Lessens from the history of Naval warfare

[NLT]

The "battle carrier group" is an expensive anachronism left over from WWll

We have more than enough land bases around the world to handle all of our fighters and bombers.

The carrier battle group is alive and well and will be for the rest of the 21st century. No other platform can project American Power (except Nuclear) as well.

 

[Oldguy]

Carriers are vulnerable to attack in open Naval warfare. We haven't had such warfare in 65 years.

Yes, if we had an attack by sub or cruise missile a carrier could be taken out. But the countries that have such capabilities are not about to mess with the US Navy

In the meantime, carriers provide the best means to project our power abroad on short notice.

So, no, they are not obsolete

The British thought that too, but Spain, France, Holland and Germany weren't impressed and took them on anyhow. For that matter, so did we.

 

[rightwinger]

Carriers are vulnerable to attack in open Naval warfare. We haven't had such warfare in 65 years.

Yes, if we had an attack by sub or cruise missile a carrier could be taken out. But the countries that have such capabilities are not about to mess with the US Navy

In the meantime, carriers provide the best means to project our power abroad on short notice.

So, no, they are not obsolete

The British thought that too, but Spain, France, Holland and Germany weren't impressed and took them on anyhow. For that matter, so did we.

Sorry, but I completely miss your point

When were British carriers taken out ?

 

[Oldguy]

Carriers are vulnerable to attack in open Naval warfare. We haven't had such warfare in 65 years.

Yes, if we had an attack by sub or cruise missile a carrier could be taken out. But the countries that have such capabilities are not about to mess with the US Navy

In the meantime, carriers provide the best means to project our power abroad on short notice.

So, no, they are not obsolete

The British thought that too, but Spain, France, Holland and Germany weren't impressed and took them on anyhow. For that matter, so did we.

Sorry, but I completely miss your point

When were British carriers taken out ?

The point is that the British felt secure behind their overpowering naval might and came to believe nobody would dare challenge them.

They were wrong. We may be too.

 

[rightwinger]

The British thought that too, but Spain, France, Holland and Germany weren't impressed and took them on anyhow. For that matter, so did we.

Sorry, but I completely miss your point

When were British carriers taken out ?

The point is that the British felt secure behind their overpowering naval might and came to believe nobody would dare challenge them.

They were wrong. We may be too.

You think we are wrong?

Name a country that has one fifth the Naval Strength we do?

Name a country that has one carrier group that has the strength of our eleven

 

[whitehall]

The greatest fighting force on the planet is bogged down in Afghanistan because the administration forced the Troops to fight by rules set by the enemy which lives in the 6th century. What are we accomplishing with a gigantic navy when the threat comes from countries that don't have any ships? Has the US Navy really turned into a "global force for good"? If so all we need is a couple of floating hippie vans.

 

[Moonglow]

The greatest fighting force on the planet is bogged down in Afghanistan because the administration forced the Troops to fight by rules set by the enemy which lives in the 6th century. What are we accomplishing with a gigantic navy when the threat comes from countries that don't have any ships? Has the US Navy really turned into a "global force for good"? If so all we need is a couple of floating hippie vans.

It is not the administration that sets the ROE, it is the commanding general of the theater.

 

[Oldguy]

You think we are wrong?

Yes, I think we're wrong.

Name a country that has one fifth the Naval Strength we do?

None...today. We'd better be right about the future and other nations or groups intentions because the lead time for constructing a bigger, better Navy is measured in years, if not decades.

But, they have other capabilities which we tend to discredit because of our perceived might and invincibility. Our own hubris is our greatest enemy.

Name a country that has one carrier group that has the strength of our eleven

If military power and projection is measured only by carrier task forces, the answer is none. But, that's OUR metric, not necessarily the metric used by our enemies or prospective enemies. Recall that we believed our homeland was secure from attack for decades too. But, Sept. 11, 2001 revealed that to be false, didn't it?

 

[zzzz]

The fallacy of naval power is equating the relevancy to other countries other than the US. For the US, naval power is a must because it provides our first line of defense. For the rest of the world excluding the Aussies, naval power is not a prime component of power projection. The use of aircraft carriers though cannot be viewed strictly as naval power but a component of air power. But that air-power projection has restrictions too. The ever changing world of military techno-ware has made the aircraft carrier obsolete. It is still a tool in gunboat diplomacy but the threat of the cruise missile has made the carrier unusable in a shooting war. The need to protect the carrier will keep it so far from the dispute to render the attack aircraft useless.
The world today is a battlefield of missiles, and drones, not manned aircraft and the sooner we grasp that reality and prepare for that war the better off we will be.

 

[Oldguy]

The fallacy of naval power is equating the relevancy to other countries other than the US. For the US, naval power is a must because it provides our first line of defense. For the rest of the world excluding the Aussies, naval power is not a prime component of power projection. The use of aircraft carriers though cannot be viewed strictly as naval power but a component of air power. But that air-power projection has restrictions too. The ever changing world of military techno-ware has made the aircraft carrier obsolete. It is still a tool in gunboat diplomacy but the threat of the cruise missile has made the carrier unusable in a shooting war. The need to protect the carrier will keep it so far from the dispute to render the attack aircraft useless.
The world today is a battlefield of missiles, and drones, not manned aircraft and the sooner we grasp that reality and prepare for that war the better off we will be.

You sound like the 21st century Billy Mitchell...but I think you're right.

Sadly, it will probably take the sinking of a carrier on CNN live to drive home your point.

 

[Munin]

I agree with zzzz , the cruise missile is to the aircraft carrier what the aircraft was to the battleship and then we haven't even mentioned drones

Imagine what drone submarines can do to fleets ...

 

[waltky]

A dark time coming to light...

Declassified CIA documents shed light on secret Navy mission in Cold War
December 30, 2012 - In late 1971, the Navy brought the deep-diving submersible Trieste II and several support ships out to a spot 350 miles north of Hawaii to retrieve Scripps Institution of Oceanography "instrumentation" from the ocean floor. That was the cover story.

The Trieste actually was tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency with a secret mission to recover a film canister jettisoned on July 10 of that year by a spy spacecraft known as Hexagon. Two film canisters, called "buckets," that had been successfully recovered over the prior month provided images of Soviet missile sites and other sensitive military assets as the Cold War raged. The third canister should have been snagged by an Air Force C-130 aircraft as the film payload floated to Earth beneath a parachute. Instead, the parachute broke from the canister, and the 1,051-pound bucket hit the water at about 307 mph, sinking to a depth of 16,400 feet.

What followed was the deepest underwater salvage operation ever mounted by the U.S. military amid an urgency to recover and examine the film and as worries were raised that the Soviets might catch on or get there first. "Recovery of the film would be most desireable since the imagery recorded was from a particularly productive portion of the mission," John L. McLucas, then-director of the National Reconnaissance Office, said in a 1971 memo.

Details of the recovery mission, declassified during the summer, shed new light on the successful series of satellite spy programs called Corona, Gambit and Hexagon that used Hickam Air Force Base crews and aircraft to recover surveillance footage shot from space. Some of the Hexagon film was recovered from the seafloor but was unusable, and the salvage record would be eclipsed in 1974 by the Glomar Explorer's efforts to raise the Soviet submarine K-129 from nearly 17,000 feet 1,500 miles northwest of Hawaii.

But the Hexagon mission tested new operating depths for the Trieste II and "established a unique capability that enhances the security of the United States," Harold L. Brownman, who was with the CIA, said in a secret May 1972 memo lauding the Navy effort. "This was the first time that an object of this small size had been located and the first time any object had been recovered from this depth," Brownman said.

MORE

 

[Mushroom]

Considering that navies have a tendency to be very conservative, a long time all naval powers where so conservative that they kept believing battleships where the ships that win wars. The grand admiral Yamamoto (before WWII) said that a battleship in modern warfare is as usefull in modern warfare as a samurai sword, that it is considered the battleships as elaborite religious scrolls which old people hang up in their homes, they are purely a matter of fate and not reality"

Actually, Battleships do still have a place in a modern navy, it is just that most people seem to miss their obvious role.

Yes, I am the first to admit that the Battleship for use on a ship-on-ship engagement is obsolete. In fact, ship-on-ship engagements have largely been obsolete since the Battle of the Coral Sea. So the idea of using a Battleship to go after other ships is dead.

However, the US brought theirs back for about 10 years very successfully. And this new role was as both a missile platform, and to support troops on the ground (primarily Marines). Battleships have many advantages that aircraft do not have. They are true all-weather day-night targeting platforms. They can provide the kind of fire support that no Cruiser with it's 5" gun can provide. And they really were unsinkable. There was not an anti-ship missile in any inventory that could penetrate their 12-19 inch thick armor.

I remember reading one article in Proceedings man years ago, at said that it would take 11 Exocet missiles, one after another striking the exact same place to penetrate the hull of the USS Iowa. That is the same missile that destroyed the more modern HMS Sheffield with one hit.

The BBs were made in an era when the threat was a 1 ton shell penetrating from a high trajectory. This made them uniquely impervious to modern missiles.

Myself, I predict that things will continue the way they are going now. Drones will start to replace some pilots on carriers, and they will start to shrink in size again. But the role of a carrier will remain, because it is the most effective way to exert force in another area of the world (and you can't drive a ship to Kabul).

But without some radical change of philosophy, I can't see that changing for decades at the least.

 

[zzzz]

Considering that navies have a tendency to be very conservative, a long time all naval powers where so conservative that they kept believing battleships where the ships that win wars. The grand admiral Yamamoto (before WWII) said that a battleship in modern warfare is as usefull in modern warfare as a samurai sword, that it is considered the battleships as elaborite religious scrolls which old people hang up in their homes, they are purely a matter of fate and not reality"

Actually, Battleships do still have a place in a modern navy, it is just that most people seem to miss their obvious role.

Yes, I am the first to admit that the Battleship for use on a ship-on-ship engagement is obsolete. In fact, ship-on-ship engagements have largely been obsolete since the Battle of the Coral Sea. So the idea of using a Battleship to go after other ships is dead.

However, the US brought theirs back for about 10 years very successfully. And this new role was as both a missile platform, and to support troops on the ground (primarily Marines). Battleships have many advantages that aircraft do not have. They are true all-weather day-night targeting platforms. They can provide the kind of fire support that no Cruiser with it's 5" gun can provide. And they really were unsinkable. There was not an anti-ship missile in any inventory that could penetrate their 12-19 inch thick armor.

I remember reading one article in Proceedings man years ago, at said that it would take 11 Exocet missiles, one after another striking the exact same place to penetrate the hull of the USS Iowa. That is the same missile that destroyed the more modern HMS Sheffield with one hit.

The BBs were made in an era when the threat was a 1 ton shell penetrating from a high trajectory. This made them uniquely impervious to modern missiles.

Myself, I predict that things will continue the way they are going now. Drones will start to replace some pilots on carriers, and they will start to shrink in size again. But the role of a carrier will remain, because it is the most effective way to exert force in another area of the world (and you can't drive a ship to Kabul).

But without some radical change of philosophy, I can't see that changing for decades at the least.

The Achilles heel of the battleship is the hull under water. A torpedo. Just look at the General Belgrano.

 

[Mushroom]

The Achilles heel of the battleship is the hull under water. A torpedo. Just look at the General Belgrano.

The Belgrano was not a Battleship. It was originally a Brooklyn class Light Cruiser known as the USS Phoenix (CL-46). And her main armor belt was only 5.5 inches.

That is a far cry from the Iowa class, a true Battleship with an armor belt of over 12 inches.

 

[zzzz]

The Achilles heel of the battleship is the hull under water. A torpedo. Just look at the General Belgrano.

The Belgrano was not a Battleship. It was originally a Brooklyn class Light Cruiser known as the USS Phoenix (CL-46). And her main armor belt was only 5.5 inches.

That is a far cry from the Iowa class, a true Battleship with an armor belt of over 12 inches.

We are not talking about the main armor belt but the ships hull underwater. Although no Iowa class BB was ever sunk with a torpedo in WWII and only one, the North Carolina was ever hit with a torpedo. The Belgrano was sunk using WWII torpedoes with an 800 Lb Warhead. The modern torpedo has evolved into more than just a simple contact warhead. Shaped charges along with better explosives make the warheads more potent. Also an explosion under water causes other problems.

The side protection (torpedo defense) and the triple bottom systems provide protection against underwater threats such as torpedoes, mines and near-miss explosions. Both of these multi-layered systems are intended to absorb the energy from an underwater explosion equivalent to a 700 pound charge of TNT. The Navy derived at this amount of protection based on intelligence information gathered in the 1930’s. At that time, US Naval Intelligence was unaware of the advances the Japanese had made in torpedo technology. One of these advances was the Japanese 24 inch diameter "Long Lance" torpedo, which carried a charge equivalent to 891 pounds of TNT. A Long Lance torpedo essentially defeated the USS North Carolina’s side protective system. The ship was hit by chance at its narrowest, and therefore most vulnerable part of the side protection system. An Iowa Class battleship would have taken lighter damage from the torpedo due to an improved torpedo protection system over the North Carolina Class.

However, the Iowa Class torpedo defense system is virtually the same as in the previous South Dakota Class battleships. The side protection system consists of four tanks on the outboard side of the hull extending from the 3rd deck to the bottom of the ship. The two outboard tanks are liquid loaded with fuel oil or ballast and the two inboard tanks are kept void. The liquid layers are intended to deform and absorb the shock from the explosion and contain most of the shards from the damaged structure. The innermost void is expected to contain any leakage into the interior ship spaces. The armor belt is designed to stop fragments that penetrate the second torpedo bulkhead. This method should contain the damage and protect the machinery and other vital spaces. Torpedo bulkheads #1, #2 and the inner holding bulkhead are 5/8" thick steel. Bulkhead #3 is 12.1" thick armor tapering to 1" thick at the bottom and is attached to a 1.5" special treated steel (STS) plate. Additional tests in 1943 showed certain structural defects in the system

Iowa Class: Armor Protection - Naval History Forums

 

[SteadyMercury]

However, the US brought theirs back for about 10 years very successfully. And this new role was as both a missile platform, and to support troops on the ground (primarily Marines). Battleships have many advantages that aircraft do not have. They are true all-weather day-night targeting platforms. They can provide the kind of fire support that no Cruiser with it's 5" gun can provide.

While certainly I'd agree they were useful during their stint in Gulf War I, that was 20 years ago and the gap between what they could deliver vs. carrier wing aircraft has closed considerably. Back then aircraft were using laser guided bombs that weren't all weather capable and required much more time over target and risk to pilot, today we have GPS guided munitions like JDAM/JSOW that can hit targets more accurately, more cheaply, and at lesser risk to our pilots. We also upgraded B1Bs in the mid 2000s to be platforms for precision guided munitions, they would certainly play a much larger role in a scenario like Gulf War I.

I'm not saying their isn't a role for ships capable of short bombardment, obviously the advanced gun system (which looks to be a stud if it performs as advertised) they are planning for the Zumwalts is for this role. But I believe we can accomplish a lot more in the air relative to what we could when Iowa class was last floating into combat.

I remember reading one article in Proceedings man years ago, at said that it would take 11 Exocet missiles, one after another striking the exact same place to penetrate the hull of the USS Iowa. That is the same missile that destroyed the more modern HMS Sheffield with one hit.

The BBs were made in an era when the threat was a 1 ton shell penetrating from a high trajectory. This made them uniquely impervious to modern missiles.

Yeah, Exocet has a 360 lb warhead and hits below the belt, it wouldn't have much chance against a battleship.

That isn't the same as battleship being impervious to modern missiles. A SLAM-ER launched from an aircraft will come in low then pop up to put an 800lb penetrating warhead into the superstructure. Moskit will hit the deck at supersonic speeds with a 700 lb warhead, at that speed and with size of the missile it would do serious damage even without the warhead. What about a wild weasel launching a HARM, that would be a 150lb warhead at mach 2.0 heading straight for the radar and anything near it.

Sinking isn't even necessarily the name of the game, how many hits from modern armor piercing anti-ship missiles into the superstructure would render a modern battleship operationally ineffective?