Maximum Battleship - Designs

Designs

Tillman's first request, in 1912–1913, was never completed, and though the studies it involved had some influence on the design of the Pennsylvania class of battleships, that class was essentially just an enlargement of the preceding Nevada class. In 1916, he repeated his request, and this time the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair produced a series of design studies, which again had some influence on the design of the next class of battleships, in this case the South Dakotas, an enlargement of the previous Colorado class.

After the first four design studies were complete, design IV was chosen for further development and three additional studies, IV-1, IV-2, and IV-3, were prepared. At the request of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, these designs used 18-inch guns instead of the 16-inch/50-calibers used in the earlier studies. The Navy decided that design IV-2 was the most practical (or perhaps the least impractical) and presented it to Congress early in 1917.

These designs differed from the battleships being built in two significant ways beyond just their size. Firstly, unlike preceding classes, the "maximum battleships" were designed with a continuous flush main deck. Most battleships in this era had a long forecastle deck. Secondly, 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 the Nevada class, but were omitted from the Pennsylvania class. These casemates were a return to an older design idea; American battleship designers had abandoned hull-mounted casemates after the New Mexico class. They had transpired to be too "wet" – heavy seas rendered them unusable—and they had been removed from all earlier classes. However, the casemates on the "maximum battleships" would have been higher above the waterline than they had been on earlier designs, so it is possible that their huge size and flush decks would have provided enough freeboard astern to keep the casemates dry.

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