Battleship gun range?

Great Debates
101

I’ll reiterate:

We fight many little wars in which we spend a ton of money throwing million dollar missiles at all sorts of targets that are within 100 miles of the sea.

We also use aircraft, exposing the pilots to risk, to bomb targets that are within 100 miles of the sea.

There is no danger in lobbing a $500 2000 pound shell at these targets. I don’t see how this benefit alone, regardless of the artillery needs, regardless of the intimidation factors, regardless of the lower costs, regardless of the prestige, and regardless of the secondary roles, isn’t worth the cost.

Especially when you consider the navy is throwing 5 billion dollars away on these ineffective little destroyers to replace the role, throwing out shells with 19 pounds of explosives from a single gun.

102

Senor:

Virtually everything mass produced goes down in cost over time. Tomahawk’s used to cost twice as much and were less accurate.

Tranq:

Accomplishing the mission is the point (me reiterate too!). The mission is not to blast everything near the target, but to hit exactly the target and no more. BBs hit the target and took them out and everything all around them. Current missiles and bombs hit what they are aimed at 80% of the time and leaving what we don’t want hit intact. Missiles can hit the roadway of a bridge while leaving the supports in place for quick replacement after the war.

And I just disagree on the issue of cost. It cost several hundred million a year to run a battleship (IIRC $300 million) for which cost you can purchase over 5 to 10 years thousands of various missiles. You can have your BB or several of them, but 100 missiles will take it out at a fraction of the cost. I can take any offensive action with those thousands of missiles, even far inland. By contrast the BB is very limited in its usages. The versatility, speed, range, precision, and lessened necessary support more than justify the decision of the navy in spending their dollars elsewhere.

103

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Uh, what?

I’m saying that programs developed to create a totally new lower cost item to replace a more expensive ones almost always end up being more expensive anyway. That has nothing to do directly with mass production.

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A) It’s really pretty easy to put a guidance system on an artillery shell.

B) Our missiles carry over a decent bit of explosives, so it’s not like a missile can reduce ‘overkill’ by much.

Also, extended range shells would be lighter, and guided - so if precision was a huge concern, those could be used.

**

Uh, sorry, no. Tomahawks cost around 1.5 million now. So you’re getting perhaps 200 of them. A BB can hit the same 200 targets for pretty much free (shells are already made), and many more.

Besides, each of these new destroyers to replace the BB are going to cost $500-700 million a pop. Plus significant operating costs, if not more for the greater number required.

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You can have your BB or several of them, but 100 missiles will take it out at a fraction of the cost.

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What?

Versatility? Check earlier in the thread. Speed? Uh, they can move at around 35 mph. Pretty significant. Range? Do you mean operational range, or shell range? They outrange their escorts by quite a bit, and their shells could reach 100 miles. Precision? The extended range shells would be guided.

So the navy, instead of paying $300 mil a year (your figure, I don’t have it offhand), will:

Build completely new ships at $700 mil a pop.
Need to build at least a dozen of them to even come into the same ballbark as a BBs firepower.
Require more crew and operating costs overall.
Reduce effective delivery range to 60 miles, as opposed to 100, and with 19 pounds of explosive, as opposed to 400-500 at range, and 2000 within 45 miles.
Reduce survivability HUGELY.
Eliminate secondary roles like hospital ship, flag ship, machine shop, cargo holder, ect.
Heavily reduce prestige and psychological values - which are important to naval vessels.
Reduce operating endurance due to lower munition storage…
Buy ineffective, expensive 6" ERGM rounds instead of simply using cheap, existing 16" shell stocks.

And this seems like a good financial idea to you?

104

~~Don’t mean to interrupt Janes vs. Janes but,

“Eliminate secondary roles like hospital ship, flag ship, machine shop, cargo holder, ect.”…?

How is that?

105

BBs have large and well-equipped sick bays, machineshops, and cargo holds. The traditioally served as support for lesser vessels, a role that the CVs have continued. They also have enourmously capacious fuel-oil bunkers (18,000nm range), which can be trans-shipped to other vessels. The Iowa-class BBs were specifically designed as command vessels.

106

Current philosophy in designing anti-ship missiles.

Why armour is not always your friend.

When any closed hollow object is penetrated by an explosive device, the blast(or Brissance effect) operates on the points of greatest resistance, producing a shattering effect which breaks metal apart like it was glass, which adds hugely to the destructive effect on personel.

The rapidly expanding gases however take the least resistance path, what this means is that if there is a only nice small entry hole, the gases will be forced elsewhere, and so expand inside the ship, this will blast away the clips on watertight bullkhead doors and compromise the watertight integrity of the hull.

Modern ships are designed with a far greater number of ‘ribs’ per unit length than say WWII ships but the outer hull is thinner, the idea being that the blast finds its way out through the sides rather than along the body of the ship.
When one looks at the number of hits taken by Royal Navy ships during the Falklands war this was borne out, although finally destroyed by fire HMS Ardent was hit by at least a dozen bombs and rockets but remained afloat, HMS Coventry was hit by 3 1000 pound bombs yet only 19 crew were lost.
Similar hits during WWII to vessels often resulted in the ships capsizing and/or far greater numbers of casualties.

With the greater number of reinforcing girders the integrity of the hull is at less risk than one might suppose.

Current missiles can weigh over a ton, such as the Exocet, Harpoon and others, if you couple the warhead with the kinetic energy of a 500 knot impact the energy released will cause a fire and everything in the immediate vicinity is subjected to such intense heat that even some main construction materials such as toughened aluminium alloys will burn.Humans simply evaporate.

A salvo of such missiles, ie two, would seriously degrade the operating capability of a BB, if four were to hit the BB it would be lost, 24" of armour just will not stop an anti-ship missile and yet one patrol boat of around 200 tons with less than 30 crew can carry such complement of weapons and strike from twice the range of the BBs guns.

The Israeli Gabriel system takes things on, it has two titanium plates which are blasted apart at incredible velocity, these plates are designed to penetrate armour and will put holes through a series of watertight bulkheads along the length of the vessel.

I have seen the talk here on large shells being cheap, but large bombs hardly cost any more, and these are well capable of putting a hole straight through any depth of armour.US bombs went completely through the turret armour of the Yomato which had armour up to 26.5" thick, and those were just plain dumb bombs, not like the current highly technical modern armour busting stuff
Take a look at the current crop of bunker buster weapons, that can penetrate up to 40 feet before destroying a subterranean hardened bunker, no battleship could sustain the damage that just one direct hit would cause.

Senor
Have you ever seen the size of a torpedo ?

They are just as large as they ever were, from 28’ to over 32’and the warhead is just as large.
WWII showed how vulnerable battleships were to subs.

Stand off missiles from aircraft of mid flight guided weapons from five times the range of the BB guns are too great a threat to risk a BB in a war against an enemy equipped with them. These were not available in WWII, their ancestors, the radio controlled glider bombs wreaked havoc in the Meditterrannean upon BBs.

The crew is one very important asset of a warship, modern warfare demands greater training resources, to crew one BB you can crew five maybe six other warships, the Navy does not like to have all its eggs in one basket.

107

~ So do other ships… in fact, with greater capacity… My
ship unreped with a BB and ships that later did it with
the BB also… That’s hardly a plus even when compared to
other combatants…

108

You guys have been going on for a while here now, and to tell you the truth I’ve kind of lost track.

Is there still a General Question on board, or should I shoot this puppy on over to Great Debates?

109

Seeing as I started the thread, and my question was answered LONG ago (I never dreamed that the best response I would get to a thread would be this), I say move it to Great Debates.

Gentlefolk, I thank thee for a spirited discussion (sory, been working on Shakespeare at work).

110

I meant, you’re losing the benefit of the other roles the battleship can play but the destroyer can’t, such as a “free” (infrastructure there) hospitalship, flag ship, machine shop, cargo holder, ect.

111

Uh, yeah, but the point being that there is benefit in the BB performing these roles essentially for free. You save money by not needing seperate hospital, cargo, ect. ships.

And yeah, throw it over to the great debates.

112

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Is it SOP to have an antiship missile set on a delay fuse in that fashion?

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I’ll take your word on that.

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“Often” might be exaggerative, depending on what sort of ships you’re talking about. I have a hard time believing modern ships are actually more resistant to such things as 1000 pound bombs, on the basis that they’re geared towards avoiding the hits, rather than taking them.

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It’s a bit of a catch-22 with the missile. If you make them big to damage the bigger ships, you make them a better radar target, and usually slower, more capable of being shot down by standard missile systems or CIWS. If you make them smaller, with less warhead, you have a better chance of making a hit, but, obviously, less change of damaging.

I’ll agree that a BB couldn’t just completely ignore a hit from an exocet. But the various systems are VERY compartmentalized, even if it’s not quite so much as modern ships. Damage control systems are excellent, ect. I can’t speak authoratively, but I can’t imagine an exocet type missile, even if it managed to get through all the defenses, critically crippling a BB. Especially since they can essentially operate off a guy with a plotter and a calculator in the FDC, being significantly less reliant on technical systems than other ships.

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24" armor won’t stop a 15 or 16" shell either, generally speaking. But battleships have taken hits from large shells which have penetrated their armor without missing a beat. That is, of course, if the missiles can get through. In which case, of course, any ship in the navy is vulnerable.

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That’s probably true - but if your enemy can actually fly over you and drop a 5000 pound bomb on your battleship, the rest of your naval group is probably destroyed.

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Yes

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I agree with this. Subs are definitely a concern. But that’s true of any modern naval vessel also.

Although, actually, I can’t think of an example of a battleship being sunk by a sub in WW2.

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I think ‘too great a threat’ is way exaggerated. Also, radio controlled glider bombs weren’t the predecessors to modern antiship missiles in a functional sense.

Also not available in WW2, of course, were anti-missile missiles, phalanx guns, and the like.

Hmm? We’re talking about 1200 people here. That’s the compliment of 2.5 or so destroyers, or 2 cruisers. Carriers carry 6000 or so. Relative to that, 1200 isn’t anywhere near ‘putting all its eggs inone basket.’

You raise valid points, I suppose. I’m not knowledgable enough in these areas to refute your points. However, I have read from those who are - and most ‘experts’, that I’m aware of, still seem to be of the ‘an antiship missile isn’t a big threat to a battleship’ line of thinking.

113

I think that casdave has raised some points in a new way, thank you.

I agree that carriers have more eggs in the basket, but the question of whether we should have big carriers or smaller carriers with vertical take off and landing capabilities is another thread. We cannot do without carriers in modern warfare. I’ll take one supercarrier against all four Iowa class BB’s (with enought distance and no other support for either side) any day of the week, even if you have the BB’s grouped or spread out. With my air wing and phalanx systems, aerial tankers and AWACS it isn’t a fair fight.

The question is modern destoryers and cruisers or BBs?

I like casdave’s points about the nature of the armor on BBs and modern destroyers and cruisers. Thick armor that is intended to just tough it out simply will not work in this age of armor piercing missiles. (And yes I know these techniques were already being used in WWII.) But these missile technologies are now mature.

Incidentally, the Yamato’s armor, although quite thick, was considered to be made of steel inferior to the Iowa class.

114

Well, I was just contrasting his idea that a BB required a huge manpower commitment and would be ‘all our eggs in one basket’

At 6000 per carrier, with 12 active carriers, we’ve got 72,000 sailors invested in carriers, compared to 4800 even if we recommissioned all 4 Iowas. Clearly, the ‘all eggs in one basket’ description doesn’t apply.

115

A free-falling bomb behaves much the same way as an artillery shell, and is about as distructive, should it hit. It has the disadvantage of a less accurate delivery mechanism, and that it requires an airplane w/pilot to go out where they may be shot down. Never the less, if you’re willing to spend the money (and the expense of launching, flying to the target, and recovering an aircraft must be considered in the weapon delivery costs), and take the risks, a concerted air assualt can sink anything that floats, be it carrier, destroyer, or battleship. Guided munitions are more costly, but are more effective. This is why it’s been doctrine for better than 50 years that you don’t send surface units of any kind out alone where they can be expected to face concentrated airpower (surprises and mistakes do happen, such as the Stark, but those are the odds you play when you’re a super power). That goes for Gators, Carriers, and anything else.

Any ship with air defence capablities can hope to get lucky once or twice against aircraft. Maybe even more than once or twice, but no ship is going to stave off a multi-axis attack from more than a dozen or so aircraft without back-up. Which is why we send back-up with the high-cost units.

All the talk of vulnerability has become a complete red herring to what the real discussion has become:
Is there a mission?

  • The Marines say yes.

Can the battleship do the mission?

  • Experience says yes.

Can the battleship continue to do the mission?

  • For now, yes. Later, who knows?

Can other systems be designed to do the mission?

  • Yes.

Are the systems currently under design sufficient to the need?

  • GOA says no.

Can other systems be put into place faster than reactivating the BBs?

  • Most likely, no.

Can other systems be more economically put in place than the BBs?

  • GAO again says no.

Will something have to replace any current system we put in place?

  • Of course.
116

Tranquilas summed up the arguement for the BB rather nicely.

The BB is the best ship available with which to provide surface gunfire support to land based forces. It is powerful and tough and can get into areas that would be deemed too dangerous to send an aircraft carrier. Because it can get in closer to the shore, the flight time of the rounds is less which means it can put steel on target much faster than a ship that has to sit well out of range of enemy anti-shipping missles. For an infantry commander, having heavy artillery available could be the difference between a successful mission or failure.

As for casdave’s assertion

I would suggest you are incorrect. A cruise missle might tear up the rigging but I doubt it is going to pose a serious danger to the ship itself. The BB is built to withstand its own AP round:

The same site has more info on the armor system, as well.

In short, the battleships are designed to stop a hit from their own guns. So here we have a ship designed not just to withstand, but to turn aside, a round designed to be Armor Piercing, weighing some 2700lbs and travelling in the neighborhood of 1000mph. A 600mph, 2000lb cruise missle with its blunt non-AP nose would knock off the antenna and scorch the paint, but it isn’t going to do much else. Then I can call in my aircover or launch my Harpoons at that little waterbug of a PT boat and go about my business of making the infantry’s life miserable on shore.

casdave again

Actually, we have sent the BB into that situation, escorting oil tankers through the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war. The Navy pulled the carriers out because the tight sea left little room to manuever. The BB’s were sent in instead because their gunrange, missle launch capabilities, and armor made them the perfect ship for those tight confines. All reports I have seen indicate that the shooting stopped when the BB was around. No one was willing to risk a shot at it and end up on the receiving end of its guns.

117

Submarines sank at least three battleships during WWII, HMS Royal Oak, HMS Barham and one Japanese battleship.There are others but searching the web brings up gazillions of hits of only passing relevance.

Navies of the world quickly realised how vulnerable BB’s were to subs(but curiously not to aircraft) and were very careful where they used them, in fact so valuable were BB’s considered to be they were deployed very sparingly.
Usually they were sent in on a known target at a known location so that they could proceed to and from with a minimum exposure to submarine risk.

As for shore bombardment, well the effectiveness of large guns in this role was appreciated even before WWI when HMS Furious and HMS Glorious were laid down. These were equipped with 18" guns and were intended for a specific campaign in the seas around Denmark, Holland and Belgium which never emerged, and so were converted to aircraft carriers.In truth these were shallow draught cruisers whose armour was not adequate for ship to ship combat.

Personally I see an irony in the conversion of these gun platforms into aircraft carriers of which type would ultimately prove to be the nemesis of the whole Battleship class, and it was done so early on.

The main problem of shore bombardment is that it may well be great at keeping heads down but aircraft such as the A10 can hit specific points with more accuracy and support ground troops at least as well, smart bombs can take out bunkers with alomost unerring accuracy, in short aircraft can do virtually all that beach landing troops need plus they can be employed further inland in differant missions that the BB cannot.

With a crew of around 800 or more you can crew 4 destroyers, or maybe three if we are looking at the larger ones, each destroyer carries helicopters and these expand the capabilities of the destroyer far beyond the horizon.

It took Navy Chiefs virtually the whole of WWII to appreciate that the main role of the BB was gone, yes they were useful in landings support, but with the use of long range heavy bombers even that role became narrower and narrower.

I noted the speeds of shells, and would answer that there are surface/surface missiles capable of Mach 3 which would have no problem overcoming BB armour.

The roll of the BB is limited now to shore bombardment where the enemy has no aircraft, subs or shore batteries of the various types of anti-ship missiles and where aircraft cannot provide close enough support, unlikely this latter considering the abilities of the US supercarriers.

It’s a pretty limited scenario to keep such a large, expensive and vulnerable asset operating for.

118

casdave, apparently the Army and Marines haven’t figured out that the BB isn’t as effective as aircraft at shore bombardment. The BB has participated in the majority of campaigns since 1945, including Korea, Vietnam, Lebenon, and Southwest Asia.

Aircraft do not have loiter capability. They are good for about 30 minutes at a time before they have to leave. Ground attack is very dangerous work and a very easy way to lose a $1 million pilot and $20 million airplane while trying to kill a $2 million tank. Not the best trade off. Cruise missliles are nice to have around, but when the launcher has to hide a hundred miles or further off shore, it can’t provide the immediate support the BB can. I can keep a BB 20 miles off the coast and capable of providing devestating fire support 24 hours a day.

Artillery is very accurate and useful at destroying enemy formations. There is a reason it is known as the king of battle and responsible for many more casualties than the next closest competitor. In addition, a salvo of nine 16" rounds are about equal to hitting the target with 9 cruise missiles and for less than 1/10th the cost.

Yes, destroyers have over the horizon capability, but modernized BB’s do as well. They can be equipped with helicopters, unmanned recon aircraft, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and more.

There are missions out there that the BB can accomplish because they are strong enough to risk letting them take a hit. No destroyer or carrier could withstand a hit from a modern anti-ship missile. Consequently, you find these ships hundreds of miles off shore, far out of range of land based weapons. Contrast this with the opinion of most experts that a BB could stand-up to those same weapons. It has a survivability factor built-in. When the Navy pulled its ships off tanker escort duty duringthe Iran-Iraq war, they left the job to the BB. The BB was at less risk in the confined waters around the Straight of Hormuz then the CVA and DD’s. It has a psychological presence that the DD can’t even come close to.

Why spend billions developing a new ship of questionable capability to accomplish the shore bombardment role when the BB can do it for another 40 yrs? The main upgrades where done in the 80’s, the hulls are good for another 40 years or so, and these ships are unmatchable in the world.

119

Tranquilis, SenorBeef and others make a good case for the continued existence (or re-existence) of battleships. All other considerations aside I’d love to see them sailing the seas once again.

However, as convincing as you’ve all been I just can’t shake the nagging suspicion that they are past their day.

The only thing proposed as a role for the battleship is as an artillery platform to support marines. Protecting shipping in the gulf could have been achieved just as easily by nearly any US ship from a destroyer on up. The battleships in that case weren’t safe because people were afraid of the ship. The battleships were safe because attacking any US naval ship would bring the wrath of the US military down on their heads. Those little speed-boat things they occasionally attacked with were ridiculously outclassed by anything the US had in the area at the time. If anyone was serious about sinking US naval vessles a concerted air attack would have been the way to go but it never materialized.

Using the BB as a floating hospital or machine shop? That’s nice but that was far more important during WWII than it is today. You will always have dedicated hospital ships no matter how good a BB or CV is at it (no cost savings there). As for machine shops parts for just about anything can be shipped worldwide in such short order that a machine shop would be hardpressed to make something faster and in quantity and of equal quality and precision (except for simple items and maybe not even then).

In short what the marines want is the world’s most expensive artillery system. While impressive and better than anything else currently in inventory or on the drawing boards the times they have been needed (and need might be too strong of a word here) have been extremely few and far between in the last 30 years. Nor does it seriously look like there would be a great need in the foreseeable future. Although some would like to ignore this aspect of the equation I still think it is important and VERY relevant to why you should spend the money on battleships.

Again I go back to what aircraft can achieve for the marines. Tranquilis took me to task on my weapon choices (napalm, cluster bombs, FAE’s, etc.) based upon close fire support. I was talking from the basis that the marines aren’t even on the beach yet. We’ve established that a BB wouldn’t move in an area without air superiority and the marines certainly wouldn’t try landing without it. So, we own the air. Exactly what stationary force waiting to repel marines wouldn’t be vaporized in a few days of unrestricted air attacks? Digging in won’t help them like it did in WWII. Bunker-buster bombs and FAE’s would see to that. Mobile troops? Lay some cluster bombs around them and see how far they go. By the time the battleship shows up to support the marine landings there would be precious little left for it to blow up and all achieved by planes using low-tech (read cheap) weapons and not expensive Tomahawks or the like.

I am not familiar with the new breed of ‘heavy’ destroyers people have talked about in this thread. I can only assume that these ships are seen as able to fit a broader range of missions than what a battleship would be called to do. Assumptions are dangerous things I’ll grant but it’s the only thing that makes sense. If all the new destroyers are able to do is strictly to replace a BB in its role and if everyone’s numbers are correct (I accept them unless proven otherwise) then it goes beyond blind stupidity of the military to build such ships. I’ll grant the US military is capable of some seemingly crazy decisions but how they could ignore numbers as obvious as those posted here is beyond me unless there is more to the story.

Certainly in the past we’ve seen admirals who refused to accept new weapons and preferred to stay with the tried and true stuff they knew. The battleship admirals of WWII who refused to recognize the potential of aircraft carriers or submarines till later in the war are one such case. At least those guys could be somewhat forgiven because the battleships were proven weapons and the subs and carriers were relatively untried. The ‘penis stroking’ carrier admirals today have the value of hindsight. They know what a battleship does and what it can do. They know the capabilities of a carrier group. When adding up the numbers a battleship just isn’t flexible enough in its mission roles to be of much value even if it is the BEST floating artillery system on the planet and damn near indestructible.

120

By popular demand, off to Great Debates.

Thanks for keeping things so civil while it was here in GQ, all.