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!!
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.
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.