Following the authorization of the battleship in 1892, the
United States Navy failed to order new vessels in 1893 and 1894; this was in part the result of an economic depression in 1893 that reduced naval budgets, and also the views of the new
Secretary of the Navy Hilary A. Herbert, who had opposed fleets of expensive battleships earlier in the decade. Nevertheless, the
Bureau of Construction and Repair (C&R) continued to work on new designs, and by 1893, Herbert had been convinced by
Alfred Thayer Mahan's seminal work
The Influence of Sea Power upon History. In his requested budget for 1893, Herbert requested
Congress appropriate funds for at least one new battleship. Congress delayed until 1895, when it authorized funding for two ships that were to become the
Kearsarge class by the Act of 2 March 1895. Work on the new design began immediately, and by late March, four proposals had been prepared. All four marked a compromise between the high-
freeboard Iowa and the coastal battleships of the ; they had greater freeboard than the
Indianas, but lacked the raised
forecastle that had rendered
Iowa an excellent
sea boat. Coal storage, again, represented a compromise between the two. Armor protection was increased compared to the earlier vessels, which included an improved arrangement of the armor
deck so that it protected a greater volume of the
hull. The main battery was to repeat the guns used in
Iowa, since they fired significantly faster than the 13-inch guns the
Indianas carried. The designs varied considerably with regard to their armament. By this time, a new
quick-firing gun had been developed, which significantly increased the offensive power of the
tertiary battery. The designers initially considered adopting
gun turrets for these weapons, but decided against it owing to the increased weight of such an arrangement, along with problems with ammunition
magazines and fire control. All four designs arranged these in a central battery
amidships, which forced the secondary battery of 8-inch guns to be pushed toward the ends of the ship. The four variants adopted different arrangements for these guns: "A" called for eight guns, two in
centerline positions
superfiring over the
main battery and two
wing turrets amidships. "B" discarded the forward turret and placed two wing turrets further forward and one superfiring aft; "C" retained the centerline turrets and discarded the wing mounts, and "D" opted for the reverse of "C". C&R preferred the "A" design, since it maximized firepower, while the
Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd) believed that none of the proposals was worth pursuing. An ensign in BuOrd,
Joseph Strauss, developed a two-story turret that solved the problem; it would carry the 8-inch guns in a separate turret mounted directly atop (and fixed to) the main battery turret. Strauss accordingly proposed a fifth version, "E", that incorporated his turret. Some officers questioned whether it was advisable that the 8-inch guns could not be directed against targets other than what the 12-inch guns were engaging, but Strauss pointed out that at long range, ships were relatively small targets, and at close range, the much greater reloading time of the large guns would permit the 8-inch guns to direct the rotation of the turret while the gun crews prepared the main guns. By this time, American naval engineers had made improvements to their gun turret designs and significant weight savings were achieved. In addition, the two-story, four-gun turret adopted for the
Kearsarge class was lighter than the two-gun turrets used in the
Indianas of just five years earlier. At the same time, BuOrd registered its opposition to what it viewed as a regression to 12-inch guns; while the 13-inch weapons were slower to fire, BuOrd estimated that they were 30 percent more powerful. Experiments with armor plate demonstrated that 12-inch guns could not penetrate that thickness even at the relatively close range of , while the 13-inch shells were capable of defeating the armor plate. C&R refused to accept BuOrd's objections, but further tests with a mock up of
Iowas belt demonstrated that the 13-inch shells could easily defeat the armor, while the 12-inch shells were kept out. The Navy decided to adopt "E", with 13-inch guns in place of the 12-inch weapons originally proposed. The Navy repeated the two-story turret arrangement with the s designed in the early 1900s, with much the same reasoning, namely the goal of weight reduction and the belief that the faster-firing 8-inch guns could be operated without disrupting the 12-inch guns adopted for the
Virginias. A new, sloped turret design remedied the problem with the overly-large gun ports of the
Kearsarge turrets, but the advent of large-caliber, quick-firing guns rendered the concept a failure, since the 12-inch guns fired nearly as quickly as the 8-inch weapons, and the latter could not be fired without severe blast effects disrupting the crew of the former.
General characteristics and machinery The two
Kearsarge-class ships were
long at the waterline and
long overall, with a
beam of and a
draft of . They
displaced normally, which increased to at
full load. Like the
Indiana class, the
Kearsarge class also had a very low freeboard, amounting to forward under normal conditions, which resulted in her guns becoming unusable in bad weather. The ships' hulls incorporated a prominent
ram bow, a common feature for battleships of the period. Steering was controlled with a single
rudder; while steaming at a speed of , it took
Kearsarge to complete a turn to
port and to turn to starboard. As completed, both ships carried two heavy
military masts that carried some of the vessels' light guns, along with
spotting tops to help direct the aim of their guns.
Kearsarge was manned by 38 officers and 548 enlisted men, while
Kentucky carried 38 officers and 549 enlisted men. Their complement was later adjusted to 40 officers and 513 enlisted men. The battleships had two 3-cylinder
vertical triple-expansion steam engines that each drove a single
screw propeller. Steam for the engines was provided by five coal-fired
Scotch marine boilers, which were ducted into a pair of
funnels. The ships' engines were designed to produce a total of for a top speed of . During
sea trials, the indicated horsepower and speed exceeded the design, with
Kearsarges engines producing a total of for and
Kentuckys propulsion system reaching for . Coal storage amounted to normally and up to at full load. At a cruising speed of , the ships could steam for .
Armament The
Kearsarge-class battleships had two double turrets, with two
/35 caliber guns and two
/35 caliber guns each, stacked in two levels. The guns and turret armor were designed by BuOrd, while the turret itself was designed by C&R. Since the turrets retained the vertical walls of the type used in the first generation of American battleships, the ports had to be very large to allow for sufficient
elevation. Then-Lieutenant
William Sims noted that the floors of the turrets could be easily seen through the ports, and claimed that as a result, a shell fired into the port could reach the magazines below, disabling the guns. The 13-inch weapons were
built-up guns of the Mark II type, mounted in Mark III turrets that were electrically trained. They were originally supplied with
brown powder propellant charges that weighed nearly , later being replaced by
smokeless charges. The shells had a
muzzle velocity of , and at the
muzzle, could penetrate up to of standard steel, and at a range of , could pierce of steel. The turrets allowed depression to −5 degrees and elevation to 15 degrees, which provided a maximum range of , though this was significantly in excess of what could be achieved with the rudimentary gunnery direction equipment at the time; BuOrd recommended that crews open fire at , and even this was optimistic. The
rate of fire was one shot every 320 seconds, and the guns had to be returned to 2 degrees elevation to be reloaded. The 8-inch guns were the Mark IV version, which had a muzzle velocity of . Also originally brown-powder guns, they, too, received updated smokeless charges in the early 1900s. The change improved the rate of fire from one shot per minute to one shot every forty seconds. Reloading was also fixed at 0 degrees. They were mounted in Mark IX turrets that were fixed atop the main battery turrets. The arrangement was adopted because the significantly higher rate of fire of the 8-inch guns was thought to reduce interference between the guns, but with the adoption of smokeless propellant and rapid fire for the main battery in the early 1900s proved this to be an incorrect assumption. The turret guns were supported by a battery of fourteen
5 in/40 caliber guns mounted individually in
casemates in the upper deck, seven on each
broadside. Once the ships entered service, it was discovered that the central battery had been placed too close to the waterline, and the casemates were frequently washed out, rendering them unusable in all but calm seas. For defense against torpedo boats, they also carried twenty
6-pounder () Hotchkiss guns and eight
1-pounder () guns. These were also in individual open mounts distributed around the decks and
fighting tops of the
masts; eight of the 57 mm guns were placed in a broadside battery one deck above the 5-inch guns, four on either side. Four more were placed in casemates in the bow, and another four were similarly arranged toward the stern. The ships also carried a pair of
M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun chambered in
Lee Navy. As was customary for battleships of the period, the
Kearsarge-class carried four American 18 inch torpedo|
torpedo tubes. These were placed in above-water mounts in the hull; two were placed abreast of the forward main battery turret and the other two were placed on either side of the aft
superstructure. The tubes were supplied with a total of six
torpedoes. They were initially equipped with the Mark II Whitehead design, which carried a
warhead and had a range of at a speed of .
Armor , showing the arrangement of the guns and armor The ships were protected with face-hardened
Harvey armor, an improvement over earlier
compound plates. The main
strake of the
belt armor extended from the forward
boiler room to the aft main battery
barbette, and covered a section of the hull from above the
waterline and below the line. It was thick at the top, gradually tapering to at the waterline, and reducing further to at the bottom edge of the belt. Forward of the boiler rooms, the belt was reduced to a maximum thickness of , and from the forward barbette, slimmed further to . Transverse
bulkheads that were forward and aft connected the belt on both sides of the ships. Above the main strake was a second one that was 5 in thick, extending from the forward to aft barbette. The belt structure was reinforced by a curved armor deck that was curved at the sides and connected to the bottom edge of the belt. The flat portion of the deck was level with the upper edge of the belt, and it was thick. Forward, where the belt was significantly reduced in thickness, the deck was increased slightly to ; aft, where there was no side protection, the deck was more significantly strengthened, being 5 in thick. The
conning tower had 10 in thick sides and a roof. Armor protection for the 13-inch turrets amounted to on the sides and on the rear to balance the turrets, while the 8-inch turrets received on the sides and on the rears. Their roofs were and 2 inches thick for the 13-inch and 8-inch turrets, respectively. The turrets rested in armored barbettes that were thick. The 5-inch gun battery, which was placed directly above the upper belt, received 6 in of armor plating. The casemate battery lacked splinter screens between each gun, a significant shortcoming since a single hit could disable numerous guns.
Modifications After the US Navy introduced rapid-firing for main guns in 1903,
Kearsarge and
Kentucky had automatic shutters installed in the ammunition hoists to prevent an explosion in the turret from traveling down to the magazines. After a propellant charge was accidentally detonated by an electrical short aboard
Kentucky in April 1906, most electrical equipment was removed from the ships' turrets and additional precautions were installed, including bulkheads between the guns in each turret and gas evacuators in the
breeches of the guns to prevent propellant gasses from blowing back into the turrets. Between 1909 and 1911, most of the 57 mm guns were removed and four more 5-inch guns were installed. The original military masts were replaced with
lattice masts, and the torpedo tubes were also removed. The ships also had their original boilers replaced with eight Mosher boilers. The ships underwent another refit by 1919 that included the removal of all but eight of the 5-inch guns. The guns that were removed were used to arm merchant ships to defend themselves against German
U-boat attacks. A pair of 3"/50 caliber gun|
anti-aircraft guns were installed aboard each vessel. At some point in the ships' careers, splinter bulkheads were added to the 5-inch battery to improve survivability. == Ships in class ==