Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "USS Maine (BB10) - Guide 220" video.

As Drac noted, these were the first USN battleships mounting the new 12"/40, which was specifically designed to use smokeless powder. As mentioned in response to another question a week or so back, when the 12"/40, and the 8"/40, were designed, the designers did not fully understand the dynamics of smokeless powder. As a result, these guns had a tendency to blow off their muzzle and chase, due to higher than expected pressure in the tube. The Navy instituted a modification program that encompassed installing a heavy nickle steel liner inside, and hooping the barrel to the muzzle on the outside to reinforce the barrel. The Maines also used the Mk IV turret, which was the first balanced large turret used by the USN. The preceding Illinois class was the first the use the Mk IV, but pared it with the older 13"/35. As Drac said, by WWI all the Maine and Illinois class ships were relegated to the reserve squadron, spending the bulk of their time tied up in a navy yard with a skeleton crew. On March 6, 1915, Maine was being used as a receiving ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when a sea cock burst and the ship sank at the pier.
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@afx935 I have read that the guns on the Majestics had another issue: "steel choke". Apparently what happened was that, as the gun was fired and the liner stretched, a ridge would form in the liner. Eventually the ridge would grow to the size that the shell would be jolted enough when it hit the ridge to start the fuse. This became more of a problem when guns from the Majestics were remounted on the Lord Clive class monitors, due the heavy use the guns were subjected too. iirc in one case a monitor in the Gallipoli campaign fired, the shell detonated just after leaving the muzzle, and a nearby French destroyer was showered with shell fragments. "Steel choke" was suffered by some other guns as well as those from the Majestics. It was a matter of a learning curve, how to design the liners so they would not develop that ridge.
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@erikgranqvist3680 the Navy will remove equipment that can be reused. When the Connecticut class battleships were scrapped, their 12"/45 guns were removed, some for spares for the Navy, some were transferred to the Army for use in shore batteries. When the Maine and Virginia class battleships were scrapped, the Navy didn't want their 12"/40 guns, so large holes were cut in the side of the barrels to render them useless, before they were sold as scrap.
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February 1919. Maryland is only about one third done. The other three Colorado class battleships have not been laid down yet. The Navy has made the decision to abandon the standard battleship template and go larger and faster with the South Dakota class. SecNav Daniels has an epiphany: decisions made since the Colorado class was ordered in 1916 have rendered the Colorados obsolete, so why put any more money into them? Maryland is scrapped on the slipway. The other three are never laid down. The South Dakotas and Lexingtons are scrapped for treaty compliance. That leaves the Nagatos as the only battleships in the world with 16" guns. Are the Nelsons built for parity with the Nagatos? Does the US build two new, clean sheet, 16" gunned ships, like the Colorados that had been cancelled two years earlier, even though the entire idea of the conference was to stop spending on new ship construction? Is the maximum treaty gun size set at 15" and Japan required to regun the Nagatos with 15" guns? Do the US and UK decide to not get upset about the IJN having only two ships with slightly larger guns, because they both have numerical and firepower superiority over the IJN, even with the Nagatos?
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@RedXlV I did not see reasoning behind that reduction discussed in the turn of the century BuOrd annual reports I was reading some months ago. The first Iowa, commissioned in 1897 had 12"/35s. iirc the thinking behind Iowa was to be a smaller, cheaper, battleship. Looking at NavWeaps, it appears the 12"/40 was some 10,000kg lighter than the preceding 13"/35. A 13"/40 would be even heavier vs a 12"/40. We are talking quite small ships, 13,000 tons. Maybe the judgement was 4-13"/40s would be too heavy?
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@RedXlV there are two schools of though wrt Mutsu's status. Wiki shows a commission date in October, a couple weeks before the start of the conference. Under treaty rules carriers in commission, *or building*, when the conference started, were regarded as experimental and exempt from the treaty replacement schedule, which exempted Langley, Eagle, Argus and Hermes. The treaty parties could be flexible, if they wanted to, or they could leverage the treaty to beat someone down by being rigid. If the US and UK have severe size envy issues over the Nagatos, it would be a lot easier, and cheaper, to regun the Nagatos, than for the other parties to build new, clean sheet, battleships. I could even suggest it would be cheaper for the UK to settle it's size envy issues by giving the IJN a couple dozen 15"/42s out of spares inventory with which to regun the Nagatos. Interestingly, according to NavWeaps, the 15"/42 and 16.1"/45 weigh almost exactly the same. That way, the Japanese save face by keeping both Nagato and Mutsu, without having a "bigger one" than the UK.
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@torgarth Newspaper reports of the sale of Dreadnought for scrap in November, 1921 say her cost to build was "almost" $10M US Dollars, while her sale to the breakers was for $200,000 US Dollars.
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