Wait a minute. You’re telling me they didn’t hit the decks a runnin’, and turn their guns around?
Probably not.
They had been on alert for an hour or so since sighting the German vessels, so I doubt they were still running to General Quarters. And presumably they had already aimed their guns in the direction of the enemy, so they didn’t need to spin those guns around.
Actually there was such an idea floated (pun intended) to actually build one that almost got off the ground.
Project Habakkuk was a plan to create a giant aircraft carrier made out of a mixture of frozen ice and wood pulp that had the strength of concrete while also still having the floating properties of ice and was to have been four times the size of a conventional aircraft carrier with decks capable of landing four engine bombers. If built it would have been almost impossible to destroy through the sheer thickness of the material and thus the only real way to destroy it would have been to just make it uninhabitable by knocking out all the control towers and hangers on top of it.
There is such a thing as mission kill. A CV that’s floating but can’t launch any planes is as useless as one headed for the bottom.
One of the reasons BBs’s became obsolete. They could take and not be sunk by obscene amounts of punishment. Its took much less to become helpless and mission killed.
South Dakata needed an East coast rebuild after getting hit by a pair of '14 and fucking cruisers.
Hiei crippled from fire from destroyers and light cruisers. Sunk next day by bombers, being helpless.
South Dakota was hit 47 times which knocked out radars and radio and whatnot but the ship still sailed to New York. Also remember that due to electrical problems on the ship she was unable to fight back so was mainly just a target. She might have fared better if she could have hit back at her attackers.
Hiei was crippled by a serious amount of fire directed her way. This was not a destroyer or two. It was concerted fire and, like the Bismarck, her steering was knocked out. She wasn’t sunk till the following day after a further concerted effort. All that for a WWI battleship.
I would say there is a dramatic difference between being knocked out of the battle for a few months and going to the bottom. These are expensive ships with lots of people on them. I am sure a “mission kill” on the HMS Hood would have been far preferable to everyone than exploding and killing all but three sailors not to mention having the ship available again in a few months for duty.
Compare that to the the USS Stark which was taken out with two missiles (and one did not explode). Or the HMS Sheffield sunk by one missile. Those missiles would have done little to a modern battleship meaning you have to work a lot harder to get them out of the fight.
There is a reason American fighters were better than the Japanese fighters at the end of the war. The Japanese still used the barely armored Zero whereas the US planes had significant armor on them. Armor makes a difference. Building all your ships out of paper-mache because armored ships can be mission killed is not a good plan. Ask the British how well their (comparatively) lightly armored battlecruisers fared at Jutland.
"“Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.” ~Admiral Beatty at Jutland commenting on an alarming number of their ships blowing up
I was just going to post something like this, Whack-a-Mole*. Nice.
WW2 Japanese and American battleships survived atomic blasts, albeit with some damage. That’s pretty strong.
Just to further what Whack-a-Mole already said:
You mean the 14" shells from another battleship. That hardly supports your idea.
If you’ve forgotten or were unaware of the particulars of this engagement, the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began with Hiei and the destroyer* Akatsuki* turning on their searchlights and illuminating the Atlanta at a range of 3,000 yards, and from there proceeded to become what was described as “a barroom brawl after the lights had been shot out”. The destroyer Laffey missed colliding with the Hiei by 20 feet. Hiei’s steering was knocked out by 8" shells from the heavy cruiser San Francisco; the US force consisted of two heavy and three light cruisers and eight destroyers. A brief account of the Hiei:
I am not sure where exactly you two are disagreeing with me here. My point was that BB’s were difficult to sink. The were not very difficult to mission kill and make helpless. For a battle, “sunk with all hands” is functionally the same as “6 months of repair and 200 casualties”: And if that’s going to happen, then might as well have an unarmoured ship, and save the expense of a battle wagons.
Both *Bismarck * and Scharnhorst took a lot of punishment to sink but both quickly became helpless in their final battles.
SoDak was out of action for months. If there had been Japanese aircraft around, she would have been sunk. Hiei would have been able to escape if US aircraft were not around. Either was not available for further action in said battle (not sure if the salvo that killed Adm Callaghan on San Fransico was delivered before or after the one that killed Adm Abe). Both lost power, radar and Optics fairly early on.
Nonsense. If they had been unarmored ships, they would have rapidly sunk, and there is a huge fundamental difference between needing 6 months of repair after battle and being sunk with all hands. The amount of pounding needed to mission kill a battleship was extremely difficult to achieve. That’s where the disagreement is, you’re under the impression that mission killing a battleship was trivially easy.
Again, nonsense. If South Dakota had been unarmored, she’d have been sunk outright, not put out of commission for 6 months. The idea of Japanese aircraft being around is absurd, she was able to sail to Nouméa on her own power and was far clear of Guadalcanal by daybreak and any possible Japanese air attack coming out of Rabaul.
You’re completely missing the point. The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began at point blank range of 3,000 yards and got even closer from there. Hiei’s secondary batteries couldn’t even depress enough to engage the American destroyers, much less her main batteries while the destroyers were so close they were raking Hiei with 20mm and 40mm anti-aircraft gun fire, hardly something standard practice or even something even envisioned as possible to occur. She sailed right through the American formation and was subjected to immense amounts of fire at absurdly close range. Completely disregarding the particulars of the battle in that American aircraft were literally right next door at Henderson Field and able to fly because *Hiei *and Kirishima were unable to carry out their mission and bombard the airfield due to the chaotic night action, Hiei was not going to be able to escape regardless. Kirishima tried to tow her clear, but was unable to. Hiei’s steering compartments were flooded, her rudder was jammed starboard, and there was nothing she could do but turn starboard circles at a speed of 5 knots.
And yes, Hiei along with a number of other Japanese ships was able to cripple San Francisco while under all of this fire and Abe’s bridge was hit. Abe was only wounded by the way, it was his chief of staff that was killed. To give you an idea of how utterly chaotic the battle was, the San Francisco’s first barrage of the battle was aimed at the Atlanta, which was misidentified as a Japanese vessel in the confusion. Admiral Scott and much of the bridge crew on the Atlanta were killed by this volley from the San Francisco, the color from the dye bags left no doubt that the shells that destroyed Atlanta’s bridge came from the San Francisco.
Seems to me that the battleship vs carrier contest is simply a matter of “when”. More armor and speed might delay the inevitable, but the end results will be the same. The big, expensive, slow moving battleship will be harassed and bombarded by dozens of fast, relatively inexpensive aircraft until a hit is scored on some delicate part like the rudder or fire control radar and a “mission kill” is achieved. The battleship will have almost no way to respond as the carrier is well beyond the range of the battleships guns or even it’s means of detection.
Even if the battleship isn’t disabled, a carrier and its air wing can effectively put a battleship on the defensive and distract it from performing it’s primary roles as a commerce raider and heavy fire support platform.
Even if some of those early battleship vs carrier duels were not decisively one-sided, the writing was on the wall. Funding and research would be better spent on aircraft, torpedoes, anti ship missiles and the carriers to deliver them than on armor and air defense systems to try and make the battleship an impregnable sea fortress. More armor and more air defense just makes the battleship a bigger, slower, more expensive target with diminishing returns against the weaponry designed to take them down.
You are assuming the battleship is alone which was almost never the case. A modern battlegroup centered on a battleship included a cruiser, 2-3 destroyers and 2-3 frigates. An attack wing from a single carrier would have a lot of problem with that. Consider how many planed the Japanese flung at US ships as Kamikazes. Not many made it through and they were the WWII equivalent of a guided missile.
Not all battleships were created equal when it came to AA fire. The Iowa class had excellent AA. Further, the whole ship is not dependent on one fire control radar to be able to shoot. That was ideal choice but there were backups and backups to the backups. Knocking out one radar is not a mission kill.
Also, if a lone carrier has her torpedo and dive bombers killed then all the carrier can do is run. A “mission kill” on the carrier even if they never touched the carrier.
Remember by the end of WWII the US had HUGE numbers of carriers and planes to put up against one target but at that point, if that is what you are facing, nothing you have afloat will survive long and you’ve probably lost the war whether you are willing to admit it or not.
Battleships did more than fight battleship duels.
They were a floating artillery platform and ideal for shore bombardment. Indeed nothing else was better. So feared were they that their mere presence encouraged the Vietnamese to re-enter peace negotiations as long as they were removed.
In the Gulf War soldiers surrendered to a drone used to spot for the battleship because they knew what its presence presaged.
Ask a Marine about the need for artillery support. The 5" gun on a modern destroyer simply won’t do that job. Also, missiles are great and all but vastly more expensive than artillery shells and you can carry a lot more artillery shells so can stay on station shooting a lot longer. Again something your Marines will appreciate.
Battleships also had some of the best floating hospitals in the navy (currently the US has only two dedicated hospital ships). Nice to have for the Marines during a beach invasion. Additionally they had first rate machine shops on board to make things needed as they broke or were blown up.
I get that they are colossally expensive ships and don’t make sense in today’s navy but they did fill a role that no other ship can. If we ever got back into the business of storming beaches you might want to have those again watching your back.
For that battle, maybe. But how about the next, and the one ofter that?
The relative judgments about how ‘easy’ it was to inflict damage on WWII battleships or the relative setback from losing one v having it damaged are somewhat matters of opinion.
But on two factual points:
South Dakota was non-operational for more like 3-4 months after the 2nd NBoG in mid Nov 1942 than 6. She arrived at the NY Navy Yard in mid-December and left Feb 21. At first for trials and shakedown but soon formed Task Force 61 along with Alabama and the carrier Ranger in the Atlantic. Also the yard period involved an overhaul and further addition of light AA, update of electronics, removing 2* 5"/38 mounts in top weight compensation, etc not strictly battle damage repair.
Second South Dakota’s machinery and steering were not affected by the combat damage in the November battle, the ship broke off the action at full speed after losing contact with Washington and was as far away from Japanese air bases as had been planned by daylight with full speed and maneuver capability and most of her light AA weapons operational. The two battleships fell in together at 0951. They reported some unidentified a/c but if they were the patrolling flying boats of the JNAF 851st Air Group they didn’t sight the battleships.
Sources are relevant primary records which don’t necessarily exactly agree with secondary sources quoted on websites.
Agreed. Which is why the Iowa class stayed in service until 1992. But I would argue that once the carrier had the ability to dominate the sea, the role of “floating firebase” for supporting amphibious operations might be better served by a different sort of vessel. Something like an “arsenal ship” full of missiles or destroyers armed with rail guns that shoot 100 miles. Or even a less armored battlecruiser with the battleship’s big guns.
Nothing really improves on shore bombardments over the really big artillery the battleships carry.
Missiles aren’t suited to the job and even if they were they are waaay more expensive the artillery shells (Tomahawk is around $742,000/missile whereas a 16" artillery shell is in the neighborhood of $14,000 each). If you use missiles you very quickly race past the cost savings you gained by not having a battleship.
I also do not think rail guns replace conventional artillery. Shells from a battleship were dubbed swimming pool makers because they’d carve out a chunk of ground the size of a swimming pool. I do not think rail guns would have the same effect. Also, while extra range is nice, there are plenty of targets within 25 miles of the shore for battleships to hit. I forget but something like 33% of the world’s population lives near coasts. You could hit more with railguns but there’d be no shortage of things to shoot for battleships as is.
Battlecruisers might be a good option but only if they never get shot at. Over and over again battlecruisers didn’t live up to their potential because they were too squishy (as these things go).
That said if there are no plans to storm some beaches on a regular and massive scale there is not much need for a battleship.
Battleships shore bombardment is overkill against most nations and against the few nations against who its not overkill, tend to be nuclear powers.
I remembered seeing this thread pop back on the radar a while ago, and as I was watching this video thought I’d link to it here. This guys conclusion is that Iowa would win, but that the battle would be protracted and in any sort of protracted battle there is also a lot of luck involved. But Iowa SHOULD hit the Yamato roughly twice as often in most circumstances, and in a night engagement, Iowa should win fairly easily. Anyway, if you are interested, watch the video.