Navy orders North Carolina and Washington; first battleships laid down in a decade carry 16-inch guns
The Washington Naval Treaty had kept American battleships on ice for over a decade, and the navy that emerged from the freeze faced a Pacific where Japan's Kongō-class battlecruisers could outrun anything it could outgun. In 1937, the U.S. Navy ordered two fast battleships — North Carolina (BB-55) from the New York Naval Shipyard and Washington (BB-56) from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard — the first new battleship design America had attempted under the treaty system. Japan's refusal to sign the Second London Naval Treaty that same year triggered an escalator clause, letting the Navy swap the planned twelve 14-inch guns for nine 16-inch weapons — a decision that would prove itself dramatically on a dark November night off Guadalcanal five years later.
The North Carolina class resolved a decade of treaty-era paralysis by proving that speed, firepower, and armor could coexist within international limits — and then exceed them when diplomacy collapsed. The class set the template for every subsequent American fast battleship, and Washington's destruction of the Kirishima at Guadalcanal in 1942 validated a design philosophy built in a Brooklyn drafting room in 1937.
QWhy did Franklin Roosevelt personally try to limit the North Carolina class to 14-inch guns — and how did Japan accidentally overrule him?
Roosevelt told naval planners the new battleships 'should contemplate the ... 14-inch gun,' a position rooted in his belief that a smaller caliber would encourage other powers to follow suit and keep the arms race tamped down. Admiral Joseph Reeves pushed back hard, arguing the 16-inch gun's armor penetration was too important to surrender voluntarily. The debate was resolved not by either man but by Japan, which refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. That refusal automatically triggered the escalator clause, rendering Roosevelt's preference moot. The president who wanted 14-inch guns ended up with a class that sank a Japanese battleship with 16-inch ones.
QHow did USS Washington sink the Kirishima while remaining effectively invisible to the entire Japanese fleet?
During the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on the night of November 14–15, 1942, Washington's sister ship South Dakota suffered a catastrophic electrical failure that lit her up on Japanese radar and drew concentrated fire. With Japanese guns and attention fixed on South Dakota, Captain Glenn B. Davis maneuvered Washington into a firing position without being detected. Rear Admiral Willis Lee held fire until Washington was close enough to make the engagement decisive. Washington then fired 75 sixteen-inch and 107 five-inch rounds, scoring roughly 20 main battery hits on Kirishima — destroying her steering and main battery. Kirishima's crew scuttled her before dawn. It was the last battleship-on-battleship surface engagement in naval history.
QWhy was USS North Carolina nicknamed 'The Showboat,' and what was actually wrong with her?
The nickname had two layers. North Carolina was the first new American battleship in years, drawing enormous public attention and press coverage — the 'showboat' in the theatrical sense. But the name also carried a gentler edge: the ship vibrated badly. Her propulsion system produced resonance severe enough to require repeated sea trials and multiple propeller configurations before the problem was brought under control. The testing delays made her the most-watched and most-scrutinized ship in the pre-war Navy. She survived a torpedo hit from Japanese submarine I-19 in September 1942 and went on to serve through Okinawa. She is now preserved as a museum ship in Wilmington, North Carolina — still drawing a crowd.
