Battleship Montana: What Would We Have Done Differently

This all depends on when the hypothetical Montanas became active. If its in 1944, when originally planned, very little changes. The AAA battery would be the same DP 5 inch guns used on virtually every other US capital ship of the era. The use of proximity fuses on the shells pretty much made this a world beater. The quad 20's are only useful as long as the opposition is using torpedo planes and then only at the end of the torpedo run.

Come the 1950's and the advent of the Jet age, you pretty much can remove any AAA that is guided by the human eye. People are not fast enough in their reactions to be able to shoot down jets with AAA. Sure, you can get lucky, but when the speed of the opposition doubles from around 300 MPH to over 600 MPH, you're in a lot of trouble with your slew rate, even with hydraulics. AAA doesn't really regain ability until the CWIS of the 1980s. At this stage, missiles are in their infancy, and are not really useful.

Once missiles are able to kill planes, you can start reinstalling them on the Montana class, assuming its not been scrapped in the meanwhile.

"Make the Montana faster" and "removing weight" are the same thing. Where are you going to get the weight from? Ok, you can scrap the conning tower (Making a through c the same thing) but you then need to create an armored space inside the hull. I suppose you could add utility to the CIC and con the ship from there, but that's going to make it VERY crowded. Now, I may not understand exactly what one does from the conning tower, but as far as I know, you con (read steer) the ship. Most of the time, its not an issue, particularly when under air attack. However, I don't think you can assume historical circumstances prevail. (the US is the only country to maintain anything that can pretend to be a battle fleet). In particular, if the US holds onto the Montanas, you have to assume that the USSR probably completes at least one of the Sovetsky Soyuz class and in that case, you need to keep an armored platform to steer the ship during surface combat. Sure, drop the armored steering box (aka conning tower) down in the superstructure to do both things you said (clearing arcs {not as important, depending on the timeframe} and opening space for aerials) but you still need something that will withstand heavy gunfire.

Not entirely sure how well trunking the funnels would work. At some point when trunking, you end up in a position where your flue gasses no longer exhaust on their own, and you end up needing additional fans to continue to provide draft, even if you're under forced draft from the front end. There's also only so much trunking you can do before you're constricting your exhaust, as well. And, again, after the late 1940's the threat you're facing doesn't really need AAA arcs.

Flag facilities? I'm not entirely certain how large the flag facilities were supposed to be for the Montana class. It is my understanding that they were already pretty large, and the accompanying communication facilities were also large. As the conversion of the USS Hawaii would have been a better choice because by the time the Montanas came online, you don't need your admiral in the same ship that is fighting broadside to broadside with the enemy. The command ships that exist today have very little in the way of armament.

Belushi TD

More on the Montana Class.

Despite the arguments in favor, the wastage of resources on battleships probably delayed USN recovery by a FULL YEAR after Pearl Harbor. As I have mentioned elsewhere, while the North Carolinas and South Dakotas could be justified by what was known, the Iowas were a waste and the Montanas if built would have been sheer folly.