Is it time to bring back the battleship?
For decades, naval architects have concentrated on building ships that, by the standards of the World Wars, are remarkably brittle. These ships can deal punishment at much greater ranges than their early 20th century counterparts, but they can’t take a hit. Is it time to reconsider this strategy, and once again build protected ships?
In 2012 the San Francisco dumbshits refused the Iowa battleship as a museum. “It has guns and was used in WAR”. I wish their stupidity only affected them.
You can bet your ass that in 1941 the people of San Freakshow wanted the Iowa there
I wish we had a dozen parked off Somalia so we could blow it into oblivion. Then after that’s donempark them along the Nork, South Korea border. Make fat little Un nervous.
Several years ago, the US Naval Institute magazine “Proceedings” had an article “Within 10 years we will fight a naval war with China and we will lose”. I wish I had kept it. And this was before the 0bammy years.
I’m a aircraft carrier guy who served on the USS Kitty Hawk CV-63 and think we should launch massive airstrikes from all the carriers we can get and bomb the shit out of our enemies. Along with cruise missiles off of battleships and assistance from the Air Force, B-52’s etc. to carpet bomb and drop napalm on the enemy and A-10’s and C-130’s to finish them off with close air support on the ground against anything left that still moves. No quarter, finish them off before they get a chance to hit us.
Designing any naval warship has always been a compromise. You can get just so much power out of a rated powerplant. When the Iowa class battleships were built, a lot of extra tonnage was used to increase the horsepower from 100,000 to 200,000. That doubling of horsepower only succeeded in a gain of 6 knots speed. The North Carolina had the same armament as the Iowa but could only make 27 knots as apposed to the 33 knots of Iowa. Was it worth it? Who knows?
In WWII, the Washington (nine 16 inch guns, same class as North Carolina) slugged it out in a gun duel with Kirishima (eight 14 inch guns) off the island of Guadalcanal in November of 1942. At night. Doing maybe 15 knots. The South Dakota was also involved but she lost power to her gun turrets and Washington had to step in pound Kirishima to a pulp.
However, in the end, Kirishima did not sink from the 16″ shells but was scuttled. Dreadnought battleships had been proven to be very difficult to sink by other battleships. All of the battleship versus battleship actions in the Pacific during WWII were at night when air power was useless. Because during the day, battleships paid a heavy price at the hands of aviators. The Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by Japanese naval aviation on December 10, 1941. It was the first time that manned and maneuvering battleships had ever been sunk by air power alone. And in October of 1944 and April of 1945 the Musashi and Yamato, respectively, were sunk by aircraft alone. These were 63,000 ton monsters with nine 18″ guns. No battleship could have killed either of them in a gun duel. They were meat on the table for aircraft.
The fact is, with today’s weapons any ship is just a big fat lazy target. Do not forget the Falklands war and the Exocet missiles. And today’s anti-ship missiles are much better now than those of 30 years ago. Air power has proven time and again to be the nemesis of ships. Bigger, stronger, faster, doesn’t necessarily mean better.
You’re not gonna get any new ships under Obama’s watch
The biggest reason our Battleships were retired is because they burn expensive oil that has to be constantly replenished at sea.
I’ve read a number of interesting articles over the years that proposed a number of things. For example, remove the boilers and install a couple of compact submarine nuclear plants for main propulsion. You could run the ship for decades.
Remove gun turret number three completely down to the keel and install a massive vertical launch missile system on deck in its place, with a massive magazine to reload it completely, 2 or 3 times.
Naval Weapons Station Yorktown, Virginia still has thousands of 16″ projectiles in stock and plenty of powder bags as well. Making fresh propellant for the guns is not that difficult to do. Several Naval Depot maintenance facilities on both coasts still have plenty of 16″ gun barrels and other spare parts to keep the two other turrets in operation.
During the Falklands War, a reporter asked the Skipper of USS New Jersey what would happen if his ship were hit by an Exocet missile. The Captain replied “We would call “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms!””, because New Jersey was designed to take a hit from another battleship, and a mere Exocet would barely scorch her paint.
They do not make battleship hulls any more for good reason, but we could sure stand to recycle a couple of the ones we have and put them to very good use.
I agree.
Crush the enemy.
Bullshit. Armor on a ship today means exactly zip. The threat weapons are so badass it just don’t matter if they hit.
What matters is keeping them from hitting.
Yep, and small offensive weapons are dirt cheap compared to a modern “Battle Ship” and would take a fraction of the time to engineer and build. The Battle Ship could never keep up with the new threats. People would die.
there’s a good chapter in ‘Twilight of Abundance’ (on Amazon) where a New Zealand or Australian Naval analyst said that any ‘small’ engagement w/ the Chinese by the US Navy (like the one that’s going to happen soon) is doomed from the start because they already make all the chipsets for our military aircraft (& what they haven’t, they’ve hacked) & have built-in ‘failure codes’……charming…..another benefit from the Chinese buying access from the Clintons
It’s never a question of one hit. The Yamato and Musashi took about 20 torpedo and 20 bomb hits before they sank. And that was WWI delivery systems. Aircraft, during the day, rudimentary to non-existent radar, small payloads due to short range of the airplanes involved. Today’s planes fly at night and in all kinds of weather and have better delivery systems with better weapons and payloads.
I know that all weapon and defensive systems are state of the art but the fact remains that a few anti-ship missiles hitting any combatant ship means it is out of the fight. And taking out the combatants is not always the answer; sometimes you take out the supply and support ships.
When the US Navy knocked out the Japanese naval base at Truk in 1944, the fleet had already left, but their supply ships, tankers, and support ships were still at Truk and were sunk. After that, the Japanese scrambled to rebuild their supply train but just couldn’t keep up. Only two more major fleet actions took place during the war; one during the invasion of Saipan in June of 1944 and the other during the invasion of Leyte in October of 1944. The Japanese fleet had to stay close to its oil supply and could not venture very far due to lack of support ships. The Yamato’s last mission was actually a suicide one-way mission due to lack of oil.
Don’t ever forget history.
WWII delivery systems!!
Edit feature, please!!
Let’s bring them back and name the biggest one we have after ‘mooch’
I think everyone would appreciate that.
It would sink aft-end first.
Shouldn’t we..uh, I mean, we should have much better high tech counter measures to any attack against man made monument to American exceptionalism.
You’re missing a big big point. The amount of BOOM per square inch and per ounce is 100 times what it was in WWII. And penetrating armor is no big deal. Trust me, military prime used to be our deal. And those engineers love to tell you how smart they are.
China is not the only country that manufactures chips – Taiwan, South Korea and Japan all do. Plus they are designed in the US – I am pretty sure Intel could tell if the design was altered
Rather than decommission old battleships they should rent them out to patriotic American citizens. iOTWreport readers could all get together and pitch in and go on a big terroist-killing cruise.
So we can tell if something is hacked?
Every single chip on every single board inside every single module of every single aircraft, tank, and boat?
Nope. Don’t think so.
no no this is about battle SHIP not battle AXE
I think it’s much more important to have transgendered Captains and Other Ranks, and no more armaments on Navy ships – we should bring civilization and love to the Chineses pips so that when they come to get their country, no one will get upset.
The Iranians and mexicans have offered to assist China in despoiling America …
Great discussion even if it is only academic. Having served in New Jersey for her last WestPac and then decomm’ed her, I can say I’d love to see them again. Chieftain’s idea of a VLS in the after turret was brought up in Proceedings, as was making them hybrid carriers like the Kongo or Hyuga. Sadly, still just huge targets to be pummeled into submission from the air. CIWS can’t handle simultaneous-time-on-target with ship killer missiles. Plenty of examples already mentioned – Prince of Wales and Repulse, battleship row, Yamato and Musashi, Conte di Cavour, Littorio, Roma, Tirpitz, … We probably can’t even manufacture the 16″ guns anymore. I watched the spares get loaded on a scrap truck at St. Julien’s Creek in VA when I taught Navy cryogenics. Just sad.
ok, time to built more small and extremely fast submarines, At least they are harder to find, And not as much a target as a surface ship.