Age of the battleship really ended when?

[bengtsson]

If he had five fleet Carriers he would have stood two hundred miles off and pounded the Invasion Fleet.

Bob B.

The Americans would have just pounded him back. .

But I never said they wouldn't pound him back. Japan was prepared to lose it ships in this last battle. If I had the Carriers, I'de have attacked. The fact that the Japanese Carrier Task Force would have been lost simply proves the power of Task Force 38. If I had the five Japanese Carriers, I do know one thing for certain, No American BBs are going to touch me. So on to my point that Carriers had made BBs obsolete as THE Capital ships that decide who wins sea control. If I'm Kurita, I want to go to a Naval Airwar with Aircraft Carriers, not BBs.
Kurita and his higher ups knew they were going to lose their ships in all likelyhood. That's not to say a Battleship couldn't be of use, only that it was not the primary weapon, nor a weapon ever likely to defeat a Carrier Task Force. In my view at least

Bob B.

[chuck]

Ozawa had 5 carriers, and Halsey's battleships came to within 65 miles of touching them. Were it not for the fact that American escort carriers were being touched by Japanese battleships at the same time, and thus requiring Halsey to turn back, Halsey's battleship would have not only touched Japan's 5 carriers, but would have embraced them very tightly.

And about Kurita, if he had 5 carriers, why do you suppose he would have been able to accomplish his primary mission any better? The 5 carriers can't possibly survive the initial American air raids as well as the 5 battleships did. If any survive in an operational condition at all, the Taffy escort carriers with their Wildcats can put up a more effective defence against an air strike than they can against 4 battleships. What is to say he could have accomplished any more result with a sterling effort from his surviving carriers than he could with the very mediocre effort from his battleships? Also 4 out of the 5 battleships Kurita brought that day survived to fight another day. How many carriers would have survived?

[Werner]

If we grant the Japanese five first-class carriers and airmen, do we also give them aircraft of patterns not yet in manufacture?

By 1944, IJN carrier aviation was poorly suited to attack TF38. They would do much better against land targets.

[chuck]

At the time, the Japanese had 3 first class fleet carriers (Shukaku, Zukaku and Taiho), a competitive carrier torpedo bomber (Nakajima B6N Jill) and a world class carrier strike bomber (Aichi B7A Grace) in service. But there is no real first class carrier fighter in service. The Mitsubishi A6M was increasingly obsolescent, and the potentially first class Mitsubishi A7M was plagued with amazing amounts of delays and won't fly until well into 1945. If we ignore the deficiency in numbers and pilot quality, we would still be left with an uneven carrier force that has some superb shipboard strike aircraft to provide the punch, but no real competitive fighters to provide fleet defence or attack escort.

[Werner]

Grace wasn't produced in any meaningful numbers. The entire War's production may have supplied our hypothetical 5 carriers.

Jill was cannon fodder. It needed the -2 model to get the performance of which you speak, and by then the Battle for the Philippines is already about over.

The usual appearance of a B6N Jill:

[chuck]

Jill was competitive enough to match any torpedo bomber anywhere else in the world. Its vulnerability is the same as that of any other torpedo bomber that must fly low and straight, and in Jill's case mostly without air cover. Torpedo bombing was increasingly difficult against improving air defense. That is not a reflection of the relative merit of a particular torpedo bomber.

[Lesforan]

A Jill verses a 5" shell? Really, Werner, what other aircraft could do any better?

[bengtsson]

Also 4 out of the 5 battleships Kurita brought that day survived to fight another day.

You do mean to be sunk another day don't you The simple fact that the Kurita couldn't manage with 4 Battleships against a few Escort Carriers says alot about the state of US Naval Aviation in 1944. The case for Japanese naval aviation was just the opposite. It was finished, over, dead, long before Lyete gulf. Ozawa was simply a toothless decoy. Finished off by US Carrier Air Groups in the Marians action.
I don't blame the Japanese for using their BBs. They had them, there was no viable Carrier force left. Why not use them. The fact that 4 survived should be seen in the light of their accomplishments. Which were close to zero. If they had stayed to make hay against the Escort Carriers they would have caught a massive air strike from Task Force 38, and all sank.
BBs still had a use in 1944, but they had little bearing on naval superiority. That was down to who had the Carrier Forces.

Bob B.

[Werner]

Apart from Yamato's futile sortie, what "fighting" did the others do? One was sunk by submarine and the others anchored in the Home Islands under camouflage to serve as AA platforms. Nagato had bits of her upper works and funnel removed.

The only practical place for these ships in 1945 was Brunei, because there was no lift to carry fuel back to the Home Islands. On the other hand, they required refits that they could only get at Kure or possibly Singapore.

[bengtsson]

Should Kurita have been tried by Court Martial and shot for his performance at Leyte Gulf?

How does a BB force with 24 knots find it so hard to catch 18 knot escort Carriers? His CAs have over 30 knots available and his DDs even more. I have to assume Kurita was suffering shell shock from his approach to battle the day before and was in a state of sleep deprivation that probably had him near to hallucinations. ANy sailor who has experienced a 3-4 day period at sea without sleep can tell you how out of touch you become. I expect Kurita was too far 'out of it' to really know what he was doing. I think Allied commanders at Savo Island were in much the same boat as Kurita years later.

By 1944, the Japanese Naval Air Force had been pretty badly beat up. So I understand their going to the BB force to try and turn the Leyte gulf battle in their favour. Ozawa himself requested to use the 3 rd Carrier division [I think?]
as a support force for Kurita. This division was the closest to having fully worked up Carrier Air Groups.

Bob B.

[chuck]

Should Kurita have been tried by Court Martial and shot for his performance at Leyte Gulf?


Bob B.

Not by precedent. Yamamoto kept his post despite the fact that he also proved that it is always possible to loose a battle regardless of the odds.

[chuck]

Also 4 out of the 5 battleships Kurita brought that day survived to fight another day.

You do mean to be sunk another day don't you
Bob B.

Irrelevent distinction when arguing about the merit of the battleships. The point is the battleships survived long enough to reach a position from which it can inflict massive damage, and then survived to get out. That is something no comparable carrier force would likely be able to do in the circumstances. The fact that they failed to do overwhelming damage was not because they were battleships facing a few desperate last ditch strafers, but because they were commanded by someone who had little inclination to maintain control over the battle and apparently not eager to win. The point here is if he had 5 carriers, was able to maintain effective control of the battle to the maximum degree his forces would allow, and was eager to win, he still wouldn't have been able to achieve anymore than the mediocre results of his battleships. On the other hand, if he had possess those improvements while in command of his battleships, he would have been able to inflict massive damage on the American forces with only fractional losses to his force in the same amount of time it took for him to weave floral patterns on the sea with the wakes of his battleships in the name of avoiding torpedoes in real life. So the argument of his having to stay until destroyed to accomplish any result is false. If he had the will, he could have gotten in, killed Taffy group, suffered maybe 1 addition battleship loss due to torpedo, and still have gotten out at about the same time as what transpired in history.

No comparable carrier force would have been able to do substantially more even if they were eager and well commanded. If Kurita had carriers, he would have nothing to show for it either, not even surviving carriers. But with battleships he at least had surviving battleships to show at the end of the battle. There is no question that in Kurita's position, his 5 battleships were a far more effective force than could a comparable sized carrier force. The fact that he gave command a bad name is not the fault of his battleships.

If Kurita had successfully killed taffy and gotten out with 3 battleships, history would not be substantially changed, Japan would still be out of oil, IJN would still be unlikely to sortie again, and atomic bomb will still be ready in August 1945, but we wouldn't be here arguing about weather battleships has been living on borrowed time since 1920 or 1942. We put too much stock in the indicative power of chance occurrences in history. The fact that everyone who had battleships recognizes that continued usefulness of battleships are by no means exhausted is shown by the fact that both US and UK continued to study new battleship through 1946.

[bengtsson]

You do mean to be sunk another day don't you
Bob B.

The fact that everyone who had battleships recognizes that continued usefulness of battleships are by no means exhausted is shown by the fact that both US and UK continued to study new battleship through 1946.

Last point , I acknowledged in all my previous posts on the subject, that the World War II BB still could be useful in naval warfare. So we agree on that .
I still hold that from 1942-45, the Naval Power with the Carrier Task Forces that had the most aircraft, the best aircraft and the best pilots would win the war at sea. He who had the best Battleships would add only on the margine to their Naval Power. The big gun was too short ranged in a world of Carrier Air groups. When BBs were used to effect, after 1942, it was usually under aircover. And it was very rare for them to be in the role of a Battle line attempting to defeat the other power's main naval forces.

Bob B.

[chuck]

As an aside, the British G-3 and N-3 designs featured 4 10 barrel pom-pom mounts. These weapons would give these 1921 designs close range AA fire volume equal or greater than any battleship would actually carry in 1939. So if the Mitchell tests did pursuade any aviator of the dominance of their 80 mph fabric covered wooden aircraft over contemporary 35mph battlecruisers, any real naval conflict in the 1920s would likely put them back in their place.

[aleccap]

Sorry but I disagree with when the time of the battleship came to an end, that's ery much like saying when the prop aircraft came to an end with every war there is advancement in technology because money doesn't mean anything to get a weapon idea off the ground so to speak, there was a story a few years ago about the American navy that was going to lose their BIG aircraft carriers because they were deemed a BIG target, the story goes something like - the navy wanted F1-11 but could never land these huge aircraft on a small ship, but they put the order in nevertheless, after a short time of heated rows the plans were drawn up for the USS Enterprise, the big battleships are still here and that makes me very happy.

[GTDEATH13]

I think that the only reason that modern navies do not build battleships is that the cost of building and deploying them multiplied by the cost of losing one in battle is much greater than the benefits of deploying a battleship, either in peacetime or in wartime.
What I mean is that it is more affordable to lose a destroyer or a frigate or a cruiser than a battleship. Consider the Falklands war. The British navy lost the Sheffield. The Argentinian navy lost the General Belgrano. The impact of the loss to the Argentinian people was much greater than that of the loss of the Sheffield. Consider the impact of the loss of Prince of Wales by Japanese planes.
In my opinion that is the date the age of the battleship ended. The day the Prince of Wales was sunk.
Nowadays, the cost is just too high. How many planes will a battleship destroy before being sent to the bottom? Propably not more than a destroyer or a guided missile cruiser. But it is better to deploy ten destroyers than a single battleship. It is just a matter of cost-effectiveness than a matter of battle-effectiveness. The New Jersey at the Vietnam war did much damage. But what if a lunatace north-vietnamese torpedo boat captain managed to send two or three of his torpedos against it? What would the impact of losing the New Jersey be? Huge...

[Lesforan]

So we reopen this can of worms?

I'll restate my previous position. The battleship today still has a place in naval warfare, in my opinion at least. There is one task that it can perform far better than any other ship type.

That task is heavy shore bombardment. A battleship can put more weight of ordinance on a target in less time, with less cost, and with less exposure of crews to enemy fire than any other delivery system.

We do not need battleships to fight other battleships: there are no other battleships. Maybe all they can be is heavy coastal offensive monitors. But they can perform that role with excellence.

By the way, I don't think New Jersey would be lost in a face-off with a torpedo boat, even if the boat got a few torpedo hits in. She is a lot tougher than that.

[Timmy C]

I
What I mean is that it is more affordable to lose a destroyer or a frigate or a cruiser than a battleship. Consider the Falklands war. The British navy lost the Sheffield. The Argentinian navy lost the General Belgrano. The impact of the loss to the Argentinian people was much greater than that of the loss of the Sheffield. Consider the impact of the loss of Prince of Wales by Japanese planes.

I'm willing to bet that if the Sheffield was named Winston Churchill, then the morale impact would be similar to the lost of the Gen. Belgrano to the Argentines.

[Werner]

The aircraft carrier and cruise missiles have a place because of range. With hypersonic projectiles and precision guidance, railguns may shift the balance back to gun-ships. Whether the need for the armor which characterizes the battleship manifests itself again remains to be seen. A gunship of the future may have 200nm rail guns and resemble a cruiser in size and construction, rather than a hulking battleship built to take the same sort of weapons it fires.

[GTDEATH13]

The point I am trying to make is that the battleship never became obsolete but it became expensive. A battleship will always be of use.

Undesputedly shore bomberdment duties are the best example of the usefulness of a battleship.

Moreover, a modern antiship missile will propably not be able to penetrate the armor of a battleship. The biggest areas of damage would be the superstructure and the outer decks. The exocet missile for example does not have the power to penetrate complex armor like the one of the Iowas. Ballistic missiles, though, are a completely different scenario.

Anyway, in my point of view, a battleship will always be a formidable weapon platform as well as the best way of projecting power.

As for the scenario with the New Jersey and the torpedo boat consider it as a wild case scenario with possibility of 1/1000000000 for the torpedo boat to score a single hit on the battleship.

As for Timmy's bet I am willing to wage against that.