The US Super Battleship Designed To Fight The Monster Ship Yamato

Montana-class battleship

Grant Piper
4 min readAug 6, 2022
(Public domain)

On August 8th, 1940, the Japanese launched the largest battleship in human history. The Yamato garnered attention from naval observers around the world as the monster ship slid into the pages of history. At the time, most naval officers believed that the next great naval war would be fought — and won — with ships like the Yamato. Super battleships armed with massive cannons capable of hitting targets miles away would ply the waves and engage in titanic struggles for naval supremacy.

That is not how history played out, but the appearance of the Yamato caused the United States to develop their own super battleship. The US response was the Montana-class which was a proposed line of battleships designed to usurp the Iowa-class battleships. The Montana-class was specifically made to be able to do battle with the Japanese super battleships.

American Super Battleship

Simple schematics of the Montana-class (Public domain)

When the Japanese launched the Yamato in 1940, it far outclassed the United States’ Iowa-class battleships. It outstripped them by over 15,000 tonnes, featured best-in-class…

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Grant Piper

Professional writer. Amateur historian. Husband, father, Christian.