
Four of these biggest, most powerful battleships were built in the early 1940s, and are considered among the most heavily armed ships the U.S. Some of the more heavily-armed ships in WWII were the Iowa-class battleships – the last battleships built for the Navy. We only included aircraft carriers, cruisers, and battleships in this list. We ranked aircraft carriers above other classes, according to their capacity for aircraft, while other vessel classes were ranked based on their largest caliber gun. referenced the World War II Database, an online collection of data regarding the people, events, equipment, and ships of WWII.

To identify the most heavily-armed warship classes of the United States from World War II, 24/7 Wall St. And with technological advances in weaponry, the new classes of warships at the time were armed with bigger, better guns, and older vessels were upgraded to include new weaponry. As a result, the United States had only about 700 commissioned ships when it entered the war, a figure that grew to more than 6,000 ships during WWII.

The Washington Naval Treaty, signed in 1922, slowed down production of warships in the years following World War I. The United States Navy played a fundamental role in the Allied victory, especially in the Pacific Theater, with several classes of warships setting new standards for firepower.

World War II marked a turning point in naval warfare and saw the development of some of the most heavily armed warships in history, including the aircraft carrier.
