This is a very low-probability event. The chances of us having to conduct an amphibious assault aginst mainland China are as close to nil as I can imagine, and designing our amphibious operations capability to only one opponent is short-sighted in the extreme.
For the foreseeable future, we’re far more likely to be using the Marines against second tier (and lower) nations.
Again I point out, that if we were to conduct an amphibious assault against a well-equipped military, the BB would still be the most survivable ship in the gator fleet, and would be a low-pri target, as the enemy would be trying to sink the gators first. The presence or absence of a BB in the assault fleet will do nothing to increase that threat, and if armed with AA weapons, may well decrease the threat.
The simple fact is, taking your supposed combat situation, that ANY ship sent into the Taiwan Straight is a great risk. Why would we do it? Only if the gain outweighed the risk, and if the potential gain outweighed the risk, it wouldn’t matter at all if a BB was in the group or not (except to the marines), as the threat would still be the same, to all ships. The DD214 ships would be subject to precisely the same incoming fire, and are less capable of standing up to it, while being less effective in the Naval Gunfire Support role.
Oh, and the BBs weren’t used in Kosovo because they’d already been deactivated. During the Gulf War, the BBs came under surface-to-surface missile fire (from the heavy ship-killers that Iraq had), and the Amphib Group escort shot them out of the air with ease.
Whack-a-Mole, I see your last post as a support for SenorBeef. We certainly should not send the Iowa into a Chinese harbor, guns blazing. On the other hand, we faced the U.S.S.R. for over 40 years without sending it into Sevastopol or Leningrad/St.Petersberg, and yet we still found a lot of use for the weapon.
An B-52 would be useless for shooting down a squadron of attacking aircraft. Should we abandon them, as well?
Fascinating though this conversation is, I’m gonna add a bit of trivia re: the OP:
The HMS Belfast, permanently moored in the Thames, has its guns trained on the London Gateway Motorway Services Area off the M1 motorway. For some reason, I find the thought of firing a battleship’s guns in Central London and blowing up a highway rest area twelve miles away strangely amusing.
The strategy “kill your enemy on the beaches,” was abandoned shortly after WWII. The idea being that ANY permanent defensive structure was vulnerable to nuclear attacks and air strikes, so concentrating your defensive resources on the beach is futile (I base this on National Park Service info from Fort Pickens, which was a shore defense facility in Pensacola, FL from 1860 to 1950 or so).
If true, then the argument “Battleships are necessary for supporting Marines on the beaches.” Is really not important. There won’t be another Normandy-type invasion of a fortified beach.
You missed the point: The Marines want Naval Gunfire Support up to 35 miles inland. This isn’t about the beaches, it’s about the beachhead (two different things, despite the similar name), and how to provide effective mobile artillery support for it.
I still don’t see the need for a battleship in these cases. It certainly doesn’t hurt but that doesn’t make them worthwhile to pay to keep them around either.
It has been noted already that the marines aren’t likely to land anywhere where they could expect resistance if at all possible. It has also been noted that any landing attempted without air superiority is foolish. Against a relatively unequipped military a BB doesn’t drastically improve your odds.
So, we have a relatively wimpy country that the marines wish to invade. What can the battleship do that the planes can’t or haven’t already done? With modern weaponry there isn’t really anything the enemy could be sitting in that will save him from aerial attacks. Bunker-buster bombs, napalm, cluster bombs…heck, a few fuel-air explosives should clear anyone out of the marines way right quick and probably more effectively than a battleship could do it.
Also, shelling an entrenched enemy from a battleship doesn’t seem to be all that effective. WWII footage has shown that non-stop bombardment from multiple BB’s for hours before an attack still left the defenders mostly intact. The fire was basically to keep the enemy’s heads down long enough to get your troops on the shore. After that there were more than enough troops left to give the marines a hard time.
So much for battleships vs. Grenada…devastating certainly but hardly necessary. Where then does a BB really become useful? To my way of thinking it’d be nice to have on an opposed landing by marines. Who can oppose a marine landing in the face of overwhelming air superiority? Tier 1 militaries. If we won’t be fighting those types of enemies (as has been suggested) then why have a battleship? If we do fight those types of enemies then we are back to square one of having a BB in easy attack range of whatever the enemy has to throw at you.
I also disagree about the gators being the preferred target in an opposed landing while ignoring the battleship. I agree that letting the marines ashore is bad news but it’d take a while to move any sizeable number ashore (I don’t think we possess anywhere near the amphibious assault capacity we enjoyed at the end of WWII). Maybe I’d make a bad military commander but I’d go for the BB first and let the first gators through. If I can take out the battleship I’ve given my troops on land a huge leg-up in opposing the marines on my beach. Without the withering barrage from the BB I can seriously start thinking about poking my head up and shooting back. After the BB is gone the task force has lost a formidable air defense platform potentially giving my planes a better shot at whatever else remains. I have also scored a big point in the morale department (hurting my enemy and pumping up my own troops). The marines on the beach are now cut off from from artillery support and if I’m lucky my side will be able to repulse any future gators from landing and reinforcing those marines (it’s already been stipulated that gators are very soft targets so it shouldn’t be especially difficult). Those who already made it to the beach are now in big trouble.
Finally, I don’t understand the uselessness of firing on a battleship with whatever you have. Harpoon and Exocet missiles and land based artillery may not be able to sink a battleship or even seriously damage it. Still, pop a few shots in and you are bound to blow off radars, antennas and the like. Certainly the battleship all of a sudden becomes far less effective if it can’t receive transmissions from forward fire control or use its radars for counter-battery fire or to engage air targets. Secondary batteries are also likey to be affected by such attacks thus reducing a battleship’s defensive capabilities against future attacks (could a Phalanx gun survive a hit from a Harpoon?). How useful is the ship after all of that even if it is still sailing merrily along with the majority of its crew intact?
Again, the battleship does what it does (shore bombardment) better than anything else but the need for what it does has severly diminished in today’s world. It’s overkill against weak militaries and a sitting duck for modern ones. In the end its costs, whatever they are, don’t really justify its continued use. Overkill is all well and good against your enemies but those extra dollars applied to more troops, better/more training, better/more equipment, etc. will net you more bang for your buck in the end.
At the very least, it demonstrates their usefulness, if not their relative invulnerability.
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Yeah, but so what?
The question here is if the battleships would be vulnerable in the situations we’d put them in. Whether or not other naval ships are vulnerable isn’t strictly pertinent to that question. I was giving an example of a military operation in which a battleship could’ve partook, and been useful, without threat to itself.
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That’s true, and that would be relevant if we were discussing the relative merits of the carrier and battleship, or I was suggesting replacing the former with the latter.
Those are examples in which battleships could be used without exposing themselves to undue risk.
And, in any case, I don’t know too much about the gulf war specifically, but I think they did a bit more than simply diversions and such. I think they were tasked with destroying infrastructure, saving airplane sorties.
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Because they were retired 6 or so years earlier.
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Picking on small, relatively backward countries is one thing. In those cases I imagine our military could get on just fine with or without battleships at their disposal.
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It’s “one thing”, and it’s also the one thing that our military has been called to do in every military conflict since korea. The point is… we DO attack these ‘backwards countries’ quite often, and we often have to use really expensive tomahawk missiles, and risk aircraft, for tasks that would be performed by battleships with more effectiveness, much less expense, and less vulnerability. You’re not making a case for your argument by saying “Well, sure, they’re useful in 99% of the military situations we get into… but what about that other 1%?”
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Why do you think this? Are you familiar with china’s naval technology? It’s not exactly modern.
Also, the battleship can make it’s usefulness known without charging in on the first day.
China’s potential air force and such can be nullified before the battleships are brought in.
Wherein the battleship could perform an effective role in killing whatever we need to kill later.
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Carriers sitting behind Taiwan would be of far more use.
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Probably correct. We’re not talking about picking either/or, here. And carriers cost a lot more, too, so you’d expect them to pull their weight.
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Well, then they’d use less resources to destroy the BB task force.
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All the better for the battleship.
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Why not? You’re overstating the effectiveness of the chinese military. I’d rank them only slightly better than the iraqi military of '90.
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China is also more than a ‘mystical’ enemy as they have already rattled their sabre repeatedly against Taiwan and make claims to territory 1,000 miles from their shores. They seem to have every intent of being the next military world power to rival the US. **
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All you’ve gone to say is that battleships might be vulnerable to china if we rush them into the taiwan straight in one day.
I bet we can find a situation in which carriers would be vulnerable too. We should scrap all carriers immeadiately, since they’re expensive, useless platforms.
Even if I grant your concern about China, that doesn’t say much. Our military operations predominantly involve nations which have a weak military. Battleships prove a very effective, safe, and cheap weapon in such fights.
Military doctrine of land forces completely relies on artillery for practically everything. Artillery, as you’ve probably heard, is the king of the battlefield. It’s absense (our current navy) is a severe hinderance to littoral operations.
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Sure it does. With artillery, any land force increases it’s effectiveness dramatically. Operating a given land force without artillery is nearly absurd, yet that’s what we’re doing today.
Even if we attack with enough force to garuntee a victory, a battleship will certainly save lives on our side.
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Wrong. I’m not going to write a book here about military doctrine regarding artillery here, but artillery certainly is critical to any real military operation. Close air support and the like can’t replace it.
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And how did the marines eventually prevail? Overwhelming tactical support assets. The marines engaged the japs, called in fire from naval ships, and pounded the living hell out of them with artillery.
That’s how you see 5:1 japanese/marine loss rates even though the japanese have extremely good defensive positions.
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I don’t know Grenada well enough to go into specifics.
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Because the wars we been fighting can be fought more effectively, and cheaply, with naval gunfire to destroy infrastructure without even taking the amphibious support mission into consideration.
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“Because a BB isn’t useful in every situation, it’s not useful at all”?
In any case, no one has made a compelling argument that being close to shore is significantly more dangerous than being a bit off.
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I also disagree about the gators being the preferred target in an opposed landing while ignoring the battleship. I agree that letting the marines ashore is bad news but it’d take a while to move any sizeable number ashore (I don’t think we possess anywhere near the amphibious assault capacity we enjoyed at the end of WWII). Maybe I’d make a bad military commander but I’d go for the BB first and let the first gators through. If I can take out the battleship I’ve given my troops on land a huge leg-up in opposing the marines on my beach. Without the withering barrage from the BB I can seriously start thinking about poking my head up and shooting back. After the BB is gone the task force has lost a formidable air defense platform potentially giving my planes a better shot at whatever else remains. I have also scored a big point in the morale department (hurting my enemy and pumping up my own troops). The marines on the beach are now cut off from from artillery support and if I’m lucky my side will be able to repulse any future gators from landing and reinforcing those marines (it’s already been stipulated that gators are very soft targets so it shouldn’t be especially difficult). Those who already made it to the beach are now in big trouble.
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In saying that the battleships are a higher priority target, you’re admitting that is has it’s usefulness. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.
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That’s probably true, if a given missile actually hit’s a battleship. The whole concept these day’s involves a multilayer umbrella of protection. Airplanes on the outer ring, then certain missiles on the next ring inward, then another type of missile for close stuff, and finally point defense systems. If a missile manages to get past all that and hit the battleship, it’ll probably do some damages to external systems, yes. Other ships would probably sink.
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Certainly the battleship all of a sudden becomes far less effective if it can’t receive transmissions from forward fire control or use its radars for counter-battery fire or to engage air targets.
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Probably not, if a direct hit, but that’s kind of a random chance thing.
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It can still be pretty effective. Battleships are pretty low tech things. You could still effectively fire the guns the old fashioned way.
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Perhaps you should replace your idea of ‘shore bombardment’ with “Destroying anything within 100 miles or so of a coast line”, you may start to recognize the usefulness.
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So you’d rather chuck away million dollar missiles instead of thousand dollar (probably less) shells at a weak military simply because it’d be overkill?
And by the scenarios people give here, any naval ship is a ‘sitting duck’ for a modern military.
Besides, what modern militaries are we going to attack, anyway? England?
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You seem to be forgetting that the navy recognizes a lack in the gunfire support department and is building new ships to replace the battleship in these roles. They are called the DD214 destroyers.
These ships have less firepower, less survivability, high manufacturing costs, and higher operating costs (when you take into account that you need more than 1 to replace 1 battleship).
We’re not talking simply about removing battleships from the fleet or not, but also replacing them.
The replacements are inferior in practically every category, and cost more. Hence my advocacy for restoring the Iowas.
yer see China fields Su-27s and other varients of the Sukoi flanker series these babies carry the Russian Sunburn missile that even AEGIS airdefenses are speculated to have major trouble with , phanalax autoguns cannot defeat this as it travels faster than its track speed
never mind your exocet missiles back when they were used against the British antimissile systems barely existed , and hell china also fields the S-300 SAM which only your F-22s and other stealth aircraft are capable of nullifying
stick the launcher behind a concrete wall and keep its radar truck mobile and its undefeatable
BBs are dead and were obselete in WWII airpower and airmobile troops are the way forward
This has already been discussed: The Marines want artillery. Naval Gunfire, to be specific. It’s already been discussed that artillery can do things aircraft can’t, such as almost instant response, long endurance bombardments, and single target precision.
It does for the individual Marine on the line. See above.
See above, plus: Cluster bombs are not to be dropped close to your troops (unless you don’t mind friendly casualties), although at some distance from the troops, they’re very d*mn effective. Bunker-busters are not close support weapons, they’re anti-infrastructure weapons. Napalm and retarded bombs (Snake and Nape) are useful, but again, not up too close to the troops. FAE’s are right out as close support. Using an FAE as close support would be like picking fleas off your dog’s hide with a shotgun. Naval Gunfire can put steel on target within minutes, and is selectable for target size, and is very responsive to changing conditions. The FO adjusts round by round, until he’s got just the placement he wants. There are fewer issues with a misplaced fire mission, as the FO is on or very close to the front line, and knows were not to place the shot. Close support aircraft have an issue with this, and are fairly vulnerable to ground fire, while the naval vessel is sitting miles away, firing with impunity. There’s no need to scramble a fighter to kill a machinegun nest, when a shell can ace it in minutes, at a very low dollar-cost, and very little risk to equipment or lives. Aircraft are also required to be certain of a timely advance, but they’re partners to the artillery, not a replacement. You don’t conduct land war without both aircraft and artillery, and the Marines have to secure a bridgehead before they can bring in their own land-based big guns.
Frankly, I surprised that you’ve been taking this stance. The fire support needs of the Marines are no different than the Army, and you’ll note the Army sure as hell hasn’t retired their tubes. Are the Marines so magically tough that they can go without the basic support elements that every other army on the face of the planet thinks are necessary? (well, I know some Marines that might say “yes”, but they’re not in charge, and for good reason) The difference is that the Marines are coming in from the sea, and can’t haul the big guns over the beach with them, so they need to get their gunfire support from somewhere else. The sea. They’ve formally asked for it, and that’s also been discussed in this thread.
Ask the Marines that were in Beiruit that question. They’ll tell you something different. Spotting is necessary for good hits, and in the WWII shots you were referring to, guess what? There were no spotters on the beach! Once the spotters got ashore, it was a different story. Today, with RPVs and improved fire-control, a BB can put a shell within a dozen feet of the aim point. That’s plenty close, and better than all but Laser-guided munitions (and the guided weapons are far more expensive).
The purpose is to reduce Marine casualties. Even second- and third-tier militaries have dedicated, courageous, and creative soldiers, fully capable of killing Marines. The whole point of US doctrine is to put the odds so far in our favor, that the other guy never gets a chance to breathe, much less fight back.
Well, every nation’s military doctrine that I’m aware of disagrees with you. They all agree that it’s better to stop the enemy troops before they reach your territory. Killing a gator means that you’ve killed (or at least removed from combat) an entire enemy formation, which would otherwise need to be killed individually or in groups in land combat, at much greater cost (lives, munitions, destroyed infrastructure, and time) to yourself. You’ve also removed a ship that could be used to ferry more soldiers & equipment to the bridgehead, thus restricting logistics (always important, that!). With no Marines to land, there’s no point in the BB hanging off shore blowing things up, becuase the risk-benefit equation just shifted the other way: No Marines, no benfit in being there.
BBs are were designed to withstand direct hits by ton+ AP shells, and keep on fighting effectively. In the few battleship-to-battleship fights on record, they did just that. In the gulf war, every missile fired at them (while they were on the gunline off Kuwait, no less) was shot out of the sky. This is less of threat than you may think.
That’s a mission question, and you may be right. Or wrong. Who knows? None of us in this thread, that’s fer sure.
Again, Maybe, maybe not. That’s a doctrine question.
Except the Navy is going to spend money to build a less effective ship at the same job. The Navy is developing the DD-21 Zumwalt class to meet the Marine requirements for inland fire support. These ships will mount a single gun no bigger then Army tubes (155mm) and the long range rounds they have developed are apparently only 19 pounds (see previous links) and hardly strong enough to dent a tank while the ship itself could very well be in danger from shore batteries. For the new gun system, alone, the costs are rolling in.
How much will these fancy new destroyers cost? From fas.org, the Navy hopes to build five of these at a cost of $750 million each. That is in 1996 dollars and a target. We can modernize to 21st century standards two battleships for each DD-21 we DON"T build.
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BBs are were designed to withstand direct hits by ton+ AP shells, and keep on fighting effectively. In the few battleship-to-battleship fights on record, they did just that. In the gulf war, every missile fired at them (while they were on the gunline off Kuwait, no less) was shot out of the sky. This is less of threat than you may think.
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are you sure? the HMS Hood was killed by the bismark from a high angle shot which hit the magazine , also exocet is more than 25 years old ie slow , short ranged and easily decoyed (the british didn’t have anti missile systems in the fauklands and they took two exocets one on the HMS sheffield the other on their supply ship the atlantic conveyor they decoyed them by using an aluminium pyramid glued to their helicopters) , an the argentines only had 5 exocets bought on the black market and 4 extendards to deliver them (they had 5 but one was used for spares)
now if you factor in modern weapons which are antiship thenyour BB is utterly dead , unless it has an AEGIS cruise backup
Iraq wouldn’t count as a decent army sure they had some T-72s from years ago but they didn’t have proper training and decent SAMs , if Iraq had some S-300s buried with only the tops eposed and they turned radars off and moved them while they were off (since HARMs remember the location) add a few Su-27MKs and a few Sunburn missiles and the coalition would have lost alot of its carriers ,
I don’t buy the argument that there is no need for battleships today, even aside from beachhead assaults. The New Jersey was brought out of mothballs to fight in the Gulf War, and that was a modern conflict very similar to the most likely types of conflicts we’ll face in the future.
Have a look at a map of the middle east, and you’ll see just how many strategic and tactical targets are within range of a battleship. But more to the point, a battleship can bottle up troop movements and prevent them from crossing some strategic boundaries.
I’ve been told that the battleship bombardments demoralized the Iraqi soldiers more than just about anything else did in that war.
And I don’t think we should discount the value of intimidation and prestige. After all, the most common use of a Navy today is to simply threaten people. When tempers flare in a region, all the U.S. has to do is sail a carrier group or two into the area, and it tends to calm things down. A battleship is very cost-effective for that kind of role. Its psychological effect on coastal cities is tremendous.
Yup. Quite sure. First, the Hood was a Battle Cruiser, and not so strongly armored as she might have been. Second, the Hood had a known design flaw in her armor, one which the English never quite got around to fixing. Despite that, she took several direct hits from 380mm and 203mm shells and kept on fighting until the Bismark found her achiles heel. The Bismark took three 356mm hits (one was glancing), during the fight, and never stopped fighting. The Prince of Wales took a direct hit to the bridge, and yet remained in the fight for a while, until the Bismark and Prinz Eugen closed to 15,000 yards, where even the German secondary batteries came into play. At this point, the Prince of Wales retired from the scene (and inexplicably, the Germans let her go).
Battleships are tough.
Would you consider the Silkworm missile a modern ship killer? That’s what was fired at the BBs and cruisers. They were shot down by Seasparrow missiles fired by Brittish warships. Hardly AEGIS back-up. Never-the-less, the BBs wouldn’t be sitting around all by themselves anyway. They sure as hell weren’t alone off of Kuwait. I get the distinct impression that that’s the scenario y’all keep tinking of. Unh-uh. BBs didn’t, and wouldn’t be, operating alone. They’re always supported by auxiliaries.
Britain doesn’t have Sea Sparrow. It’s arguable that the Sea Wolf missiles we do have (I can’t remember if Sea Dart was still in service) are even less effective than Sea Sparrow, so your point may be even more salient.
To add my tuppence-worth, until (or unless) the US is facing opponents with the quality or quantity of missiles and aircraft to overwhelm standard USN air defences, I can’t see why battleships couldn’t be a fairly simple and cost-effective solution to the naval gunfire requirement. Given the almost inevitable cost-spiralling of new military projects, I wouldn’t be surprised to see two Iowa-class BBs being a much cheaper interim alternative to the Zumwalt ships.
Missiles for “shore bombardment” needn’t be cruise missiles which currently go for $750k, but something shorter range and super sonic. I guess I wasn’t clear. But there is no reason something cheaper and faster cannot be developed.
DPWhite, why develop a new weapon to do what existing weapons already do in an excellent and inexpensive manner?
I guess my point, which I mentioned in previous posts, has been missed:
With some modification, the BBs can do what the Marines need done, and can do it for a couple of decades, while the boffins work on a suitable replacement. The arsenal ships and DD-21’s aren’t the answer yet. Maybe they will be later, or maybe not ever, but they certainly don’t meet the Marines needs now.
During the Battle of Denmark Straights, the Prince of Wales took three 380mm (15") and four 203mm (8") direct hits, and yet retired from the fight still firing.
The Bismark’s 38cm shells weighed 800kg (or 1764lb) each, and left the muzzle at greater than 2600fps. At maximum range, the Bismark’s shells are still moving at 1500+ fps (1527fps, nominal). That’s a 1764 pound AP shell arriving at better than 1040 miles per hour (Mach 1.4). Those are tough stats for a missile to match, and yet three of them failed to render the Prince of Wales impotent.
The Prinz Eugen’s 203mm shells were quite a bit smaller, but were no slouches themselves, at 269lb, arriving on target at approximately 1200fps or roughly 820mph (supersonic). They certainly added to the havoc on the Prince of Wales, yet still she fought.
Maybe we agree completely. I think that in fact the boffins are always working at this sort of thing (new missiles). The advantage of missiles, in coming years, is flexibility. You can plot the trajectory and location of where you want it to hit. Artillery as far as I know, is only accurate out to 30 miles, and I am not sure how accurate that is. A missile, on the other hand can have whatever range you want, and you can change it in flight, and you can hit from whatever angle you want.
Now, don’t get me wrong, if I am on a surface ship, I want to be on a BB. But solely for the armor. I don’t see the point of that much armor for just another ship in a carrier group, which is well protected anyway. If I were given the choice between commanding a Aegis heavy cruiser or a BB, I’d take the BB, who wouldn’t? But is a part of the overall strategy? The Iowa is 10 miles up the road from me in the mothball fleet for a reason, just like all the liberty ships with it: it is obsolete. Cargo is now moved by containers, and wars fought on the sea are fought by air.
It is kind of like the idea of beach invasions. Very dramatic and necessary in WWII, but we didn’t have helicopters then. So the enemy knew the beachheads would be on the beach, big surprise. But if we had D-Day again and complete air superiority, I’d skip the landing vehicles till later in the week, and ferry 10 divisions behind the enemy lines so that the defenses faced the wrong way, and then move the heavy equipment through the beaches and ports. In short, shore bombardment, while used as a feint during the Gulf War, is just way to dangerous and limits your options in a mobile sea, land, air and space battlefield.