Reading about Alaskas now. A ship I knew very little about before. Thank you!
Why not? Because VTOL jets were 30 years in the future when WWII ended?
The 1943 aircraft a half-decked BB could carry would be very limited in range and in firepower. Think biplanes or float planes.
As various folks have discussed above ref battlecruisers, any hermaphrodite weapon system is outclassed by purpose-built full-on systems.
So, the most generally accepted explanation for the performance of British battlecruisers at Jutland is that they were poorly designed and poorly conceived. An alternate theory, which I find quite interesting, is that it was in fact poor training that led to the loss of battlecruisers after receiving surprisingly few hits at Jutland. Namely, that the RN, in its pre-war training regimen, was so focused on achieving a high rate of fire that crews were encouraged, perhaps implicitly, to cut corners to continually try and outdo one another. So physical barriers and mechanisms that were supposed to interrupt the spread of fire were manually bypassed to make it easier to move ammunition and powder from the magazines to the turrets.
But of course, if that was what caused so many ships to be lost after receiving so few hits, that would mean the Admirals in charge of the fleet, who emphasized speed over safety and effectively encouraged short cuts, were to blame. And we just can’t have that now, can we? I mean, if the Navy has to take a black eye, okay, but god forbid that black eye should go to only a couple of named Admirals who could have prevented this disaster if only they had been more in tune with what was going on aboard the ships under their command, if only the climate they had fostered had been better.
Anyway, the theory is discussed in a paper called ‘Our Bloody Ships’ or ‘Our Bloody System’? Jutland and the Loss of the Battle Cruisers, 1916, which is itself referenced in this cringe Medium article (I know, I know).
FWIW, if historical fiction is to be believed, high ROF is a historical Royal Navy objective, so it’s not like they did some sort of weird volte-face and emphasized ROF versus accuracy.
Of course, this way of thinking dates to an era where Englishmen were expected to “hate Frenchmen as you hate the Devil”, so probably more than a bit anachronistic by 1916.
A lot of that weight is propellant and engine which will be mostly gone by the time it arrives and, since it is not part of the warhead, will have little effect in the damage done to its target.
As for getting through armor it really depends on the actual armor. WWII battleships had crazy armor. (16" belt armor from the USS South Dakota) Sure you could blow off radar masts and such but sinking the ship was very hard. I’d wager you could send 20 Exocets into a WWII battleship and not sink it. Not even stop it from moving on its own. Probably not even a mission kill (the turrets had their own sighting systems which, while not ideal, could do in a pinch).
Look at the USS Stark and HMS Sheffield and they were ruined by one missile.
You’re wrong on at least one account there. For instance Stark (which was hit by two missiles, not one) was actually most seriously damaged not by the explosion, but by the excess fuel that caused a large fire, which then spread throughout the ship afterwards.
Because it had shit armor and the missile could get in the ship and spew flaming crud all over.
Also, the Stark was not in battle so did not have bulkheads closed and what-not to stop flaming crud from spreading everywhere.
Also, goes to show if that tin can could survive (barely) two missile hits then a battleship would do much, much better.
If I have time, I may take another look at the investigation into the Stark (it’s available online) but I think you’re overestimating the extent to which material condition (which boundaries were closed) at the time of impact mattered. It’s not that the fuel spread all over, it’s that once a fire starts on a ship, and it gets to be large enough, it can be difficult to control. Because of course one of the first things that would have happened, after being hit, would have been to shut all the open hatches and bulkhead penetrations (start setting material condition zebra as they call it). It’s just that fire can spread across boundaries, by heating bulkheads and causing material on the other side to combust.
For reference, Sheffield also was lost, ultimately, due to complications from the fire, which spread due to damage to firefighting systems, and was abandoned due to concerns that the fire might cause ordinance on board to detonate. In fact the ship drifted, abandoned, for several days prior to sinking.
While a heavily armored ship, such as a battleship, might be less susceptible to hull damage from a missile, there are a couple things to consider:
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Superstructures, where all the antennas and radars are, tend not to be heavily armored because of course that would lead to stability problems.
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Modern missiles can be designed to either perform various maneuvers like a pop up and then drop down to enter the ship at an angle from above (through the superstructure and down, or through the deck and down), can be programmed to fly at or level off at a certain altitude just prior to impact (corresponding with the expected height of the superstructure on the targeted vessel, for instance), or even make use of an electro-optical sensor to discern, not unlike one of those self-driving cars, the ship’s outline and then decide on a terminal maneuver based on programming.
All that to say, we’re back to the problem of battleships maybe less susceptible to sinking after a couple hits, but not necessarily much better suited to continuing their mission after just one or two hits, given that so much of the stuff needed to actually fight the ship are in vulnerable parts of the superstructure.
ETA: For a great example of how catastrophic a fire in the superstructure alone can be, see USS Belknap.
We have examples of battleships operating while being pummeled. Bismarck and Yamato leap to mind.
Bismarck did not take only a couple hits. It took loads of hits:
For 74 minutes they pounded Bismarck with their big guns (it’s estimated that the ship was hit by more than 500 shells of 13.3 cm or larger) and fired torpedoes at her. SOURCE: May 27, 1941: Sink the Bismarck! | WIRED
Granted she was wrecked at that point but still afloat and kinda sorta still fighting. (To be clear, I realize Bismarck was in its death throes here and at its end.)
500 shells couldn’t sink the Bismarck but you think 2-3 Exocets would.
Not gonna happen.
I didn’t say that. I was specifically discussing the possibility that damage to the superstructure from fires, which would be likely to have a far greater impact on a modern warship, with its dependence on advanced electronics, than the Bismarck. In fact, it’s right there in the section you quoted: “battleships maybe less susceptible to sinking after a couple hits, but not necessarily much better suited to continuing their mission after just one or two hits.” By that, I mean to refer to whatever a modern batttleship might look like, and I am referring, yes, to missile hits (which would be much more like a kamikaze hit than a shell hit).
Most warships are built with a citadel in the lower bowels of the ship where they put the most important stuff. These are some of the most protected and hardest to hit spots on the ship. No surprise…where would you put the important parts?
Also, US battleships had an all-or-nothing armor scheme. Basically, they armored the ever-loving hell out of critical parts and left shit like the superstructure to burn because those parts did not matter.
The superstructure is mostly filled with unimportant stuff (there is a command bridge that is hyper armored). At the top are the antennas and range finders and whatnot which are important. Those will get blown off easily after a few hits.
But, and this should come as no surprise, these ships have secondary and tertiary means to keep fighting. Not to mention, in this day and age, data links to other ships who still have working radar.
I’ve served on four warships, not counting patrol boats, ranging in size from a minesweeper to an aircraft carrier. I’m not sure you have that entirely correct. But more on that below:
Except all the radars and all the antennas would have to be mounted in the super structure. You can put the computer systems and the displays deep down inside the hull, in the lower bowels of the ship if you like, but all those antennas and all the miles of cabling connecting them are going to be in exposed parts of the ship. And FWIW, the Combat Information Center on all the ships I’ve served on has been above the waterline, not exactly in the bowels of the ship.
And when all of those “antennas and range finders” get blown off, do you know what you have? You have a ship that is basically blind, deaf, and dumb beyond visual range. Which was all well and good in the days of gun duels between surface ships, but which renders such a ship near-useless and defenseless in the missile age.
Secondary and tertiary means of fighting in the days of guns? Yes. Secondary and tertiary (as in, without the aid of radar) in the days of missiles? Not so much. I mean, there’s going to be redundancy, sure (like extra fire control radars or a secondary air search radar like the cruisers have), but all with the same vulnerabilities. And those data links? They need working antennas and working electronics (which means cabling intact, no crazy grounds in the system due to extensive battle damage topside) to work.
Carriers and minesweepers will not have citadels. Why would they? Neither are armored in any meaningful sense. The Brits tried armored carriers…no one builds them today for a reason.
Battleships were built with the notion they would get hit so they armored them. Modern ships have little armor. They are deemed disposable. A single missile is either a deadly hit or at the least, a mission kill.
That would not be the case for a battleship. They expected them to get hit and built them with that in mind. Losing parts would not stop the ship. Make it less effective…sure but it would still be in the fight. The Stark or Sheffield…BOOM…out. One hit and done.
We know battleships kept going after massive damage. We know most ships today are done for after one hit.
Which would you rather serve on if you expected to be shot at?
Even that is misleading, modern warships have more sections and compartments, they are capable of dealing with explosions because the philosophy has changed - it changed largely during the early 1960’s.
Hits that would have taken out destroyers and cruisers would cause severe operational damage but not sink the ship.
The thinner outer skin allows blasts to exit instead of being contained in a hard shell and propagating througout.
Some of the hits taken in the Falklands war bear this out, HMS Sheffield was lost to fire, however I can personally attest to the fact that this should not have happened - she was operating under the wrong protocols at the time. I can go into great detail on this since I was a serving RN rating at the time and I know the specifics.
As for serving on a battleship when it gets hit - depends upon the hit, and the role you play. You would not want to be working in the machinery spaces or magazines if you take a couple of torpedoes because your chances of escape are very slim - look at the sinkings of various battleships and compare with the list of survivors.
OTOH, if it were close air attack then being anywhere on the upper deck operating the AA is likely to result in a short career.
As part of the damage control you are screwed either way, you go into a compartment to fight a fire, the area is sealed shut behind you - you are expendable the ship is not. Either you control the fire, or it will be someone else’s turn to have a try - as they step over your remains.
We also know that unarmoured ships such as destroyers kept going after massive damage, HMS Kelly was renown for having her bows blasted off, later on having been repaired the after section was blown off and later on having been repaired the main midships section was heavily damaged and had to be rebuilt.
Armour is not always your friend, the more you try to contain a blast, the worse you will make it
Okay, Whack-a-Mole, which is it? Are the battleships you have in mind going to just be replicas of the WWII-era ships, or are they going to be upgraded to have missile systems and advanced communications and computer systems on par with missile age warships?
My take on Sheffield & Stark is that both suffered from one grievous design error, namely …
Using aluminum as a structural material topside to save weight. That decision improved seakeeping, fuel mileage, top speed. All good. And it left the ships with the proverbial “glass jaw”. Once a good fire gets going, the superstructure collapses, melts, and in some cases even combusts. And as that’s happening, you get a total mission kill because of all the important stuff up there.
Oops.
My intuition is that had those ships had steel superstructures and been properly configured for battle they’d have fared much better.
Here’s a ticklish topic also worth considering vs those two ships, and indeed many other post-WWII casualties to accident, terrorist attack, etc.
In the early days of any full-on war, a lot of men and materiel on all sides are destroyed by poor skill. Men who’re ill-prepared, not-quite-gritty enough, or indecisive get ruthlessly culled by enemy action. And if those men are in command of large units, at sea or on land, their mistakes take a lot of other good men with them.
A distinct but closely-related concern is poor doctrine refined in peacetime to achieve peacetime management goals that (at best) are presumed to represent tactically useful wartime practice. The discussion upthread about the WWI RN & the mistaken obsession with rate of fire over configuring the ship for maximum survivability is a classic example. History is replete with these if you dig carefully. These can all be viewed as simply the leadership shortcomings of the very high level HQ bureaucracies. Far more damaging in scale, but no different in kind really than the infantry lieutenant who is weak in his battle drills.
As to materiel, every shortcoming in design, procurement, and logistics is again ruthlessly brought to light by the enemy. Guns that jam, ammo in too short supply, not installing enough fire hoses, etc. I can recall when I was in USAF that there were certain consumable parts for our aircraft that were adequately supplied for the peacetime ops tempo but would have grounded our fleet if we’d gone to full WWIII-level emergency sortie production for a long time. These were complex parts whose production could not simply be spun up over a week or three. Why were these parts not available in far greater numbers when their criticality and quantity shortfall was well known? Budget.
In the early days of a full-on war learning to overcome all of these individual and organizational shortcomings takes place at great cost and soon enough you have a better equipped, more capable, more competent, and, tragically, smaller force.
As applied to the perpetual violent quasi-peace since 1945, this means each chance encounter with enemy violence or severe accident (e.g. collision at sea, major ammo dump fire on land, etc) is handled by mostly peacetime men with mostly peacetime equipment in a mostly peacetime mindset at the moment of engagement. Stark, Sheffield, Belknap, Cole, etc., are examples. Yes, Sheffield was in a known real war. It was also hit on its 3rd *day* in theatre. The USS Vincennes event was the same failure in reverse: unskilled offense killed ~300 innocent civilians.
For sure the US forces in the Middle East have become well battle-hardened over the last 20 years; most especially the ground forces. As have those of all other participating nations. At the same time, all the services have been organically learning how to fight that war. Those are valuable lessons paid for with lots of blood and far more treasure.
But at least some of those lessons are anti-learning for fighting other wars, especially near-peer wars. All militaries struggle with that. DoD is no exception. It will cost us grievously in the early days of the next conflict of a different nature. It always does. C’est la guerre.
Sheffield too. Turns out burning rocket propellant and modern warship construction don’t mix. Fire’s killed quite a lot of ships over the years, which is one reason the USN is so monomaniacal about firefighting and damage control in general. As you well know.
Navies learned a lot about warship construction and survivability from the Sheffield attack
And @casdave, I’d like to hear what you have to share about Sheffield’s story. The wiki mentions something about the Exocet took out half or all of the firefighting capability?
Wrong, I was there.
Specifically HMS Sheffield was not operating on wartime cruising state when she was hit, had she been doing that the fire would not have destroyed her. This is in contrast to the rest of us who were operating on war cruising protocols
Her Ops room was beyond use however she could still have operated her helicopter and a number of other functions.
Lots of us were hit, HMS Antelope was hit a number of times, it was the fire in the hanger that killed her off, but she was almost saved
I am not aware of USS Stark state of readiness at the time she was hit, but although she was operating in a high risk zone it was not as far as I am aware a hot zone - I would expect she was cruising in a state one above peacetime cruising, which is the sort of readiness used to deal with crash and collision issues rather than wartime readiness.
Why does that matter? Because part of states of readiness also includes how many of the damage control parties are fully manned and how the firefighting measures are organised.
Full action stations requires each and every fire pump to be running, and the fire main itself is isolated so that each pump feeds only one section. The fire main runs the full length of the ship and in peacetime readiness it will be connected as one line with only one fire pump feeding it - any breach of the fire main would cause loss of fire main pressure throughout the ship - by splitting it into maybe 4 or five sections a warhead strike will likely breach one, or perhaps two sections - but firemain pressure elsewhere will still be available instantly to fight the fire.
Emergency pumps and firemain bypasses can be brought into use but you wait until you know where they are needed and it takes minutes that you can’t afford to waste.
Reconfiguring the firemain and pumps from peacetime operating to wartime state also takes time - typically if it takes longer than 2 minutes to attack the fire then you are in very big trouble indeed.
HMS Sheffield was in a known war zone - we had just sunk the General Belgrano - she should have been in the second highest state of readiness, she should have had 3 of her 4 fire pumps running and feeding into three firemain sections - she wasn’t, and she lost all her firemain pressure because of that - nothing to do with the aluminium superstructure at all.
You mention that we may be in an analogous situation to when carriers replaced battleships: What do you think will replace aircraft carriers?