Juubi Karakuchi wrote:It is a common argument, valid in itself, by battleship advocates that shells cannot be intercepted by existing defences. This is only one of several mistakes made by Zipang with regard to modern naval warfare, another being its use of a tomahawk missile to sink the USS Wasp, unless one counts the one-off anti-ship variant that was never used.
TASM was never fired in anger but it was deployed (and eventually removed from service due to over-the-horizon targeting problems). It's not particularly problematic to assume that this alternative-Japan had access to such weapons (other than various East Asian nations being unhappy about Japan getting Tomahawk-anything).
As to whether a modern ship could miss a WW2 submarine, it depends. Despite what the US navy might claim, modern diesel subs can be highly effective. They use pretty much the same technology as nuclear subs, only losing out in terms of endurance underwater (they can't circumnavigate the globe underwater without refueling). A modern diesel sub is can avoid detection by switching off its engine and sitting on the bottom, whereas a nuclear sub would still be making noise (you can't just shut down a nuclear reactor), though efforts have been made to remedy this in recent designs.
Modern diesel subs are highly effective as mobile minefields but lack blue-water capability, which is what the USN tends to regard as its playground. Outside of confined exercise spaces, it's unlikely that an SSK would be able to engage a carrier group at speed unless said carrier group went right over the submarine (which could happen!) As for reactors, not all have pump noise, and efforts to quiet the ones that do have been not just the product of "recent design" efforts but decades of work.
Thus, whether a WW2 sub could avoid a modern ship depends on a variety of factors. It would depend on the exact conditions, what the sub was doing, and the quality of the crew.
There's also other voodoo like the inversion layer, etc. that makes ASW such a black art.