I wasn't sure it was true or not but apparently back in 2007 Congress required that the Iowa and Wisconsin be kept in some type of state of readiness should they be recommissioned. By readiness i understand kept unaltered for museum ship purposes, dehumidification, and cathodic protection.

My question is this: Why the Iowa? After the turret explosion it's my understanding the Navy didnt repair that turret. If so, why designate the one of the four ships of the class in which 1/3 of the 16-inch guns aren't operable?

Just skimming though the articles I was surprised that is true. While awesome and imposing Battleships are woefully outdated. Essentially just floating missile platforms. Having cruisers, frigates, and destroyers that are ready currently and can pack the same punch I don't see the need to get a battleship back into the fight. (Unless aliens invade during annual naval war games). I did read that in the '90s they opted to use the New Jersey instead of Iowa for any contingency that would call them back into service due to the damaged turret in Iowa. Just curious as to what would happen that would have the government call the BBs back into the fight.

Not so much the -51, but a P-47 might be an awesome COIN fighter.

Re the battleships: there is something psychologically terrifying about the possibility of being on the receiving end of a number of 2000-pound 16-inch projectiles filled with high explosives.

Much like CAS for the USAF, I believe naval gunfire support (NGFS) is a role that the USN would like to believe is no longer necessary. Sure missiles can do the work--but at a cost of $1.5 million per round fired (TLAM)? The current standard 5-inch round costs only $1500-$2000 per round and can be fired at a max rate of 16-20 rounds per minute.

My only gripe with current deployment of the 5-inch is that there is normally only 1 tube per ship.

Rabid Cougar said:

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Lets bring back the P-51, B-29 and the M-26 Pershing too. One see's what happens to WWII era and 1950's era Soviet tanks when they show up on the battlefield.

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Well, unlike the P-51 and B-29, which have been replaced with vastly superior upgrades, a battleship with its 9 very big guns and 12X the # of secondary guns of other ships (although the rate of fire would be less per gun) they do offer a unique capability.

I think retiring them was a wise decision in the end but they could also probably sustain a good deal of damage that would take newer ships out of action.

coupland boy said:

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Rabid Cougar said:

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Lets bring back the P-51, B-29 and the M-26 Pershing too. One see's what happens to WWII era and 1950's era Soviet tanks when they show up on the battlefield.

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Well, unlike the P-51 and B-29, which have been replaced with vastly superior upgrades, a battleship with its 9 very big guns and 12 the # of secondary guns (rate of fire would be less per gun) of other ships, thry do offer a unique capability.

I think retiring them was a wise decision in the end but they could also probably sustain a good deal of damage that would take other ships out of action.

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You could pound them with Atom bombs and they don't sink (Able) unless they go off underneath them (Baker).

That is the Arkansas in the blast column of Test Baker.

Got me all curious and went and watched videos and looked up the Arkansas. Just imaging something the size of the Battleship Texas upended is freaking crazy.

I think the Arkansas got pile-driven down into the bottom of the lagoon. Nevada was farther away and survived the blast but was very contaminated.

The bombing of the Cole would have required some paint touch up for an Iowa. I can understand not wanting to let a unique asset like that go because once it's gone there's no getting it back. I suspect the decision was difficult not only for emotional reasons.

Most large naval assets that were sunk in WWII, with a couple of exceptions, endured tremendous beatings and sustain horrific damage. Several examples of them not going on their own and had to be administered the coup de grace. We are talking CVs and BBs.

One can also mention the beatings that smaller ships (DDs and DEs) took and survived.

Those old warships ships did not give up the ghost easily.

Arkansas was moored off the port beam of USS Nevada, the target ship for the Able test on July 1, 1946. The battleship was "one of the three major combatant ships within one half mile of the zeropoint." The ship was the site of the maximum measured radioactive contamination from the Able test; a pool of water on Arkansas was measured at eight roentgens per eight hours. Arkansas was moored within 500 feet of the detonation point for the Baker Test of July 25, 1946; it was the closest of the target vessels with the exception of the vessel that suspended the bomb, LSM-60. The detonation is popularly believed to have lifted the battleship vertically out of the water within the blast column. Careful analysis of the sequence of movie photographs, however, shows what appears to be the battleship's foremast in the blast column, with the dark "hole" thought to be the up-ended battleship caused by the mass of the ship blocking the uplifted water column rising above it. Arkansas sank almost immediately; the Navy technical inspection report for Arkansas notes it disappeared within 19 seconds after the blast. According to Bombs at Bikini, "in sinking, she carried with her the dubious honor of being the first battleship to be sunk by an atomic bomb, and the first battleship to be sunk by a bomb that never touched her."

From Test ABLE:

Sakawa was moored off the port quarter of Nevada. The actual detonation of the Able bomb took place some 490 yards above and slightly to starboard of Sakawa's stern. Following the blast, observers noted that Sakawa's superstructure and hull had suffered major damage. The superstructure aft of the bridge was smashed down, as was the stack, which collapsed forward. The mainmast toppled forward and to port until it overhung the side by one-third of its length. Reports also noted that "the tops of the after mounts were crushed. The tops of the forward mounts were dished in a fore and aft V having a two-foot maximum depression." The worse damage, however, was to the hull. "The stern was most badly damaged.... Its deck plating was crushed inward and shell plating about the counter was twisted and torn open in several places. Shell plating on the starboard side...was badly wrinkled from approximately frame 145 aft." [69] Other damage included the dislodging of deck fittings, the smashing of the lifeboats, and a fire that broke out on the stern and raged for two hours.

Immediately after the test Sakawa's stern sank two feet. Through the night the stern continued to settle as the cruiser listed to port. Some 24 hours after the test, the ship lay on its port beam, half submerged, with the stern on the lagoon bottom. Sakawa's bow sank beneath the lagoon surface at 10:43 a.m. on July 2. According to the U.S. Navy, "flooding unquestionably started when the Sakawa's stern was ripped open to the sea by the blast....Poor watertight integrity...permitted progressive flooding. After 24.5 hours the main deck was awash. In the next hour rapid progressive flooding, probably due to poorly fitted and damaged hatches, vent trunks, and other fittings in the main deck, sent the Sakawa to the bottom."At the time of sinking, the Navy tug Achomawi (ATT-148) had a line aboard Sakawa and was attempting to pull the ship from astern to shore; the cruiser was moved astern about 150 feet when it finally sank. The Navy was able to board and inspect the cruiser prior to sinking; "diving operations on this vessel were assigned low priority and eventually limited by a time factor to recovery of instruments. Hence no diver's report is available..."

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/swcrc/37/chap3.htm

JABQ04 said:

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While awesome and imposing Battleships are woefully outdated.

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Do not underestimate the congressional armed services committee to do stuff like this for purely political reasons. It very well could have absolutely zero to do with an actual need that the military has and have everything to do with some congressman wanting to get credit for a cool looking toy.

It would not be the first time that weapons/equipment etc were added/gotten rid of/changed etc just for political or money reasons.

Not saying that its 100% the case here, but I'd bet that it plays into it.

I would love to see those big guns fired. As an old artilleryman, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around a shell twice the size of an 8 inch. On top of that they can be fire what, 4,6, or 8 at a time? Almost makes one feel sorry for the bad guys on the receiving end.

Yeah, or their district has a restoration facility that is a large employer of people in that community.

I hate politics.

Large gun platforms have great value as support vessels, even in modern warfare, when amphibious landing must occur, or operations are being carried out within range of their guns.

Unfortunately the battle-wagons are just not usable anymore. Their guns could be very useful in certain situations, btu we would be much better off developing modern railgun technology and letting the old ladies stand down, and teach a generation about history it's forgetting.

I think a new generation of battleship-esque vessels, large nuclear powered gun platforms(likely rail guns at this point) and missile launch platforms, possibly with vtol drone based air defenses, consolidating the ship to shore firepower that was so useful from WWII forward. I think that will be the ultimate legacy of the steel battleship. Nto the great clashes of capital ships on the high seas, but the support role their guns have played in making amphibious assaults possible.

I'd think using rail guns for naval gunfire support (for troops ashore) would be problematic unless the target is in direct line-of-sight? The hypervelocity and flat trajectory that are the hallmark of a rail gun technology would seem to preclude most indirect-fires.

I don't doubt that there might be solutions developed that would allow a rail gun to provide indirect fire. That said, it seems like those solutions would involve guided projectiles of some type--whose cost per round would probably then begin to approach that of current missile technology?

DogCo84 said:

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I'd think using rail guns for naval gunfire support (for troops ashore) would be problematic unless the target is in direct line-of-sight? The hypervelocity and flat trajectory that are the hallmark of a rail gun technology would seem to preclude most indirect-fires.

I don't doubt that there might be solutions developed that would allow a rail gun to provide indirect fire. That said, it seems like those solutions would involve guided projectiles of some type--whose cost per round would probably then begin to approach that of current missile technology?

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Very good point.

Railguns are being developed as cruise missile defense, not for fire support.

Even classic naval guns tend to have too flat of trajectories for ideal indirect fire support. They were designed for long range direct fire -- not close support IDF. "Danger close" on naval gunfire is 1000 meters.

Rail guns are, like traditional naval guns using bag propellant, able to be adjusted in their firing arc and power. In a rail guns case, they're infinitely adjustable through voltage adjustments.


Read the reports from the pacific, or how Texas earned her battle star at Normandy. Now multiply that capability into many more miles.

The current rail guns in a smaller format are unsuited to the task, but imagine something the size of a battleship, but with FAR less armor, stores, and need for damage control capabilities, mounting very large reactors and capacitive banks to discharge large bore rail guns in an indirect fire role. You don't need powder magazines, your turrets are largely automatic, and you have no deep citadel needing to protect cordite, only the more stable projectiles.

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Railguns are being developed as cruise missile defense, not for fire support.

Even classic naval guns tend to have too flat of trajectories for ideal indirect fire support. They were designed for long range direct fire -- not close support IDF. "Danger close" on naval gunfire is 1000 meters.

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You can't drop plunging fire on the reverse slope of a hill with a weapon that has a range-probable error in the same realm as the long axis of the state of Tennessee (exaggerating slightly).

A classic naval gun is as accurate as modern land based artillery. It's not the guns that caused issues during the battleships evolution, it's the plotting/spotting/rangefinding that has always been the problem. You can't visually direct fire over several miles, especially through cordite smoke, bei mg directed by nelsonian signal flags.


They have been used in fire support roles.... look back to the action Texas took off the Normandy coast for an extreme example. The main role of the battleships in ww2 was largely as fire support platforms, and the Iowa's fired their guns in gulf 1.

I'm also not sure why the idea of plunging fire is so foreign to naval gunnery, look at the Hood, killed by a high angle plunging shell from Bismarck. Bismarck guns where not specialized for high angle firing either.

I'm not suggesting that naval gunnery is the be all end all of fire support and artillery rolls, but you have to admit, especially operating in countries where they could get close, the idea of a ship armed with large bore, highly accurate guns capable of extremely long range fire is tempting, especially talking dozens of miles.


Also failing to see why a guided projectile from a non propellant based gun would be that much more outrageously expensive than a guided projectile strapped to an aircraft, unless acceleration induced damage would become a major issue.

Make a naval shell the same as the Excalibur 155mm shell and you've got GPS guided naval artillery. Even as expensive as Excals are, still gotta be cheaper than cruise missiles. With the amount of propellant used I bet you could one of those suckers out close to 40 ish miles or so

During the battle to take Caen in June of 1944, the German field commanders would not allow their communications units within 1 kilometer of their HQs because the Allies could triangulate off their transmissions and blow the place to hell with will placed 14 and 16 inch fire. They learned very fast that naval gunfire was not to be taken lightly even when they were 10 to 15 and sometimes 20 miles inland.


Can anyone name the battle in which U.S. ground forces have ever been subjected to battleship fire???

Our troops were shelled by Japanese naval gunfire on Guadalcanal. Weren't we also shelled by Vichy French ships after we landed in N Africa?

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I'm also not sure why the idea of plunging fire is so foreign to naval gunnery, look at the Hood, killed by a high angle plunging shell from Bismarck. Bismarck guns where not specialized for high angle firing either.

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My point about the impact of trajectory was intervening crests between guns and targets ashore. The Hood was on the flat surface of the ocean. If it had been a target behind masking terrain of any significant height the Bismarck's guns could not have been elevated high enough to lob a shell over it. The British Navy at Gallipoli faced exactly this problem from shorter range Turk shore battery that could hit the ships but the ships could not hit the shore batteries.



I'm a big fan of NSFS where it can be used against the right enemy on the right terrain but it has some serious limitations. NSWC Dahlgren has significantly increased the range of 5" guns with ERGM but the program was cancelled because the cost of an ERGM was huge compared to the damage it could inflict. If you fired ERGMs at the max rate you would empty the magazines before you could adequately neutralize a large area target which old dumb 5" HE was good at doing.

JABQ04 said:

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Make a naval shell the same as the Excalibur 155mm shell and you've got GPS guided naval artillery. Even as expensive as Excals are, still gotta be cheaper than cruise missiles. With the amount of propellant used I bet you could one of those suckers out close to 40 ish miles or so

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Excalibur is a ~50lb warhead. A Tomahawk is a 1000lb warhead.

Yes, Excalibur is extremely accurate (in a GPS-friendly environment) -- but the challenge is getting timely target data sufficiently accurate to place the round within the weapon effects radius.

Having shot some Excalibur, my experience is that if your grid is off 10 meters against a hard target, you've blown a quarter million dollars. I've seen people doing cheetah flips over accurate grids using all sorts of resource -- UAV lasing, satellite imagery, etc. I've had patrols walk to the top of buildings with GPS to collect grids -- and seen Excalibur "miss".

A friend used to be the Acquisition OIC of the program, and he has assured me those experiences are based on some bad lots.

I got it. The fact remains, precision weapons that lack effective terminal guidance to adjust for target error/movement are of limited utility in dynamic warfighting situations. Like pretty much most combat.

The net result is that you have a tendency to miss precisely, and lack the blast radius to bridge the gap.

Excalibur would be absolutely useless against other ships -- which is something the Navy needs to be doing a lot more thinking about: our surface fleet is sorely lacking in anti-ship capability, in an environment of increasing near peer competition.

Our fixation for precision weapons is bred in large part by the necessities of civcas aversion -- which is important in some contexts. But not in every case. Optimizing all (or even most) of our systems to drop buildings with minimal collateral damage is a mistake.

And Ulysses90 is dead on about the limits of naval gunfire. Yes, it works, but not optimally -- especially with intervening terrain. For all the comments about how awesome it was on D-Day, people seem to be ignoring the fact that the Nazi defenses were largely intact after the bombardment and the landing force got chewed up on Omaha beach, despite being unopposed from the sea or air.

I was referring to battleships providing fire support, which is what I thought this thread was about. Personally I don't see ships duking it out with each other anymore and if the do it will be via missiles or aircraft. Strictly speaking, if people want battleships to be able to provide fire support they need to fix the guns to be able to fire at high angle, fire GPS guided munitions, or use PGK similar type fuses. Essentially turn battleships into a floating artillery battery. As former active duty gun chief and a current gunnery sergeant for an M777 NG battery, artillery can and should ever be replaced. CAS can be grounded, AWT can be grounded, artillery can shoot anytime anywhere. Naval gunfire can be a huge asset in situations where either weather prohibits support from aerial assets or imagine doing an amphibious operation in horrible weather and have 14 inch shells for fire support.

JABQ04 said:

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I was referring to battleships providing fire support, which is what I thought this thread was about. Personally I don't see ships duking it out with each other anymore and if the do it will be via missiles or aircraft. Strictly speaking, if people want battleships to be able to provide fire support they need to fix the guns to be able to fire at high angle, fire GPS guided munitions, or use PGK similar type fuses. Essentially turn battleships into a floating artillery battery. As former active duty gun chief and a current gunnery sergeant for an M777 NG battery, artillery can and should ever be replaced. CAS can be grounded, AWT can be grounded, artillery can shoot anytime anywhere. Naval gunfire can be a huge asset in situations where either weather prohibits support from aerial assets or imagine doing an amphibious operation in horrible weather and have 14 inch shells for fire support.

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I get your points -- and agree with you on the need for fire support.

But don't think battleships are a viable solution. I agree that the future of Anti-surface warfare is aircraft and missiles -- but would note that our anti-ship missile capability is pathetic, and completely outmatched by our adversaries.

It might be possible to refit the old battleships as fire support platforms, but not cost effective -- not only in the cost to refit them, but in the manpower it takes to run/maintain old BB-class ships. And personnel costs are what eat service budgets alive.

Further, it would have to be a relatively permissive environment for BBs to close coastlines close enough to provide fire support, as our adversaries DO have extremely capable land-based anti-ship cruise missiles that would force BBs beyond gun range in a major shooting war against the likes of Iran, nK, China, or Russia - or even some non-state actors supported by Iran. So we would be paying a lot of money for a capability of limited value/survivability in the type of war we would want to have that kind of fire support.

The Navy has poured two decades of ship-building resources down the rathole of LCS and Zumwalt, and is in a serious pinch -- and frankly, lacks a clear vision on how to move forward.

As a ground guy, I love the idea of 9 sixteen inch guns bringing scunyon. But I can't see any way to get there from here.

Trinity Ag said:

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JABQ04 said:

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I was referring to battleships providing fire support, which is what I thought this thread was about. Personally I don't see ships duking it out with each other anymore and if the do it will be via missiles or aircraft. Strictly speaking, if people want battleships to be able to provide fire support they need to fix the guns to be able to fire at high angle, fire GPS guided munitions, or use PGK similar type fuses. Essentially turn battleships into a floating artillery battery. As former active duty gun chief and a current gunnery sergeant for an M777 NG battery, artillery can and should ever be replaced. CAS can be grounded, AWT can be grounded, artillery can shoot anytime anywhere. Naval gunfire can be a huge asset in situations where either weather prohibits support from aerial assets or imagine doing an amphibious operation in horrible weather and have 14 inch shells for fire support.

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I get your points -- and agree with you on the need for fire support.

But don't think battleships are a viable solution. I agree that the future of Anti-surface warfare is aircraft and missiles -- and most especially submarines -- but would note that our anti-ship missile capability is pathetic, and completely outmatched by our adversaries. There are times and places with surface-surface conflicts will happen, and we are completely outmatched by the Russians and Chinese. And not very capable against Iran patrol boats/swarms.

It might be possible to refit the old battleships as fire support platforms, but not cost effective -- not only in the cost to refit them, but in the manpower it takes to run/maintain old BB-class ships. And personnel costs are what eat service budgets alive.

Further, it would have to be a relatively permissive environment for BBs to close coastlines close enough to provide fire support, as our adversaries DO have extremely capable land-based anti-ship cruise missiles that would force BBs beyond gun range in a major shooting war against the likes of Iran, nK, China, or Russia - or even some non-state actors supported by Iran. So we would be paying a lot of money for a capability of limited value/survivability in the type of war we would want to have that kind of fire support.

The Navy has poured two decades of ship-building resources down the rathole of LCS and Zumwalt, and is in a serious pinch -- and frankly, lacks a clear vision on how to move forward.

As a ground guy, I love the idea of 9 sixteen inch guns bringing scunyon. But I can't see any way to get there from here.

I guess I deleted the last part when I went and changed stuff around, but I agree Battleships will never see the light of day again. My posts were more for speculation and what if types of things. Be cool to see them afloat again but agree the cost would be ridiculous and as per my 1st post on the thread plenty of other ships afloat in the Navy to do the same thing. Still, nothing says **** you like 16 inch shells screaming at you!

I wasn't talking about the un spotted pre-landing bombardment..... it's well established that naval gunfire without adequate spotting in that era was not terribly accurate.


I was talking about the post landing results with forward spotters.

I've also not been talking about traditional naval guns.