Battleships and costs

[Thanas]

^And the idiocy train to stupidtown is right on track.

You really think the Egyptians were just that inepet that they could not get planes in the air? Or could maintain an aircraft carrier?

[ComradeClaus]

the only time egypt WASN'T inept was when sadat signed a peace treaty w/ israel, that & build the pyramids.

It was said earlier that if egypt bought a battleship, it'd just rust at anchor. a carrier is even more complex, w/ more things to break (catapults, arrestor cables, elevators) that must be maintained constantly, it'd be even harder for them to run it, plus, if it can't run at full speed, it can't launch jets (like what happened to 25th de mayo in the falklands, it's boilers failed, iirc), wheras a battleship is still operational even if half sunk, like the soviet ship gangut? (sunk by Stuka pilot rudel, it fired it's guns throughout the Lenningrad siege)

and then, developing experienced flight crew for a carrier (my late grandpa was an avenger pilot) is very time consuming, look at how well egypt's land-based crews fared against israel: "Turkeyshoot 1948-73"

they could take off from solid runways, if israel let them, but then they'd get shot down 5 seconds later. turkeyshoot.

So yeah, mentioning Egypt at all was a bad idea, i just felt that since even a broken clock is right twice a day, egypt might actually use a battleship well & get lucky, err "if god permitted it" actually.

[Thanas]

Do you really know anything about the period and the worth of battleships?

Because you come across as a grade A idiot.

[HMS Sophia]

hur-hur battleships, hur-hur egypt, hur-hur wankery

yo, shit-kicker. Go read something about the actual worth of a battleships in modern combat (I tell you what, you can flick through my dissertation when its done. it might be at your reading level), then come back and debate about it.
idiot .

You know, i'm actually going to seriously counter one of his points?

a carrier is even more complex, w/ more things to break (catapults, arrestor cables, elevators)

A battleship is just as complex. Large ammunition hoists, the tracking machinery for it's turrets, fire directors for its guns. Turrets are not the least complicated of things ever, particularly the larger ones.
Also, a battleship is only operation is half sunk, if it is sunk in shallow water. If it goes down in deep water, are you expecting the crew to magically survive and fire the guns somehow?

[ComradeClaus]

It's obvious a battleship sunk is deep water is useless, it's needless for you to even mention that. To REstate the point I was getting at so even YOU could understand it; say a battleship has RUN AGROUND (so it can't move), like what the IJN planned for Yamato. A grounded battleship can still fire its guns, but if a carrier runs aground, it can't really launch aircraft. Since it has to have wind moving across the deck to aid launch-recovery of it's aircraft. The partially sunk marat could still fight, if it were a carrier, it'd just be hulked.

And anyways, only 2 countries used battleships (superdreadnought-fast battleship type) competently, the US (sinking Kirishima, fuso & Yamashiro) & the UK (sinking Bismarck & Scharnhorst, plus the french fleet at Mers-el-Kebir), every other country failed & hard. while the vaunted carrier is only now used by the US, UK (Q.E. planned), france (1), & Russia (1) (also, India & china) Germany & Japan are unlikely to ever procure any despite being among the top 4 wealthiest economies & leading steel/ ship producers. So some "armchair admirals" or pacifist politicians could argue that even carriers are obsolete, compared to Frigates/destroyers which are the mainstay of most 1st-world fleets (though again, some would call "helicopter carriers", carriers.)

[Simon_Jester]

It's obvious a battleship sunk is deep water is useless, it's needless for you to even mention that. To REstate the point I was getting at so even YOU could understand it; say a battleship has RUN AGROUND (so it can't move), like what the IJN planned for Yamato. A grounded battleship can still fire its guns, but if a carrier runs aground, it can't really launch aircraft. Since it has to have wind moving across the deck to aid launch-recovery of it's aircraft. The partially sunk marat could still fight, if it were a carrier, it'd just be hulked.

Why would this matter when it's sunk in a specific place not under attack? If the sunken battleship is in Alexandria and the battle is in the Sinai, the fact that one or more of the battleship's turrets might still be working is completely irrelevant. Also, a sunken battleship is an obvious target for enemy air strikes meant to finish it off and permanently destroy its ability to fight even as a static gun platform, as the fate of SMS Tirpitz demonstrated.

Finally and decisively, who gives a shit if a battleship retains some theoretical combat ability after being sunk at anchor? You could just buy the guns off the battleship for a fraction of the cost, put them in stationary coast-defense mounts, and get about the same amount of defensive firepower for that isolated point. Or you could buy large amounts of normal ~155 mm artillery, antiship missiles, and air defense weapons, for that same price, and get a better, more distributed defense.

From the point of view of a country contemplating a battleship purchase, "oh, well we might be able to fire its guns even after the enemy sinks it in our harbor!" is an incredibly stupid argument to make. Why do you keep harping on this? Since when is the value of a weapon judged by whether it there's some glimmer of hope that it can keep up a pretense of usefulness after the enemy has already kicked your ass?

It seems like you're conceding that the battleship will be sunk at anchor, and recommending that the Egyptians would want to use it as a very expensive and inefficient form of fixed coast defense for Alexandria. Why would anyone buy a whole ship under those terms, instead of just buying the guns? Or, more likely, buying a larger number of smaller guns with nearly equivalent range, better accuracy, much cheaper and more easily handled ammunition, and the ability to be moved around, which a sunken battleship does not have.

So some "armchair admirals" or pacifist politicians could argue that even carriers are obsolete, compared to Frigates/destroyers which are the mainstay of most 1st-world fleets (though again, some would call "helicopter carriers", carriers.)

They would be full of shit.

There's a difference between obsolete and expensive. Carriers are merely expensive. Battleships are both expensive and obsolete, and have been since the 1950s at the latest.

[HMS Sophia]

The clues in the name dick-wad. A helicopter carrier is still a carrier. Anyway...

Battleships are both expensive and obsolete, and have been since the 1950s at the latest.

When did carriers get good night fighters/bombers? That's what I consider the end of the battleship, because a battleship could still fight effectively at night when often carriers couldn't. I don't know how long this holds true though. Can you help?

[HMS Sophia]

Sorry, missed the edit window. My question was for Simon, not Claus.

[ComradeClaus]

The clues in the name ** A helicopter carrier is still a carrier. Anyway...

Battleships are both expensive and obsolete, and have been since the 1950s at the latest.

When did carriers get good night fighters/bombers? That's what I consider the end of the battleship, because a battleship could still fight effectively at night when often carriers couldn't. I don't know how long this holds true though. Can you help?

Exactly the point I tried getting at. UNTIL the point a carrier had aiircraft that could fight well at night could it fully outcompete a battleship. & the point I made about egypt was that it was some time before israel aquired planes that had day/night capability. that would've made it fully impossible for a battleship to be used then (I'd put that at when the israeli's got F-4s since they could employ the 2000-3000 lb HOBOS tv guided bomb. The french jets [Ouragan, mystere] they had before that were too lightly armed & had ranging radar only) I would say late 60's early 70's before aircraft were really all-weather & air-to-ground. The F-104 had ground attack radar & missiles like bullpup, so that's where the line is.

and most helicopter carriers can't fly fixed wing aircraft, not even the V/STOL harrier or F-35 (if the F-35 doesn't get canceled).
Oosumi, Rotterdam, galicia, mistral & singapore's endurance classes. that's more than a dozen ships. no fixed-wing capability, & their decks can't support V/stols (the jet blast damages them according to the articles I've read). they lack ski-jumps too. Those WITH the jumps obviously have stol support.

The statement on political opposition on carriers stands. For example, the UK had to call the Invincible class a "through-deck" ship to get thenm built since the other party at the time was against carriers. Plus the fact that some parties consider carriers to be a weapon of aggression & thus verboten & thus oppose them, thus making them "obsolete" in the sense that the world no longer needs ships of that kind. Lots of politicians (Green Partie) think that, it's not my opinion & you should save your spite for them.

[Sea Skimmer]

Exactly the point I tried getting at. UNTIL the point a carrier had aiircraft that could fight well at night could it fully outcompete a battleship.

Actually that doesn't really matter because a 30 knot battleship had about zero chance of bringing a 30 knot carrier to battle at night, and in the daylight hours the carrier can strike from ten times the distance any battleship gun could reach. The only reason the battleship wasn't completely driven from the ocean in WW2 was just that everybody started out the war with so many more battleships then carriers. So the battleships had an advantage of shear persistence and kept themselves in action through 1942. As we see at Samar, even when the battleship force has a 10 knot speed advantage, vastly superior escorts and takes the weakest possible types of carriers equipped almost no anti ship ammunition, by surprise no less, it still has an incredibly hard time coping with the situation.

& the point I made about egypt was that it was some time before israel aquired planes that had day/night capability. that would've made it fully impossible for a battleship to be used then (I'd put that at when the israeli's got F-4s since they could employ the 2000-3000 lb HOBOS tv guided bomb. The french jets [Ouragan, mystere] they had before that were too lightly armed & had ranging radar only) I would say late 60's early 70's before aircraft were really all-weather & air-to-ground. The F-104 had ground attack radar & missiles like bullpup, so that's where the line is.

All you need to use any of those planes against a battleship at night is a lead jet, or hell a C-47 would work better, to drop flares. In fact flare dropping happens to be exactly how RN carrier launched Swordfish crippled the Italian fleet at night in 1940 using an attack plan dating from the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. It also scored night hits on RM battleships at sea. Israeli Mirage III jets could drop 2,000lb bombs, an Ouragan can drop four 1,000lb bombs which when rocket boosted could defeat nearly any feasible deck armor. That is more then enough to destroy any warship ever if any rational need existed for the required munitions weapons. Making new bombs is way way quicker then training the crew for a battleship, let alone building one or establishing a base infrastructure to support one in a non industrial hole like postwar Egypt.

and most helicopter carriers can't fly fixed wing aircraft, not even the V/STOL harrier or F-35 (if the F-35 doesn't get canceled).

The hell is that supposed to mean? Hey look a light cruiser can't carry battleship guns either, this matters why?

Oosumi, Rotterdam, galicia, mistral & singapore's endurance classes. that's more than a dozen ships. no fixed-wing capability, & their decks can't support V/stols (the jet blast damages them according to the articles I've read). they lack ski-jumps too. Those WITH the jumps obviously have stol support.

If anybody gave a damn about amphibious assault ships being attacked by battleships they'd just carry a couple helicopters with anti ship missiles and still be able to attack the battleship a hundred miles over the horizon. Hell just take a damn Russian destroyer which still has 533mm torpedo tubes and watch it obliterate a battleship with a spread of modern homing torpedoes while displacing hardly 8,000 tons. A WW2 battleship wouldn’t even know it was under attack until the first torpedo exploded.

The statement on political opposition on carriers stands. For example, the UK had to call the Invincible class a "through-deck" ship to get thenm built since the other party at the time was against carriers.

But was pro battleship?

Plus the fact that some parties consider carriers to be a weapon of aggression & thus verboten & thus oppose them, thus making them "obsolete" in the sense that the world no longer needs ships of that kind. Lots of politicians (Green Partie) think that, it's not my opinion & you should save your spite for them.

You are just getting stupider by the second aren't you?

[Simon_Jester]

Battleships are both expensive and obsolete, and have been since the 1950s at the latest.

When did carriers get good night fighters/bombers? That's what I consider the end of the battleship, because a battleship could still fight effectively at night when often carriers couldn't. I don't know how long this holds true though. Can you help?

Exactly the point I tried getting at. UNTIL the point a carrier had aiircraft that could fight well at night could it fully outcompete a battleship. & the point I made about egypt was that it was some time before israel aquired planes that had day/night capability. that would've made it fully impossible for a battleship to be used then (I'd put that at when the israeli's got F-4s since they could employ the 2000-3000 lb HOBOS tv guided bomb. The french jets [Ouragan, mystere] they had before that were too lightly armed & had ranging radar only) I would say late 60's early 70's before aircraft were really all-weather & air-to-ground. The F-104 had ground attack radar & missiles like bullpup, so that's where the line is.

Nope. See, the battleship may be difficult to kill at night, but it doesn't magically disappear or become invulnerable during the day. In the strategic context of Egypt, a battleship would be vulnerable to daylight air attacks by Israel, even if it was totally invincible at night.

There was a time in the 1950s and early 1960s when at least battleships were good for something; they weren't completely, totally fucking worthless compared to the cost of keeping them around. They were still obsolete, the way that a thirty-year old car with shitty gas mileage that breaks down every thousand miles is obsolete. Sure, it physically works, you can get from Point A to Point B in it. But it's more trouble than it's worth to maintain, it doesn't really do anything all that vital, and replacing it with a more modern vehicle would get you huge benefits.

The Egyptians would have to be complete fools to buy a battleship in the 1950s or 1960s, even if anyone was selling them.

The statement on political opposition on carriers stands. For example, the UK had to call the Invincible class a "through-deck" ship to get thenm built since the other party at the time was against carriers. Plus the fact that some parties consider carriers to be a weapon of aggression & thus verboten & thus oppose them, thus making them "obsolete" in the sense that the world no longer needs ships of that kind. Lots of politicians (Green Partie) think that, it's not my opinion & you should save your spite for them.

Thinking "we don't need to fight an aggressive war, and therefore do not need this expensive ship" isn't the same as thinking "this ship is obsolete."

Your argument is foolish- you're trying to redefine "obsolete" so that carriers can be called obsolete, without changing any of the facts about what they're capable of.

[CaptHawkeye]

How long before he starts pitching the comical "Battle Carrier" concepts?

Battleships lost their position as the center of the Fleet when Naval Aviation grew to maturity in the 40s. The guided missile and HEAT warhead put the final nails in the coffin by totally undermining naval artillery and the "big gun" as the weapon that naval warfare revolved around.

[Marcus Aurelius]

How long before he starts pitching the comical "Battle Carrier" concepts?

Battleships lost their position as the center of the Fleet when Naval Aviation grew to maturity in the 40s. The guided missile and HEAT warhead put the final nails in the coffin by totally undermining naval artillery and the "big gun" as the weapon that naval warfare revolved around.

Most anti-ship guided missiles don't carry a HEAT warhead. Some do, but mostly anti-ship missiles have semi-armor piercing warheads, which have also been used by modern naval artillery since the demise of heavily armored ships. The problem with HEAT warheads in naval use is that warships have a much larger internal volume than armored vehicles and compartmentalization, which makes HEAT much less useful. In order to really hurt a warship you want to make a BIG hole and start fires, which HEAT is not likely to do.

One also must not forget the homing torpedo combined with a reliable magnetic fuze, which both emerged during WW2. They made possible for even medium powers with diesel-electric submarines to cripple and possibly even sink a battleship with a single torpedo if she dared to venture too close to the shore (a necessity of shore bombardment). The elaborate anti-torpedo systems developed before WW2 were essentially useless against under-the-keel detonations. Soon magnetic fuzes were applied to mines as well, making the situation even more precarious for large steel-hulled ships like battleships.

[bz249]

Naval aviation, submarines and whatever had some nails into the coffin of the battleship, but what really killed them was the nuke.

A battleship was in theory a warship, that could go in the harms way, wreck havoc and return unscathed. That was the theoretical mission profile, anything smaller was a joke, and even against another battleship the defensive capabilities (armor) were so strong that a battleship could disengage at will, well it did not work so good in reality, but what are facts compared to a nice theory.

Now let's forget about those pesky subs and aircrafts and also forget how ridiculously easy to increase the offensive power of a warship compared to the defensive capabilities (the weight of a 20" gun, plus shells compared to the armor which can stop the said shells). Just keep one thing: nuclear weapons. Afterall the centerpiece of the post WWII strategy was the A-bomb.

Now a battleship is remarkably resistant to a nuke, but only to the level that one need to land the 20 kt device in half a kilometer radius around a battleship for achieving an instant kill. Now this not a feat with even WWII gun from 20-30 km using dumb WWII era shells, and by 1953 the US had 280 mm nuclear munition and by 1957 they even possessed 203 mm nuclear munition. Thus any heavy cruiser in the world would have battleship killing potential by then (and this was done in a world where killing a battleship was far from being a top priority). In a few more years even 155 mm was enough to have a nuclear shell (though the actual shell was a low power one) thus even a light cruiser could have destroyed a battleship if she spot her. This means that battleships lost their greatest asset, (domination over other surface ships), so their existence is unjustified in a nuclear armed world. So even if they somehow counter aircrafts, submarines and guided missiles/shells they would disappear since gun armed lighter ships equipped with dumb (but nuclear armed) shells can still kill them with ease. The only defense against a nuke was not being observed (being far away or hidden), hence the dominance of the carrier, submarine and the guided missile frigate/destroyer/cruiser.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Now a battleship is remarkably resistant to a nuke, but only to the level that one need to land the 20 kt device in half a kilometer radius around a battleship for achieving an instant kill. Now this not a feat with even WWII gun from 20-30 km using dumb WWII era shells, and by 1953 the US had 280 mm nuclear munition and by 1957 they even possessed 203 mm nuclear munition. Thus any heavy cruiser in the world would have battleship killing potential by then (and this was done in a world where killing a battleship was far from being a top priority). In a few more years even 155 mm was enough to have a nuclear shell (though the actual shell was a low power one) thus even a light cruiser could have destroyed a battleship if she spot her. This means that battleships lost their greatest asset, (domination over other surface ships), so their existence is unjustified in a nuclear armed world. So even if they somehow counter aircrafts, submarines and guided missiles/shells they would disappear since gun armed lighter ships equipped with dumb (but nuclear armed) shells can still kill them with ease. The only defense against a nuke was not being observed (being far away or hidden), hence the dominance of the carrier, submarine and the guided missile frigate/destroyer/cruiser.

The battleship lost its original role as a sea control weapon already in WW2. That role was completely taken over by the fleet carrier. Carriers can also be killed by nukes (and it's not that easy to hide a carrier once everybody has radar), but it's worth trying to defend a carrier against a nuke attack. Not so with a battleships, which already during the second half of WW2 were useful mostly as shore bombardment platforms and oversized air defense ships for the carriers. The shore bombardment role was then after the war compromised by more advanced torpedoes, mines and anti-ship missiles even if the enemy did not have nukes. It made some sense to keep the WW2 battleships mothballed as long as they were still usable, but the refit of the US Iowa class BBs in the 1980s was already almost pure prestige seeking and gunboat diplomacy in order to fill in St. Ronald's 600-ship navy, despite the USMC still insisting that the battleships could be useful.

[bz249]

The battleship lost its original role as a sea control weapon already in WW2. That role was completely taken over by the fleet carrier. Carriers can also be killed by nukes (and it's not that easy to hide a carrier once everybody has radar), but it's worth trying to defend a carrier against a nuke attack. Not so with a battleships, which already during the second half of WW2 were useful mostly as shore bombardment platforms and oversized air defense ships for the carriers. The shore bombardment role was then after the war compromised by more advanced torpedoes, mines and anti-ship missiles even if the enemy did not have nukes. It made some sense to keep the WW2 battleships mothballed as long as they were still usable, but the refit of the US Iowa class BBs in the 1980s was already almost pure prestige seeking and gunboat diplomacy in order to fill in St. Ronald's 600-ship navy, despite the USMC still insisting that the battleships could be useful.

The main advantage of the carrier is the range. So theoretically a carrier can launch planes from a distance and remain hidden or at least outside the strike range of the enemy also the range means there is a much larger time window to intercept the enemy aircraft and missiles, so at least there is a hope that one can defend a carrier against a nuclear attack.

A battleship had not even the slimmest chance of not being targeted and being a target is a death sentence in a nuclear armed world. Thus only expendable ships can enter the combat zone, not a billion dollar worth, 60.000 ton penis-extension. Anyway simply giving terminal guidance to a 16" shell (something which can not be that hard given the size of the thing) and increasing the hit rate would also kill the armored ship concept. So it is almost impossible to find a scenario where a post-war battleship can have a niche. Maybe pounding 4th world shitholes, but for that kind of mission there is a number of cheaper options.

In a WWII scenario a battleship still had some advantage over carrier, by being able to withstand a stronger punishment a battleship was better suited in denying/occupying a certain location than a carrier (which was more like a skirmisher than a front line unit and relied in keeping the range and being invisible) however the number of spots worth risking an expensive ship and not already guarded by land based artillery is somewhat limited. As the methods of defeating the armor (including naval guns itself) improved this advantage vanished.

[Simon_Jester]

Most anti-ship guided missiles don't carry a HEAT warhead. Some do, but mostly anti-ship missiles have semi-armor piercing warheads, which have also been used by modern naval artillery since the demise of heavily armored ships. The problem with HEAT warheads in naval use is that warships have a much larger internal volume than armored vehicles and compartmentalization, which makes HEAT much less useful. In order to really hurt a warship you want to make a BIG hole and start fires, which HEAT is not likely to do.

On the other hand, HEAT weapons would allow even planes with very limited ground attack capability to pose a credible threat to a battleship. If all a P-51 Mustang can do to your battleship is strafe it and maybe fuck up a few bits of the superstructure, you can afford to pretty much ignore it and concentrate on worrying about heavier and more advanced aircraft. But when a Mustang carrying a sheaf of unguided 5" HEAT rockets might actually break your turret armor, suddenly the equations about a battleship's resistance to air attack change pretty drastically.

Even a relatively minor hit on a battleship can have far-reaching effects on its combat power, so while it's not a decisive threat, those HEAT rockets still pose a risk that further weakens the battleship's position.

Yet another problem is that a battleship purchased by a third-rate naval power is unlikely to have much, if any, surface to air missile armament. Against jet aircraft this makes it nearly defenseless, which likewise makes it more vulnerable to modern or even semi-modern (by 1960 standards) aircraft.

The battleship lost its original role as a sea control weapon already in WW2. That role was completely taken over by the fleet carrier. Carriers can also be killed by nukes (and it's not that easy to hide a carrier once everybody has radar), but it's worth trying to defend a carrier against a nuke attack. Not so with a battleships, which already during the second half of WW2 were useful mostly as shore bombardment platforms and oversized air defense ships for the carriers. The shore bombardment role was then after the war compromised by more advanced torpedoes, mines and anti-ship missiles even if the enemy did not have nukes. It made some sense to keep the WW2 battleships mothballed as long as they were still usable, but the refit of the US Iowa class BBs in the 1980s was already almost pure prestige seeking and gunboat diplomacy in order to fill in St. Ronald's 600-ship navy, despite the USMC still insisting that the battleships could be useful.

One thing you could do with a battleship, in a nuclear war, is mount what is effectively a suicide run in close to the enemy coastline and open up with nuclear shells of your own. It's a desperation tactic, though- the sort of thing I've only heard suggested in the context of "the missiles have flown and landed:" what I believe Herman Kahn called a "broken-backed war." One where the nuclear powers are now trying to finish each other off with whatever marginal nuclear attack capability they still have, with both sides' first-line forces having suffered massive losses due to strikes on their bases, planes shot down by enemy fire, and so on.

As a tactic, that would be, I don't know, nearly on par with loading the nukes into cargo planes, sending them on one-way flights over enemy territory now that your nuclear air force and their air defense have committed a murder-suicide, and shoving the nukes out of the back to get the last few targets- just to make sure it takes them longer to rebuild than it takes you.

Grim as hell and I don't like it, but I can all too easily imagine that issue arising in the context of 1950s or early 1960s nuclear warfare, in which neither side really had the capacity to be truly sure of finishing off the other immediately after the outbreak of war.

Bear in mind that this is a role which arises given that one already has some battleships lying around and is trying to come up with a way to make use of them as something other than razor blades. Not something you'd ever buy a battleship for- and all the countries which could even contemplate doing this did already have battleships lying around.

[bz249]

One thing you could do with a battleship, in a nuclear war, is mount what is effectively a suicide run in close to the enemy coastline and open up with nuclear shells of your own. It's a desperation tactic, though- the sort of thing I've only heard suggested in the context of "the missiles have flown and landed:" what I believe Herman Kahn called a "broken-backed war." One where the nuclear powers are now trying to finish each other off with whatever marginal nuclear attack capability they still have, with both sides' first-line forces having suffered massive losses due to strikes on their bases, planes shot down by enemy fire, and so on.

As a tactic, that would be, I don't know, nearly on par with loading the nukes into cargo planes, sending them on one-way flights over enemy territory now that your nuclear air force and their air defense have committed a murder-suicide, and shoving the nukes out of the back to get the last few targets- just to make sure it takes them longer to rebuild than it takes you.

Grim as hell and I don't like it, but I can all too easily imagine that issue arising in the context of 1950s or early 1960s nuclear warfare, in which neither side really had the capacity to be truly sure of finishing off the other immediately after the outbreak of war.

Bear in mind that this is a role which arises given that one already has some battleships lying around and is trying to come up with a way to make use of them as something other than razor blades. Not something you'd ever buy a battleship for- and all the countries which could even contemplate doing this did already have battleships lying around.

This kind of mission is feasible during the very short timeframe in the reduction of a nuclear weapon from 380-406mm to 203mm, at that point the much more numerous heavy cruisers (or light cruisers modified to carry a dual 8" instead of a triple 6") can do the job just as well. They are pretty much unstoppable also, since they can lob a tactical nuke to anything in range, so save from another nuke armed warship/submarine/aircraft nothing can hurt them, but those are equally capable of defeating a battleship. Of course in such a last desperate act there is no reason not commiting the battleships also, but in reality they are just increasing the number of hulls and tubes.

[Sea Skimmer]

Most anti-ship guided missiles don't carry a HEAT warhead. Some do, but mostly anti-ship missiles have semi-armor piercing warheads, which have also been used by modern naval artillery since the demise of heavily armored ships. The problem with HEAT warheads in naval use is that warships have a much larger internal volume than armored vehicles and compartmentalization, which makes HEAT much less useful. In order to really hurt a warship you want to make a BIG hole and start fires, which HEAT is not likely to do.

Its easy enough to make a hybrid warhead, some missiles already have that. Shaped charge weakens the armor, follow through charge and explodes. Since you can switch warheads on preexisting missiles lack of shaped charges is a false dilemma vs. non existent battleship threats. On the German Kormoran missile it gets even better because the follow through warhead itself has rings of EFPs which then explode in all directions with enough force to defeat lighter deck armor. In the modern day we also now can make some very exotic forms of shaped charges, including ones which do make wide holes and ones which have combusting warhead jets. Anyway the reason the Russians went with HEAT was not just to pierce armor, it was to blow burning missile fuel as deeply as possible into the ship. That very much does work.

[Simon_Jester]

True, but how much of this sophisticated design was practical in the '50s and '60s?

I doubt even Claus is fool enough to pretend that battleships are worthwhile in the 1980s.

[Sea Skimmer]

True, but how much of this sophisticated design was practical in the '50s and '60s?

Work on Kormoran began in 1962, I see no reason at all why its warhead could not have worked in WW2 had anyone thought of or had reason to build it. Kormoran went for such an advanced warhead in large part because it’s a relatively small weapon; essentially a 500kg class store though its actually a little heavier then that. It was required to pierce about 75mm of armor to deal with Soviet light cruisers. Shaped charge designs made radical advances in 1950s because methods of high speed and X-ray photography invented just before WW2 were perfected that allowed detailed studies of shaped charge dynamics, rather then pure trial and error experimentation. You could see how the jets actually formed.

But none of this matters that long ago. In the 1950s so many people still had bombers and heavy attack planes and leftover WW2 weapons of all kinds so... who really cares? Drop a bunch of 4,000lb general purpose bombs on the ship and it will sink quick enough. Nobody much felt like paying for highly expensive conventional warheads when delivery systems were cheap and numerous and could easily lift heavy payloads. Today delivery systems are expensive and fewer in number, with ever greater demands for more striking range, so people will spent more to greatly increase the and effectiveness of small warheads. In the 1950s its just not a big deal to simply drop a big heavy cheap bomb or numerous smaller ones. In the 1950s everything is all too easy as you have guidance and high firepower in the same era.

But to review the range of non torpedo, non gun heavy anti ship weapons available or available with moderate additional R&D had anyone given a damn, in WW2 work was still indeed done on heavy shaped charge weapons. The US worked on 1000lb and 2000lb bombs; mainly to attack U-boat pens but also capital ships, the German Mistels which might be considered very crude missiles, had a 3,500kg shaped charge (with according to some reports a follow through warhead), and was based on work on shaped charges as heavy as 5,000kg all with the goal of sinking allied battleships with a single hit. I have little doubt that would have worked at least to the extent of crippling with one blow. For even more comedy, on paper the Nazis had a He177 based Mistel that was to take a 6000kg shaped charge! Of course the odds of a Mistel hit are pathetic, but the price of one battleship would buy hundreds of the things and given more development time and effort then the Nazis had to spare much more advanced drone bombs could be created with better guidance then 'aim plane and release'.

In trials the mere 3,500kg warhead pierced a 60ft block of reinforced concrete. With such huge conventional shaped charges, while the warhead jet hole is still limited, the shear blast of the charge is going to make it much bigger and the Nazis used a bell shaped design that naturally produces a wider jet then the modern ‘cones’ we are used too today. Not to mention such huge bombs are going to cause extensive structural breakup to even the heaviest ship. Penetration of steel armor for 3,500lg charge was estimated at 7,000mm but was apparently never tested to that scale. Its something to think about that taking a faceplate from each of Yamato’s main turrets, plus a plate from each side of the belt and one from the deck and stacking them all together would still only be around 3000mm of armor.

But excessively heavy stuff is not at all vital. Even the standard US 1,600lb AN-MK1 bomb, a weapon you could hang on most tactical planes and which lasted in US service throughout the 1950s, could already defeat 8-9in of deck armor when striking at a 60-75 degree angle and dropped from 17,500ft. This is already as much or more deck armor then any battleship ever had; and it’s a less then a 2,000lb class weapon! The bomb is known to have pierced the main deck armor on both Yamato and Tirpitz; though the bomb that struck Tripitz proved to be a dud though did not breakup.

The trick was hitting from that high; that trick was solved by the Nazi Fritz X as well as rocket boosters which simply reduced the needed height, and things rapidly became more advanced from that point. Tirpitz was struck from considerably lower by the stock bomb, but she had no single deck thicker then 80mm. Also one must remember that by 1945 the US had already used an active radar guided glide bomb in combat, it only had a 1,000lb bomb as the warhead but by this point few heavy ships remained to attack anyway. The weapon had a 20 mile range leaving the launch platform far outside of any possible defensive gunfire even from a vast naval formation.

Immediately postwar the British estimated a 3000lb rocket boosted bomb, reasonable enough size, would defeat 13-15in deck armor. This is already absurd performance. In actual tests the 2000lb Mark IV AP bomb went through a 6.25in armor deck on Nelson and continued out the bottom of the ship. Release height was 5,500ft from a dive bomber. The German PC 500 RS rocket boosted AP bomb, a 500kg weapon, was rated for defeating 200mm of deck armor at 345m/s; essentially the speed of sound. So that tends to suggest a high subsonic missile with 1000lb class forged AP warhead diving onto the deck of any battleship will pierce it already. The same German bomb without rocket would defeat 190mm from 3500m release height. One German 500kg AP bomb with a more advanced and expensive forged shape, SD500 was rated for 120mm of armor; already enough to put most of the worlds battleships at risk.

The PC1400 bomb used as the warhead on Fritz X was also rated for 120mm of armor from 3,500m but had a rather large explosive filler charge rato. In the attack on Roma the bomb pierced about that much armor in two decks; though it was dropped from a higher altitude. Roma was lost from two hits; the first one knocked out half the machinery plant, set much of the aft end of the ship on fire and by some estimates might have sunk her on its own, the second hit minutes later in the forward half of the machinery plant and also near missed B turret magazine. B magazine exploded and the ship went down in minutes. Still this is only a 1400kg bomb; heavy but within reason for single engine planes. Indeed the Fw-190G, a single engine fighter, could carry the heavier PC1800 bomb though by the time this model appeared Germany had no worthwhile attack pilots to attempt any missions. A PC2500 AP bomb was also produced but that’s going back into excessively heavy, I mention it only for completeness.

Japan had its own range of AP bombs varying from comically overmatching anti battleship weapons like the Ki-67 twin engine bomber kamikaze variant (which still had a three man crew, for the Emperor!) with a 3000kg thermite shaped charge to more moderate weapons. A very plain 500kg AP bomb could defeat 80mm of armor, while a mere 315kg rocket boosted weapon could defeat 125-150mm armor though it had only a 1.25% ratio of explosive filler limiting damage. The 800kg modified 16in shells used at Pearl Harbor were rated for 150mm armor from 3000m. The list of battleships actually built with any single plate of deck armor over 150mm thick is rather small, I can only think of two off hand.

[Sea Skimmer]

For graphical review of what a heavy bomb can do to a ship, here’s the official damage sketch of USS Savannah after being hit by a Fritz X at Salerno. She avoided catastrophic explosion only because American powder was very safe and an enormous hole was blow in the ships bottom, almost instantly flooding the magazines.

Warning 2000x1000 pixel image



Image of the moment of bomb impact. 197 men died from this bomb hit obliterating the forward magazines, only 15 were wounded. Repairs and rebuilding took eleven months.

[ChaserGrey]

Thanks, Skimmer. The original post may have been beyond clueless, but I'm definitely bookmarking that image.

It's also worth pointing out that after WWII conventional weapons development actually lost momentum for a while because all the development budget was going into all nukes, all the time. As someone pointed out earlier multiple countries were actually using radio-controlled glide bombs by 1945, which were then taken out of service in the nuke mania and not reintroduced until 15-20 years later with weapons like Bullpup and AS.12.

[Sea Skimmer]

The early radio controlled bombs were taken out of service primarily because the control systems prove too easy to jam, that’s what drove Fritz X out of action, and then yes, nuke mania meant nobody felt like designing better control links. But as has been said, the battleships were already almost entirely gone by the end of the 1940s anyway, so nobody has reason to care about that or making active radar stuff. Also conventional bomb sights and radar assisted bombing which could actually lock onto targets made radical improvements and made iron bombing much more accurate anyway. North Korean bridges learned that the collapsing way.

[HMS Sophia]

But as has been said, the battleships were already almost entirely gone by the end of the 1940s anyway

How many US ships were left? The Royal Navy only had 5 in 1950 (Four KGV's and a Vanguard), and I'm pretty sure the French had Richeliue, Jean Bart, and Lorraine.