you can start reinstalling them on the Montana class, assuming its not been scrapped in the meanwhile.

Most SAMs are myopic below 1000 meters unless in chase mode, which is the MANPAD default. Otherwise you predict lead and lob into a hunk of sky called "the basket" and either steer to kill in the fall after rocket motor burnout or hope a prox fuse is close enough and your basket is in the right place for the  aircraft to fly into it and be killed. 

Feb 2, 2023 17:50:51 GMT belushitd said:

"Make the Montana faster" and "removing weight" are the same thing. Where are you going to get the weight from? Ok, you can scrap the conning tower (Making a through c the same thing) but you then need to create an armored space inside the hull. I suppose you could add utility to the CIC and con the ship from there, but that's going to make it VERY crowded. Now, I may not understand exactly what one does from the conning tower, but as far as I know, you con (read steer) the ship. Most of the time, its not an issue, particularly when under air attack. However, I don't think you can assume historical circumstances prevail. (the US is the only country to maintain anything that can pretend to be a battle fleet). In particular, if the US holds onto the Montanas, you have to assume that the USSR probably completes at least one of the Sovetsky Soyuz class and in that case, you need to keep an armored platform to steer the ship during surface combat. Sure, drop the armored steering box (aka conning tower) down in the superstructure to do both things you said (clearing arcs {not as important, depending on the timeframe} and opening space for aerials) but you still need something that will withstand heavy gunfire.

Strangely, the US Wichitas and British Counties prove that is not true. The hull shape and drag coefficient of wetted hull area has more to do with speed limitation thyan "weight". The two ship classes ADDED weight and saw no appreciable loss in speed because their reserve buoyancy was so substantial that their hulls were not driven DOWN into the water increasing the "wetted hull area" and thus increasing drag. Reducing weight TOPSIDE in a Montana affects her keel depth DOWN and reduces wetted area, thus diminishes overall parasitic hull drag.

 

Feb 2, 2023 17:50:51 GMT belushitd said:

Not entirely sure how well trunking the funnels would work. At some point when trunking, you end up in a position where your flue gasses no longer exhaust on their own, and you end up needing additional fans to continue to provide draft, even if you're under forced draft from the front end. There's also only so much trunking you can do before you're constricting your exhaust, as well. And, again, after the late 1940's the threat you're facing doesn't really need AAA arcs.

You Y the piping together as they did in the South Dakotas and go up through a reinforced MACK. You had forced ventilation anyway in the originals so what is new here? If you look at the Arleigh Burkes today, you notice that VLS arrays still need clear arcs to flop the missile over and POINT them at the section of sky the missile needs to fly into to reach its drop basket. Sky arcs remain important and we still design for it. 

Feb 2, 2023 17:50:51 GMT belushitd said:

Flag facilities? I'm not entirely certain how large the flag facilities were supposed to be for the Montana class. It is my understanding that they were already pretty large, and the accompanying communication facilities were also large. As the conversion of the USS Hawaii would have been a better choice because by the time the Montanas came online, you don't need your admiral in the same ship that is fighting broadside to broadside with the enemy. The command ships that exist today have very little in the way of armament.

40 men (staff) and an admiral's battle plot take up a LOT of room.

[miletus12]

More on the Montana Class.

Despite the arguments in favor, the wastage of resources on battleships probably delayed USN recovery by a FULL YEAR after Pearl Harbor. As I have mentioned elsewhere, while the North Carolinas and South Dakotas could be justified by what was known, the Iowas were a waste and the Montanas if built would have been sheer folly.   

[belushitd]

You're confabulating the early marks of the 3 inch AAA with the Mark 22 3 inch AAA. The previous marks were hand fed and while "quick firing" were NOT automatic, as the Mark 22 was. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-inch/50-caliber_gun The "quick firing" 3 inch mounts were being landed as quickly as the 40's and 20s could be manufactured and installed. Also, the automatic 3 inch gun only came into widespread use when the proximity fuse was miniaturized enough to fit in the 3 inch shell.

As far as 40's and 20's still in use... Well, you see them on land. Their use at sea is mainly in CWIS mounts, although the Italians seem to like them a great deal. Using them to saturate an area of sky is quite effective when the sky is constricted and you know what direction the enemy is going to approach from. Since a missile attack can come from any angle, saturating a part of the sky is ineffective, which is why they are used in CWIS mounts, which are generally radar guided, rather than being used to fill a part of the sky with shells. Another point... The vast majority of attacks on ships at sea these days (regardless of the Argentines in the Falklands war) are missiles, which are fired from FAR outside 20, 40, 3 inch or even 5 inch range.

Either way, none of your points about the 3 inch or 20 or 40 mm have anything to do with my point that if the proposed changes to the Montanas happen in 1944, when it was originally planned to have them commission, there would have been virtually no changes to the AAA suite, as there was neither a perceived need nor the technology to change them.


I don't understand your point about MANPADS. Are you suggesting that ships crews should carry MANPADS and use them in defense of the ship? The rest of that paragraph works for land applications where approach vectors are limited, but at sea, doesn't work that way. Again, CWIS doesn't saturate the sky, it fires aimed rounds. Yes, 20 or so at the target and then looks to see if its been destroyed, but as I understand it, the CWIS is capable of hitting within the first 3 or so shells.


As far as your paragraph about the wetted hull area, what you said is what I said. Reducing topside weight will cause the ship to have less draft, therefore reducing the wetted hull. So, reducing weight will also increase speed, as I said.


With regards to trunking.... The SoDaks had 130K shaft horsepower from their 8 boilers. The Montanas would have had 172K from their 8 boilers. Having a third again power implies a lot more gasses flowing. I am unconvinced that it was as simple as "trunk them together to clear arcs" because they also understood the concept of clearing arcs for AAA back in the day. I'd also like to point out that I specifically stated AAA arcs, not arcs for radar.


Your VLS comment is fairly pointless, because you mount the damn things on the top of the ship, and they fire up. The turn and point doesn't happen until its FAR above the highest point in the ship. See this video, about 30 seconds in.

As far as flag space goes, according to wiki, the flagship was planned to have an additional 400 or so people. Not sure what they would have deleted to put the space there, or if they'd have just made the crew accomodations more cramped, but they planned for far more than 40 people.

Belushi TD

[belushitd]

Feb 2, 2023 18:51:49 GMT miletus12 said:

More on the Montana Class.

Despite the arguments in favor, the wastage of resources on battleships probably delayed USN recovery by a FULL YEAR after Pearl Harbor. As I have mentioned elsewhere, while the North Carolinas and South Dakotas could be justified by what was known, the Iowas were a waste and the Montanas if built would have been sheer folly.   

A full year? I don't know about that. Honestly, I'm not sure it would have mattered at all. 

Even if you assume that the Iowas were a waste, I don't think you can blame the US navy's recovery on them. They were all laid down before Pearl Harbor. Even if you'd immediately stopped building them (which would be stupid, as most of your battle line had just been wrecked) and immediately started scrapping them, it would have taken a good long time to clear the slip to be able to build something else. On the order of 6 months, probably. All the steel that had been cut and shaped, and armor and the turrets and guns, would have to be scrapped, rather than be reused in other ships. Even the sheet steel used in the ships skin was 1.5 inch STS, which, as I understand it, was not used in any other ships, not even the carriers, so that would need to be sent back to the foundry, reheated, run through the rollers to thin it out, and then reannealed to make it suitable for other uses. 

The US had sufficient industrial might to be able to build a half dozen ships that turned out to be ships we could have done without, and still beat the world's navies. Remember, the first 13 Essex class carriers had been laid down by Pearl Harbor. Well, maybe 11. I think two were laid down in December of 41, but I don't know if it was before or after the 7th. 

The best that the Navy could have hoped for is for another 6 carriers around the same time CV-31 through CV-47 came on line, which is mid 1944 to 1946. By that time, the Navy had not only recovered, but was a world beating machine. 

Belushi TD