Berras Battleship Question: Post WWII Battleships

I'm trying to go outside my area of expertise and make questions about stuff I don't know much about and don't find interesting in most cases. I hope I inspire someone else to think outside the box. (Be kind)

We have discussed battleships beeing popular later in history, post the development of carriers. My thought on the subject, they aren't that useful on the high seas against carriers. But what about a US fleet of big gun battleships of similar size of a carrier, possibly with the same propulsion and so on (might make economic sence), a decent anti-aircraft and anti sub system as well as very thick armour designated to go in close and attack enemy harbours?
 
You don't need ships that size to accomplish fire-support, which I think that is what you are driving at. Carriers are very flexible weapons platforms and can strike further inland than battleships.
 
Battleships...still useful

Until the development of reliable smart bombs (or perhaps longer) a battleship is going to be a cost and risk efficient way of bombardment.
Aircraft can paste a site, but then have to return...the bad guys can pop back up and keep shooting. A battleship can wait, and resume firing.

Aircraft can be shot down with light weapons, whereas even tank guns will merely attract a batleship's attention.

It's not a perfect weapon system, but IMHO, it belongs in the inventory until just about now, and perhaps a bit longer.
 
Advances in aircraft, and particularly the size and power of the bombs they carry, sealed the deal against battleship in WW2. A Mosquito can carry a single 4000lb bomb, and a heavy bomber can carry the 12,000lb Tallboy or 22,000lb Grandslam. No battleship can be armoured to withstand the effects of such huge bombs. And in case they want to dodge these bombs, then simple guidence - sufficient to hit a battleship, was available in late WW2. So even smaller countries had the means from 1946 to sink the most powerful battleships.
 
Advances in aircraft, and particularly the size and power of the bombs they carry, sealed the deal against battleship in WW2. A Mosquito can carry a single 4000lb bomb, and a heavy bomber can carry the 12,000lb Tallboy or 22,000lb Grandslam. No battleship can be armoured to withstand the effects of such huge bombs. And in case they want to dodge these bombs, then simple guidence - sufficient to hit a battleship, was available in late WW2. So even smaller countries had the means from 1946 to sink the most powerful battleships.

Personally, I do NOT believe the successful sinkings/cripplings of battleships at sea in WW2 by aircraft say a lot. In almost every case, the ships were steaming alone or virtually alone without a large escort force and without effective air cover. Put 5-10 Iowas or Yamatos jammed packed with AA at the center of a defensive box surrounded by DD's and CL's, put a carrier or two in the mix to provide air cover and I would dare any WW2 air force armed with dumb bombs or crude radio controlled glide bombs to sink them. Heavy bombers with their Tallboys or Grandslams in particular woudn't stand a chance.


The fate of BB's was sealed by their cost per unit and the fact that it was perceived at the time that carriers could project a far greater variety or power farther than them. Also, since it was also perceived at the time that the next major war would be nuclear, it made no sense to pile armor and guns on a ship which would be just as easily destroyed by a nuke as a coast guard cutter. More than anything, it was nukes and ballistic missles, not airplanes which made BB's obsolete.
 
Eh? What about B25s dropping 3000lb M118s from medium level onto BBs wallowing inshore bombarding land targets? Much closer to the Tirpitz and Pearl Harbour than the high level bombings of the IJN early in the war.
 
The following dreadnought battleships were sunk at sea (or damaged to the point that they were abandoned and scuttled) by aircraft in WW2:

Repulse and Prince of Wales - alone and without aircover
Roma and Italia - essentially alone and steaming to surrender, hardly prepared to defend themselves. Roma sunk.
Hiei - damaged from surface combat, largely unprotected - scuttled
Yamato and Musashi individually sunk on essentially suicide missions with minimal surface escort and next to no aircover.

Other BBs were damaged by aircraft, but as far as I remember these are the only BB's sunk at sea in true combat situations by aircraft.

Compare that to the fact that US battleships in strong task forces survived intensive conventional and kamakazi attacks while supporting amphibious landings throughout the Pacific, and Royal navy BB's endured German and Italian air attacks thoughout the Mediterranean campaign without a single loss (admittedly with serious damage to Warspite), I would still argue that the case was never made that aircraft and bombs made BBs obsolete.
 

CalBear

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Personally, I do NOT believe the successful sinkings/cripplings of battleships at sea in WW2 by aircraft say a lot. In almost every case, the ships were steaming alone or virtually alone without a large escort force and without effective air cover. Put 5-10 Iowas or Yamatos jammed packed with AA at the center of a defensive box surrounded by DD's and CL's, put a carrier or two in the mix to provide air cover and I would dare any WW2 air force armed with dumb bombs or crude radio controlled glide bombs to sink them. Heavy bombers with their Tallboys or Grandslams in particular woudn't stand a chance.


...

Your post actually illustrates why the BB didn't survive as a major fleet unit. Even with 10 of the most powerful warships ever made (actually four more than the U.S. & Japan built together), surrounded by escorts, you still need to add a couple carriers to ensure survival. Why not just make it 12 carriers?

The real death knell for the battleship, as a primary weapon system, to a support system, wasn't at Pearl Harbor, or even off the coast of Malaya, in December 1941. The battleship lost her crown, once and for all, on October 24, 1944, when the USN aircraft sank IJN Musashi, in open water northwest of Leyte, while in the company of 3 other battleships (including her sister the Yamato) eight heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and thirteen destroyers. This is, sans aircraft carriers, almost the exact Battle Group described above. Despite the large, well armed and very strong escort, Musashi was blown out of the water by three deckloads of USN aircraft. While the strike wasn't as effective as it could have been, had say, 12 carriers, been available to mount the strike the largest warship in the world sank, despite the presence of 23 escorts and three other battleships.

Surface ships, without robust air cover, were meat for aircraft by 1942, by 1945 they were barely an irritation, as illustrated by the end of the Yamato en route to Okinawa, where the commander of the American Task Force couldn't even bother to detach a surface force to sink her.

This being said, there is still a number of roles for battleships, even today. These are not as the centerpiece for a navy, but as a role player of great importance as part of large navy (which these days means only the USN). These roles go from gunfire support (127mm guns for shore bombardment? Please), to cruise missile platforms to escorts that can keep up with a carrier regardless of weather.

You can create this in a single package, probably around 65,000 tons, nuclear powered, with one, perhaps two, turrets with 16"/406mm main battery, AGEIS or improved AGEIS sensors, towed array, VLS (6-8 61 cell launchers), hanger space for four helos/UAV, and modern armor. It would be expensive as hell, probably $3 billion a copy, but it would provide an exceptionally flexible, very rugged platform that would greatly enhance the defenses of a CBG, and would allow engagement, by the BB, out to 1,000 miles inland, and a strong ASW presence.

Will we ever build one? No. Partly because we'd need one per carrier (with a few extra) & at $3B each the Navy would never get Congress to bite.

Pity.
 
CalBear,
I stand corrected about the circumstances surrounding the loss of Musashi. Also I have no basic disagreement with what you say in principle, by 1945 there is no debate the carrier had become the supreme seapower system.

However, I would still argue that it was more a combination of unit cost, the fact that as a power projection sea control weapon the BB was more limited than the carrier, and the fact that nukes seemed to make made armour redundant that led to the sucess of the carrier over the BB, not simply the fact that BB's could sometimes be sunk by aircraft. Probably many carriers owed their survival to the fact that they were steaming with many BBs packed with AA. The fact is that any type of major surface combatant today must operate in a coherent task force to survive against another modern fleet

It may be worthwhile to remember that as many aircraft carriers were sunk at sea by battleships as battleships by carrier aviation.
 
I am not sure it is pity that no further battleships will be built.

That being said, the basic problem with any battleship is that these days weapons can be delivered with such accuracy that the armor schemes that were used on WWII and earlier warships are effectively useless. No ship can effectively armor every part of itself equally. Modern weapons though require that the deck be as well armored as the
sides of the ship, and the bottom of the ship needs to be even stronger. A ship that well armored probably doesn't have much displacement left for weapons.

The more likely modern scenario would be a guided missile battlecruiser. The armor would be rather light (or essentially non-existent as in modern warships compared to the weapons they fire) and it would rely on missiles and point defense weapons to stop attacks from hitting it (its weapons would ensure that any ship with guns would be toast long before it was in range to use them). You could in theory mount larger guns for fire support missions (Though I am not sure 16" guns are necessary, 8" guns, if they could be rapid fire might be a better option). That being said, it might be better to build dedicated ships for fire support missions. They would be cheaper and not take away from the offensive weapons of the guided missile cruiser.

Of course the problem with all of this is that a smaller cheaper destroyer or regular cruiser can launch the missiles just as effectively. 2 destroyers is always going to be cheaper and more flexible than the above described battlecruiser and their combined firepower will probably as great. This pretty much explains why the Navy looks like it does today.

--
Bill
 

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You can create this in a single package, probably around 65,000 tons, nuclear powered, with one, perhaps two, turrets with 16"/406mm main battery, AGEIS or improved AGEIS sensors, towed array, VLS (6-8 61 cell launchers), hanger space for four helos/UAV, and modern armor. It would be expensive as hell, probably $3 billion a copy, but it would provide an exceptionally flexible, very rugged platform that would greatly enhance the defenses of a CBG, and would allow engagement, by the BB, out to 1,000 miles inland, and a strong ASW presence.

Hm. While I truly love big guns, saddly, I think it would be slightly more feasible to to have six-gun turrets, armed with 8" guns. That's 16 8inch guns capable of rapid fire. It may also be cheaper. It'd still look cool as well.

Hmm.

Why did no one experiment with the concept of the "Battlecarrier"? Guns & flight deck. The arrangement would need experimentation, but I think having the deck at the center, and the guns stern and bow. Would be a good surface vessal, AA guns bristling from the sides. Floating fortress.

Sure, it would be utterly massive, but it would also be quite awesome.
 

CalBear

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Hm. While I truly love big guns, saddly, I think it would be slightly more feasible to to have six-gun turrets, armed with 8" guns. That's 16 8inch guns capable of rapid fire. It may also be cheaper. It'd still look cool as well.

Hmm.

Why did no one experiment with the concept of the "Battlecarrier"? Guns & flight deck. The arrangement would need experimentation, but I think having the deck at the center, and the guns stern and bow. Would be a good surface vessal, AA guns bristling from the sides. Floating fortress.

Sure, it would be utterly massive, but it would also be quite awesome.

8" autoloaders are great, but there is a HUGE difference between an 8" bombbardment shell and a 16". It's a geometric progression.

8"/203mm shell (High Capacity)

Total weight: 260 pounds
Bursting charge: 21.37 pounds

12"/305mm High Capacity) as on USS Alaska, for comparison

Total Weight 940 pounds
Bursting Charge: 79.44 pounds

Lethal radius of a 8" shell is 75 yards.

16"/406mm shell (High Capacity)

Total Weight: 1,900 pounds
Bursting charge: 153.6 pounds

The effects of a 16" shell

The Armor Piercing (AP) shell fired by these guns is capable of penetrating nearly 30 feet (9 m) of concrete, depending upon the range and obliquity of impact. The High Capacity (HC) shell can create a crater 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep (15 x 6 m). During her deployment off Vietnam, USS New Jersey (BB-62) occasionally fired a single HC round into the jungle and so created a helicopter landing zone 200 yards (180 m) in diameter and defoliated trees for 300 yards (270 m) beyond that. (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm)

If you can defoliate trees at that distance, imagine how far away you can kill someone.


18"/460mm (High Explosive) As on INS Yamato, for comparison

Total Weight: 2996 pounds
Bursting charge: 136 pounds

I am not aware of any data on lethal radius of the 460mm shell (a disappointment, since it would be interesting to see of the additional shell weight made up for the much smaller bursting charge in the round).

The 16"/406mm shell is at least five times more efficient than the 203mm, which is almost equally that much more efficient than the 127mm shell.
 
Also By 1946 What nations of the world still had any BB they were All Allies nations thats is why they were scraped or put in res .
 
Hm. While I truly love big guns, saddly, I think it would be slightly more feasible to to have six-gun turrets, armed with 8" guns. That's 16 8inch guns capable of rapid fire. It may also be cheaper. It'd still look cool as well.

Hmm.

Why did no one experiment with the concept of the "Battlecarrier"? Guns & flight deck. The arrangement would need experimentation, but I think having the deck at the center, and the guns stern and bow. Would be a good surface vessal, AA guns bristling from the sides. Floating fortress.

Sure, it would be utterly massive, but it would also be quite awesome.

Some of the early WWII carriers did in fact have significant guns mounted on the ship. In particular the Lexington Class had several turrents armed with 8" cannon. Unfortunately, the use of them could damage the flight deck.

I think ultimately its awfully easy to create paper tigers, but it is another thing all together to make these paper tigers practical fighting ships. Naval ships seem to work best when they concentrate on doing one or two things and doing them very well. Making a ship that does everything dooms it to doing nothing particularly well.

--
Bill
 

CalBear

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It may be worthwhile to remember that as many aircraft carriers were sunk at sea by battleships as battleships by carrier aviation.

Hmmm...

Fleet carriers sunk by Battleship gunfire: 0
Fleet Carriers Sunk by Battle Cruiser Gunfire: 1 (HMS Glorious)
Escort Carriers sunk by Battleship Gunfire: 1 (USS Gambier Bay)

Total carriers lost to Battleship/battlecruiser gunfire: 2 (1 CV, 1 CVE)

Battleships sunk by carrier aircraft in Port: 8 (INS Haruna, INS Ise, RM Conte di Cavour, RM Littorio, USS Arizona, USS California, USS Oklahoma, USS West Virginia)

Battleships sunk in port by land based aircraft: 2 (KM Triptiz, SN Petropavlovsk)

Battleships sunk in open water solely by aircraft: 5 (HMS Prince of Wales, INS Hyuga, IJN Musashi, IJN Yamamoto, RM Roma)

Battle cruisers sunk in open water solely by aircraft: 1 (HMS Repulse)

Sunk by Aircraft after damage by Naval gunfire: 1 (INS Hiei)

Total Battleships/Battle Cruisers lost to aircraft: 17
Total BB/BC lost to aircraft in open water: 7

To recap: 2 carriers (1 CV, 1 CVE) vs. 16 Battleships/ 1 Battle Cruiser.
 
The "BBGN" concept CalBear laid out is the most likely configuration of a post-WWII battleship. The fact that armor-wise it's more of a traditional 'battlecruiser' is irrelevant, ship types evolve over time.

I can actually see this as more of an option for the future than the immediate postwar period. Such a large, nuclear powered vessel would have tremendous amounts of power available for the kinds of solid-state lasers the military is developing - if they develop the level of power required for antimissile point defense, putting a combination of lasers, missiles, and UAVs on this platform (along with a large gun mount) would be an effective fleet addition. The main sticking point would be the cost... you may see this built as a 'cruiser' to ease it through Congress.
 
You can create this in a single package, probably around 65,000 tons, nuclear powered, with one, perhaps two, turrets with 16"/406mm main battery, AGEIS or improved AGEIS sensors, towed array, VLS (6-8 61 cell launchers), hanger space for four helos/UAV, and modern armor. It would be expensive as hell, probably $3 billion a copy, but it would provide an exceptionally flexible, very rugged platform that would greatly enhance the defenses of a CBG, and would allow engagement, by the BB, out to 1,000 miles inland, and a strong ASW presence.

The reason why a ship like that wouldn't be that useful is that 16" gunfire is not as effective as it seems. Sure, 16" gunfire has a nice range (almost 40km's without new technology) and nice shell weight, albeit with a small bursting charge. The problem is that if deemed necessary, much more capability can be achieved by converting ATACMS to naval use as has been contemplated. This would offer vastly more range (128-300km) and much more effective warhead, would be far less manpower intensive, needs much smaller hull and is housed within a firing system which can fire other rounds if deemed necessary.

As for BBG/CBG, both can be achieved in early Cold War context, before missiles were small enough for standardized storage VLS (IMHO, one of the greatest post-war naval inventions).

But, let the fantasizing begin: My Battleship from Hell would be a modified USS Kentucky completed ca. 1958. It would fire rocket-assisted nuclear shells from it's 2x3 16" turrets. For nuclear deterrance it would house Polaris tubes and for air defense it would have Talos and Tartar missiles. ASW would be handled by ASROC's and S-58 helos...
 
You don't need ships that size to accomplish fire-support, which I think that is what you are driving at. Carriers are very flexible weapons platforms and can strike further inland than battleships.

Carriers are way too expensive. The planned USN littoral attack vessel would have been an excellent solution, armed with a gun and land-attack missiles. They would have been inexpensive and not required too much manning, so many could have been built.

Battleships aren't the answer either - they are designed to fight other battleships; for fire-support a cheaper alternative makes much more sense.
 
Hmmm...

Fleet carriers sunk by Battleship gunfire: 0
Fleet Carriers Sunk by Battle Cruiser Gunfire: 1 (HMS Glorious)
Escort Carriers sunk by Battleship Gunfire: 1 (USS Gambier Bay)

Total carriers lost to Battleship/battlecruiser gunfire: 2 (1 CV, 1 CVE)

Battleships sunk by carrier aircraft in Port: 8 (INS Haruna, INS Ise, RM Conte di Cavour, RM Littorio, USS Arizona, USS California, USS Oklahoma, USS West Virginia)

Battleships sunk in port by land based aircraft: 2 (KM Triptiz, SN Petropavlovsk)

Battleships sunk in open water solely by aircraft: 5 (HMS Prince of Wales, INS Hyuga, IJN Musashi, IJN Yamamoto, RM Roma)

Battle cruisers sunk in open water solely by aircraft: 1 (HMS Repulse)

Sunk by Aircraft after damage by Naval gunfire: 1 (INS Hiei)

Total Battleships/Battle Cruisers lost to aircraft: 17
Total BB/BC lost to aircraft in open water: 7

To recap: 2 carriers (1 CV, 1 CVE) vs. 16 Battleships/ 1 Battle Cruiser.

D'oh!. I meant to specify "at sea", but even thien I didn't pay attention to my own figures. I'm getting too old for this.
 
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