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).

[Sir Napsalot]

Thanks for the link. (Saved for later)

[JimRed]

Take that Allah worshippers and we’ll station armed drones over you day and night as well.

The drones will be too busy at Tea Party rallies!

[Cyber Liberty]

If the Sheffield was a Battleship, the Exocet would have just bounced off the 8” armor. But there are battleship killers today, so your point is valid.

[Axenolith]

Build the Montana (oh, right, we’re out of money...) but replace 2-3 of the gun mounts with rail guns and their generating units in a similar turret system.. Leave one powder burner mounts. Lay out the secondary systems with laser and gatling AA/Anti missile units. Maybe work in STOL aircraft on it. Trade weight with interior composites and utilize the savings to slather the exterior in Chobham and reactive armors, make it so it can survive being pounded on by whatever can get past it’s 200 mile wall of death...

[Billthedrill]

Yeah, the rail gun is an interesting idea. Current versions take a heck of a lot of electric power and are long enough to run the length of the ship, but that might be something we could either improve or design around.

Anti-ship missiles, though, would prove a challenge to the best-designed armor. One I remember reading about, the "Sizzler" (Soviet 3M-54 Klub) is a sea-skimmer that has a 1000-lb warhead and a terminal attack profile of straight down at Mach 2.9. That's going to be a handful for any AAW suite.

[mrsmith]

terrific read!

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Nelson did the same thing at Trafalgar.Devestating effects in both battles.

[Axenolith]

Well, there is also the scenario where everyone either spends all their whiz-bang gadgets and/or they’re fried by a bunch of EMP strikes, in which case he who has the most old school stuff would probably prevail.

[Axenolith]

OMG, could you imagine the mission patch from the 12th Imam well spiking??? It could be a battleship anthropomorphized so it’s just comming off a massive basketball slam dunk with the well as basket with fire jetting out... ARF!

[Vermont Lt]

Ok...but the day of the battleship battle is gone.

I lived there, Northfield, for a while. My parents moved back to VT from Mass after they retired. So now I am a landowner and taxpayer in VT as well as the PR of Mass.

[doorgunner69]

Guided missiles are superseding artillery on land as well.

The geniuses also said that the advent of air to air missiles meant that guns on fighters were no longer needed.

We all know how that turned out...............

[SunkenCiv]

Guns are still needed on fighters for when the relatively few missiles are gone, but that just points to the fact that fighters will be supplemental to the far more numerous (and expendible) drones.

[PapaBear3625]

That being said an Iowa makes for a relatively hard target, can carry a butt load of missiles and can I have been told can deliver as much ordinance via its 16" guns in 45 minutes as a carrier can deliver in 24 hours.

Also, shells (and missiles) can be delivered in weather that aircraft could not fly in, and shells and missiles do not care if the target is ringed with SAMs.

The pendulum swings back and forth. Aircraft are currently supreme because they can drop bombs on distant targets, then come back to the carrier for more stuff to drop.

Things change when the enemy has effective anti-air defenses, and when sensors can detect "stealthed" aircraft.

[wally_bert]

GI Joe sank the Montana once. I couldn’t resist the cartoon reference. I could only find this piece.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJXrDcncXE

[SamAdams76]

Here is the most amazing fact about a battleship.

A battleship can fire 2,700 lb projectiles a distance of 24 miles with its 16-inch guns with a high degree of accuracy.

A Volkswagon Beetle weights 2,100 pounds. That means a battleship anchored in Brooklyn, NY can fire a Volkswagon Beetle - with two passengers - and shoot them to Hackensack, NJ on a trip they will not soon forget.

[kvanbrunt2]

If it was the Iowa then my dad may have been on it at the time. he was a gunners mate on the little ones only 5 inches.

[tanknetter]

The “Iowa”-class gun barrels had a rated life of about 300 rounds (depending on the powder load and other factors).

That was when they came into service during WWII. Following the war advancements in propellant (during Korea), preservation chemicals (like "Swedish Additive", which was a titanium dioxide and wax mixture, during New Jersey's Vietnam reactivation) and other measures (wrapping the propellant bags in a plastic film during the 1980s reactivation) resulted in something like a 4x barrel liner life increase for the AP "heavy" shell and an 8x increase for the standard HE shell. IIRC when they left service the estimates were that the barrels could handle over 1500 shells before needing replacement. Each. So over 13,500 rounds per ship and 54,000 rounds for the entire class, from an assumed point where they were completely re-barreled (note: of the class only NJ was re-barreled during their 1980s reactivation, receiving only a single new barrel that was considered to be worn out when she left service in 1969)

I don't recall whether tests were conducted or not with the 13" sub-caliber cluster-munitions sabot round before they left service, and the 11" sub-caliber (GPS-guided with a notional 100 mile range) was still in the concept phase at DARPA, but it would be assumed that both of those would be fired using reduced charges (something the Iowa was playing around with at the time of the turret explosion) that would extend barrel life even further.

But enough about that. The Iowa's two primary missions went away with the mass adoption of VLS (including retrofitting of most of the Spruance-class DDs) that took away their cruise-missile-shooting supremacy, and the introduction of GPS-guided bombs that took away their all-weather shore-bombardment supremacy. The simple fact is that a wing of B-52s loaded with JDAMS is MUCH more preferable to the Iowas in just about every respect.

This inferiority in the Iowas' capability has been recently augmented with the Ohio-class SSGN conversions, which are - functionally - the arsenal ship through other means.

[Nuc 1.1]

Northfield is a pretty little place. Sorry about the taxes. I voted against the marxists every chance I got. Good luck LT. Happy New Year!

[Last Dakotan]

I wonder how effective those missiles would be. They are designed to go through the thin skin of a modern ship.

Citadel USS Iowa, current day. Somebody stole the helm.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

Lets bring back Monitors! Small one turreted armored ships—we could use the guns from an old battleship—and arm three smaller, automated monitors for fire support. Cheaper and with armore they could take rockets better. Use advanced computers and rocket assist shells they could meet the needs of a whole new era!