AHC :Have Battleships remain the biggest fleet element up till today .

[Andre27]

What doomed the BB were two things - nuclear weapons rendered their armor obsolete and carriers had a longer strike option.

For BBs to survive you need to get rid of nuclear weapons, and you need to give BBs a strike option that makes them competitive with carriers - likely rockets or missiles.

So WWII likely needs to be avoided so that no one actually attempts to make nuclear weapons, and you need to increase development of guided missiles. Perhaps there is a brief great power war in the 1950s that demonstrates that guided missiles launched from ships put aircraft to shame, but the war ends in a negotiated peace instead of a prolonged war that would demonstrate the effectiveness of other technologies.

If technology develops differently than OTL, then the battleship as a weapons platform might survive.

As for range, if BB had remained as major fleet assets, is a development for 38-40 cm variant of this shell viable?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Range_Guided_Munition

If so, what kind of range would we be looking at? 150-200Km?

 

[Delta Force]

I don't know about battleship caliber, but a case could be made for using autoloading 5", 6", and 8" guns for roles such as air defense, naval gunfire support, and perhaps even battling other ships if they should happen to get into close enough range and the shells use rocket assisted propulsion, base bleed, and guidance systems. Those are more light and heavy cruiser caliber, although an 8" gun was designed for USN destroyers in the 1970s. Of course, modern destroyers are closer in size to World War II era light cruisers. More information here.

 

[Legofan4]

Another thing is that once you have guided missiles for anti-ship duty why build a bigger ship. You only need it to be big enough to carry enough missiles to attack several targets at once and missiles take up less space and weight then heavy guns. Also making bigger warheads is always going to be cheaper then designing a entirely new ship with enough armor to not be mission killed in one hit from any contemporary missile or anything that could be developed in at least a decade after getting the go ahead to build it.

 

[Delta Force]

Another thing is that once you have guided missiles for anti-ship duty why build a bigger ship. You only need it to be big enough to carry enough missiles to attack several targets at once and missiles take up less space and weight then heavy guns. Also making bigger warheads is always going to be cheaper then designing a entirely new ship with enough armor to not be mission killed in one hit from any contemporary missile or anything that could be developed in at least a decade after getting the go ahead to build it.

Some of the early missile systems were quite large and heavy, so an 8" could fit on a hull similar to one designed to carry something like Talos. Also, if cruiser caliber cannons are the largest fielded there would be no need to go with battleship level armor. The ships would never have to worry about anything larger than an 8" shell, so cruiser standards would be quite feasible.

 

[MattII]

Talos still has a range of over 90km.

 

[Namayan]

Another thing is that once you have guided missiles for anti-ship duty why build a bigger ship. You only need it to be big enough to carry enough missiles to attack several targets at once and missiles take up less space and weight then heavy guns. Also making bigger warheads is always going to be cheaper then designing a entirely new ship with enough armor to not be mission killed in one hit from any contemporary missile or anything that could be developed in at least a decade after getting the go ahead to build it.

I believe the concept of an arsenal ship is 500+ VLS.

The current Ohio ssgn, can only bring 150+.

 

[Delta Force]

Talos still has a range of over 90km.

8" subcaliber rounds might be able to reach further than that. I made some range estimates here:

Here are the standard ranges for some heavy USN guns:
-- 8"/55 Mark 12-15: 29,800 yards (27,250 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55RF Mark 16: 29,800 yards (27,250 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55 Mark 71: 32,000 yards (29,260 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 12"/50 Mark 8: 38,573 yards (35,271 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/45 Mark 6: 36,900 yards (33,741 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/50 Mark 7: 42,345 yards (38,720 m) at 45 degrees elevation

Base bleed rounds would thus give something like this:
-- 8"/55 Mark 12-15: 38,740 yards (35,425 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55RF Mark 16: 38,740 yards (35,425 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55 Mark 71: 41,600 yards (38,038 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 12"/50 Mark 8: 50,145 yards (45,852 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/45 Mark 6: 47,970 yards (43,863 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/50 Mark 7: 55,049 yards (50,336 m) at 45 degrees elevation

However, there are also some interesting systems under development or currently in service. The Vulcano system uses a subcaliber sabot round to significantly increase range. The 127 mm/54 gun normally has a range of 25,290 yards (23,130 m) at 47 degrees but has a range of 100 km with Vulcano shells, and the 127 mm/64 gun is expected to have a range of 25,290 yards (23,130 m) at 47 degrees but have a range of 120 km with Vulcano shells. That's an improvement of around 4.323 to 5.188 times in range. Project HARP used a 16"/100 gun to fire sounding rockets and could have put small payloads into orbit, so I think these impressive figures might be scalable.

Using the lower estimates of 4.323 times, these ranges could be expected with subcaliber sabots:
-- 8"/55 Mark 12-15: 128,825 yards (117,802 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55RF Mark 16: 128,825 yards (117,802 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 8"/55 Mark 71: 138,336 yards (126,491 m) at 41 degrees elevation
-- 12"/50 Mark 8: 166,751 yards (152,477 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/45 Mark 6: 159,519 yards (145,862 m) at 45 degrees elevation
-- 16"/50 Mark 7: 183,057 yards (167,387 m) at 45 degrees elevation

Similar figures could be expected from the ERGM and BTERM rocket assisted propellent rounds, assuming their performance scales. However, they significantly increase barrel wear and not as many rounds can be carried.

 

[MattII]

Fair enough, although comparing a modern gun round to a late-50s surface-to-air missile could be seen a redundant. if you really want to compare it to something, try a tomahawk.

 

[Delta Force]

Fair enough, although comparing a modern gun round to a late-50s surface-to-air missile could be seen a redundant. if you really want to compare it to something, try a tomahawk.

I think subcaliber rounds were being developed as early as the 1960s by the USN. They might not be capable of being guided or carrying payloads though.

 

[MattII]

No matter, you're still going to be comparing those to Tomahawks.

 

[Delta Force]

No matter, you're still going to be comparing those to Tomahawks.

True, but you can't attack something if you don't know where it is. You probably won't be attacking other ships from half an ocean away.

Also, the guns (or at least the 5" and 6") can be used to help defend against missile attack because they have longer effective range than automatic cannons and can use large explosive shells. That means even in an air defense engagement the guns aren't deadweight.

 

[MattII]

True, but you can't attack something if you don't know where it is. You probably won't be attacking other ships from half an ocean away.

Depends how good your ship search radar is.

Also, the guns (or at least the 5" and 6") can be used to help defend against missile attack because they have longer effective range than automatic cannons and can use large explosive shells. That means even in an air defense engagement the guns aren't deadweight.

And how do they deal with sea-skimming missiles?

 

[Shaby]

For BBs to survive you need to get rid of nuclear weapons, and you need to give BBs a strike option that makes them competitive with carriers - likely rockets or missiles.

But then you don't need that big a hull.

 

[Andre27]

But then you don't need that big a hull.

Not necessarily. In the early days, 1950's & 1960's, missiles were anything but small. If you would want an arsenal ship in the 1950's then you'd need the size of a BB. It's that or being severely limited in the number of missiles carried.

 

[anotherlurker]

But then you don't need that big a hull.

Bigger hull = more missiles.

The larger destroyers today pack 100+ vertically launched missiles in VLS cells, scale that up to 2000 missiles or so and you need a large ship hull.

 

[Legofan4]

Bigger hull = more missiles.

The larger destroyers today pack 100+ vertically launched missiles in VLS cells, scale that up to 2000 missiles or so and you need a large ship hull.

Why would you ever need to carry that many missiles in the first place. You only need enough so that you don't use all of them on any one particular deployment because when the ship gets rotated back home it can get restocked. And it would be much cheaper to have smaller ships and just have replacement missiles at bases then to have incredibly large ships with lots of missiles. Also if that one ship gets sunk your screwed but if its just a destroyer you probably have lots more unlike a capital class ship of which you might just have a handful at most.

 

[anotherlurker]

Why would you ever need to carry that many missiles in the first place. You only need enough so that you don't use all of them on any one particular deployment because when the ship gets rotated back home it can get restocked. And it would be much cheaper to have smaller ships and just have replacement missiles at bases then to have incredibly large ships with lots of missiles. Also if that one ship gets sunk your screwed but if its just a destroyer you probably have lots more unlike a capital class ship of which you might just have a handful at most.

I have no idea why someone would do that but it's a possibility to have something in the fleet categorized as "battleship".

Personally i'd prefer many smaller ships, 5k ton destroyers and 25k ton carriers - the fleet as a whole would be less vulnerable to losses because there's more of the "critical" ships around and the expertise to run the ships would be distributed over far more ships.

 

[Lost Freeway]

All of them after 1935 or thereabouts.

So says the guy who had battleships play an important part in The Anglo-American/Nazi War.

 

[Andre27]

All of them after 1935 or thereabouts.

Would not say they were obsolete during the second world war, but the ACC had taken over the leading role.

Especially during WW2 there were some tasks which the complement of aircraft on the temporary ACC could still not fulfill to the same degree.

Shore bombardment and counter battery fire being examples.

The thing which really made the BB obsolete was the atom bomb.
To keep BB around longer the use of nuclear weapons against Japan needs to be butterflied away.

 

[Mike D]

The thing which really made the BB obsolete was the atom bomb.

I'd disagree with that, personally.

Look at the list of battleships sunk during WW2 - even if you discount the ones hit at anchor (such as the Pearl Harbor attack), you can see that even quite early in the war air power was able to at least severely damage battleships.

Once aircraft got to the point where they could lift a weapon heavy enough to hurt a battleship the days of the dreadnought were coming to an end. Aircraft are faster, more flexible, much cheaper, much longer ranged and (as navigation aids, air to surface radar etc improved) once they were able to fly at night or in bad weather the battleship lost the last advantage they had left over the carrier/air group.

Atomic weapons may have been the final nail in the coffin but I think the body was already dead and inside the coffin before that nail was driven in.