Posted on 09/14/2017 6:34:49 PM PDT by BBell
Commissioned by the Japanese in December of 1941, just over a week after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Yamato was the largest, most powerful battleship that had ever existed a title that it still holds to this day, over 75 years later. With its nine 18.1-inch guns, it could fire 3,000 pound shells up to 26 miles away so far that it required spotter aircraft to identify targets over the horizon. In comparison, the heaviest guns on U.S. battleships were 16 inches and limited to a maximum range of 20 miles. To paraphrase President Trump, it was truly a ship to make its enemies shake with fear.
While the Yamato was the pinnacle of the battleship era, the recently commissioned USS Gerald Ford represents the state of the art of what came next the era of naval aviation and, crucially, the aircraft carrier. At 1,100 feet long and displacing over 100,000 tons, the Ford is a massive ship. However, while what distinguished the Yamato from its peers was the size of the ship and its cannons, what distinguishes the Ford are its technological improvements. Of roughly similar size and speed as the previous Nimitz class of supercarriers, Fords advantage comes, in part, from its increased efficiency. Advances in design allow it to launch 25 percent more sorties per day, greatly increasing its striking power. It also operates with at least 20 percent fewer crew members due to improved automation.
The Ford is adding to an existing fleet of 10 Nimitz class supercarriers. These are joined by an additional nine amphibious assault ships that, while much smaller and with more limited capabilities, are still capable of launching a range of helicopters and vertical takeoff and landing fixed wing aircraft. By comparison, the rest of the worlds major navies
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
So what? They sink/damage one carrier and we destroy their Navy. A surprise attack is always a possibility. Like I said so what? You are not addressing the correct issue. The problem is not having CVNs, the real problem is do we, as a nation, have an industrial infrastructure capable of quickly repairing/building CVNs in a hot war scenario? I say the answer to that is a resounding no.
I actually read up on that plane and to my surprise it was perfectly serviceable as a torpedo bomber.
Hopefully the satellites won’t be compromised and the destroyers don’t run into each other. I’ve been negative lately . In the last two days we have had several Soldiers and Marines hurt in training accidents of some sort and of course we have had 3 mishaps this year with Navy ships. We have also lost some planes and helicopters. I still wonder what happened to that Marine C 130 that dropped out of the sky.
Yep, another thing that males me feel negative. Not to mention we have come to rely on other countries for our high tech chips, boards, etc.
They weren't "hurt", they were injured or wounded which is part of the deal unfortunately.
If a hit stops flight operations, it is almost as good as destroyed. Assuming the enemy allowed it to limp back to a repair port, it could easily be out of action for the duration of the conflict.
Yesterday we had 15 Marines injured and today we had one soldier killed and 7 injured. And they were special ops soldiers. Not easy to replace those guys.
The navy shot itself in the foot not replacing the long range carrier defense the F-14 provided.
Fairy Swordfish. If you had the guts to fly that into flak it dropped a torpedo as well as anything. Devastated the Italian fleet at Taranto as well.
I would hope so but after 8 years of 0bama I worry.
Hopefully todays super-carrier centric navy will have its Billy Mitchell moment and realize the future is in drowns and swarms of mini-drones. It doesn’t take a 100,000 tons of big target to pack the punch of an Alpha Strike anymore.
...But, can the USS Gerald Ford defend itself against being rammed by a slow-moving freighter...
In general terms, who would have right of way. A very large aircraft carrier, a very large slow freighter, or a very small island light house?
“The anti carrier crowd thinks one cruise missile hit would destroy an A/C carrier. They are crazy.”
That would depend upon what that missile was carrying. Wouldn’t it?
L
Might be these junior officers see that and are trying to break out of the box. After all, it will be their ass on the line, not the career brass in the pentagon.
With the advent of advanced stand off weapons, it seems today’s bombers are becoming nothing more than weapon delivery systems.
Low intensity conflicts, you can have a variety of aircraft on perpetual, on-call “standby” for fire missions...like airborne artillery.
High intensity, send in the stealth drones or have air assets just outside enemy air defense zones dropping off huge swarms of hunter killer ordinance.
And while you’re at it, hack into the air defense computers and play pong on their display monitors :)
Had to read up on “Jeune École” but I see your point.
You are right. Buying only 20 copies was a big waste of development money. If we had built 200 to 500 copies we would have gotten our money’s worth.
Meanwhile the Norks and China have nearly all of their nukes on 8 axle TELS, which means when a war starts no one knows where they are. The original mission of the B-2 was to find and kill high value relocatable targets.
As St. Mother Theresa put it, “ Nuclear war is the fruit of abortion.”
Yes, and worse than that, BECAUSE the Swordfish planes were SOOOO slow (and maneuverable), the fairly sophisticated AA batteries of the Bismarck actually had trouble getting an accurate bead on them.
Still, the torpedo that hit the rudder was pure blind luck - and inexperience on the part of the Bismarck’s crew in torpedo avoidance.
The Japanese did it much better (plus the Yamato-class, for all their size, were AMAZINGLY maneuverable - check out some of the aerial photos of Yamato at Leyte Gulf basically ‘turning on a dime’ and causing a boatload of bombs to miss - you can find them on http://www.battleshipyamato.com There are some incredible sequential aerial photos of a couple of massive USN bombing runs on Yamato, and her sister Musashi, which took the brunt of the attack at Leyte and was sunk)...
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