AHC: More Countries kept their Battleships

Japan, France, Britain and Italy all had respectable battleship fleets up until the end of WWII. Your challenge is to get as many of these nations as you can to keep their battleships through the Cold War. Bonus if you can get them to do an Iowa level modernization in the 80's or 90's.

The problem is what does the battleship do? It's primary purpose was to engage other battleships.

The decision to abandon new BB projects was taken by all the powers by mid point in WW2.

By the end of WW2 the most modern US and British warships were reduced to the level of carrier escorts and bombardment ships.

In the Cold War the enemy was the USSR. They built a lot of cruisers after the war but no BBs. Only the Iowas could keep up with a Sverdlov class cruiser I think.

Like others have said. The costs are too high for too little. In an age of nuclear submarines with more powerful torpedoes, missiles, nuclear weapons and radar, a large ship with big guns is just a large target.

Look at what happened to a WW2 cruiser in the Falklands War. The same would happen to a battleship in the modern era too. You would have to deploy escorts to protect them as well as carriers and commerce.

Not worth it.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Luckily these ships were never engaged in battle by a hostile force, as they certainly had no defence against a modern weapon, other than four small CIWS's. Had the Cold War become a Hot War, these ships would have been facing terrible odds, against which they simply were not designed for.

And that is not all their luck. The powder was getting older and more unstable, and we were still using it. The one that lost the turret to a explosion on a test is an interesting example. The powder exploded as it was being rammed into the breech mechanically. This indicates highly unstable powder since the ram has very low forces compared to what happens in a tube and it lacks the containment of pressure that allows what should be very stable artillery powder. The bag was probably unstable enough that it was at risk of exploding from something as simple as being dropped. If the bag had just exploded a minute or two earlier while being handled in the main powder magazine, it would have set off the magazine and likely other magazines. The ship would have split in half and we would have losses such as seen on the Hood or the Jutland BC's. It is not the 100 pounds of explosives that doomed these ships, but losing magazines to explosions.

Back in the day, I bought into the hype. But in retrospect, these ships should not have left mothballed status in the 1980's. And if they did, they should have nevered fired their main guns or even had the main powder and ammo magazines fired. Just imagine the political impact of one of these BB having an internal explosion in Desert Storm. Or simply having one blow up during Reagan's term. 2500 dead sailors is hard to explain. And the military knew how lucky they were. This is why the came up with the bizarre "gay sailor cover story" where they basically fabricated evidence in a desperate attempt to make it sabotage not bad powder (i.e. Admiral or Reagan incompetence). At a minimum, you need a full run to manufacture new powder and ammo. Probably requires you recalibrate some spare 16"/50 on test range, assuming we have those lying around.

I understand that many people believe the Reagan hype for bringing out the ships. They are beautiful ships in ways our modern ships can never be. I understand the marines would like to have ships with very large guns for land support. It is just when you try to translate either the desire for 16" land support to a practical ship, it has a lot of problems. Same with armoring ships. And this is not a new problem. It goes back a hundred years. As soon as a BB (pre-dreads) guns and armor was not seen as able to take main gun line combat, we start seeing them become barracks and transport ships. I look at this for my TL where Germany had to make the decision. Again, they quickly move to secondary reserve status and soon after that the scrap yard. So what kind of ships can you build that look like a BB.

1) Assuming around a 16" guns is actually best way to support marines, you get a monitor. Probably stats of around 10-15 knots, very shallow draft, armored versus land artillery (all or nothing scheme probably), and small crew. Probably you are taking a civilian shallow water oil drilling platform as a base for the concept of the design. A barrage that can put down legs into the mud to increase firing stability. And something that can go deep into a river mouth. Now would such a device in southern Iraq have helped that much? Kind of doubt it, but it is the closest to practical. Fighting the soviets? Probably worthless. If you want 16" guns in Germany, you would just install them on land. Monitors are for unexpected battles. Now maybe something like Vietnam, it would be a big help to have one of these attached to each Marine Division or RCT.

2) Armor. As others pointed out, the sensor have to be on the outside. So this one is hard, but I guess I could see some argument for the Marine command ships to have some armor. Or any ship designed to carry Marines close to shore. But I am not sure it is worth the weight.

3) Now it is too crazy to actually do, but I can see a combination of #1 and #2. Your "Regimental Marine Monitor with 3 16/50 guns" also has a small area to serve as the Marine RCT command headquarters as the Marines are getting established. Sure it would be mocked, but it comes closer to a workable idea than any WW2 era BB running around or a new BBN/BBGN built in the 1980's. Unless someone builds a gun with a range of several hundred miles and can self guide to a target with sensors in the gun shell, we will never see a ship with guns as it main weapon again. There is work on making a rail gun, but since it is not even on the ships being built but will be a retrofit (maybe), it is clearly not the main armament.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
It didn't take the Pacific War to convince most people how useless battleships were, the Taranto Raid carried plenty of weight on that front.

I don't have the date for the article, but I think it was more the PoW. I am pretty sure Churchill released a book/article praising BB over CV after Taranto. RN BB had a pretty good track record against aviation until they faced true quality naval aviation.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Well they didn't need to re-activate the Iowas in the 80s either other than nationalistic dick waving contest, I was simply arguing that some of them could possibly spend the intervening twenty-five years as commissioned ships rather than sitting in the reserves. It's not like we have to let logic or costs get in the way of defense spending, especially in the US. ;)

Sadly, you are correct on that. I somehow suspect if you could have set down with Reagan and persuade him of the reasons the Iowas were not the best ships, he would have still approved the program so he could get to his "600 ship navy" promise. It is not just the four Iowas he need, but the around 40 total ships need for the four task forces. "560 ship fleet" is not as sexy. He could not build CV fast enough and they take twice the manpower, so he would have an ackward situation of not meeting his campaign promise. He instead would start with making new powder, probably building new gun barrels for long term seviceability, and doing some railgun project hidden in the starwars budget. After all, this makes as much sense as jet seaplane bombers to attack Russia with nuclear weapons. ;)

Now if I was trying to keep one or more of them in service, and I had to write a POD, i would go with the Marines taking over the ship. They seem to be a big support. And maybe with a little work and modernization to free up space and tonnage, you might find enough space to fit some time of Marine command center in the ship. Yes hugely wasteful, but cheap by F-35 standards. We could probably find the space with things like - put in modern engines to fill space. They have to be more efficient designs than the 1940's and if you are willing to tolerate lower speed (say 20 knots), you can put in a lot less horsepower. Then look at automating some of the older process. The old firing computers take up a lot of space, and the justification I heard for not replacing them was to save money. Use electronics. Also, if we have smart shells (buzz words are great), we don't need as much ammo. So can free up ammo and powder magazine. Maybe look at taking the guns out of one turret. Yes likely structural issues to be solved, but I have unlimited funds. And since they are non-stealthy anyway and have low center of mass, we could build steel frame deck on top of current deck. (Yes, this has been done before). Probably for low cost of 0.5 to 1.0 billion per ship. And if crewed by marines, the gunner could also be "infantry first", so really they 1000+ men in the gun tubes are just a light regiment of marine infantry held in reserve.

I can't give you the politics of Italy, France or the UK; but they would need some similar motivation to keep up. Something like the pride of Italy demands we have a flag ship, and an old BB is the easiest option. Or Thatcher needs votes from a district with a big shipyard and wants to keep up with Reagan. I guess if you could get 3 nations with BB, France would have to do it for pride reasons. And the Soviets might copy.
 

amphibulous

Banned
Back in the day, I bought into the hype. But in retrospect, these ships should not have left mothballed status in the 1980's. And if they did, they should have nevered fired their main guns or even had the main powder and ammo magazines fired. Just imagine the political impact of one of these BB having an internal explosion in Desert Storm. Or simply having one blow up during Reagan's term. 2500 dead sailors is hard to explain. And the military knew how lucky they were. This is why the came up with the bizarre "gay sailor cover story" where they basically fabricated evidence in a desperate attempt to make it sabotage not bad powder (i.e. Admiral or Reagan incompetence).

This is part of the reason I was so brutal with Ron-bo.

1) Assuming around a 16" guns is actually best way to support marines, you get a monitor. Probably stats of around 10-15 knots, very shallow draft, armored versus land artillery (all or nothing scheme probably), and small crew. Probably you are taking a civilian shallow water oil drilling platform as a base for the concept of the design. A barrage that can put down legs into the mud to increase firing stability. And something that can go deep into a river mouth. Now would such a device in southern Iraq have helped that much? Kind of doubt it, but it is the closest to practical. Fighting the soviets? Probably worthless. If you want 16" guns in Germany, you would just install them on land. Monitors are for unexpected battles. Now maybe something like Vietnam, it would be a big help to have one of these attached to each Marine Division or RCT.

I'd suggest that you'd be better off with smaller monitors than large ones. The best armour is distance. So LCT "monitors" that work with motherships that re-supply them with ammo make sense - plus the motherships can hall any type of cargo and landing craft you like. For decent firepower without recoil you use artillery rockets... Hey - didn't they do this on D-Day? Plus when you have rockets leftover, they can be use to supply tracked launchers.

You can keep some battleshipness by giving the monitors armoured boxes for their crews.... Or maybe they should be autonomous.
 
I don't have the date for the article, but I think it was more the PoW. I am pretty sure Churchill released a book/article praising BB over CV after Taranto. RN BB had a pretty good track record against aviation until they faced true quality naval aviation.
Nevertheless, no BB could have pulled off anything like Taranto. That raid was perhaps the first time the Carrier showed what it could do, hit the enemy at the range of its aircraft, rather than the range of any gun. The Japanese studied up on the operation extensively, in preparation for their own raid on Pearl Harbour.
 
This is part of the reason I was so brutal with Ron-bo.



I'd suggest that you'd be better off with smaller monitors than large ones. The best armour is distance. So LCT "monitors" that work with motherships that re-supply them with ammo make sense - plus the motherships can hall any type of cargo and landing craft you like. For decent firepower without recoil you use artillery rockets... Hey - didn't they do this on D-Day? Plus when you have rockets leftover, they can be use to supply tracked launchers.

You can keep some battleshipness by giving the monitors armoured boxes for their crews.... Or maybe they should be autonomous.


16 inch gunfire still is way to expensive, as it needs a purposely constructed platform for the guns. This had to be crewed, armed and operated. A single aircraft with bombs, can do exactly the same sort of firesupport for much less dollars. The best way to point out that it only needs a fraction of the crew to operate it, even when counting groundcrew as well.
 
It didn't take the Pacific War to convince most people how useless battleships were, the Taranto Raid carried plenty of weight on that front.

Let's not forget how the Bismark (no I can't spell) was crippled by biplanes.


I guess I should add that one British carrier (can't recall the name) that was sunk by gunfire from German battlecruisers, so there's a flip-side to it.
 
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