The Ship Model Forum

...and people like me pay the price with their lives.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Found this while browsing in search of something else and thought it was worth sharing. This fellow has put together a rather interesting what-if page dedicated to a nuclear powered Iowa Class battleship.

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Unaffiliated Independent Subversive
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"Every day we hear about new studies 'revealing' what should have been obvious to sentient beings for generations; 'Research shows wolverines don't like to be teased" -- Jonah Goldberg

How about putting a Nucular(nuclear) reactor as in the Nimitz,Updated Nimitz class and keep their turbines. They were all put out to pasture before their time. Their hulls really have not had any mileage placed on them!
Dane

Dane,

This is covered in other What If threads on the Iowa Class.

Russ

Yeah, I have thought about this a whole lot, too. It's a real toss up as to if battleships are a good candidate for nuclear power. Battleships are ships meant for sustained combat and fight while heavily damaged. Nuclear power plants are not conducive to damage. While this would probably be modified for battleships, CVN plants are programmed to scram/shut down as soon as they are shaken pretty badly. An Iowa or Montana-class battleship's armor scheme is perfectly suitable for power-plant protection, so if there is any type of ship that has thought about keeping its power plant safe, it's an American fast battleship. While the armor scheme would offer a nuclear power plant the best survivability of any design, especially better than a CVN, if you're a battleship eating missiles carrying 1,000lb or 2,200lb warheads flying at 2.5-3 times the speed of sound, the whole ship is going to rattle and shake a LOT. Those plants had better be very flexible to continue operation after the ship has been hit.

As we have seen over the last 40 years with CVs and CVNs, the costs of nuclear powered ships are significantly higher than conventionally powered ships in all regards (upfront costs, yearly costs, end of life costs, and total life-cycle costs). I would imagine it would be the same way with battleships. Nuclear power would drive their costs up as well.

You might find it interesting that NAVSEA and Newport News Shipbuilding had drawn up plans how to mechanically convert the Iowas to nuclear power in the late 1980s. This did not address new weapon systems or radar or anything, it was just how to physically take out the boiler plants and replace them with the CVN-73 power plant. It would have been an entire rebuild of the amidships of the vessel. Pretty much everything between the armored citadel that rises up through the bridge to just forward of Turret 3 would have been removed, and the interior cut out leaving the armored fire rooms exposed and ready to accept power plants. Longbeach Naval Yard contributed that during such a rebuild they would either remove and replace the hull’s shell plating with an entirely new welded shell or they would simply weld all of the rivets in place and weld all of the shell plating together.

The cost of this nuclear conversion/rebuild was going to be the same as building a new Virginia-class nuclear powered cruiser, about 50% more than what it cost to reactivate them as they were.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

The last research and development for 16 inch shells was done in the 1950s. The nuclear round (the Mk23 "Katie") started development in 1952 and 50 rounds were delivered to the USN total. All other funded developemnt was for new fuses for exsisting rounds. The new fuses increased the leathality of the older rounds allowing for better air burst and contact fusing. The scramjet shell was conceived as an anti-tank weapon. Scramjet shells penetrate enemy armor with a depleted uranium round in a tungstun caseing with a sharp tip on the front. The penetration was to be made with the kenetic energy of the round's velocity. There was no bursting charge. Scramjet shells are only effective for line of sight attacks. The scramjet round has marginal value beyond visual range.

One of the biggest Cold War gunfire projects was the development of the Mk86 gun fire control system. Originally designed to be run on UYK-7 computers the system was designed to provide gunfire control for the Spruance class DD and the Mk71 203mm/55 and the Mk45 127mm/54 guns. The system was fir to the Spruance class DD and the California, Virginia, and Ticonderoga class cruisers. A major component of the Mk86 system is the AN/SPQ-9A radar which produces high resolution surface and topography information, as well as the AN/SPG-60 radar for targeting surface and air targets. Because of a lack of fire support capability the USN started in the early 1960s to increase the number of vessels with Mk42 or Mk45 127mm/54 guns. The Belknap class deleted its second Mk10 launcher for a Mk42 gun. The California and Virginia class DLGN (later CGN) were designed with two rather than 1 Mk45 127mm/54 gun. In the 1980s the Arleigh Burke class DDG had its design altered so that the bow Mk75 76mm OTO Martella Super-rapid gun would be replaced with the Mk45 mod2 127mm/54 gun.

During operation Desert Storm the Navy found that the high persion bomb sights on the the A-6E and A-7E were not able to reduce error in landing bombs on targets in many situations because dumb bombs would drift off target because they had not control surfaces to keep them on target. The USN and USAF jointly developed the JDAM kits for existing free fall bombs. The GPS control would guide the bomb to its aim point after its released from the aircraft. By operation Iraqi Freedom The USN and USAF had accuracy good enough that a single aircraft could sortie to attack multiple targets, and the aircraft was not nearly as exposed to enemy fire as they were back in the Vietnam era. JDAM kits and the free fall bombs they are attached to are inexpensive.

During the battleship's tour of duty along the gunline in Vietnam, the USS New Jersey had fired 5,688 rounds of 16 inch shells, and 14,891 five inch shells.

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║ Seasick║
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Carr already posted a link to the damage assessment done in the wake of the Vietnam deployment. It seems stunning clear based on those assessments that the real answer here is that you can throw almost 3 times as many 5" shells and still be roughly ten times LESS effective than the 16".

The only reason why we fired so many 5" rounds is because they were so ineffective. Every single time I have read about how many 5” rounds we fired during WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, it's always qualify with their ineffectiveness. Norman Friedman points this out multiple times in both US Destroyers, US Battleships, and the NGFS section of US Amphibious Ships. The only reason why we preferred to use 5”/38s in some situations was because they were so under powered that they could be used closer to our troops than a 16" round, they were the only thing avilable, and they could be used in carpet bomb type strike.

ComparisonIt is exactly like comparing the 5”/38caliber gunfire mission to a single cluster bomb delivery. There are small explosions over a relatively small area. It took "several dozen 5” rounds" to destroy a target. The delivery of a single 16” round is directly comparable to a 750-1000lb JDAM strike. The 16” round goes damn near exactly where you want it to, but it carries an enormous impact that destroys everything within 300 meters.

16” round development:You will be interested to find that we fully developed 3 rounds for the 16" rounds during the 1980s and fielded 2 of them. The third was too good for the battleships' present GFCS.

The last 16" round to be developed and manufactured was the 11" discarding sabot round during 1986-1988 by Captain Richard W. White, a LCDR at the time. I have spoken with him at length in person about its development. They were specifically being withheld from use until the Mk160 GFCS could be installed aboard the battleships, because the rounds out shot the the computing abilities of the original GFCS by almost 20nm.

There was also interest in a different 11" round that only weighed 600lbs and had reportedly achieved 115nm during testing during Vietnam.

Earlier in the '80s two 16" full bore submunition rounds were developed. They were heavily modified 1960lb HC rounds. Their base plugs were redesigned with sheer pins, an explosive propellant charge was added the nose to drive out the submunition package. One delivered 440 submunitions and the other delivered 666 submunitions. Both of these rounds entered service and went on deployment with USS Iowa.


I have seen all of these in person, the 11" DSR banded on pallets at Norfolk Naval Shipyard where the USS Illinois's armor is being stored and the 16" submunition rounds at the NGFS/ANGLICO school at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. I have been able to see if they made it into the registry. Not only did we develop them, but we have them in inventory.

This is all unclassified stuff you can also find on the web, so if you have any retort, please offer it.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

There were many fire support assignments for the New Jersey in Vietnam where the 16 inch guns remained cold and even unmanned. Many of the fire support missions involved the New Jersey firing 5 inch rounds at targets less than 500 feet from US ans SVA positions. I have it from a good source that about half of the fire missions for the 16 inch guns were "Daisey Cutter" jobs. Daisy cutting involves firing high explosive rounds set to air burst so that they nock down trees to make clearing so that helicoptors could land. The primary reason the New Jersey fired so many 5 inch rounds is that compared to other ships she had an endless supply. The safety radius for the 5 inch shells enabled them to be fired right up next to friendly forces. While the New Jersey was in Vietnam she put a lot of NVA soldiers in the morgue. The New Jersey could saturate an area with 5 inch shells for an entire evening, replenish completely in the day time and return the next evening and pick up where she left off. The only weekness with the 5 inch/38 was range not lethality. The 127mm/54 Mk42 guns on newer vessels fired a heavier shell that had better range and better accuracy at longer ranges. Destroyers with the Mk42 gun did provide counter-battery fire against NVA coastal artillary for the New Jersey but that was so that the New Jersey wouldn't have to be side tracked. For fire support, volume is the most important capability, especially against infantry that has partial cover.

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║ Seasick║
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The guns caliber called on most frequently in ww2 to provide direct fire support were the 5 inch/38 and 6 inch/47.

The 6 inch/47 fired amongst others a Mk34 HC round that weighed 105 pounds and had a bursting charge of 13.22 pounds. In the fire support roll it could be fused for air burst with the VT fuse or timed fuse. The primary target was infantry. The HC shell could also be fired with a contact and contact delayed fuse.

Maximum range of the 6 inch HC shell at 46.5 degrees elevation is 23,480 yards.

The current Mk45 mod 4 127mm/54 fires several rounds that have a weight @68 pounds, including:

Mk 80 HE-PD =High Explosive, Point Detonating Fuze
Mk 116 HE-VT = High Explosive, Variable Time Fuze
Mk 127 HE-CVT = High Explosive, Controlled Variable Time Fuze
Mk 156 HE-IR = High Explosive, infra red homing fuse
Mk 172 HE-ICM = Cargo round (everything from leaflets to submunitions)

Standard bursting round is 7.75 pounds. The high explosive in these rounds has more potential energy per pound of explosive than the WW2 era charges which makes comparison a little hazy.

Maximum Range with the standard propellent charge at 47 degrees elevation is 25,880 yards.
Maximum Range with the high energy EX-175 propellent charge at 47 degrees elevation is @40,000 yards.
So the standard 127mm rounds of the USN fired from the Mk45 mod 4 gun can out range the 6 inch/47 rounds from the Mk16 gun fielded in WW2.

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║ Seasick║
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Given the information about the development of the 5", I conclude that, if the same effort were applied to the 6", 8" and 16", we could expect corresponding increases in the range, accuracy and lethality of those rounds. Further, within the effective range of such weapons, explosives could be placed on target at considerably lower $ cost per pound than can be achieved with missile and/or aircraft delivered weaponry.

If more effort was placed into 155mm naval guns in the 1960s through 1990s guns beyond 155mm wouldn't be necessary.

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║ Seasick║
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I saw an intert 5"/54, 155mm, and 8-inch rounds side by side today. The size explains the 8inch's superiority over the 155mm and why it was so much easier to modify and adapt than either the 155 or the 5inch. It's also clear why we were able to whip up a laser guided round, an ER round, and a gun mount we can mount on destroyer sized ships and greater in only a few years time whereas we are still fighting with AGS and its 155mm ammunition after over 10 years. The 8inch has proven it offers fewer technical problems and offers far more growth potential.

Why do you prefer the 155mm over 8 inch?

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

I'd freely concede that with the available technology, you absolutely want a smaller bang if within spitting distance of front line troops when you make a 50 foot impact crater. Of course CEP for the 16" guns improved markedly between 1968 and Gulf War 1. Dispersion was improved to 123 yards at 34,000 yards range. In July 1987 they began RPV testing. Using an RPV made the 16-in gun a very formidable weapon; only three salvos were necessary to straddle a 4 x 120 6-yd sled at 40,000 yd. With RPV use and improved fire control, this changed a bit to 33% direct hits on a sinkex in 1989 at a range of 46,800 yards.

The 16" AP shell can penetrate 30 feet of concrete. The 5"/62 can penetrate about 2 1/2 feet.

Just look at the difference in Bunkers destroyed/collpased in Vietnam. NJ fired three times as many 5" shells to destroy 1/10 as many structures. You seriously can't tell me that you think the 5" round is a suitable substitute when compared to the 16". The 5"/62 round is about 70 lbs, travelling at a muzzle velocity of roughly 3000 fps (depending on ammo type) compared to a shell weighing between 1900 and 2700 lbs, travelling at 2500 fps. You would have to have invented an explosive that would make a nuke look like a firecracker if you expected those shells to be even remotely comparable.

Imagine if they'd actually devoted the effort into the accuracy and first hit kill of the 16" cannon that they spent trying to get more range and accuracy out of the 5".

From what I've seen, there are two basic camps. Those who think the 5" gun is absolutely fine and don't understand what all the fuss is about, and the guys who actually need NSFS and wonder what everyone else is smoking. The Marines are pretty adamant that the 5" gun is just not sufficent. And really, you can scoff or say whatever you like, but these guys have an actual idea of what they need in the form of support.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... 91/KMC.htm

For pete's sake they testified before congress that the job was not being handled. But, the non-battleship crowd prevailed, and the ships are far too gone to make refurbishing them a possibility. Heck, the Marines that argued against their retirement and tried to get them put back in service have even had to accept that recently.

And really, to me the most compelling argument about the 5" gun is simply this. If it's so awesome, why are people looking for a bigger replacement? MONARC, AGS, the 155/52, all of them were attempts to remedy a perceived deficiency.

The effectiveness of the 16" round has always been without serious question. It's just too effective for some people. It's the same thing with close air support. Saying you can't have a 16" round is like saying you can't have a 1000lb or greater JDAM. Neither is true, and we use 2,000lb JDAMs to take out machine gun nests all the time. With the battleship at your disposal (a modernized like the pictures I have in this thread) you would have the advantage of 3 5" guns to combine fire for an effective 5" strike if you were really too concerned about firing a 16" or 11" round too close to the troops. However, it's the troops who call it in, so it's ultimately up to them where it goes. Sometimes they only have 500lb and 1,400lb or even a 2,000lb JDAMS to use so they end up dropping a crowd pleaser on a truck.

Again, I think you get that the 16" round's effectiveness annot be seriously questioned. I think Seasick trying to say that a battleship with its 16" guns was reactivated for its 5" guns is pretty silly. He is either playing devil's advocate or ignoring his previous arguments to support a current one.

The conclusion in Vietnam was to reactivate 2 more heavy cruisers and 2 battleships to properly engage targets in Vietnam. 5" and TACAIR was not doing it. 8" and 16" gunfire was required. Losing aircraft at the rate they were was unacceptable. Instead of getting 2 more CAs and 2 more BBs, they only got the New Jersey. It only cost the Navy 7 Phantom's worth of money to reactivate New Jersey.

There is an adaptive fuse that is adaptable to the 16" round that gives all existing 16" rounds GPS guidance that is being fitted to 155mm rounds. With the installation of a base-bleed plug and this course corrective fuse, a 16" HC round could land 33nm away with GPS accuracy. The 11" DSR could benefit the same and range from 51nm to 112nm with GPS accuracy, equivalent to a 500lb JDAM.


You got it, bro. NGFS is just as important as TACAIR, and some people are simply true believers against battleships and it seems 8inch. No matter what information you find on effectiveness, economy, feasibility, plans, etc battleships will never be good enough....just because. It's the same thing with the Mk71, too. People will yell at you like you just stomped out a kitten, and when you give them tech and performance data proving the weapons viability, they lock up and pout (an admiral and a captain did this to me at two different events) or they ignore what you say (some contributors on here do that often).

I was at a dinner after I challenged the CNO about 5” gunfire and suggested a re-examination of the Mk71 at the Surface Warfare Symposium 2008, and I was speaking with the Captain who was in charge of the Navy’s 5” ERGM project for almost 10 of its 15 year development life when some old drunk dude came up to me who recognized me from earlier when I asked the CNO about it and started talking about how stupid gunnery is. Then I asked him for specifics, and he told me about how all the battleships did was dig motes around Iraqi emplacements during the Gulf War, and he laughed loudly. Then I told him that I had watched all of the fire missions of UAV footage shot on the Wisconsin during the Gulf War, and you could see a pattern of practice they developed after the first 2 fire missions. After the 3rd mission they were landing rounds within their kill radius with the first round every time and direct impacts (skin to skin) after 3 rounds. He poo-pooed this and said the battleships cost more than a carrier to operate. Then I told him, they cost $58 million per year to operate, and a CVN cost $301 million to operate. He got all flustered, and I followed it up with the cost of new F/A-18s and the cost of fuel to get them off the deck. He grumbled, and I followed it up with the time it takes to get a ready-5 aircraft from a flight deck to an area of operation 10 miles inland, and finally he just said I had a bunch of bogus numbers. Then I told him I was quoting from the GAO’s reports of Gulf War effectiveness and current budget expenditures. He grumbled again and said they were bogus numbers, and then the 5” ERGM CAPT standing next to me laughed and said, “you know, GM2 is right, Admiral,” and the guy stormed off.

The guy whose cocktail I had just taken a HUGE dump in was the last CINCAIR for the Atlantic Fleet.

So, they’re everywhere. No matter what facts you give them, they just don’t care, because even it means ignoring what they have already told you (like some in this forum do) you have to be wrong, and the battleships cannot be the answer...ever...no matter what. These types of guys even make questionable statements like "the battleships were so ineffective that they were taken off the gun-line to sort mail," when a simple reference shows that the battleships were shooting all the way up to the very last hour of the war. Wisconsin had to cancel 3 fire missions and clear her loaded guns, because the war was over.

I disagree. Nothing serious has been done to them to make the unusable. Even cutting through armor can be repaired at moderate cost. I don't know about Iowa, but the Wisconsin is still being preserved in a mothballed state with cathodization and dehumidification. The only difference is people pay admission and walk on her decks instead of her being behind a locked fence.

The most effective 5" rounds are the new ones Seasick did not list: HE-ET and KE-ET rounds, and even those are only good enough to shred trees and destroy light vehicles and people in a 30' radius, which by the way is well outside its CEP.

It's clear through studying the development of the destroyers the only reason why we still mount 5" guns on ships is because the Mk71 was never adopted. There is a clear linear eveolution to these weapon systems. The 5" is clear to see, because it's always been a secondary battery on ships. The 8" is a little more difficult, because the Navy was forced to quit using it. However, to put it back into perspective, the Mk71 was the next step in keeping main battery gunnery in the fleet. It went from the Mk16 gun mount (Newport News) to the Mk71 as a main battery aboard Spruance-class destroyers, the cruiser Long Beach, and the strike cruiser.

Senator Proximore convinced the Congress to remove funding for the weapon in 1978 against the Navy’s requests and testimony for the immediate need for the weapon. In 1980 the weapon was again approved and funded for a first run of 7 Spruance-class destroyers, but this time funding literally mysterious disappeared. There was no reason, there was no paper trail. The program was just magically assassinated. When it was summarily killed, even though it was fully approved for USN, the Navy quit pursuing it, because the battleships were on their way back in, and 16" rounds are rar and away more effective than 8" rounds.

Well, it has been established that the battleships were decommissioned prematurely, and there is not political will to bring them back, the 5" gun has been maxed out and it's still inadequate, and the 155mm AGS cannot be fitted on small ships (only being fitted on 3 ships giving the entire fleet 6 155mm guns, and the 155mm round still cannot perform the anti-ship mission or hardened emplacement destruction required by naval gunnery. The Mk71 was designed to accomplish all of the mission areas and be small and light enough to be mounted on destroyer and larger sized ships. It has proven it can. 5" and 155mm have failed them all.

It's time to bring the Mk71 back in to new construction and channel all those funds dedicated to the ineffective 5" and 155mm systems into further development of the 8" ER rounds.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Looking at the positions of targets for Tomahawk missiles in Libya, and considering the cost of 130 or so of these missiles, I am compelled to ask if 130 or so 16" projectiles wouldn't have been somewhat less expensive and just as effective.

Yes, GPS guided 16" or 11" rounds would have been cheaper, however I would analyze it a little further. The $600,000 to $1 million for a TLAM is not correct. The real numbers are $900 million to $2.1 million depending on the variant in question. The precision guidance packages for the 16" rounds would be the expensive parts, and if the 155mm PGK are $10,000 a piece we can expect 16" to be maybe twice as expensive. So, yes, the 11" or 16" rounds would have been significantly more economical. As we already know, a battleship itself is significantly more economical than an aircraft carrier.

The next question would be effectiveness. The engagement time would have been a little longer, because the battleship would have had to shoot on the move going form one target area to another, and depending on the ranges in question the battleships would have had to engage each target with 1 to 2 16" rounds or 3 to 4 11" rounds. The "warhead" carried by a standard 16" HC round is comparable to a 500-700lb bomb.

So, as the situation sits right now, the battleship would have fired 160 or maybe 200 11" and 16" rounds at a cost of $1.6 million to $2 million and would be able to stand off the coast and ready to perform NGFS and unit specific intelligence reporting for NATO SOF elements and aircraft. The ship itself would be able to host SOF in order to rescue downed pilots or other persons of interest of priority.

The battleship would be able to react quickly to targets of opportunity instead of having to wait for aircraft to enter the airspace, etc. Everyone gets the point.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

I can not agree more,, I was in the Med during the conflict over in Beruit in the early 1980's and was involved when, the building housing all those serviceman was destroyed.. I also remember when the NJ was their doing fire support it was a sight to be seen.. What a shame...
Hey I might have missed this conculsion to the propulsion debate on these beast.. but was the Gas turbine option every mention.. they have proven flexiablity,, I know it would mean a major gutting of the beast.. but it would free up space for support of Helo's or Special forces.. or additonal VLS or What-if..
Too bad we can not make some of these discussion know to the people who make the decision down in the funny farm call the captial... so my humble opnion...

Speaking of NJ in Beirut, does any one know of any reports/papers/studies done regarding the effectiveness of her gunfire, both in terms of suppressing the enemy in the immediate short term and in long-term attainment of strategic goals? Currently writing a paper on naval counterterrorism and would like her as a case study.

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De quoi s'agit-il?

Timmy, Yes, please, please, please read Paul Stillwell's book on New Jersey. He speaks in pretty deep detail about the issues her 16" guns suffered caused by a bad propellant lot and the effectiveness of her presence in theater. I have read the actual damage assessments of her 16" and 5" guns in her fire missions. The document was labeled as "secret" but it is old so I don't know if it is still secret or if it has been redacted and is now public information. Because of this I cannot comment about the contents of that report or the accuracy of Stillwell's statements, but I would highly recommend using Stillwell as a source.

Also, another perspective is given by a Navy SEAL in Warrior Soul by Chuck Pfarrer who was in Bruit at the time. "In war, bigger is better, and New Jersey was both." He credits her strategic value due to her presence everywhere as superb but her tactical value limited to the hills and plains due to the incredible destructiveness of her 16" rounds.

Good luck with that paper, man.

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Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance