AHC :Have Battleships remain the biggest fleet element up till today .

easiest way is a situation where there was no WW1 & 2
In a situation like that the battleship will stay a lot longer
 
In todays military world, combat worth ist pretty irrelevant. A weapon system has to do one thing most of all: generate profits. Battleships are expensive but tried-and-true tech, they won't need multi-year multi-billion development contracts that exist only on paper, nor constant updates, and so on. Neither do aircraft carriers, which by the way are as likely to survive as battleships in any modern combat that isn't totally asymetrical, but the aircraft they sport, those very, very expensive, fragile aircraft do. That's the main reason for aircraft carriers, and why militaries go for the most expensive high-tech pieces of junk, instead of material useful for todays asymetrical, low-intensity warfare.
 
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Um no brit participation in ww1 and it might delay the battleship age into missle age i guess .

They were the main innovators in this and everyone else just copied it . At the time the thought of landing aircraft on moving ships was thought prepostorus.
 
Um no brit participation in ww1 and it might delay the battleship age into missle age i guess .
Except without the war they have more money to throw into carriers.

They were the main innovators in this and everyone else just copied it.
Don't you believe it, the Japanese were hot on their heels, and the Americans would catch them up soon enough.

At the time the thought of landing aircraft on moving ships was thought prepostorus.
Except it had already been done by Eugene Burton Ely (also the first aviator to fly off a ship) on 18 January 1911, more than three years before the start of the war.
 
In todays military world, combat worth ist pretty irrelevant. A weapon system has to do one thing most of all: generate profits. Battleships are expensive but tried-and-true tech, they won't need multi-year multi-billion development contracts that exist only on paper, nor constant updates, and so on. Neither do aircraft carriers, which by the way are as likely to survive as battleships in any modern combat that isn't totally asymetrical, but the aircraft they sport, those very, very expensive, fragile aircraft do. That's the main reason for aircraft carriers, and why militaries go for the most expensive high-tech pieces of junk, instead of material useful for todays asymetrical, low-intensity warfare.

I would say jobs is much more important than money or profits. Lack of jobs, less manpower for the military (which is facing recruitment shortages in Western countries) and more jobs for the manufacturers. For example, Congress insisting on making more M1 tanks even though the Army says there's enough. Each job made is a won vote for the politician, if you are being cynical.

I question the usefulness of a battleship in asymmetrical warfare (which you seem to imply). It can only shoot 20km inland, 40km with a long range shell, and it would cause massive collateral damage. In fact, battleships are the one piece of kit you do not want in asymmetrical warfare, whether it be pirates, terrorists or a rogue state. Better to split it up all into destroyers with enough punch to destroy anything floating and enough VLS tubes to empty dozens of cruise missiles with a lot of 5 inch guns with extended range ammunition.
 
easiest way is a situation where there was no WW1 & 2
In a situation like that the battleship will stay a lot longer

Exactly. It was the world wars (and especially the 2nd World War) that provided proof that carrier-based naval aviation rendered the classic battleship obsolete...at least for the role it was originally intended. Butterfly away the wars and naval aviation would probably be considered by most admiralties a very useful auxiliary (for scouting, spotting, overland force projection, and harassing and damaging enemy ships prior to fleet engagements), but still secondary to large surface combatants as the decisive naval tool. Navies are by and large conservative when it comes to changing platforms and plans.

Minor navies might take the risk of investing more heavily in naval aviation, but unless this is shown to have been a wise move in an actual war, I'm not sure it would have much impact on the thinking of the large nations which have invested heavily in their battlefleets.

Barring naval reduction treaties, my guess is that battleships (large, heavily armored ships mounting the largest possible guns) would still be the core of all major nations' fleets well into the 1960's if there had not been any wars. Also, improved (nuclear?) submarines, ballistic missiles, guided missiles, and ships mounting cruise missiles - not manned aircraft launched from aircraft carriers - might be the weapon systems that eventually lead toward to their elimination.
 
Exactly. It was the world wars (and especially the 2nd World War) that provided proof that carrier-based naval aviation rendered the classic battleship obsolete...at least for the role it was originally intended. Butterfly away the wars and naval aviation would probably be considered by most admiralties a very useful auxiliary (for scouting, spotting, overland force projection, and harassing and damaging enemy ships prior to fleet engagements), but still secondary to large surface combatants as the decisive naval tool. Navies are by and large conservative when it comes to changing platforms and plans.

Minor navies might take the risk of investing more heavily in naval aviation, but unless this is shown to have been a wise move in an actual war, I'm not sure it would have much impact on the thinking of the large nations which have invested heavily in their battlefleets.

Barring naval reduction treaties, my guess is that battleships (large, heavily armored ships mounting the largest possible guns) would still be the core of all major nations' fleets well into the 1960's if there had not been any wars. Also, improved (nuclear?) submarines, ballistic missiles, guided missiles, and ships mounting cruise missiles - not manned aircraft launched from aircraft carriers - might be the weapon systems that eventually lead toward to their elimination.

It also might hugely depend on naval restriction treaties as you say. Because for example before the Washington naval treaty (I think it was that one) Japan had a naval build program that it couldn't even afford. The other major powers had the same problems that the navy was becoming increasingly expensive to the point it was almost unaffordable to keep up the arms race.
 
Exactly. It was the world wars (and especially the 2nd World War) that provided proof that carrier-based naval aviation rendered the classic battleship obsolete...at least for the role it was originally intended. Butterfly away the wars and naval aviation would probably be considered by most admiralties a very useful auxiliary (for scouting, spotting, overland force projection, and harassing and damaging enemy ships prior to fleet engagements), but still secondary to large surface combatants as the decisive naval tool. Navies are by and large conservative when it comes to changing platforms and plans.

Minor navies might take the risk of investing more heavily in naval aviation, but unless this is shown to have been a wise move in an actual war, I'm not sure it would have much impact on the thinking of the large nations which have invested heavily in their battlefleets.

Barring naval reduction treaties, my guess is that battleships (large, heavily armored ships mounting the largest possible guns) would still be the core of all major nations' fleets well into the 1960's if there had not been any wars. Also, improved (nuclear?) submarines, ballistic missiles, guided missiles, and ships mounting cruise missiles - not manned aircraft launched from aircraft carriers - might be the weapon systems that eventually lead toward to their elimination.
Hm, no, the Cuxhaven Raid is basically proof that at least one major nation was already considering them warships in their own right by the start of WW1.
 
Hm, no, the Cuxhaven Raid is basically proof that at least one major nation was already considering them warships in their own right by the start of WW1.

I didn't claim the navies would not recognize aircraft carriers as "warships in their own right". Of course they would, and I also noted that overland force projection (as in the RNAS's attacks on zeppelin bases) is a role they might see. But absent the WW2 examples of Taranto, Pearl Harbor, the crippling of Bismarck, and especially the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, navies will only "demote" battleships and put carriers in their place when one of two factors occur: (1) Battleships' excessive cost becomes prohibitive or (2) when a wartime situation proves BBs cannot survive as fighting units under air attack. And that requires a war to make that case. Remember, as late as 1940 senior brass in the RN, IJN, and the USN still considered battleships the core of their fleets - and these were the most air-minded navies.
 
Hm, no, the Cuxhaven Raid is basically proof that at least one major nation was already considering them warships in their own right by the start of WW1.

Not at all. Zoomar isn't claiming that people will not see them as warships without World War II, but that they won't see them as capital ships, which is a very different thing. Corvettes and cruisers are warships, but they can hardly be expected to have a decisive effect in the way that a battleship can, and the same was generally thought to be true of aircraft carriers and seaplane carriers right up to the beginning of World War II. Of course there were thinkers that recognized the potential of airpower, and of course there were many experiments in this direction, but the idea of the decisive portion of the force being the battle line was very current (thus the various battleship-building programs that were started just before the war).

Cuxhaven specifically is clearly a type of action, the raid on an enemy base, that was usually undertaken by lighter vessels which one could afford to lose instead of battleships (or the equivalent), and so demonstrates that they were thinking of seaplane tenders at that time as basically cruisers with a very long-range gun, not as battleships that could be employed in fleet actions.
 

Andre27

Banned
I'd disagree with that, personally.

Look at the list of battleships sunk during WW2 - even if you discount the ones hit at anchor (such as the Pearl Harbor attack), you can see that even quite early in the war air power was able to at least severely damage battleships.

Once aircraft got to the point where they could lift a weapon heavy enough to hurt a battleship the days of the dreadnought were coming to an end. Aircraft are faster, more flexible, much cheaper, much longer ranged and (as navigation aids, air to surface radar etc improved) once they were able to fly at night or in bad weather the battleship lost the last advantage they had left over the carrier/air group.

Atomic weapons may have been the final nail in the coffin but I think the body was already dead and inside the coffin before that nail was driven in.

I suppose it is open for debate.
ACC didn't make the BB obsolete overnight especially since ACC were still maturing during WW2.

While significant progress for the ACC was made during WW2 with armored decks, radar and improvements for the carrier aircraft i feel the BB still had a significant role at the end of WW2.

Had the nuclear age been delayed then BB IMO might have seen a continuance in production until the 1950's.
 
I didn't claim the navies would not recognize aircraft carriers as "warships in their own right". Of course they would, and I also noted that overland force projection (as in the RNAS's attacks on zeppelin bases) is a role they might see. But absent the WW2 examples of Taranto, Pearl Harbor, the crippling of Bismarck, and especially the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, navies will only "demote" battleships and put carriers in their place when one of two factors occur: (1) Battleships' excessive cost becomes prohibitive or (2) when a wartime situation proves BBs cannot survive as fighting units under air attack. And that requires a war to make that case. Remember, as late as 1940 senior brass in the RN, IJN, and the USN still considered battleships the core of their fleets - and these were the most air-minded navies.
Maybe, although without the wars you're likely to see the focus of major naval expansion shift to submarines and destroyers (Germany was beginning to angle that way in 1914), against which carriers are much more effective, and battleships much less so.

I suppose it is open for debate.
ACC didn't make the BB obsolete overnight especially since ACC were still maturing during WW2.

While significant progress for the ACC was made during WW2 with armored decks, radar and improvements for the carrier aircraft i feel the BB still had a significant role at the end of WW2.
The later battles of the Pacific War would tend to go the other way.
 
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Andre27

Banned
Maybe, although without the wars you're likely to see the focus of major naval expansion shift to submarines and destroyers (Germany was beginning to angle that way in 1914), against which carriers are much more effective, and battleships much less so.

The later battles of the Pacific War would tend to go the other way.

The key words being "later battles".

With maturity the balance shifts towards the ACC, but one cannot underestimate that the Pacific was primed for ACC due to the massive distances.

It is also worth noting that surpassed in certain roles doesn't necessarily mean obsolete. One might say tanks are obsolete due to air power, but there are still roles a tank can fulfill which aircraft cannot.

What happened with nuclear weapons was armor protection had become useless and the only viable survival mechanism was range and preventing getting shot at in the first place.
 
Once aircraft have proven their ability to sink ships (and that will come, it's just a matter of time), carriers will be developed. Virtually every technology to make a battleship better can be applied to one opponent or another. To retain battleships as queens of the sea you have to do away with aircraft, submarines and nukes, and there's no way to do that.
 

Andre27

Banned
Once aircraft have proven their ability to sink ships (and that will come, it's just a matter of time), carriers will be developed. Virtually every technology to make a battleship better can be applied to one opponent or another. To retain battleships as queens of the sea you have to do away with aircraft, submarines and nukes, and there's no way to do that.

This i agree with.

Especially with nukes and nuclear submarines in place it will be difficult to retain BB as the largest fleet element.

Without nukes and nuclear submarines i could see some role for BB, possibly with extended range. Thinking of Gerald Bull's designs.

Aircraft would remain the bane of the BB existence though unless something is introduced which can mount a somewhat credible defense against aircraft. Thinking about an Aegis system on a BB or directed energy weapons to intercept missiles.
 
Submarines of any sort are an issue for a battleship, no gun can be used against a submerged submarine, and torpedoes are always bad news. Anything you do to a battleship to improve its effectiveness against subs detracts from its effectiveness against surface vessels.
 
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