Anyone for a simulation for naval supremacy?

Just this, been reading up on capital ships since I was a kid and I've come to one conclusion: battleships became obsolete only due to high operating costs. Since wars are usually won by deeper pockets, it doesn't make sense to match, say a battleship, with carriers and planes assuming equal cost to build and operate.

so why don't we simulate a war for high seas supremacy: my 20 battleships versus your 20 aircraft carriers. time context, waning years of WWII. you're free to design your carriers and planes as much as i'm free to design my gunships.

among the super-battleships never built, i'm still partial to the US montana class. i'm not sure about the german h-44 design (126 thousand tonnes with 8 20" guns???) the montana has a much better lateral profile than the iowa's stubby back due to a twin aft-turret design. beam was kept narrow to make it pass the panama. i find that a design limitation but it will do. this montana baby was designed to knock out the yamato and maybe the super-yamato if ever one was built. the iowa was really just an escort battleship to keep up with the fast fleet carriers.

for unarmored carriers, i don't need the original 12 x 16" gun layout. two turrets: one fore, one aft, each with 3 or even 4 16" guns will do. i don't need all that secondary 5" and 3" armament. the rest of that monster deck will be devoted to anti-aircraft weaponry.

removing two main turrets and most of the secondary ones, replacing them with ac-ac; plus putting an even more monstrous diesel engine and boilers, will up the speed from the original 29 knots to maybe 35 knots or faster. AA design layout will play an important role. the thing any WWII ship has to defend against is dive/high level bombing. the two big japanese gun ships were sunk by 10-12 torpedoes each only because prior to being torpedoed, dive bombers knocked out much of their AA batteries. so my high-angle AA will be long-range automatic cannons with radar guidance up to 35,000 feet. this will bring the dive bombers under fire even before they peel off to dive. the torpedo planes will get the usual deck- and waterline-level guns to wipe them out even before they can begin their topedo runs.

so, how will your 20 flat tops be?

 

And, you'd be wrong. Battleships became obsolete for two primary reasons:

1. A revolution in sensor systems
2. The introduction of aircraft (including missiles) that extended the range of fire power and the sensor systems beyond the distance shipboard systems could manage.

Essentially, it is irrelevant what you do with your "battleships." The carrier force simply remains out of gun range and applies impulse after impulse of aircraft firepower against them until they are disabled or sunk. They never engage the carriers in battle. The air defense guns of these ships alone will be unable to defend them sufficently to avoid their destruction and, in turn they are unable to engage their enemy launch platforms in battle.
You state you want an AA battery to have "radar guidance" and fire to "35,000 feet." This will require that you put a 6"/50 caliber AA battery on your ships as a minimum. The weight, size, and complexity of such systems (see the Worchester class cruisers of the immediate post war period for example) make such a battery prohibitive. This is why post war navies quickly turned to SAMs for long range air defense.

The speed of such a battleship as you propose is also largely irrelevant. As you obviously are not aware, speed to power is dependent primarily on two variables in ship design. The first is length to beam ratio with a 10 to 1 being about the most optimal one available. Now, this grossly simplifies something that is a major design study field in its own right but, it gives a basic idea that you need a long thin ship for high speed. Next, speed is dependent on power. The problem here is that speed is a cube function. That is, to double the speed of a ship takes a cube of the horsepower (roughly). An example might be that it takes 10,000 hp to make a particular ship go 10 knots. To make that same ship move 20 knots takes 60,000 hp. The function is not linear. Therefore, to make a Montana class BB move 35 knots versus 28 or 29 requires say, two and a half times the machinery space originally allotted. This in turn leaves less room for everything else. It also reduces the available weight for armor and weapons.

But, in the end the battleships, whatever their design, lose. Its that simple.

Might I suggest you start by reading Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice by Wayne Hughes Capt. USN (ret).

 

ummm, there have been battleships that can do 35 knots. your cube relation is no problem to determined engineering.

and there is no single carrier-based weapon then as now that can put a fit battleship out of action (barring nukes.) battleships were sunk by fellow-battleships, once by a german guided missile (just waiting to be sank), and a dozen aerial torpedoes only because there were no gunners to swat the planes within 500 meters.

technology for the sky sweeper was already present in ww2.

 

Hmmm, Prince of Wales, Repulse, Yamato spring to mind...

 

Actually, battleship on battleship actions in WW 2 were very rare. Most battleships were sunk by aircraft followed by submarines. The major weapon of decision is the torpedo.

You might want to peruse this article seeing as how it lists every battleship on battleship action in WW 2 and the outcome:

Military History Online - Capital Ship Surface Actions World War II

In particular, you might want to note the conclusions particularly the ones that show:

Engagement range is effectively about 20,000 yards for battleships regardless of how far they can fire.
That speed is of no advantage in offering combat, only avoiding it.
That heavy armor does little to prevent a ship from being crippled due to heavy weapon hits.

 

But, as to your original question Mac, I would propose the following carriers:

Mine would be very large ships capable of carrying about 100 to 140 large aircraft typical of the 1944 - 45 period. Each ship would incorporate four hydraulic catapults, 3 or 4 deck edge elevators, an angled flight deck that allowed for continious flight operations and, the latest in electronics. Their speed would be sufficent to make a sustained 25 knots and have a top speed of about 35 knots.
Armor would be limited to splinter protection since there is virtually no chance of a surface action in this scenario. Shipboard armament would be limited likewise to a very light AA battery of 3"/50 guns say 6 dual mounts.
The air wing would be comprised completely of a mix of attack aircraft, fighter-bomber aircraft and specialist aircraft. Taking the last first: There would be a half squadron of AEW aircraft based on a large multiseat twin engined aircraft like the AJ Savage. These would be able to extend the radar horizon around my fleet to at least 400 miles out from the carriers.
Next, I would include a half squadron of dedicated jamming aircraft carrying the latest EW equipment and being fully capable of blotting out whatever radars the battleships I am opposing carry.
There would be four squadrons each of attack and fighter-bomber aircraft. One of each type would be specially equipped for night operations with radar etc aboard. The attack aircraft would be equipped to carry various weapons loads including missiles like the German Fritz X or Hs 293 or the US Bat or AZON. These would allow for stand-off attacks at altitudes and ranges guns could not reach. They could also carry conventional bombs and or torpedoes as necessary.
The fighter-bombers could carry a 2000 lb load of ordinance in the bomber role and would have sufficent performance to conduct LABS attacks as well as other mission profiles. They could also perform reconnissance duties carrying extra fuel and cameras etc.

Basically, my carriers would find your battleships at sea long before they even knew the carriers were present. Once detected, I would maneuver to avoid a surface action having equal or better speed to your own. I would start by making attacks covered by jamming using stand off weapons to cripple a number of the ships. The ones that straggled would then be finished off using a combination of various air attacks one at a time as they would largely be defenseless after heavy topside damage, particularly to their fire control and radar systems.
In the end, the battleships might shoot down a number of the aircraft I send against them. But, they will never sight the carriers they are fighting, never fire a shell in anger against them and for all intents and purposes are nothing but target practice that fights back.
Battleships saw their demise in that they could control just a miniscule amount of ocean around them, just as little as 200 square miles. A carrier using aircraft could scout and control ten times that or more easily. Basically, battleships are a one-dimensional weapon where carriers are three-dimensional.

 

Here's two more by submarine...Barham sunk by U 331 and Kongo sunk by USS Sealion.

And one more sunk by aircraft...Musashi.

 

yes, i mentioned those sunk by aircraft. only the yamato and musashi are instructive. as i said, it took at least 10 torpedoes to sink a yamato-class ship and that's only after dive bombers crippled their low-angle guns. the prince of wales and repulse hardly count (unless you consider lee enfield-firing marines a good ac-ac battery.) how many planes sortied against the the yamato? 350. against the musashi? more than 200.

that's how tough a modern battleship is to sink.

if ever a battleship got a carrier within 20 miles, that's probably the end of it. if two battle ships were to chase a straggling flat top (like gniesnau and scharnhorst,) that's also probably the end.

a carrier task force consisting of at least 10 fast carriers (1,200-plus attack planes.) could concentrate enough air power to sink a couple of gun ships, and maybe keep the others skittering off towards a squall or away from the sun. but to destroy all of those battleships, the carrier force commander will have to plan and coordinate like he was God. no 7th and 3rd fleet mistakes in leyte gulf allowed.

the battleship commander, on the other hand, has to get lucky only once.

incidentally, the ongoing debate on land attack ships for littoral warfare has not yet decided whether the cost of a new DDX was justified, as opposed to (expensively) maintaining the last iowa-class BB.

yes, the US still needs battleships (albeit modern ones.)

 

well, i doubt if there would be and airborne radio transmitter more powerful than what a big ship can carry (like what the yamato did, squadrons couldn't coordinate during the attack.)

remember there are conditions that prevent efficient carrier operations. a windy day could halve your number of planes sent aloft. any lattitude higher than england or lower than india also makes carrier operations a biatch. during the falklands battle, the argentine planes were affected by the ever-changing weather conditions.

now if i were to base my BBs in greenland, or maybe in an antarctic base, where wind conditions change every 5 minutes, i'll have nothing to worry with regard to air attack. and if i periodically sortie to the middle lattitudes with ships spaced 50 miles apart, that's a lot of ocean to patrol, even for 1,200 planes. attacks on my ships would be piecemeal, allowing my other ships to bore through.

i doubt if a carrier admiral is willing to bet on an open sea - running battle against BBs. a better bet would be to seek haven in an inland sea where the passage is narrow and easily mined and monitored.

 

What assistance does a single battleship intent on committing murder need? If one is under attack, then the other battleships will high-tail away from him and push on.

 

By 1944 US carrier groups were regularly coordinating large strikes of well over 100 aircraft at a time. Fighter control for CAP was on 8 channels and typically had dozens of aircraft in the air. This doesn't even mention CAP control by escorts or picket vessels
You obviously missed my inclusion in the carrier air wing I described of the equivalent of an advanced version of the TBM-3W Cadillac I Airborne Early Warning aircraft with something like that aircraft's APS-20 radar with a 200 mile search range and having 3 or 4 fighter directors aboard with radios that could easily exceed 200 miles in range in UHF or VHF bands.

The carriers certainly could coordinate their own strikes. I would expect that they easily could launch a 20 plane each strike in under 15 minutes using catapults in anything up to about sea state 5 maybe a bit more. After all, I know modern US carriers can do it in far worse conditions than that. Been there, seen that myself seeing as how I served 27 years in the US Navy and aboard carriers among other ships.
I've seen regular flight deck ops in all weather, day and night. We flew off the coast of Alaska in 30 to 50 foot waves with spray breaking over the bow nearly 50 feet above waterline. I've seen our escorts in such weather looking more like submarines with green water up to the bridge and the whole bow of a destroyer underwater. Aircraft were still up. We flew in restricted navigation.....one night we had 22 aircraft up at 2 in the morning in the straights off Malaysia and lost half the plant. I had a busy watch that night. But we recovered all 22 on time.
Here we have a scenario where there are 20 carriers launching strikes of 20 every 30 minutes and recovering every 30 minutes. This puts 200 aircraft on the way to the target, 200 on target, 200 returning to the carriers and 200 landing. Those battleships don't stand a snowball's chance in...... The whole operation is coordinated by the carriers using their AEW aircraft as relays for direction and messaging. Large late war carrier CICs were more than capable of handling such operations.

Anything bad enough to curtail flight operations is going to pretty much make big problems for a battleship too. Battleships typically ride much lower in the water than carriers. Taking green water over the bow on a BB usually means flooding forward to some degree. Carriers operated in all kinds of conditions in WW 2 and afterwards. US carriers operated above the Artic circle as have British ones. Winds up to say 30 or 40 knots are actually beneficial to carrier ops, particularly if their direction is close to the same as the carrier's intended line of advance. Wind means less speed necessary to gain wind-over-deck for launches.

Unfortunately, in the real world sea control means steaming at sea. Being bottled up in port does nothing to counter an enemy's movements at sea. The Germans tried this very strategy in WW 2 to no effect. The Tirpitz stayed in port in Norway for most of the and did nothing. Scharnhorst and Gneisneau likewise remained in port for most of the war ineffectually.
As an example of just how ineffective battleships are against carriers look at Admiral Nagumo's sorte into the Indian Ocean in early 1942 at the opening of the Pacific War. The British had 4 (four) 'R" class battleships along with several 8" and 6" cruisers stationed in Celyon (Sri Lanka today) along with one old small carrier, the Hermes. When the Kido Butai showed up the British ran for the Maldive Islands knowing full well their fleet would go to the bottom faced with overwhelming air power and there was nothing they could do about it.

I think things go the other way. A battleship admiral would prefer the narrow seas where his opponet does not have room to maneuver. After all, if you don't catch the carriers at close quarters you will never get a shot in.
Carriers are at their best in open ocean. TF 28/58 (the Fast Carriers) of the US Pacific Fleet in the first 90 days of 1944 swept the entire....get that ENTIRE Central Pacific of all ALL Japanese surface combatants and shipping larger than a motor boat using air power. They cleared about half-a-million square miles of ocean of everything the Japanese had afloat and in their path.
If you look at the battle of Samar off the Philippines where a Japanese taskforce with Yamato as flagship steaming with cruisers, other battleships and essentially an overwhelming surface force came into contact with the US Navy's Taffy 3. Just 6 little escort carriers, escorted by 3 destroyers and 3 destroyer escorts. Yet, the US ships using torpedos and air attacks drove off the Japanese and casued them greater losses than that miniscule carrier force took.

As to why the USN decommissioned the Iowa class: They were high cost, high maintenance ships. They required large crews. They were old and had serious engineeing problems along with serious corrosion control problems. I never served on one, but I fixed more than one system on them in the yards. Everytime you fired the main battery the electricians had to re-tube the ship as it would knock all the florouesent tubes out of their light fixtures. This also played havoc with the Harpoon and Tomahawk systems on the ship.
Their 5"/38 guns were worthless for air defense in a modern enviroment so they were pretty much limited to just their CWIS when those worked.
Aside from that, they were just too limited in volume for modern electronics and weapons aside from not having sufficent electrical generating capacity aboard. They were obsolete. Its that simple.

 

you're right about close-in fighting for BBs but i take exception to ineffectiveness with regard to open sea fighting. during leyte gulf, the japanese commander wanted to destroy the 7th fleet using battleships. it was by necessity as he had practically no carrier strength. but halsey also wanted to destroy kurita using battleships, and this was by choice. he knew he could not stop all seven battleships from reaching macarthur's transports and escort carriers by airpower alone, even with more than 1,000 planes. the weakness in halsey's plan was that the limited range of his BBs' guns forced him to chase what he throught was the main force. it would have been better for 3rd fleet BBs stayed within rush-in of the 7th should the japs sneak in either from the north or south.

which brings me to another point. halsey had more than 1,200 planes but he was able to stop only one battleship out of 7. of course, the japanese were weaving in and out of the philippine islands which made detection difficult. still, that's a bad kill ratio.

 

A cruiser or sub can fire a harpoon or tomahawk just as well. the only thing left for the big guns of a battleship are shore bombardment. Pretty expensive piece of artillery I think.

 

i wonder what effect(s) today's ship- and air-launched weapons will have when used on the iowa. the best i know is arguably the russian yakhont: mach 3 with a 1,000-pound warhead. let's say that has the punch of a battleship shell. unfortunately, many of today's naval weapons go off on proximity rather than contact. but let's assume a direct hit:

hit the iowa midships - hardly any effect, just a few sailors killed.
hit the waterline - probably cause some flooding, speed might go down below 20
hit the bridge - you knock out radar and comms, kill a lot of officers
hit a main turret - probably knock out one gun

submarines with big alpha-type torpedoes - maybe but that sub will have to work hard.

in short, most of today's weapons will just piss the BB commander off. you better have something really big in store or that battleship will just steam towards its mission.

 

Let's take the USN typical most concerned ex-Soviet missile and go through this with it. That missile would be the SS-N-22 Sunburn.

It does about Mach 3 and is very low flying. It has a 1100 lb / 500 Kg warhead. The conventional one is typically a linear shaped charge using double or triple based explosives with about twice the force of TNT.

Here are some likely outcomes:

The missile is not in pop-up mode where it climbs steeply and then dives into its target but rather hits side on:

Bow or stern outside the armored box of the ship. The ship loses its bow to #1 turret where the armored box starts. Flooding forward takes out the forward magazines leaving the ship severly down by the bow and incapable of making more than a few knots after about 3 or 4 hours. Loss of plant during this period is due primarily to shock and tripping circuits with the hit. This is similar to US cruiser hits in WW 2 by "Long Lance" torpedoes. These usually took most of the bow off a ship in such a hit.
A stern hit takes out much of the rear of the vessel, floods after steering and leaves the ship both rudderless and without shafts operable due to a combination of flooding of shaft allyies and shock to the shaft mounts. Vessel will likely require towing to port in badly flooded condition. #3 turret is inoperable due to damage blocking its operation and flooding of the magazine.

A hit amidships will likely hit above the belt of the vessel. This will destroy much of the upper hull structure above the armor belt and with some damage occuring to deck armor and the belt structure cause local flooding of the torpedo defense system over an area of at least 100 and likely as much as 200 feet of the ship's length. Remember, the belt on an Iowa is internal to the hull.
The upperworks and superstructure will have significant damage and fires will be widespread in this area but likely controlable. Loss of plant will occur due to blast being sucked into the engine rooms through the boiler intakes. This will limit fire fighting ability initially to just emergancy diesel firepumps due to loss of steam and electric power (through shock). The ship will basically be DIW or close to it for as much as 60 minutes before recovering some or all of the plant.
If the armor belt is hit, the blast effect will actually be worse. The linear shaped charge will penetrate this completely and much as going into an armored vehicle, the armor around the penetration will contain the blast and make its effects far worse. Loss of much of the plant will ensue due to fires and casualties. Flooding of the torpedo defense system will still be massive. The ship is in more serious trouble here.

Bridge or superstructure hit. Loss of communications. Loss of all radar and fire control systems initially. Fires throughout the superstructure will occur. While the ship is in no danger of sinking it would be in great danger of more hits having essential no defenses at this point. Command and control would have to shift to the conning tower (limited ability) or to DC central. CIC might survive but much of it is above the armored box and probably out of commission. The presence of the conning tower is actually to the benefit of the command staff on the bridge as it would allow them to survive such a hit unharmed.
Another concern is the missile boxes amidships. These will cause a massive fire if severely damaged in the hit. This could be theoretically ship threatening as uncontrollable.

Turret hit: The turret is destroyed in a penetration (shaped charge remember). There is a significant chance of a turret fire and possible flash carrying to the magazines. Flooding of the magazines will occur as a precaution causing the loss of either #1 and 2 turrets (foward) or # 3 aft. There will also be collateral damage topside to many radar and communications systems.

Plunging hits on the ship would be just as deadly. Hits would cause a penetration of much of the deck armor system and blast would be massive within the ship. Damage and fires would be a ship threatening event and would likely put much of the plant out of action due to blast effects on boiler intakes and ventilation systems. Loss of plant nearly equals loss of ship.

One has to keep in mind that these missiles have charges designed specifically to focus their blast forward along the axis of advance and in many cases have a slight delay to ensure the target is penetrated before detonation to enhance the blast effect. The Sunburn was designed to be a "carrier killer." And modern carriers are a whole lot more resistant to attack than WW 2 battleships are in many ways.

Or, we could go with a torpedo designed for proximity detonation under the ship's hull like the Mk 48 or Tigerfish. These would severely shock an Iowa causing the loss of much of the plant and massive flooding of the inner bottom and likely even the main spaces. On smaller ships like a heavy cruiser or light cruiser the ship likely would break in half from such a hit as was demonstrated by the Cleveland class cruiser Wilkes-Barrie that was torpedoed in just such a fashion in a post war test.

 

nice one, t.a. a single half-ton explosive charge with no armor-piercing case can put the BB out of action --when a good brace of one-tonne AP shells back then was hardly enough to do the damage you described. but, metal fatigue, less than 70% normal manpower complement, a wrecked #2 turret, and finally, your scenario is just what i've been dreaming of: sending the iowa unescorted up the kola peninsula to bombard the harbors there.

in an all-out shooting war, i'd still prefer to sit inside a BB than a CVA. strong bones and muscle sound like a safer bet than having buddies (escorts) around you. ever wondered why, in the last 30 years, the USN had used only iowa-class ships to come within 20 miles of a hostile shore? bring an unarmored corvette or frigate near beirut and you get a sneaky silkworm missile. at the falklands, i would have charged with a BB all the way to the argentinian shore and chase the carrier veinte cinco de mayo from her shallow water sanctuary. the brits tried it with a destroyer and they got a land-launched exocet for their trouble.

and come now, why would the USN consider a pair of armored land attack DDs, armed with 155mm cannons, each ship costing 2.2 billion? because they don't have any ship sturdy enough to wade close to enemy land, lob a high (read: cheap) volume of ordnance at the enemy and laugh at an exocet-armed plane that might pass by.