[Eye of Unk]

I think it should be kept in total sea shape, what people don’t know is that our enemies will use mass versus our technical prowess, they will use quantity versus our quality, and our ships are pretty darn advanced but it can also be a weakness with sabotaged computer programs and EMP.

The ships of this era had the most basic of computers for getting the shells on target, at the time an outstanding achievement of engineering, but we should keep the ship, add as many close in weapon systems like the gatling guns, it would survive almost any attempt at its lower level from a suicide boat bomber belt as the ships were massively armored below the waterline. I don’t think any of our current fleet of naval vessels have the thickness of armor that the Missouri Class of battleships had.

And then there is a new concept, installing a railgun on a naval ship that can truly indeed strike a mach 7 projectile.

[Eye of Unk]

I meant Iowa class of battleships. I always think of the Missouri when I first see a battleship.

[tanknetter]

The ships of this era had the most basic of computers for getting the shells on target, at the time an outstanding achievement of engineering, but we should keep the ship, add as many close in weapon systems like the gatling guns, it would survive almost any attempt at its lower level from a suicide boat bomber belt as the ships were massively armored below the waterline. I don’t think any of our current fleet of naval vessels have the thickness of armor that the Missouri Class of battleships had.

The son of next door neighbors growing up was assigned to the Missouri in the late 1980s, right after her reactivation. He said that, next to the 16" rifles and the plaque on her Surrender Deck, the thing that interested visitors the most was the small dent in her side where a kamikaze had hit, and disintegrated, in 1945.

Now, understand this about the Iowa-class BBs: they had an internal armor arrangement. That means that their main armor belt was located inside the hull of the ship, rather than bolted onto the outside (as was the case with some of the other battleship classes). So what the kamikaze had really hit, and disintegrated against leaving a small dent, was her outer hull plating, NOT her armor belt.

The only ships in the USN that have protection (I'm not using the word "armor" here for a reason. Read on ...) equivalent to if not better than an Iowa are the carriers. While they do carry some armor (steel on the flight and hangar decks, the later Nimitz class have kevlar armor various places), their main source of protection is compartmentalization that will absorb and contain a hit, rather than multiple inches of steel that will deflect one.