They were designed to carry 8 16” guns, displace over 55,000 tons and steam at 30 knots powered by diesel engines. The H-39 class, the direct successor to the Bismarck Class came closest to fruition of any of these ships. However as grandiose as the plans of the Americans and Japanese were the German proposals grew from ships somewhat larger than the Bismarck and Tirpitz to ships that would have dwarfed any warship ever built, including the US Navy Nimitz Class Aircraft Carriers. Initially the designers called for 8-9 20.1” guns but tests indicated that the ships would then displace over 90,000 tons making them too large and costly. The Super Yamato’s or the A-150 class as their design was known would have been comprised of 2 vessels each armed with 6 20.1” guns displacing over 70,000 tons with a speed of 30 knots. The class was suspended in May of 1942 and cancelled after the battle of Midway. Thus they would have been 5 knots slower than the preceding Iowa’s which were designed to keep up with the fast carriers. They would have had a speed of 28 knots as designers chose firepower and protection over speed. The Montana class would have been comprised of 5 ships, each armed with 12 16” guns displacing over 72,000 tons at full load. The Germans chose the path of U-Boats, the Japanese and Americans Aircraft carriers and their escorts. The simple reason was that their construction would have consumed vast amounts of raw materials, labor and industry which was needed for other types of vessels. When war came work and planning was suspended on the ships. the latter would have been the largest artillery ever mounted aboard ship. The guns to be mounted ranged from 16” guns on the Montana’s and the initial German H-39 class, to 20” guns aboard the Super Yamato’s and the H-44. Had they been built they would have been some of the largest and most heavily armed ships ever seen. But that was before the vulnerability of battleships to carrier based aircraft brought about a revolution in naval warfare as Fast Carrier Task Forces supplanted the traditional battle line of battleships. Most of the ships described here were already on the drawing board by the late 1930s, even as the Super-Dreadnaught Battleships of the Bismarck, Yamato and Iowa classes were under construction. However in the mid-1930s with the threat of war again in the air nations once again began to build bigger, faster and more powerful Battleships. The great naval arms races, especially that of the race to build the most powerful battleships were expensive and after the First World War, nations exhausted by war and bankrupted by the costs attempted, for a bit longer than a decade to dictate limits on their construction and size. One of the amazing aspects of the Battleships after the launching of the HMS Dreadnought in 1906 how they impacted every major power and were in some part a reason that England went to war with Germany in 1914. I happen to be one of those who are fascinated about warships, especially the all gun battleships and cruisers of the first half of the 20th Century. None ever sailed the high seas and only two even began construction but they are the stuff of dreams for those fascinated with the history of battleships and their development. It could see that–by some criteria–a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgment implied….” Iain M. It found, as it was rightly and properly supposed to, an awful beauty in both the weaponry of war and the violence and devastation which that weaponry was capable of inflicting, and yet it knew that attractiveness stemmed from a kind of insecurity, a sort of childishness. It was built, designed to glory in destruction, when it was considered appropriate.
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