Battleships to Present Day

[Derek]

And . . .

one missile sinks any non-carrier in the USN. We still build them for some reason and rely on defensive systems to stop the missiles. Battleships would require more defense against subs.

Battleships are less vulnerable to missiles and more to torpedoes. They would be better at pretty much any anti-surface missions than any current ship. They are not cost-effective in the current environment (or several others). But it is not an immediate function of modernization.

A modern BB say 20 percent larger than an Iowa-class could easily mount an Aegis-radar system, 2-3 ASW helos, one or two sets of 15 or 16 or 18 inch guns (or smaller, obviously), and still more missiles than a Ticonderoga class CG. Some of them can be SAM, some SSM.

If the major threat is subs, this is a bad idea. If it's an air threat, it's still an expensive idea. But it's hardly a ridiculous one.

 

[Wiggy]

There is no conceivable way that BBs could still be around short of a very major POD that retards technology.

I agree. Something that big up against missles and aircraft might as well just be labelled USS Shoot Me.

I think that you'll continue to see shrinking platforms as the military is able to pack more and more punch into a smaller and smaller package. That'll apply to any platform, not just battleships or other naval platforms.

 

[Derek]

reply

"Something that big up against missles and aircraft might as well just be labelled USS Shoot Me."

You mean like a carrier?

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

"Something that big up against missles and aircraft might as well just be labelled USS Shoot Me."

You mean like a carrier?

There is no comparison between the flexibility of a modern carrier and a BB; a carrier is part of a large task force defended by a number of vessels. A BB would require such a TF to keep it alive, which totally defeats the purpose, since the escort vessels will have most of the capabilities of the BB itself.

Plus, to carry out the primary reason for its existance, shore bombardment, it will have to expose itself to major danger inshore.

Also, a ship like the one Derek postulates, 20% LARGER than Iowa (!!!) and equiped with all those systems, would be so incredibly expensive, one wonders how many could be afforded. Not many. Much better to have a larger number of small, cheap ships. Also, Derek, your ship tries to do everything, and if history has taught us anything, when you try to do everything, you do nothing well.

Also, the argument that modern missiles aren't good at penetrating armor is totally invalid. If armored ships were still around, missiles would be designed to be armor penetrating, and then we could all say "You sunk my battleship!".

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

Lets also remember that a well-designed SSM warhead (we are talking thermobaric or some sort of blast-frag) would strip the antenna and other sensors off of any battleship quite neatly. A few near misses by those, and your battleship is a blind, pitiful giant.

I went down this road in the 80s, and was a big backer of the New Jersey reactivation. The problem was (as Lebanon showed quite well), that the guns, while quite impressive, don't really do much against the soft of enemies that we fight these days. If you want to fantasize some sort of 'Clancy War' where we are slugging it out with some old-fashioned bad guys (the Russians and Chinese come to mind), there might be some limited use for the things, but the cost far, far, far outweighs any concievable benefit.

If you want to see how deep into nostalgia most of the BB boosters are (and sadly, I count myself among them...smile...), just consider that most of the schemes for reactivating (or building NEW) battleships typically involve making them super-sea control vessels, losing one or more turrets. The turrets are literally the only thing that those ships have that make them unique (OK, LOTs of armor, but so does a pillbox...subs can handle even the most heavily armed ship quite easily...ask the crew of the Belgrano). The ASW solution is always put the BB in the middle of a group of escorts, at which point the nasty question of what capabilities this ship has that a carrier or missile cruiser doesn't have begin to pop up....

If you want a good shore bombardment system, take a look at the Mk71 8" gun the USN keeps trying to ignore. A good size for bombardment (anything that requires bigger rounds is a sitting duck for JDAMs - remember those?), mature technology, and it fits on our existing ships without any real modifications. We have tested the thing for 20 years now...

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I too was a huge proponent of BB reactivation, but that was in the context of the Cold War. They served a useful purpose at the time, but that time is over. We now have four stunning museums to remind us of a bygone era...

 

[Redbeard]

CV's bleeding pale

If the late WWII IJN had had an AA capability on par with the late war USN, i.e. something equal to VT fuses, Bofors, 5”/38 and good CAP tactics, then I think air attacks would have been found extremely expensive in losses and with few decisive results, especially regarding battleships, which were much better to withstand damage than thin skinned carriers.

In such a scenario you could imagine BB’s being seen as necessary to achieve a decision and the carrier as mainly a floating base for the BB’s aircover and scouts, and which in emergencies could launch strikes to slow down the enemy. The impotence of air strikes will lead to new weapons like the guided missile, but also to new defence systems, partly making the carriers superfluous, and the general conclusion is, that if/when the defence systems fail, it’s better to be in a heavily protected ship, than in a thin skinned. The biggest threat to the “Rulerrole” of the BB will be the nuclear powered submarine, which can launch guided missiles as effective as a BB, but unseen and protected by hundreds of feet of water. But for peacetime “showing the flag” the BB is second to none.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

If the late WWII IJN had had an AA capability on par with the late war USN, i.e. something equal to VT fuses, Bofors, 5”/38 and good CAP tactics, then I think air attacks would have been found extremely expensive in losses and with few decisive results, especially regarding battleships, which were much better to withstand damage than thin skinned carriers.

By late WWII the US was so overwhelmingly superior it really doesn't matter how good Japanese AA is. A US task force would not have faired well if attacked by 1,000 aircraft with well-trained crews.

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

If the Japanese had effective CAP post-Midway, then the use of airstrikes (the raison d'etre of carriers) would of course be limited. Without CAP, the best defended ships in the world (in terms of AA, etc.) still are going to get sunk. Since carriers are the source of the CAP, they will remain the central force in the fleet, not battleships.

In any event though, the suggestion that 'rebalancing' the WWII conflict in the Pacific might change the value of Battleships ignores the changes in technology that were coming into force by the end of the war, notably guided missiles (I count the kamikaze as primitive ones...), effective long-range high-speed carrier launched aircraft, and the rise of the submarine as a useful anti-shipping platform. Battleships simply cannot cope with a long-range multiplatform attack without substantial air cover (both CAP and AEW, not to mention airborne ASW and fleet surveillance), and these things will only happen when carriers are with the fleet. Once long-range missiles become practical, the last justification for Battleships takes a fatal strike...

 

[Redbeard]

By late WWII the US was so overwhelmingly superior it really doesn't matter how good Japanese AA is. A US task force would not have faired well if attacked by 1,000 aircraft with well-trained crews.

A 1000 aircraft strike would have involved sending all aircraft from more than ten big CV's, in other words putting all your eggs in one basket (and leaving no CAP at home). If we're talking land based bombers it is a force equivalent to entire Bomber Command, or from the 1BB = 40 bombers rule a force in construction and running cost equivalent to 25 battleships!

If up against the OTL late war IJN a 1000 attacking aircraft would wreck 100% havoc, not at least because the IJN in AAA in effect was left behind in 1940/41 - at best. In other words the apparent successes of late WWII airpower to a large degree were based on the targets being very poorly defended. Take also into consideration that out of the 1000's of kamikazes very few ever hit anything, because they were up against a formidable air defence. Imagine those aircraft being regular attack aircraft - the hit ratio would have been a fraction, but not many more of the attackers would return to make another attack.

Now imagine that the navy capable of sending 1000 aircraft on a strike (and having late WWII USN standards in air defence) is met by an equally capable force. In each force about 2/3 of the aircraft will be fighters (late war USN ratio), but the attacker will be handicapped by not only meeting the defenders CAP, but after that also an AAA fire not ever imagined by anyone. Some attackers will of course get through and some bombs and torpedoes will even hit, but the losses will be in the magnitude of the Devastor attacks of Midway, i.e. break all the eggs and have avery big omelet!

In general the battleships take damage best, as at least the more modern are immune to most divebombers, and under these conditions the big coordinated attack needed to bring home enough torpedohits to sink a major warship are simply impossible.

Under such conditions I will predict the fighter ratio on CV's to go close to 100 and admirals will try to get "good ole' guns into range, and the side with the fastest and strongest BB force (and good recon) will prevail.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

 

[Scott Rosenthal]

Where does the notion of 1000 planes come from? Taking out the larger Japanese BBs (notably the Musashi and Yamato, two of the best protected BBs ever built) took about 300-400 aircraft, a largish strike certainly, but nothing extraordinary, and well within the capabilities of the USN on any clear day in 1944-45. This ignores, of course, the use of subs, which tended to be quite effective when used against capital ships. By late in the war, the US carrier forces had substantially improved their anti-BB technique, making better use of 'one-side' attacks to capsize the ship earlier in the battle, thus reducing the number of planes required to defeat it. BBs, however picturesque and inspiring, were (by the end of the war) simply expensive shore bombardment platforms, and even in this they had smaller utility in GENERAL use (yes, I am sure that you can find some special cases where this was otherwise) than cruisers and rocket platforms.

Taking out BBs that were not HEAVILY protected by CAP/AA/etc. was more or less a mature technique by the end of the war, and it only would have gotten easier as the range and potency of the strike weapons (and the platforms launching them) improved in the years to follow. As submarines matured as a platform (particularly as air-independent propoulsion systems came of age), the ASW problems for BBs would have multipled as well.