Why do they build such tall and massive masts on World War II battle ships?

Question

I suppose they put antennas on top, and scouting pods near the top. But why do they have more than one? And why are they so massive in some ships? Certainly not using them for sails!

Answer 1

There were used to mount the gun range finders. It got them up above the smoke and gave a further view over the horizon of enemy targets. These sights were optical at the time before radar.

Answer 2

Each turret needed their own director.  Distance between the fore and aft turrets required more than one mast.

Answer 3

as was said:

you needed more than one gun director in case of battle damage.

all the rebuilt WW1 era ships and ALL the WW2 ships, even the Iowas which shot cruise missiles at Iraq in the First Gulf War were designed before radar.......so gun directors..essentially a set of binoculars where the lenses were 24 foot apart were used to estimate range to the target and correct the fall of shot........the big 16" guns could shoot 15-18 miles so you needed gun directors high enough to see that far.....and to get them above the smoke of the funnels

Answer 4

On a typical WWII battleship, each set of the 16" guns also had a "gun director" positioned high above it that coordinated the pointing of the guns.  It was normally done electronically, but could be done manually by having a gunner enter the director itself to point the guns manually.

In addition, the early radars were very substantial in size.