Ok Junior Naval Historians, is this a real design? I know next to nothing about USN battleship development and I can't confirm if this was a pre war plan or not. If real, I plan on making a model for Shapeways. I might do a lot of Fantasy designs, but they all at least have some historical truth. Even it was just a scribble on the back of a napkin, it was still a 1940's napkin.
And if it is real, what was its length so I can scale it right?
The USS Minnesota is a Fast BB proposed in 1934 with 9-14″ rifles in three triple turrets and 12-5″ guns in twin turrets. She was designed for 30kts at 35000 tons with excellent protection comparable to the later fast BBs (13″ belt, 4.5″-5″ on the decks). A sketch can be found in Norman Friedman’s book “US Battleships : An Illustrated Design History” on page 234.
The design does show up in Freidman's and is a real design although this series of designs is more a proof of concept to see if a balanced fast battleship was possible with the more modern technology of the 1930's and not actually part of the design process for an authorized ship.
It was only 31,000 tons standard, and was 670x101.5x29.4'.
Freidman's is a fairly expensive book but it has a lot of design illustrations and hull measurements of built and unbuilt ships and I highly recommend it.
The USS Minnesota is a Fast BB proposed in 1934 with 9-14″ rifles in three triple turrets and 12-5″ guns in twin turrets. She was designed for 30kts at 35000 tons with excellent protection comparable to the later fast BBs (13″ belt, 4.5″-5″ on the decks). A sketch can be found in Norman Friedman’s book “US Battleships : An Illustrated Design History” on page 234.
I own Friedman's book (it awesome). Some the General Board Design Sketches like this one were extremely ambitious. Compare the above stats with the Tennessee class. Similar armament, similar protection (heavier deck armor, a unitary 13" belt vice 8-13"). 50 feet longer, and more importantly, somehow 9 knots faster on only ~3-4,000 more tons displacement. Steam engineering technology was certainly more advanced and compact in 1934 than in 1916, but this seems to have been a little bit of wishful thinking on the part of the General Board. I suspect if such a ship had actually been built, she would have ended up being way heavier than the 35,000 tons the Washington Treaty stipulated. Case it point, the Washington-class, which was the ultimate outcome of these 1930's era design studies, had a "standard" displacement of 36,600 tons, but a full load displacement of a whopping 44,800 tons. Not unique for ships of the period - there was plenty of designs in the 1930's that busted treaty limits, sometimes pretty deliberately.