Posted on 01/25/2017 6:15:48 PM PST by MtnClimber
Original title: US Navy's Ultimate Dream Weapon (That Russia Feared): Merging a Super Battleship and an Aircraft Carrier
In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was looking to fund high visibility defense programs. Reagan had been elected on a platform of rebuilding the armed services after the “hollowing out” of the early 1970s.
One example was the reactivation of four World War II-era Iowa-class battleships, which started in 1982. Each of the four ships, Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin was refurbished, their sixteen and five-inch guns brought back online. Each battleship was also equipped with sixteen Harpoon anti-ship missiles, thirtytwo Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and four Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense.
The four battlewagons were swiftly retired after the end of the Cold War because the manpower-intensive vessels each required a crew of nearly two thousand. That made them early victims of the post-Cold War drawdown as the defense budget was sharply reduced. Today, all four serve as memorials or floating museums. Retirement put an end to future upgrades, which might have included the boldest of them all.
In the November, 1980 issue of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Captain Charles Myers, USN (retired) proposed reactivating the battleships with significant modifications to the aft section.The proposal envisioned deleting the number three turret near the stern and the three sixteen-inch guns housed in it.
In place of the number three turret would be an extraordinary set of armaments. A V-shaped, ramped flight deck would be installed, with the base of the V on the ship’s stern. Each leg of the V would extend forward, so that planes taking off would fly past the stacks and ship’s bridge. Two elevators would bring Boeing AV-8B Harrier II jump-jets up from a new hangar to the flight deck.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
WWII battleships have so much armor that modern missiles have no effect...
interesting read.
ICE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS AND PYKRETE
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2720.htm
best concept:
US Navy’s Ultimate Dream Weapon (That Russia Feared): Merging a Super Battleship, an Aircraft Carrier, and a Submarine
I read somewhere on FR that the steel used to make the armor plate couldn’t be re-created/built again; the secret had been lost...
True?
Not true?
Ya right! Ever hear of the General Belgrano?
No secrets.
We just don’t have the industrial capacity anymore...
I feel sure they're working on SOMEthing like this...
I don’t think there is any secret to it but I have read that there is not a single steel mill left in the world which could produce battleship armor.
I guess they would have to start from scratch and build a mill first.
They attacked Oregon using it and nearly attacked the Panama Canal.
Missouri at Pearl, and the New Jersey at Norfolk.
Anything that comes out of the present Pentagon procurement process needs to be looked at cross-eyed by the American public. It has been a threat to national security and the economic welfare of the American citizens since before WWII. [the P-51 was built on spec by Dutch Kindelberger against the wishes of the War Department who further resisted turning it into the hot-rad it became with the Rolls Royce Merlin engine - at the insistence of the British]. These are the folks who built the F111 and resisted the far superior F16, and built the dog of an F35 - which is such a joke that it has become the but of official DoD procurement system courses. The list goes on of the wasted funds and botched procurements of DoD acquisitions.
Put wings on it, a nuclear powered jet engine and maybe we could put it in orbit.
Ok, now I have seen everything.
There were two of them, I believe.
One was sunk in a secret location a couple miles off of Oahu. It was feared the design would inspire the Russians who, because of some Yalta treaty gobbledigook, were technically entitled to inspect such captured weapons.
The risky part of this sub design was that setting up the steam-launch rail required the sub to be on the surface for a dangerous amount of time.
Our admirals of the 1980s should have remembered that these ships were not effective in either role.
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