HMS Vanguard, effects on the Falklands?

Hello all, This comes out of a topic I saw on Shipbucket. The Basic premise is that, ignoring the cost Issues, the RN keeps the HMS Vanguard in storage. Just the Vanguard, and in the early 1980s, chooses to reactivate it and its ready for the Falklands war in 1982. Now I will freely admit I know very little in depth knowledge of 'Vanguard' or Battleships in general. But if this scenario had taken place what would have been the results for the Falklands? Argentinean Air force has to deal with a bigger anti aircraft screen? Confrontation with the Belgrano?

Let me know what ya thunk.

Luath said:

Hello all, This comes out of a topic I saw on Shipbucket. The Basic premise is that, ignoring the cost Issues, the RN keeps the HMS Vanguard in storage. Just the Vanguard, and in the early 1980s, chooses to reactivate it and its ready for the Falklands war in 1982. Now I will freely admit I know very little in depth knowledge of 'Vanguard' or Battleships in general. But if this scenario had taken place what would have been the results for the Falklands? Argentinean Air force has to deal with a bigger anti aircraft screen? Confrontation with the Belgrano?

Let me know what ya thunk.

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It could provide some gunnery support but to be honest is either going to die due to lacking modern counter measures or sit around and make no notable contribution.

If it sinks British casualties just got a hell of a lot higher.

deathscompanion1 said:

If it sinks British casualties just got a hell of a lot higher.

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The Argentines' ship sinkings were done by Skyhawks with iron bombs and Super Etendards with Exocets, neither of which is capable of sinking something with Vanguard's level of armor protection.

It would also need a considerable (and expensive) refit just to be able to operate in the early 1980s, and as the US Navy's Iowa rebuilds showed, that isn't particularly cheap.

TheMann said:

The Argentines' ship sinkings were done by Skyhawks with iron bombs and Super Etendards with Exocets, neither of which is capable of sinking something with Vanguard's level of armor protection.

It would also need a considerable (and expensive) refit just to be able to operate in the early 1980s, and as the US Navy's Iowa rebuilds showed, that isn't particularly cheap.

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The fuel in the missile could cause a ship killing fire and iron bombs did fine against battleships in WWII if they actually detonate their is at least a mission kill with a possibility of sinking.

Got to be better than 4.5 inch frigate guns. However you would need the whole Navy to man it and 2 extra RFA to refuel it.

Could you put a Sea Harrier on each turret? Maybe the muzzle blast would not be beneficial to the airframe......

Get it reasonably close in and it could have the entire islands in gun range.

The armour should make it pretty well invulnerable to Exocet strikes and even 500lb GP bombs (though crew outside the armour might wish to differ). Did the Argentines have anything larger to throw at it? I don't count the Belgrano. 6" guns would never get close enough to fire at Vanguard.

Would it have the speed to close quite close to the mainland at night in a long winter night and leave before dawn? Not quite I suspect.

Possibly you would have to factor in some form of continuing conscription to keep it and the rest manned. There was never a shortage of little green men with pointy sticks but there would never have been enough matelots to run Vanguard.

Now where else could heavy guns have played a role? Korea, Suez, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Kuwait (3 times), dissuading Guatamala, defending Grenada?

deathscompanion1 said:

The fuel in the missile could cause a ship killing fire and iron bombs did fine against battleships in WWII if they actually detonate their is at least a mission kill with a possibility of sinking.

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The fuel in a missile could cause a fire IF the missile is able to penetrate Vangaurds armour, which is unlikely. When Iron bombs did serious damage to BBs it was generally only after the BB had been swarmed by attackers and recieved large numbers of hits. Even if Vangaurd only had her origional anti aircraft defences (extreamely unlikely) she would have exacted a heavy price from the Argentine Sky Hawks for every hit. Don't forget that with the range of her guns she would have been able to stand far out at sea denying the Argintine pilots the ability to hide behind hills until the last few seconds of an attack.

Peg Leg Pom said:

The fuel in a missile could cause a fire IF the missile is able to penetrate Vangaurds armour, which is unlikely. When Iron bombs did serious damage to BBs it was generally only after the BB had been swarmed by attackers and recieved large numbers of hits. Even if Vangaurd only had her origional anti aircraft defences (extreamely unlikely) she would have exacted a heavy price from the Argentine Sky Hawks for every hit. Don't forget that with the range of her guns she would have been able to stand far out at sea denying the Argintine pilots the ability to hide behind hills until the last few seconds of an attack.

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True but consider manning and maintenance costs alone chances are the rest of the Royal navy and consequently the task force will probably be smaller and less modern ships could have nasty side effects.

Peg Leg Pom said:

The fuel in a missile could cause a fire IF the missile is able to penetrate Vangaurds armour, which is unlikely. When Iron bombs did serious damage to BBs it was generally only after the BB had been swarmed by attackers and recieved large numbers of hits. Even if Vangaurd only had her origional anti aircraft defences (extreamely unlikely) she would have exacted a heavy price from the Argentine Sky Hawks for every hit. Don't forget that with the range of her guns she would have been able to stand far out at sea denying the Argintine pilots the ability to hide behind hills until the last few seconds of an attack.

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There is a drawing on Deviantart of a Vanguard as she may well have looked at the time of the Falklands, outfitted with four Sea Cat missile launchers, a Sea Slug missile launcher, eight Bofors 40mm guns and four Exocet missiles in two pairs on either side of the B turret, as well as the suitable electronics fit. The Sea Slug is obsolete by the 1980s and the Exocets are going to be damaged by the overpressure, but its a start. It also kept both the eight 15" guns and the eight 5.25" guns on each side, which would mean A LOT of naval rounds flying to targets as needed.

deathscompanion1 said:

True but consider manning and maintenance costs alone chances are the rest of the Royal navy and consequently the task force will probably be smaller and less modern ships could have nasty side effects.

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I think we'd have to have a much more prosperous Britain for this idea to ever have traction in the first place, so I don't think we should concern ourselves too much with that.

TheMann said:

I think we'd have to have a much more prosperous Britain for this idea to ever have traction in the first place, so I don't think we should concern ourselves too much with that.

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So in short we're using a completely different world situation which butterfly's the Falkland's as the Argentinians think that the British have the resources and will to fight without being mislead by the defence cuts.

deathscompanion1 said:

So in short we're using a completely different world situation which butterfly's the Falkland's as the Argentinians think that the British have the resources and will to fight without being mislead by the defence cuts.

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It may not. Remember that the Falklands are 8000 miles from Britain, have a population of 2200 and we are talking about a nation run by a military junta which is running a country with serious economic problems and an abysmal human rights record, and the driving force behind the invasion thought right up until the point of hostilities began that the UK would not try to take the islands back. The stronger Britain may or may not butterfly the invasion at all.

Anyone saying that 500lb bombs can't hurt battleships is wrong. Quite apart from the WW2 experiences (which should indicate some problems with the idea), any weapons platform is only as good as the sensors that guide it. Those sensors have to be outside the armour protection and so will be the first things destroyed, even by hits that don't penetrate the armour. A mission kill is quite possible even if the ship isn't sunk.

Peg Leg Pom said:

The fuel in a missile could cause a fire IF the missile is able to penetrate Vangaurds armour, which is unlikely. ....

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Vanguard, like all post 1920 BB's used and "all or nothing" armour scheme, so if an exocet struck a "nothing" area it could penetrate it. Of course the "nothing" areas tended to be places of less importance (ie not magazines, machiney, CIC).

(And this ignores the unlikelyhood of Vanguard being kept on the RN in the first place).

any serious refit of the Vanguard post war would remove the 5.25 turrets and replace them with 4.5 inch turrets. This would be a massive improvement in AA capability . Their is sufficent room for Sea dart directors and radar topside also . a Vanguard armed with 2 Sea dart launchers ( 40 missile magazines ) and 2 seawolf (sextuple launchers ) and a pair of 4.5 inch turrets isgoing to be a tough nut to crack .

The question being: Where is the money for this refit going to come from (especially in the late 1960's/early 1970's which is when you'd be installing Sea Dart when cost cutting was the order of the day)?

How about this.

Instead of refitting the Victorious which was basically the same as putting money in a nice pile and then setting it on fire, ie an utter waste, the Vanguard was refitted. The refit would be fairly simple, no long range SAMs fitted, no 15 inch turret removal as thats major major work.

Instead replace the 5.25s with the dual 4.5's of the new RN destroyers/frigates, remove the older 40mm bofors mounts and replace them with more modern radar guided ones as well as two sea cat launchers per side and their associated magazines. The sea cat is non intrusive and very very basic and would not require much in the way of fitting.

After the refit the Vanguard carries out flag showing duties, long range cruises as well as becoming a NATO flagship as she did in her time. When the naval reductions come she is placed in reserve as a training ship/headquarters ship at Portsmouth, the effectiveness of the Iowas in giving fire support to ground troops and the current threat of Soviet Sverdlov class cruisers being the two things that the admiralty repeatedly points out and it helps save her. You could also not waste money on refitting the Tiger class light cruisers which was never satisfactory to again help pay for this money hungry behemoth.

Because she's used as a training ship and still sees use carrying members of the Royal Family around she's not laid up to slowly deteriorate and the companies that produce her equipment needed for her engines and turrets are kept in buisness which is seen to help the job market, often touted in the news, even if the effect is negligable.
The tensions of the cold war and again the refits of the Iowas make the admiralty consider a modest and 'cheap' refit which boils down to overhauling her machinery, minor modernisation of her radar systems and FC systems for her lighter armament and fitting four exocet launchers per side amidships, this is completed early in 1981.

Of course this would require a considerable change to the UKs armed forces doctrine and would require a less harsh axe blow to the RN as well as probably some seriously improved UK finances which we simply didn't have in the 50s, 60s and 70s and I've no way of figuring that out short of handwavium because the UK's military spending policy in that period was both bonkers and self destructive, we spent millions on projects that never saw the light of day, got bent over the table and then robbed by the US a few times (TSRs...you don't want them, *gets out a packet of F-111's* this is the good shit..trust me everyone will want this...this is where its at...), the constant fighting for money between the three services lead to a toxic atmosphere at the top levels along with Mr Sandys 'MISSLEAES ARE TEH ANWSER!' defence reviews that damn near destroyed the RN and RAF.

One source for diverting defence funds to the Navy could have been the B.A.O.R. Rather than spending a large chunk of cash on large numbers of troops and equipment that if war ever came would soon be radioactive dust on the wind reduce the Army's presance in Germany and use the savings to pay for a Navy that can better meet Britains needs.

That said keeping a 36 year old Battleship with nearly 70 year old turrets would still be a huge waste of money.

if you tried to reduce the BAOR it would piss off NATO and have the army screaming blue murder. Reducing the UKs commitments to NATO in that way is a bad idea. And the turrets were old yes, but they had been reconditioned and modernised, they were not the exact turrets from Fishers follies.

But lets say that the RN does keep the Vanguard all be it in a slightly modernised state and she goes off to the Falklands (possibly saved from being decomissioned and scrapped/placed in permanent reserve because of it) and otherwise the RN's forces sent are identical to OTL. She's most useful supporting the marines ashore so she'd not be with the carriers, refitted 4.5s and 40mm guns are not capable of engaging missiles with any real degree of accuracy, especially something like the Exocet which their radar systems were not designed to track. They'd also have issues with tracking high speed aircraft but not that major so she's no carrier escort, leave that to the Type 42s and Type 22s.

Inshore the advantages of having 15 and 4.5 inch gunfire support on tap would be massive and a morale boost for the troops ashore too so she'd be supporting the landings. In the close confines of 'bomb alley' the ships 4.5s and 40mm guns would add to the barrage of fire that the bloody brave Argentinians faced every time they made their attacks. If she had any sea cats then its more rounds going up but the missile system itself is woefully obsolete so any hit is more luck than anything.

The Argentinians seemed to concentrate on hitting the warships rather than going after the obvious targets like the RFAs and Canberra and the Vanguard might well preset an irresistable lure to any jet making its run. In reality the best they could hope for is a mission kill, a 500lb bomb dropped at low altitude will not penetrate her decks but as mentioned it could start fires and disable armament with the best hoped for result being her gun director being knocked out through either shock or a direct hit, also the Vanguard's bridge was not massively protected so a hit there could be serious.

Well, two potential options have been talked about on this board a few times:

1) The Anglo-French union happens and remains post-war (see Dunois' fabulous TL on the subject), which massively-increases Britain's post-war industrial sectors and economy and makes a much more powerful Royal Navy as a result.

2) Britain's industry takes advantage of every opportunity possible to produce world-class products and as a result stacks up a number of enormous, highly-capable industrial sectors, which earn the country a huge amount of money and contribute to Britain building the CVA-01s, not wasting money on stupid projects and Sandy's White Paper never seeing the light of day.

Pull off either one of these plans, and you may well see Vanguard and maybe one or two of the KGVs in the mothball fleet after WWII, but the BBs ride again in Korea and Suez. In the mothballs in the 1960s, the RN sees the performance of New Jersey in Vietnam and thus decides to keep Vanguard in the fleet, just in case.

The rumors of the Kirovs are broken by a spy in the late 1970s, and the idea of such ships rattles the RN to the point that the decide to answer back with a heavy surface combatant, and Vanguard gets recalled to the colors in 1978-79, with recommissioning in 1981. Thus, when the Argentines make their little mistake in April 1982, one of the most recently-upgraded ships in the Royal Navy heads south with the task forces, with a full load of 15-inch surprises for the Argentine Army....

TheMann said:

The rumors of the Kirovs are broken by a spy in the late 1970s, and the idea of such ships rattles the RN to the point that the decide to answer back with a heavy surface combatant

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They wouldn't. A battleship would be a suicidal mismatch for a Kirov - it has too little room for electronics and missiles and would never get close enough to use its guns. And as far as the RN is concerned it has the world's best hunter killer fleet (they're probably right - the US sub fleet's officer corps is dominated by a technocratic nuclear engineering tradition, while the RN is dominated by bridge officers - ie killers.) As far they're concerned, the Russians have just given them a Christmas present.