Connecticut class battleship

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Connecticut-class battleship
Class Overview
Class type:	Battleship
Class name	The State of Connecticut
Preceded by:	Virginia class
Succeeded by:	Mississippi class
Ships of the line:	Connecticut (BB-18), Louisiana (BB-19), Vermont (BB-20), Kansas (BB-21), Minnesota (BB-22), New Hampshire (BB-25)
General characteristics (USS Connecticut)
Displacement:	Standard:16,000 tons Mean War Service:
Length:	456 ft 3 in
Beam:	76 ft 8 in
Draft:	24 ft 5 in
Speed:
Complement:	827 officers and men
Max. cruising radius
Power:
Drive:
Fuel:
Armor	Belt: Bulkheads: Barbettes: Turrets: Decks:

The Connecticut-class battleships were the final class of United States Navy pre-Dreadnought battleship. They were equipped with a heavy broadside (four 12", four 8", six 7", ten 3" and six 3-pounders), having superior seakeeping capabilities and a fast (for the time) top speed of . The class still had some minor deficiencies. In theory, the mixed intermediate battery seemed to hold promise, as the 7" guns fired a much heavier shell than 6" ones, but were faster-firing than the big 8"s. In service, the splashes of the 8" and 7" guns could not be told apart at a distance, negating the higher firing speed of the 7" weapons. A uniform intermediate battery of all 8" or all 7" would have been more useful.

However, they were outdated as the first two ships came into service just months after singlehandedly made every other battleship in the world obsolete. Still, they gave good service through their lifespans - four of the five ships (New Hampshire being the exception) participated in the cruise of the Great White Fleet, and two of them (Connecticut and Minnesota) served as squadron flagships during that cruise (Minnesota, however, only for the first leg of the voyage, as she was shuffled forward into the First Squadron afterward, a move which brought four of the newest and finest battleships in the US Navy to the forefront of the fleet).

After the cruise, the ships were stripped of their fancywork, their bridges were cut down to reduce their target profile and their hulls were repainted from the attractive (but militarily useless) white-and-buff paint scheme to a dull but functional haze grey. Despite being outdated against modern dreadnoughts, they were kept on in the fleet as force levels rose over the early 1910s in the build-up to World War I. In this form, they served the fleet until they were discarded following the Washington Naval Treaty in 1921.

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Last updated on Friday March 07, 2008 at 15:59:18 PST (GMT -0800)
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