South Carolina Class Battleship - Background

Background

Battleships at the turn of the 20th century were armed generally with a few heavy guns in turrets on the centerline fore and aft and with a number of intermediate-caliber weapons. It was found that as the range between naval combatants increased, the shells of these secondary weapons did not penetrate the heavy armor of enemy warships. Therefore, several navies worked simultaneously and independently toward a battleship with a main battery composed exclusively of the largest guns. HMS Dreadnought, armed with ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns and completed in 1906, was the first of these warships to go into service and for this reason became the best known. However, Japan began designing warships armed entirely with 12-inch guns in 1903—only the lack of funds stopped her from following through—and Italian naval architect Vittorio Cuniberti's design for an all-big-gun vessel was published in the 1903 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships.

Several officers in the United States Navy began suggesting such a warship in 1901. A proposal by Lieutenant Matt H. Signor for a vessel armed with six 12-inch guns in triple turrets fore and aft and six 10-inch (254 mm) guns in triple turrets amidships, appeared in Proceedings, the official publication of the U.S. Naval Institute. While this article did not have a direct effect on U.S. naval warship design, it made enough of an impression to prompt both Professor P.R. Alger, the U.S. Navy's leading gunnery expert, and David W. Taylor, who would later become Chief Constructor, to comment publicly on and propose improvements to this design. Another U.S. naval officer, Commander H.C. Poundstone, submitted his own all-big-gun design directly to President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902; Proceedings published this paper in June and September 1903. Nor had the Navy's own Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) been caught napping. One of the designs it submitted for the USS Mississippi in March 1902 featured twelve 10-inch guns.

At its 1903 Summer Conference, staff at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) found that a battleship armed with twelve 11- or 12-inch guns hexagonally arranged would be the equal of three or more conventional battleships. After this conference, the staff sent a memorandum to the War College president that reported considerable informal discussion and guarded approval for such a vessel. This recommendation was passed to the General Board. Impressed, the board asked C&R to prepare feasibility designs on an all-big gun design. However, because it was preoccupied with higher-priority projects which included designing ships approved under the 1904 Naval Building Act, C&R did not start work on this request until September 1904. even then, the design it submitted was armed with four 12-inch and eight 10-inch guns. The NWC tested a preliminary version of this ship with its 1903 proposed ship and the USS Connecticut at its 1904 Summer Conference. It found only the 12-inch gun satisfactory in penetrating armor at long range; added advantages were easier fire control and simplified ammunition storage and handling.

Meanwhile, considering the NWC's findings and C&R's apparent reluctance to produce an all-big-gun warship, it was fortunate that Commander Poundstone kept working on his designs toward this end. He presented three of them to the General Board and the Bureau of Navigation in June 1904 to illustrate his notion that, with the increasing size in intermediate calibers, warships built with a universal heavy-caliber gun were only a matter of time. At the same time, Lieutenant Commander W.S. Sims was doing pioneering work in U.S. naval gunnery and came out in favor of Poundstone's work when he was apprised of it in the fall of 1904. C&R had claimed that the mixed battery on the Connecticut was superior to that of any other battleship in the world at that time and that a capital ship with a uniform heavy caliber was impractical. Sims cited the gunnery results attained at the 1904 fleet target practice and displayed one of Poundstone's designs to refute C&R's claims in detail. By this time President Roosevelt had taken a personal interest in the controversy, which along with Sims' testimony to the General Board ended C&R's procrastination. C&R worked out detailed plans for an all-big-gun vessel between July and November 1905 and approved a final set on 23 November. The Secretary of the Navy approved them on 15 December 10 days after Dreadnought had been laid down but before any details about her had been released officially.