Montana
Montana-Class vs. Iowa-Class: Which Would Have Been the Better Battleship?
Summary: The Montana-class battleships, authorized but never constructed, represented what could have been the pinnacle of U.S. naval power during World War II, eclipsed by the strategic shift towards aircraft carriers. Designed to outclass the preceding Iowa-class in firepower and size, the Montana-class aimed to enhance U.S. naval capabilities significantly. With plans for twelve 16-inch guns per ship, these vessels would have boasted a 25% increase in firepower over the Iowas. However, the evolving naval warfare landscape, underscored by the effectiveness of aircraft carriers demonstrated at Pearl Harbor and against the Royal Navy’s Force Z, shifted priorities away from battleship construction. The Montana-class was ultimately canceled in 1943, a decision that marked the end of new battleship designs in the U.S. Navy. While the Iowas proceeded to serve due to their near-completion and compatibility with the new Essex-class carriers, the Montana-class remained a testament to the transitional period in naval warfare, where the supremacy of battleships was superseded by the advent of carrier-based power projection.
Montana vs. Iowa-Class Battleship: Which Would Have Been Better?
The Montana class could have been the U.S. Navy’s most powerful battleship if it had made it past the design phase. But like all battleships in the World War II era, the purpose of the Montana ships was overridden by the rise of the aircraft carrier.
Five Montana battleships were authorized for construction, and they were designed to bring a whole new set of capabilities to the open waters. In fact, these leviathans would have dwarfed the preceding Iowa-class vessels. The Montana class never made it to sea, though, leaving the Iowa class as the last group of battleships commissioned by the Navy.
Introducing the Iowa-Class
As tensions were mounting in the inter-war period in the 1930s, U.S. engineers prioritized the construction of lethal battleships. As part of the service’s War Plan Orange strategy against Imperial Japan, it was assumed that future combat would take place in the Central Pacific. Since Japan had an arsenal of high-speed cruisers and capital ships, the U.S. worried that its own fleet of standard-type battleships would not be able to pursue enemy ships in battle. Around this time, the Second London Naval Treaty’s escalator clause kicked in, allowing the U.S. and other signatories to build bigger guns and larger vessels.
Iowa-class ships were therefore constructed as 45,000-ton vessels equipped with 16-inch guns, as opposed to earlier battleships limited by the treaty at 35,000 tons with 14-inch guns. Overall, nine 16-inch Mark 7 naval guns were fitted on each ship. They could fire explosive and armor-piercing shells. The three-gun turrets positioned on each battleship could fire any combination of its guns, including a broadside of all nine. In addition to these armaments and large-caliber guns, the Mark 38 Gun Fire Control System was incorporated on the battleships.
Introducing the Montana-Class
While the Montana-class ships never made it past the conception phase, big plans were proposed to make these vessels even more capable than their Iowa predecessors. Notably, twelve 16-inch main guns were intended to be fitted on each vessel. The extra guns would have made the proposed USS Montana, USS Ohio, USS Maine, USS New Hampshire, and USS Louisiana 25% more lethal. These proposed 16-inch guns were so large, weighing roughly 2,700 pounds each, that it would have taken dozens of sailors to fire each one.
The Montana-class ships were also designed to dwarf the already giant Iowa battleships. Initial proposals for the new class indicated that each vessel would have measured 890 feet long and would have displaced 64,599 tons. On the other hand, the Iowa battleships measured 860 feet. Due to the Montana class’ heavier proposed armaments, the ships in this series would have been slower than their predecessors. The Iowa battleships could travel at speeds in excess of 33 knots, while the Montana battleships would have been limited to 28 knots.
Despite the Navy’s ambitious plans for its Montana battleships, the ships never came to fruition. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, coupled with the destruction of the Royal Navy’s Force Z a few days later, indicated that aircraft carriers were surpassing battleships as the most significant naval warship. In the early 1940s, the Montana ships were initially delayed in order to allocate more funds and resources to aircraft carrier construction. In 1943 the Montana proposal was nixed altogether. It would then take the Navy more than a decade to introduce a warship as large as the proposed Montanas, with the deployment of the USS Forrestal supercarrier in the mid-1950s.
When the Montana-class was canceled, prospects also looked grim for the Navy’s Iowa-class battleships. But the Iowas were nearly complete on the construction line and were needed to operate alongside the service’s new Essex-class aircraft carriers, so the battleships stayed on the trajectory toward commissioning. Although the Montana ships would have provided more advanced capabilities and more impressive specs than their Iowa-class predecessors, these battleships were simply not meant to be.
About the Author: Maya Carlin
Maya Carlin, National Security Writer with The National Interest, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.
Hero Image by Ethan Saunders. All others are Creative Commons.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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