Marines have their own air support, no aircraft carrier needed. 
Posted on 05/20/2018 11:16:21 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
And yet another reason to love Ronaldus Maximus Reagan.
A torpedo hit aft bent a prop shaft and caused catastrophic flooding.
What was really awful about the Brit navy in the period was their AA fire control.
That and the F2A Buffaloes they had left didn't show up for air cover.
Probably the saddest part of Force Z is that they were just hours away from Singapore and thought they had survived their suicide mission when the G3M's and G4M's showed up.
Allow me to clarify....if devoid of air cover which I presumed that was what your post was meaning. And an Iowa-class BB could go just about anywhere it wanted to with virtual impunity...
At the Battle of the Philippine Sea our BBs were not devoid of air cover.
Take away the air cover and a number of the BBs would be sunk as was HMS PoW, HMS Repulse, IJN Yamato and IJN Musashi.
My understanding of the carrier battle group would have the battleships close to the carriers to provide additional anti-air protection.
I would agree the destroyers and destroyer escorts were on picket duty....but not the battleships.
Well, HMS Invincible at Jutland. And 3 other battlecruisers that were sunk.
In the next war, all but one British battlecruisers were sunk. All foreign battlecruisers were sunk as well. None were succesful at their intended task.
To be fair, the French scuttled their Dunkerques in port at Toulon.
Who here has been to the Navy’s equivalent of CGSC? Until I hear from one who can explain the Navy’s principles of offense, defense, etc. how can I or anyone judge the fleet?
We know there are too many perverts who were never meant for military service on AD now. We must get back to boys being boys and vice versa,
I believe Adm Sir Jackie Fisher warned against placing battlecruisers in the battle line, which Adm Jellicoe did. The High Seas Fleet battlecruisers were closer to true battleships and did far better in the exchange.
But mostly Jutland was like the Battle of Bull Run in the US Civil War. You were using line ahead tactics and signal flags much like Nelson did at Trafalgar, but the weaponry was largely untested. Jutland was that test.
“Who needs a battle cruiser when a Burke class DDG is 10,000 tons and carries 96 VLS missiles with a 1,000 mile range?”
Bingo !
Our ships are kinda hybrid. The ship itself is like a carrying case for the weapons system that is onboard. To use these outdated classifications.. I wouldn’t call it “stupid” but I think that maybe our Navy has evolved beyond that.
Our ships combine things that just 40 years ago were considered “impossible”. I’m waiting for the day we can carry aircraft in a magazine and make tiny little aircraft carriers.
“We won’t know how badly we failed, or how spectacularly we succeeded in a design until actual combat. Frankly, I’d prefer more numerous small ships spread over a larger area.”
Agree, we won’t know if our current capital ships, carriers, can successfully withstand a missle attack until they’ve been tested in combat. I know that the U.S. Navy won’t send any of our carrier groups through the Straits of Taiwan or the South China Sea....
Propeller planes sank the largest warship ever built.
Are you saying Exocet and Harpoon missiles would not sink a WWII era battleship?
How a Plucky Swedish Sub Took Out a US Carrier All on Its Own
Both of those missiles have a warhead weighing less than 500lbs.
Might tear up some superstructure and start some fires.
But sink? No.
Marines have their own air support, no aircraft carrier needed.
After World War I, Jellicoe was sent to New Zealand as Governor General and was not able to defend his reputation. His Line of Battle never got engaged. The fight was carried forward by Adm. Beattie who had most of the battle cruisers and most of them are still there, on the sea bottom. The practice of the Royal Navy, in order to improve the rate of fire, was to leave open bulkhead hatches that separated the gun turrets and the passageways from the projectiles and powder. In addition, crews stowed propellant in the turrets in order to reload more quickly. They turned the Battle Cruisers into death traps.
Adm. Beattie made the famous comment, “Something is wrong with our bloody ships today”. Now we know.
Speaking of precision... 
Precision semi-active laser-guided rockets fit on a Marine Corps jet. U.S. Navy photo
The APKWS is a 2.75-inch rocket with semi-active laser guidance for precision strikes in built up areas. It has been used by helicopters.
No BB needed either.
I’ve been reading a few books on the Pacific War (James Hornfischer’s) and one thing that struck me is that a lot of the very effective fighting in WWII was done by Destroyers.
Wolfpacks of Fletcher class destroyers armed with torpedos were a serious threat to the Japanese navy. Other than carriers they might have been the main strike force despite the glamour of the larger capital ships.
But who is winning the war if a $50,000.00 missile is fired from a 150 million dollar jet at a 500.00 dollar pickup truck carrying a machine gun? If the enemy doesn’t care about loss of (his soldier’s ) lives, who is really winning at that exchange rate?
But EVERY destroyer-cruiser sized ship hit by ANY weapon (even disarmed and dummy warheads) since WWII has been knocked out of action by ANY SINGLE shot that landed.
We have wooden-headed sailors and tin-plated ships.
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