The preceding two North Carolina-class battleships were assigned to the FY1937 building program but in 1936 already the General Board wanted two more battleships allocated to FY1938. Their career was short as they spent most of their postwar time in reserve, until the 1960s for South Dakota and Indiana while USS Massachusetts and Alabama ended as museum ships. They were commissioned from the the summer of 1942 and served both in the Atlantic and the Pacific’s carrier groups. Construction started shortly into the war, procured as per FY 1939 for the first pair instead of FY1938 as initially planned. ![]() They had notably a single funnel and a less favourable hull shape ratio for top speed, but miraculously just lost one knot. Design-wise, they were basically a “repeat on budget” keeping the same main battery of nine 16″/45 caliber Mark 6 guns in three-gun turrets but, smaller, more compact, freeing weight and surface for a better protection. The class comprised also USS Indiana, Massachusetts, and Alabama, all designed under the peacetime standard displacement limit of 35,000 long tons, like the preceding North Carolina class. The South Dakota class was a class of four fast battleships, the lead vessel being the second named after the 40th state, taking the name of a super-dreanought class canceled under terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. USS South Dakota (BB-57), Indiana (BB-58), Massachusetts (BB 59), Alabama (BB 60) The shortened fast battleships
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