The United States Navy's South Carolina class consisted of two battleships. They were designed independently of but contemporaneously with HMS Dreadnought, and with the same all-big-guns principle as that famous ship, but their construction proceeded so slowly that Dreadnought was commissioned before they were.
In design and characteristics, South Carolina represented an evolution of the preceding Connecticut class, rather than a revolutionary "clean sheet" design the way Dreadnought was. They used obsolete VTE (vertical triple expansion) engine machinery instead of newer and faster steam turbines the way Dreadnought did, a machinery arrangement which would be repeated on only four more U.S. battleships (New York class battleships, Delaware and Oklahoma.) The class was originally intended to be a modest modification, with single 12" guns replacing the dual 8" guns on the superstructure corners, but the recoil proved to be too much of a problem and the 12" guns were reworked into superimposed (or "superfiring") turrets; South Carolina was the first battleship in the world to feature superfiring turrets, British battleships would not add this design feature until the mid-1910s.
Ships
General Characteristics
- Displacement: 16,000 tons
- Length: 452.8 feet
- Beam: 80.2 feet
- Draft: 24.5 feet
- Speed: 18.8 knots
- Armament: eight 12-inch, 22 three-inch, two 21-inch torpedo tubes
