laststandonzombieisland

Here we see the North Carolina-class battleship USS Washington (BB-56) maneuvering off Oahu, Hawaii, in mid-1943 during the height of the War in the Pacific. Taken by a USS Yorktown (CV-10) photographer in beautiful original color.

I always liked the North Carolina-class profile with their twin thin stacks. They look a lot like really big cruisers. The follow-on SoDaks, with their stubby hull and single fat stack and the Iowas with their twin fat stacks don’t have the same “feeling” of speed to me, even though they were actually faster.

For reference, at their 46,000-ton heaviest, the 728-foot Washington could make 26.8-knots on a 121,000 hp Babcock &Wilcox/GE plant.

The South Dakotas, at 44,519-tons with a 130,000 hp plant could still hit 27.5-knots on a tighter 680-foot hull.

In contrast, the behemoth Iowas, with a 58,000-ton full load (post-1980s modernization) were still able to pull down 30+ even in their advanced age largely due to their very impressive 212,000 total shaft horsepower– almost twice that of Washington and her sistership North Carolina, proving them to be the king of the “fast battleship” concept. This fact, that they were the only battleships with the speed required for post- VJ Day operations based on fast aircraft carrier task forces, left them still in the U.S. inventory after 1962 when the six low-mileage dreadnoughts of the North Carolina and South Dakota-classes were scrapped or, in the case of half of them, donated as museum ships while the Iowas of the same era went on to another three decades on the Naval List.