Florida Class Battleship - Design

Design

The Floridas were the third of 11 separate classes built between 1906 and 1919, a total of 29 battleships and 6 battle-cruisers. Virtually the entire American battle line was being designed from pre-dreadnought experience and observation of foreign designs, as no U.S. dreadnought had yet been commissioned at the time that the Floridas were designed; all were either at some stage of building or in design. American capital ship design was also heavily influenced by war games conducted at the U.S. Navy's Naval War College. Captain William Sims led a reform movement that assigned warship design to the General Board.

These ships were an improvement over the preceding Delaware class. Their engine rooms were larger to hold four Curtis or Parsons steam turbines. Their larger beam gave them greater metacentric height, in which the Delawares were notably deficient, which improved buoyancy and reduced hull stress. The ships mounted new 5 in (127 mm) /51 caliber guns as secondary batteries in casemates that boasted increased armor protection. The class retained the large and fully enclosed conning towers that were adopted for the preceding Delawares, as a result of American studies of the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The design reduced the vulnerability of the command staff. Overall, these ships were much better protected than their British counterparts, although they were modified extensively during the interwar period.