Bring back the battleships?

[Declan]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

So now we throw the topic open for GD Dopers. What do you think?

As a class the BB will be back once they can't justify the size of a cruiser, it just wont have 9 sixteen inch guns, and a brace of five inch guns for secondarys.

The reality was that Battleships were the nuclear weapons of their age, how you were viewed as a power rested on the amount of tonnage that your fleet carried. Those days are gone and we have missiles and bombers on the strategic chess board now , with most of the remaining battleships being tourist attractions.

In todays world a battleship is naked where it counts , as has been posted above , a single mark 48 torpedo would in likely hood cripple a bb if not outright sink it, and precision guided weapons would make hash out of the top side of the ship where its armor was weakest. The Iowas were a transitional ship, to bridge a gap between the sodaks and the newer montanas that were on the drawing boards.

To get the speed that was required to escort the fast carriers , something had to give and that was armor. I am not against bringing back the Battlewagon class, but the threat no longer exists that would justify the tonnage. It needs a new role in tommorows navy , and there is some justification that its coming.

Declan

[MOIDALIZE]

The cruise lines could probably make good use of a battleship for cruises near the Horn of Africa.

[Elendil's Heir]

Originally Posted by MOIDALIZE

The cruise lines could probably make good use of a battleship for cruises near the Horn of Africa.

For that, I think a PT boat would suffice.

[puppygod]

I think cruise lines generate less income that would cost to escort them with friggin battleships.

For missions like that you need something fast, cheap and numerous.

[Alessan]

I wouldn't mind bringing back the Yamato Class battleships - suitably modified, of course.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

Revive the battleship? It would be stupid beyond belief. There is no role for these things anymore, and they are vulnerable to cruise misiles. The battleship was obsolete by 1930. So are most surface ships (except for carriers). We ought to reduce the surface fleet to carriers and destroyers and some fast gunboats (like the Swedish navy has done). There will NEVER be another fleet-fleet slugfest on the high seas, because no other navy has them (unless you count the UK and France, who are unlikly to be enemies).

I can see several problems with this, which I hope will not be too much off-topic for a while before returning to the question at hand.

First off, to state that battleships were obsolete in 1930 is so utterly misinformed that even to ask "cite?" seems superfluous. There was nothing, not the aircraft, not the submarine, nor any other kind of warship capable of doing what battleships were capable of doing in 1930. Any navy without a battleship could not but fail to achieve anything more than the very occasional lucky sea-denial success. Any nation without battleships in 1930 could not hope for more than France managed to achieve 1805-1815 -- very limited victories against secondary objectives.
Second, there's a certain doubt to be levelled at the arguments of someone who's idea of what the U.S. Navy should look like is Sweden's navy. To say that the Swedish and American strategic situations and requirements are entirely different is an understatement. Sweden's navy is a coast-defense force of limited strategic reach, while the U.S. Navy's is a globally-operating force. It's customary to decry the strategic vision of Navy planners, but really: they know their stuff. The centerpiece of the carrier needs the protection of air-defense cruisers and submarine-defense destroyers (although increasingly, these functions are taken up by the same ships) and so do the amphibious ships. So unless you come up with a landing-craft-submarine, you'll need surface ships.
And will there never be another high-seas battle? Hopefully there won't. But I bet China is not betting on it, and nor should the U.S. Navy (unless it is required to do so politically).

As for the question of the battleship today.

I think it would pay to look at what's meant by "battleship" and how that might relate to things useful today. If we start off simple, by looking at the evolution of the battleship, these things stand out:

• Origins: the battleship comes from the sail ship-of-the-line. From the s-o-t-l, first the British and then other navies developed iron, turreted warships which still had the function of standing in the line of battle in a large-scale naval engagement. It's not for nothing that even into the 1900s, pre-dreadnought battleships were called ships of the line, and served the same purpose as their wood-and-sail predecessors. The dreadnought battleship was an extension of the same concept. The modern battleship still more.
• Characteristics: a battleship is usually characterised by large guns and strong armor, because it needs to be able to sink other battleship while not being sunk itself.
• Uses: battleships had one primary use: sink other battleships, because only in this way could the threat to the real uses of the sea, i.e. communications, trade, invasion, be permanently erased. The Greek victory at Salamis was not important because of the ships the Greeks sank, but because in sinking them, they gained control of the sea and sea communications; the same holds true for Lepanto, for Trafalgar, for Jutland. "Battle"ships enabled the victor to avoid the threat of invasion and allowed him free use of the oceans.
• Reason for deactivation: in the U.S. and Britain both, cost, and their lack of utility in peacetime.

Several things stand out here, I think. The two central characteristics of the battleship, guns and armor, have very different usefulnesses today. A 16" gun today might actually be much more useful than it was in 1945. Thanks to submunitions, GPS guidance, rocket-assistance etc., a battleship today could range deeply inland with great precision, a rapid rate of fire and fairly good sustained rate of fire. It would be superior in this case to aircraft.
Armor is a much different matter. Missile combat so far has shown that the greatest danger to a warship is not the warhead, but the fuel and the resultant fires (see Stark and Sheffield), and modern warships' vulnerabilities may lie more in soft- and mission kills than in outright sinkings. The experience that South Dakota had in the naval battle of Guadalcanal is a significant one: although at no time in danger of being sunk by the Japanese battleship gun fire, she was essentially mission-killed by loss of radar fire-control. The same will hold true for a modern battleship with its essentially unprotectable electronics. These same electronics will make it necessary to completely redesign a modern battleship, compared to a World War II one. Today's warships are volume-critical, not displacement-critical.
And the battleship was not built for the secondary operations it could do well, like shore bombardment, or carrier escort. It was built for sea control, a function fulfilled today by the carrier, and a function the battleship had probably ceased to be able to fulfill by the advent of guided missiles (not guided bombs) an carrier jet planes.

In summary: it will not pay to reactivate a battleship. They were not built for the role they would fill today. There is a use for a 16" gunship, there can be little doubt of that; the question is, is there enough use for it to justify the necessary cancellation of other projects. Regrettably, I think there is not.

[puppygod]

Originally Posted by Enterprise

(...)

Several things stand out here, I think. The two central characteristics of the battleship, guns and armor, have very different usefulnesses today. A 16" gun today might actually be much more useful than it was in 1945. Thanks to submunitions, GPS guidance, rocket-assistance etc., a battleship today could range deeply inland with great precision, a rapid rate of fire and fairly good sustained rate of fire. It would be superior in this case to aircraft.
(...)

In summary: it will not pay to reactivate a battleship. They were not built for the role they would fill today. There is a use for a 16" gunship, there can be little doubt of that; the question is, is there enough use for it to justify the necessary cancellation of other projects. Regrettably, I think there is not.

I think your assessment of usefulness of 16 inch guns is somewhat overoptimistic.

First, we don't have system like that operational now - that means it will cost a lot and take years to develop and field family of modern ammunition, as well as integrate it with fire control systems.

Range for 16 inch is about 40 km. Even with ERFB, base-bleed or rocket assist we can only hope to extend it by up to 40%. Say, 56 km maximum. Quite a lot for barrel artillery, but next to nothing compared to heavier rockets, not to mention missiles. Heck, even guided aerial bombs like SDB have twice that range. Nothing close to stand-off. Note, that we can achieve 30 km with your standard ground-based 155 mm howitzers now - using ammo currently fielded.

Another point, it's too powerful. Sure, you can deliver metric ton of mines for area denial, or cover several acres with submunitions, but nowadays we want something with more finesse. There are little scenarios where massive human waves of Chinese infantry will be assaulting over areas that have no civilian population. Most of thing that 16 inch would do would be labeled as war crime nowadays.

As for direct hits, there are few targets hard enough to warrant such heavy AP fire. And caves of Afghanistan are well out-of range. Harpoons, bunker-buster bombs and the like are enough for hardened targets and more versatile to booth. Also, guided munition while useful as extension of existing systems, are not really worth it when developed from the scratch. What you would get would be something with cost and efficiency similar to Harpoon, but much inferior range. And, on the other hand, not that much more capable than existing artillery systems using existing munition.

Overall, I think that 16 inch artillery is answer to question that nobody is asking today. It has very thin area of conditions where it excels over existing systems, and I don't think it's worth pursuing.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Enterprise

I can see several problems with this, which I hope will not be too much off-topic for a while before returning to the question at hand.

First off, to state that battleships were obsolete in 1930 is so utterly misinformed that even to ask "cite?" seems superfluous. There was nothing, not the aircraft, not the submarine, nor any other kind of warship capable of doing what battleships were capable of doing in 1930. Any navy without a battleship could not but fail to achieve anything more than the very occasional lucky sea-denial success. Any nation without battleships in 1930 could not hope for more than France managed to achieve 1805-1815 -- very limited victories against secondary objectives.

Billy Mitchel's 1921 demonstration of the aircraft's ability to sink a battleship effectively rendered the battleship obsolete. This message was driven home at Pearl harbor, the sinking of the Bismarck, the Battle of Midway, and the sinking of the Yamato. It just took a long time for the message to sink in (zing!).

The problem with any battleship is that no matter how big and powerful it is, it can only be at one place at a time. An aircraft carrier with it's wing of dozens of fast and relatively cheap aicraft can control an area for hundreds of miles around it.

Originally Posted by E-Sabbath

I rather favor the railgun variety. 290 miles, mach speed, time on target in minutes. Still faster than airplanes, especially in cases of multiple targets. Fire, change target, fire, change target, fire...

The 1940s Battleship is dead. The 2009 one is just being reborn.

This wouldn't be a true "battleship" though, in the sense of a giant ship covered in armor and bristling with cannon and missle. More like a cruiser - fast, but with a lot of firepower. And really it depends on how small they can make a powerful railgun. We could just be talking about a relative small destroyer.

[Uzi]

These things go in cycles. Currently airpower dominates, but as soon as someone makes a useful energy weapon, anything flying in the air becomes obsolete. "If you can see it, you can hit it" renders anything above the horizon a target and thin skinned vehicles like airplanes and missles won't survive such a conflict. So, you'd be back to creating weapons platforms that would survive equivalent weapons from the enemy. Tanks would rule the battlefield on land, while the new battleship, designed to power the weapons and survive against other equivalent ships, would rule the waves again.

[What Exit?]

Originally Posted by Uzi

These things go in cycles. Currently airpower dominates, but as soon as someone makes a useful energy weapon, anything flying in the air becomes obsolete. "If you can see it, you can hit it" renders anything above the horizon a target and thin skinned vehicles like airplanes and missles won't survive such a conflict. So, you'd be back to creating weapons platforms that would survive equivalent weapons from the enemy. Tanks would rule the battlefield on land, while the new battleship, designed to power the weapons and survive against other equivalent ships, would rule the waves again.

But how close are we to a working energy weapon powerful enough to knock aircraft and missiles out of the sky or small enough for a tank? It seems like we are as close to these as we are to a working Fusion reactor. You know a rolling 20-50 years.

[E-Sabbath]

Puppygod, once again, the railgun version have 290 mile range. Mach 7 speed.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/articl...gnetic-railgun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD(X)
Read what the Zumwalts can do. 80 VLMS cells for Tomohawks.
For a main gun?

The Advanced Gun System is a 155 mm naval gun, two of which would be installed in each ship. This system consists of an advanced 155 mm gun and the Long Range Land-Attack Projectile.[38] This projectile is in fact a rocket with a warhead fired from the AGS gun; the warhead weighs 11 kg / 24 lb and has a circular error of probability of 50 meters. This weapon system will have a range of 83 nautical miles (154 km) and the fully automated storage system will have room for up to 750 rounds.[38] The system will be provided with a magazine of 600 rounds or more per weapon and offers a rate of fire of 10 rounds per minute per gun. The barrel is water cooled to prevent over-heating issues. The combined firepower from a pair of turrets gives Zumwalt-class destroyers firepower equivalent to 18 conventional M-198 field guns.[34]

This is not your grandfather's battleship. There will be only three, but they will be Queen of the Seas.

Edit: Msmith, check out the armor ratings and the missile launch capability.

[Uzi]

Originally Posted by What Exit?

But how close are we to a working energy weapon powerful enough to knock aircraft and missiles out of the sky or small enough for a tank? It seems like we are as close to these as we are to a working Fusion reactor. You know a rolling 20-50 years.

Granted. With today's technology it isn't possible. But if it is developed then there will be a case made to mount them on ships big enough to defend themselves and power the weapon, plus carry the electronics and sensors to make them useful.

[puppygod]

Originally Posted by E-Sabbath

Puppygod, once again, the railgun version have 290 mile range. Mach 7 speed.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/articl...gnetic-railgun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD(X)
Read what the Zumwalts can do. 80 VLMS cells for Tomohawks.
For a main gun?


This is not your grandfather's battleship. There will be only three, but they will be Queen of the Seas.

Edit: Msmith, check out the armor ratings and the missile launch capability.

I was refering to 16 inch artillery, not future railgun or improved 155 mm systems. Actually my point was that there is not enough benefits for 16 inch to be developed when compared to, say, improved 155 mm artillery systems.

And Zumwalt is not battleship. It weights three times less than Iowa and don't have any armor worth mentioning.

It's not like anybody is arguing that surface ships and barrel artillery is obsolete. It's just huge, heavy, armored floating colossi with huge, heavy artillery guns are done for and not going back.

[ralph124c]

"Beserkers" are unmanned, autonmous, heavily armed fighting ships with multiple weapons capabilities. You send them out, and they engage the enemy. Nolives lost, and they are expendible. Sort of like RPAs-we could knock them out quickly, and use them against any Chinese fleet.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by What Exit?

But how close are we to a working energy weapon powerful enough to knock aircraft and missiles out of the sky or small enough for a tank? It seems like we are as close to these as we are to a working Fusion reactor. You know a rolling 20-50 years.

Closer than one might think It's not small enough for a tank, but it is small enough for a battleship.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by E-Sabbath

Edit: Msmith, check out the armor ratings and the missile launch capability.

The Zumwalt is classified as a "destroyer", not a battleship.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by msmith537

Billy Mitchel's 1921 demonstration of the aircraft's ability to sink a battleship effectively rendered the battleship obsolete. This message was driven home at Pearl harbor, the sinking of the Bismarck, the Battle of Midway, and the sinking of the Yamato. It just took a long time for the message to sink in (zing!).

I hate to do this, but really: read up on that, and I mean all of this. Check, for example, the various articles written by Trent Hone (I can give you cites if you so desire) on the role of the battle line in U.S. Navy thought.
Billy Mitchell's attacks on Ostfriesland were a joke. What he proved as that given what time they needed, attacking an anchored, undefended and unmanned ship, planes were capable of inflicting enough damage to sink a battleship. Give me a blow torch and the same conditions, and I'll sink you a battleship myself. That, however, does not render the battleship obsolete.
The same goes for the other examples. Pearl Harbor proved nothing (if it had been the Pacific Fleet submarines that the Japanese had concentrated on, would that have proven they were obsolete?).
The case of Midway is interesting. Midway demonstrated that carriers operating wihtout battleship support would not be able to control the sea, although they could deny it to the enemy. Spruance declined to pursue the Japanese fleet because of his fear of a night engagement with enemy battleships, against which he could not have stood. Carriers in 1942, even up to 1944, could not expect to unilaterally control naval operations as long as the enemy posssessed sufficient strategic opportunity to force a fight, as, for example, the Japanese had at Leyte. As for the others, Bismarck was rather unlucky, but she was sunk by battleships, not by carrier planes; and all Yamato proves is that a single battleship without air cover escorted by one cruiser and eight destroyers cannot stand up to the air power of sixteen carriers over a prolonged period of time. That's the lesson of Prince of Wales and Repulse, too. None of it has any bearing on the utility and or obsolescence of the battleship.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by puppygod

Range for 16 inch is about 40 km. Even with ERFB, base-bleed or rocket assist we can only hope to extend it by up to 40%. Say, 56 km maximum. Quite a lot for barrel artillery, but next to nothing compared to heavier rockets, not to mention missiles. Heck, even guided aerial bombs like SDB have twice that range. Nothing close to stand-off. Note, that we can achieve 30 km with your standard ground-based 155 mm howitzers now - using ammo currently fielded.

I'm not so sure. The new 155mm for the Zumwalt is apparently planned for a range of 100km or so, and I imagine a well-designed 16" gun would be capable of quite a bit more. I agree about the point about the price tag, though not about the applicable targets (again, think submunitions, or something of the sort; but even with a regular WWII type 16" shell, you'd have only about 2000lbs total weight and significantly less explosive filler; certainly, what an F-16 may bomb with a Mk84, a battleship could legally shoot at).

I suppose you'd end up with something akin to a short-range (shall we say, just for the heck of it, about 250kms?) carrier-based fighter-bomber in performance, without needing to endanger a pilot or plane. Probably, as I said, not worth it.

[Ravenman]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

Don't be so sure. We didn't use Apaches in Kosovo in 1999 because we were so concerned about their vulnerability to ground fire.

And which do you think is more vulnerable, a battleship or an SSGN? Those fuckers are stealthy, carry 154 TLAMs, need only 150+- crew, are nuclear powered, and we got FOUR of 'em. Not to mention B-2s armed with small diameter bombs -- not quite as stealthy, but we're talking about many, many dozens of precision guided weapons falling from the sky.

I'm at a loss to think of a good reason why a battleship would do better than SSGNs and stealth aircraft in softening up a beach for an assault, should that ever be needed.

[E-Sabbath]

Originally Posted by msmith537

The Zumwalt is classified as a "destroyer", not a battleship.

This is true, DD, not BB. But it does seem to be darn impressive for a DD. Will a BB result from this? I don't know, but I _can_ tell you that this is a new _kind_ of warship. I honestly can't guess how it'll change warfare, but if it performs, I don't see any reason why a BB successor might not happen circa 2050.

[Otara]

Isnt the biggest barrier to the battleship turning up again political?

Ie there has to be an opponent building a significant enough navy that it would come up as a theoretical concept. Currently the US's lead over other navies is so huge its unlikely to be a viable concept, and any opposing navy is likely to concentrate on submarines for a good while before considering major capital ships, making a new capital ship for the US an unlikely prospect as a counter.

Otara

[Ravenman]

Originally Posted by Otara

Isnt the biggest barrier to the battleship turning up again political?

On the contrary, I'd say it is technology. Precision guided weapons can be carried on nearly any platform, so what's the point of 16 inch guns? Especially considering that a battleship costs a lot more to build and operate, and there's a lot to be said for having a slightly larger number of slightly less capable platforms, rather than one-of-a-kind ones (e.g., we could probably build 2 DDG-1000s and perhaps even the first of the next generation cruiser for what it would cost to build one battleship).

[toadspittle]

Originally Posted by Quartz

So, what if we put them in the centre of the battle group with the carrier and re-cast them as a platform for large weapons? Weapons too large to be carried on smaller ships. Are there such weapons? Nuclear missiles come to mind.

Meh. We've already got SLBMs. Much handier.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by E-Sabbath

This is true, DD, not BB. But it does seem to be darn impressive for a DD. Will a BB result from this?

Not likely. A modern destroyer is roughly equivalent in tonnage to a WWII cruiser but with a lot more firepower. The class designation is more a product of a ships role, not it's size.

[JRDelirious]

Originally Posted by msmith537

Not likely. A modern destroyer is roughly equivalent in tonnage to a WWII cruiser but with a lot more firepower. The class designation is more a product of a ships role, not it's size.

Right. FWIW, the ships the USN still classifies as cruisers have themselves been built on what are essentially stretched destroyer designs for decades now.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Enterprise

I hate to do this, but really: read up on that, and I mean all of this. Check, for example, the various articles written by Trent Hone (I can give you cites if you so desire) on the role of the battle line in U.S. Navy thought.
...None of it has any bearing on the utility and or obsolescence of the battleship.

I'm not an expert on the history of the battleship, but it's my understanding their purpose is to dominate the sea with their firepower. The problem is that they don't and never did. Battleship duels like the Hood vs the Bismark or the Battle of Jutland were the exception, not the rule. And when you can launch dozens of relatively cheap aircraft with bombs and torpedos that can cripple them relatively easily, their huge cost becomes prohibative.

[E-Sabbath]

I'm having a hard time imagining something dominating the sea more than that Tomohawk carrier/rail gun design I'm seeing. Add in some drone scouts...

[Declan]

Originally Posted by Ravenman

I'm at a loss to think of a good reason why a battleship would do better than SSGNs and stealth aircraft in softening up a beach for an assault, should that ever be needed.

Maybe thats now, but in twenty years the tomohawk and B2 may not be in service for any number of reasons. The kind of war that would require a kick down the door ,beach operation, would mean that those systems would be dedicated to non nuclear strategic targets like airfields and the like, so you would be limited to the harrier and F18 hornet for servicing targets with the old fashioned iron bombs, pgm's and cluster bombs.

Declan

[The Second Stone]

Billy Mitchell had the correct idea that battleships would be obsolete in the face of naval air power. Taranto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto proved it, and so did Pearl Harbor. So did the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway. Carriers render battleships utterly obsolete. Had the Japanese continued to attack Midway with only their battleships and escorts after their four carriers were sunk, they would have lost every ship that remained. Every damn one. With few to zero American losses to anything except submarines.

Why have a battleship with a 30 mile weapons range, or even a 100 miles weapons range when a cruise missile from a cruiser can hit a portable shit house at will? When a Predator can do it and report back that it was unoccupied at the time of the hit? The only other advantage that a battleship had (other than big guns) was lots of armor. An Iowa was 800 feet plus and weighed 40,000 tons. Well, a Nimitz is 1000 feet long and weighs 100,000 tons. They are substantially more heavily armored than battleships were. They are faster, can protect the missile cruisers and destroyers from anything in the open ocean short of a nuke and launch attacks 500 miles away and refuel bombers flying from the other side of the globe. You could put up a fleet of Iowas and Yamatos against one carrier battle group and lose the all the battleships with no casualties to the carrier battle group.

Short of nukes, a carrier battle group constitutes naval and air supremacy in any military situation for the next 10 years.

Nukes make that a whole lot more problematical.

Hell, the HMS Victory is cool, but like the USS Missouri, it is properly a museum.

[The Second Stone]

Originally Posted by Declan

Maybe thats now, but in twenty years the tomohawk and B2 may not be in service for any number of reasons. The kind of war that would require a kick down the door ,beach operation, would mean that those systems would be dedicated to non nuclear strategic targets like airfields and the like, so you would be limited to the harrier and F18 hornet for servicing targets with the old fashioned iron bombs, pgm's and cluster bombs.

Declan

Beach operations are are done over the horizon and the "shelling" can be done with destroyers and cruisers and support aircraft to the extent it is necessary. Or even B-52s. Yeah, we don't know if in 20 years cruise missiles and bombers will work, but they do now, and battleships are bizarrely more expensive and less effective at accomplishing the same thing.

[Declan]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

Beach operations are are done over the horizon and the "shelling" can be done with destroyers and cruisers and support aircraft to the extent it is necessary. Or even B-52s. Yeah, we don't know if in 20 years cruise missiles and bombers will work, but they do now, and battleships are bizarrely more expensive and less effective at accomplishing the same thing.

Yup , but if you noticed up thread where I said that BB's would come back as a class, but they would look nothing like the New Jersey with its nine sixteens, as well as there is no threat to justify bringing them back.

Declan

[Dissonance]

Originally Posted by What Exit?

Great Post but as to Reagan's reactivation.

This was discussed while I was serving and was fairly well known in the service and I thought outside of it by those interested in the military. The BBs were brought back primarily as big impressive flag-waving flag ships. It was much the idea of the "Great White Fleet". It was meant to impress and awe. The cost to bring them back was actually cheaper than building a state-of-the-art Cruiser of the time though of course operational expenses were huge.

Thanks, and this is kind of what I meant about the reactivation of the Iowa’s. They look very scary and intimidating, and again I would not dispute their value at shore bombardment - but it's pretty much flag-waving and sitting off of some country's shores in the end. As you said, the reactivation cost wasn't so bad compared to laying down a new cruiser from the ground up, but the cost of manning them was much larger than that of a new cruiser due to their age. I'm sure that designing a battleship from the ground up today would result in a much smaller crew requirement - but at the same time the costs of tooling up to be able to make heavily armored triple turrets, or 16" guns, or thick belt and deck armor would be very, very steep; they're lost arts.

The other part was the the Iowa's class armor was much greater than that of any other ship floating in the 80s except for some of our carriers. What I recall and it might be off, is very few of the nations that were not our allies had Torps and Missile that could disable or sink an Iowa class. Maybe this was hype or pure scuttlebutt but the idea was the BBs were for 3rd world nations and never the USSR or China.

Very true, and it was much greater than the carriers of the '80s or today as well. As designed, the Iowa’s were intended to be able to take hits from shells weighing as much as a car and built to penetrate thick armor from other battleships. An Exocet, for example, wasn't really going to do anything against a solid foot of steel, which was the Iowa's belt armor. Compare this to say, the USS Stark which very nearly sank from a single Exocet hit. The 'armor' on modern warships if you can even call it that is very thin. Even against the most modern of anti-ship missiles from the USSR, the survivability of the Iowa’s from anything short of a nuclear blast would have been pretty amazing compared to anything else in the fleet. I mean when the Soviets designed the AS-6, they weren't looking for it to penetrate very much armor before the 2,200lb warhead detonated.

If you ever get the chance to visit one of the museum battleships, it's pretty sobering to walk into the bridge from an external bulkhead door and have to step over more than a foot of steel.

Originally Posted by Alessan

I wouldn't mind bringing back the Yamato Class battleships - suitably modified, of course.

Oh god I loved watching that growing up.

[Declan]

Originally Posted by Dissonance

Very true, and it was much greater than the carriers of the '80s or today as well. As designed, the Iowa’s were intended to be able to take hits from shells weighing as much as a car and built to penetrate thick armor from other battleships. An Exocet, for example, wasn't really going to do anything against a solid foot of steel, which was the Iowa's belt armor. Compare this to say, the USS Stark which very nearly sank from a single Exocet hit. The 'armor' on modern warships if you can even call it that is very thin. Even against the most modern of anti-ship missiles from the USSR, the survivability of the Iowa’s from anything short of a nuclear blast would have been pretty amazing compared to anything else in the fleet. I mean when the Soviets designed the AS-6, they weren't looking for it to penetrate very much armor before the 2,200lb warhead detonated.

Yes , but BB's then could not have armor everyware, and especially the Iowa's. The hood was most likely killed with plunging shell hitting the relatively paper thin armor on the decks, leading to the powder magazine.

Plus they are naked to Torpedos in the Mark 48 or 533 mm class, the USN has been coy about what protects the carriers from these sub launched torps, other than the attached submarines and the surface escort and embarked airwing. But the Battleship of the day was designed with taking a torpedo against the hull, not several feet under it. If enough water is displaced , the weight of the ship will break its own back.

Declan

[Dissonance]

Originally Posted by msmith537

Billy Mitchel's 1921 demonstration of the aircraft's ability to sink a battleship effectively rendered the battleship obsolete. This message was driven home at Pearl harbor, the sinking of the Bismarck, the Battle of Midway, and the sinking of the Yamato. It just took a long time for the message to sink in (zing!).

Sorry but Billy Mitchell's demonstration was incredibly contrived. Yes, a stationary battleship with no AA guns firing that bombers can leisurely cruise over and drop bombs on and there is no damage control on the ship - wow, it sinks! You may as well put a one inch hole under the waterline and watch it sink. Sorry, but while battleships were no longer the queens of the sea, the mantle of which passed to aircraft carriers, they were anything but obsolete. That message was kind of driven home by the first and second naval battles of Guadalcanal, Surigao Straights, the sinking of the Bismarck (which sank to - drum roll - surface ships including battleships), the sinking of the HMS Glorious (an aircraft carrier) to the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (battlecruisers!), Scharnhorst being sunk by the Duke of York (a battleship!), or... well there were actually far more surface engagements in WW2 than carrier battles, even in the Pacific where carriers were much more active.

Aircraft carriers had taken the mantle from battleships to be the decisive capital ship, but battleships served quite heavily and successfully during the war, they simply were not obsolete. Hell, even the US fast battleships served as escorts for the carrier fleets, they mounted a huge number of 20mm and 40mm AA guns as well as 20 5in DPs.

The problem with any battleship is that no matter how big and powerful it is, it can only be at one place at a time. An aircraft carrier with it's wing of dozens of fast and relatively cheap aircraft can control an area for hundreds of miles around it.

In WW2 they had to move away from any potential surface engagement at night, which opened huge opportunities for night surface actions. See for example Guadalcanal, there were 5 major surface battles and 1 carrier against carrier battle. Admittedly only 2 involved battleships mostly due to the unwillingness to commit them to anything but vital battles, but surface actions are surface actions, they involve naval fleets doing the obsolete and closing to gunnery and torpedo range and fighting it out, with nary a carrier airplane to be seen.

And well, carriers being everywhere at once and controlling hundreds of miles around them - well, tell that to Halsey when he fell to Japan's Northern Force feint and went chasing Japanese aircraft carriers without pretty much any planes at Leyte Gulf. At least he opened up the opportunities for two surface engagements involving battleships - one of them in broad daylight!

[puppygod]

I don't think experiences from WWII are meaningful to this discussion - either way.

A lot has changed since then. Planes don't need to fly over to drop bombs anymore - they can release their loads from dozens kilometers away and let it glide - and still hit with ten-meter precision. Thanks to satellites, drones and recon aircrafts ships as large as battleship are practically impossible to hide. Oh, and that pesky missiles - some of you seems to operate under impression that they are just like cannon shell, only flying further. Nope. During last half century we improved our technology of breaking armor quite a bit. Heck, top modern handheld anti-tank weapon can penetrate three feet of armor steel or more. Maybe Iowa belt could withstand direct Exocet hit. But it takes less time to fit Exocet with tandem HEAT warhead than to build battleship. Not to mention things like Storm Shadow or BrahMos, which could took it with single hit anyway.

There is a reason why only battleship sized ships in modern navies are carriers - you can keep them relatively safe far away within carrier group, and with they can still project force over hundreds of miles. Battleship don't have that luxury and to engage in combat it needs to get within enemy range. And feet or two of armor is simply not enough to achieve suitable survivability today. Single frigate with displacement of 3.500 tons can score killing blow against 60.000 ton battleship. It's a fact. That changed dynamics of naval conflicts and times of huge guns and heavy armor are not going back, unless we experience some civilization collapse.

[Dissonance]

Originally Posted by Declan

Yes , but BB's then could not have armor everyware, and especially the Iowa's. The hood was most likely killed with plunging shell hitting the relatively paper thin armor on the decks, leading to the powder magazine.

Aye, but the lack of deck armor on the Hood was well known and worried about. She was stuck having to bear all of the misconceived notions by the British admiralty about battlecruisers from before WW1. In short, British battlecruisers were designed with speed, firepower, and armor in that order. The idea, which proved to be tragically and very, very wrong was that speed could make up for lighter armor. It was just a bad idea for a design, which was obvious at Jutland in WW1: 3 Battlecruisers lost to deck hits reaching the magazines

The British battlecruisers were designed to chase down and destroy enemy cruisers from a range cruisers could not effectively reply from. They were not designed to be Ships of the Line and exchange broadsides with the enemy. Although one German and three British battlecruisers were sunk, none of them was destroyed by enemy shells penetrating the belt armor and detonating the magazines. Each of the British battlecruisers was penetrated through her turret roof and her magazines ignited by flash fires passing through the turret and shell handling rooms.

The deck armor of the Iowa was 6" for example, while the Hood's was a mere 1", 3" over the magazines.

Plus they are naked to Torpedoes in the Mark 48 or 533 mm class, the USN has been coy about what protects the carriers from these sub launched torps, other than the attached submarines and the surface escort and embarked airwing. But the Battleship of the day was designed with taking a torpedo against the hull, not several feet under it. If enough water is displaced , the weight of the ship will break its own back.

Declan

I don't disagree at all about the lethality of torpedoes, but detonating the torpedo under the keel did date back to WW2. Both the US and Germany used magnetic detonators which were supposed to detonate the warhead under the keel, but they were plagued with problems. They would frequently detonate early (which often made it appear that a hit had been made), and depth keeping at least on US torpedoes was fucked up. Torpedoes would run much deeper than they were set to, so sometimes the twitchy magnetic detonator wouldn't go off because the torpedo was running far too deep. Once the problem was identified, both navies went to contact detonators - but that was just the beginning of the troubles to fix the USNs Mk 14 torpedo, the contact detonator would frequently go dud. Ironically the best angled shots were the most likely to crush the contact detonator before it fired.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by msmith537

I'm not an expert on the history of the battleship, but it's my understanding their purpose is to dominate the sea with their firepower. The problem is that they don't and never did. Battleship duels like the Hood vs the Bismark or the Battle of Jutland were the exception, not the rule. And when you can launch dozens of relatively cheap aircraft with bombs and torpedos that can cripple them relatively easily, their huge cost becomes prohibative.

There are two points to be made with regard to this: the first is that you're right that once your scenario of easily crippled battleships comes true, they become obsolete. But that point was not reached until very late in World War II, and then only when aircraft attacked battleships without air cover. It was never easy to sink a battleship -- else Kurita would never have made it as far as he did at Leyte -- and as I said, it is probably not until the advent of jet bombers that the battleship was becoming obsolete as an instrument of sea control.

The second is that just because battleships, and even that's debatable, never dominated the sea with their firepower (they certainly did at Jutland), that doesn't mean that they could not have, or that operations were not conducted with a view to what a battleship would be able to do if it did encounter an opposing force. Just as the various nukes scattered around the world could obliterate the planet, but don't, battleships could duke it out on the high seas for naval dominance, but didn't (or at least, not in World War II). For most fleets, a battleship in being was a valuable asset, and to risk it was necessary to have a valuable objective. Kurita had, or thought he had, such an object at Leyte, and but for the tides of war and twelve hours more time, Lee would have caught Kurita going back through San Bernandino Straight. We would have had a four vs. six battleship match, Kurita would have been annihilated, and there would have been no doubt about the utility of the battleship in 1944.

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by Spiny Norman

no enemy ships are going to be stupid enough to blunder within gun range

While I don't dispute the rest of your assessment of how battleships would fare in modern combat, I would like for the record to point out that there's ALWAYS someone stupid enough to blunder into the most unlikely military disasters. Not that we should base policy on having stupid enemies. Historically, however, people do inexplicably blunder into gun range despite having every reason to avoid it.

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by I Love Me, Vol. I

I didn't realize that English was not your first language. And it's exactly because it's become so prevalent that I made the comment. It is truly a abomination

Gaudere's law strikes again!

(it's an abomination!)

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

The only other advantage that a battleship had (other than big guns) was lots of armor. An Iowa was 800 feet plus and weighed 40,000 tons. Well, a Nimitz is 1000 feet long and weighs 100,000 tons. They are substantially more heavily armored than battleships were. They are faster,

Couple of misconceptions here. Battleships can be just as fast as carriers; the US Iowa class steamed 31-35 knots; carriers typically 33 knots.

On the armor, I went to find a citation; turns out modern carrier (Nimitz-class) armor belt information is classified. You may know something I don't know, but I doubt it; I would be very surprised if a modern supercarrier had a significant armor belt.

The most recent class of carriers I can find armor stats for (from Wikipedia):

Midway class (1945 and following):

Belt: 7.6 inch
Deck: 3.5 inch

USS Iowa class battleships (contemporaneous with the Midway carriers):

Belt: 12.1 in
Bulkheads: 11.3 in
Barbettes: 11.6 to 17.3 in
Turrets: 19.7 in
Decks: 7.5 in

In addition to their dubious combat utility, the most damaging argument to be made against battleships nowadays is the enormous capital expense of building new ones. In their day they consumed national treasuries like nothing else, and we'd have to rebuild the vanished infrastructure to make more of them (where could we roll 19.7 inch class-A armor plate these days?).

Someone, I think it might have been Richard Humble, said that there have been many "ultimate weapons" in human history, but nothing looked as much like the ultimate weapon as the dreadnought battleship. What could be more menacing then a dark battleship bristling with huge guns lying just on the horizon?

They're as dead as the armored knight, and nearly as romantic.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

Billy Mitchell had the correct idea that battleships would be obsolete in the face of naval air power. Taranto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto proved it, and so did Pearl Harbor. So did the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway. Carriers render battleships utterly obsolete. Had the Japanese continued to attack Midway with only their battleships and escorts after their four carriers were sunk, they would have lost every ship that remained. Every damn one. With few to zero American losses to anything except submarines.

This is still Great Debates, not IMHO; although we're in the forum for witnessing, I don't suppose I imagined it would happen in the battleship vs. carrier debate.

Tell me, what was Billy Mitchell's idea? That twenty years in the future, carrier planes would be capable of sinking battleships at anchor? I'd give him props for that (the British came up with it in World War I, actually). No, his idea was that the aircraft could defend the American coastline more effectively, cheaper, etc., than the surface Navy could -- and he was wrong. He was also wrong in suggesting that aircraft could easily sink battleships, and would not be right until years later.

And consequently, the battleship's decline as sole dominator of the sea went on another decade. In 1790, nothing could defeat a ship of the line but another ship of the line. By 1860, spar torpedoes were putting a dent in; by 1880, automotive torpedoes; by 1900, submarines and automotive torpedoes; by 1918, torpedo planes. And each of these weapons grew more powerful with time (well, not the spar torpedo), making the battleship more and more vulnerable. Fine, we're agreed on that. But again: even in October 1944, at Leyte, the United States Navy, which had by then had two and a half years of wartime experience with progressively stronger carrier forces, thought that to reliably sink a battleship, you needed another battleship. That's why they sent Lee to catch Kurita (and had previously planned for him to sink ISE and HYUGA in the Northern Force); that's why Spruance wanted Lee to engage Ozawa at Philippine Sea six months earlier; that's why ISE and HYUGA were so high on the hit list for the 3rd Fleet after Leyte.

So what did Pearl and Taranto prove? They proved the hypothesis, already uttered at least a decade earlier (and experimented with in U.S. Fleet Problems) that a battlefleet at anchor could suffer serious damage from planes. But why did the British bomb Taranto? The Japanese Pearl? Because the battleships anchored there were the sole tool of reliable sea control the Italians in 1940 and the U.S. in 1941 possessed! Coral Sea proved nothing (except that ships smaller than carriers could not operate were enemy carriers were present; there were no battleships at Coral Sea); and I wrote about Midway above. Spruance could deny the Japanese sea control, but he did not possess it himself either. In order to ensure that he could gain sea control in the face of the Combined Fleet during the Gilbert and Marshall campaigns, Spruance brought battleships, and was ready to use them in battle.

Again: is it so difficult to understand that an evolving role for the battleship, increasingly needful of protection, first by smaller cruisers and destroyers from enemy torpedo boats, then by carriers from enemy aircraft, is not proof of the obsolescence of the battleship?

[ralph124c]

I WWII, these were rare events. For example, in the Pacific, the only such conflict was the batlle of the Komandorski Straights-in which japanese and US Navy battleships blasted away at eachother (with little effect).
I remember visting the USS Massachusetts 9now at Fall River MA). This ship fought a brief gun battle with the (Vichy) French battleship JEAN BART (at the North Africa invasion, 1943). A 15" shell fired by the JEAN BART hit the forward turret of the MASSACUSETTS-it did nothing but make a slight dent in the turret.
So, it is paradoxical, that the batlleships were well-constructed 9to avoid damage from high-velocity cannon fire), but could be sunk by a single torpedo.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

I WWII, these were rare events. For example, in the Pacific, the only such conflict was the batlle of the Komandorski Straights-in which japanese and US Navy battleships blasted away at eachother (with little effect).
I remember visting the USS Massachusetts 9now at Fall River MA). This ship fought a brief gun battle with the (Vichy) French battleship JEAN BART (at the North Africa invasion, 1943). A 15" shell fired by the JEAN BART hit the forward turret of the MASSACUSETTS-it did nothing but make a slight dent in the turret.
So, it is paradoxical, that the batlleships were well-constructed 9to avoid damage from high-velocity cannon fire), but could be sunk by a single torpedo.

In the Battle of Komandorski Island, the link is to Vince O'Hara's excellent summary of the battle, two American and two Japanese cruisers fought a daylight action. The next battleship was thousands of miles away.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Dissonance

Sorry but Billy Mitchell's demonstration was incredibly contrived.

I disagree. It was a proof-of-concept that a relatively inexpensive aircraft could locate and damage a big ship at sea. No, it did not instantly render the battleship obsolete. But it showed clear insite as to the direction things were heading.

Originally Posted by Enterprise

Again: is it so difficult to understand that an evolving role for the battleship, increasingly needful of protection, first by smaller cruisers and destroyers from enemy torpedo boats, then by carriers from enemy aircraft, is not proof of the obsolescence of the battleship?

It is difficult to understand. The battleship is designed to dominate the sea and yet it requires greater and greater protection from much smaller, less expensive threats - torpedo boats, submarines, aircraft, etc.

So what makes it different from the aircraft carrier in that regard? The ability to project force long distances. The TBF Avenger torpedo plane carried by Essex class WWII carriers has a range of 1000 miles. The guns on an Iowa class battleship has a range of 20 miles or so. The carrier battlegroup just has to provide local protection while the carriers aircraft can engage targets much further out.

So IOW, since the battleship can't protect itself and can't project force AND is ridiculously expensive, you are much better off just building a dozen smaller ships.

Originally Posted by Enterprise

So what did Pearl and Taranto prove? They proved the hypothesis, already uttered at least a decade earlier (and experimented with in U.S. Fleet Problems) that a battlefleet at anchor could suffer serious damage from planes.

Yes, THAT is the whole point. The carrier battlegroup does not have to engage the battleship fleet on the high seas. They can sail within a few hundred miles and launch their swarm of torpedo and bomb laden aircraft and sink the fleet at anchor.


So no, the battlships shouldn't have been scraped after Mitchels demonstration. And clearly the Iowas have had a useful service life up until as recently as the first Gulf War. And they look cool as shit. But in terms of the capital ship role they were designed for, they slowly became more and more impractical as soon as you could prove they could be hurt by itty bitty aircraft.

[Enterprise]

Originally Posted by msmith537

It is difficult to understand. The battleship is designed to dominate the sea and yet it requires greater and greater protection from much smaller, less expensive threats - torpedo boats, submarines, aircraft, etc.

So what makes it different from the aircraft carrier in that regard? The ability to project force long distances. The TBF Avenger torpedo plane carried by Essex class WWII carriers has a range of 1000 miles. The guns on an Iowa class battleship has a range of 20 miles or so. The carrier battlegroup just has to provide local protection while the carriers aircraft can engage targets much further out.

First off, you're overestimating the effective combat range of a TBF. Second, I'll try this once more and then retire concluding that you're not reading what I'm writing: even as late as October 1944, it was the considered opinion and the tactical standard operations procedure to ensure sea control by destroying the enemy's battlefleet by engaging it with your own battlefleet. Yes, the carrier could engage the enemy further away than the battleship. No, it could not reliably sink it, or barr a determined enemy from reaching his objective. This is what Leyte proved.

Yes, THAT is the whole point. The carrier battlegroup does not have to engage the battleship fleet on the high seas. They can sail within a few hundred miles and launch their swarm of torpedo and bomb laden aircraft and sink the fleet at anchor.

Good, we're in agreement. Sadly, you seem to have ignored (just because you could, I assume) the point that while anything was vulnerable in port, only the enemy's battleships were worth endangering all your carriers to hit them.

I hope you'll stop cherry-picking my posts, or else I'll call ignorance unfightable and slink off...

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

So, it is paradoxical, that the batlleships were well-constructed 9to avoid damage from high-velocity cannon fire), but could be sunk by a single torpedo.

While I suppose in theory a single torpedo could have gotten lucky, in reality battleships were tougher and required multiple hits to bring down -- the Americans were astounded at the toughness of IJN Musashi, for example.

But Musashi did go down, with enough effort. Admittedly, it required a major concentration of the world's most experienced naval air, and took five separate attacks. And there's a point to be made -- had she had significant air cover -- equivalent air cover -- she would likely have survived. Battleships in WWII were effective if used in the right mix of fleet units. Like the tank, a weapon that had once been strategically decisive by itself became incorporated into combined arms tactics...one powerful part of a properly composed fleet, vulnerable when isolated. [By mid-war, tanks sent forward without infantry and air support were vulnerable.]

I love the old battlewagons, but I am unconvinced there's a role for them today. It's true that Iowa would survive any rubber boat filled with suicide bombers, and not even stop for a puny Exocet missile strike. But you could afford thousands of Exocets for a fraction of the cost of a battleship, especially if we're talking the attendant costs of building a new one; and eventually Iowa would suffer Musashi's fate. Yes, as part of an integrated task force, Iowa would live a lot longer and do more good; whether that would be cost-effective remains to be seen. And in a hypothetical equal encounter, the side with one battleship plus a combined fleet probably does not best the side with 10,000 Exocets (or however many is the equivalent cost) instead of a battleship, plus the same combined fleet.

[msmith537]

Originally Posted by Enterprise

First off, you're overestimating the effective combat range of a TBF.

That was total range. So lets say roughly a third to half of that as effective combat range.

Originally Posted by Enterprise

Second, I'll try this once more and then retire concluding that you're not reading what I'm writing: even as late as October 1944, it was the considered opinion and the tactical standard operations procedure to ensure sea control by destroying the enemy's battlefleet by engaging it with your own battlefleet. Yes, the carrier could engage the enemy further away than the battleship. No, it could not reliably sink it, or barr a determined enemy from reaching his objective. This is what Leyte proved.

I think you are missing the point. Here are the 9 Japanese battleships/battlecrusiers that saw action at Lyte Gulf:

Yamato - survived Lyte but ultimately sunk in by carrier based aircraft off Okinawa
Musashi - sunk by carrier aircraft.
Nagato - survived Lyte but driven off by air attack. Eventually used as target practice for nuclear bomb tests.
Kongō - ultimately sunk from damage caused by torpedo hits from the USS Sealion
Haruna - survived Lyte but ultimately sunk in by carrier based aircraft in port at Kure Naval Base
Yamashiro - Had it's shit fucked up by torpedo hits and naval gunfire (woooo)
Fusō - blow'd up from torpedo hits from destroyer USS Melvin
Hyūga - survived Lyte
Ise - survived Lyte, later sunk by carrier based aircraft in 1945


Regardless of what the Navy thought in 1944, I have the advantage of 60+ years of hindsight. To me, in my uneducated opinion, the battleship, while certainly badass, is vulnurable to being destroyed by aircraft and smaller, far cheaper torpedo armed ships. In all fairness, I would have to evaluate how many ships were actually sunk or damaged by those ships to make a true assessment of their value.

But knowing what we now know of history, do you focus your research on building even bigger and more expensive battleships or do you focus on making naval aircraft and carriers more effective?

It's like when the car was first invented. It didn't immediately replace the horse and carriage. But you would have to be a fool to throw more and more money into technology to improve the buggy whip.

[Elendil's Heir]

Originally Posted by The Second Stone

...An Iowa was 800 feet plus and weighed 40,000 tons. Well, a Nimitz is 1000 feet long and weighs 100,000 tons. They are substantially more heavily armored than battleships were....

This can't be true. Cite?

[What Exit?]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

This can't be true. Cite?

Well he is a little under on the BB and a little over on the CVN but he is close.

As to the Armor, the Enterprise has heavy Armor (8") and I imagine the Nimitz class does also. It is possible that is was upped to near the level of the Iowa class.

[Chronos]

It's important to realize that the best armor isn't a few feet of steel. The best armor is a few thousand miles of thin air. If you can engage the enemy from hundreds or thousands of miles away with planes and missiles, then it doesn't much matter how much steel you're wearing.