[Paleo Conservative]

Yes, the Navy was terrified by his demonstration, if thinking like that had caught on, appropriations for battleships and ships of the line would have disappeared.

It would have avoided all the wasteful spending on Battleships in the 1930's and '40s. We could have spent more on aircraft carriers and submarines and testing weapons. Imagine how many allied planes wouldn't have been lost if we had already developed aerial refueling.

[rmlew]

Battleships were useful weapons well into 1941 in the Atlantic theater. Major surface actions occured around Guadelcanal involving battleships despite the use of air power. (In fact the nightly Japanese bombardment of Henderson field took out many planes.)
The North Carolina and Iowa class Battleships were hardly a waste of money.