Bring back the battleships?

Great Debates
161

The shore bombardment capability was somewhat incidental. The 16-inch rifles really were designed for the purpose of ship-killing some 70 years ago. They put a lot on them on each ship to compensate for the lack of precision - firing a salvo once the target was bracketed made it more likely that one or more warheads would hit home.

If I were a dug-in defender, I’d be more scared of the capability of an MLRS or the like to blanket my position with submunitions. (And if I were in a command bunker, I’d be much more scared of a guided weapon.) Pure weight of shell is not as important as putting the warhead on target. (Doubling the precision is roughly equivalent to making the warhead 8 times bigger.)

All things considered, these (vital) functions are better served by separate ships.

Certainly depends on the missile. Turret roof armor on an Iowa is 7.25 inches of steel - considerably less than the frontal armor of a modern MBT. A top hit from a mach 1+ missile with 200+ pound warhead would put the turret out of commission.

Afloat, probably. Operational, I doubt. Even if weapons, propulsion & command remained intact, antennas and other unarmored elements wouldn’t.This isn’t Jutland, where the wireless being knocked out is a nuisance and we’ll make do with flags and Aldis Lamps. If the radar and radio antennas are gone, the battleship isn’t fighting anymore.

That had as much to do with the insistence on compartmentalization as it had to do with armor. While it’s of course imperative for a ship to stay afloat, from an operational perspective there’s little difference between a floating wreck and one on the bottom of the sea. However, the Bismarck illustrated one point - that a torpedo, even if it doesn’t kill a ship, can still play merry hell with rudder and propellers.

Weight spent on armor is weight that can’t be used for propulsion. (Or guns) That’s why the battlecruiser made its (short-lived) appearance on the arena - to trade armor for speed. Anyway, for shore bombardment, the basic requirement is to keep up with the invasion fleet, which is probably not going to be moving at carrier speeds.

I’ve never been a Marine storming a beach, thanks be, but if I were, I think I’d rather have at my disposal 12 200-pound warheads than one 2700 pound one. And if I had the pesky luck of facing the target that took a ton-plus warhead, I’d much rather have a guided version than a free-flight one.

Again, a 2009 shore bombardment ship would not be an Iowa class. The guns are large, unwieldy and overengineered for the shore bombardment job, the armor is a very heavy anachronism, and the job can be done just as well by more flexible units.

162

I do not know that it was entirely incidental for the guns to be used in shore bombardment. Certainly they used them that way a helluva lot in the Pacific in WWII. Back in WWI I thought the notion of having to pound land defenses (cannons) was still alive and well and the battleship was seen as something that would do that (as well as blow up other ships).

And today their accuracy is actually excellent. With modern radars and computer controlled systems and using remote drones for target spotting and assessment I think the Iowa class could put a shell within a few feet of a desired position once they have you zeroed in.

Certainly not all weapons are ideal in all situations. This is just one tool that frankly has no better option for the job it does. The battleship can loiter and shell you all day with (relatively) cheap ordinance. Missiles are far more expensive and they carry less of them.

And there really is a psychological effect to consider. I have read (looking for a cite but has been a long time now) that the barrage a battleship can lay down, and lay down hour after hour, is just hugely demoralizing to the enemy. The only comparison I heard that was hugely feared in Iraq was from the MLRS (Iraqi soldiers called it “steel rain”). The battleship provides a visceral effect that few other things can match. There are WWII stories of the hell that living through an artillery barrage is and that is what a battleship is…floating artillery.

Maybe but the battleship can be right up front close to the action. A specialized hospital ship cannot dare venture so close. Neither would a flimsy vessel for repairs.

They have more than one turret. And I see no reason armor couldn’t be shuffled around to better protect various things in light of current threats. They could toss all their AA guns since they are largely useless to get modern aircraft to lose weight and add armor.

These are big ships and they can repair themselves. Further, modern computers allow other ships in the fleet to link up and act as the “eyes” using their radar and so on (pretty sure Aegis has this ability to have various ships share target info). Perhaps the battleship cannot do that today but I see no technical reason why such an ability could not be added.

Designs advance. The Germans had numerous times besides Bismarck where their rudders got all messed up. They recognized the design flaw and worked to correct it. Damage is damage of course but knowing what they know now they should be able to mitigate such damage and not let it be their Achilles Heel.

As noted battleships were pretty zippy and that was with WWII era engine technology. And being fast can maybe get them away from a sub found to be lurking in the area. Subs can be rather quick these days too but if they push 30 knots pretty sure they will be making a lot of noise.

What units can do the shore bombardment role as well as a battleship? Sure planes can do some but not sustained bombardment that never lets up. I cannot think of any other ship in the fleet that carries what amounts to artillery akin to a battleship and planes simply do not fill that role. Once on shore you can land normal artillery but you need to get on shore in the first place.

163

In that case, I’m sure you can provide examples of lighter ships that can outrun a 70 year old battleship. Of all the examples I’ve seen, including nuclear supercarriers, nuclear battlecruisers, and conventional ships of all sizes, the Iowa’s 33 knots is pretty close to the leading edge. Hydrofoils can get into the 40s, but then you’re talking about ships 1/200th of an Iowa’s weight.

164

Sorry, but you are wrong. Explosives made up only between 5 and 20 % of APC shell weight. So it would be between 60 - 240 kg of explosive. Less than “only” 300 kg missile warhead.

Even with just SAP warhead (which means it’s just reinforced, not all-solid core) BrahMos missile is gonna hit harder than direct hit from heavy anti-ship 16 inch shell. It’s a fact.

And they have seven times longer range, and can be dropped from airplanes or launched from patrol boat sized ships that cost small change compared to cost of battleship.

That’s the undoing of battleship. It doesn’t really matter if enemy kill battleship - just possibility of killing it with single shot means it’s risky to get them involved in real-life operations. Carrier can project force from 300 miles away. Battleship needs to be less than 30 miles away. Well within enemy range. And missiles are cheap like dirt, when compared to cost of making - or even just operating battleship.

165

This is veering into a repeat of this thread:

“How many conventional cruise missiles to sink the USS Missouri?”

Main summary of it was that the main reason no missiles are currently dedicated for ship armour is because theres no armour to attack any more. If there was it wouldnt be too hard to start making them, assuming you were in a position to seriously challenge the US in a naval prospect at all.

Otara

166

Even though I voted for him, I doubt that President Obama will be bringing back the battleships anyway. If anything, I suspect the Navy is in for some deep cuts. Too bad.

167

Just for curiosity, could an IOWA-class BB ever be automated? I mean, have the guns loaded automatically, and the ship driven by remote control? that would be cool-and you would not need to risk a crew!

168

Note the missile is described as “semi-armor piercing”. It just is not made to penetrate the armor of a battleship (because there is nothing remotely armored like a battleship these days). In general that missile will just do splash damage to the ship. Woe be to anything nearby but nothing like a killing shot where one Exocet did in the HMS Sheffield.

Read the link Otara provided below. Battleship armor piercing rounds were made to penetrate 20 inches of steel armor plate (equivalent to 21 feet of reinforced concrete). Read the bit about the Bismarck again. Studies since then have shown only a few of the hits from the British battleships managed to penetrate its armor. Despite the Bismarck being pounded mercilessly for over an hour most of the sailors still managed to get off the ship (alas only some were rescued).

Battleships are astonishingly durable ships. Here is a picture of a 17" thick steel door. The ships were highly compartmentalized so even if a shell penetrated armor in one area there was more and more all through the ship. Modern missiles are just not up to the task of taking one on. At best they could render it combat ineffective with numerous hits.

Battleships can do what nothing else can. They can provide close support for an amphibious landing. Planes simply cannot provide the time-on-target support that a battleship can. Planes cannot loiter very long and carry limited payloads. Further, missiles are in much less supply and FAR more expensive than a shell from a battleship gun (a Tomahawk cruise missile costs over $1 million each…do not need to fire a whole lot before the battleship looks like a bargain). The battleship can sit there and shell incessantly all day long…or longer. Their guns are very accurate and the barrage they can lay down is astounding and demoralizing to the enemy.

It may be the geniuses at the Pentagon see no need for such missions any longer but there have been many times in the past where they thought this or that was obsolete only to be proven wrong.

169

Now I DON’T have any cite for these, but I remember years ago reading that during WWII one of the Iowa’s took a direct hit on the roof of one of their turrets with a 500 lb bomb, and the turret crew didn’t even realize that they had been hit. And I also remember reading in several places that the during the Korean war the most enthusiastic proponents of the battleship were the naval aviators. If the battleships blasted shore targets the pilots didn’t have to risk getting shot out of the sky.

170

Look, I never said that battleships aren’t cool or aren’t tough. But technological capability improved quite a lot since Korean War.

Battleship armor might be impressive, but now, in XXI century we can do things like tandem warheads. For missile of diameter 60 cm your average shaped charge would have armor piercing capability of 14 feet or more. So, making precursor warhead capable of piercing 17 inches of armor steel and high-explosive incendiary secondary warhead that explodes under armor is relatively easy task. To save time you can install such warhead on existing anti-ship missile. And voila - you have anti-battleship weapon within six to twelve months. How long to make new battleship?

And such weapon could attack from 160 miles away. Even with full speed it means that battleship will be within range - but enemy will be out of range - for at least 3.5 hour.

And that is just missiles. Not to mention gliding bunker-buster bombs or torpedoes. There are many weapons that might hurt battleship enough to make it limp home for long and costly repair session, as well as kill hundreds of it’s crew.

And it’s not exactly that easy to hide tons of steel with many protruding parts to hide from modern radars and other detection systems.

So, you have costly and easy to detect weapon platform that can be rendered inoperable by single - or heck, even five - enemy planes. Or sub. Or mobile shore defense battery. I’m not that sure if planning amphibious landing operation around fire support from such platform is smart strategy.

Those are all valid concerns. Is it really worth building and maintaining something so expensive? Aren’t there viable alternatives? Maybe couple of Zumwalts will cost the same, but be useful also for something other than unlikely case of full-scale war amphibious landing?
Eta:

Yeah. But as I said - military technology advanced quite a lot since Korean War. For example we now have bombs than pilots can drop from 60 miles away and let the gps do the rest.

171

There is armor all through those ships so blowing your wad to penetrate the first armor plate and get completely stopped by what is behind that. The designers are not stupid and understand not to make it all paper maiche behind a 17" bulkhead. And the armor is more than just solid steel in many places with areas filled with water (as an example) to help mitigate damage that does get through.

I think you are vastly overestimating the damage a single, penetrating missile will do to a ship that size. Will it cause damage? Sure. Will it disable the ship? Almost certainly not.

So? Look, the battleship is a weapons system like any other. It is not meant to be the end-all, do-all ship. Like anything it has some specific areas it excels at and leaves other tasks to other specialized systems. That is why you form a battlegroup.

All of which apply to a carrier and then some (they are far less armored and an even bigger and more valuable target). Why is a battleship sitting under a carrier’s umbrella in a battlegroup in any more danger?

Yeah…unlikely maybe…till you need to do it then you are screwed with no capacity to achieve the landings. Not to mention there is tons of infrastructure near oceans. A battleship raiding up and down a coast can be devastating (to wit what they did in Korea and Vietnam).

Yeah…so has defensive technology. Forget CIWS…pile a bunch of RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile Systems on board. Not to mention the rest of the battlegroup’s capabilities.

172

There’s a lot of (necessary) simplification in this thread. Battleships could be quite durable: HMS Warspite at Jutland lost steering control and turned toward the German fleet, getting pounded (Wikipedia says 15 capital shell hits, my memory from Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty was 22 such hits) but returning to the line and reporting ready for action.

But no matter how tough one is, weapons can be made and launched in sufficient quantities to overcome it, and the design and construction time and cost of such ships will not be competitive with improvements in missile design and/or tactics. You can’t build a newer, tougher ship as fast as you can a better, more numerous missile. I happen to agree the Iowa would shrug off an Exocet or two, but that’s only becauise no one is expecting to fight the Iowa: if we deploy the Iowa a serious opponent will bring more, heavier missiles.

Regarding shore bombardment, the issue is as much one of command as it is having a battleship. On several Pacific invasions, the marines did not get good shore bombardment support; it took specific decisions by specific admirals (Connolly and Turner, iirc; maybe Oldendorf deserves mention) to risk the big ships in close to get really effective bombardment. “Close-in Connolly” got his nickname doing exactly this. It’s (otherwise) too easy to stay way out to sea and not deliver the point-blank high-velocity concrete-obliterating weight of shell directly on observed targets.

So I’d say a battleship with a ballsy admiral is good support.

The question is, can we afford it? There’s a reason they’re called “capital” ships.

173

This is true of any weapon system. For every measure there is a countermeasure. Build a harder bunker and someone builds a better bunker buster.

That said there are practical limits to how big and devastating a missile can be. It is limited by what can carry it and how many those things can carry, costs to build, complexity, flight characteristics and so on. The US navy is not unaware of the issues of getting swarmed by missiles so they do their best to see it doesn’t happen or that defensive measures are in place to handle such a threat.

Are they perfect? Of course not. Such is the chess game of the battlefield. Nevertheless I doubt any single missile, short of a nuke, could take out a battleship. I think the most devastating missile built for naval warfare was (is?) the Granit (Shipwreck) missile. While it would definitely hurt a battleship it’d take a pile of them to sink one (although perhaps a handful to render it combat ineffective…depends where they hit). Getting that many missiles on target is not so simple a task.

Add to that while you may view the missiles as relatively cheap compared to the battleship but they are part of a larger system that needs to be put at risk to engage (e.g. the launching planes, ships, etc.). If one cheap Exocet ends your missile carrying ship well…good trade but perhaps your attempt to sink the battleship costs you several missile cruisers and a wing of planes so maybe not such a good trade.

And of course the battleships carry cruise missiles now too making them more versatile and able to engage targets at extended ranges well beyond its guns.

174

From your link I’d like to quote this bit that I think is telling:

175

The bolded bit needs to be taken into consideration when looking at how successful the bombardment was, Kwajalein is very small, 4000m long and 800m wide, Roi Namur is even smaller. There is no point on these atolls that even a 5" gun can’t reach. Although there was little choice in the matter due to its size, Kwajalein was one of the last times that the Japanese stuck with the strategy of preparing defenses right by the beach line and counterattacking the beaches the night of the landings with extremely wasteful Banzai charges. They then shifted to placing minimal or no defenses on the beaches and instead preparing an extensive defense in depth, and not throwing away their soldiers in pointless Banzai charges. The difference was quite dramatic. Peleliu while larger than the atolls, wasn’t a very large island at 6 miles long by 1 mile wide and every inch of it was within range of battleship guns. The bombardment was thought to have been very successful, Oldendorf went so far as to say There are no more targets. I have destroyed everything., when in fact the bombardment had a minimal effect on the defenses which were inland, underground and concealed. He was hardly alone in his optimism, the Marines were expecting a four day battle, and it took a while after the landing to realize that the defenses by the beach weren’t the main defensive positions. The battle turned out to take two months with extremely heavy casualties. Due this change in tactics, no bombardment was anywhere near as successful as at Kwajalein.

I’m not trying to downplay the abilities of battleships at shore bombardment, just that its overwhelming role in Kwajalein was not the norm but rather the exception. As I’ve said previously in this thread, battleships excel at shore bombardment. The problem is that shore bombardment and the ability to take far more of a beating than anything else afloat is all they have going for them today.

The Iowas are still available for reactivation if needed, but the operating costs of them are very high due to their need for a large crew since they are so old and weren’t designed and built with the degree of automation that is done now.

Battleships had a good run, but they’re not coming back. One of these days the Iowas will get to be so old that congress won’t even require them to be maintained for potential reactivation and that will be the end of battleships even potentially seeing service again. I can’t see that being too far in the future; the Iowas are all over 65 years old. Nobody is going to pay the costs to build a new battleship from the ground up just to make a ship that has only one real role that a carrier can do almost as well and do a great many other things to boot.

176

This is an important point.

The Japanese learned a hard lesson at Kwajalein and shifted tactics to account for it which was successful. That said almost nowhere in the world is defensively prepared like that anymore. Battleships would demolish most anywhere you can think of that is in range of their guns. Sure if the enemy knows where you will be coming and knows you have battleships and has several months to prepare they can render the battleships ineffective. Chances are however that today they’d have no clue where it was coming and be hard pressed to prepare defenses. Iran, as an example, has a thousand miles of coastline. Unless they are prepared to build a Maginot Line type defense along its length they cannot reliably protect it all in anything like Peleliu was.

And of course today it is all about combined arms and we are pretty good at that. Were we to have to do Peleliu all over under those same conditions today we’d have little trouble flying missiles right into those caves the Japanese were hunkered down in.

Granted the world today does not seem a place for massive amphibious assaults and as such the role of the battleship and its extreme cost does not make much sense. Just seems to me history has a way of repeating itself and you never know. If you needed to do an amphibious assault I still maintain there is nothing better than a battleship at your back. Carriers are great and very necessary too but they simply cannot fulfill that same support role in that venue as well as a battleship can. Accurate artillery directed at your enemy is a Marine’s best friend (apart from their gun and another Marine).

177

And a dog! Don’t forget dogs!

Seriously, I agree that shore bombardment, competently conducted, against a foe who has surrendered command of the air, has no missiles, and poses a minimal submarine threat, is very effective. Assuming your guns can reach every part of the island.

It’s just that those are a lot of conditions to assume about a future conflict.

I love the old battlewagons and I’ve tried to rationalize keeping them, but there’s a reason the experts in charge of the decision have not built new ones.

178

This cuts both ways though - since it’s highly unlikely that a landing nowadays is going to face such extensive defenses, covering a landing somewhere in Iran for example is something that doesn’t really call for a battleship. Aircraft and helicopters plastering whatever defenses there are would be enough to cover the Marines coming ashore on LCACs doing 40 knots while other Marines vertically envelop the beachhead in helicopters and V-22s.

I get nostalgic about them but times have changed.

179

Well there was this little spat with Iraq in 91, and the fact that they actually thought all those marines were going to go iwo jima on em, that tied up a couple of divisions in the wrong end of the country.

Iminent Thunder

Even the Marines thought it was not a good risk for limited rewards and shwartzkof went with the left hook, but its still a believable front for a potential enemy to honor, when it comes to dancing with America.

Also the falklands campaign in the 80’s would probably be concidered an amphibious landing by both sides , I distinctly remember argentine marines moving about in american amphibious apc’s.

All that aside, you dont have to defend every inch of coast since only a percentage of a given coast may be a candidate for an amphib attack, you just have to keep enough troops around to make a beachhead expensive. I would imagine that if the Japanese had more depth to play with , they probably would not have defended on the beach so strongly, why the Germans bothered is a head scratcher it itself , but I guess if DDay had been turned back at the beach, that would have been it for the war.

Declan

180

Russia?