What would have happened if America had built this monster battleship?
America’s Iowa-class battleships, some of the last battleships ever produced, were also the most powerful. Equipped with nine 16-inch guns, they were floating arsenals capable of duking it out—and winning—against any other ship of their kind. The ships were so powerful they were reactivated in the 1980s, refitted to do battle against the Soviet Union.
As powerful as they were, the Iowas would have been dwarfed by an even larger class—the monster battleships of the Montana class. How would the Montanas, which were tragically never built, have fared against Germany’s greatest battleship, the Bismarck?