The Rise and Fall of the Battleship (And Why They Won't Be Coming Back)

PopSci ^ | 1-3-2014 | Sam LaGrone

[Sir Napsalot]

USS Iowa firing all of its 16-inchers. A fantastic spectacle but anachronistic in 21st century warfare. (US Navy Photo)

Those who cover the militarized aspects of the ocean eventually will encounter a group of people who want the U.S. Navy to get back into the battleship business.

The argument goes like this: The four remaining World War II Iowa-class battleships are cheaper to operate, cheaper than building new ships, and provide powerful and much-needed weapons (giant 16-inch guns—that’s the diameter of the shell, not the length of the barrel) to the U.S. arsenal. (The 2012 summer movie spectacular Battleship may have reinvigorated some of the calls to reactivate the big ships following the glorious montage of the USS Missouri coming to life to fight maritime aliens).

Before killing the buzz of why bringing back the Iowa-class ships doesn’t make sense, let’s take a quick history tangent.

The modern armored ship entered popular American culture with the 1862 ironclad battle between the Union’s USS Monitor and the Confederacy’s CSS Virginia (often referred to by its Union moniker Merrimack).

[Axenolith]

There were a lot of spare barrels in the past, but IIRC, a lot of them were utilized to dispose of high level rad waste by filling them and welding the ends closed.

I think a few were used in the testing efforts to make deep penetration gravity bombs too...

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Cool. I like this one better. The whole movie in 5 minutes 35 seconds.

Battleship & ACDC - Thunderstruck

[Tallguy]

“They” are getting awfully close to taking the guns off fighters a second time. Even those fighters most recently designed to carry cannon have precious few cannon rounds. It’s now truly a last-ditch weapon for these planes.

[gura]

[gura]

Apparently, the brand-new Zumwalt and the remaining DDs of its class are similarly useless, since that's their primary mission. At least the battleships might survive a counter-attack.

Just won the thread.