page_title: Nevada-class battleship
section_title: Initial design
hierarchical_section_title: Nevada-class battleship / Development / Initial design
caption_attribution_description: A U.S. Navy battleship USS Texas (BB-35) at New York City (USA), circa 1916.
context_page_description: The Nevada class comprised two dreadnought battleships—Nevada and Oklahoma—built for the United States Navy in the 1910s. They were significant developments in battleship design, being the first in the world to adopt "all or nothing" armor, a major step forward in armor protection because it emphasized protection optimized for long-range engagements before the Battle of Jutland demonstrated the need for such a layout. They also introduced three-gun turrets and oil-fired water-tube boilers to the US fleet. The two Nevadas were the progenitors of the standard-type battleship, a group that included the next four classes of broadly similar battleships that were intended to be tactically homogeneous.
  Nevada and Oklahoma deployed to Ireland in 1918 to escort convoys during World War I but saw no action. After the war, they were transferred to the Pacific Fleet, where they spent most of the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, they conducted extensive training operations and made several long-distance cruises, including to Australia and New Zealand in 1925 and Oklahoma's voyage to Europe in 1936.
context_section_description: The General Board was not satisfied with the adoption of 5 and 6 twin-gun turrets in earlier dreadnoughts and so requested the next ship be equipped with three-gun turrets. Three-gun turrets would provide a main battery of twelve 14 in (356 mm) guns, two more than the preceding New York class, but with four turrets instead of five. Design work on the ships that would be authorized for FY1912 had begun in 1910, with the first sketch prepared by the Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) in May that was based on the preceding New Yorks. The aft superfiring No. 4 turret was removed, the amidships No. 3 turret was moved up to superfire over what had been No. 5 turret in an arrangement similar to contemporary British battlecruisers. It was a complicated arrangement that required an ammunition magazine to separate the engine and boiler rooms; the naval historian Norman Friedman suggests it may have been adopted to reduce the concentration of weight aft, which would have put greater stress on the hull and thus required significant strengthening of the hull structure. The ship would also carry four torpedo tubes and a secondary battery of seventeen 5 in (127 mm) guns, while belt armor was to be 11 in (279 mm) thick.
  By this time, the Navy had come to the conclusion that naval engagements would be fought at very long range, and primarily with armor-piercing shells (AP) instead of high-explosive shells, since the latter would be defeated by even medium armor, and at long range, there was no ability to aim specifically at unarmored portions of ships. And because AP shells would easily perforate medium armor plate, only the thickest possible protection should be carried. Another important development that resulted from the assumption of long battle ranges was the adoption of thick deck armor. This was necessitated by the trajectory of the projectiles; as range increased significantly, the angle of impact increased, and thus shells would tend to strike the horizontal deck, not the heavily armored sides, an effect known as plunging fire. The result was the "all or nothing" principle of armor protection, which reserved armor protection only for the ship's vitals, including magazines, propulsion machinery spaces, and command spaces. The arrangement was made watertight to create an armored raft that contained enough reserve buoyancy to keep the ship afloat even if the unarmored ends were completely flooded. The Nevada design was the first of any navy to introduce the concept.
  In June, the Board sent a set of requirements to C&R that incorporated the twelve-gun battery already projected, a minimum speed of 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph), and an armor layout based on the "all or nothing" concept. The engineers at C&R noted that the armor deck would considerably strengthen the hull, but pointed out that the 11-inch belt of the original design would be wholly insufficient to defeat the latest main guns in foreign navies. The Board suggested the addition of a 1.5 in (38 mm) splinter bulkhead behind the belt, which would contain shell fragments. In late 1910, before a final design was accepted, the Navy had to submit estimates for FY1912 to be voted on by Congress in 1911; they used figures based on the New Yorks, which were accepted by Congress, and in turn limited the size of the new ships to a displacement of around 27,000 long tons (27,000 t); this was too low for C&R's existing proposals, necessitating a redesign. By this time, the first generation of American dreadnoughts had begun to enter service, so experiences operating them could be incorporated into the redesign.
caption: USS Texas of the New York class, which formed the basis for the initial Nevada design
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