Strictly speaking, it was the Second Pacific Squadron.
I started something, God bless Nicholas II.
I agree with all of this. EXCEPT, and I know this goes a bit (or totally) off topic, how do you feel about the f-35 vs. f-16/f-15? I know out there in interwebland there is much f-35 hate…You seem like a better source on the subject than much of the crap questionable crap I’ve read elsewhere…
Washington v Kirishima, Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The action also involved the South Dakota, but she was ineffective because a) some nimrod in the engineering division tied down her circuit breakers, resulting in a loss of electric power to critical systems, and b) she got silhouetted against a burning destroyer and pretty seriously shot up.
(Nitpick: the “Rusty W” was the second — and last — North Carolina class battleship.)
Oh, yeah. Sorry.
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All I know about F-35 is what’s in the trade press.
Having said that, F-35 represents a design where an awful lot of aerodynamic performance and weapons tonnage was sacrificed for stealth.
IMO there are three hostile environments out there: A) ones where stealth is nice to have; B) where stealth is need to have; and C) where stealth isn’t good enough and you’re still dead.
The F-15 (including E model Strike Eagle), F-16, and F/A-18 are all limited to first (A) environment. They’ll be dead promptly in B or C.
USAF bet the farm that there will be almost no place on Earth like C. Maybe over the capital city of a peer adversary, but probably not even there. They’re assuming most battles worth fighting will be (B), wherein the pre-stealth aircraft simply cannot participate and live.
If that bet holds true for the 40+ years the F-35 is supposed to be in the fleet it’ll be an excellent tradeoff, since the other aircraft would be utterly useless in such a battle. If stealth gets fuxxored in 10 years all the compromises and expenses will be, if not for naught, at least for darn little benefit.
A related assumption is that they can use F-35 and other means to degrade B-quality enemy air defense into scenario A soon enough to affect the course of the war. Then they can use the greater volume of older aircraft effectively to quickly carry the necessary weapons tonnage to the enemy. Yet that level of robust & persistent air defense suppression has not proven do-able in any aerial war yet since the invention of the aeroplane.
USAF (& USN) have the problem that they have to plan to fight so-called near-peers like China, or Russia, and second-raters like, say, Iran, and third raters like, say, Bulgaria, and total air-nobodies like, say, Cuba or ISIS.
What it takes to successfully prosecute the first scenario is far more expensive than what it takes to prosecute the fourth. But we can’t simply decide the first scenario is too expensive or doesn’t seem imminent so we’ll just ignore it.
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Oh jeez… not this airplane/stealth crap again.
Thanks for bumping the thread, bump. 
A metric, certainly, but is it sound? If a given class of battleship was fearsome enough to change the enemy’s dispositions just by existing, I don’t see how we can ignore it because it didn’t see battle.
Something like that, yes.
I guess “best” depends on whether you’re commanding a battleship, a fleet, or a nation’s armed forces.
Historically speaking, that’s most of what most battleships accomplished in the 20th century. They were a strategic deterrent, and costly enough to discourage their being used willy-nilly.
Yes. The “Fleet in being” doctrine from the late 19th century is a lot like SAC’s 1950s/60s motto of “Peace is our profession”. And the SSBNs coming along a bit later.
Their mere fearsome existence caused a lot of enemy action to simply not happen.
I wasn’t in the strategic forces, but a common refrain by those folks and their leaders was along the lines of “If we ever have to use this stuff for real then we’ve failed in our primary duty.”
I don’t agree. Mahan’s Fleet in Being theoretically existed during time of war. For example, during WWII when the United States had a single aircraft carrier. The Japanese didn’t know when it would show up while they were refueling, loading stores or covering a landing.
SAC existed to be able to immediately strike against the Soviet Union should they attack the United States. It was a constant, immediate, obvious presence of overwhelming force, rather than a small stealth force attacking at an unknown and dangerous time.
Fleet-in-being = force-in-being. The basic concept is that the enemy has a force available that essentially constrains your ability to achieve your strategic goals without necessarily having to fight.
A perfect example is the German High Seas Fleet in WWI - for most of the time that it existed, it sat around in Wilhelmshaven and didn’t do anything. But it was powerful enough to be such a threat in case it was to move, that the British shaped a lot of their strategy and resources to guard against it.
It’s more of a wartime concept; in peacetime, the only real consideration would be where it is / what it’s effects might be IF the shooting starts. The Soviet Northern Fleet is a good example, I think. It’s presence up around Severomorsk meant that NATO spent a huge amount of resources aiming to protect convoys and unarmed shipping traveling to Europe from it.