Battleships as main ship are doomed with introduction of airplane in naval warfare. From 1914 some military officers point that battleships cannot be a match for aircrafts. The experiment in 1921 by Gen. Mitchell proves this theory.
Look at the history of WWI and WWII, and check how many times a battleship fired on another battleship of another Navy. In Pacific theatre, the only war theatre where battleship are employed in naval battles against other battleship in great numbers and many times, how many times US battleships are able to shot to Japanese battleships? Normally US battleship are used as a naval gun support against air or ground enemies while aircrafts from aircraft carrier and destroyers and cruisers get in contact with Japanese battleship, only 2-3 times, i don’t remember very well, battleships are able to confrontate each others. The only time that Japanese sunked US battleship is Pearl Harbour attack. Also in European and Russian theatre normally battleship are sunked in harbour for a simple reason: with growing of potence of airplane weapons there is no way to keep battleships safe in open water. How many battleship are sunked by guns of other battleships? For sure, aircrafts sunked 16 battleship in WWII.
Tirpitz sinking demonstrate that there even finest armor require only bigger bombs and Roma sinking demonstrate that stand-off weapons from airplane make useless small AA guns.
Not really.
The bombing exercises conducted by General Mitchell proved only that any stationary, unmanned, undefended ship could eventually be sunk by aircraft if they were allowed unlimited time in which to bomb it.
This is not a very useful measure of the usefulness of battleships. In fact, there were only two occasions on which battleships opposed their opposite numbers in the Pacific, but far more occasions on which battleships were considered necessary units of the fleet, In the Atlantic, Arctic and the Med, in WW II, battleships met and fought numerous battles against each other; it was the aircraft carrier in these theaters which supported the battleship as the main capital ship.
If you are going to count only battleship vs. battleship encounters as useful instances, then the same measure would relegate aircraft carriers to nothing but a footnote in history; there have been only five carrier vs. carrier battles in all of history. That’s not very indicative of their true importance.
Not at all.
Again, the Tirpitz was attacked while stationary and had to be attacked again and again before it was finally destroyed; it took great effort by the Allied air forces to eventually eliminate the Tirpitz. The Roma was destroyed by a bomb that happened to hit in a very fortunate spot. The same kind of bomb hit the USS Savannah, a light cruiser, and exploded in it’s forward magazine, yet the Savannah managed to return to port under it’s own power and was repaired and returned to service. The German guided bombs were eventually rendered in effective against ships by electronic jamming measures.
I wasn’t Wizard. Just saying they were not king of the hill. Yes twice carriers were caught by surface ships, including battleships, but an awful lot of ships were caught by carriers and sunk, without ever seeing the enemy fleet at all.
Deaf
True, which would suggest that adequate surface escort AND air cover was necessary to ensure a reasonable chance of survival on a modern naval battle field. That was the point I raised when I mentioned the value of a “balanced fleet”.
What i want to explain Wizard is that battleships life in WWII proves that the new queen of battle group is the aircraft carrier and that in future big naval battles will be fought airplanes vs ships or other airplanes. The WWII demonstrate that the concept of big fleets in line-of-sight that shoot each others with guns is passed away so one of the main reason to keep battleships on active duty doesn’t exist anymore.
I understand the ideas you are trying to convey, but I do not entirely agree with them.
World War II was a period of technological transition in naval warfare, but it wasn’t instantaneous, or even uniform around the world. Carriers didn’t begin to threaten the position of battleships in naval fleets until the mid- to late 1930’s, when carrier-based aircraft began to gain the capability to carry bombs and torpedoes capable of killing the largest armored ships, and attack over ranges of 200 to 300 miles. Until that time aircraft carriers could only be viewed as scouting and secondary combat assets, most useful for screening a battleline composed of armored big-gun ships.
Moreover, this evolution occurred first in the Pacific where the weather was usually mild enough to allow aircraft to consistently operate effectively. In the North Atlantic this was not the case until aircraft became sophisticated and powerful enough to operate in almost any weather; this did not happen until after the end of the war. There was also a learning curve associated with operating aircraft carriers and it was a long one, complicated by rapidly changing aircraft technology and other advancements such as electronic sensors and radio. This learning curve meant that carriers were not used as effectively as they might have been until right at the end of the war.
Thus, aircraft carriers did not suddenly appear on the scene one day and instantly render all battleships obsolete and useless. It was a long process, accelerated by war, but nevertheless lasting several years. As long as some navies continued to operate battleships, carrier fleets could not be entirely secure without heavy surface escort ships, including battleships, and this situation lasted until almost the end of the war.
In retrospect, WW II may be considered the period when carriers came into their own and battleships gradually became irrelevant to naval warfare, but it should be noted that the last clash between battleships, unattended by aircraft, didn’t happen until late 1944, just months before the end of the Pacific war. And navies saw fit to retain battleships in service for years after the war, the British battleship Duke of York served until 1949, for example. This wasn’t sentimentality, but a hard-nosed calculation that big-gun ships still had their uses.
Bismark, not really for what she did but the short life and her faith in history.
There is still the debate of effect of naval gunfire from battleship. Surely nowadays cruiser missiles has better precision and range, but as proved in Iraq the psychological damage of being shelled by huge guns of a battleship is far more devastating than being bombarbed from missiles or aircraft bombs.
Was any such thing really proven in Iraq?
I remember reading a lot of hyperbole from media journalists at the time about the effectiveness of NGF against troops, but I consider that source to be so unreliable as to be worthless.
I am unaware of any subsequent objective studies comparing the psychological effectiveness of large caliber NGF to the heavy bombardment by aircraft and/or missiles. Perhaps you are aware of some such study and could reference it?
During WW II in the Pacific, it was found that battleship-caliber NGF was actually less effective than high-angle fire from ground-based artillery, even though the ground-based artillery consisted of much smaller guns firing smaller shells. That was why, in the latter stages of the Pacific island campaign, the planners would seek to capture small offshore islands where artillery batteries could be installed to support the main landings.
At Tarawa for example, it was found that high-velocity naval guns fired at such a flat trajectory that their shells sometimes ricocheted off the target, doing minimal damage. The Japanese defenders were not at all impressed by American NGF in the early days of the war.
I cannot now say to you an exact study about it, but the effect of gunfire it’s concerning the sound of projectile flying trough air and hitting near you. It’s the same reason because Stuka has sound device to make a loud sound before hitting the target.
A lot of books from WWI and WWII talk about the devastating psychological effect of being shelled by big guns, even if your are safe in a bunker, because you hear the sound and feel the impact on the soil.
With bombs and missiles you cannot produce this effect so easily.
The problem of naval gun is that they use fast detonation gunpowder to achieve better muzzle velocity, a key perfomance if you main target is another armoured ship, while ground guns for infantry support use slower gunpowder to save life of their barrels and use lighter barrels. But it can be solved simply using different gunpowder.
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It the rotating band on naval shells that makes the eerie wailing sound that accompanies the arrival of NGF. Any rifled artillery, naval or otherwise, will produce the same sound effect. However, I have both heard and read of Vets claiming that a shell which arrives quietly with no warning of it’s approach is far more unnerving than one which produces a sound and gives time for troops to take cover. Certain rocket artillery projectiles, as well, as “stand-off” missiles and bombs, do not announce their approach and can be devastating when catching troops in the open. As for feeling the impact of the shell through the earth, that is something that is plainly discernible even with relatively small mortar bombs, and is dependent upon the size if the projectile’s bursting charge and proximity of the impact.
I understand the reasons behind the difference between high-angle artillery fire and flat trajectory NGF. And no, different gunpowder will not turn flat trajectory NGF into effective high-angle gun fire. There is a whole slew of problems from fire direction to exhausting the unburned remnants of powder from the breech before reloading a naval gun. Shell design may also be a factor.
Suffice it to say that any shelling is terrifying for those on the business end of it, but the most terrifying of all is that shelling which is on-target and destroys equipment and men with devastating certainty. Big shells do enjoy a certain advantage in this respect no matter what their origin, but as WW II demonstrated, NGF was seldom as effective as concentrated and persistent high-angle artillery fire, except in rare cases where heavily fortified targets were encountered.
I’ve been told that if you hear the shell fire, it’s already probably missed you as it’s gone over your head…