Losing the Battleships

TownHall.com ^ | Dec 5, 2005 | Robert Novak

[Iris7]

One's affection for the old BBs indeed has a sentimental element.

The reality of war, the complete concreteness, the life and death requirement for unemotional intelligent action, remember it well.

On the other hand, I remember San Francisco annihilating a NVA armored regiment with one bombardment. I also recollect that on that day San Francisco despite the best efforts of the crew and 34 knots just barely made it into gun range in time.

A rain of 8" 280 pound projectiles obviously must arrive in a timely manner.

I will add that modern large caliber guns have never been built. Modern large caliber ammunition likewise. Bull's 40 incher that he was building for Saddam Hussein could have put a two ton projectile on target from three hundred miles away. Or a ten ton projectile eighty miles away. Rough personal calculations, a calculated guess.

Any modern large bore gun would not use conventional propellant but instead something like kerosene and LOX. Burners like those used in liquid fueled rocket engines could light in sequence as the projectile passed by. Full pressure right to the muzzle. Also I think 150,000 psi is possible with reasonable tube longevity even with a (relatively) light weight structure. Would have to use film cooling. Steam augmentation, hey!!

[BnBlFlag]

"They are no longer practical weapons systems".
Think about this. These Battle wagons are so heavily armored that anti ship missles that will tear a "modern" Warship apart will bounce harmlessly off it's hull.
Also, there has got to be ways to upgrade these ships with new electronics and computers to lower the crew sizes significantly.
Did you see the price tag of the new Destroyers? Unreal.

[tanknetter]

Currently shelved. Was not sexy enough for the Navy.

Sort of. The Navy is getting the four Ohio-class SSGN conversions. They'll have 25-30% of the arsenal ship's firepower, plus SpecOps capabilities, plus much better stealth/survivability.

[Junior]

And a 19th century ship of the line never needs to refuel. A hull can be 16" thick of solid steel and still be unsound. Crew size for simply maintaining a battleship will exceed 1000 (the last iteration required 1800 -- and the ships were only ~40 years old then. Now they are topping 60, with all the problems aging vessels have. It doesn't help that one is now a museum and the other hasn't been actively maintained for more than a decade.

If the Navy really wants a battelship, it's best bet is to design and build one from scratch, not reactivate one built for a war fought more than half a century back.

[lentulusgracchus]

A hull can be 16" thick of solid steel and still be unsound.

Yes, of course. That's why Iraqi soldiers surrendered to the first adumbration of their coming.

If you think the Iowa's steel is unsound........here's a paint chipper, get busy. Show me all the unsound bits, sailor.

LOL.

[RobbyS]

The problem is that there is less money to be made by contractors by refitting the battleships.

[MikefromOhio]

yeah....

Being an ex-artilleryman myself, I love watching the big guns go boom, as my wife likes to say.

But I'm NOT a Naval planner nor do I ever want to pretend to be one.

If they don't think they can do it, well, I'll just leave it at that.

[berserker]

Everyone on this thread seems to forget or is ignoring two things: (1) the last time they were in operation, the Navy was hard pressed to fund their operating costs (high fuel and manpower costs, even back in the low-cost '80s), and (2) they were taken out of operation because they are too dangerous to their crews

[lentulusgracchus]

If I were a DD skipper, I would respectfully keep my distance from that floating arsenal.......way too big a shower of sparks if she ever got hit.

Looks like a big, fat target to me. There was a place in Ernie King's Navy for slow-moving, extremely vulnerable, don't-click-your-teeth-too-loudly AE's and LSI(R)'s, but to make a ship like that a ship of the line, and engage enemy combatants directly? Wow.....

[lentulusgracchus]

Come to think of it, that's been done.......someone had the bright idea to bring an ammunition ship within weapons range of the Germans at Anzio. The result was one of the more spectacular photographs of the war, and a bunch of dead American sailors.

[lentulusgracchus]

On the other hand, I remember San Francisco annihilating a NVA armored regiment with one bombardment.

Must have been Newport News or St. Paul.....or maybe the Boston. When I was in, I knew a CWO2 who had stood weapons watches in the Boston the night she wiped out a VC or NVA battalion that got trapped on a beach near Qui Nhon or Quang Tri City. Killed over 600 of them.

San Francisco was retired and decommissioned at the end of WW2.

[lentulusgracchus]

....they were taken out of operation because they are too dangerous to their crews

They were decommissioned so President Bush 41 could have a "peace dividend" to spend on his other priorities -- like tax cuts for rich people he went to Yale with.

He also wanted to decommission most of the troops he eventually sent to Kuwait instead, which decision had, or would have had, further ramifications:

• If Saddam had just held his water for a little bit, say 24 months, before moving on Kuwait, he'd have caught the U.S. in the middle of an election campaign, and without the troops to oppose him, the heavy divisions and many ships having been demobilized and paid off on schedule. Bush couldn't have done much, and he'd have been hobbled by the appearance of trying to get elected on the back of a crisis. He'd have been picked off easily by Slick, or by someone further to the Left, and what do you think the 'Rats would have done about Saddam? He'd still be in Kuwait, instead of in prison, and he'd be the master of the Arab world.
  
  
• After the Gulf War, Bush went ahead and demobbed some of his formations anyway. They included a soldier who wanted to be a lifer named Timothy McVeigh. He wanted into the Airborne, but after his long deployment, he needed more time to get into shape. He didn't get it, he got RIF'd, and he was turned out. He wound up living in a trailer park in Kingman, Arizona, with no money and trashy friends of poor moral fiber. Bush's "peace dividend" gratuitously turned a good man bad, by wadding him up and throwing him away. Thanks for all the devoted service -- now get lost, and go be poor somewhere.

[Junior]

Methinks you are confusing 16" guns with 16" hull plates (the Iraqi soldiers ran from the former -- 15 years ago). Back to boot camp with you.

BTW, it's "Chief," not "sailor."

[Iris7]

When I was in, I knew a CWO2 who had stood weapons watches in the Boston the night she wiped out a VC or NVA battalion that got trapped on a beach near Qui Nhon or Quang Tri City. Killed over 600 of them.

Dang, memory problems here. Battalion to Regiment. Wrong ship. Couldn't remember the place either. I recollected the events being in 1972 invasion. St. Paul could well be correct.

Long time ago. Haven't thought about that story in almost forty years now.

[Iris7]

I hope you don't think I believe an Iowa could be converted and operated for anything like the cost of building something modern of equal or greater (actually a darn sight greater) effectiveness. The Iowas are 1920s technology. Antiques.

Oldendorf at Leyte Gulf will never come again. Nor the vastly greater achievement of Johnston, Roberts, and Hoel the next morning. Those old boys for sure earned their pay that day.

Had an email conversation with an old swab who worked for Commander Evans that day. A gallant gentleman.