# Talk:Virginia-class battleship

Any explanation and timing for the change from conventional masts to these strange lattice structures? Davidships (talk) 23:02, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

The US Navy came to believe that a single pole type of mast, like a military mast, was vulnerable to a single shell hit, while the cage mast was susposedly less likely to be hit (being mostly open space), and unlikely to suffer major damage if it was.  In practice the cage mast was weak, and suffered from vibration which made it a poor location for spotting.  The Navy eventually replaced the cage masts on most ships with tripod masts (after one of the cage masts collapsed in a storm).  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:589:300:C7C0:54A5:FE94:68FF:DEA1 (talk) 22:43, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

While its common to call the Virginia class turrets "superposed", it seems to me this is a misnomer.  Unlike the Kearsage class, where the 12" and 8" turrets were seperate structures placed one atop the other, in the Virginias it appears the 12" and 8" are in a single structure, which would be better described as a double-deck turret.  It would be worth adding more detail about the turret to this article, how it was constructed and used (how, for instance, did the ammunition hoists work), if someone could research the subject.

As far as I'm aware, the Kearsarge turrets could not rotate independently either; the primary difference between those and the Virginia turrets was the shape. Parsecboy (talk) 23:40, 8 January 2025 (UTC)