Age of the battleship really ended when?

[kennylibben]

when was this?

[Werner]

when was this?

May 17, 1987. Iraqi Exocets

[kennylibben]

no wonder i didn't hear of it...

[Deckard]

Dec 17th 1903 when two bike makers proved powered and controlled sustained flight was possible in a heavier-than-air machine.

[Werner]

Dec 17th 1903 when two bike makers proved powered and controlled sustained flight was possible in a heavier-than-air machine.

If you're referring to sustained flight by powered unmanned heavier-than-air machines, the date ought to be 11 November 1896, by Samuel Pierpont Langley. His unmanned demonstrator flew more than 5,000 feet.

[Dave Wooley]

In any case, I don't want to be aboard the next Battle Ship that tries naval gunfire support missions! Good luck when 10 or 20 supersonic anti ship missiles start arriving onboard!

Bob B.

I don't want to be at the beach when the next Battle Ship does naval gunfire support...

Jorit

By the way, has anyone ever done a realistic threat assessment of shore-based SSMs against a BB-centred battlegroup? I mean, you wouldn't put your battleship alone off the enemy beach, would you?

BBs are steel coffins no more no less . Before you could get in range to fire your 16inch round a couple of SSMs have reduced one BB to a tangled wreck .
Dave Wooley

[Gone Asiatic]

I don't want to be at the beach when the next Battle Ship does naval gunfire support...

Jorit

By the way, has anyone ever done a realistic threat assessment of shore-based SSMs against a BB-centred battlegroup? I mean, you wouldn't put your battleship alone off the enemy beach, would you?

BBs are steel coffins no more no less . Before you could get in range to fire your 16inch round a couple of SSMs have reduced one BB to a tangled wreck .
Dave Wooley

16" ERPGMs?

[JWintjes]

BBs are steel coffins no more no less . Before you could get in range to fire your 16inch round a couple of SSMs have reduced one BB to a tangled wreck .
Dave Wooley

How many SSMs do you need to a) saturate the BBG air defences, b) saturate any alternative targets and c) then turn one BB to a tangled wreck?

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm only saying that it's a tad more difficult than firing off half a dozen Silkworms...



Jorit

[Werner]

A "modern" battleship (85-95 era) never traveled alone. They always had an AEgis ship in formation, which effectively neutralizes any missile attack of the period. I'm sure were battleships still a part of the inventory, there would be several SM-2 carrying vessels around her at all times.

[Alan Raven]

Dec 17th 1903 when two bike makers proved powered and controlled sustained flight was possible in a heavier-than-air machine.

I remember it well, they were English.

[Dave Wooley]

A "modern" battleship (85-95 era) never traveled alone. They always had an AEgis ship in formation, which effectively neutralizes any missile attack of the period. I'm sure were battleships still a part of the inventory, there would be several SM-2 carrying vessels around her at all times.

Aegis has never really been put to the test { 85-95}. I guess a saturation attack of SSMs from land and submarine would give some serious trouble to any defensive screen, then and now . BBs in the 21 Century would be a liability and best left in port or better still a museum. My be the Kirov's would survive longer. ?
Dave Wooley

[Mark Petersen]

A "modern" battleship (85-95 era) never traveled alone. They always had an AEgis ship in formation, which effectively neutralizes any missile attack of the period. I'm sure were battleships still a part of the inventory, there would be several SM-2 carrying vessels around her at all times.

Plus the BB's would of been upgrade with the point defense missiles currently being deployed on the CVNs. Plus I really think that some of the anti-missile gun systems that have been talked about might of been deployed. One would of been the 35MM CIWS proposal shown at the 1991 US Navy League show. Another might of been a proposal I remember hearing about for a guided version of the 5.5" naval round some time in the '90s. Plus we might of seen tall or some of remaining 5" turrets on the Iowa's replaced with 5.5" mounts of the type used on other naval vessels or possiblity VLS cells for land attack missiles or possilly SM-2s. Plus any assumption of a BB or any other naval vessel working the gun fire support role presupposes air superiority anyways.

[Werner]

Aegis has never really been put to the test { 85-95}. I guess a saturation attack of SSMs from land and submarine would give some serious trouble to any defensive screen, then and now

While I agree that the Iowa would be a liability were it to sail today, it is also not true that �gis has not been "put to the test". In actual combat, perhaps, it has done little apart from shoot down the ocassional air liner, but from an exercise standpoint, it certainly has been tested against live fire attempts to saturate the system.

It is the best AA weapon possible, which accounts for it's use in Japanese and European applications in spite of the immense cost of acquisition.

[bengtsson]

The basic question of when the Big Gun Armored Ship became obsolete might mean different things to different people.
For instance, when the the BB became obsolete as a sea control/naval superiority weapon? That's got to be when Aircraft Carriers became viable and their aircraft became mono plane, metal and powered by high performance engines. 1939-40. Just in time for WWII. Bismarck sinks because of the A/C Carrier, Italian BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier, American BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier and finally Japanese BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier. Now that isn't to say that at times a BB could not still be of some use. But you were not going out with a BB squadron looking for the enemy fleet Carriers. Fleet Carriers decided who won the war.
The argument that the BB still has a use today may be true in a case where you have already won complete sea, sub surface and air superiority. In which case the BB can park off shore and shell the local Camel Corps. But I'de rather complete that mission with a few precision guided bombs. If the Camel Corps is backed up by some recently purchased supersonic anti shipping missiles on mobile launchers? Well, as I said, I'de not want to be aboard. Counter measures exist, but so did the Anti Aircraft gun in WWII and yet count the ships sunk with all AA guns in action. Why spend the money to keep BBs for a war you have had to already have won in order to employ it?
BBs? The Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet 1914-18. That's what the Dreadnought Battle Ship is all about!

Bob B.

[bengtsson]

Aegis has never really been put to the test { 85-95}. I guess a saturation attack of SSMs from land and submarine would give some serious trouble to any defensive screen, then and now

While I agree that the Iowa would be a liability were it to sail today, it is also not true that �gis has not been "put to the test". In actual combat, perhaps, it has done little apart from shoot down the ocassional air liner, but from an exercise standpoint, it certainly has been tested against live fire attempts to saturate the system.

It is the best AA weapon possible, which accounts for it's use in Japanese and European applications in spite of the immense cost of acquisition.

I don't want to take this way off topic, but I don't keep up so much on modern USN systems any longer. Anways, since AEgis is, at the end of the day, just another active radar system, why is it immune to jamming and or targeting by radiation homing missiles? It seems the claims made for it's capabilities always assumes an enemy with primitive technology. What accounts for it's performance and near invulnerability as advertised?
If the USN has electronic counter measures to defeat anti shipping missiles, why don't the possible enemy weapons systems have the same capabilities? How hard could it be to confuse a radar picture for AEgis and then let go with 30 or so missiles? Mobile launchers have proved very hard to target. Saddam's Scuds for example.

Bob B.

[Dave Wooley]

The basic question of when the Big Gun Armored Ship became obsolete might mean different things to different people.
For instance, when the the BB became obsolete as a sea control/naval superiority weapon? That's got to be when Aircraft Carriers became viable and their aircraft became mono plane, metal and powered by high performance engines. 1939-40. Just in time for WWII. Bismarck sinks because of the A/C Carrier, Italian BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier, American BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier and finally Japanese BBs sink because of the A/C Carrier. Now that isn't to say that at times a BB could not still be of some use. But you were not going out with a BB squadron looking for the enemy fleet Carriers. Fleet Carriers decided who won the war.
The argument that the BB still has a use today may be true in a case where you have already won complete sea, sub surface and air superiority. In which case the BB can park off shore and shell the local Camel Corps. But I'de rather complete that mission with a few precision guided bombs. If the Camel Corps is backed up by some recently purchased supersonic anti shipping missiles on mobile launchers? Well, as I said, I'de not want to be aboard. Counter measures exist, but so did the Anti Aircraft gun in WWII and yet count the ships sunk with all AA guns in action. Why spend the money to keep BBs for a war you have had to already have won in order to employ it?
BBs? The Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet 1914-18. That's what the Dreadnought Battle Ship is all about!

Bob B.

Absolutely . There is no doubting that the Trireme was a superb naval craft and in the hands of the Athenians at Salamis was a truly strategic weapon which altered the course of history but you wouldn't want to use it today.
Dave Wooley

[Seasick]

Battleship Zenith: Jutland battle.
Battleship last hurrah: Battle of the Surigao Strait.
After that it was over for the battleship.

Night gunnery was the last bastion of battleship power. Once aircraft supplanted them in the night roll it was over.

[richter111]

When Billy Mitchell blew up the Osfriesland, the day was over. No one knew it, and the US Navy certainly denied it....

[Guest]

I think it is silly to put a single date on "end of battleship era". It is a gradual process that spanned the period from 1918 to 1993. The process is more like the lengthy and gradual imposition of constitutional constraints upon the British Monarchy than the short and violent overthrow of the French Monarchy. In 1918 viable technique to launch a substantial number of planes at sea, and have those planes launch viable torpedo attacks on ships, had been developed and thus the process of the eclipse of the battleship is well underway.

Mitchell's 1921 stunt is just a stunt. It marked a non-workable tangent to the fundamental process that proceeded at its own pace completely oblivious to the antics of Billie Mitchell. Beyond a histrionic puncturation mark, Billy Mitchell signified nothing. It marked neither the end of any era nor the beginning of any era.

In 1921, the erosion of battleship's primacy was well underway, but erosion or no erosion, battleship was still supreme. It is no longer absolutely invulnerable to the newly geathering threat, and everyone knows this without Billy Mitchell. But the admirals of USN was absolutely right in supposing that battleship supremacy does not depend on complete invulnerability. Battleships had always been vulnerable to some threats. The degree of vulnerability as it existed in 1921 had been growing, but nowhere near what it would take to dethrone the battleship. Battleship might no longer be the absolute monarch, but then there had never been any monarch that was truely absolute. And the process of imposing new constitutional restrictions on the monarchy of the battleship was still at its early stages in 1921. Perhaps something like the Monarchy of King Charles II.

[Lesforan]

When did the BB era really end? With the retirement of the Iowas.

While I will allow that their primary purpose originally was to fight others of their own type, they would up being excellent shore bombardment craft.

No existing combat ship can sustain the type of damage that a battleship could, either shellfire, guided missles, or torpedos. The battleship had the ability to put more weight of fire ashore, more cheaply, and with less risk to its operators than any comparative system (bombing, missle attack).

Battleship guns had a range of well over 20 miles, the ability to inflicy considerable damage to coastal infrastructure. That would be their true value today.

Of course, a battleship has the ability to be a massive cruise missle launch platform, but that is rather a waste, as a much cheaper vessel could also do that.