Posted on 04/15/2005 2:27:55 AM PDT by Zero Sum
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the BBs were modernized. Put every ship system on the table besides one (or perhaps two) turret of the big guns and the hull armor, and see what happens. Redesign every ship system with an eye toward reducing the manpower requirement and automating functions, and see how many you would need to man a ship this size. Replace the engines with modern gas turbines. Eliminate as much of the ship superstructure as possible, to eliminate excess weight and vulerability. For every space freed up, put in a cluster of vertical launch missiles.
It would be interesting to see what the designers would come up with. It would probably be ugly as Hell, but it might be a formidable platform that could be affordable to operate.
You would have something similar to the Arsenal Ship and that was an ugly mother.
When Reagan first pulled them out of mothballs, plans were drawn up to do just that. They were going to pull number 3 turret, redesign the aft section as a mini-carrier for Harriers, replace the electronics and the the main propulsion, put in a VLS missile system, the whole nine yards. At the time the estimated cost per ship would have been close to a billion dollars so I imagine it would be several times that now. The brutal fact is that the Navy doesn't have that kind of money to waste on a platform with such limited use as the battleships.
I wonder what it would cost to replace the boilers with gas turbines?
The Iowa class modernized in the 80's with new reduction gearing could steam at 37 knots and keep up with the nuke carriers. They were among the fastest ships in the fleet. In WWII they could do 33 knots and were the fastest battleships of all time.
Those are battleaxes my FRiend.
Ollie is living in the past. A portion of a carrier air wing can put more tonnage on target with more accuracy than both battleships can.
Actually what you describe reminds me a great deal of the disastrous Japanese modification of the Ise and Hyuga during World War II.
Like I mentioned there's this sort of weenish emotional fascination with 16" shells; people don't realize how much more accurate and how much of a bigger boom (if you want) aircraft-dropped bombs are.
This subject comes up a couple times a month in the USEnet naval newsgroup and gets shot down every time.
One gun. The center gun of Number 2 turret. The other two tubes are still operational.
-Precision guided munitions make BBs completely obsolete.-
Correct and they are delivered by A/C. The escorts are for the carrier and it is exceptionally dumb to send them close to shore. The new DDX is a dumb idea since what we need are cheaper Aegis platforms (like the DDG-51 class) and keep them with the CVs. I do not know of any CO who wants to hazard a billion dollar ship (the DDX) close to shore unless they are assured of no shore based launches of ASMs.
Plus, no matter how well on-board systems are shock tested, naval gunfire has an unsettling effect on them. Personally, I would not want to be involved in any sustained shore bombardment with the possibility I might make myself electronically blind.
Your argument about DDs being vulnerable is a straw man. So is a BB, CVN, SSN, A/C whatever if they are in the wrong place and get hit in the right place. Also, the Falklands is a bad example of what can happen, since the Brits had little long range intercept capability. One CV in the area would have made things very different, not a jump carrier.
I participated in preparing the BB for service and there is good reason the USN took them out of service soon after that. Obsolete systems, lots of manpower, and high operating costs for limited use, and you have cheaper and as effective platforms to perform the same mission. You are pouring money into a hole in the ocean.
Naval gunfire for shore bombardment is a thing of the past, but I know of few Marines who have seen a BB in action who would agree. I have seen them too, and they are effective in what they were designed for, a WWI (mainly)and WWII environment. Back when NTDS arrived on the scene, I met an Admiral who told me the electronic Navy was not for them and wanted to stay in a WWII plotting board world. There is always opposition to change.
It took over 400 major caliber shells (16 and 14 in.) and 7 torpedoes to sink the Bismarck. Even after that massive bombardment the Germans may have very well scuttled her. There is no modern ship afloat that could take that kind of punishment even from WWII vintage weapons. She was a remarkable piece of naval construction based upon a WWI design.
That isn't a gas turbine-sized problem. That's a nuclear reactor and steam turbine-sized problem.
And riddled with egregious design flaws.
Neither example you cited had air cover or effective anti-air weapons systems.
Seriously, it's sobering to realize that the nation's destroyers and frigates are so easily killed.
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