Delaware Class Battleship - Design

Design

Prompted by the launch of and misinformation about HMS Dreadnought, the U.S. Navy and Congress faced what they perceived as a vastly better battleship than the two South Carolina battleships then under construction, which were designed under tonnage constraints that Congress had imposed on capital ships. Actually, the South Carolinas were inferior only in speed to Dreadnought; they carried fewer heavy guns but, unlike Dreadnought, could bring all of them to bear on the broadside. Because of this, they could fire an equal weight of metal. Also, because greater time and care had been taken with their armor and bulkhead arrangement, they were far greater protected than the British ship. None of this was realized at the time. Nevertheless, the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) had struggled tremendously to design an adequate warship under congressional limits and had taken battleship design as far under those restrictions as far as it could. Seeing now that those limits had become unrealistic, Congress ended them; any subsequent constraints would be dictated by treaty limitations. The language of the authorizing act of June 26, 1906 was for a battleship "carrying as heavy armor and as an powerful armament as any known vessel of its class, to have the highest practicable speed and the greatest practicable radius of action."

The Delaware class was the second of 11 distinct U.S. capital ship designs begun from 1906 to 1919; some 29 battleships and six battlecruisers were laid down during this period, though seven of the battleships and all six of the battlecruisers were cancelled. Except for the Lexington-class battlecruisers, these were all relatively slow ships, designed for no more than 23 knots. They ranged in displacement from 16,000 to 42,000 tons. At this time, no U.S. dreadnought class battleship had yet hit the water as all were either at some stage of building or in design. Virtually the entire U.S. Navy battle line was being designed by drawing on experience from pre-dreadnought designs, or from observation of foreign battleship design.

The design for these ships was actually ready in 1905 or 1906. Two variants were offered—a 10-gun version on 20,500 tons and a 12-gun alternative on 24,000 tons. The larger ship was rejected as too expensive for the firepower it offered, even after its displacement was reduced to 22,000 tons. Also, because C&R was required to consider private designs, construction on the Delawares did not commence until 1907. None of the private designs was considered remotely satisfactory by the Navy. However, Fore River later developed its version into the battleship Riadavia, which was built for the Argentine navy. While the C&R design was considered superior, it still came under criticism, particularly for the poor placement of and lack of protection for the secondary armament.