AHC Modern Monitor

Your challenge, should you chose to accept it is to have with a Post 1950 Divergence point have multiple navies have a class of Monitors in service built post 1950 with a gun caliber of at least 203mm for shore bombardment in service in 2000

I figure this is easier and more cost effective than a modern battleship, your thoughts please?
 
Monitors don't have the same sea-going capabilities as battleships, making them even more limited. Also, there's nothing you can do with a gun that you wouldn't also be able to do with a missile (which is why no gun today is bigger than 5-6 inches bore).
 
Monitors don't have the same sea-going capabilities as battleships, making them even more limited. Also, there's nothing you can do with a gun that you wouldn't also be able to do with a missile.
Well I figure the main thing going for these is cost efficiency, the only real argument for bringing battleships back is for shore bombardment and these can do that well enough but cheaper, shells are always cheaper than comparable missiles

There are still 203mm guns in service with some military forces I believe
 
And aircraft are cheap compared to ships.
And shells are still the cheapest way of delivering explosives, most responsive too

Point is there is still a debate over the need for naval gunfire support, I would like to see if it is possible for monitors to be used for this as they are far cheaper and simpler to build and operate than Battleships
 
Does it have to be blue water?

If not, you could have a riverine type monitor with a very large mortar or howitzer mounted on it. Over the top but could be done.
 
Does it have to be blue water?

If not, you could have a riverine type monitor with a very large mortar or howitzer mounted on it. Over the top but could be done.
Wanted Blue water, but Riverine will work I suppose

Wanted something that could replace a BB at bombardment but be far cheaper
 
Monitors in the early part of the 20th century were built for a coastal defense role, so they wouldn't really be good for bombarding hostile shores, as they don't fare too well on the high seas.
 
And shells are still the cheapest way of delivering explosives, most responsive too
Shells are not much cheaper than bombs. Also, the effectiveness of a shells is dependent on the line-of-sight of either the ship or the forward observer.

Point is there is still a debate over the need for naval gunfire support, I would like to see if it is possible for monitors to be used for this as they are far cheaper and simpler to build and operate than Battleships
As both I and Color-Copycat have stated, Monitors has reasonably poor sea-keeping, thus such ships will see limited use. You'd do better building battlecruisers.

Also, bombardment ships will only get used in invasions, and post 1945 there are only two nations with the kind of man-power needed to launch that kind of operation, and one already has battleships.
 
I think the easiest to imagine is the USMC winning the fight with congress over large calibre fire support. If they could convince congress or the navy that something larger calibre than the AGS or Mk 71 is needed a dedicated fire support platform starts to look better than reactivating battleships between their age, crew requirements and the lack of need for armour and mid calibre guns on a modern fire support ship.

Now, whether this would be a true monitor is questionable given that it would have to be seagoing, and that there would be a large temptation to add significant air defences to it making it more of a modern battlecruiser than monitor in design...

In terms of a POD you might not really need one, could still happen given the right combination of failures in the Zumwalt Class and missions required of the Marine Corps. If it really must be AH as opposed to predictive though, I'd think giving the Iowa class a chance to show off its capabilities in terms of fire support in a big way in the 80s and 90s could well solidify a requirement for some kind of large gun battleship replacement. If, say, Desert Storm includes a large scale landing in Kuwait and the Navy is able to do something with the ships in Panama, Grenada or Somalia that is generally accepted as having saved a significant number of American lives I could see the Zumwalt class carrying more and larger guns on a larger and less stealthy hull and being seen more as a solution to the aircraft carrier like crew size of the Iowa class than a next generation destroyer more or less aimed at obsoleting the Burke class.

It might also be possible to come up with a scenario under which the Soviets completed one or two of the Sovetsky Soyuz class ships post war, which would require a POD around '46 or '47 but involving ships not becoming active until the 50s. This would serve no real practical purpose that I can see, but Stalin was apparently very interested in seeing these ships operational, even after the war. With a little ASB intervention (not really ASB I suppose, but much more likely the the navy would have no interest in them and arrange for the ships to be retired ASAP after Stalin's death IMO) the naval infantry might be able to make a case for keeping the ships to ensure strategic parity with the American battleships, eventually resulting in the Kirov class gaining large guns to provide naval gunfire support. Ultimately the biggest flaw here is that there just aren't that many possible Russian amphibious operations, and any kind of large gun ship would be VERY expensive for them.

tl;dr
Not inconceivable to come up with more active battleships more recently than OTL leading to large gun ships with a fire support role, but they are probably more like battlecruisers than monitors in design though not in function. True monitors seems damn near impossible to me.
 
The Independence-class and Freedom-class littoral combat ships of the USN are pretty much the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century ironclads.
 
I would say a Zumwalt or arsenal ship is the closest thing to a monitor, but that doesnt exactly seem like what your asking for.
 
Just a pet peeve: the Monitor, and the whole ship-type, was modern.

But I'm not sure modern means anything any more, since it's used in so many contradictory senses.
 
I think the above posters are right. Monitors generally were quite bad for seakeeping, which isn't good in any modern Navy, and if you are building new ships they will need to be able to keep up with the rest of the fleet, which would make it ending up more like a very heavy cruiser (like the Alaskas, for example) or an arsenal ship.
 
I think the above posters are right. Monitors generally were quite bad for seakeeping, which isn't good in any modern Navy, and if you are building new ships they will need to be able to keep up with the rest of the fleet, which would make it ending up more like a very heavy cruiser (like the Alaskas, for example) or an arsenal ship.
Well I figured they would only have to keep up with the invasion transports, cause bombardment is the only role I can think of for them
 
Some ideas:

-The Caspian is somewhere i can see Monitors. Its a lot smaller and safer than open Ocean. Also monitors would be absolutely useless in any of the other Soviet fleets, so if you want the soviets to have them this is pretty much the only location. Crappy, hard to maneuver ships, but packing a large amount of missiles and even a large gun(s). The gun is added in response to coastal and land fortifications constructed in Iran by the USA by request of the Shah. The idea is to the ship can multi task, with the gun(s) focusing on busting fortifications while the missiles focus on attacking logistics and more mobile targets in a war against Iran.

-Surcouf-esque submarines. Basically underwater monitors like the real Surcouf. Built by the Soviet Union and China. Reasonably popular among rich Soviet clients who need a bit more firepower in their naval defense forces than missile boats but dont want to buy a full cruiser. A submarine packing a bunch of torpedo tubes and a set of 203mm guns. Extremely unseaworthy, its role is purely coastal defense. Truly worthy of the name 'Underwater Monitor'
 
Great ideas there, I figured only a few countries would have 2 or 3 kept mostly in reserve in case they need them to bash third world countries on the cheap
 
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