Op Corporate and HMS Howe

BlondieBC

Banned
Is a battleship that much more expensive to run than a fleet carrier? I agree that a CV can fill a much wider capability 'hole' than a battleship. However, a fleet carrier has not only the cost of the crew but the aircrew, aircraft maintenance, catapults, etc. A BB is comparitively simple. An armoured box with some big shooty things on top. Crewing a BB can't take more than a CV with a full airwing, can it?

Well, yes modern CV cost more to run when one counts the air operation.

Now if you want to save money, you keep the BB in reserve status with the equivalent of Navy National Guard to run the batteries. Since the 14" weapons are just being used for land artillery anyway, you don't need the high rate of fire that a battle like Jutland ask for. Or put another way, if the less experience reservists shoot at 1/3 the rate of a WW2 era crew, so what. You could also deactivate one of the main turrets, and possible use for other things such as a command center for the task force. Strip out the main guns and just use the existing space largely as is. Also as other mention strip off the secondary armament and put on labor saving modern secondary guns. And I am sure there are other ways to keep costs down, on a ship that only leaves port a few weeks per year.

The question is more why to have the ship. If you just want 14" guns, build some modern monitors that have ok speed with modern electronics to save labor. There a lots of jobs on a BB gun that can be automated. The ship is pretty low value for fighting the Russians where DD, CV, SS or SSN would help a lot more. So the only reason I can see is ego, and once that is the reason, you can pretty much do anything with the ship.

Now once you have the ship, it will be used a little here and there. It is a low casualty way to support the USA in Vietnam. It might make a trip to Hong Kong as a show of support for the Colony at some point. It might have showed up in the Gulf War 1 or 2. I guess if you were willing to sail the ship with a half crew for one 14" turret, it might be a plausibly effective command ship. I can see it use for symbolic missions like taking the UK Governor General from Hong Kong to the UK the last time. Maybe the queen makes a state visit to Canada with the ship. Maybe for symbolic reasons, when the PM of the UK meets the USA president, it is on this ship in the spare/convert turret. I can easily see Reagan and Thatcher having summit lasting a few days where they meet on the Flag ship of the RN. I could even see Thatcher taking it to New York Harbor to met Reagan. But again, it is a big, expensive yacht.

Either the USA, France or UK could build a much better battleship for modern conditions, if there was only a reason to need the 14" to 16" guns. The Torpedo Defense system are a waste of space. The main armor belt is designed to stop shells and dumb bombs, not missles, so lots of room for improvement. It probably would be a BBN. I am sure by the 1970's, we could build better big guns and much, much better ammunition. BB were built when labor was cheaper, so we could build in a lot of automation and save labor. For example, if the rate of fire is not so critical, I bet you could automate the loading process. And even when used for ground support, do we ever fire more than 2-3 guns at a time. I bet you could build a 2X2" ship and save a huge amount of tonnage. But again, why? The USA had money to waste, the UK did not.

I guess if the right politicians or maybe the Royal family got behind having one ships, you might be able to save the ship. But it will cost a fortune to keep it in service 50 years to fire maybe 100-200 rounds in a battle the UK was winning anyway.
 
Given the only practical use a battleship would have in the modern era would've been to provide gunfire support - any other roles could be more economically achieved by other means - it'd have been easier to invest more fully in light weight large calibre guns.

They would be no more than an expensive luxury in both peace and war, such as the Iowas.

If it was a budgetary case of an old battleship - which may be of use in expeditionary warfare once every 20 years; which may be of WW3 use against Russian warships provided they'd not already been sunk by less vulnerable air or sub-surface assets - versus 3 extra SSNs, or a carrier, or a half-dozen destroyers - I can bet which the Cold War RN would've wanted more to fulfill its NATO and global roles.
 
Given the only practical use a battleship would have in the modern era would've been to provide gunfire support - any other roles could be more economically achieved by other means - <snip>

I'd suggest that even this role could be more economically achieved by other means. The number of situations that absolutely require guns of no less than 14" is vanishingly few these days, and in many cases smaller calibres (6" or 8") can do the same job at a significantly lower cost.
 
I'd suggest that even this role could be more economically achieved by other means. The number of situations that absolutely require guns of no less than 14" is vanishingly few these days, and in many cases smaller calibres (6" or 8") can do the same job at a significantly lower cost.

Keeping the Tigers without the helicopter decks could do that, both together is roughly the same crew numbers of a Battleship.

But certainly I think another Audacious class carrier or the 1955 design or CVA would be better I would think.
 
The reason 5" guns remained on USN vessels is because at that caliber, you can still use it for AA duties, though its not nearly as effective as a SAM, of course. The loss of gunfire support is something well known, and while a 14" would be useful for that, the cost of manning Howe or Vanguard as we have already seen is extremely high, far too much so to be useful for the few times since WWII where a British battleship could have used those guns in anger. (Really, only Vietnam, the Falklands and Desert Storm qualify.) The Royal Marines would love being able to call on those guns, of course, but the cost problem remains. Peg Leg Pom's idea makes sense, but even that is probably not easy to justify, if for no other reason than the cost of keeping said battleship in operable condition would be very high - and the fact that for a while the Royal Naval Reserve had HMS Belfast as a flagship in the early 1960s, but that didn't last long for the same reasons.

Now, assuming that we massively improve Britain's economic status to afford a much bigger armed forces, we still have to have a reason to have a battleship in the Royal Navy. The presence of a Russian BB is about the only way to justify it, and one would have to be prepared to have the RN's big gunboat going out with escorts, or perhaps going out with the amphibious assets. One way of perhaps justifying would be to have it partially crewed by the Royal Marines and having it be part of the amphibious groups of the RN, alongside Bulwark and the Fearless class LPDs.

As for 6" guns on RN surface ships, one idea proposed for the Type 45s was to fit them with 155mm guns to standardize the ammunition between the British Army's artillery and the RN's gunfire support, and 155mm is a hair over six inches, and more to the point using the same ammunition from the AS-90 reduces logistical concerns and gives a bit of a range advantage to the 155mm variant. If the RN is keeping ships for fire support, this isn't really a solution, as all RN ships will have this and all RN vessels all only have one gun. Truthfully, its better for money to keep cruisers around, but no surviving RN cruisers other than the Colony class ships lived through WWII (Both York class ships were KIA) and most of these were pretty work by the end of WWII. These, however, have half the complement of the Howe or Vanguard, and once one ditches the AA guns and goes with improvements to crew utilization the complement from about 700 to 550. One potential POD for this would be the Amethyst incident, where HMS London came to HMS Amethyst's aid when she was fired on by Communist Chinese forces and took a beating as a result. Towed back to Britain, The Royal Marines decide to use convert the surviving County-class ships into something better, allow three or four of them to be rebuilt during the early 1950s as HMS Belfast was. Combined with the Tigers, Belfast, Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle (the last four Town class cruisers, still quite useful at the time), the RN is left with a considerable cruiser force which probably wouldn't need the help of any BB.

As far as carriers go, keeping the WWII carriers around would be foolish - if Britain really has the money, finishing the Malta class would fix the problem until the 1970s, but that's not likely at all, so instead keep Ark Royal, Eagle, Victorious, Illustrious, Implacable and Indefatigable, with the latter four being converted to helicopter carriers once the CVA-01s are built. If the RNR idea is taken up and everything kept worthy of operation, then there are four carriers, a battleship, eight or nine cruisers and a big pack of destroyers and other surface ships, plus the amphibious ships. This is an immense force to say the least....
 

Deleted member 9338

As far as carriers go, keeping the WWII carriers around would be foolish - if Britain really has the money, finishing the Malta class would fix the problem until the 1970s.

While this is off the subject, could the British use American Essex Class carriers. It was not like we did not have enough of them.
 
Truthfully, its better for money to keep cruisers around, but no surviving RN cruisers other than the Colony class ships lived through WWII (Both York class ships were KIA) and most of these were pretty work by the end of WWII.

So the County Class Cruisers, Town class Cruisers, Dido class cruisers and Minotaur class Cruisers did not survive WW2? Ok......
 
Jesus wept, whilst they did come up with a number of successes post-war the amount of own goals and missed opportunities by the British armed forces is sometimes just depressing.

Very intersting book on RN AEW is 'The Admiralty and AEW; Royal Navy Airbore early Warning Projects' by Chris Gibson (he of VC-10's and Pofflers)

There is a drawing in it of possibly the most ugly aircraft ever conceived - a Buccaneer with fore and aft radomes (Nimrod AEW style)- the so called Dumb-bell Buccaneer...I have a theory that it could protect the fleet by deflecting enemy missiles by shear ugliness.
 
So the County Class Cruisers, Town class Cruisers, Dido class cruisers and Minotaur class Cruisers did not survive WW2? Ok......

I thought that the Admiralty considered them either used up from heavy service or with short lifespans due to rushed wartime construction?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I thought that the Admiralty considered them either used up from heavy service or with short lifespans due to rushed wartime construction?

On many wartime ships built, the steel and worksmanship was consider second rate, and the vessels were expected to have a short life span. From memory, a lifespan of about 10 years. In many ways, the UK would be much better off building new ships in the late 1940's and early 1950's than keeping these second quality ships in service.
 
On many wartime ships built, the steel and worksmanship was consider second rate, and the vessels were expected to have a short life span. From memory, a lifespan of about 10 years. In many ways, the UK would be much better off building new ships in the late 1940's and early 1950's than keeping these second quality ships in service.

That's what I thought but I could remember the exact years they thought they'd last. As to building new ships given the budgets and the changing technologies that were kicking off by the 1950's (or the possibilities of them) I'm not sure what would have been the best spending plan for the RN, I'll leave that to those with far more knowledge than I.
 
Very intersting book on RN AEW is 'The Admiralty and AEW; Royal Navy Airbore early Warning Projects' by Chris Gibson (he of VC-10's and Pofflers)

There is a drawing in it of possibly the most ugly aircraft ever conceived - a Buccaneer with fore and aft radomes (Nimrod AEW style)- the so called Dumb-bell Buccaneer...I have a theory that it could protect the fleet by deflecting enemy missiles by shear ugliness.
Whilst I do find the Buccaneer to be an attractive aircraft and have a soft spot for it that does sound truly hideous. Having just ordered Vickers VC10 from Chris I am morbidly tempted to add The Admiralty and AEW to my list of books as well. :)
 
It's not ugly, it's beautiful! Just look at those radomes... yes, I go gooey over bull terriers too. Don't judge me.

Seriously, though, this would have made perfect sense in a world where the RN stayed in the fleet-carrier business. Makes you wonder what else we narrowly missed out on seeing.
 
Well after buying Chris' Vickers VC-10 I decided to add The Admiralty and AEW and BAe P.1216 to the order as well, The Air Staff and AEW was apparently sold out. After having now seen the Buccaneer variant in question I can now honestly say that truly is an awful looking aircraft. If it got even close to production it should of been taken out back along with the Nimrod AEW3 and shot to put it out of its misery. :)
 
On many wartime ships built, the steel and worksmanship was consider second rate, and the vessels were expected to have a short life span. From memory, a lifespan of about 10 years. In many ways, the UK would be much better off building new ships in the late 1940's and early 1950's than keeping these second quality ships in service.

Yet some of the war emergency RN Light carriers stayed in service for 40+ years, if the money is there to keep the Howe in service then the money is there to splash out on a few new paintbrushes every year.

Admittedly they probably took more maintenance as anything built post war to keep upto the same standard. I agree that the money spent on completing the Centaurs and refitting Victorious would have been better spent on new carriers, though I have a suspicion that the RN may never have seen the money if they had not spent it in the way they did.
 
That's true I think, they only got stuff because it was already half paid for and they had the other motivation of clearing a slipway to build merchant ships.
 
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