Alabama

History

Design

The South Dakota-class battleships are the next step in design from the previous North Carolina-class battleships. Still designed in the late 1930s it was under the limitations imposed by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty and the subsequent 1936 London Naval Treaty. Originally conceived to be more additions to the North Carolina-class ships, it was decided to belay their design by a year in order to implement some solutions to the shortcomings discovered on the preceding “fast-battleship” class.

The South Dakotas were the first “fast-battleship” class of the US Navy to implement sloped armour plating to address the issue of high angle oncoming shells from plunging fire, especially from 406mm shells. Due to the design itself being of an advanced phase already when this decision was made, only the main armour belt, located interior of the ship, was able to be angled inwards, by 19 degrees, which stretched from the main deck to the bottom plates. More so, the bottom plate armour and other major longitudinal armour sections were thickened in comparison to the North Carolina-class.

As a consequence of the additional armouring to increase the survivability of the South Dakota-class ships, they had to be made shorter to meet the displacement restrictions of 35,000 tonnes imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty. Therefore, the South Dakota-class ships were about 14 meters shorter than the preceding North Carolina class battleships. But, the design still required the ship class to retain the same speed of 27 knots as the preceding class, therefore more powerful propulsion systems were required, and some creative design features were implemented to fit them in a more compact hull. The machinery rooms had to house the boilers, turbines, and their accompanying evaporating and distilling equipment, as apposed to being housed in separate rooms in a more traditional design. Furthermore, the machinery rooms themselves took up to two deck spaces; this is because the boilers were placed on a level above the rest of the machinery to allow the propeller shafts, connected to their respective turbines, to run their full length, unhampered. Interesting to note, the bottom hull ends well before the stern of the ship, and the two outer propeller shafts form a “skeg”, or an enclosure, around the inner propeller shafts; additional form of protection from torpedoes.

The superstructure of the South Dakota-class is taller, but narrower than the ones found on their predecessors. Due to the concentration of propulsion machinery in the midsection, the design required only one funnel as opposed to the usual two, saving some deck space. From the onset the South Dakota-class were designated the role of fleet flagships, therefore an admiral’s bridge was placed above the captain’s command bridge on the conning tower specifically for this purpose.

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  USS Alabama (BB-60), 1 December 1942, in camouflage. Note trunked tower foremast and funnel, similar to that used in the design of the later Iowa-class battleships.

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  Alabama fires a salvo during exercises with the British Home Fleet in 1943

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  Alabama escorting the aircraft carrier USS Monterey en route to the Marshall Islands

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  Bob Feller by a 40 mm quadruple anti-aircraft gun mount, probably on board USS Alabama in 1943.

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  Alabama cruising with her screen of escorting destroyers in April 1944; Knapp is in the foreground

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  Alabama at permanent berth.

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  Alabama as a museum ship in Mobile Bay, Alabama, 1985.