Steve,
I've toured two of the Iowa-class ships, amazing vessels.

Still, they're expensive to maintain, and we don't project firepower in that manner anymore. Warfare has evolved, and the Iowa-class could only evolve so much with it.

I wouldn't be opposed to keeping them stocked and preserved in the naval reserve defense fleet in Philadelphia though.

No, warfare hasn't changed so much that a battleship gun isn't still a damned useful piece of artillery. If the US ever needs to do shore bombardment on a large scale again, nothing will do the job as well as those old battleships. The only difference is that we haven't had to do that sort of thing in a long time, but that's more a function of the wars that have been fought in recent years than it is a function of modern warfare.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why they're eager to get rid of the things. They need something like 2000 crew apiece to keep them fully staffed - that's most definately not inconsequential. And given the current budget situation, making cuts is perfectly reasonable. That said, those ships are still pretty useful pieces of hardware, and it'd be a bit of a waste to see them get scrapped when they will never be replaced and will probably see future use.

Whenever a big gun is fired, there's a certain amount of wear on the gun barrel. If the barrel wears too much, the gun becomes useless; muzzle velocity is reduced and accuracy goes into the toilet. It's even possible for the shell to wedge, resulting in a catastrophic explosion at the breech.

After enough rounds have been fired, on something like a tank they remove the barrel and replace it. (For the German-designed gun used on the M1, that takes upwards of a couple of thousand rounds.)

But the big rifles on a battleship suffer a hell of a lot more wear per round fired, and of course it's not possible to replace the guns. This problem was known when the Iowa-class battleships were designed, however, and what they did was to put steel liners in the gun barrels. After a certain number of rounds fired you would replace the liner.

Which brings us to the bad news: we no longer have the industrial ability to make those liners, and all the stored spares have been used up. To regain that ability would be grossly expensive and difficult. Without a source of replacement liners, the big rifles on those battleships are useless.

The Iowas were wonderful ships, probably the finest battleships ever produced. But there are legitimate reasons why they were retired. This is by no means the only reason, but it's a good one.

Well, if one incorporates more of the Navy's "smart ship" technology, crew levels could get a bit smaller... but I believe it took over 100 crew to man each of the triple-gun turrets.

Not to mention Engineering 7 other crewing needs. But aircraft carriers require 5000+ crew!

That aside, a lot of the Earth is within range of those 16"-ers, especially (as was done in 'Nam) if one uses "extended-range" munitions (rocket motor that fires at near apogee to extend range to 35+ miles...

If I wanted Navy fire support, I'd prefer a few briadsides from the Missouri to a few dozen rounds from the Spruance!

To second SdB's comment (As if HE really needs me to back him up on this or any other subject), it's not just the 16"/50 rifles and their linings that aren't made any more. The Iowa class used old fashioned steam plants that no one makes spare for anymore. You'd have to cannibalize the two museum ships to keep the two (and eventually one, as spares ran out) active ships running. The heat & pressure in those steam lines isn't anything nice, either. One of my co-workers in a retired Chief who tells me that they used to look for steam leaks on our carriers by waving a broom handle in front of them as they walked through the effected area. When it came back shorter than before, they had found the leak. (Ensigns being too expensive for this purpose, apperently)

At any rate, the job of heavy precision bombardment is now done by orbiting bombers carrying JDAMs for a similar price per shot and a much reduced risk of manpower.

"We realize that every once in awhile it is nice to have
ammunition that costs less than the target."

The late Admiral Jeremy Boorda:

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/people/cno/speeches/usni0424.txt

Many of your commenters have said what I would've, and better, so I'll just pile on becasue it's nice to be in the same thread as Steven Den Beste. Longing for the Iowa class, or any class, battleships is simply that: longing for battleships. I.e., the days of yore when a battleship meant something. But it's been more than 60 years since the Navy needed a battleship, and once they didn't need one, they became about as useful as feathers on a turtle.

Naval gunfire as artillery support? In modern times? Nah, we don't need it. Until the armageddon arrives and everything goes to hell, it's unlikely we'll be storming any heavily defended beaches and in need of such a thing.

Coming soon: the uselessness of the M1A1 and the howls of its supporters that it must be modernized. But how do you modernize a tank against a jet-pack wearing smart-missile armed satellite-uplinked private?

I think that many of these old systems (e.g. battleships and B-52 bombers) should be continued or even replaced by new designs. They are cheaper to use and more effective than fancy missles.

Unfortunately, the military just loves expensive new toys.

Look, one of the advantages of these old battleships and carrier task forces is that it takes a while to bring them to the fight. During that time, your enemy can watch the news and see what's coming his way. That gives everyone time to think about it. Remember: wars start because one side thinks they can win. If you are in range of 16-inch guns -- and much of the Middle East is -- then you know you're in trouble when those big guns start heading your way.

If all you want to do is reach out and hit a target, then use high altitude bombing is fire cruise missles from submarines.

Of course, if the military continues to lose in the MSM, the Congress, and the American People, then projecting military power is something we won't need to do. We'll be able to fund Social Security by cutting the military budget by 80-90%.Why fund a paper tiger?

"Whether they try or not, we have seen in the last decade the decline of the American government and the weakness of the American soldier." Osama bin Laden, 1996

"You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses has become very clear," he said. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”
Osama bin Laden, referring to the retreat from Somalia

These older ships are objects of pride, but they really are impractical now due mainly to the very large crews they need. Still, it hurts to see them go. But if we think of the can-do spirit of the men of those days, they would probably want the newest, nastiest, most up-to-date weapon they could get their hands on to do the job. That's what these ships once were.

To a lot of people they are a tangible survivor of America's greatest days, when America won World War II with massive industrial-era muscle. It is as if somehow the ghosts of the warriors of those days will finally leave us forever when these ships are retired for the last time, and we don't want to let them go.

I had a friend who was on Iowa. He said there was nothing in the world like a broadside from a battleship. I believe him.

I love the battleships and the big guns, but as a matter of brute practicality I also have to agree with Steven den Beste. The capacity to support and maintain these ships doesn't exist anymore. Remember that Iowa has been running with two operational turrets since 1986: they never repaired the number-2 turret after the turret explosion that killed 16 sailors. They didn't because they couldn't. They just sealed up the turret and ever since Iowa has been running with one-third of her main battery inert. As far as I know there's no arsenal that can even make cruiser-caliber (8-inch) guns anymore; making 16-inch gun barrels is beyond any existing machinery. No army or navy has made anything bigger than 6-inch in a couple of decades.

The real problem our armed forces are facing is that the Pentagon has gone gadget-happy, and gadgets cost too much money. Too much to develop, too much to produce, too much to maintain, too much to train the troops. Two billion dollars apiece for submarines is ridiculous, especially when that same two billion could build a couple score of brownwater combat craft, or almost as many cargo and tanker aircraft to replace the ones that are nearing the end of their useful lives. For that matter, which is better: one super-submarine @ $2 billion, or ten less sophisticated but still effective submarines @ $200 million each?

From a financial perspective, retiring all the battlewagons makes sense. Moving that much metal is *expensive*. We're still using the rounds and powder produced during WWII to fire them.

On the other hand, short of nuclear, *nothing* would stop one of those bad boys from getting to where it wants to go these days.

When we asked the Navy what would happen if the New Jersey were hit with an Exocet type of missile, they said that it would take perhaps as many as ten well placed hits with such a weapon to penetrate the armor protection. The Captain pointed out that the Kamikaze attacks packed as much wallop as an Exocet and they literally just swept them off the decks of the Iowa class ships.
I believe the only battleship ever sunk (when sealed up and at general quarters) was the Yamoto - and that took 3 days of pounding by aircraft, if I recall correctly.

The Bismarck was crippled (lucky torpedo shot found the known flaw and jammed the rudder), and 2 British battleships pounded it for 3 hours - and while it was battered, it was operational when the Germans scuttled it as the British fleet was out of ammo and fuel.
Russian Admirals speak of the Iowa class with reverence - part of the fall of the USSR was their dash to build 2 battleships of their own (perhaps why Reagan reactivated ours?).
But, I still want our Navy to have a battleship. Or two. Because we just should, that's why.
Which is why I've been wanting (at least) 2 new, nuclear BB's be built. :)
And let's not forget the gigamundous laser capacity they'll have. :) And some Bull-type Big Guns.
No, the money won't ever be there. But, just, the Navy ought to have a Battleship, there's all there is to it. :)

Addison, I'm afraid that a lot of battleships were sunk in WWII. It wasn't just the Yamato.

Coming soon: the uselessness of the M1A1 and the howls of its supporters that it must be modernized.

That's what I've been saying since 1990 - nobody is going to come out and "play" with our Armor for the forseeable future. The M1 Abrams is the King of the Hill - and what the US Armor can do with the communications, command-and-control - means it's almost obsolete. Not that the "tank" is, but the MBT duking it out one on one with each other is.. well, in the same boat as the Battleship. The Mano-a-mano duels are over. The battles in the future I think are going to be much more urbanized, as our enemies aren't going to fight out in the open (aka suicide by US Army).

Steven:

I won't say that you're wrong, but I'll require references before agreeing with you. (You'd also be the most likely candidate to be able to prove me wrong).

All the ones that I'm currently aware of, save the Yamoto, were docked, and not sealed up. (Pearl Harbor, the French fleet, the rest of the German battleships). (And the German sinkings required the British to get very, very innovative even so).

(Wait, was the Prince of Wales a battleship or a battle cruiser? On checking, apparently it was a battleship too.)

Ok, the Yamato and the Prince of Wales - but all the other BB sinkings I can find info for were due to other BB's. (Which is apparently why the USSR was building battleships - without going nuclear, the only way to get a BB to move is to have a BB of your own)

I want to build on Stephen’s asterisk point a little. One of my most prized possessions in my technical library is a WWII era metal forming handbook. It describes some of these machines, how they were built, used, etc.

The thing that is even more amazing is that they didn’t just bend 12” thick steel. Some of that steel started out 20” thick, or maybe more. Its thickness was reduced to 12” during processing. Its this reduction in thickness that made the cold rolled steel so hard and impenetrable.

I've always felt that the technology that went into the ships of that era was more amazing than that of the aircraft. But it doesn’t seem to be nearly as appreciated today.

When I was a kid, my dad would tell me stories about when he was in the Navy. One of the coolest was the time his destroyer was on training manuevers. One of the ships in the group was an Iowa-class battleship (I don't recall which one). They had towed an old freighter out to be used as a target for the old girl and my dad's ship was to serve as a spotter.

The center turret crew find ranging shots and my dads ship would report back corrections. As soon as they got a single direct hit, they opened up with a full broadside, nine of those mothers at once. Dad said there was just this gigantic splash where the target ship was. And then there was nothing. Target completely obliterated.

How cool is that?

I was going to cite the Hiei and Kirishima in the battles around Guadalcanal, but apparently they started out as battlecruisers, and only got re-classified in a later refit.

The HMS Barham got sunk by a U-boat while in open waters, and while it was a WWI-era ship, its 15-inch guns seem to make it definitely a battleship.

The Musashi was a Yamato-class super-battleship, and was sunk by air strikes during the Leyte Gulf campaign, mostly as a distraction from the main effort elsewhere, but to the two-fifths of the crew killed by the sinking, it was a real enough battle.

Addison,

It appears the Japanses lost the Hiei and Kirishima to American surface/air bombardment at Guadalcanal. Further, the Fuso, Yamashiro, and Musashi were lost in two separate battles at 'Leyte Gulf'.

Linky

In the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Kirishima was crippled by gunfire from USS Washington, but did not sink. Once the sun rose, aircraft from Henderson Field sunk her.

HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Japanese aircraft in December of 1941.

In 1940, the British sank the (Vichy) French battleship Bretagne. Later, USS Massachusetts sank the (Vichy) French battleship Jean Bart.

Kongo was sunk by an American submarine.

And I seem to recall that quite a few battleships were sunk on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor.

Having served on the USS IOWA during her last 14 months, then moving on to an Aegis cruiser, I can offer some insights between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’.

Probably the main reason for retiring the ships is the personnel cost. We had 1500 sailors on board, plus 4 pilots for the UAV.  That’s enough crew for 4 destroyers.

As Cyberluddite pointed out, the IOWA’s run on old steam plants; 8 600 lb D type boilers producing 212000 horsepower. Changing the boilers to a nuke plant doesn’t really save any people, and you’re still making steam for the turbines. It might be cheaper to replace the boilers with gas turbines.

The biggest threat to the IOWA was submarines and AS-4 and AS-6 antiship missiles.
Wire guided torpedoes good be coordinated to hit at nearly the same time. IIRC, we expected to be able to take 6 hits on the same side, before we could not counter flood to maintain an even keel. The big danger from the missiles was a fire topside. No current missile is designed to penetrate the 12” of side belt armor. It would be easier to have the missile try and penetrate both armored decks ( 1.5” and 4.5 “).

As a firepower comparison, we could duplicate a 48 plane F/A 18C alpha strike (each plane carrying 4 GBU-32 JDAMs) every 11.5 minutes. The big differences are distance inland, 20 miles vs 300 miles, and the fact that we can keep it up.

"As a firepower comparison, we could duplicate a 48 plane F/A 18C alpha strike (each plane carrying 4 GBU-32 JDAMs) every 11.5 minutes. The big differences are distance inland, 20 miles vs 300 miles, and the fact that we can keep it up."

The other big difference, sadly, is that you'll NEED to keep it up. JDAMs usually hit (and kill) with the first shot, battleship guns usually don't ...

Steve

This page contains a list of battleship and battlecruiser sinkings from WWII, which it summarizes as follows:

18 sunk by air attacks (4 while underway).
8 sunk through surface action.
5 "other" (including submarine attacks and glider bombs)

The 8 sunk in surface action were Hood, Bretagne, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Hiei, Kirishima, Fuso, and Yamashiro

The guns on the Iowa-class battleships fired both AP and HE rounds. The HE round only carried about 150 lbs of explosive, but I imagine the sheer mass of the shell caused damage all by itself.

I understand the tendency to simultaneously wax nostalgic and awe-full about the old battleships, but the Aegis cruisers have a different kind of beauty. The ability to sprint and then stop within a boat-length (if I recall the tourist spiel correctly), among others. And of course there's the VLS and the SPY radars. But the Aegis ship is primarily a defensive weapon.

I think it's safe to say that the modern navy is built around precision strike by aircraft rather than brute-force bombardment by 16-inch guns. The standoff range improvement sort of goes without saying, too. The CEP of the 16-inch gun at 20 miles or so is at least a couple of hundred meters, as opposed to maybe a dozen meters for GPS-guided weapons and single-digit meters for laser-guided weapons. Although there are ships that have shore-bombardment capacity (some or all of the Aegis ships have this ability; too lazy to Google for exceptions), the heart of the Navy's offensive capacity is and will be (for the near future, anyway) the aircraft carrier (and its support group, of which the Aegis ships are part).

While the battleships of old were very good at making big craters and obliterating exposed targets, well-prepared and entrenched defenders proved able to withstand the assault.

Take Iwo Jima as an example. 74 days of continuous air and naval bombardment had almost no effect on the Japanese dug into Mt Surabachi. The firepower was provided not only by destroyers and cruisers, but by battleships such as the USS North Carolina with her 16"/45 guns. And once the troops are on the beaches the battleship's main guns are useless for close support.

There are far more cost-efficient ways to loft tomahawk missles at targets inland and if a floating artillery battery is truly needed to bombard shorelines there must be some way to do it with fewer than 2000 sailors (although i wouldn't expect today's navy to figure out how to do so for less than $500 billion).

That's not to say that the Iowa-class ships weren't beautiful instruments of war, but they were obsolete before ever being launched.

While the Iowa's 12" belt armor is impressive, it might be a good idea to take a look at the armor on an M1A1 Abrams (for instance). From this site, for instance we can see that the turret armor is equivalent to 800-900mm of rolled homogenous armor against kinetic penetration. (Protection from HEAT is significantly higher.) For the metrically impaired, that would be 31.5"-35.4" of armor.

The 120mm Rheinmetall smoothbore cannon on that tank is said to have a penetration capability of 520mm (20.5") of RHAe at 2000m.

12" of RHA doesn't mean what it used to.

But the old BBs sure are pretty.

(Note: I do understand that tanks and BBs are not really directly comparable, but I still find this interesting.)

The battleships can fill a very narrow role better than any other platform. We are not likely to need that capability.

The only other role would be the "damn sexy flagship".

link to NEW JERSY and WISCONSIN from Gulf War I.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-7.htm

Here's some information on the next generation for the 5" gun.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-45.htm

The two key elements of the NSFS program are the Extended Range Guided Munition EX 171 and the modified MK 45 MOD 4 gun mount. In conjunction with an increase in barrel length from 54 to 62 calibers and other gun modifications by United Defense, ERGM is expected to boost the 5-inch gun's range from 13 to 63 nautical miles. Due to the development of the EX 171, the existing 5" MK 45 mounts must be modified to support the new round. The EX 171 will be able to operate at greater ranges than existing 5" ammunition. Both elements are in their early phases of development. The NSFS system will be installed on DDG 52 class ships by the year 2001.

The Navy is developing something that should be a lot more effective and sustainable than those wonderful, monstrous 16" guns: Advanced Gun System to be carried on the DD(X) ships. The 155mm rounds will be guided for high accuracy. The ship will carry up to 600 of these rounds and 70 long range LRLAP rounds with ranges up to 100 nm. AGS will have a rate of fire of 10 rounds per minute.

With high accuracy, super large but less accurate shells are less useful (just as the increase in accuracy with laser and GPS guided bombs allows the military to go to smaller bombs to destroy a particular target.) As others have pointed out, WWII experience showed that a well dug in enemy could withstand sustained bombardment, even from battleships. Part of the reason was the flat trajectory of the battleship rounds. AGS will have very high accuracy and a more vertical trajectory that should make it more effective at supporting Marines on the beach.

...more effective at supporting Marines on the beach.

That, too, is an obsolete concept. Marines don't land on hostile beaches; they land on beaches which have already been secured by an airhead created through the use of helicopters.

I wrote about the current doctrine for amphibious assaults here.

My main attraction today to the Iowa class battelships is their armor protection. It's hard not to like something that could shrug off Exocets, or suicide bombings like the one that hit the Cole. I doubt you could get funding to build something that well protected today.

I sometimes wonder if it would be feasible to strip out the 16 inch guns, the steam power plant, etc. and strip it down to the armored hull. Then fill that shell with modern equipment. Install the Aegis weapon system and the DD(X)'s Advanced Gun System. Replace the oil-buring boilers with gas turbines driving electric generators, and either drive the current propellors with electric motors or switch to Azipods. I think the modern systems would reduce most of the high manpower costs of the WW-II battleships, but I may be wrong.

Siergen, the armor belt on a battleship covers the side of the ship down to a handful of fathoms below the waterline. It doesn't protect the deck, and modern top of the line anti-ship missiles strike there, not on the side.

It doesn't protect against modern torpedoes, which maneuver under the keel to detonate instead of running into the side.

The armor belt on the classic battleship is designed to protect the battleship against the weapons of 1945, not the weapons of 2005.

If there was any good reason to put that kind of armor on warships we'd be building them that way today. There basically isn't. All it does is make the ship heavy and massively increase fuel consumption, without significantly increasing the survivability of the ship.

Doug, (or anyone else)

Why don't we have a ship with the equivalent of the M1A1's armor?

Or is it possible that we do?

Incoming WW-II shells fired from 10-20 miles away would not be coming in horizontally. For that reason I suspect the Iowa class had substantial (though perhaps not its thickest) armor on the top of its central hull. Still, the lower hull would probably be thinner, and vulnerable to keel-breaking torpedoes.

Perhaps some of the weight saved by replacing the 3 16-inch turrets with the DDX guns system could be applied to strengthening the hull bottom. However, as I understand the mechanics of bottom attack, the most damage is done not by blasting through the hull directly, but instead by creating a huge gas bubble under the ship. Ships are designed to be supported by water along their entire length, so leaving part of it "up in the air" literally breaks the ship in two.

Still, against anything less than a keel-breaker, the Iowa class ships would fare better than any modern destroyer or cruiser.

Why don't we have a ship with the equivalent of the M1A1's armor?

Cost, most likely.

The armor on the M1A1 (or M1A2) is bloody expensive, and extremely heavy (there's depleted uranium in there, I hear).

Now, I dunno what running a ship with a nuclear reactor does to the fuel consumption argument, but it doesn't make the ship inexpensive.

Our modern carriers are great, but when I read of stories that the Chinese are feverishly working on missiles that can kill our carriers, I just hope our modern carrier admirals aren't making the same assumptions/mistakes the battleship admirals made in 1941.

After seeing those 16" rifles fired (in anger, off Lebanon) I want them there. Yes I am a "Jarhead".

Mr. Den Beste, those rifles ain't been used that much that they can't hit a target today. And you forget the submunitions that have been designed for those 16" rifles.

Not too mention 32 Tomahawks, besides the rifles and the harpoons.

The New Jersey's will save lives if we keep them around.

And no dollar saved is more important than a life saved.

Chris, I didn't forget anything. The question is how many more times those guns can be fired before all the rifling wears away from the inside of the liner. How much would it cost to bring one of those old girls back online again?

Is it really worth that just to fire perhaps another couple hundred rounds out of those guns? Not likely.

There isn't anything those battleships could do today that can't be done another way, cheaper.

We don't need 65,000 ton battlewagons to fire Tomahawks and harpoons; Arleigh Burke's do that just fine.

We don't need those big guns, either; jets can deliver bombs that large without any trouble, and do so more accurately -- even bombs with submunitions.

And "dollars saved" does matter if those dollars can then be spent on something else that saves even more lives.

Steven,

I missed out on the early days of the blogosphere, but now I understand why so many of the folks I admire speak so highly of you.

Incoming WW-II shells fired from 10-20 miles away would not be coming in horizontally.

Shells fired from that range didn't hit other ships unless they were preposterously lucky.

As impressive as the armor on the battleships are, you don't sink a ship by letting air in. You sink them by letting water in.

Topredoes basically take that armor belt out of the equation and modern torpedoes are... impressive: http://www.ssbn622.homestead.com/Sinkex.html

I agree with Den Beste to the extent that battleships are not invulnerable, but it may be a bit shortsighted.

The conventional wisdom nowadays is that the old rules of warfare are gone. No more set piece battles with divisions of troops and fighting ships on the high seas. Everything will be done with small units of special forces to deal with terrorists and rogue nations. How China fits into that mix is never explained.

But doing away with the artillery provided by the Iowa class ships is asking for trouble. I understand den Beste's statements about the current doctrine for amphibious assaults (helicopter-borne troops, etc.) but just because it's doctrine does not make it right. US naval night fighting doctrine in WWII had gunfire being the primary weapon. Our cruisers were not even armed with torpedoes. That doctrine got us things like the Battles of the Java Sea, Savo Island and Tassafaronga. Doctrine there cost us dealr, and we didn't learn from our mistakes until, quite literally, the Battle of the Surigao Strait in the 1944 Leyte Gulf campaign, wherer we copied the Japanese tactics to great effect.

There are too many potential uses for the Iowa class battleships for them to just be done away with like this. Retrofitting them with mounts for helicopters and VTOL aircraft could expand that usefulness.

For the record, and I know others have chimed in on this before with some pieces, while still very effective, the battleship was not nearly the god some have made them out to be in World War II. In the Pacific War AFTER Pearl Harbor, the US lost no battleships sunk. The British lost:

Prince of Wales (King George V class battleship)-- sunk in the South China Sea by Japanese air attack on December 10, 1941;

Repulse (Renown-class battlecruiser) -- sunk in the South China Sea by Japanese air attack on December 10, 1941. As you know, battlecruiisers were not as well armored as battleships.

For their part, the Japanese lost:

Hiei (Kongo class battleship, upgraded from a battlecruisr in the 1930s) -- heavily damaged by gunfire from US cruisers San Francisco and Portland and sunk by aircraft or scuttled, First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 1942;

Kirishima (Kongo class battleship, upgraded from a battlecruisr in the 1930s) -- heavily damaged by gunfire from US battleship Washington and scuttled, Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 1942;

Mutsu (Nagato-clas battleship) -- sunk in Hashirajima harbor by what apparently was a massive magazine explosion of an unexplained nature, July 1943;

Musashi (Yamato-class "superbattleship") -- sunk in the Sibuyan Sea by US air attack, Leyte Gulf campaign, November 1944;

Yamashiro (Fuso-class battleship) -- sunk in the Surigao Strait by torpedoes from US destroyers Monssen, Killen and Newcomb, Battle of Surigao Strait, Leyte Gulf campaign, November 1944;

Fuso (Fuso-class battleship) -- sunk in the Surigao Strait by torpedoes from US destroyer Melvin, which apparently caused her magazines to detonate and blow the ship in two, Battle of Surigao Strait, Leyte Gulf campaign, November 1944.

Kongo (Kongo class battleship, upgraded from a battlecruisr in the 1930s) -- sunk by US submarine Sealion II in Formosa Strait, East China Sea, November 1944.

Yamato (Yamato-class "superbattleship") -- sunk by US air attack in the East China Sea, April 1945.

But doing away with the artillery provided by the Iowa class ships is asking for trouble.

I have to disagree. Battleships were only useful in a landing operation in establishing a beachhead. We have other, better ways to do that now. And in deepwater naval operations, we have other, better ways to go after other ships. Such as this fleet of very pricey, very quiet and deadly submarines that we have equipped ourselves with. Finally, battleships aren't all that effective as part of the carrier group unless they're retrofitted extensively, which would probably cost even more than building an Arleigh Burke-class ship from scratch. The primary threat to today's battlewagon (the nuclear aircraft carrier) is missiles, and an Iowa-class isn't going to do much against those. Of what use is the armor belt, after the superstructure has been blown clear of the deck?

For massive bombardments, we can always call in the heavy bombers. A single B-1 can drop twenty-four 2000-lb guided bombs, which are going to do much, much more damage to the intended target than a few broadsides from an Iowa-class's 16-inchers. That aside, as Den Beste has pointed out, doctrine has changed much since we were storming beaches sixty years ago. These days, we pulverize the enemy's defenses from the air, and then we take the ground.

And for heavily bunkered targets, we have bombs and missiles that can reach them.

Retrofitting them with mounts for helicopters and VTOL aircraft could expand that usefulness.

Again, I have to disagree. Arleigh Burke-class ships carry 2 ASW helicopters each, sheltered. If there were a definite need for more helicopters or more fixed-wing aircraft that an aircraft carrier (or other members of the carrier group) could not fill, possibly you might have a point. The Iowa-class already carries 4 helos; how many more do you want? Besides, to keep up with a carrier battle group, an Iowa-class would have to burn a couple of hundred tons of fuel per day. More, probably, if it had to participate in ASW pickets and the like.

We retire weapons when they've outlived their usefulness. We retired the 8-inch howitzers decades ago. We retired the Pershing Missile back in the mid '80s. We'll retire the Iowa class, with regrets and fond memories.

I guess I'll add my two cents as well being a former squid who was attached to the marines for 3 out of my 6 years active.

There is no legitimate reason to reactivate our aged battleships. Especially when you take into account the DD(X) and LCS ships will be equiped with LRLAP which expands range to 100 nautical miles vs the far shorter range on the 16" (rougly 13 miles) guns as well as their limited accuracy.

Smaller, swifter ships with far fewer crews that can sustain themselves for nearly 4 weeks without replenishment are far more desirable than large slow targets with antiquated fire control systems like the Iowa has. Even with updated systems, the ships just are too cumbersome and slow to be viable operational platforms for todays conflicts.

Regardless the Marine Corps has moved its doctrine away from beach assaults requiring the establishment of land-based artillery support and supply depots. It has become an expeditionary maneuver force focused on direct ship-to-objective tactics, increasing its requirement for sustained, long-range supporting fire.

Slartibartfast,

I don't know that aircraft are necessarily more effective. There is no denying their effectiveness, mind you, but it may be along different dimensions than the Iowa class battleship.

"A single B-1 can drop twenty-four 2000-lb guided bombs, which are going to do much, much more damage to the intended target than a few broadsides from an Iowa-class's 16-inchers." Perhaps, but it's not nearly as effective at suppressing enemy fire. If you have entrenched infantry, those 24 bombs may kill a lot of them, but the bombs won't kill all of them. And you can't bomb them forever. Once the bombs stop, the infantry will pop their heads up and start shooting at you. Constant artillery has the effect of forcing them to keep their heads down, suppressing return fire. Constant bombardment also has an effect on morale that is more damaging and more immediate than that of air attacks.

Note, I am not necessarily saying that an artillery bombardment such as can be provided by the Iowa is better than air attack, but it does provide a different dimension than what air attack provides. Why not keep it?

The other issue is in terms of pure surface power. If you take out the missiles (and why would you do so? Read on), then the Iowa is the most powerful non-carrier ship we have. One Burke class destroyer has one five inch gun, The Iowa has ten of them, and that is just the secondary armament, not even counting the main guns.

Why is this important? Because of the vulnerability of electronic and satellite based weapons. The Chinese in particular are working on ways to attack our satellites. The Russians have laser jammers that they are selling and were used during the Iraq War. Other countries are working on stealth technology of their own, including stealth ships. Still others (China included) are working on EMP technology, which can disrupt our electronic munitions.

The upshot is that no one is considering what happens if all of a sudden our laser- and satellite-guided munitions lose their effectiveness. The Iowa is one of the few ships that is not totally dependent on those munitions, because of her main and secondary guns. Our Burke and Ticonderoga class ships would not be nearly as capable of defending themselves in such a situation.

And that is the point of keeping the Iowa. We're putting too many eggs into an electronic basket. I agree that current tactics require such weapons and systems designed to protect them, but a weapons system that can still fulfill its mission duties in th emeantime while not totally requiring that level of technology -- a level that can be exploited -- would seem to be useful.

I am reminded of the ancient javelin. The javeline was thought of merely as an old skirmishing weapon, until people people realized that it could be used very effectively against chariots. It's the javelin that probably got the Hittites and Mycenaean Greeks to where they are today.

Iowa is in the same category (so, for that matter, is the A-10). it doesn't have to be the centerpiece of your strategy, but it is useful to have around, and may in fact be necessary in the proper circumstances. Getting rid of it just because it's old, again, is asking for our enemies to exploit th ehole it leaves behind.

so, for that matter, is the A-10

Oh, the A-10 still has a purpose, all right. The main gun aside (and that's a tough put-to-the-side, all right: there's still no defense against a pound of DU traveling at a kilometer per second, a few thousand times a second), the A-10 is already being refurbished with modern avionics so that it'll be useful for carrying modern antiarmor weapons. It's already a done deal. We've even tested a targeting pod or two on it.

Sure, you could take an old battlewagon like the Missouri, remove the gun turrets and put a few hundred VLS slots in, but who's going to refuel her?

The upshot is that no one is considering what happens if all of a sudden our laser- and satellite-guided munitions lose their effectiveness.

I promise you that's not true. EMP weapons have their limitations, and even though we're ahead of the pack in this area, we have yet to deploy one. Do you have any other failure mechanism in mind?

The Chinese in particular are working on ways to attack our satellites.

I'll worry about that right around the time they can hit the broadside of a barn at half geosynch. The Russians worked for quite some time on ways to attack our satellites, and they never even came close to taking one GPS sat down.

One Burke class destroyer has one five inch gun, The Iowa has ten of them, and that is just the secondary armament, not even counting the main guns.

One DDG can fire Tomahawks serially, and keep doing so until the resupply ship can load her back up again. These carry 1000-lb HE warheads (among other kinds) and can hit their target within a few meters at standoff ranges of several hundred miles. So yes, I'm saying that a DDG can hit harder and more precisely than a battleship. Load out a carrier battle group for land attack and it's Katie bar the door. You'd have four ships and two submarines all launching Tomahawks at shore targets. You could even launch a barrage of missiles all at once and have them hit spaced apart randomly over a sustained period, so you've got time to do other things between missile launches. You could do all of this without a battleship, but you couldn't have a battleship wandering around without support ships unless you want to litter the sea bottom with foot-thick, cold-rolled scrap.

but the bombs won't kill all of them

This is why we have ground attack aircraft, and aircraft carriers to move them around on. Even taking GPS and precision-guided weapons out of the picture, a dumb bomb dropped from an F-18 is far more effective than several 16-inch shells lobbed from 15 miles offshore. And as I and others have pointed out more than once, battleships cannot provide fire support much past the beachhead. When is the last time we had to establish a beachhead, again?

Note that we're not even getting a little into modern warfare, here. Just what's been available for the last few years or so.

Slartibartfast,

Re: A-10. Your source on that, please. I hope you're right that the air force is planning to keep and upgrade the A-10. I've heard to many times over the past few years that they want to get rid of it so they can standardize their aircraft, which to me is not a good enough reason to throw away its special capabilities. Best ground attack aircraft ever.

Re: cruise misiles. Please refresh my memory as to the how many Tomahawks are carried on a Burke (or a Ticonderoga, for that matter) versus how many shells (16" and 5") are carried on the Iowa? Not just launchers (or guns, but reloads. And how long it takes to replenish their respective magazines. Perhaps my concerns are already being addressed through superior logistics.

Re: seaborne invasions. Are you suggesting that we will never again need to establish a beachhead? Against an enemy deployed within range of the beaches? We've had contested seaborne invasions and river crossings since at least (if legend can be believed) the Trojan War. Their present form dates back to at least Gallipoli, but was perfected (as you know) during World War II. I am aware of den Beste's (excellent, as always) description of modern US Marine doctrine on this issue, but that does not mean I agree with that doctrine. Given that our main force of power projection is naval, and that most of the rouble spotrs we must deal with are adjacent to major bodies of water (Taiwan, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela), my belief is that this is a capability that should be mainatined. Because it will be needed again.

One DDG can fire Tomahawks serially, and keep doing so until the resupply ship can load her back up again.

As someone quoted upthread: "We realize that every once in awhile it is nice to have ammunition that costs less than the target."

Yeah, a bomber can drop a load more precisely than an Iowa, but the Iowa can sit off the coast and keep it up for hours, while the bomber has to spend several hours flying home, being repaired, and rearming in between each drop.

Your source on that, please.

I work for the company that's doing the upgrade, and also I work on the targeting pod program. If you don't want to take my word for it, though, you can always look here.

Yeah, a bomber can drop a load more precisely than an Iowa, but the Iowa can sit off the coast and keep it up for hours, while the bomber has to spend several hours flying home, being repaired, and rearming in between each drop.

On the other hand, a carrier can send Hornets back and forth to the target zone with a load of iron bombs pretty much indefinitely. And again: say, when's the last time we established a beachhead?

It all depends on what the mission is for the most part. If you need accuracy, a 16" gun is not your weapon of choice. Understand the desire to alleviate collatoral damage with todays military actions and you can see why lobbing a 1 ton HE round with accuracy levels in the hundreds of meters range probably isn't the best course of action.

And if you're thinking cost, balance the cost of refurb and upkeep of just one Iowa>-class battleship against the cost of ordnance we'd use in the slim eventuality that we ever attack a power great enough to emplace people and weapons within 20 miles of the beach that wouldn't be wiped out by a decent bomber attack followed by a few swarms of Hornets with eggs to lay...and let me know what you find out. I'm guessing that you're hedging a long shot. Sure, keep them around as museums.

But you have to admit, this is impressive. If shock and awe is the latest doctrine, maybe we should build more.

I'll take your word on the A-10, Slartibartfast. Good. I thought getting rid of it was a horrible idea.

The following excerpts speak for themsel ves.

Excerpts from the Novak piece:
----------------------------------------
Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the current commandant of the Marine Corps, testified on April 1, 2003, that loss of naval surface fire support from battleships would place his troops "at considerable risk." On July 29 this year, Hagee asserted: "Our aviation is really quite good, but it can, in fact, be weathered."
Marine desire to reactivate the Iowa and Wisconsin runs counter to the DD(X) destroyer of the future. It will not be ready before 2015, costing between $4.7 billion and $7 billion. Keeping the battleships in reserve costs only $250,000 a year, with reactivation estimated at $500 million (taking six months to a year) and full modernization more than $1.5 billion (less than two years).

On the modernized battleships, 18 big (16-inch) guns could fire 460 projectiles in nine minutes and take out hardened targets in North Korea. In contrast, the DD(X) will fire only 70 long-range attack projectiles at $1 million a minute. Therefore, the new destroyer will rely on conventional 155-millimeter rounds that Marines say cannot reach the shore. Former longtime National Security Council staffer William L. Stearman, now executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, told me, "In short, this enormously expensive ship cannot fulfill its primary mission: provide naval surface fire support for the Marine Corps."

...they served effectively in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars. Congressional pressure brought the USS New Jersey to Vietnam for six months, leading the Marine commandant, Gen. Leonard Chapman, to conclude, "Thousands of American lives were saved." The Marines calculated that 80 percent of 1,067 U.S. planes lost in Vietnam could have been saved had battleships fought the entire war.

"The Marine Corps supports the strategic purpose of reactivating two battleships," said a Nov. 19, 2004, General Accounting Office report. Since then, current Marine leaders have adhered to the naval position and walked away from boosting battleships, but not retired Marines. Gen. P.X. Kelley, the renowned former commandant, said in a June statement: "I would hate to see a premature demise of the battleships . . . without a suitable replacement on station. In my personal experience in combat, the battleship is the most effective naval fire support platform in the history of naval warfare."
-----------------------------

-------------------------------------
Excerpt from: GAO Report on Battleship Readiness April 12,1999
(URL included)
-------------------------------------
The Navy is currently maintaining 26 usable 16- inch gun barrel
spares at Hawthorne, Nevada, and Dahlgren and Portsmouth,
Virginia. About 15,000 rounds of usable 16- inch gun ammunition
and associated propellant charges are stored at the Army
Ammunition Plant, McAlester, Oklahoma, the Crane Army Ammunition
Activity (CAAA), Crane, Indiana, and the Hawthorne Army Depot,
Nevada. CAAA still maintains a 16- inch ammunition repair and
renovation capability and operable propellant mixing and stacking
machinery. Thus, according to CAAA officials, production of 16-
inch projectile bodies could be restarted in only a few
months, at an estimated cost of $7,000 per projectile. Final
assembly of the 16- inch projectiles would be performed at the
Army Ammunition Plant in McAlester, Oklahoma. Officials there said
that the explosive pressing and
fuse installation assembly line could be restarted within a year,
at an estimated average cost of $3,000 per projectile, and that
they would also need about $600,000 to restore and modernize the
production facility.

The Navy has estimated the cost of maintaining battleships in the
inactive fleet at about $200,000 per ship, per year, which
excludes the cost of sustaining the battleship logistics support
structure. Because the ships are
maintained under dehumidification and special rust protection,
maintenance of parts on board costs nothing extra. According to
CAAA officials, DOD's cost to store and maintain the 16- inch
ammunition and propellant powder there is about $294,000 per year.
Annual storage costs to DOD for 16- inch ammunition and propellant
at the Hawthorne Army Depot and the McAlester Army Ammunition
Plant are about $121,000 and
$26,000, respectively. Navy Plans to Keep Battleships on the
Register
Section 1011 required the Navy to list and keep two battleships on
the NVR until the Secretary of the Navy certified that the Navy
has within the fleet an operational surface fire support
capability that equals or exceeds the
fire support capability that the Iowa class battleships would be
able to provide for Marine Corps amphibious assaults and
operations ashore. With the retirement of the battleships, the
Navy's existing surface fire support capabilities are limited to
5- inch/ 54 caliber guns and munitions on cruisers.
----------------------------------------

Q E D !!!

Ooops.. the GAO report URL:

http://www.warships1.com/US/BB61stats/index-BB1-GAO2.htm

Not to nitpick or anything, but this part:

Therefore, the new destroyer will rely on conventional 155-millimeter rounds that Marines say cannot reach the shore.

is either provably false, or true for the 16-inchers as well, depending on how far you want to set distance to the shore. A towed 155mm howitzer can demonstrably shoot a non-boosted projectile about twelve nautical miles (goal of fifteen or so for the latest design), so I rather think the Navy can design a deck-emplaced 155 that will shoot even further. The 16-inchers shoot about 20 nautical miles, so I'm guessing that "cannot reach the shore" is a bit of intentional dishonesty.

I’m sorry to say all of you pro-modern warfare people have know idea just how much more powerful and effective a 16 inch round is compared to a 2000 pound aircraft bomb... It’s not the weight of the round or the munitions.... It’s the striking velocity.... how fast the round is traveling when it hit's the target that matter... Plus the explosive yield... and for people’s education an 16 inch naval rifle is very accurate even with unguided rounds…

Here Read This Site Uninformed People

http://www.usnfsa.org/Articles/Latest%20Documents/Lehman%201984%20BB%20letter.pdf

The Iowa’s are very accurate gun plat forms

Here this site goes in to detail about the striking power/velocity or the 16” gun’s…

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm

And here is a site that has a picture demonstrating the accuracy of the guns

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-7.htm

and just for the record there is no way in the world an M1A1 tank could shrug off a 16 inch gun hit... it would totaly abliterate the tank and there is also no way in the world that an M1A1's gun would be able to penerate us navy class A armor or class B armor......

just to get the idea out of people's head's.......

HOPE THIS HELP'S ALOT OF PEOPLE.......