Iowa-class battleship: Difference between revisions

The vessels that eventually became the ''Iowa''-class battleships were born from the U.S. Navy's [[War Plan Orange]], a Pacific war plan against Japan. War planners anticipated that the U.S. fleet would engage and advance in the Central Pacific, with a long line of communication and logistics that would be vulnerable to high-speed Japanese cruisers and capital ships. The chief concern was that the U.S. Navy's traditional 21-knot battle line of [[Standard-type battleship|"Standard-type"]] battleships would be too slow to force these Japanese task forces into battle, while faster aircraft carriers and their cruiser escorts would be outmatched by the Japanese {{sclass|Kongō|battlecruiser|0}} battlecruisers, which had been upgraded in the 1930s to [[fast battleship]]s. As a result, the U.S. Navy envisioned a fast detachment of the battle line that could bring the Japanese fleet into battle. Even during the developmentnew processbattle line speed standard of 27 knots, as the preceding {{sclass|North Carolina|battleship|0}} and {{sclass|South Dakota|battleship (1939)|0}} battleships were designed for, was not considered enough and during their development processes, designs that could achieve over 30 knots in order to counter the threat of fast "big gun" ships were seriously considered.{{sfn|Garzke|Dulin|1995|p=107}}{{sfn|Friedman|1986|p=307}} At the same time, a special strike force consisting of fast battleships operating alongside carriers and destroyers was being envisaged; such a force could operate independently in advance areas and act as scouts. This concept eventually evolved into the [[Fast Carrier Task Force]], though initially the carriers were believed to be subordinate to the battleship.{{sfn|Sumrall|1988|p=41}}