AHC: Battleships, Battleships, Battleships!

If the naval treaties banned aircraft carriers, or if airplanes were prohibited by treaty from carrying weapons in any form, this could delay the advent of the carrier, allowing battleships to develop. Now you need a reason for that...

Thats a bit farfetched. The weapons ladened airplane demonstrated itself between the wars as a cheap alternative to sending large armies into the field. Besides why would a nation just end up deploying more submarines? The torpedo still is a threat to the battleship.
 
I don't think you're going to get a world without aircraft carriers, and even if you did that still wouldn't keep ground-based aircraft from hitting them. However, in spite of the mythology that grew up after World War II, battleships didn't do too badly overall in coping with aircraft. Yeah, planes knocked out battleships in port and partially manned at Taranto and Pearl Harbor. They also knocked out a British battlecruiser and a single battleship off Malaysia. Beyond that, how many Allied battleships were lost to aircraft in World War II? I specify Allied because the Allies had much better AA due to proximity fuses.

The reality is that an Allied battleship fully manned and with maneuvering room was a formidable thing for World War II aircraft to tackle. I forget which battleship it was, but one of the US ones swatted down 3 dozen Japanese aircraft in one attack, without taking ship-threatening damage. Late in the war the US was using battleships partly as floating anti-aircraft platforms to protect the carriers.

How could you get battleships lasting longer as a major seagoing weapon? First, somehow avoid the battleship moratorium that essentially stopped design and building of new battleships for ten years shortly after World War I. That cut into the battleship design expertise of the countries that took it seriously, especially Britain. Second, avoid the tonnage restrictions of the Washington naval treaty. Most of the battleships that fought in the first part of World War II were either World War I-era ships or ships that had been designed to fit within tonnage restrictions, which made them less than optimal ships. When battleships that were modern and free of those restrictions, like the Iowa-class, entered the war, battleship were suddenly fast enough to keep up with carriers and very hard to kill from the air. By that time, though, carrier advocates were in control and battleships were relegated to shore bombardment work, which they did very well at.
 
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Artillery ships equipped with cannons similar to .

Metal storm systems, that is basically electrically fired shells, being invented early. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hlj4EbdsE As a result, anti-aircraft fire is much more effective. Battleships also have better radio-cannon targetting systems and later, ship-air missile radio/tele guided systems.

Makes sens in sea battles between two great powers and in a world where large-scale practise disprooves the idea of strategic bombing early.

from a_clash_of_waves_and_steel :
I remember some years ago in the early '20 that some nutter had this stupid idea of equipping a ship with aircrafts.
And I do not mean one ot two seaplanes: no, the idiot was talking of dozen of land-planing (well, deck-planing) veichles.
Obiouvsly the idea was a complete failure since difficulties in taking off and landing in such a little, moving, wave-rolling, wet strip were simply too much, and all the navies reverted at building the good old grey ships, the ship-of the-line, mountains of steel and cannons that dominate the seas nowadays.
Of course there are variants, such as the german pocket-battleships and the italian MAS, but the bulk of every marine is nowadays composed of dreadnoughts, cruisers and battleships, with their escorting frigates and destroyers.
Oh, and of course there are submarine to take in account.
But nothing as silly as a aircraft-launching-ship.


No offensie but your link doesn´t work.

Good way this quote convey the AH idea. :)
 
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