Key Points and Summary – The USS Illinois (BB-65) was the fifth Iowa-class battleship, ordered in 1940, with its keel laid in late 1942.
-However, the ship was never completed. By 1943, the decisive naval battles of World War II, particularly the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, had proven that aircraft carriers—not battleships—were the new capital ships.
Iowa-Class Battleship USS Iowa. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Iowa-Class Battleship U.S. Navy Full. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-With resources shifted to building carriers, the Illinois was canceled in August 1945 when it was only about 25% complete.
-A proposal to convert the hull into an aircraft carrier was also rejected in favor of building new Essex-class carriers.
-The unfinished hull was scrapped in 1958.
USS Illinois: the Iowa-Class Battleship Never Completed
Back in the Second World War, battleships—AKA battlewagons, AKA capital ships, AKA dreadnoughts—were replaced by aircraft carriers—AKA flattops—i.e., the primary instruments of naval power projection.
That said, the Iowa-class fast battleships of the United States Navy continued to play a more minor but still vital role in naval warfare not only during WWII but throughout the Cold War, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Alas, at least one would-be Iowa-class battleship missed out on all that action by simple virtue of the fact that she was never completed: the USS Illinois (BB-65).
Backstory: USS Illinois Namesake
Had BB-65 come to fruition, she not only would have been the fifth ship of the Iowa class, she also would’ve been the second battleship to bear the name of the State of Illinois (AKA the “Prairie State,” AKA the “Land of Lincoln”).
The first was USS Illinois (BB-7), which was launched on October 4, 1898, commissioned on September 16, 1901, renamed USS Prairie State on January 23, 1941, and sold for scrap on May 18, 1956.
What Might’ve Been Part I: USS Illinois (BB-65)
BB-65 did, in fact make it as far as her keel laying; she had been ordered on September 9, 1940, under the provisions of the Two-Ocean Navy Act (AKA the Vinson-Walsh Act) and was laid down at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on December 6, 1942 (one day shy of the 1st anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing, no less).
USS New Jersey Iowa-Class Battleship. Image Taken on 8/2/2025 by National Security Journal/Stephen Silver.
USS Iowa 16-Inch Guns National Security Journal Photo. Taken August 15, 2025 By Harry J. Kazianis.
Had she come fully to fruition, USS Illinois would have born the same impressive technical specifications as her extant sister ships, such as a hull length of 887 feet 3 inches (270.4 meters), a fully-laden displacement of 58,460 tons, a top speed of 32.5 knots (37.4 mph; 60.2 km/h), and nine 16-inch (406 mm)/50 caliber Mark 7 main guns divvied amongst three triple-gun turrets (two such turrets fore, one aft). These 16-inchers could lob a 2,700-lb. (1,225-kg) shell up to 42,345 yards (24.05 miles; 38.72 kilometers).
Alas, as already indicated, by the time the U.S. entered WWII, it was already evident that the aircraft carrier was gaining primacy over the battleship—a point that was further driven home by the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in mid-1942—and therefore building battlewagons became less of a priority.
What Might’ve Been Part Deux: USS Illinois as an Aircraft Carrier?
Speaking of the shifting of shipbuilding priorities to flattops, BB-65 could have found a new lease on life via conversion to an aircraft carrier.
The idea isn’t as crazy as it may seem at first.
After all, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) did so with the Shinano, which had initially been a sister ship to the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi—with a 72,809-ton displacement and nine 18-inch guns—before being converted to the world’s first supercarrier; Shinano’s displacement dropped to 65,800 tons as a result of this conversion. (Of course, she was sunk during her sea trials by the submarine USS Archerfish [SS-311], but that’s a different story). In addition, the IJN converted two other dreadnoughts, Ise and Hyuga, into hybrid battleship-carriers.
Accordingly, the USN studied converting the Illinois into a makeshift carrier.
The study included concept drawings (part of the Bureau of Ships’ “Spring Styles” project books) showing an elongated, slender flight deck on a battleship hull.
However, as intriguing as this idea looked on paper, it was passed over in favor of the more practical and purpose-built Essex-class carriers, which were less costly and time-consuming to build and carried more aircraft to boot.
Iowa-Class Battleship National Security Journal Visit from August 2025. Image Credit: Harry J. Kazianis.
Thus, it came to pass that the Navy canceled the USS Illinois whilst she was roughly 20-25 percent complete.
She was stricken from the roster on August 12, 1945 (three days after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki) and dismantled on the slipway in September 1958.
BB-65’s Legacy
The USS Illinois thus passed into history with the never-built Montana-class battleships as one of the great “what if?” stories of naval warfare.
However, since four of Illinois’s sister ships within the Iowa class *were* not only fully built and commissioned but indeed preserved for posterity as floating museums, maritime history buffs can still get an up-close-and-personal experience of what Illinois would’ve looked like (and felt like and smelled like, for that matter).
Those floating museums are:
–USS Iowa (BB-61), located in San Pedro’s Downtown Harbor within the Port of Los Angeles, California. We visited this warship recently and extensively documented our time on board.
-USS New Jersey (BB-62), docked at Penn’s Landing in Camden, New Jersey. National Security Journal recently visited this impressive warship.
–USS Missouri (BB-63), moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
-USS Wisconsin (BB-64), berthed at the Nauticus maritime-themed science center and museum located on the downtown waterfront in Norfolk, Virginia
Meanwhile, there is a current USN warship bearing the Illinois moniker: the Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Illinois (SSN-786), commissioned on October 29, 2016.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr, Defense Expert
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the newly published book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series.”
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