Montana Class Battleship

Building a (accurate) Montana is not as simple as splicing two Iowa hulls together for length and reworking the superstructure. They were actually wider than the Iowas and had a different hull form.

I will leave it to you to define accuracy to your own personal level. The image below is from the USNHC collection and shows one of several design studies for the Montana.



http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/usnshtp/bb/bb67.htm

Should you choose, you could splice some Iowas together and call it close enough.

Mike Bartel of Imperial Hobby Productions has made some 1:700 scale Montanas which are more accurate WRT the hull form. They were resin, limited production run, and long out of availability.

But fear not, Mike has posted that he is working on a 1:350 scale Montana which he has said will be sold through Yankee Modelworks. I'm not sure what the status and due date is for the kit

Ed. Thanks for the advice. A 1/350 resin kit would be nice but pricey. I just thaught that if I could get my hands on an old Iowa class kit that I could lengthen and widen the hull of the Iowa and add another turret. The dimensions of the Montana are not that far from the Iowa, 37' longer overall, 30' longer at waterline, 13' wider in the beam. How was the hull shaped differently? From all of the line drawings I have viewed it looks the same as the Iowa

The Montana class was going to be a big step over the Iowas. A fourth triple 16inch/50 turret was going to be fitted. The additional turret would give the Montanas a more powerful broadside than the Yamatos. More armor was planned than the Iowas as well as a significant increase in displacement.

Otherwise the Montana would probably be fitted with the model of 5 inch/54 gun used on the Midway class CVB. There is a good posibility that Montana would be completed without catipults. No single 20mm guns, twins only. The number of 20mm guns will be reduced over the Iowas. 40mm quads and twins. 3 inch/50 twins might be fitted in place of quad 40mm guns, but it would assume a completion closer to 1948.

An anecdote about the Montanas.

The lead ship was supposed to be built at Newport News Shipbuilding in Va, where the last of the Iowas was under construction. The boiler plants had been ordered. When the ships were cancelled, the yard used the boilers for its own steam plant, where I believe they are still in use.

When Pres. Reagan decided to build up the Navy and ordered the reconditioning of the Iowas, one of the conditions in the proposal was experience in working with high pressure steam plants. (I believe the BB boilers were 1200 PSI.) NN had a working Iowa steam plant in use for 40 years, but they were not awarded the contract. Politics sent the ships to MS and CA.

Steve

The Iowa and Montana classes both used or were to use 8 Babcock & Wilcox 3 drum "M" type boilers that operated at 565psi (@4000 kPa) and 850F (@450C).

QUOTE: Originally posted by modelbuilder How was the hull shaped differently? From all of the line drawings I have viewed it looks the same as the Iowa

Navsource has a page on the Montana at http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/67.htm
The image at the bottom of the page is a cross-section of the engine room.