Key Points and Summary – USS Illinois (BB-65) was planned as the fifth Iowa-class battleship, laid down in late 1942 at Philadelphia.
-By 1945 she was roughly one-fifth complete—just as World War II ended and aircraft carriers eclipsed battleships for good.
-The Navy halted Illinois in August 1945 and, despite brief ideas to convert or test her, scrapped the incomplete hull in 1958.
-Had she joined the fleet, Illinois likely would have mirrored her sisters’ careers—Korea, Cold War modernization, and even 1980s missile upgrades.
-Instead, she became a cautionary tale about changing technology and timing—and a reminder that even great designs can miss their moment.
USS Illinois (BB-65): The Great Iowa That Never Was
You can stand on the Delaware River today and imagine it: an 887-foot warship with the lines of speed, nine big rifles in triple turrets, and the same thunder that made the Iowa-class famous. USS Illinois was meant to be that ship. She just never made it.
The story isn’t complicated so much as it is inconvenient. By the time Illinois moved from drawings to steel, the future had already shifted under her keel.
A Battleship Born Just as the World Changed
USS Illinois was ordered in 1940 under the Two-Ocean Navy Act, then laid down at the Philadelphia Navy Yard in December 1942. On paper she was familiar: an Iowa-class fast battleship designed to sprint with the carriers, throw heavy punches at sea, and—if needed—level shores. In practice, the war moved faster than her slipway. After Coral Sea and Midway, the U.S. Navy reoriented around aircraft carriers. Big-gun ships still mattered for shore bombardment and as escorts, but they were no longer the center of gravity.
Construction on USS Illinois never had the urgency of a carrier or a destroyer. The yards prioritized what won the Pacific. By August 1945, with Japan collapsing and the ship maybe one-fifth to one-quarter complete, the Navy did the unsentimental thing: it canceled the ship and moved on.
The Carrier Conversion That Didn’t Happen
In the middle of the war, the Navy even studied turning Illinois (and sister hull Kentucky) into makeshift carriers. The concept drawings—part of the Bureau of Ships’ “Spring Styles” exercises—showed a long, slim flight deck on a battleship hull.
The idea was clever but compromised: fewer aircraft than a purpose-built Essex, more cost and time than just building another Essex, and a finished product that still wasn’t truly optimized for carrier ops. The study died on the merits, and both ships reverted to the battleship plan—at a very low priority.
Why Canceling Illinois Made Sense (Even If It Hurts)
By late summer 1945, three unforgiving truths lined up against Illinois:
Mission Relevance: Air power had outstripped gun power for sea control. Battleships still had roles, but not enough to justify more new construction.
Budget and Backlog: The Navy faced a massive demobilization while paying to complete ships that actually changed outcomes—carriers, escorts, amphibs.
Opportunity Cost: Every riveter on Illinois was a riveter not finishing something the postwar fleet needed more.
Plenty of good ships have been canceled because the world changed mid-build. Illinois is just the most glamorous example.
What Became of the Hull
The Navy kept the incomplete hull around for a time—there were fleeting ideas to finish it enough for nuclear test duty—but the costs to even launch her were too high. In 1958 the steel was cut where it sat and sold. If you’re looking for relics, there are two footnotes worth knowing:
The Bell Lives On: A ship’s bell cast for “USS Illinois 1946” ended up at the University of Illinois’ Memorial Stadium. NROTC midshipmen still ring it during football games, a small echo of a big ship that never sailed.
A Sister’s Bow Saves a Sister: Not Illinois, but her near-twin Kentucky gave up part of its uncompleted bow in 1956 to repair Wisconsin after a collision—an odd coda to the class’s unfinished stories.
What USS Illinois Would Have Done—If She’d Joined the Fleet
It’s not hard to sketch the alternate timeline. If Illinois had slid into the water in 1945 and commissioned, she would have looked a lot like her sisters.
Korea: In the early 1950s, the Iowas returned to pound shore targets and show the flag. Illinois almost certainly would have been there, working the gun line off Korea’s coast, reminding everyone that big naval artillery still had a use after all.
The Long Cold War: Through the 1950s and ’60s, operational use of battleships waned. The class spent long stretches in reserve, then came back for specific crises or modernization spurts. Illinois would have ping-ponged with them—mothballed, reactivated, modernized, perhaps doing a turn as a training or presence ship.
Vietnam (Maybe): Only New Jersey saw sustained action off Vietnam, but a larger battleship pool could have changed that mix. There’s a plausible world where Illinois replaces or supplements a sister on the gun line, providing heavy fire support with spotter aircraft overhead.
1980s Modernization: This is the big one. When the Navy reactivated the Iowas under the maritime strategy, they sprouted Tomahawk cruise missiles, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Phalanx CIWS, and modern electronics. They launched drones for spotting, pounded targets with 16-inch shells, and—in Desert Storm—struck from standoff ranges with precision Tomahawks. Illinois would have received the same VLS-by-box treatment: armored launchers on deck, updated combat systems inside, and the unlikely but potent combination of Cold War steel and late-Cold War precision.
Gulf War and After: In 1991, Missouri and Wisconsin fired the last battleship shots in anger under the U.S. flag. Add Illinois to that roster and the playbook barely changes—more missiles in opening salvos, more gunfire options on call, another massive presence ship pulling deterrence duty off hostile shores.
None of that is fantasy. It’s what her sisters actually did.
“But Battleships Were Obsolete”—Yes, And No
The easy line is that battleships were obsolete by 1945. True in one sense: they no longer decided fleet battles. But the roles that kept the Iowas relevant—shore bombardment, presence, and later missile trucking—were real. Big decks, big magazines, big electrical power, and the sheer psychology of a battleship still had value.
USS Illinois didn’t sail not because battleships had zero utility, but because the marginal utility of one more was low in 1945–46. The Navy already had four completed Iowas, dozens of cruisers, and carrier air groups that were chewing through the remaining work of the war. Finishing Illinois just didn’t move the needle enough to beat the budget ax.
The Broader Lesson: Timing Is a Design Variable
Illinois teaches a designer’s lesson as much as a historian’s: timing is part of the design.
The Iowa hull was a triumph—fast, spacious, upgrade-friendly. Those qualities made the class surprisingly adaptable in the 1980s. But they couldn’t overcome a basic reality in 1945: the fleet had pivoted, the fight was ending, and the next fight would reward different things.
If there’s a bittersweet moral, it’s that the Navy eventually rediscovered the value of the qualities Illinois embodied—volume, power, and margin for growth—two generations later. By then, her steel was long gone.
Why The Ship Still Matters—Even As A “What If”
Every unfinished ship leaves traces. Illinois’s bell rings in Champaign. Her paperwork sits in archives that record a moment when the Navy weighed carriers against conversions, guns against planes, present needs against future bets. And naval architects still study the Iowa lines when considering how to keep large ships relevant across decades.
USS Illinois, ironically, may be the cleanest case study: all of the promise, none of the messy service record.
That makes her the most modern story of all—an object lesson in how strategy, technology, and budgets collide on the ways.
About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis
Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.
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