Marines have their own air support, no aircraft carrier needed. 
Posted on 05/20/2018 11:16:21 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
WEST BETHESDA, Md. — If the battle cruiser has all the best elements of a battleship and a cruiser, why doesn't the Navy have a fleet of them?
James Harrison, division director for the Expeditionary Warfare Ships Division at Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA 05D3), set out to explain why some ships just didn't make it in to the Navy fleet, during his history presentation May 9 at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division in West Bethesda, Maryland.
"Not Even Once!" was about ships or ship programs that were initially supported by Navy leadership, but were ultimately cancelled before being built or launched, and the battle cruiser was in that line-up.
"Battle cruisers have the fighting power of a battleship with the speed of a cruiser," Harrison said in his eighth talk at Carderock.
The Navy did make an attempt to build its own battle cruiser in response to the Soviet nuclear battle cruiser of the 1970s. Harrison said the Soviet battle cruiser was considered a ship killer, and the U.S. Navy had nothing like it. So, the Navy initiated a model test program of a nuclear-powered strike cruiser in 1976. By 1977, Congress didn't authorize the Navy's request for funding for this strike cruiser and instead funded the new version of the Virginia-class nuclear guided-missile cruiser, CGN 42, which ironically, also didn't get built.
"You can't just build cool stuff. You have to build military equipment that supports your overall national strategy," said Capt. Mark Vandroff, Carderock's commanding officer. It was Vandroff who invited Harrison more than a year ago to give these somewhat humorous historical presentations at Carderock.
USS Virginia (CGN 38) was built, and there were four of that class of ship built with state-of-the-art combat systems. However, newer combat systems were quickly changing what "state-of-the-art" was, specifically the AEGIS weapon system and vertical launching systems. According to Harrison, the also-planned DDG 47, or what was at the time to be the Spruance-class destroyers, was cheaper and more modular, meaning it could retrofit newer systems as they became available, unlike the cruiser.
The 20 new CGN 42-classes of cruisers were scrapped to make way for 27 new DDG 47-class of destroyers, which also didn't get built. Well, they were built, but not as destroyers. Harrison said Congress was concerned because cancelling the CGN 42 meant the Navy would have no cruisers being built at all.
"So, a simple solution was found for that. They took DDG 47 and rebranded it as CG 47, and voila, you don't have 27 new destroyers, you have 27 new cruisers," Harrison said.
While the CGN 42 program was halted in the late 1970s in favor of the Ticonderoga-class cruiser (CG 47), it was brought back in the 1980s in support of the buildup of the 600-ship Navy, but again halted before one was built.
Back to battle cruisers. The Navy's first attempt at a battle cruiser was actually in 1920. USS Lexington (CC-1) didn't have quite the fighting power of a battleship at the time, but was going to be a lot faster at 34 knots. The Navy's plan was to build six of them at the same time in four different shipyards. Keels were laid in 1920 and by March 1922, all work stopped, very short of completion, as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty.
"After World War I, there was a lot of angst in the U.S. about all the money being spent to build the fleet," Harrison said. "The world powers got together in 1922 and decided to place limits on the size of their navies and stopped building further battleships."
But Lexington and Saratoga (CC-3) did survive in a different form. The battle cruisers were redesigned to be aircraft carriers on the same keel. So, USS Lexington became CV 2 and USS Saratoga became CV 3.
Ultimately, aircraft carriers really became the U.S. Navy's answer to the battle cruiser.
"Since WWII, the Navy has not used ships to kill capital ships," Harrison said, defining capital ships as key assets of any navy. "We use carriers, we use aircraft, which fly out hundreds of miles and kill your capital ships way out there, not letting you get close enough where you can shoot at our key asset."
But the Navy almost lost even its ability to build carriers. At the end of World War II, the Navy wanted to build USS United States (CV 58), which was a carrier designed with the mission of delivering nuclear-armed bombers. The design had no island to make room for these bombers, as well as fighters. A model was even built and tested for seakeeping at Carderock's David Taylor Model Basin in 1947.
"The idea was the fighters would protect the carrier to get in close enough to launch the bombers that were thought to be needed to carry the heavy nuclear weapons to deliver a nuclear strike against your adversary," Harrison said.
The Navy was pretty serious about building it, even laying the keel April 18, 1949, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia. Then, on April 23, 1949, the secretary of defense cancelled the program, sparking the secretary of the Navy to resign. Harrison said the secretary of defense's actions against the U.S. Navy at the time ultimately led to what's called the "Revolt of the Admirals."
President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson decided on a defense strategy that basically eliminated the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps, believing that all wars of the future would be solved with nuclear weapons, which the Air Force's bombers could deliver. The secretary of the Navy and several other admirals went behind Johnson's back to Congress to ask for funding and this led to the CNO's resignation.
"In 1949 the ship gets cancelled," Harrison said. "Then in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea."
When Truman wanted to blockade North Korea, the Navy said they didn't have the ships and the naval forces necessary to conduct a blockade of a nation so large as North Korea. Also in 1950, the Navy demonstrated it could use smaller aircraft to deliver nuclear weapons using a Midway-class carrier.
"There was a sea change and a realization that not every war was going to be nuclear exchange, that we were going to need forces across the full range of options," Harrison said. "So, in 1951, USS Forrestal, CV 49, the first of our super carriers, was ordered and delivered in 1959."
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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