Something New for the Fleet

This week at Brooklyn Navy Yard the U.S. Navy is to commission the 750-ft., 35,000-ton North Carolina, the first new battleship to join the U.S. Navy in 18 years. By July she will be ready to make her trial runs, then join the Fleet. Close behind will be her sister ship, the Washington, almost completed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and by next year the South Dakota.* And when the North Carolina goes into service, she will have profound effects on U.S. naval power and strategy.

The major tactical effect will become apparent only when at least three of the new battle wagons are in service. The 15 battleships now in commission are slow (18-21 knots), depend mainly on heavy armor and crushing fire power. Rated at 27 knots, the North Carolina can probably do 30. Three such speed wagons will give the Fleet a new battleship division, able to operate as a unit with a fair chance to outmaneuver the fastest battleships which an enemy is likely to have. The Navy's present battleships require destroyers, cruisers and aircraft to do the fast sea work, screen the battleships themselves, and maneuver the enemy within range of the main battle line. With faster battle ships, the Fleet should be able to release some destroyers for detached scouting and patrol.

North Carolina and Washington alone will greatly increase the Fleet's fire power. The whole Fleet now has only 24 16-in. guns (eight each on the West Virginia, Maryland, Colorado). Each of the new class has nine. What is more, the new guns have longer range, throw a heavier shell (2,300 lb., instead of the 2,100). Net result: the 18 big guns on North Carolina and Washington will almost double the 16-in. broadside power of the Fleet, tremendously enhance its chances to crush an enemy line.

Naval officers devoutly hope that the new battleships have adequate protection against aircraft attack. If so, they will be the first in the U.S. Navy to have it. Said Secretary of the Navy Knox (in last week's Saturday Evening Post): "Our officers appreciated the possibility of air attack, but their failure to translate the appreciation into protection for the ships is the one real miscalculation they made during the 20 years of peace." Design of the North Carolina class was begun before the Navy had waked up, presumably was altered in time. The North Carolina has 20 5-in. guns, an undisclosed number of 1.1 pom-poms to ward off air attack (the five-inchers are also designed for use against torpedo carriers). This anti-aircraft armament represents an enormous advance over the Navy's last battleship, West Virginia (commissioned in 1923), which carries only eight 5-in. anti-aircraft guns.

Even bigger and faster battleships are on the way, probably will not begin to join the Fleet before 1943. On order are seven 45,000-tonners, designed to better the North Carolina's speed by several knots. Still on the drafting boards are plans for five even bigger ones. These undoubtedly will have even more gun power, at least equal armor protection. Whether they will be as fast as the North Carolina is still a moot point.

In any event the U.S. Fleet--now the world's slowest, heaviest, most powerful--will within a few years be the world's fastest, heaviest, most powerful. But Navy men last week thought that they would have to fight their next war with their slow Fleet. History was faster than the new one.

*In 1942 the Navy hopes to have two more (Indiana, Massachusetts).

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