South Dakota-class battleship (1920)

The first South Dakota class was a group of six battleships that were laid down in 1920 for the U.S. Navy, but were never completed. Considerably larger and more powerful than the preceding Colorado class, the South Dakota class was designed to achieve 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph), they represented an attempt to catch up with the increasing fleet speeds of its main rivals, the British Royal Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy.

The South Dakotas were authorized in 1917, but work was postponed so that the U.S. Navy could incorporate information gained from the Battle of Jutland, fought in mid-1916, in their design. Work was further postponed to give destroyers and other small fighting vessels priority as they were needed urgently to fight German U-boats in the North Atlantic. Construction started only in 1920. As the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 both restricted the total battleship tonnage allowed the U.S. Navy, and limited individual ship size to 35,000 long tons (35,562 t), construction was halted in early 1922. The unfinished hulls were scrapped the following year, the guns were transferred to the U.S. Army and their boilers and armor were used to modernize older battleships. The class name was not re-used until 1939 when the first of four South Dakota-class fast battleships were laid-down.

Background and design history

Before World War I began in August 1914, the Navy was not well funded by the U.S. Congress, which had failed to heed the General Board's recommendation of a building program of two battleships per year. The election of President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and his appointment of Josephus Daniels as Secretary of the Navy did nothing to change that as neither man believed that additional expenditures on the Navy were worthwhile.