AHC: Nuclear powered Battleship

[thanix01]

In this Alternative history challenge what is require to change so that nuclear power battleship can come into existent? Any country could build it and it could only be one of it kind but it have to be built.

For all I know it could be ineffective when it was built whether through country naval doctrine being out dated, have it be from ego of leader, or one off prove of concept.

What reason (illogical or logical) for a country to build one?

 

[Carl Schwamberger]

I guess as a proof of concept, or test model? Sort of like the nuke power cargo ship the US built in the 1950s.

 

[Captain Seafort]

In this Alternative history challenge what is require to change so that nuclear power battleship can come into existent?

Nothing.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Nothing.

That’s a cruiser, not a battleship.

To answer the OP’s question, you need to give a country a reason to build an all-new BB in the 1960s. That might be outright ASB.

 

[steamboy]

That’s a cruiser, not a battleship.

To answer the OP’s question, you need to give a country a reason to build an all-new BB in the 1960s. That might be outright ASB.

Maybe not THAT ASB.

Lets say its 1967 and a US battleship is sailing near the waters of Israel and it and its escort come under attack by a salvo of SS-N-2 missiles. As CIWS didn't exist at teh time, and these are new, then its most likely they get past any AA and one US escort is hit by two missiles and is lost, but the Battleship, hit by three, is largely unscathed. Yes a 5-inch mount was knocked out and there's damage to the superstructure, but the two that hit the hull did nothing more than leave big dents and scorch marks.

This or something like it might get the USN to go "Hey so armour works gainst these..." before that industrial military complex springs into action and starts looking at a new ship, with armour, nuclear energy (because its the late 60's) and more.

 

[Captain Seafort]

That’s a cruiser, not a battleship.

It's a battlecruiser - over twice the displacement of any contemporary cruiser. Given the way the later gun battleships and battlecruisers converged (Hood, the Twins, Iowa, Vanguard, etc) I think we've got to the stage where the two terms are effectively interchangeable.

To answer the OP’s question, you need to give a country a reason to build an all-new BB in the 1960s. That might be outright ASB.

Given that the Soviets did precisely that (albeit with construction beginning in the early 70s), obviously not.

 

[MatthewB]

A battleship is not really intended for NGFS, anything with big guns can do that role, such as a monitor or even thinly protected battlecruiser.

No, a battleship is intended to do battle with other surface warships, including enemy battleships. Unlike modern thin skinned alumimum and sheet steel warships that must avoid being hit at all costs, a battleship is expected to absorb anything the enemy can throw at it. This means our nuclear battleship must be able to withstand hits by SSMs. Do you really want a SS-N-19 Shipwreck hitting your reactor?

On the otherhand, if all we want is a super Ticonderonga with nuclear power and heavy guns for NGFS, we can skip the battleship idea entirely. Just build a better Kirov.

 

[Roches]

What makes it a BBGN and not a BCGN? I think it's at least partly political, if we're talking about a post-1945 ship. Something like how the Invincible class were "through-deck cruisers" and not "aircraft carriers", the Kirovs might have been "battlecruisers" to avoid too much saber-rattling of the kind that might cause the US to say something like "you call that a nuclear-powered guided-missile battleship?"

Since this has to be post-1945, I think we can rule out 16 or 18 or 21 inch guns as a defining characteristic of a battleship. Instead, it needs missiles -- one of which can contain more explosive force than every shell every battleship ever fired, if you want to fit them with great big late-60s 20 MT warheads. That leaves armor -- sufficient armor to survive one or more conventional missile hits. That would be highly advantageous in any real-world scenario, such as a US "observer" ship being hit by SS-N-2s off the coast of Israel, as @steamboy suggested. But, politically, it would be easy to say that nuclear-era battleships don't even need armor. US Steel would disagree, though, and it's possible our BBGN would be very heavily armored. Plus, a ship double or triple the size of USS Long Beach (CGN-9, 15,500 tons) could be called a battleship even if Kirov (28,000 tons) is a battlecruiser and the "old", "heavy" battleships, the Iowas, were 60,000 tons. Ultimately, the definition of a battleship is up to a country that has battleships.

I'll suggest that the difference between a BBGN and a BCGN is, in addition to what its navy calls it, strategic nuclear weapons. Ballistic ones, not Regulus. Perhaps it'd be a stopgap measure -- refitting the Iowas with ballistic missiles and nuclear reactors, until enough submarines could be built. Long Beach was initially intended to carry Polaris.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

On the otherhand, if all we want is a super Ticonderonga with nuclear power and heavy guns for NGFS, we can skip the battleship idea entirely. Just build a better Kirov.

That sounds more like the Strike Cruiser (CSGN) of the 1970s.

That was armed with the 8" Medium Calibre Light Weight Gun (MCLWG).

I have no idea how or why, but why not have a complementary Strike Battleship, armed with a Heavy Calibre Light Weight Gun (HCLWG). That is if a heavy calibre light weight gun is not a contradiction in terms.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Plus, a ship double or triple the size of USS Long Beach (CGN-9, 15,500 tons) could be called a battleship even if Kirov (28,000 tons) is a battlecruiser and the "old", "heavy" battleships, the Iowas, were 60,000 tons.

I think the only plausible POD is a replacement for the Iowa class.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

I think the only plausible POD is a replacement for the Iowa class.

Given the unlikliehood of that what comes to mind for me is refitting one of Illinois or Kentucky as a proof of concept. This could make particular sense if the original order for those hulls as the first Montana's goes ahead.

 

[RamscoopRaider]

You would probably need some early PoDs, pre WWI.

Basic outline for how it could go

1. Russia "wins" Russo-Japanese War, Russian Navy ends up bigger with more funding
   
2. Shorter less devastating WWI, different people live and die
3. Soviets still take power but with a bigger Russian Navy to start with the Red Navy has teeth and the USSR a functional naval industry
   
4. Different Naval Treaty as a result of better funding from shorter war, thus battleships get bigger than OTL
   
5. Different people living through WWI means Electronic and atomic research goes forward faster, while aviation is pushed less by a shorter war
6. Less of a hangover from WWI means Great Depression is more mild, battleship replacement actually occurs on schedule
7. With a better naval industry to start Stalins naval plans move forward
   
8. Air Search Radar begins getting deployed and experimented in mid 30's
9. Naval Treaty system falls apart on schedule, but everybody has treaty busting battleships ready when it does
10. By outbreak of WWII everybody has air search radar and 50,000+ ton battleships under construction. Radar directed gunnery and VT fuses are in limited use by a few navies. Meanwhile nobody has a carrier airplane that can really carry the weapons thought needed to sink a modern battleship due to larger size/advancement over OTL and slightly behind state of aviation
11. During WWII no battleship is sunk by carrier based air and few are sunk by land based air, decisive battleship actions occur in Med and Pacific while German and Russian fleets in being prove their effectiveness
    
12. WWII is shorter and less devastating as well
13. Less devastated by WWII Stalin resumes his prewar naval plans, which did produce some new battleships even before the war, and orders new battleships/battlecruisers designed with lessons of war
14. US responds to Stalins new warships with their own
15. Stalin wants to build some new monsters but dies before he gets the chance, his successor uses a K-1000 type Maskirovka to think they are actually building one, going so far as to set wooden mockups in false building slips
    
16. US public hears about this and swallows the bait hook line and sinker, demanding a new superbattleship to face them, with nuclear the next big thing and more advanced than OTL, nuclear propulsion is chosen
17. 6 Nuclear Powered battleships are ordered in 1955, though soon after there are questions about the usefulness
    
18. Several years later four incomplete ships are converted to carriers, and the first two are too far along in the process for economical conversion and it is decided to finish them as battleships

 

[creighton]

Nothing.

I can’t read this without The Hunt for Red October music just blaring in my head.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

Given the unlikliehood of that what comes to mind for me is refitting one of Illinois or Kentucky as a proof of concept. This could make particular sense if the original order for those hulls as the first Montana's goes ahead.

I should have been clearer.

I meant ships build in the 1990s or later to replace the Iowa class in a continuing Cold War, which is the only situation I can think of where the American taxpayer could be persuaded to buy them.

 

[CV12Hornet]

Maybe not THAT ASB.

Lets say its 1967 and a US battleship is sailing near the waters of Israel and it and its escort come under attack by a salvo of SS-N-2 missiles. As CIWS didn't exist at teh time, and these are new, then its most likely they get past any AA and one US escort is hit by two missiles and is lost, but the Battleship, hit by three, is largely unscathed. Yes a 5-inch mount was knocked out and there's damage to the superstructure, but the two that hit the hull did nothing more than leave big dents and scorch marks.

This or something like it might get the USN to go "Hey so armour works gainst these..." before that industrial military complex springs into action and starts looking at a new ship, with armour, nuclear energy (because its the late 60's) and more.

A battleship isn’t shrugging off Styx missiles with just big dents and scorch marks, I’m sorry. Those are 1000-lb hollow-charge warheads, they’re going to carve through the belt armor like a hot knife through butter. And even if they were just 1000-lb HE that’s still a lot of explosives going off. Something is going to break.

It's a battlecruiser - over twice the displacement of any contemporary cruiser. Given the way the later gun battleships and battlecruisers converged (Hood, the Twins, Iowa, Vanguard, etc) I think we've got to the stage where the two terms are effectively interchangeable.

Given that the Soviets did precisely that (albeit with construction beginning in the early 70s), obviously not.

It's a cruiser. The Russians call it a cruiser, not a battlecruiser, for starters. "Battlecruiser" is entirely a Western thing thanks to, as you said, them being over twice the size of Western cruisers. For another, while it's twice the size of Western cruisers, that's Western cruisers being overly small, not the Kirovs being overly big. The size difference between a Kirov and say, a Sverdlov is about as much as, say, a Kotlin and an Udaloy. Ships got big postwar, and the size of a Kirov compared to a WWII cruiser is well in line with other ship types. And finally, while it is an armored ship the scheme (box around the magazines, box around the machinery) has more in common with cruiser armor schemes than any sort of big-gun capital ship.

They're cruisers. Deal with it.

 

[MUC]

In order for the nuclear battleship to emerge you would have to create the need for it.

So if you cannot accelerate nuclear reactor development, thus allowing nuclear propulsion to emerge during the era battleships were still being built, you will have to make certain battleships are still built after WWII.
The victorious powers of WWII all emerged with many active battleships, alot of them quite new. Thus there was no need to built any new battleships. Furthermore aircraft carriers won the war in the Pacific. It was during Korea and then Vietnam later on or even Desert Storm when battleships were needed. So, what you may have to do is a) make aircraft carriers play a less important role in WWII and/or b) have the US and GB lose a lot more battleships during WWII, so that end the war with only few battleships and a vacuum left.

 

[Khanzeer]

In a way nuclear powered oscar class is a submersible battleship
Role is primarily ASUW and it can devastate any surface forces barring a CVBG

24 ssn19 is equal to the broadside of 3 contemporary cruisers [ ASSUMING each cruiser has 8 × ASM ] and few cruisers in western world had warheads as big as Oscars missiles

 

[docfl]

What is the baker test shows battleships had much better survivable , less damage


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads

 

[Somedevil]

Given the unlikliehood of that what comes to mind for me is refitting one of Illinois or Kentucky as a proof of concept. This could make particular sense if the original order for those hulls as the first Montana's goes ahead.

This is what I was going say Hyman G Rickover or another officer/ navel thinker thinks to put a reactor into the last two Iowa's to pair with the first nuke powered carrier

 

[marathag]

To answer the OP’s question, you need to give a country a reason to build an all-new BB in the 1960s. That might be outright ASB.

Keeping up with the Joneses.

Uncle Joe says he wants a nuclear powered Icebreaker/Battleship for Polar Dominance in 1952. Building starts soon after, even before there is a Marine reactor design

U-2 Overflights discover the Lenin being completed, and suddenly, the USN needs one too

USS Alaska is ready for her conversion.