The chaotic early 1940s, when World War II ravaged the world, the United States Navy stood at a critical juncture between innovation and tradition. While war shadows loomed large and the Japanese Yamato-class battleships posed threats of superiority in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy initiated an ambitious endeavor to construct the most heavily armed battleships ever conceived the Montana class. These sea monsters were the pinnacle of battleship design, with unprecedented firepower and armor, but were meant to stay on the drafting tables and lose their place in the pages of history without ever slicing through the waters.
The Montana class battleships, planned under the auspices of the 1940 “Two Ocean Navy” building program and allocated in Fiscal Year 1941, were the last battleships commissioned by the U.S. Navy. They were planned to have a designed standard displacement of 60,500 tons, close to a third bigger than their predecessors, the Iowa class. The Montanas were meant to mount a formidable complement of twelve 16″/50 caliber guns, three more than their predecessors, the Iowas, and were to be the sole new World War II era U.S. battleships that had sufficient armor against guns of the same caliber as they themselves had.
“Completion of the Montana class would have given the late 1940s U.S. Navy a total of seventeen new battleships, a considerable advantage over any other nation,” signaling the huge power projection these ships would have had. They were being planned as real giants, measuring 921 feet in length and a top beam of 121 feet, driven by 172,000 horsepower steam turbines for a top speed of 28 knots. Their armour and secondaries of twenty 5″/54 guns in ten double mountings were no less formidable, setting them up to reign supreme in an age when large gun ships roamed the oceans.
But the changing fortunes of war and technological changes were not kind to these giants. In May 1942, prior to any of their keels being laid, the building of the Montanas was put on hold, and by July 1943, with the strategic significance of the battleships waning, the building was canceled. The scrapping of the Montana class was a reflection of an even greater trend reversal in the nature of naval warfare, a recognition of the ascendance of the aircraft carrier and air power as the new determinants of naval superiority.
The Battle of Midway, which occurred during 1942, highlighted the central importance of aircraft carriers, transforming naval doctrine that would direct the U.S. Navy for the rest of the war and afterwards. The need for additional aircraft carriers, amphibious ships, and anti-submarines and the restriction placed by then-available Panama Canal locks made Montanas unsuitable for the new naval battle course. They quite simply could not compete with the flexibility and strike power provided by carriers.
The possible psychological lift to morale in the wake of the Pearl Harbor raid, which such a Montana class super battleship might have generated, was noted but eventually considered too expensive against more immediate strategic requirements. The Navy’s acceptance of learning to conform to “modern trends in warfare” and the necessity of having a more agile and responsive fleet to offset the ever-present danger of hostile submarines and planes signaled the end of the era of the battleship.
