Battleship versus Aircraft carrier

There have been various threads on battleships over the years, usually lamenting their demise, but by all accounts they were impressive beasts. Just for my idle curiosity I would be interested in hearing informed opinions on the following scenario.

Two ships only, one Iowa class battleship against one Nimitz class aircraft carrier. No support ships of any type. The battleship starts ten miles away from the carrier and has one objective, search and destroy.

The action takes place in the middle of waterworld, there is no land to run to. Also, the aircraft carrier does not have any aircraft on board. Its boat against boat.

So, what happens next?

Its seems obvious in this loaded scenario that the battleship wins, but what I am really interested in is the actual reality of this, how does it go down? What will the carrier look like after the initial pounding from the big guns? Absent aircraft, is there anything at all the carrier can do? How will the battle last?

For extra credit, let the carrier have its planes back, who wins now?

A Nimitz Class carrier has zero offensive weaponry; it’s a bit like putting Rocky Marciano vs. Muhammed Ali, except Ali has no arms.

Under your scenario, the battleship would pound the carrier until it sunk, unless the carrier managed to run out of range, in which case it would use its greater food and fuel stores to outlive the battleship.

If the carrier had planes, it’s solely a matter of how fast they can get an F-14 or two loaded and launched. If the scenario starts with the F-14 armed and ready to launch, the Battle will be over in minutes. If the F-14 is unfueled, unarmed, and in the hangar deck, it’s quite possible the BB will be able to make the flight deck inoperable, in which case see above.

F-14 Tomcats have been retired.

Did you mean an F-18? :slight_smile:

Yeah, but Ali would still throw a knee at him. I knew the carrier relied on its planes, but does it really have zero offensive weaponry? Is there not a turret something on the thing? A missile? A popgun?

Will the battleships shells do much damage individually, or will it just be a case of hammer at the carrier for 4 hours?

Interesting, but surely it would take more than one F14/18 to destroy the battleship, or is the ship that susceptible to air power?

Towards the end of their most recent life cycle the Battleships had Tomahawk missiles as well. Cruise missiles with a nuke tip = win.

Don’t aircraft carriers have the capability of launching Tomahawks? Put a nuke on the tip of one of those, and it’s no contest. Even without the nuke, modern guidance systems could probably deliver it straight to the battleship’s magazine.

EDIT: Simulposted with Algher

Nitpick, it’s ship against ship. In both situations the carrier sinks. If there is an armed strike force on deck, the carrier might get a parting shot doing some damage to the battleship, but the carrier itself would likely sink even faster. There are only 4 steam catapults on the Nimitz to launch aircraft; only the 4 planes already spotted and ready to launch are going to get off of the deck before the 16 Harpoons and 32 Tomahawks the Iowa carries cover the 10 miles in about 1 minute. The rest of the deck full of planes loaded with aviation fuel and ordinance become a liability, not an asset.

Of course, in the real world the carrier would not allow the battleship to get anywhere near 10 miles from it.

ETA: Carriers are only armed with Sea Sparrows and CIWS for point defense against missiles, all other armament is delivered by planes. Carrier aircraft can carry Harpoons, but not Tomahawks.

That, I think, is the key. A carrier is designed to control an area of sea a thousand miles across - it’ll take out the BB literally days before it reaches 10 miles of it.

What the OP is saying, essentially, is that a guy with a knife will kill a guy with a rifle, if they both happen to be locked in a closet.

That’s the whole point of the thing. If you set that condition, then this is not a good test of their relative fighting-strength unless the battleship has no operable guns on board.

Technically that’s two objectives.

Searching wouldn’t be required. At ten miles you could see it (with binoculars at least. No radar needed.)

Nah. The objective is not complete unless the carrier is both located and destroyed. One objective, two components. :wink:

Could the battleship hit it with the guns from ten miles?

The 16-inch guns carried on the Iowa class had a range of over 20 miles.

The Mark 7 16" naval guns had a range of 24 miles.
A curiousity–this article

says that the ships did not move sideways when firing a full broadside, which never occurred to me, but look at the picture in the article. Sure looks like a sideways wake to me.

It does look kinda like the whole 57,000-ton battleship is moving sideways, but I’m pretty sure that’s just the blast wave from those enormous fireballs stirring up the water down below the muzzles of the guns.

Nothing. What for?

if it was carrying the right load and hit it in the right spot, one hit from one anti-ship missle would do it; more likely it would take several, but a plane can carry several. All ships are that susceptible to air power.

True that: I was thinking Vietnam. With Tomahawks, there’s no contest.

I’m not an expert, nor do I have classified US military clearance. And my knowledge is pretty much limited to the US Navy. (Other countries may do things differently.) But as I understand it, aircraft carriers’ non-aircraft armaments are exclusively defensive. They do have anti-aircraft missiles, but those are primarily defensive in nature, and presumably would not be particularly useful against a battleship. (For some reason, I also thought that some carriers had Phalanx in-close-weapons systems, which are anti-ship. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure whether that’s true. I can’t see any on this picture of the USS Nimitz.)

As I understand it, aircraft carriers are used in Strike Groups. A Strike Group is made up of a number of different types of ships. Each ship plays a different role in the Strike Group. The aircraft carriers focus on air power. The other ships take care of other offensive and defensive capabilities, such as Tomahawk and cruise missiles, anti-ship warfare, or anti-sub measures.

Because the role of aircraft carriers is to get and keep planes in the air, anything that would get in the way of that function is stripped down to a minimum. Putting gigantic canons on the flight deck would cause problems with getting the planes in the air. Plus, firing one of those large canons moves the entire ship. (You can kind of see the sideways movement in this picture.) It would be extremely difficult to land a plane on a ship that’s firing canons.

Battleships are designed to conduct offensive anti-ship warfare, and have the guns to achieve that. Of course, I believe that all of the remaining battleships (at least in the US Navy) have been decommissioned. So they’re presumably not updated with the latest weaponry. But if you take away a carrier’s aircraft, you’re taking away its primary weapon. The carrier wouldn’t be entirely helpless, but I’d guess that it would try to avoid a one-on-one fight with a battleship.

This discussion with some basic math, is probably of interest in answering the question of how much the Iowas moved sideways when firing a broadside. FTA:

As far as how CVs do when in knife fighting range with BBs, we have answers both Pro and Con. Ironically, before being mothballed, the Iowas were capable of firing the Tomahawk, including TLAM-A with the W-80 200kt nuclear warhead. I don’t believe that any of the BGM-109s were air deployable by the USN, but I’m probably wrong. EDIT: And I see Algher and Chronos already covered the nuke bit.

Assuming hits on the flight deck, with the first broadside the carrier will be rendered unable launch aircraft and will probably be on fire from bow to stern from exploding airplanes and ordnance.
I’ll take the battleship for the win.