maximum battleship

During the years leading up to World War I, some members of the U.S. Congress were growing frustrated with what they perceived to be chronic overspending by the U.S. Navy on battleships.{{cite book |title=Senate Congressional Record of the USA |volume=51 |pages=9638–9651 |date=June 2, 1914 |url=https://www.congress.gov/bound-congressional-record/1914/06/02/ |access-date=October 4, 2021 |publisher=Library of Congress |via=Congress.gov |lang=en}}

File:"Maximum Battleship" Design 3.jpg

The only limits on the potential size of an American battleship were the dimensions of the locks of the Panama Canal. The locks measure roughly {{convert|1000|x|110|ft}}, and so the "maximum battleships" were {{convert|975|x|108|ft}}. The Panamax draft limit during the designing of these battleships was {{convert|39|ft|6|in}}, however the Department of the Navy required that all designs be limited to only {{convert|34|ft}} in draft.

File:"Maximum Battleship" Design 4.jpg

Tillman's first request for designs of so-called "maximum battleship" in 1912–1913 led to several estimates for battleships unconstrained by cost. Created by the US Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R), these ships would displace up to {{convert|38000|LT}} and carry 14 inch guns. Although C&R was "appalled," in the words of naval historian Norman Friedman, by the extravagance of these designs, they admitted that far larger warships could transit the Panama Canal's locks, which, due to the US's geography, were often held to be the final limiting factor on the size of a US warship. Such larger designs would be often and seriously proposed within only a few years.Friedman, US Battleships, 148–149.

In 1916, Tillman repeated his request, and C&R produced another series of design studies. C&R drew up four blueprints, all ships having varying characteristics despite being built on the same hull:

{{bulleted list

|Tillman I – Armed with twelve 16-inch guns in four superfiring triple turrets (two at the bow, two at the stern), with an 18-inch thick armor belt and a speed of 26.5 knots.

|Tillman II – Armed with twenty-four 16-inch guns in four superfiring turrets in the same layout as "Tillman I," but with six guns in each turret. The speed remained at 26.5 knots, but the twelve additional 16-inch guns necessitated the thinning of the belt armor (to 13-inches) in order to meet the 70,000-ton displacement.

|Tillman III – A return to the armament of "Tillman I," with the reduced armor of "Tillman II" for an increased speed of 30 knots on a reduced displacement of 63,500-tons.

|Tillman IV – Using the sextuple turrets and layout of "Tillman II," "Tillman IV" retained the 18-inch belt of "Tillman I" in exchange for reducing speed to 25.2 knots and an increase in displacement to 80,000-tons.

|Tillman IV-1 – One of the two sub-designs that came out of refinement of "Tillman IV." Armed instead with thirteen 18-inch guns in five twin and one triple turret. It dropped the 18-inch belt to a 16-inch belt and displaced 80,000-tons.

|Tillman IV-2 – The second of the two sub-designs that came out of refinement of "Tillman IV." Armed instead with fifteen 18-inch guns in five triple turrets. It kept the 16-inch belt of IV-1. It also kept the same displacement as "Tillman IV."}}

The Tillman designs all included five casemate guns mounted aft, two on each side and one at the tip of the stern. Similar "stern chasers" had been previously mounted in Nevada, but were omitted from the {{sclass|Pennsylvania|battleship|4}}. These casemates were a return to an older design idea; American battleship designers had abandoned hull-mounted casemates after the {{sclass|New Mexico|battleship|4}}. They had transpired to be too "wet" – heavy seas rendered them unusable{{snd}}and they had been removed from all earlier classes.

File:Tillman IV-1.jpg

File:Tillman IV-2.jpg

The Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 limited naval armaments, causing the cancellation of the South Dakotas and halting all consideration of the "maximum battleships."

• {{HMS|Incomparable}}
• USN 1934 "Maximum Battleship" study.

{{Reflist}}

• Friedman, Norman. Battleship Design and Development, 1905–1945. New York: Mayflower Books, 1978. {{ISBN|0-8317-0700-3}}. {{OCLC|4505348}}.

• [http://myplace.frontier.com/~wellsbrothers/Battleships/TillmanBB.html An extensive article about the Tillman battleships, including a look at possible designs for "Tillman battlecruisers."]. Retrieved 5 May 2012
• [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/bb-1917.htm Tillman battleships entry at Global Security]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120430052204/http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/s-file/s584110c.htm Design for 80,000-ton battleship prepared by C&R for Senator Tillman], dated 29 December 1916, from U.S. Naval Historical Center. Retrieved 5 May 2012.
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZdNGAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA77 "Construction of battleships"], includes the 1912 resolution
• [https://shipscribe.com/styles/S-584/albums/s584-bb.htm The Shipscribe article on the Bureau of Ships' "Spring Styles" Book # 1 (1911–1925).] This specific webpage publicly preserves, among other things, the "maximum battleship" designs as digital photographs from the first "Spring Styles" US Navy catalog, and describes how they were presented therein. Quoting Shipscribe's About page: "The "Spring Styles" drawings were added on 26 April 2015... following the deletion of the Online Library of Selected Images from the web site of the Naval History and Heritage Command."

Category:World War I battleships of the United States

Category:Battleships

Category:Battleships of the United States Navy

Category:Benjamin Tillman