Posted on 09/18/2006 7:41:46 PM PDT by neverdem
On Dec. 4, 1983, 28 aircraft from the USS Independence Carrier Battle Group attacked Hezbollah and Syrian anti-aircraft positions in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Two U.S. Navy A-7s were lost on the mission and a third aircraft was damaged. One of the downed pilots died of wounds in captivity and the other, Lt. Robert Goodman, was taken prisoner and paraded before the cameras. Though Lt. Goodman was eventually released, the U.S. Navy had learned a hard lesson.
Ten days later, U.S. reconnaissance flights were fired on again -- but this time the response was different. Instead of launching air strikes, the battleship USS New Jersey opened fire -- and with just 11 2,700-pound, 16-inch rounds, silenced the anti-aircraft sites. This feat was repeated on Feb. 8, 1984, when Syrian artillery opened fire on Christian West Beirut -- inflicting heavy civilian casualties. Less than two hours of fire from the New Jersey's 16-inch guns eliminated the Syrian artillery threat. It wouldn't be the last time the World War II-era "battlewagons" would serve our national interests.
During the 1981-1988 Iran-Iraq War, the Ayatollahs running Tehran decided the best way to influence the outcome of the conflict was to attack Western oil tankers transiting the Persian Gulf -- through which passes 20 percent of the world's oil. The United States responded by beefing up the 5th Fleet -- and deploying the USS Iowa. The battleship's captain, Larry Sequist, described the effectiveness of the 45,000-ton armored behemoth: "When we would sail the Iowa down the Strait of Hormuz, all southern Iran would go quiet. Iran's Revolutionary Guards were steaming around in boats with rockets, shooting at ships. When we arrived, all of that stuff stopped."
When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the battleship Wisconsin was among the first capital ships to arrive in the Persian Gulf. By the time Operation Desert Storm concluded on Feb. 28, 1991, the Wisconsin and her sister battleship, USS Missouri, had delivered more than 1 million pounds of ordnance on the enemy from their 16-inch guns, Tomahawk TLAM-C cruise missiles and 5-inch gun batteries. Fire from the battleships was so overwhelming that an Iraqi garrison actually surrendered to one of the USS Wisconsin's unmanned aerial vehicles.
Despite the effectiveness of the vessels in modern warfare -- and pleas from the U.S. Marine Corps to retain them for Naval Surface Gunfire Support -- two of the four battleships, the New Jersey and the Missouri, were decommissioned and turned into floating museums. Until now, however, Congress has insisted that the Wisconsin and Iowa be maintained in "a state of readiness" for "rapid reactivation" in the "event of a national emergency."
But all that may be about to change. A House-Senate Conference Committee is now considering lifting the requirement that the last two "heavy gun" ships in the allied arsenal be kept ready for action. Apparently the lessons of recent history have been lost on the administration -- and perhaps even in the corridors of Congress -- despite new threats from Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and interfere with shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Just three weeks ago, Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval craft attacked a Romanian oil rig, assaulted the offshore platform and briefly took the crew hostage before evicting them. And last week, as President Bush was preparing to remind the world of the threat posed by Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd of supporters that "Iran has the ability to control the flow of oil the world needs."
Given the Jihad being waged against the West in much of the Islamic littoral, Iranian "saber rattling" and the lack of any replacement for the well-protected firepower of the Wisconsin and Iowa, turning them into floating museums now seems foolhardy. Yet, according to the green-eyeshade procurement wizards at the Pentagon, the two remaining battleships are too old, too expensive to operate and too costly in crew size to be deployed.
Instead of keeping the heavily-armored battlewagons maintained and ready, the brass at the five-sided puzzle palace and big spenders on Capitol Hill want the Marines to bide their time until 2012, when the Navy says it will deploy seven new DDG-1000 class destroyers -- at $3.3 billion apiece. These slower, thin-skinned vessels are to be equipped with an unproven Advanced Gun System designed to fire rounds weighing only 63 pounds but costing nearly $100,000 each. Even if the new ships eventually perform as advertised by their promoters, that's scant solace to the soldier or Marine who needs naval gunfire support at any point during the next six years.
People in Washington who ought to know better -- like Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee -- have turned a deaf ear to the plight of the Marines. Thankfully, a handful of stalwarts led by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., have taken up the cause of preserving the Wisconsin and Iowa as mobilization assets. He believes that keeping the battlewagons ready to fight will save American lives. He's right.
At Normandy, at Tawara, at Iwo Jima, the enemy poped up after the fire ended and killed many soldiers and Marines.
The preparation was sound and fury but accomplished little besides giving Marines a false sense of security.
I agree with indiscriminate area fire being largely ineffective, except the occasional, lucky hole in one which do happen. A point target with a competent forward observer, fire direction control and gun grews was a piece of cake before GPS. Now they have GPS artillery rounds. See Kinder, Gentler Artillery.
.....Now they have GPS artillery rounds......
Hmmm.... that puts a little different light on the subject.
Agreed. As I recall the 101st was roughed up trying to use them in the attack.
I shudder to think what those landings would have been like if we only had 5" guns for preparatory bombardment. Although they were bloody days for the Marines, those landings would simply have not been possible without big guns.
The same could be said about an aircraft carrier, yet we still highly value those. Besides, a battleship's turrets are also armored and the CIC is far better protected than any ship's.
Iowa's class armor
12.2" @ 19degrees for the armor belt
11" Bulkheads
6" decks
17.5" conning tower
comparisons here between Iowa class, Yamato, Bismark and others...http://www.combinedfleet.com/b_armor.htm
Ballastics on the 16"/50cal rifle here
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
My guess is that the navy is run by aviators and that they have deep ties to contractors in the aviation business.
That's cute ... and useful, but the Iowa throws a VOLKSWAGON of explosives 25 miles and usually as accuarately as a long range sniper.
BB's are grid square killers ... nothing else even comes close.
Sorry, no.
While Battleships are vulnerable to the same attacks as any other ships... Your attempted arguments are just as valid against air craft carriers.... Theoretically you keep them more than the range of the aircraft on them, they have no effect....
Technically true, but practically a non reality.
The Iowa Class ships have proven themselves in every major conflict, and nothing projects raw power like them.. nothing.
There is no counter defense to 16" shells, none. Once the volley is launched, nothing any enemy alive can do to stop them. They cannot be jammed, cannot be shot down, and not be fooled by flares... etc etc etc.
We are going to have an open conflict with China within the next 30-50 years, this will be a large scale open conflict.... The only thing I think that will short circuit this conflict will be if the Muslims in eastern China start pulling the kind of crap there, that they have been pulling through the rest of Asian... which will cause a common enemy to perhaps end the pending confrontation.
Short of that, you are going to have a large scale war that is going to need exactly the kind of support and power that the battlewagons bring to bare. It is beyond foolish to mothball the single greates project of raw power on the planet, without having a suitable replacement in service first.
Precision guide munitions are nice... but I know if I'm the marine getting ready to storm a beach in east asia, I'd feel better knowing the areas had severral days of blanket unloading by the 16"inchers on the region first.
Shhhhh.. .you hurt the aviation is kings mythos revealing truths like that.
Might want to check up....
"When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the battleship Wisconsin was among the first capital ships to arrive in the Persian Gulf. By the time Operation Desert Storm concluded on Feb. 28, 1991, the Wisconsin and her sister battleship, USS Missouri, had delivered more than 1 million pounds of ordnance on the enemy from their 16-inch guns, Tomahawk TLAM-C cruise missiles and 5-inch gun batteries. Fire from the battleships was so overwhelming that an Iraqi garrison actually surrendered to one of the USS Wisconsin's unmanned aerial vehicles."
Over a Million Tons of ordiance, isn't a "few times"
Iraqi's quickly learned if a spotter drone was visible to you, the hand of God was not far behind.... You have never seen what 16" broadsides do if you believe some of the things you have claimed.
And no, the days of sending marines ashore on an opposed beach head are not a thing of the past.... Open conflict with China is a near certainty in the next half century, and it will be open and ugly, and we will indeed be storming the beaches when the time is right.
I remember (didn't see them in action) but I remember laughing my butt off when I read in Stars and Stripes that part of a North Vietnamese Island was sunk by the New Jersey. Semper Fi.
you say the sweetest things:-)
I don't know how well she was maintained by Argentina, but she was caught loafing along at seven knots with no screen when she was torpedoed.
I always had a theory that we told the Britsd where she was from satellite photos.
As you noted the WW II torpedo hit the armor, modern torpedoes are designed not to hit the armor but explode under the ship and use the ship’s own weight to sink them.
Modern ship architecture has more or less abandoned armor in favor of electronic countermeasures and counter munitions.
I am not familiar with the action you speak of.
Did they place the charge on the hull or beneath the hull in the water? It would make considerable difference.
Beneath the hull, at the TIRPITZ's anchorage in Kaa Fjord. It was something on the order of a ton [give or take five hundred pounds] of high explosives. Howevder, the weater was not particularly deep.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.