How would an Iowa-class battleship fare against this kind of beating?

Factual Questions
101

But at what point do you race past the firepower you gained by using the two and a half thousand trained crewmen the battleship would need to instead man a supercarrier?

The challenge is that in the modern world battleships are completely rubbish for anything other than short-range beating on people who can’t effectively shoot back. They are brilliant at that, but for leisurely shooting at shore targets then third or fourth best is perfectly good enough. For every other conceivable task you can get much more bang for your buck using other platforms.

Also everyone loves to bang on about how well protected they are but the fact of the matter is that ww2 german guided bomb technology was perfectly capable of feats such as drilling straight through a battleship top to bottom and out the bottom of the hull (Warspite, Littorio) or penetrating magazines and blowing a battleship in half (Roma). Compare the specs of a Fritz-X with e.g. a Kh-22 and its pretty obvious that even by the sixties armour no longer plays any meaningful role in protecting a capital ship - either the CAP and SAMs keep the missiles away or it’s game over.

102

The Warspite was built in **1910 **and it easily survived.

103

That would be a neat trick, since the Warspite wasn’t even ordered until 1912 and she was completed and commissioned in 1915. She also underwent two major refits in the interwar era, one in 1924 that added torpedo bulges and removed a funnel, and a second and far more extensive on from 1934-37. I’m not sure what any of this or the fact that she survived has anything to do with slaphead’s point or the price of tea in China. slaphead said “ww2 german guided bomb technology was perfectly capable of feats such as drilling straight through a battleship top to bottom and out the bottom of the hull (Warspite, Littorio)”. From here where you can even see the Luftwaffe photo of the hit:

Bolding mine. Now in what way was slaphead incorrect?

104

Ok, designed in 1910. Still a **WW1 **battleship, and the updates didnt add any deck armor.

Now the Iowa was specifically armoured against such attacks with: *The deck consists of three parts, the bomb deck, the main armor deck, and the splinter deck. The bomb deck is 1.5 inches STS plate, the main armor deck is 4.75 inches Class B armor laid on 1.25 inches STS plate and the splinter deck is 0.625 inches STS plate. The bomb deck is designed to detonate general purpose bombs on contact and arm armor piercing bombs so they will explode between the bomb deck and the main armor deck. Within the immune zone, the main armor deck is designed to defeat plunging shells which may penetrate the bomb deck. The splinter deck is designed to contain any fragments and pieces of armor which might be broken off from the main armor deck.
*

http://www.kbismarck.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2925

Sure, the “ww2 german guided bomb technology was perfectly capable of feats such as drilling straight through a **WW1 **battleship top to bottom and out the bottom of the hull”…

105

Related thread

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=822049

The consensus is the battleships (while impressive) are not feasible to bring back into operation.

106

Article from Nat Geo on the Fritz X and some people who rebuilt two of them and tested it on a stationary target by launching it from a ww2 plane.

Note: they missed the target (battleship sized and stationary) on both tries.

107

Some days you just can’t get anything right. The 1934-37 refit, my bolding:

108

  1. Warspite’s 1930’s reconstruction added considerable deck armor, to 3.5" over the machinery (from 1" originally) where the direct hit by Fritz X penetrated (along with decks above and below). See “Battleship Warspite” by Tarrant. Although it’s true, these kinds of deck armor increases, typical of reconstructed WWI battleships, did not typically put them on an even footing with post-Washington Treaty 1930’s-WWII battleships.
    Sorry this is now a duplicate but…

  2. The Fritz X’s capability v the Iowa’s is open to question. But, the hit which destroyed Roma penetrated the 1.5" (36mm but let’s stick with inches) forecastle deck, 1/2"+main deck and up to 6" armor deck. Since the ship sank so quickly it’s not clear which portion of the armor deck was hit, it might have been on a 100mm (~4") or 150mm (6") portion of the armor deck. See “The Littorio Class” by Bagnasco and de Toro, Appendix 2.

109

German sources claimed 14 hits and 7 damaging near misses out of 60 Fritz X dropped in combat, but in ‘Warriors and Wizards’ Bollinger only records 6 hits and 5 damaging near misses. He doesn’t give a total for Fritz X dropped in combat.

He does give a total of 700 Fritz X and Hs 293 dropped in combat for possibly 51 hits and damaging near misses, of which 35 are confirmed. In other cases it’s not 100% certain what type of weapon damaged particular Allied ships in near simultaneous German air attacks with varied weapons, as was often the case.

The Hs 293 more closely resembled modern antiship missiles with airplane type arrangement and self propulsion but basically the same guidance system as Fritz X. It was used generally against non armored warships, and in much larger numbers. However the flat trajectory rendered it vulnerable to self-jamming by multi-path interference as the guidance signals bounced off the water (not a problem with the steep trajectory of Fritz X), it was possible though difficult to shoot down (basically impossible for Fritz X), and eventually Allied electronic countermeasures seriously affected it (the key Fritz X successes in 1943 faced no effective Allied ECM).

Anyway two particular Fritz X’s missing, or malfunctioning, is not that surprising a result based on WWII combat experience.

110

LOL. Ship was hit at 2pm, lost all steam and electric power immediately and was floating dead in the water for over two hours before being taken under tow. Didn’t even get emergency electrics until the next morning. Towed a thousand miles for emergency repairs, months of repairs in two separate dockyards, and spent the rest of the war with 1/4 of her main armament and 1/6th of her boilers as scrap metal.
Truly, a trivial incident not much worse than that time the admiral’s wife dropped a bottle of champagne on the quarterdeck.

Roma - launched 1940, commissioned 1942, sunk in 1943. One of the worlds newest battleships. Littorio - launched 1937, commissioned 1940, not exactly a relic either.

111

Our hypothetical IJN Iowa will sink. She has some advantages over Yamato, such as better fire control, better AA guns, is more maneuverable, and 5 knots faster. But even the best AA of the day would only knock down a small percentage of the attacking aircraft. Witness all the hits on USN carriers, which had AA little worse than an Iowa, and were surrounded by other ships, which were surrounded by a screen of friendly fighters. Even the flimsy and flammable Japanese planes managed to get through sometimes.

So IJN Iowa will get hit. The bombs will not penetrate her armored deck, but they will degrade her FC, disable her AA guns, and slow her with near misses. Much worse are the torpedoes. These had a warhead equivalent to 900 pounds of TNT. Iowa’s TDS was designed to contain 700 pounds. So each torpedo hit will flood either a boiler room, a turbine room, or a magazine. Each torpedo hit, or bomb near miss, also compromises the TDS fwd and aft of the hit, making later hits more damaging.

Also note that while Yamato and Musashi sank after many hits, the number of hits that put them in a sinking condition was fewer. For example, Yamato was escorted by the cruiser Yahagi, which sank after 7 torp hits and multiple bombs. This is more than double the damage needed to actually sink her.

112

BUMPED
Very old thread, but this video from the curator of the Battleship New Jersey museum discussed this topic. Many participants are still active posters, so.

113

I’m impressed with the level of discussion here. Yamato is an old favorite of mine…I read a book about its “suicide mission” way back when I was a sophomore in high school, and it was the catalyst for many life decisions that led me to where I am today (long story!).

For starters, nobody here has thus far referred to it as the “Battleship Yamamoto” which used to completely drive me nuts. It seemed, for the first 20+ years that I knew of this ship’s existence, everybody I spoke with about this ship would call it the “Yamamoto,” conflating it with the famous Admiral.

I agree the Iowa wouldn’t stand a chance under the same degree of attack suffered by Yamato (and earlier, similarly, by Musashi). But of course, fortunately, that never happened. The Japanese couldn’t muster the same number and quality of pilots for their planes, then if they did, they’d have to run the gauntlet of a very powerful CAP fighter force (in most cases, protecting large ships such as a battlewagon). Survivors would have to brave the huge volume of AA fire from the fleet, especially the Iowa, and the AA proximity fuses that made them more effective. Still what was left over probably would be enough to cripple and/or sink the Iowa.

114

Probably a lot of anime fans here.

And the Iowa definitely wouldn’t be able to withstand a shot from the Wave Motion Gun.

115

Or StarCraft…

116

That was my suspicion too.

117

Very informative! Thank you.

I remember reading about the attack years ago, before I had started studying the war, and had read that they had concentrated the torpedo attacks on one side. I hadn’t realized why that was important, but of course all the damage from torpedoes on one side increases the chances of having the ship capsize.

It’s interesting that he said pretty much what was in thread already.

I know this is from 10 years ago, but a nitpick in that the modified bombs were dropped by B5N Kate torpedo / level bomber and not by the D3A Val dive bomber, which could carry only 250-kg general purpose bombs and not armor-piercing bombs. The Japan started the war with the VAL and finished with it, and with the weight limitations never developed any AP bombs, unlike the US which could carry heavier bombs loads with the Curtiss SB2C, which was introduced during the war.

The Kates attacked in ten “V” formations of five aircraft each (49 planes total, as one had to drop out), with the lead bombardier at the point. These highly trained and skilled pilots executed perfected, but these attacks were against stationary targets and would not have worked against maneuvering battleships, as other failed level bombing attacks showed.

An Iowa battleship would simply never be sent out with aircover, of course.

If Iowa were swapped out for Yamato and subject to the same attack by the same number of US planes then yes, she would be sunk.

However, if the Japanese were to decide to send a similar number of its planes at a US task force and concentrate on Iowa (which would be a strategic blunder, but just for the hypothetical) I’m not certain that Iowa would get sunk.

To sink a BB, it really takes a torpedo or a lucky hit with an AP bomb. As Japan didn’t have AP bombs for the dive bombers, the likelihood of hitting a moving target with level bombers would be really hard.

The only way would be with torpedoes, and at that stage of the war, Japanese aviators weren’t trained well or experienced, a prerequisite for successful attacks. The US task force CAP would concentrate on the vulnerable torpedo bombers flying low and slow and would decimate them.

While there is not doubt that some dive bombers would get through and the fighters would be able to strafe the AA personnel, that wouldn’t sink the ship.

118

This seems to be something missed by many of the people responding. They argue their case as if the battleship is the only thing around and will be pummeled by the enemy.

But that’s not the case. The BB would be very well protected by its battlegroup and never put near a coast all by itself. Carriers will be suppressing enemy planes and land based missiles. The area would be clear(ish) of enemy combatants.

Of course, not all things will be accounted for but a BB can take a punch like no other. Most US ships these days will be done for by one Exocet missile. A BB could shrug that off.

119

The OP was a query about how well an Iowa would handle an attack like the one that sank Yamato. There’s no need for the situation to be realistic. For this sort of evaluation, it’s best to imagine a Japanese manned Iowa, attacked by USN aircraft.

Also, AP bombs will be less effective against this target than HE bombs. The AP won’t penetrate, so better to use a bomb with more explosive. The HE will destroy more of the unarmored upper works, funnel uptakes, AA, etc. And near misses cause more flooding and damage to the side protection system.

120

As @Capn_Carl said, the OP specified a similar attack to that of the Yamato, which would not be realistic, but it is still an interesting question. Of course, in real life, battleships didn’t adventure out by themselves in the Pacific because they were vulnerable, but it’s interesting to compare the two ships and see how an Iowa class BB would have fared.

I was responding to @Limmin because they believe that Japanese would have succeeded against Iowa even with CAP and I disagree with that, especially in the later stage of the war. Air cover would have protected her.

In a WWII History Roundtable presentation, Jon Parshall, co-author of Shattered Sword discusses the prior history, and logic leading to Japan’s development of kamikaze forces during World War II, and talks about the tremendous increase in AA firepower. This is a bit of the presentation, starting here.

Later in the war, Task Force 38/58 would be about 120 vessels with 1,200 to 1,500 aircraft and an increasing bias towards fighters. There would be 952 5” barrels, 3,136 40 mm barrels, 2,926 20 mm barrels.

As the war continued, the trend was towards increasing size, weight cyclic rate and overall firepower of AA weapons. The CAP was controlled centrally within the combat information center.

In 1942, the CAP had a radius of 25 miles, 1944, it was 60 miles.

The 5” and the 40 mm guns were the best in the war, being directed by the Mk 37 director, the best of the directors in the war.

At the battle of Midway, a typical carrier formation of a CV, two CA and four DD would put up about 32,000 lbs / min in AA explosives and steel. This is about two or three times as much as the Japanese formation.

In late 1944, with a CV, one BB, one CA, one CLAA and three DD, then it would be 162,000 lbs/min.

The BB in 1944 had more than firepower than the entire formation in June, ’42.

Factoring in the effect of the VT fuze, the effective weight was 575,000 lbs/min about an 11,000 times increase so it was suicidal to even approach a task force. This was the reasoning behind the formation of kamakaze in that if they were going to lose their lives, they might as well have a meaning for it.

After the invasion of Okinawa, the IJA and IJN sent joint tokko missions, called Kikusui. The first mission, Kikusui 1 had 230 IJN planes and 125 IJA planes for a total of 355 tokko attackers.

Obviously, an American battleship safely within a task force simply would not be vulnerable, but that’s a boring answer. On its own with a few other ships against a hypothetical US enemy, it would be sunk.