Talk:Iowa-class battleship

message: EDIT: Corrected. Thank you!
For the life of me, I can't find this 39 knot figure. The 35.6 knot figure is from a shake-down cruise of USS New Jersey, after a recent refit for her service in the Vietnam War. It is also worth noting that the ship's armament was significantly modified prior to her service in the Vietnam War relative to how she was initially tested for her service in WWII. This figure in itself comes from the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest battleship, however it makes no mention of the 39 knot number in the article. The 39 knot number is however mentioned in the comments section, but I have been unable to verify it.
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/fastest-speed-recorded-for-a-battleship/
:If it's not properly sourced, feel free to revert such things.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 13:47, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iowa's top speed - currently listed at 39 knots maximum 

message: I. In regard to range:
One of the cited sources, 
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.php
gives the figure for 2700lb projectile at 45 from OP-770 (range tables) of 43,245 yards. That is 24.05 miles. I do not know where the printed 23.4 figure comes from. The OP figure is of course theoretical.
II. States without source the turret configuration is "2-A-1" in quotes. I've never hard of that and this is not sourced.
III. Incorrectly states  "The guns are 66 feet (20 m) long (50 times their 16-inch bore, or 50 calibers from breechface to muzzle)." The guns are actually 816" (68') from breechface to muzzle. BuOrd plan 227539. The caliber measurement does not include 16" allocated to the breech.
IV. This is misleading: "Each gun rests within an armored turret, but only the top of the turret protrudes above the main deck". There is a fixed part of the turret and a revolving part of the turret. The fixed part of the turret has 1 1/2" of armor. The rotating turret is obviously armored above the barbette, but it is not armored below. Is is high 
The text implies the rotating turret armor extends below the barbette which is incorrect. From the shelf plate to the plan plate, the rotating turret wall is 7/8" high tensile steel. The pan plate rests on the roller bearing track. The circular bulkhead around the pan plate even has openings. So there is no armor intended there.
It also implies that there is armor around each gun rather than around all three guns of the turret.
Plan 7201ZN
IV. "Each turret required a crew of between 85 and 110 men to operate."
The official manning for the turret was 77 plus 6 powder passers and 12 in the magazines. (OP-769). The 77 figure includes many redundancies. There are duplicates on the sights. There are allowances for manning the rangefinder (which was removed in Turret No. 1), and for crew that do nothing when the turret was in automatic control (as they normally were).
There were 45 people killed in the Iowa Turret 2 explosion. "Required" is the wrong term. 
V. "When firing the same conventional shell, the 16-inch/45 caliber Mark 6 used by the fast battleships of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes had a slight advantage over the 16-inch/50 caliber Mark 7 gun when hitting deck armor . . . ."
This "advantage" is only true for certain ranges. Beyond 40,000 the 50 caliber projectiles arrive at the same angle and the "advantage" disappears. 
(OP-770)
VI. I find this description misleading or hard to interpret: "The turret extends either four decks (Turrets 1 and 3) or five decks (Turret 2) down."
Reason I find this misleading is that the levels of the turrets do not correspond to decks EXCEPT for the powder handling flat. The powder handling flat is at the Second platform.
All three turrets extend to the Second Platform. (Plan 7201ZN), The revolving parts of the turrets are effectively identical down to the lower projectile flat. Below that, length of the central column and the powder hoist paths are different to accommodate the differences in heights between the barrel centerlines and the second platform.
The shape of the fixed part varies considerably among the turrets and consequently the ammunition storage in the outer ring is different and turret no. 2 has an additional projectile storage level that [over]compensates for its significantly reduced storage in the upper flat.
VII. A bit off the subject but I noticed this incorrect statement "At the time of their commissioning, all four of the Iowa-class battleships were equipped with 20 quad 40 mm mounts and 49 single 20 mm mounts."
Neither the Iowa nor the New Jersey had 20x40mm mounts at the tie of commissioning. It was actually 16x40mm quad on the NJ and 15x40mm on the Iowa.
While I am at it, the number of 20mm mounts was not the same among the Iowa class. The New Jersey had 49x20mm mounts (8 of which were ultimately twin). Some of the other Iowa class wedged in more mounts.IIRC, the Missouri crammed 3 mounts at the 02 level FR 120 in the space designed for 2.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.88.128.195 (talk) 16:56, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turret 

message: regarding your partial undo of my edit regarding inflation, you commented, "Do not use ordinary inflation calculators for capital items like warships".
I used the "US-GDP" inflation index, rather than regular "US" (CPI-based) inflation index. A note at the top of  states, "For inflating capital expenses, government expenses, or the personal wealth and expenditure of the rich, the US-GDP or UK-GDP indexes should be used, which calculate inflation based on the gross domestic product(GDP) for the United States and United Kingdom, respectively."
US-GDP seems like the right index to use. What should be used, and how should it be used so as not to hard-code inflation year into the text? sbb (talk) 00:56, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that even that index is actually accurate for warships since 1.2 billion is roughly the cost of a single 9,000 ton Burke-class cruiser. An Iowa is roughly 5 times bigger and its armor and guns cannot be built by any facility in the world as they were all retired as unneeded more than half a century ago. The most valid comparison might be as a percentage of that year's Navy budget. Honestly I've given up on comparable costs as prices have increased by multiple orders of magnitude for more directly comparable equipment like tanks. A WW2-era Sherman cost about $50K, a modern M1A2 is about $5 million. And aircraft are even worse.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 02:02, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: FWIW, there was a pretty robust debate on this a few years ago at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/ARA Moreno/archive1. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:16, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  US-GDP Inflation cost 

message: In my opinion, the current infobox image does not show the silhouette of the ship very well, and this image does it better. I know this image has been used by the article forever but I think the following would be a good replacement. Alternately, here's another image that I think is a good candidate as well. Thoughts? Steve7c8 (talk) 23:56, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I subscribe to the theory that the best infobox image is a "beauty shot", or an image that otherwise grabs the reader's attention in some way. The current one certainly does that, and the overall color is beautiful. The image you've suggested is a bit bland, and the background makes the overall ship a bit hard to see, especially the details, at that size. I'd keep the current one for now.  However, the proposed image isn't in the article anywhere else, so I'd recommend adding it in an appropriate section. BilCat (talk) 00:12, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

text: Ditto on the second image. I prefer the first one for adding to the article somewhere else. BilCat (talk) 00:14, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point, but nearly every other infobox picture of a ship class tend to show the profile and silhouette of the vessel quite well; I agree that the current image is great in terms of colors and is attention grabbing, but it seems to be the exception compared to how most ship class articles have their infobox image. Steve7c8 (talk) 06:10, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Most other ships don't have nine 16-inch guns either. The Iowa photo is n that article in the lead too, so we probably don't need it here in that position also.  However, I really don't think the alternatives shown are good for the lead. I glanced through Commons, but didn't see any I thought were much better, aside from those in the leads of the other 3 ships. Wisconsin's is probably the best of those, but it's bow on at a slight angle, and the other 2 are still more bow facing. BilCat (talk) 06:24, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

text: IMO the current infobox image needs certainly to be in the article somewhere'  It is both very interesting and show it doing what battleships are designed around and designed to do. Other than that I have no strong opinion. North8000 (talk) 09:56, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Infobox image 

message: Every authoritative source on the Iowa class battleships cites a standard displacement of 48,110 long tons; nowhere on any other site could I find an attribution for the (unsourced) figure of 47k and change. It's a minor difference, but one that to my knowledge isn't backed up by any authoritative document. I've replaced the number and added a citation. The Pittsburgher (talk) 00:25, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard displacement 

message: Can someone please check the formatting of colons after time periods (WWII, Cold War, etc) in the specifications infobox? I can see some with no colon, normal colon, and bold colon. Loqiical (talk) 00:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I shall make them all bold with colons. If that is a problem, please let me know. Loqiical (talk) 04:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colons in infobox 

message: There is a new book out "Armor of the Iowa-Class Battleships" that is nearly 400 pages dealing exclusively with armor. The book was based on original plans. That book conflicts with a a number of statements made in this article. I would behoove some to go through that book and update the article. For example, the book shows the belt tapers to one-inch, not 1.62" as claimed in this article. If you look at the detailed diagrams in the book, it is clear that the belt would not fit if it did not taper to one-inch. I see this issue has been raised in this discussion before. 
Another issue I noticed is that the article refers to the Iowa-class as having "skegs." The supports for the inboard propellers are decidedly not skegs. The plans refer to them as "twin keels" and they are integral to the hull shape, not extensions from the hull as in a skeg.
Every time I try to update something on Wikipedia, it just gets reset back. So I'm not going to do it. 
I can see others have pointed out more errors in the article.
72.88.156.235 (talk) 01:09, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want to try a small careful and hopefully fun start, bring up a specific proposed change here in talk along with the sourcing for it. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:18, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Armor 

message: PLRD-81-21 Update of the Issues Concerning the Proposed Reactivation of the Iowa Class Battleships and the Aircraft Carrier Oriskany (gao.gov)
Could contain some info not mentioned here  D1d2d3d29 (talk) 20:54, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  I found a nice source