View Full Version : No More U.S. Battleships?
Herman Hum
25 May 05, 23:52
No More U.S. Battleships?
"For the first time since the 1890s, the U.S. Navy soon could be without a battleship," Defense News (http://www.defensenews.com/) says.
The Senate, in its version of the fiscal 2006 defense authorization bill, authorizes the Navy to dispose of the battleship Wisconsin and transfer it to the state of Virginia.
And a provision in the House version of the defense bill would transfer the battleship Iowa to the Port of Stockton, Calif.
Only two battleships remain in Navy custody: the Wisconsin, berthed at Nauticus maritime center in downtown Norfolk, Va., and the Iowa, moored in a mothball fleet at Suisun Bay, Calif. Per an agreement dating from the 1990s between the Navy and the Senate, the ships have been kept because their 16-inch guns can provide fire support for Marines on shore. The agreement mandates the Navy to keep the ships until an equal or greater fire support capability is operational.
But the Extended-Range Guided Munition (ERGM) intended to provide that new capability remains mired in developmental problems, and it’s not clear when — or even if — that weapon ever will be fielded.
Two other ships in the four-ship Iowa class, the Missouri and New Jersey are now museum ships in Hawaii and New Jersey, respectively.
Secret Agent
26 May 05, 08:00
Save the battlewagons
Oliver North (archive)
April 15, 2005
"There is no weapon system in the world that comes even close to the visible symbol of enormous power represented by the battleship." -- Retired Gen. P.X. Kelly, USMC
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Those words of the former Marine commandant resonate with me. In 1969, gunfire from the battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62) saved my rifle platoon in Vietnam. During her six months in-theater, the USS New Jersey's 16-inch guns were credited with saving more than 1,000 Marines' lives. The North Vietnamese so feared the ship that they cited her as a roadblock to the Paris peace talks. Our leaders, as they did so often in that war, made the wrong choice and sent her home. Now, 36 years later, Washington is poised to make another battleship blunder.
After the USS Iowa (BB-61) and USS Wisconsin, (BB-64) were taken out of active service in 1992, Congress passed Public Law 104-106, a 1996 measure requiring that our last two battleships be kept ready for reactivation. But today's Navy brass wants Congress to repeal the law, strike the ships from Naval Vessel Register -- the official list of available ships -- and donate them to museums.
The Navy, focusing on a new "strategic vision" called "sea basing," claims that the battleships' proven firepower is no longer necessary for Naval Surface Fire Support (NSFS) -- the kind of mission that saved my Marines three decades ago. Adm. Vernon Clark, the chief of naval operations, says that "Marines will be supported by combat air." That's great -- except when bad weather keeps the planes on deck instead of overhead. It also ignores the full range of support that is economically available from well-protected, highly mobile, gun and missile-firing battleships. This is not your grandfather's battlewagon.
In 1983, the USS New Jersey was the best support available to the Marines after their barracks were bombed in Beirut. During the "tanker war," in the mid-1980s, every time the USS Iowa steamed into the Persian Gulf, the Iranians ceased hostile action.
During Desert Storm, cruise missiles launched from both the USS Missouri (BB-63) and the USS Wisconsin attacked scores of targets deep inside Iraq; and an entire Iraqi Naval Infantry unit surrendered to one of the USS Wisconsin's unmanned aerial vehicles. Unlike any other naval vessel, battleships combine survivability, speed and immediate, heavy firepower.
The Navy claims that the "firepower problem" -- Marines call it "steel on target" -- will be solved by new, 5-inch Extended Range Guided Munitions (ERGM). Under development at great cost since 1996, the Government Accountability Office said in 2004 that the ERGM program is rife with cost overruns and that "its problems have led to test failures and delays."
In truth, the ERGM should have been scrubbed in March 2000, when the Marines told Congress that neither ERGM nor any other 5-inch round would meet Marines' lethality requirements. Worse still, a May 2001 internal Navy report admitted that ERGM won't meet Marines' volume of fire requirements, either. Both needs can easily be met by existing 16-inch guns on the battleships.
Navy planners insist that a new DD(X)-class of ships -- also still in development -- will surpass battleships' NSFS capabilities. But on April 1, 2003, Marine Commandant Gen. Michael Hagee testified that our nation's expeditionary forces "will remain at considerable risk" for want of NSFS until the DD(X) joins the fleet "in significant numbers." Since then, the Navy has reduced the DD(X) buy from 24 ships to five. This leaves Marines high and dry unless Iowa and Wisconsin are available for rapid reactivation.
Even if the Navy ordered more of the DD(X) class -- at $2 billion to $3.5 billion each -- these small, thin-skinned vessels are highly vulnerable to "sea skimmer" missiles. And a terrorist action, like the 2000 attack on the USS Cole -- which crippled the destroyer and killed 17 -- would do similar damage to a DD(X).
Naval officers admit that heavily armored battleships are practically impervious to such strikes, but claim that what the DD(X) lacks in armor it will make up in stealth and speed. To embattled Marines that just means their nearest naval gunfire support will be far out at sea and traveling at high speed -- neither of which contribute to accurate "steel on target" for troops fighting ashore.
Our Navy currently has no capability for providing the lethal, high-volume firepower that would be required if -- God forbid -- we should have to land Marines on the coasts of Iran or North Korea, or in defense of Taiwan. When the Marines assaulted Um Qasr at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, they had to rely on naval gunfire from an Australian frigate. The Navy's answer is to wait six years for the costly, unproven ERGM system and a half-dozen or fewer, yet-to-be-built DD(X) ships. But America's enemies may not wait that long. And America's taxpayers may not want to pay the price -- in blood or treasure. The DD(X)-ERGM experiments are estimated to cost between $12 billion and $16 billion.
It would take less than two years to reactivate the Iowa and Wisconsin. The battleships are 10 percent faster than the still-conceptual DD(X). They each bring to bear 12 5-inch and nine 16-inch guns -- capable, with new munitions, of firing accurately to nearly 100 miles. The two battleships can also carry nearly twice as many cruise missiles as all the DD(X) hulls combined. All that firepower is available for $2 billion -- the cost of one DD(X).
Sometimes, as I tell my grandchildren, older is better. In the case of the two battlewagons, older is not only superior, it's also a lot less expensive.
Oliver North is a nationally syndicated columnist and the founder and honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ollienorth/on20050415.shtml
Iron Mike USMC
26 May 05, 08:47
Seldom do I agree with Col. North. This is one time he is absolutely right.
Newer isn't better, only newer. With the quality of construction of the Iowa class BBs, and modern technology, these ships can be lethal for another couple of generations.
The Doctor
26 May 05, 08:56
The foundries necessary to build ships and guns like that no longer exist. The Navy needs to keep one (preferably both) of these ships in reserve until a weapons system is deployed with as good or better fire support capability.
The Iowa's were awesome fire support assets, no doubt. But with the length of time they have been laid up, and with more systemic maintenance problems like that experienced with the carrier Kennedy, I can't help but think that the opportunity to keep the battleships alive has passed. What is their present condition generally, or that of the powder bags for those 16 inch guns ?
Iron Mike USMC
26 May 05, 11:50
The Iowa's were awesome fire support assets, no doubt. But with the length of time they have been laid up, and with more systemic maintenance problems like that experienced with the carrier Kennedy, I can't help but think that the opportunity to keep the battleships alive has passed. What is their present condition generally, or that of the powder bags for those 16 inch guns ?
As stated in the article, it would take about two years to geta dormany BB up to snuff.
The components of each round would be the issue. As Doc said, the foundaries no longer exist that could manufacture more ammo for the 16 inch guns. Between the rounds, the powder bags, and everything else needed to fire one of those flying trucks a lot needs to be considered. I would assume that it would still be cheaper to ramp up manufacture of those elements, than to build new ships with similar firepower.
Doctor Sinister
26 May 05, 13:45
How would one of these things stand up to a modern sea-skimming missile?
Just curious...
Dr. S.
Secret Agent
26 May 05, 13:48
How would one of these things stand up to a modern sea-skimming missile?
Just curious...
Dr. S.
Are you kidding? These things were designed to withstand hits by Japan's Yamoto battleships, which, IIRC, had 20 inch guns. A modern ASM would only make a dent! Not even you could destroy it! :devil:
The Doctor
26 May 05, 13:52
How would one of these things stand up to a modern sea-skimming missile?
Just curious...
Dr. S.
If they were to operate in an area of severe SSM threat, they would carry enough extra paint to repair any damage that the missiles could cause.
Doctor Sinister
26 May 05, 13:55
If they were to operate in an area of severe SSM threat, they would carry enough extra paint to repair any damage that the missiles could cause.
That clears that one up then. :D
Dr. S.
Iron Mike USMC
26 May 05, 13:56
If they were to operate in an area of severe SSM threat, they would carry enough extra paint to repair any damage that the missiles could cause.
What he said :D
Doctor Sinister
26 May 05, 13:59
Not even you could destroy it! :devil:
Hmmm...
I shall start work on an R&D project to correct this immediately!
Dr. S.
Herman Hum
26 May 05, 14:16
Are you kidding? These things were designed to withstand hits by Japan's Yamoto battleships, which, IIRC, had 20 inch guns.Wasn't something similar said about the near-invincibility of the Bismarck?
The Doctor
26 May 05, 15:19
The Japanese Battleships Musashi and Yamato are the closest analogies to Iowa Class BB's. Both ships were operating with little or no air cover and sustained massive damage prior to sinking.
On 24 October 1944, while en route to the prospective battle area off the Leyte landing beaches, Musashi and her consorts were attacked by hundreds of U.S. Navy carrier aircraft. In this Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, she was hit by some nineteen torpedoes and seventeen bombs. Though her heavy protection withstood this massive damage to a degree probably unsurpassed by any other contemporary warship, Musashi capsized and sank about four hours after she received her last hit.http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/japan/japsh-m/musashi.htm
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/h63000/h63434.jpg
The carrier planes began their attacks in the early afternoon, scoring immediate bomb and torpedo hits on Yamato and sinking Yahagi and a destroyer. Three other destroyers were sunk over the next hour, as the Japanese continued to steam southwards. In all, Yamato was struck by some ten torpedoes, mainly on the port side, and several bombs. At about 1420 on the afternoon of 7 April, less than two hours after she was first hit, the great battleship capsized to port, exploded and sank, leaving behind a towering "mushroom" cloud. Fewer than 300 men of Yamato's crew were rescued. Nearly 2500 of her men were lost, plus over a thousand more from Yahagi and the escorting destroyers. U.S. losses totalled ten aircraft and twelve aircrewmen.http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-fornv/japan/japsh-xz/yamato-n.htm
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/g410000/g413914.jpg
...Yawn...One Oscar/Victor/Akula....4 SET-45 torpedos...shaken not stirred...big hole(s) in bottome of battleship, followed by wake homing torpedo (no rudders, no screws...) equals one dead BB. And it ain't the shells or powder bags that would be the problem...it's the boilers and the main battery mechanisms. You'd have to find enough boiler techs...er, ain't none of them left, they call them "machinist mates" to main the boilers (and this is an arcane art, believe me). Then you'd have to dredge up enough qualified gunners mates to not only operate the guns, but to lay them in, and work the ammunition hoists (more complicated machinery).
Sorry, but if you want to really mess up someones shoreline, get a nice big ship with a big flat deck, put a couple of hundred mortars aboard, and fire away. And with that many, accuracy would not be a large issue :p . Seriously, you could put gunfire support weapons on just about anything, and just get it to the beach. You don't have to have a billion dollar ship to get them there, just something that will power itself to the beach, has acceptable communications available, and room for ammunition. All the rest, is gingerbread.
Boats
...Yawn...One Oscar/Victor/Akula....4 SET-45 torpedos...shaken not stirred...big hole(s) in bottome of battleship, followed by wake homing torpedo (no rudders, no screws...) equals one dead BB.
What's a SET-45 ? Never heard of it. Oh, and you might want to use the wake homer first, before the ship stops dead in the water from the four torpedo hits. No propulsion, no wake. ;)
Sorry, but if you want to really mess up someones shoreline, get a nice big ship with a big flat deck, put a couple of hundred mortars aboard, and fire away. And with that many, accuracy would not be a large issue :p .
Hmmm, range and terminal effect might be. Don't know any mortars that can send a shell out to 20 nm, or penetrate 30 feet of concrete.
Picky, picky, picky...I figured that the weapons exploding under the hull would cause severe damage, but might not sink it. Wake homers would certainly open up the stern tubes, and rudder posts, and cause the stern to settle quite a bit, not to mention the horrendous damage done to all the compartments the shafts pass through, not to exclude flooding.
As for the mortars, you should read more about WW2...battleship fire did little if any real damage to fortifications, unless there was a very lucky direct frontal strike. When attacking fortifications like bunkers, you want plunging fires...much like is delivered by mortars. My point, was that if NGFS is needed, you don't need a battleship. You only need a platform that will mount the weapons, feed them, and guide them. The other ships of the battle group will protect this ship...and no I don't think we need to go to the extravagance of the Arsenal ship.
Boats
1) WW2 battleships were designed to withstand side impacts by relatively primitive torpedoes. They have no design provision whatsoever (armor belt, multi-hull spacing, shock protection, you name it) for underkeel detonations. What this means is that any modern torpedo or mine is going to cause a world of mayhem to them. A heavy anti-surface torpedo (like one of those 650mm Russian mothers with their 1-ton warheads, or a couple of Western 533's) would have no problem breaking a battleship's back and sending it to the bottom faster than you can say "design obsolesence".
2) The oft-bragged-about "superthick armor belt" actually covers a relatively small portion of the ship, IIRC the bridge, flag and CIC sections. Most of the rest of the ship has the typical WW2 ship armor and substantial portions of the board are _wood_ (unless that has been renovated and I didn't hear about it). Guess what happens to the super-armored section's bouyancy when the rest of the ship gets more holes than a Swiss cheese...
3) Modern anti-surface weapons are far more lethal than anything the Japanese could throw at the Iowas in WW2. To quote Paul J. Adam, an SS-N-22 impacts with ten times the kinetic energy and twenty times the explosive load of a typical 16-inch shell (and let's not even go to the real beasts like SS-N-12/19 or AS-4/6). Think what these numbers mean for a second. And even if we're talking about light & slow sea-skimmers like the Exocet or Harpoon, there's still the matter of most of the ship (sans super-armored island) being vulnerable to them. Hell, even plain 5-inch munitions these days have far better accuracy and penetration thn they used to.
4) The main guns of the Iowa have a 150x500m dispersion pattern, according to the field manual. Want to be the marine that fights on the front with such an inaccurate weapon supporting you? Not me, thanks. If I'm about to die, at least let it be from an enemy round. I'd much rather have overhead CAS-air & helos plinking enemy positions.
Their rate of fire is also lackluster. Quoting PJA again:
"[As the enemy, which ship would I rather have firing at me?] The battleship. Thirty seconds between salvoes while firing for effect? I can cover two hundred yards a minute on foot under battleship fire even if they're properly registered. (Up, run for twenty seconds, down, wait for the next salvo, up, run...). OTOH, even a single 5" mount lands a shell on my position every three seconds. Just raising my head becomes dangerous.
Rate of fire is _much_ more important than shell size for most applications."
Also there's the subject of limited range. The 16'' guns have a maximum range of ~23nm (and an effective range shorter than that). IIRC current USN doctrine is that NGFS platforms should stand at least 25nm off-shore, at which distance the Iowas can't even hit the shoreline. Modern gun & ammo systems like 5-inch RAPs (and soon ERGM and possibly naval ATACMS) are more appropriate.
5) 1500-man crew (just count the salaries...). 60-year-old machinery and equipment. Design & construction techniques long surpassed. Drydock queens easily surpassing supercarriers in maintenance requirements (without any of their benefits).
"Facts, those stubborn things"
I don't think there is any doubt that torpedoes are the way to kill a battleship. In fact, they're a great way to kill just about anything that floats, aren't they. I don't know of any warship that likes torpedoes; sure, some are better protected than others, but there's a reason why they called the Soviet/Russian 650mm heavyweight torpedo a "carrier killer". On the other hand, sending a battleship into the littoral where there is any serious risk of enemy submarines would be kinda risky, don't ya think ? :laugh: :whist:
I don't think there is any doubt that torpedoes are the way to kill a battleship. In fact, they're a great way to kill just about anything that floats, aren't they. I don't know of any warship that likes torpedoes; sure, some are better protected than others, but there's a reason why they called the Soviet/Russian 650mm heavyweight torpedo a "carrier killer". On the other hand, sending a battleship into the littoral where there is any serious risk of enemy submarines would be kinda risky, don't ya think ? :laugh: :whist:
Thus putting the oft quoted argument to rest, that it looks really scary to a nations military to see that big grey battleship sitting offshore...right up until an SSK puts a spread into it, or it runs into a minefield....
Boats
Thus putting the oft quoted argument to rest, that it looks really scary to a nations military to see that big grey battleship sitting offshore...right up until an SSK puts a spread into it, or it runs into a minefield.... Boats
Depends on which nation we're talking about, I guess. I'm sure it was pretty scary to the Iraqi soldiers occupying Kuwait in '91, for example. But like I said earlier in this thread, the time of the battleship has probably passed.
Well it seems that a very long time ago I lost the argument, very badly I might add........Never did get back on way back then to admit it, but here ya go, read away. :devious:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/sci.military.naval/msg/a21548e2d6be79c8?hl=en
richyoung
05 Jul 05, 15:52
Sunburn, I feel compelled to address the points you raise....
1) WW2 battleships were designed to withstand side impacts by relatively primitive torpedoes. They have no design provision whatsoever (armor belt, multi-hull spacing, shock protection, you name it) for underkeel detonations. What this means is that any modern torpedo or mine is going to cause a world of mayhem to them. A heavy anti-surface torpedo (like one of those 650mm Russian mothers with their 1-ton warheads, or a couple of Western 533's) would have no problem breaking a battleship's back and sending it to the bottom faster than you can say "design obsolesence".
This is simply not so. The Iowa class has a spaced, triple-bottom hull, designed to withstand 700 pounds of TNT exploding beneath it - the concept of beneath-keel explosions was well understood by the naval architects that designed and built these ships - at the time, our own naval torpedo, the Mark 14, was fitted with an "influence" (magnetic) exploder to do just that. Although FUNCTIONING torpedoes that can do this weren't built until after the war, the class was designed with this threat in mind. To an extent, they are vulnerable to the largest, most capable threat, - but so what? So is a carrier, or any other NGFS ship, and the size, triple bottom, and compartmentalization of the BB give her a better chance of withstanding a hit.
2) The oft-bragged-about "superthick armor belt" actually covers a relatively small portion of the ship, IIRC the bridge, flag and CIC sections.
You recall wrong. It covers almost everything except the foremost portion of the bow and the extreme stern. Adding the triple bottom, hull armor, armored turrets, and the triple-layer armored deck, the powerplant, magazines, all the main guns' breaches and ammuniton storage and handling facilities, basically everything needed to keep fighting, is in the "armored box" except fot the conning tower, which has its own armor.
Most of the rest of the ship has the typical WW2 ship armor and substantial portions of the board are _wood_ (unless that has been renovated and I didn't hear about it). Guess what happens to the super-armored section's bouyancy when the rest of the ship gets more holes than a Swiss cheese...
Once again, you are wrong - perhaps you might wish to read about the pounding the South Dakota took at the hands of the Japanese - and she was NOT sunk. The deck is triple-layer spaced armor - the turret roofs are 7" of special face-hardened alloy - battleships most certainly did NOT have "typical WWII ship armor"...
3) Modern anti-surface weapons are far more lethal than anything the Japanese could throw at the Iowas in WW2.
NOT true - the IJN had munitions specially designed to attempt to defeat battleship armor (18.1 inch armor piercing, anyone?) - no such weapons exist today. There is no modern equivalent to a 14" or larger naval shell in terms of sectional density or armor penetration. Even the aerial bombs of the time had to be developed for penetration, (if I recall correctly, Japan did so by adding fins to 15" AP naval shells...) - modern bombs, with the exception of rare and expensive "bunker busters", are optimzed for blast effect - not penetration
To quote Paul J. Adam, an SS-N-22 impacts with ten times the kinetic energy and twenty times the explosive load of a typical 16-inch shell (and let's not even go to the real beasts like SS-N-12/19 or AS-4/6). Think what these numbers mean for a second.
They mean slightly more than NOTHING, because SECTIONAL DENSITY (or a shaped charge) is what is needed to defeat armor, and, because they have to fly, ASMs are not dense enough to defeat BB armor. (It doesn't matter how fast the butterfly is going - the windshield still wins). This fallacy is the very reason KE is discounted when evaluating small arms ammuntion - it "over-values" velocity, whereas in the real world, .45 ACP out-performs rounds that KE indicates "should" be better, like 7.62 Mauser. Not to mention the ASMs with the big warheads are also the rarest, most expensive, and easiest to shoot down. Their warheads would prove no more capable than the bombs on the Japanese Kamikaze - no U.S. battleship was ever even TAKEN OUT OF THE FIGHT, despite some taking multiple hits.
And even if we're talking about light & slow sea-skimmers like the Exocet or Harpoon, there's still the matter of most of the ship (sans super-armored island) being vulnerable to them. Hell, even plain 5-inch munitions these days have far better accuracy and penetration thn they used to.
Exocet simply not a threat to the BBs - former NavSec Lehman agrees. You are half-right about 5 inch - it's more accurate, but penetration is actually less, as modern rounds are optimized for blast effect/lethal radius. Either way, Exocets and 5" can mess up the unarmored parts of the superstructure, but there is nothing there the ship needs to fight or move - those things that ARE essential are safe in the conning tower behind 17" of armor.
4) The main guns of the Iowa have a 150x500m dispersion pattern, according to the field manual. Want to be the marine that fights on the front with such an inaccurate weapon supporting you?
Wrong again - trials conducted after their last modernization & refit, still using old shells and powder, showed the rounds would land within 200m of point of aim - and this is without precision guidance or GPS navigation, either of which would be easier to add to a roomy 16" round than to a 155mm round - and we already have those (see: Copperhead). We've proven with the HARP project that the electronics can withstand the launch.
Not me, thanks. If I'm about to die, at least let it be from an enemy round. I'd much rather have overhead CAS-air & helos plinking enemy positions.
Bad weather shuts down air (and it can't hang around long enough for continuous suppression) - ask the Rangers in Afghanistan...
Their rate of fire is also lackluster. Quoting PJA again:
18 2,700lb shells a minute isn't enough for you? It would take more than 27 battalions (486 tubes) of Paladin M109A6 howitzers to throw an equivalent weight - and they can't do it from as far away. Only the lightest artillery peices exceed the battleships rate of fire, and its bullets are much bigger.
"[As the enemy, which ship would I rather have firing at me?] The battleship. Thirty seconds between salvoes while firing for effect? I can cover two hundred yards a minute on foot under battleship fire even if they're properly registered. (Up, run for twenty seconds, down, wait for the next salvo, up, run...). OTOH, even a single 5" mount lands a shell on my position every three seconds. Just raising my head becomes dangerous.
Rate of fire is _much_ more important than shell size for most applications."
Not may people can run a 100 yard dash in 20 seconds with a combat load, though swimming-pool sized craters, in combat boots, while people are shooting at you, with a concusion. 5" can't sustain a rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute. If the last sentence of this quote was true, we would still be fielding the French 75...
Also there's the subject of limited range. The 16'' guns have a maximum range of ~23nm (and an effective range shorter than that).
Partly untrue, partly misleading, partly disenginuous. The guns can shoot out to almost 50km - nearly thirty statute miles, which are smaller than nautical miles. Modern 155mm howitzers, firing experimental RAP rounds, can get to that range...but with an explosive payload so reduced as to be ineffective, whilst the BB is chunking full size rounds that distance. There are extended range ammuntions proposed for the BB that would enable it to out-shoot the effective combat radius of carrier attack planes w/o aerial refueling. Lastly, that "effective range" refered to AP rounds having enough momentum to defeat battleship armor - a worthless statistic so long as we don't have to shoot at another battleship.
IIRC current USN doctrine is that NGFS platforms should stand at least 25nm off-shore, at which distance the Iowas can't even hit the shoreline. Modern gun & ammo systems like 5-inch RAPs (and soon ERGM and possibly naval ATACMS) are more appropriate.
...and the Marines are unhappy with both the accuracy and the effectiveness of 5" rap lauched from over the horizon - part of the reason current Naval doctrine is such is because they DON'T have a heavily armored platform like the BBs in service. Do you know how SMALL the explosive charge is in a 5" rap shell?
5) 1500-man crew (just count the salaries...).
Could be manned with 800 according to Lehman, and the Marines have volunteered to pay for part of the manning costs. No reason automation can't be added during refit. How many people on a carrier, 4,000? 5,000?
60-year-old machinery and equipment.
Identical to that serving in the AOE Sacremento and Camden. How old are the engines in the USS United States - and there are plans to put her in service. How about the (former) Ile De France, the QE, the QEII? How old are the B-52s we are still using?
Design & construction techniques long surpassed.
Construction-wise we heven't built anything as heavily protected in the hull, including carriers, since. In this case, "they don't build them like they used to" is a compliment. Design-wise the Army and Marines are going back to 1911-style pistols for some units...guess what year they were designed in?
Drydock queens easily surpassing supercarriers in maintenance requirements (without any of their benefits).
... to be corrected during refit
"Facts, those stubborn things"
Yes, they are - especially when you know them! :p
Interesting points, especially regarding the torpedo protections. :)
Welcome to the forums, richyoung.
And very well done!
Not to stir the poodoo, but thought HEATs thread might be of interest in this discussion, as well... (http://www.strategyzoneonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12400&page=1&pp=40&highlight=USS+New+Jersey)
To tired to add to the discussion, but am humorously following the battle, regardless. A bit later, I'm sure.
http://img1.photobucket.com/albums/1003/acelazer/Pirate3.gif
Just curious, Rich....how well does an Iowa defeat wake-homing torpedos?
Boats
Hi Richyoung,
You have some interesting points there indeed, and some reasonable debate is in order. Let's see.
This is simply not so. The Iowa class has a spaced, triple-bottom hull, designed to withstand 700 pounds of TNT exploding beneath it - the concept of beneath-keel explosions was well understood by the naval architects that designed and built these ships - at the time, our own naval torpedo, the Mark 14, was fitted with an "influence" (magnetic) exploder to do just that.
Very interesting information. Got a solid source on that? I could pass that piece of info to the Harpoon DB designers for evaluation and any necessary modiications to the class representation in the various DBs.
Although FUNCTIONING torpedoes that can do this weren't built until after the war, the class was designed with this threat in mind. To an extent, they are vulnerable to the largest, most capable threat, - but so what? So is a carrier, or any other NGFS ship, and the size, triple bottom, and compartmentalization of the BB give her a better chance of withstanding a hit.
Assuming that the design measures you refer indeed exist, then this point is true. However, the typical 'song and dance' of battleship enthusiasts is that the BBs are all but impervious to even the heaviest weapons (as a simple stroll through UseNet and a gazillion forums demonstrates). "Vulnerable but better protected than its peers" is a quite different perspective than "They'll barely scrath the paint!".
BTW, I've seen photos of 1-ton underwater detonations at some distance from USN carriers (during shock trials, simulating mines or close-call Russian torps). The main vapor bubble (the back-breaker) was almost as big as the length of the carrier. Triple-bottom hull be damned, this is gonna HURT. (In my totally unscientific and humble opinion :smoke: )
You recall wrong. It covers almost everything except the foremost portion of the bow and the extreme stern. Adding the triple bottom, hull armor, armored turrets, and the triple-layer armored deck, the powerplant, magazines, all the main guns' breaches and ammuniton storage and handling facilities, basically everything needed to keep fighting, is in the "armored box" except fot the conning tower, which has its own armor.
Possibly trivial question: If the rest of the ship suffers catastrophic-level damage, does the armored section (with all the heavy stuff inside) have enough boyancy on its own to remain afloat?
Once again, you are wrong - perhaps you might wish to read about the pounding the South Dakota took at the hands of the Japanese - and she was NOT sunk. The deck is triple-layer spaced armor - the turret roofs are 7" of special face-hardened alloy - battleships most certainly did NOT have "typical WWII ship armor"...
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't other famous ship designs like the Bismark, Yamato, Shinano etc. feature equally impressive armor protection? All of them succumbed to combinations of air, ship and/or sub attacks.
NOT true - the IJN had munitions specially designed to attempt to defeat battleship armor (18.1 inch armor piercing, anyone?) - no such weapons exist today. There is no modern equivalent to a 14" or larger naval shell in terms of sectional density or armor penetration.
There are also no modern equivalents of the battleaxe (unless you count bayonets). All weapons have a lifecycle that is usually defined by their period of operational utility (and variated by technological/social/political/economic factors). Heavy-caliber guns have been replaced int he anti-surface role by guided missiles.
Even the aerial bombs of the time had to be developed for penetration, (if I recall correctly, Japan did so by adding fins to 15" AP naval shells...)
There were some quite successful endeavors, particularly from the Germans - the FX-1400 bomb (which handily sent the armored battleship Roma to the bottom, along with damaging several other ships), the less known HS-293 and some others.
- modern bombs, with the exception of rare and expensive "bunker busters", are optimzed for blast effect - not penetration
Actually, penetrators have gradually been becoming the norm. A BLU-109 or equivalent (with any combination of guidance kits) is relatively inexpensive and common these days, and most projects under development or in recent service (BLU-110, BANG, AASM, SDB, SPICE, the new KAB series etc.) follow the same trend. Sure, total inventories still favor Mk80-class HEs, but the point is that there are enough penetrators around that spending some of them on an important surface target is not a big worry.
They mean slightly more than NOTHING, because SECTIONAL DENSITY (or a shaped charge) is what is needed to defeat armor, and, because they have to fly, ASMs are not dense enough to defeat BB armor. (It doesn't matter how fast the butterfly is going - the windshield still wins).
The vast majority of modern AShMs have AP or SAP warheads precisely in order to punch through a ship's armor and deliver the explosive package intact inside the ship (and thus have the subsequent detonation tear the guts out). In the case of Russian AShMs in particular, you have to factor that their designers knew that they would likely have to go right through the armored flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
The few exceptions that did not count on kinetic energy and denseness to defeat armor (like the still widely-used SS-N-2 and its countless siblings) were designed with shaped-charge warheads.
This fallacy is the very reason KE is discounted when evaluating small arms ammuntion - it "over-values" velocity, whereas in the real world, .45 ACP out-performs rounds that KE indicates "should" be better, like 7.62 Mauser. Not to mention the ASMs with the big warheads are also the rarest, most expensive, and easiest to shoot down.
Rare? Yes, though it depends which OPFOR we're referring to. Expensive? You bet. (But worth it against a battleship, no doubt). Easiest to shoot down? Allow my disagreement. The USN went to extraordinary lengths to come up with counters to the Soviet/Russian heavy AShMs, and still keeping a safe distance and "shooting the archer, not the arrow" was deemed the best protective measure. Not exactly inspiring.
Their warheads would prove no more capable than the bombs on the Japanese Kamikaze - no U.S. battleship was ever even TAKEN OUT OF THE FIGHT, despite some taking multiple hits.
Allow me to not regard a HE-loaded Kamikaze in quite the same league as a modern AShM.
I guess we'll never know for sure until we actually get one of the Iowas and put it on a for-real SINKEX (in a few years, maybe...).
Exocet simply not a threat to the BBs - former NavSec Lehman agrees. You are half-right about 5 inch - it's more accurate, but penetration is actually less, as modern rounds are optimized for blast effect/lethal radius. Either way, Exocets and 5" can mess up the unarmored parts of the superstructure, but there is nothing there the ship needs to fight or move - those things that ARE essential are safe in the conning tower behind 17" of armor.
Including the exposed sensors, which are vital to the ship's ability to detect, track and engage hostile contacts? (As well as defend itself).
(This BTW is similar to how a battle tank can often be neutralised without physically being destroyed: Sprinkle it with light fire and eventually you can take out its exposed delicate EO/laser sensors, and thus deprive it of more than 50% of its operational capability).
Wrong again - trials conducted after their last modernization & refit, still using old shells and powder, showed the rounds would land within 200m of point of aim - and this is without precision guidance or GPS navigation, either of which would be easier to add to a roomy 16" round than to a 155mm round - and we already have those (see: Copperhead). We've proven with the HARP project that the electronics can withstand the launch.
Even so, it's still inferior to an aicraft's or modern arty piece's ability to deliver a warhead with a tolerance of just a few meters. The improvements you refer to add extra cost - anything can improve if you throw enough money at it. (Including torpedoes and AShMs ;))
Bad weather shuts down air (and it can't hang around long enough for continuous suppression) - ask the Rangers in Afghanistan...
B-52s can stay above the clouds and drop PGMs all day (as indeed happened), with coords provided by troops on the ground or third-party air scouts. UAVs and UCAVs will gradually take over the role of airborne bomb trucks.
As for fire persistence, IIRC the BBs take at least a a full day to reload the mags, correct? No NGFS during that time.
18 2,700lb shells a minute isn't enough for you?
They would be, if they were evenly spread in time (and had a high individual Ph, too). IIRC BBs almost always fired in concentrated salvoes in order to bracket/straddle the target area with multiple impacts and thus maximize the probability of getting at least one good hit out of the near- and far-misses. (Again, not a very inspiring thought for the G.I. on the ground who needs fire on top of the enemy _and nowhere else_...).
It would take more than 27 battalions (486 tubes) of Paladin M109A6 howitzers to throw an equivalent weight - and they can't do it from as far away. Only the lightest artillery peices exceed the battleships rate of fire, and its bullets are much bigger.
Why focus on raw weight of fire? The mission is to kill targets, not to compete on who will spit out more HE. If the job can be done with a few air- or arty-delivered PGMs then the point is moot.
Not may people can run a 100 yard dash in 20 seconds with a combat load, though swimming-pool sized craters, in combat boots, while people are shooting at you, with a concusion.
Even fewer people can put up any sort of resistance at all with multiple non-stop 5'' explosions on top of them (as opposed to 200m or 500m from them).
5" can't sustain a rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute.
A single Mk45 gun has a ROF of 16-20 rpm. Put even a single Spruance DD (2 guns) off the beach and you have 32-40 rounds per minute delivered out to 13NM (63NM with ERGM) with significantly better accuracy than the BB. Destroyers are also much more economical to operate, and you can afford to put together enough of them to provide virtually endless 24/7 NGFS through round-robin fire scheduling (one ship reloads while its peers shoot).
If the last sentence of this quote was true, we would still be fielding the French 75...
An interesting reference indeed. A weapon that long outlived its heavy-caliber counterparts exactly because its ROF was deemed more important than the monster-shells of the Big-Berthas of the day, and was eventually replaced by......more modern small/medium-caliber artillery.
Partly untrue, partly misleading, partly disenginuous. The guns can shoot out to almost 50km - nearly thirty statute miles, which are smaller than nautical miles. Modern 155mm howitzers, firing experimental RAP rounds,
Experimental...? Plz clarify. RAP munitions have been around for a while.
can get to that range...but with an explosive payload so reduced as to be ineffective, whilst the BB is chunking full size rounds that distance.
Full-size rounds of old HE delivered with operationally-significant inaccuracy. Modern arty munitions delivered at these distances are more accurate, correct?
This BTW reminds me how ICBM designers started shrinking the yield of nuclear warheads when they realised that making the warheads more accurate was not only feasible but also a more effective approach to the targetting problem than simply pushing the yield to multi-megaton figures.
There are extended range ammuntions proposed for the BB that would enable it to out-shoot the effective combat radius of carrier attack planes w/o aerial refueling.
There are lots of proposals out there.... NATACMS (RIP) was an interesting one, as was LASM. ERGM looks like it's going to make it.
Lastly, that "effective range" refered to AP rounds having enough momentum to defeat battleship armor - a worthless statistic so long as we don't have to shoot at another battleship.
True enough. Though the extra kinetic punch could be useful when trying to defeat armored targets - as is, IIRC, one of the main arguments of BB proponents.
...and the Marines are unhappy with both the accuracy and the effectiveness of 5" rap lauched from over the horizon - part of the reason current Naval doctrine is such is because they DON'T have a heavily armored platform like the BBs in service. Do you know how SMALL the explosive charge is in a 5" rap shell?
Hence the ERGM (and SDB). Accuracy does wonders in compensating for a small payload.
BTW, do you have any official source for the claim that current doctrine is influenced by the lack of BBs? I would be very interested in reading it.
Could be manned with 800 according to Lehman, and the Marines have volunteered to pay for part of the manning costs.
Is that the "two shafts only" proposal?
No reason automation can't be added during refit.
Not nearly as easy/simple as it sounds. Hard contract proposals?
How many people on a carrier, 4,000? 5,000?
Cost-effectiveness and unique abilities there.
Identical to that serving in the AOE Sacremento and Camden. How old are the engines in the USS United States - and there are plans to put her in service. How about the (former) Ile De France, the QE, the QEII? How old are the B-52s we are still using?
Good point on Sacramento, poor example on that last one. The B-52s were designed with future growth in mind, and underwent several generations of successful system upgrades (only the engines have been untouched, and probably not for long). What design features exist on the BBs that facilitate painless machinery upgrades from the ground up? (Keeping in mind that any such upgrades would, by necessity, also force throwing out all the old plumbing, electrical circuits etc. etc.) More importantly, how cost-effective would this be?
Construction-wise we heven't built anything as heavily protected in the hull, including carriers, since. In this case, "they don't build them like they used to" is a compliment. Design-wise the Army and Marines are going back to 1911-style pistols for some units...guess what year they were designed in?
The exception does not invalidate the rule. Compare the WW1 soldier with that the US Army has in mind for the next decade. For that matter, compare _anything_ in the current and future US inventory with what existed back then. I don't see infleunces of the Sopwith Camel on the F-22 :smoke:
... to be corrected during refit
Money, money, money...
Yes, they are - especially when you know them! :p
Yup, even more so when you can put them in proper context :laugh:
Nevertheless, thanks for the interesting points. The first one (about the protection-oriented design features) could prove quite useful to some of my associates, if you can elaborate.
Just curious, Rich....how well does an Iowa defeat wake-homing torpedos?
LOL. :laugh: How well does ANY ship defeat wake-homers, "Boats" ? ;)
Hi Richyoung,
You have some interesting points there indeed, and some reasonable debate is in order. Let's see.
Very interesting information. Got a solid source on that? I could pass that piece of info to the Harpoon DB designers for evaluation and any necessary modiications to the class representation in the various DBs.
here is a good one D
http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm
including this diagram
http://www.battleship.org/images/BN/armor5.jpg
One should think just what is being said here. "Withstand 700lb of TNT". Well most 533mm heavy weight torpedos have a warhead in the 400-700lb range. The other great enemy in the littorals is the mine and its not uncommon for these to have a similar sort or weight of explosive filler. Sounds like the BB should probably be okay then hey, whoops sorry torpedoes and mines aren't filled with TNT are they. Modern high explosive is typically quote as 2-3 time more energetic than TNT and some formulations (like the stuff used in torpedoes) even more so. These threats are not the worst case, the 533mm torpedo and the mine are the standard armament of ever diesel sub since the end of the Second World War be they an old Guppy, a Romeo or a top of the line Type 212.
Debate about the relative vulnerability of BBS, stimulating or not, does overlook the issue of just what are they going to do. Looking the US military's recent escapades, Afghanistan - hmm not unless they fit wheels, Iraq - well only the Basra and Al Faw regions are within range of NGFS and funnilly enough the British got that area and they have even less NGFS capability than the USN at the moment. Similarly I don't see just what the battlewagons bring to the War Against Terror, killing lots of inocent people to get a couple of Al Quaeda chappies tends to solve the bad guys recruiting problems for the next year. Maybe when the war with China arrives the BBs can make a heroic sortie into the Tawian Strait, hmm maybe not, its not 1950 anymore. When the ships were reactivated in the 1980s the crew's were reduced from 2500 to 1500. Sure Lehmann claims that a crew of 800 is possible but that arrangement renders them unsuitable as fleet units. Mighty expensive toys to having sitting around just incase we need to re-enact D-Day or Inchon. Especially in a world where the US and UK militaries are forced to cut programs to pay for todays operational needs.
Good point on Sacramento, poor example on that last one. The B-52s were designed with future growth in mind, and underwent several generations of successful system upgrades (only the engines have been untouched, and probably not for long). What design features exist on the BBs that facilitate painless machinery upgrades from the ground up? (Keeping in mind that any such upgrades would, by necessity, also force throwing out all the old plumbing, electrical circuits etc. etc.) More importantly, how cost-effective would this be?
D I'm shocked. The B-52H model introduced the TF-33 to replace the J-57 from 1960 :)
Daniel
here is a good one D
http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm
including this diagram
Great info, Dan. Thanks for pointing it out.
I don't know about the triple hull issue - I'm ex AF - but I spent a weekend on the USS Massachusetts BB59 (SD class) no modern antiship missile (even Sunburn) is going to cause a problem w/o a special warhead :surprise: I would not want to be
in any situation where a ship like this decides it wants to engage - can you blame the marines - not only 9 16" guns but
far too many rapid fire 5" guns w/many rounds in the mags - she
went thru 2 rebuilds to help w/the kamikazes :devil:
In 1983, the USS New Jersey was the best support available to the Marines after their barracks were bombed in Beirut.
Oh boy.
First, NJ fired before, not after the bombing. After the bombing the Americans did - nothing. They cancelled an airstrike and the only ones to engage Hisbollah were - the French of all people. The U.S. left thereafter.
Second, first-hand accounts of soldiers on shore describe the fire from NJ as "utterly useless". There were just no targets big enough in that extremely fragmented civil war.
I don't know squat about littoral warfare - but does'nt having a large gun platform seem like a reasonable solution?
If all we're looking for, is to supply Naval Gunfire Support, then you don't need a 60 year old ship with steam engines, and systems that are virtually unknown except to a dwindling handful of over the hill sailors (I know they would take exception to this, but I also believe the ship would have to carry several doctors specializing in geriatric medicine). You could take the average Ro-Ro, do some deck strengthing, add some elevators, a couple of gas turbines for ships power, and a good com suite. You could put any damn gun in the world on it, and plenty of them, and be able to carry one hell of a lot of ammunition. I just read an article in Proceedings, no less, that called for the end of DD(X), and for bringing back two Iowas. I cannot believe sea-going professionals would be so ignorant of objective reality, and so smitten by those antiquated leviathans, that they would post such drivel to the premier Naval review and discussion publication
Finally, where have the Marines landed in the past 25 years that they required 16" naval gunfire support? Public opinion today will not stand for the waste of human life that assaults like Tarawa or Iwo Jima. And if the Marines of 1944 had access to the technology of 2005, they would have not set foot on those god-cursed islands or lost a single Marine taking them...Can you say, "MOAB"? Dozens of them? Or FAE? Or asymetric warfare?
Please...let the BBs take their place of honor...as museums
(and don't take this as a defense of DD(X)..I think that thing is a huge boondogle itself)
Boats
richyoung
19 Jul 05, 12:45
Hi Richyoung,
You have some interesting points there indeed, and some reasonable debate is in order. Let's see.
This is simply not so. The Iowa class has a spaced, triple-bottom hull, designed to withstand 700 pounds of TNT exploding beneath it - the concept of beneath-keel explosions was well understood by the naval architects that designed and built these ships - at the time, our own naval torpedo, the Mark 14, was fitted with an "influence" (magnetic) exploder to do just that.
Very interesting information. Got a solid source on that? I could pass that piece of info to the Harpoon DB designers for evaluation and any necessary modiications to the class representation in the various DBs.
Learn about the Iowa's armor here... (http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm)
Although FUNCTIONING torpedoes that can do this weren't built until after the war, the class was designed with this threat in mind. To an extent, they are vulnerable to the largest, most capable threat, - but so what? So is a carrier, or any other NGFS ship, and the size, triple bottom, and compartmentalization of the BB give her a better chance of withstanding a hit.
Assuming that the design measures you refer indeed exist, then this point is true. However, the typical 'song and dance' of battleship enthusiasts is that the BBs are all but impervious to even the heaviest weapons (as a simple stroll through UseNet and a gazillion forums demonstrates). "Vulnerable but better protected than its peers" is a quite different perspective than "They'll barely scrath the paint!".
While I think the BBs should be brought back , for a number of operational and psychological reasons, it would be intellectually dishonest to claim them to be "invulnerable" to moderm mines and torpedoes - I think it fair to asser that they are at least as well-protected against such a threat an almost all modern ships with the possible exceptio of carriers, and certainly more so than any projected NGFS. Against ASMs, she really is all but inveulnerable to all except the biggest, most expensive, and rarest ones - assuming countermeasures fail to work.
BTW, I've seen photos of 1-ton underwater detonations at some distance from USN carriers (during shock trials, simulating mines or close-call Russian torps). The main vapor bubble (the back-breaker) was almost as big as the length of the carrier. Triple-bottom hull be damned, this is gonna HURT. (In my totally unscientific and humble opinion :smoke: )
Agreed - but there is a differenve between "hurt" and "fataly wound" - the fact that there are SOME threats capable of damaging the BBs is in no way an argument AGAINST their use - ALL fleet units are vulnerable to a certain extent, the BB far less than most.
You recall wrong. It covers almost everything except the foremost portion of the bow and the extreme stern. Adding the triple bottom, hull armor, armored turrets, and the triple-layer armored deck, the powerplant, magazines, all the main guns' breaches and ammuniton storage and handling facilities, basically everything needed to keep fighting, is in the "armored box" except fot the conning tower, which has its own armor.
Possibly trivial question: If the rest of the ship suffers catastrophic-level damage, does the armored section (with all the heavy stuff inside) have enough boyancy on its own to remain afloat?
Yes.
Once again, you are wrong - perhaps you might wish to read about the pounding the South Dakota took at the hands of the Japanese - and she was NOT sunk. The deck is triple-layer spaced armor - the turret roofs are 7" of special face-hardened alloy - battleships most certainly did NOT have "typical WWII ship armor"...
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't other famous ship designs like the Bismark, Yamato, Shinano etc. feature equally impressive armor protection? All of them succumbed to combinations of air, ship and/or sub attacks.
Bismark had a design flaw - her electrical and hydraulic lines ran under the deck OUTSIDE of the armor - even then, her own crew had to scuttle her even after the pounding she took. Shinana didn't have her watertight doors correctly fitted - and STILL stayed afloat AND steaming for over eight owers after taking four fish. The ends of the Yamato class BBs are more a reflection of a LACK of air cover than anything else - given an unlimited pounding, anything will eventually succumb.
NOT true - the IJN had munitions specially designed to attempt to defeat battleship armor (18.1 inch armor piercing, anyone?) - no such weapons exist today. There is no modern equivalent to a 14" or larger naval shell in terms of sectional density or armor penetration.
There are also no modern equivalents of the battleaxe (unless you count bayonets). All weapons have a lifecycle that is usually defined by their period of operational utility (and variated by technological/social/political/economic factors). Heavy-caliber guns have been replaced int he anti-surface role by guided missiles.
..NONE of which are designed to be capable of penetrating a target as hard as a BB - for the simple reason there AREN'T any in service.
Even the aerial bombs of the time had to be developed for penetration, (if I recall correctly, Japan did so by adding fins to 15" AP naval shells...)
There were some quite successful endeavors, particularly from the Germans - the FX-1400 bomb (which handily sent the armored battleship Roma to the bottom, along with damaging several other ships), the less known HS-293 and some others.
NONE of which are in anyone's inventory...
- modern bombs, with the exception of rare and expensive "bunker busters", are optimzed for blast effect - not penetration
Actually, penetrators have gradually been becoming the norm. A BLU-109 or equivalent (with any combination of guidance kits) is relatively inexpensive and common these days, and most projects under development or in recent service (BLU-110, BANG, AASM, SDB, SPICE, the new KAB series etc.) follow the same trend. Sure, total inventories still favor Mk80-class HEs, but the point is that there are enough penetrators around that spending some of them on an important surface target is not a big worry.
1. ANY NGFS vessel without air cover is in for a long day - the BB is more equipped to SURVIVE and continue to FUNCION after such a pasting than any proposed replacement. Plus most of the $$ to develope bunker-busters has been spent by US - I hope we won't be targeting our own ship. Dang few similar weapons in anyone else's inventory - this assuming they will work as well on face-hardened armor as they do on dirt and concrete - which they wont.
They mean slightly more than NOTHING, because SECTIONAL DENSITY (or a shaped charge) is what is needed to defeat armor, and, because they have to fly, ASMs are not dense enough to defeat BB armor. (It doesn't matter how fast the butterfly is going - the windshield still wins).
The vast majority of modern AShMs have AP or SAP warheads precisely in order to punch through a ship's armor and deliver the explosive package intact inside the ship (and thus have the subsequent detonation tear the guts out). In the case of Russian AShMs in particular, you have to factor that their designers knew that they would likely have to go right through the armored flight deck of an aircraft carrier.
That "armored flight deck" isn't NEAR the hardness of a BB's spaced, triple layer deck, or turret roof. Can't be, for center of gravity reasons...
The few exceptions that did not count on kinetic energy and denseness to defeat armor (like the still widely-used SS-N-2 and its countless siblings) were designed with shaped-charge warheads.
...against which spaced armor, such as the deck of the BB, is even MORE effective. Add some aplique ceramic armor to the decks and turret roofs, and we can discount theis threat
This fallacy is the very reason KE is discounted when evaluating small arms ammuntion - it "over-values" velocity, whereas in the real world, .45 ACP out-performs rounds that KE indicates "should" be better, like 7.62 Mauser. Not to mention the ASMs with the big warheads are also the rarest, most expensive, and easiest to shoot down.
Rare? Yes, though it depends which OPFOR we're referring to. Expensive? You bet. (But worth it against a battleship, no doubt). Easiest to shoot down? Allow my disagreement. The USN went to extraordinary lengths to come up with counters to the Soviet/Russian heavy AShMs, and still keeping a safe distance and "shooting the archer, not the arrow" was deemed the best protective measure. Not exactly inspiring.
Again, the purpose of the BB is naval gun fire support of an amphibious landing - either this problem is taken care of BEFORE we send in the Marines, or else it is a vulnerability that ANY replacement NGFS vessel is even MORE vulnerable to. Add some extended range rounds for the 16" guns, and the BB looks better and better for this...
Their warheads would prove no more capable than the bombs on the Japanese Kamikaze - no U.S. battleship was ever even TAKEN OUT OF THE FIGHT, despite some taking multiple hits.
Allow me to not regard a HE-loaded Kamikaze in quite the same league as a modern AShM.
No dice - against the vast majority of ASMs, (Exocet class...) the Kamikaze is MORE effective, plus full of highly combustible av gas.
I guess we'll never know for sure until we actually get one of the Iowas and put it on a for-real SINKEX (in a few years, maybe...).
bite your tounge! :p
Exocet simply not a threat to the BBs - former NavSec Lehman agrees. You are half-right about 5 inch - it's more accurate, but penetration is actually less, as modern rounds are optimized for blast effect/lethal radius. Either way, Exocets and 5" can mess up the unarmored parts of the superstructure, but there is nothing there the ship needs to fight or move - those things that ARE essential are safe in the conning tower behind 17" of armor.
Including the exposed sensors, which are vital to the ship's ability to detect, track and engage hostile contacts? (As well as defend itself).
..and this differs from DD(X) HOW exactly?
(This BTW is similar to how a battle tank can often be neutralised without physically being destroyed: Sprinkle it with light fire and eventually you can take out its exposed delicate EO/laser sensors, and thus deprive it of more than 50% of its operational capability).
..its also why tanks have .50 cal and coax guns, plus operate with infantry. Similarly, other task force vessles must bear the major burden of ASW/AMW/AA duties, whilst the BB makes swimming pools out of bunkers.
Wrong again - trials conducted after their last modernization & refit, still using old shells and powder, showed the rounds would land within 200m of point of aim - and this is without precision guidance or GPS navigation, either of which would be easier to add to a roomy 16" round than to a 155mm round - and we already have those (see: Copperhead). We've proven with the HARP project that the electronics can withstand the launch. Plus a 200m error is good enough against most targets, considering that they completely defoliate trees to a 300m radius - and trees are harder than people.
Even so, it's still inferior to an aicraft's or modern arty piece's ability to deliver a warhead with a tolerance of just a few meters.
Wrong - only PGMs have that kind of accuracy. A typical 155mm shell puts a much smaller payload somehwere within a 50m radius of it's target, usually. That's part of the reason a minimum fire correction is 100m - if you aren't further off, you are better of repeating than trying to adjust. And if you are going to credit the alternatives with PG, then I get to put PG rounds into the 16"s - no trouble to develope, we are doing it already with 155mm.
The improvements you refer to add extra cost - anything can improve if you throw enough money at it. (Including torpedoes and AShMs ;))
But WHO is going to spend rare dfense $$ to develope a capability to take out TWO vessels in the whole world? More cost effective to attack its log train, (fuel, ammo, etc.)
Bad weather shuts down air (and it can't hang around long enough for continuous suppression) - ask the Rangers in Afghanistan...
B-52s can stay above the clouds and drop PGMs all day (as indeed happened),
Oh, you can DROP them all day, all right...you just can see to illume the target with the designator, which kinda defeats that expensive PG fuse. Ask the Marines and the Rangers in Afghanistan about relying on air, especially for continuous suppresion missions - it just isn't there often enough for long enough to get it done.
with coords provided by troops on the ground or third-party air scouts. UAVs and UCAVs will gradually take over the role of airborne bomb trucks.
As for fire persistence, IIRC the BBs take at least a a full day to reload the mags, correct? No NGFS during that time.
But what NGFS until the mags empty! More than 1200 rounds on board...Didn't seem to be a problem at Normandy or in the Pacific.
18 2,700lb shells a minute isn't enough for you?
They would be, if they were evenly spread in time (and had a high individual Ph, too). IIRC BBs almost always fired in concentrated salvoes in order to bracket/straddle the target area with multiple impacts and thus maximize the probability of getting at least one good hit out of the near- and far-misses. (Again, not a very inspiring thought for the G.I. on the ground who needs fire on top of the enemy _and nowhere else_...).
Tactics for NGFS are different than for engaging an enemy battleship manuvering at 30+ knots, plus you forget that PG rounds are to be used in such a scenario...
It would take more than 27 battalions (486 tubes) of Paladin M109A6 howitzers to throw an equivalent weight - and they can't do it from as far away. Only the lightest artillery peices exceed the battleships rate of fire, and its bullets are much bigger.
Why focus on raw weight of fire? The mission is to kill targets, not to compete on who will spit out more HE. If the job can be done with a few air- or arty-delivered PGMs then the point is moot.
Except it CAN'T - with few exceptions, the weapons you describe can't take out hardened bunkers - the 16" can with ease, especially if modded to be PG.
Not may people can run a 100 yard dash in 20 seconds with a combat load, though swimming-pool sized craters, in combat boots, while people are shooting at you, with a concusion.
Even fewer people can put up any sort of resistance at all with multiple non-stop 5'' explosions on top of them (as opposed to 200m or 500m from them).
5" PD into soft soil? Like , oh I dunno, SAND? I know which I want shooting at me if I have a choice...
5" can't sustain a rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute.
A single Mk45 gun has a ROF of 16-20 rpm. Put even a single Spruance DD (2 guns) off the beach and you have 32-40 rounds per minute delivered out to 13NM (63NM with ERGM) with significantly better accuracy than the BB.
You can't sustain this rate of fire for more than a few minutes - the BB can fire two braodsides a minute all day long until the mags run dry. Not to mention you can put a lot of secondaray guns, like dual-purpose 5", on a BB deck...
Destroyers are also much more economical to operate, and you can afford to put together enough of them to provide virtually endless 24/7 NGFS through round-robin fire scheduling (one ship reloads while its peers shoot).
Great - we can gain the capability to throw a lot of tiny bullets at dug-in defenses for only slightly more per ship than refitting the BBs, which is what the Marines who have to go over the beach want. Do you THINK they might have an idea of what will be most effective for them?
If the last sentence of this quote was true, we would still be fielding the French 75...
An interesting reference indeed. A weapon that long outlived its heavy-caliber counterparts exactly because its ROF was deemed more important than the monster-shells of the Big-Berthas of the day, and was eventually replaced by......more modern small/medium-caliber artillery.
I would call 8" and 6" (155mm) in comparison to the woefully ineffective 3" (75mm).
Partly untrue, partly misleading, partly disenginuous. The guns can shoot out to almost 50km - nearly thirty statute miles, which are smaller than nautical miles. Modern 155mm howitzers, firing experimental RAP rounds,
Experimental...? Plz clarify. RAP munitions have been around for a while.
Not RAP munitons that will shoot out to 50k from a G5/G6 - there are non-production, experimental rounds with miniscule payloads (4 kg, IIRC),, that only hit that range from the new (read "not fielded yet") extra-long barrels, that have done so, but they are not in production yet - that is to say - they are UNATTAINABLE. If you get to shoot unobatainable rounds in the 155s for argument's sake, then the BB gets to benefit from the same technology...in bigger, more capable guns.
can get to that range...but with an explosive payload so reduced as to be ineffective, whilst the BB is chunking full size rounds that distance.
Full-size rounds of old HE delivered with operationally-significant inaccuracy. Modern arty munitions delivered at these distances are more accurate, correct?
Not correct, unless prcision or satelite guided - an easy mod to incorporate in new ammo for the 16"s.
This BTW reminds me how ICBM designers started shrinking the yield of nuclear warheads when they realised that making the warheads more accurate was not only feasible but also a more effective approach to the targetting problem than simply pushing the yield to multi-megaton figures.
Apples & oranges - killing a city isn't the same as killing a bunker.
There are extended range ammuntions proposed for the BB that would enable it to out-shoot the effective combat radius of carrier attack planes w/o aerial refueling.
There are lots of proposals out there.... NATACMS (RIP) was an interesting one, as was LASM. ERGM looks like it's going to make it.
And the improved 16" rounds represent proven technology already used in other artillery rounds, and are only slightly less "real" than the near-mythical 50k 155 round...
Lastly, that "effective range" refered to AP rounds having enough momentum to defeat battleship armor - a worthless statistic so long as we don't have to shoot at another battleship.
The class fired HC shells to more than 49 kilometers in trials during their last activation.
...and the Marines are unhappy with both the accuracy and the effectiveness of 5" rap lauched from over the horizon - part of the reason current Naval doctrine is such is because they DON'T have a heavily armored platform like the BBs in service. Do you know how SMALL the explosive charge is in a 5" rap shell?
Hence the ERGM (and SDB). Accuracy does wonders in compensating for a small payload.
BTW, do you have any official source for the claim that current doctrine is influenced by the lack of BBs? I would be very interested in reading it.
Could be manned with 800 according to Lehman, and the Marines have volunteered to pay for part of the manning costs.
Is that the "two shafts only" proposal?
No reason automation can't be added during refit.
Not nearly as easy/simple as it sounds. Hard contract proposals?
How many people on a carrier, 4,000? 5,000?
Cost-effectiveness and unique abilities there.
Identical to that serving in the AOE Sacremento and Camden. How old are the engines in the USS United States - and there are plans to put her in service. How about the (former) Ile De France, the QE, the QEII? How old are the B-52s we are still using?
Good point on Sacramento, poor example on that last one. The B-52s were designed with future growth in mind, and underwent several generations of successful system upgrades (only the engines have been untouched, and probably not for long). What design features exist on the BBs that facilitate painless machinery upgrades from the ground up? (Keeping in mind that any such upgrades would, by necessity, also force throwing out all the old plumbing, electrical circuits etc. etc.) More importantly, how cost-effective would this be?
More cost effective than building DD(X) - you think they didn't pull a lot of wiring when the B-52's servos were converted from 5881 (short bottle 6L6 vacuum tube) to solid state?
Construction-wise we heven't built anything as heavily protected in the hull, including carriers, since. In this case, "they don't build them like they used to" is a compliment. Design-wise the Army and Marines are going back to 1911-style pistols for some units...guess what year they were designed in?
The exception does not invalidate the rule. Compare the WW1 soldier with that the US Army has in mind for the next decade. For that matter, compare _anything_ in the current and future US inventory with what existed back then. I don't see infleunces of the Sopwith Camel on the F-22 :smoke:
Compare the BB (which exists) to what we have for heavy NGFS - NOTHING! A star-guaged 1903 Springfield with a scope may not be the "state of the art" sniper rifle, but with modern ammo, it will kill you just as dead, and beats not having one at all, which is the boat we are in.
... to be corrected during refit
Money, money, money...
Yes, they are - especially when you know them! :p
Yup, even more so when you can put them in proper context :laugh:
Nevertheless, thanks for the interesting points. The first one (about the protection-oriented design features) could prove quite useful to some of my associates, if you can elaborate.
The web site should be a good start - bear in mind that is "as constructed" - who knows what improvements were incorporated in all the refits?
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richyoung
19 Jul 05, 13:02
One should think just what is being said here. "Withstand 700lb of TNT". Well most 533mm heavy weight torpedos have a warhead in the 400-700lb range. The other great enemy in the littorals is the mine and its not uncommon for these to have a similar sort or weight of explosive filler. Sounds like the BB should probably be okay then hey, whoops sorry torpedoes and mines aren't filled with TNT are they. Modern high explosive is typically quote as 2-3 time more energetic than TNT and some formulations (like the stuff used in torpedoes) even more so.
Not true - most explosives have roughly the same power as their WWII counterparts - in some cases, slightly more, in many cases, (torpedos and mines) slightly less - as a consequence of reformulation to reduce "cook-offs", sympathetic detonation, etc. This is a natural reflection of the fact that carriers and attack subs are much more precious and scarce resources, which need to stay in service for longer periods - thusly, their own weapons have to be less of a threat when stored or handled, lest one have a "Kursk" incident.
These threats are not the worst case, the 533mm torpedo and the mine are the standard armament of ever diesel sub since the end of the Second World War be they an old Guppy, a Romeo or a top of the line Type 212.
ASW/AMW is not the function of the BB - rather, that duty is delegated to the assets outfitted for that job - the minesweepers, ASW frigates, and the attack subs attached to the task force. Complaining about the BBs vulnerability to torpedoes is like cutting Nate Newton because he can't throw a 60 yard spiral...it's just NOT his job!
Debate about the relative vulnerability of BBS, stimulating or not, does overlook the issue of just what are they going to do. Looking the US military's recent escapades, Afghanistan - hmm not unless they fit wheels, Iraq - well only the Basra and Al Faw regions are within range of NGFS and funnilly enough the British got that area and they have even less NGFS capability than the USN at the moment.
This situation changes with RAP and scramjet rounds...
Similarly I don't see just what the battlewagons bring to the War Against Terror, killing lots of inocent people to get a couple of Al Quaeda chappies tends to solve the bad guys recruiting problems for the next year. Maybe when the war with China arrives the BBs can make a heroic sortie into the Tawian Strait, hmm maybe not, its not 1950 anymore. When the ships were reactivated in the 1980s the crew's were reduced from 2500 to 1500. Sure Lehmann claims that a crew of 800 is possible but that arrangement renders them unsuitable as fleet units.
If needed to operate as fleet units, the engine rooms can be fully manned by calling up reserve units, or canabilizing one crew to fully man the other. Even with only two rooms manned, they will make almost 24 knots....plenty fast for beach pounding...
Mighty expensive toys to having sitting around just incase we need to re-enact D-Day or Inchon.
Mighty expensive NOT to have them if we DO have to re-create those actions...
Especially in a world where the US and UK militaries are forced to cut programs to pay for todays operational needs.
And yet the Marines are VOLUNTEERING to pay for manning them. You think they would do that if they wouldn't be effective?
If needed to operate as fleet units, the engine rooms can be fully manned by calling up reserve units, or canabilizing one crew to fully man the other. Even with only two rooms manned, they will make almost 24 knots....plenty fast for beach pounding...
Not to knit pick, as you have a firm grip on the general facts, but the Iowa class are able to achieve 27 knots on 2 turbines/4 boilers. USS Sacramento & USS Camden have very much proven the plants were capable of this speed & endurance, as well. Each recieved & steamed on 1/2 (2 turbines/4 boilers) of the cancelled Kentuckys engines at a smart & efficient 27 knots when ever required. Not surprisingly... On 4 plants, pit logs have shown that a couple of Iowas achieved 35 knots - 2 knots higher than the design criteria of 33 knots.
Not only can a battleship on station be manned by reserves & sister ship crew... New Jersey remained on station off Beirut while rotating it's crew with the that of the modernizing & reactivating Iowas crew. The experience brought to Iowa's crew - unattainable by any other means - something that school ashore couldn't. Not only valuable training, but hands on experience before their own vessel re-entered service as center piece of it's own Surface Battle Group. The best teachers & classroom for USS Iowa & reserve elements was the experienced crew of/and USS New Jersey.
Something rarely mentioned, but when in range... one Iowa can deliver on target in 30 minutes what requires one Carrier roughly 24 hours to deliver.
This does not include her suite of Tomahawks.
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richyoung
20 Jul 05, 13:48
Sorry, Admiral - I try to cross-check my facts as much as possible while at work, but in the case of the speed, I took former SecNav Lehman's word...I couldn't find any published reports of an Iowa operating on two engines only...
Either way, bring 'em back!
Rich
They mean slightly more than NOTHING, because SECTIONAL DENSITY (or a shaped charge) is what is needed to defeat armor, and, because they have to fly, ASMs are not dense enough to defeat BB armor. (It doesn't matter how fast the butterfly is going - the windshield still wins).
I do not know much about the issue you talk about but i disagree with the above quote.
Density is sure a factor for penetration but things are not so simple.
You can certainly have the case when speed will permit penetration in spite of lower density of the penetrator.
The windshield does not always win against a bird which collides with an airplane during the flight.
A piece of rubber detached from a tire explosion during a take off can certainly create a large hole in the airframe or wings and in fact we have accidents caused of that.
Wrong again - trials conducted after their last modernization & refit, still using old shells and powder, showed the rounds would land within 200m of point of aim -
The above quote is missing crucial details.
It is possible that both you and Sunburn be right.
You can not quote about dispersion without mentioning range.
From some old manuals i have , i recall the use of term "battle range" for artillery.Typically it was about 2/3 of maximum range .
Up to this distance the dispersion was small enough to permit artillery fire without the need to consume huge quantities of ammunition.
Once again, for our newer members...
And yes, I get pretty nostalgic sometimes.
BUMP!
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Herman Hum
25 Sep 05, 03:37
You can not quote about dispersion without mentioning range.
From some old manuals i have , i recall the use of term "battle range" for artillery.Typically it was about 2/3 of maximum range .
Up to this distance the dispersion was small enough to permit artillery fire without the need to consume huge quantities of ammunition.Is "battle range" shorter because the flight time is reduced enough that a target is unable to move far or fast enough to be out of the dispersal pattern when the shells land?
I've always thought that if the shells from the main guns took # minutes of flight time to arrive at maximum range, the target would have moved quite a distance by the time they landed. I would think that a hit at maximum range would have to be the most incredible stroke of luck (or lousy evasion on the part of the target).
I have this WWII simulation, Action Stations, and it does a really neat attempt at modelling crew fatigue. According to the game, most main gun batteries would suffer tremendous reduction in efficiency and accuracy after just a few rounds from the main guns. Anyone else hear about this effect?
How can the target move out of the dispersal area of naval guns at max range?
The target (presumed mobile) cannot see/hear the gun firing at max range, and cannot know how the pattern will be walked. 9 shells in a salvo make a pretty big pattern and ground units will need to be dug in rather than move in the open!
Herman Hum
25 Sep 05, 15:33
I was referring to ships as the targets and not a shore bombardment mission. I would think that a ship travelling at 30kts can move plenty far in the time required for the shells to fly to maximum range.
Those factors are fed to the FC computer.
Ships course, speed, charge & projectile is factored with wind, target range, bearing, course & speed to achieve firing solution.
Basic Trig, mechanically generated!
An able Skipper can anticipate fall of shot & comb the splash. An equally able Skipper can seperate his turrets using his secondary FC or grant various degrees of local control to the turrets, to make it more difficult, but in the end the close of battle ranges is all one can do to improve ones fall of shot.
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Herman Hum
26 Sep 05, 02:20
Those factors are fed to the FC computer.
Ships course, speed, charge & projectile is factored with wind, target range, bearing, course & speed to achieve firing solution.
Basic Trig, mechanically generated!
An able Skipper can anticipate fall of shot & comb the splash. An equally able Skipper can seperate his turrets using his secondary FC or grant various degrees of local control to the turrets, to make it more difficult, but in the end the close of battle ranges is all one can do to improve ones fall of shot.Well, the maximum range of a projectile is 26 miles or approximately 42,000 yards. If the projectile is travelling at about 2400 feet/second, then it would take about about a minute to arrive from firing to splash.
In that same minute, if the target is travelling at 30kts, it could have moved about .5 nautical miles. Even if every one of the nine shells lands EXACTLY where it is planned, the entire salvo can only cover so much area in its dispersal pattern. And, since the shells are AP shells, only a direct hit has any probability of inflicting damage, so near-misses do not count.
I still say that a hit at that distance would be an incredible stroke of luck or the target's skipper telegraphed his actions to the ship firing. .5 nautical miles is one heckuva a large area.
Now, if the Battle range is only 2/3 of the maximum, then the flight time is only about 35 seconds and the target could only have moved .25 nautical miles. The dispersal pattern might have a reasonable chance of catching the ship with at least one shell.
I'm just thinking aloud. Any real gunners out there to correct my errors?
You have the general idea, however...
Have you ever been Duck hunting?
The FC computers don't figure for where the target is. They figure where he'll be when the salvo arrives. The operators can also factor in anticipated manuever.
Turrets do not have to fire in train with each other, & often didn't.
Until a target has been stradled by ranging shot, full or partial broadsides are a waste of propellant & projectile.
Either way, a long range artillarists duel at sea & underway is subject to many variables that change, making a hit highly difficult & yes... often lucky.
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Herman Hum
26 Sep 05, 06:36
Either way, a long range artillerists duel at sea & underway is subject to many variables that change, making a hit highly difficult & yes... often lucky.Yeah, sometimes that's all it takes. ISTR that HMS Hood was sunk within a few salvos by a single shell in her magazines.
Yeah, sometimes that's all it takes. ISTR that HMS Hood was sunk within a few salvos by a single shell in her magazines.
I know an elderly gentleman who served aboard King George V. Some terrific history there. :)
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