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The battleship North Carolina was struck by a single submarine torpedo and was in repair for months in 1942, a mission kill.

The battleship Pennsylvania was struck in Aug 1945 by a smaller aerial torpedo and had such extensive damage that she ended up losing a prop shaft and was expended in the Bikini nuke test.

. . . a mission kill.

Ah, but that's precisely the point. A mission kill is not a sunk ship. The point of the article is that armor can stop an adversary from getting a 'cheap kill' and all the propaganda value that implies.

This also addresses the nuclear attack argument. If an adversary is willing to go nuclear, then any ship can be sunk, but the deterrent to that is an equivalent counter threat, not armor.

One of the key changes in naval armament since WWII is the total elimination of armor-piercing weapons. No one has big guns. No one really has armor-piercing bombs. It would be so difficult to sink a well-armored ship that there would be no USS Panay / USS Liberty excuses. It would be an strident and unambiguous act of war.

So, is there a place for that sort of ship in areas where the adversary wants to deny us freedom of the seas? Perhaps. It's not an obvious 'no' in any event.

The a North Carolina did not withdraw upon being hit.

“Nine days later, while sailing with Wasp, Hornet, and ten other warships, North Carolina suffered a torpedo hit on her port side just forward of her number 1 gun turret, 20 ft (6m) below her waterline making a hole 32 ft by 18 ft, and killing five seamen. Torpedoes from the same salvo from I-19 sank Wasp and the destroyer O'Brien.[16][17] Skillful damage control by North Carolina's crew and the excellence of her construction prevented disaster; a 5.6° list was righted in as many minutes, and she maintained her station in a formation at 26 kn (30 mph; 48 km/h).[18]

After temporary repairs in New Caledonia, the ship proceeded to Pearl Harbor to be dry docked for a month for repairs to her hull and to receive more antiaircraft armament.[13] Following repairs, she returned to action, screening Enterprise and Saratoga and covering supply and troop movements in the Solomons for much of the next year. She was at Pearl Harbor in March and April 1943 to receive advanced fire control and radar gear, and again in September, to prepare for the Gilbert Islands operation.[19]”

Pennsylvania was a thirty year old ship by the end of the war and the battleships were being decommissioned at a time when military thinking predicted that the atomic bomb was going to make conventional warfare obsolete.

The topic of a new breed of battleship has been discussed on this forum before. Such a vessel would probably not look much like the Iowa class. It would likely be smaller, have plenty of missile systems, with the main armament a battery of rail guns.

I thought of the Bismarck myself: one well-placed torpedo rendered its steering useless. Unable to maneuver, it could only circle and await its doom.

Tirpitz survived many aerial attacks but was ruined by an underwater detonation that scrambled its innards. It didn't sink (at the time) but never moved under its own power again.

Battleships can absorb brute-force attacks, but what about smart weapons designed to target weak points underwater?