What is the most interesting US Warship class in WW2?

I agree with Price, you always provide good insight on subjects regarding warships and naval warfare.

 

They ran supplies to the guerillas in the Philippines. I remember reading about them in the book ""They Fought Alone" about William Fertig, the American leading the resistance on Mindanao.

 

I'm partial to all the old BB classes myself. I am particularly fond of the USS Maryland (named for my mom's state) and the USS Pennsylvania (named for my dad's state). I understand that they were all pretty good designs by the standards of the WWI era when they were laid down: well-concentrated armor, excellent gun power. Slow, of course, but so were most designs of that era. They all had very eventful careers in WWII, doing a lot of the grubby, unglamorous convoy escort and shore bombardment work the newer ships were considered too precious for. I used to live next to a guy who had been on the USS Colorado, and his bumper sticker proclaimed that his old ship had fired more rounds and had more battle stars than any other in the USN. And the old BBs had their one moment of glory at Surigao Strait.

 

I seem to recall rading somewhere the Mississippi wore out two sets of gun tubes during the war. The standards did see a lot of action just not much of the surface action they were designed for. According to Neptune's Inferno one of the big reasons was they were less fuel efficient than the new battleships so although the navy might have been willing to risk them in the Solomons they couldn't support them there early on.

 

I hate to rain on your parade, but the USS North Carolina had the most battle stars - 15, to the Colorado's 10.

The USS Pennsylvania usually claims to be the ship that fired the most ammunition in - and this varies between either the entire war or one campaign(Guam). Either way, the Pennsylvania trumps Colorado by a good 16,000 rounds(not including the 57,447 .50 caliber rounds the Pennsylvania fired(mostly at Pearl Harbor).
For comparison
Colorado
http://usscolorado.org/History/history.htm

Pennsylvania
http://usspennsylvania.org/factsof.htm

 

Does look like Penn fired the most main gun rounds though. Have to be careful how you word things. She did have 50% more main guns though and the rounds were lighter. Quite a bit of variation in round weights depending on what was used so you'd need more details to figure out who fired the greater weight of rounds.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_14-45_mk10.htm
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-45_mk5.htm

Just found this site which claims the Mississippi lead in total weight of ammo fired but it looks like a wartime or just post war reports so may not be accurate.
http://www.wartimepress.com/archive-article.asp?TID=The+Old+Missy+(+USS+Mississippi+BB-41+)&MID=68&q=184&FID=752

I found it interesting though.

 

Thanks, guys!

 

Couple of interesting points here. Colorado's 5"/51s fired over 10,000 rounds, pretty impressive since there were only three or four of them on each side of the ship. Hadn't really thought or read much about the BBs' secondary armament in shore bombardment, but it makes sense to make use of it. The 5"/51 is one of my favorite guns and IMO one of the best for its designed role.

Pennsylvania's stats for Pearl Harbor amount to 400 rounds per gun 5"/25, 500 per 3"/50, and 7000 per .50-caliber. The 3"/50s were a temporary installation. The Navy was in the process of installing four quad 1.1" on BBs, CAs, and Brooklyn type CLs. In many cases the gun tubs were installed before sufficient 1.1s were available, so 3" were mounted in their place. AFAIK they had only local control so might not have been a major contribution to the ships' AA defense.

 

Did Japanese cruisers also use "unit machinery" as well?

 

AFAIK, only in the late-war Matsu/Tachibana class escort destroyers.

 

Okay, thanks for the response. Sorry if this ain't much of a reply, just not sure how to add to this in any way.

 

aside from the bismark and my mythical anti-aircraft cruiser, the warship i was most intrigued with was the shokaku-class carrier. superbly designed and upgraded from the earlier hiryu and soryu-class. sadly, it's wartime performance was dictated by the skill and experience of its on board air group.

 

Good looking too, but I didn't know it was an american warship-class

I like the early american cruiser classes although there were no match for the japanese heavy cruisers. But they can loose almost half of the ship and cross the Pacific anyway...

One of my favourite is the Omaha - Class, just for nostalgic reasons.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NoCq6dbYLg

 

LOL.
No, the japanese cruisers were far beyond the Washington treaty limits, so it is no surprise they were fast, well protected and heavily armed.

 

Japanese cruisers weren't that much faster (34 knots to 32.4-33), the New Orleans and Wichita at least had comparable armor protection, and they were fairly equal in gun power(though given the fact that USN sailors used "cue-balling" often, our cruisers had the edge in rate of fire ):

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_8-55_mk9.htm

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_8-50_3ns.htm

The only real advantage Japanese cruisers had was their torpedo armament, and even then the "Long lance" arguably sunk more Japanese cruisers than it sunk their Allied counterparts.

 

The counterparts to the Myoko/Takao Class were the Pensacolas/Northhamptons (date of commission).
But I agree, their sleek and modern looks may cause to overestimate the real abilities of these japanese cruisers.

Is there a really bad design from the US Navy build between 1920 and 1945? They had bad torpedoes at the start of the war, but all the ships seemed to work fine.

 

Ranger?

I'm just a WWII buff and not an expert but that is the first thing I can pull out of a hat.

 

Why would that be an interesting class of warship? Just curious. It was obsolete before it was launched, and just one of a class of one. Cool name though.

 

Don't get me wrong, the Japanese built some fine cruisers, my point was that despite being restricted by the Washington/London Naval treaties, US cruisers still seemed to remain comparable with Japanese cruisers in most areas, here's a good discussion on WW2 era cruisers:

http://www.ww2f.com/topic/30579-cruiser-comparison/