Just how big were the Iowa class battleships?

[eightmillimeter]

Yes, each progressive class past the old WWI battleships (like were at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941) got longer: the South Dakota class was longer, then the North Carolina class was a bit more, and then finally the Iowa class was our longest. In fact, the Iowa class was ~ 140' longer than the North Carolina vessels , which in turn was ~ 50' longer than the South Dakota ones. They sure stretched them out.

SoDak’s were shorter than NorCals, they had to concentrate the armor to increase the armor effectiveness for 16” gunfire. NorCal got upgraded from 14” to 16” as a last minute upgrade and they couldn’t upgrade the armor and make treaty weight.

[eightmillimeter]

Then there's the Surigao Strait where the old U.S. battleships under Oldendorf "crossed the T" of the Japs and won the last battleship engagement in world history. It was often referred to as "Pearl Harbor's revenge" since five of our battleships that night had been at Pearl Harbor on that Day of Infamy.

If I can find my OG copy of West Va’s battle report I’ll post it, it’s awesome and funny. They have a minute by minute log and when they fire the first salvo, it’s literally in the log… “Heard weapons officer chuckle and report ‘hit’”

[Disciple]

Re Midway, pick up Tully & Parshall's book Shattered Sword. Blow by blow postmortem.

Read it thanks to your recommendation. Something I was wondering after finishing, but forgot to look into, have more wrecks been found/investigated since that book was written?

[Diamondback]

Read it thanks to your recommendation. Something I was wondering after finishing, but forgot to look into, have more wrecks been found/investigated since that book was written?

Parshall was on an expedition that positively identified one of the carrier wrecks. They usually post updates and other interesting news on their site, CombinedFleet.com--probably the best concentration of IJN expertise in the world.

[WillBrink]

FYI: