Talk:South Dakota-class battleship (1939)/@comment-2601:4C1:C300:EF0:DCCF:C4C4:3CA3:ED4C-20180802200326

"Ten thousand tons was a very great deal to pay for 6 knots." Norman Friedman needs to suck a few eggs in this case. Those were the 10k best spent tons of the battleship class.

Those tons bought a ship fast enough to be able to accompany carriers into the 1990's. Those tons allowed size and weight budgets to allow mounting powerful radars and generators to drive them, without which the Iowas would have gone with the North Carolinas and South Dakotas. The 16"/50 and the heavy AP shell were more able to defeat the Yamato class armor; the preceeding classes had 16"/45 and no ability to handle the heavy AP shell. What else would you have done, Norman, with those 10K tons that would have bought the Navy something better?