Key Points and Summary – Trump’s newly announced Trump-class “Golden Fleet” recalls the U.S. Navy’s never-built Montana-class battleships: huge, heavily armed ships overtaken by changing strategy.

-In 1940, Montanas were conceived as super-battleships, but World War II quickly proved carriers, submarines, and escorts were more decisive, and the program was canceled before keels were laid.

-Today, Trump’s vision faces different but parallel constraints: hyper-partisan politics, tight shipbuilding capacity, and a fast-moving shift toward missiles, drones, and distributed fleets.

-The article argues the real lesson of Montana is that strategy and technology can outrun prestige platforms before they ever reach the water. History may be repeating itself.

Trump-Class Battleship Golden Fleet: Another Montana-Class?

In 1940, as war spread across Europe and tensions with Japan continued to rise in the Pacific, the U.S. Navy was still planning for a conflict in which heavily armed surface fleets would play a decisive role. Battleships remained central to American naval thinking, and Congress had just approved a significant expansion of the fleet under the Two-Ocean Navy Act. 

Within that framework, Navy planners authorized a new class of battleships that would be larger, more heavily protected, and more powerfully armed than any the United States had previously built.

Designated the Montana-class, the ships were intended to represent the next step in battleship technology and capability at a moment when naval strategy itself was about to change significantly. 

The program, however, never worked out as planned. In fact, none of the five planned Montana-class ships ever saw steel laid on a dock. The program was canceled before construction began, and the class never entered service. But why?

The answer isn’t precisely simple: it was a combination of shifting priorities, politics, and a total transformation in naval warfare that effectively made battleships strategically obsolete before they could even be built. 

Trump-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons/White House Photo.

As U.S. President Donald Trump announces plans for an entirely new class of battleships to form what he calls the “Golden Fleet,” the story of the Montana-class is well worth revisiting today.

The Montana-Class Vision and World War II

In the late 1930s and into the early 1940s, the U.S. Navy’s battleship force was undergoing its most ambitious expansion since World War I. Battleships like the North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa classes were designed or authorized after treaties capped armament and displacement. With treaty restrictions effectively ended and global conflict looming, the Navy chose to pursue a new class of super battleships – designated BB-67 through BB-71 – that would surpass even the formidable Iowa-class in terms of size and firepower. 

The Montana-class was set to displace more than 60,000 tons, measure more than 920 feet in length, and carry twelve Mark 7 guns in four triple turrets – significantly more heavy guns than the nine on an Iowa-class ship. Armor protection was also made thicker and more extensive. 

Congress authorized construction of the Montana-class as part of the Two-Ocean Navy Act of July 1940, which aimed to expand U.S. naval capabilities as war engulfed Europe and Asia. The intention was for these battleships to serve as the centerpiece of a powerful surface fleet capable of countering German and Japanese warships. 

However, even as the designs were being confirmed and contracts authorized, larger strategic shifts were underway. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the Pacific campaign that followed accelerated the prominence and demand for aircraft carriers. The Navy began to allocate resources differently, and shipyard capacity, steel, and manpower became limited during wartime. Ultimately, the need for Essex-class aircraft carriers, destroyer escorts, landing craft, and anti-submarine vessels became more urgent. 

Battleship construction, even for the existing Iowa-class hulls, began to compete with these new priorities. And while the Montana design was impressive on paper, it was also slower than the Iowa class and incapable of keeping pace with fast carrier forces that were increasingly defining U.S. naval operations in the Pacific. That made the Montana less suitable for the evolving (and now primary) mission of fleet air defense and power projection. 

Montana-Class Battleship vs. Iowa-Class. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Recognizing those realities, the Navy suspended work on the Montana project in mid-1942 before any keels were laid. At that point in the war, aircraft carriers had already proven decisive in major battles like Coral Sea and Midway, and naval planners were under intense pressure to prioritize ships that could be delivered quickly and used immediately in combat. Large battleships that would not enter service until 1945 or later no longer made any strategic sense.

By July 1943, the decision was made official, and the Montana class was formally cancelled.

The steel, manpower, and shipyard space allocated initially for the super battleships were instead redirected toward aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, and amphibious ships – platforms that were directly shaping the outcome of the war in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters. 

The cancellation, however, didn’t necessarily reflect a failure of the Montana design – though a case could be made that its speed was an issue – but rather a recognition that the role battleships had once played was disappearing faster than the ships could be built. 

Image of Iowa-class battleship compared to Montana-class battleship that was never built. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Image is of an Iowa-class battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

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In 2025, as President Trump promises an entirely new class of battleships that the U.S. Navy itself acknowledges it needs, there are different issues to contend with. 

Trump faces an uphill battle in terms of political partisanship, which threatens to veto (or at least rename) the ships if a Democrat wins in 2028. 

In parallel, the changing nature of global combat and the increasing reliance by adversaries on automated systems, drones, and long-range missiles means that strategies and priorities seem to be changing by the year. 

About the Author:

Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.