Posted on 09/05/2010 9:52:39 AM PDT by SmithL
Edited on 09/05/2010 9:55:55 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
VALLEJO – Since the USS Iowa was commissioned in 1943, the famous battleship that President Franklin D. Roosevelt dubbed "The Big Stick" has seen more than its share of action over the years.
Just ask John Wolfinbarger of San Martin.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Vallejo is completely and absolutely broke. I don’t see how any bid from the city can possibly be taken serious now. I doubt if any city in California can make a true bid at this point.
There’s still lots of 16” ammunition left for the guns. Why not park the Iowa off the coast and lob them all into San Francisco?
The cities can not, but private groups very well could.
L
“There’s still lots of 16” ammunition left for the guns. Why not park the Iowa off the coast and lob them all into San Francisco?”
Don’t get me started.
Refit it AGAIN.
Put it off the US East Coast.
Those gun can shoot down ICBMs 100 miles up in space.
Far cheaper than missiles.
They are rather beautiful too
It should go to San Diego, near the aircraft carrier Midway.
The range of those 16 inch rifles was about 20 miles or so, not 100. And as accurate as they were they'd never be able to hit an incoming missile moving at Mach 7 unless it was the luckiest shot in history.
At the same time the Iowa was being refitted and taken back into commission, I was also “being refitted” and returned to active AF reserve status.
In the office where I worked there was also a Naval Reserve officer. He would sometimes get the secretary to type up some of his paperwork, if they had no company work at the moment.
I got her to type up some of my paperwork as well. She is a very nice lady, and both of us knew how to treat nice ladies. :)
Anyway, when she finished with my typing, she said, “There’s going to be a war, isn’t there?”. Of course she was wrong, but only because we were both part of the Reagan buildup. Being stronger than the other guy, and clearly so, prevented that war she was worried about. :)
I don't see any point in wasting perfectly good ammunition.
Range and max alittued are not the same thing. However I suspect you are correct in that her shells could not reach 100 miles altitude.
As to being able to hit something anywhere near that far away, it would depend on the nature of the "shell". If it was mostly second stage and guidance, (don't need anywhere near that much warhead to kill an ICBM RV) it might be able to achieve both the range/altitude and be able to hit the target.
North Korea may save us the trouble as San Fransisco is about the right range for their ICBMs. Maybe just paint a large target on the roof of Pelosi's house.
As I understood it, the cost to refit these was less than the cost to build one destroyer.
I wonder though... What about a sub-calibre round? If it can toss 2700 lbs 20 miles, how high could it put say a 200 lb kill vehicle? If it could get it exo-atmospheric and reasonably close, then the kill vehicle merely has to manuever into the path of the inbound. Kinetic engery does the rest. Have to maybe run the numbers and see if it is feasible. Of course, that assumes you can build a 200 lb kill vehicle that can survive the tremendous acceleration being shot out of the barrel. The Navy does have ERGMs which sort-of proves the concept. (or disproves it, depending on your take on ERGMs) Another problem may simply be what is the max elevation the 16ers can be fired at? Would it even be realistic to get a projectile exo-atmospheric?
I like the old BBs, but sadly there's not much of mission left for them.
Leave the 16 inchers on, maybe modernize the 5 inchers put on a few Vulcan chain guns then cover the deck with cruise missiles launchers.
Nothing says from Uncle with love like a shell that's weighs more then a Volkswagen!
Also that armor probably could take a hit from any number of nonnuclear cruise missiles and not scratch the paint. I doubt if these missiles have amour piercing warheads of sufficient strength
Source please? (Not that I doubt you, but I'd sure like to be able to cite it!)
Why the east coast??? The Norks are far closer to us on the Left coast.
A guy who served on the Iowa told me they had a 16” sabot shell with a range of approx 75 miles.
There's probably enough of a knowledge base left over from the Copperhead program that would map over nicely.
And far more recent programs as well.
I’d like to see it in Chicago.
Fat chance I know, but I’d still think it would be cool if done with someone else’s money.
Sail her up and down the coast of Red China 24/7, 365/year.
Probably. Not needing a clear path for the shaped charge right through the middle of the electronics package probably helps a lot too.
A 50 lb cloud of BBs in the path of the re-entry vehicle would probably suffice!
Long ago it was standard practice to send an old decommissioned ship to ship-breakers who would tear it apart so that the scrap steel could be re-used. In the process, valuable history was literally destroyed.
By the 1960s enlightened people were able to save a few of the remaining ships, mainly those from the WW2 era, making them into museums. I’ve toured the USS Alabama and the USS North Carolina, and there are few things more awesome than an old battleship.
Sad to say, not only is California broke, but it has long been unenlightened where AMERICAN history is concerned. A battleship is politically incorrect, especially to state legislators, excepting perhaps a few Republicans.
The USS IOWA would be rather difficult to transport to the State of Iowa, for obvious reasons, but there is no reason why it has to end up in California.
Co-located with the Barak Hussein Obama, Jr. Presidential Library?
It would look great parked at Davenport.
Your information is 20 years outdated. At least. In the 90’s before these ships were decommissioned again, tests were conducted using 115 mile range guided 11-inch sabot rounds. This was part of the first Gulf War missile intersection testing.
In these intervening years, the sabot rounds have incorporated GPS and are accurate to within 3 meters in space at 100 miles of range.
Using a “shotgun” burst shell, and firing 18 shots per minute using all guns, which are independently targetable, you can hit many missiles for a micro fraction of the cost of 1 missile to missile firing.
Cheaper. Faster. Longer ranged. This is a 21st century Battleship.
Ping to 29. And google will give you hundreds of articles to review on the subject.
The Iowas ARE the most beautiful ships ever built.
I was fortunate enough to have a tour of the Iowa shortly before the #1 turret blew up. They took us into the second turret and explained the process. A pretty amazing ship and I wish I had been allowed to take pictures.
Only problem is, the circle of protection is based on the ships location. As a CVN protection platform there might be a role but there are far more CVN's in service than BB's. Furthermore, such spaceguns could be mounted atop other less expensive vessels.
Wasting? There's nothing else that shoots 16" ammunition. It would be a waste to have it decommissioned unused.
And to move the Iowa to Mare Island, the channels and approaches will have to be dredged, a time-consuming and costly impediment.
That alone will be used by environmentalists to kill the plan.
-PJ
Nah, Navy Pier. Or maybe by Shedd Aquarium.
I think it should be kept in total sea shape, what people don’t know is that our enemies will use mass versus our technical prowess, they will use quantity versus our quality, and our ships are pretty darn advanced but it can also be a weakness with sabotaged computer programs and EMP.
The ships of this era had the most basic of computers for getting the shells on target, at the time an outstanding achievement of engineering, but we should keep the ship, add as many close in weapon systems like the gatling guns, it would survive almost any attempt at its lower level from a suicide boat bomber belt as the ships were massively armored below the waterline. I don’t think any of our current fleet of naval vessels have the thickness of armor that the Missouri Class of battleships had.
And then there is a new concept, installing a railgun on a naval ship that can truly indeed strike a mach 7 projectile.
I meant Iowa class of battleships. I always think of the Missouri when I first see a battleship.
ROTFLMAO!!!! Who told you that?
ROFLMAO at your ignorance...
Google it. Only hundreds of articles since the 1st gulf war, multiple military blogs, and missile defense groups discussing it. Welcome to the last 20 years of military progress. We’ve been waiting for you.
Of course they did. Then you shouldn't have any problems providing some links?
Gerald Bull used two 16 inch gun barrels from US battleships (eventually extending the barrel lengths) for his famous tests (Barbados, wasn’t it?) and sent shells to high altitudes, actually into space. He used sabots, small diameter projectiles, and gas fill-behind to get that kind of performance. Later he built a usable field howitzer with a 40 mile range. Battleship guns were enhanced due to falling under fire off the coast of Vietnam during that war from enhanced eastern-bloc artillery.
All these were either inspired by or loosely based on the WWI-era German field gun built by Krupp, which had a range of 80 miles and were used as a terror weapon to bombard Paris. There have been *suggestions* to use 16 inch battleship guns for SDI, but their best *range* would be 100 miles, which is not the same as 100 miles *altitude*.
Putting a projectile to work to hit suborbital missiles could possibly work provided there’s accurate and timely tracking and targeting of the missiles, and the ships were stationed far enough north (ICBMs take the great circle route, and would come across the Arctic Ocean if from Russia, and across the northern Pacific if from China), and if the guns and gun crews worked fast enough (sixty seconds) to get the shots aloft, and the ships were not preemptively sunk by enemy subs.
http://www.g2mil.com/battleships.htm
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1988.tb01501.x/abstract
Project HARP firing image (appears to have been colorized):
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b198/Rithesa/Project_Harp.jpg
[Livermore eventually broke Bull’s altitude records with gas guns, which research resulted from President Reagan’s SDI program]
Great post. Thanks.
I usually ignore the posters who act like they are from 4chan and say “post me a link”. I ain’t their beotch. But, yes, you are right. 100 ranged miles is not the same as altitude. Altitude is actually easier to hit with those sabots than is “range” which was like 115 Km with those guns in the 90s. And that is less than 100 Nautical miles. In my original post I was speaking directly of “space” range not “land” range. Suborbital is between 60 and 100 miles UP.
Also, most of the objections or risks, including many you pointed out, are based on old cold war strategies. For 50 years we have used other means to disuade the former USSR or China from launching nukes. That is not the problem, nor are these ships needed for THAT threat.
But, for a rouge cargo ship, with a platform nuke launcher, say from Iran or Syria or Al Quada? Yes. Then these babies are PERFECT.
Also, for those low level high threat conflicts, the old Iron Sides in plain sight able to drop cheap ordinance on your coasts or 50 to 100 km inside your country is a SIGNIFICANT deterrent to most crazies.
The time has come to bring the Battleship into the 21st century. And our next President needs to do what Reagan did when he brought them back in the 80s.
Oh, I forgot, about your timing issue. The types of missiles likely to be shot from ships by Iran, et al, have a 2 minutes to altitude time, 4 minutes in sub orbital and then either EMP up that high, or a 90 second arc down to a normal detonation altitude. So, a Battleship WOULD have 3-6 minutes in which to act. MUCH easier for them in that time than scrambling any other defense.
I agree battleships like this would be a far more effective tool against low tech warfare such as Iran would use or any country with pirates hijacking ships.
What I am implying is that naval warfare with countries like Iran will involve disguised vessels with modern weaponry, the armored brute strength of these battleships would make them much more the victor than a thin hulled vessel.
bombardment of land targets,,,
The New Jersey was on station in ‘69 and proved this,,,
A unit of Marines were trapped on a hill in danger of
being overrun,,,
The ship fired some 1,100 rounds of 16in. and near 5,000
rounds of 5in.,,,
All night long,,,burned the paint off one side of the ship,,,
The best/fastest way to take out ICBM’s/etc. is with the
PAT-3/AEGIS systems,,,
No Contest...
These days? And 1969 in the same example proves you are NOT discussing the 21st century.
In 1969 my PARENTS were kids.
That is TWO generations ago.
We need NEW Battleships using the 21st century weapons and tactics for this generations evil doers.
Vietnam? That is like 8 wars ago and entirely without any semblance to today.
Heck, 90% of the casualties in Nam were due to POOR medicine.
Today, a soldier gets an arm or leg removed by a bomb or something, and they pour a powder on it, which stops the bleeding seconds later. He is then drugged out, and wakes up later in a state of the art hospital miles away if not in another country!
We need the Battleships on THAT level of tech. Then we will see serious improvements on that front as well.
Agreed. Nothing short of a direct hit with a NUKE will take out a Battleship. Whereas a $10,000 missile will put any lessor ship on the bottom of the sea in minutes. Just ask the British about the HMS Sheffield during the Falkland Islands’ war.
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