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Nope.

EVERY destroyer-sized ship, in every instance since WWII, that has been hit by even a dud has IMMEDIATELY lost at least one of three things needed to survive: Propulsion, power, or combat systems.

Every one of has the ability to survive a second hit.

(I forget the exact number of ships hit that I looked at: the number of "accidents" bomb hits, near-misses, accidental explosions, shrapnel hits, dud bombs, live bombs, dud rockets, dud torpedoes, live mines, etc. It was well over 60.

And EVERY ONE of these destroyer-sized ships was lost, was sunk, or was out of action. After ONLY ONE hit.

Almost all of those hit more than once sunk. Or had fires that put it out of action for months.

...

Now, what's really sobering is that NONE of these that had been "attacked" were hit a second time! Even in the Falklands, the Argentines were limited to only a few fighters who didn't strike twice. And even there the Brit's lost just under 1/3 of their escorts to single-hit failures that left them vunerable to a second wave - that didn't come.

And, most important, the Argentine bombs that DIDN'T explode (but STILL put the Brits out of action) were duds caused by US "forgetting" to tell the Ar. Air Force how to arm the US-provided fuses for low-level drops.

IF we had told them, six MORE Brit destroyers and frigates would have sunk. Not just been out-of-action until repairs were finished.

I'm not recommending that we bring back the battleships. They are simply too expensive and require too large a crew to operate. Yes, they are impressive but how much should we pay for impressive?

As far as vulnerability, I don't know of any existing non-nuclear missiles that are capable of seriously damaging a battleship. They are simply not going to penetrate 16 inches of armor. I think the decks are 4 inches of armor but even then a lot of the force would be disapated.

Today's missiles are designed to destroy todays non-armored ships. When they operated most recently, the existence of battleships in our active fleet posed a problem for our enemies because they simply had nothing in the inventory that could defeat battleship armor.

They are vulnerable to torpedos but even then their size makes them significantly harder to destroy than any other modern ship. And, the Iowa class are very fast, at 33 knots.

Senior Chief Firecontrolman(SW) USN(Ret)

-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.