[DarthVader]

The Yamato was on a suicide mission with no air support and the Imperial Japanese Navy was on its last legs. The Yamato force was attacked by 386 airplanes in the first wave and hit with 309 in the second wave. They were simply overwhelmed and had no way to fight back. The Yamato and Musashi were sunk at the time when Japan had no effective carrier force to counteract the American threat Had the Japs been able to have effective air cover sinking them would not have been as easy. A BB in a SAG would have the benefit of air cover plus the countermesasures on the escorts which are quite capable of dealing with the threats. Risk of destruction is always a fact in any naval combat operation. The best you can do is use tactics and countermeasures.

Armor is a defense. Our Abrams tanks absorb hits from the latest in AA technology and still survive and there armor technology is over 30 years old. The modern naval ordnance we have is designed to deal with unarmored ships which are not protected and not stoutly constructed. AP weapons would simply punch holes in them and pass through without exploding.

[finnman69]

I disagree. It would only take one Kilo submarine to sneak up and launch a spread of torpedoes at the Iowa.

The side protection (torpedo defense) and the triple bottom systems provide protection against underwater threats such as torpedoes, mines and near-miss explosions. Both of these multi-layered systems are intended to absorb the energy from an underwater explosion equivalent to a 700 pound charge of TNT. ( http://www.battleship.org/html/Articles/IowaClass/Armor.htm ).

Modern antiship weapons are far more powerful than a 700lb charge, such as the 1000 kilo supersonic antiship Soviet era cruise missiles. WW2 era torpedoes and mines were contact fused. Many modern torpedoes are designed to explode underneath the keel of a ship creating a huge bubble that uses the weight of the ship itself to break it's back.

Modern weaponry does not need to penetrate the armor of an Iowa class battleship to kill it. Therefore Armor is irrelevant. A retrofitted BB still has all of the unarmored modern sensors that very vulnerable to attack.

On Monday June 14, 1999 the Australian Collins class submarine, HMAS Farncomb, fired a Mark-48 war-shot torpedo at the 28 year old former Destroyer Escort TORRENS.

The firing was part of the Collins class trials requirements and was designed to validate the submarine's combat system. The submerged Farncomb fired the Mark-48 torpedo at the stationary hulk of the 2700-ton Destroyer Escort from over the horizon. The plume of water and fragments shot some 150 meters skyward as the blast of the torpedo cut the ship in two. The stern section sank rapidly after the torpedo hit, the bow section remained afloat but sank sometime later.

The torpedo warhead contains explosive power equivalent to approximately 1200 pounds of TNT. This explosive power is maximized when the warhead detonates below the keel of the target ship, as opposed to striking it directly. When the detonation occurs below the keel, the resulting pressure wave of the explosion "lifts" the ship and can break its keel in the process. As the ship "settles" it is then seemingly hit by a second detonation as the explosion itself rips through the area of the blast. This combined effect often breaks smaller targets in half and can severely disable larger vessels.

The Mark-48 torpedo used in this test is a variation of the MK-48 ADCAP (Advanced Capability) torpedo developed for the United States Navy.

Photos and Mk-48 Torpedo information provided by Maritime Headquarters and DSTO Australia. Photos by PO Scott Connolly and AB Stuart Farrow.