Comments by "Bk Jeong" (@bkjeong4302) on "US Navy Construction in WW2 - The Ships Start Coming And They Don't Stop Coming" video.

And note that the US did make its share of procurement mistakes. Without them the USN would have had an EVEN LARGER advantage over the IJN in numbers.
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So…yet further support in favour of the Iowas being a Yamato-grade strategic disaster? They were built for a role that was pointless and unnecessary from the start, and everything they actually ended up doing in WWII would have been better done by other alternatives.
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@Shenaldrac The Iowas ended up serving pretty much in two supporting roles due to carriers rendering battleships obsolete at the strategic level: carrier escort duties and shore bombardment. In the former role, the fact they were attached to the fleet and light carriers (since the CVEs were too slow to need such a fast escort anyways) meant they were never close enough to enemy surface units to actually engage them (except at Truk, which was only because Spruance intentionally spared some damaged light enemy units…..which led to REDUCED enemy losses because one of those light units escaped thanks to the last air attacks being called off). The Iowas were thus effectively restricted to being the biggest, most expensive CLAAs ever built (when, given the costs and construction times, you could have gotten a better trade by building double their number of CLAAs: it wasn’t as if the USN was lacking in shipyard capacity compared to other nations). In the shore bombardment role, the USN already had plenty of Standards and other old battleships (plus subcapital units and even improvised bombardment platforms, such as the Vietnam War-era river monitors) that could get the job done well enough that building a new battleship just for fire support was unjustified.
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@Warmaker01 Given the massive American airpower advantage from the CVEs I’m not sure if the three Taffy groups (only one of which they were able to shoot at) counted as a weaker force than Centre Force.
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@rahadityap2375 The IJN has a decent argument, but the Kriegsmarine absolutely doesn’t. I’d actually say the Kriegsmarine had the WORST battleships of WWII by a large margin (with everyone else clustering around each other further up the curve).
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@patchouliknowledge4455 The Iowas survived for a long time but never justified the investment put into them.
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@paulbade3566 Yet in none of these theatres were the Iowas the best tools for the job from a purely military standpoint. And in the case of Vietnam, New Jersey's supposed intimidation value doesn't appear to be backed up by primary sources.
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