RoG Bismarck, Pray for me!

Well, it might be interesting to have a look at the Bikini Atoll nuke tests!  Here is a good summary:  http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-1.htm

There were two tests, one as an airburst that did very little (the raditaion was so negligible that the ships were bale to be reboarded within a day, and only five ships were sunk from this explosion (none of them battleships).  The results of this test can be seen here:  http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-3.htm     The next test was an underwater explosion in the middle of the assembled fleet, the center portion of which was largely made up of battleships and carriers.  This test was much more destructive, with two battleships (Arkansas and Nagato) sunk, one carrier sunk (Saratoga), and several others.  More importantly, the ships were all bathed in radioactive water spray from the explosion, which rendered them very radioactive indeed.  However, the battleships, by virtue of their very thick armor, were largely protected from internal radioactivity, though of course their exteriors were quite hot! 

After these tests, most of the ships were subsequently cleaned up and either towed away or sailed away under their own power, and were expended as targets later, as seen here:  http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq76-5.htm

In other words, nukes aren't particularly good weapons to throw at ships, especially not ships at sea (as against moored in a harbor), and battleships are the least vulnerable of all, due to the radioactive resistance of their very thick armor....

As for the supposed 'supremacy' of the carrier over the battleship, from every source I have read when examined closely, this is pretty much a myth!  When you figure it took the combined efforts of 18 jeep carriers (the equivalent of SIX fleet carriers!), plus ground-based airpower to drive off a Japanese battlesquadron (at Leyte), and in fact, there was really not a lot of reason for that battlesquadron to turn away (other than the perception of its very ill Admiral, Kurita), and could WELL have pushed on and wiped out ALL of those carriers, this should give you some indication of what a proper battlesquadron can do, if it moves with determination!  There were a couple other instances of this in the Solomons, where the Japanese Admiral (on board a carrier like Shokaku) would call off the battlesquadron, just as it was within striking distance of the American carriers (in fact, USS Hornet was 'finished off' by destroyers of this battlesquadron, and if they had just pushed on a few more miles, would have caught USS Enterprise and blown her out of the water, thus eliminating further US airsupport for Guadalcanal!).  The reason for such withdrawals in all cases for the Japanese was the loss of their carriers, not their battleships or heavy cruisers (and this was the case at Midway, etc, etc, etc), which in fact were often in a position to have redressed the losses in no uncertain terms, but didn't because of the overcaution of their overall Admiral, rather than the Admiral on hand.... I really do recommend you get a chance to read 'A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy' by Paul S. Dull (you can get a used copy from Amazon for just a couple bucks).  Once you get a really good understanding of these various battles, you will get a better idea of how close some of these things actually were, with just a nudge required by a few battleships that could have turned a number of US victories into bloody and disasterous defeats...

And here is an intersting little bit of oral history regarding the tests:  http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq87-6b.htm

Note the tale about USS Nevada.....

Alright, I'm goin' in Marv! You guys are too much fun to ignore. Ref my last post, and no I wouldn't have been near Bikini in anything, there's a certain something about battlewagons. As symbols of national pride, I'd opine that reading between the lines of Searats post there's a hesitancy to throw them full throttle into an engagement as opposed to say a cruiser, that as Bill suggests they have an air of invincibility, therefore when you lose one, you are perceived as losing period, and to be ecumenical our friend Manny I believe has a point: can't operate without air cover, as you can probably sink one with a couple of dozen airplanes.

I don't know a thing abt war planning, but I'd guess that the idea was to keep them from being sunk, at all costs. Out of range of opponents aircraft.

Funny, all of my refs say quite the opposite: carriers rendered BB's obsolete...period...if that isn't the case, why haven't fleets been represented by this notion since WW2?

You also prove my earlier point about BB's being husbaned, at least by the Japanese...they were so afraid of losing one of thir capital ships, they turned away time and again, even when victory seemed imminent---although hindight is 20/20...

Manny,

I believe that I said that the only navy to husband their battleships was the Japanese Navy. No other navy did so. Just reread my posts; you will see it repeated many times in my comments.

Bill Morrison

I'd add the Italians, the French and the Germans in that group as well...

...just got through watching the Military Channel (not that I rely much on that channel for hard facts) and saw a program on sea power which restated that BB's were obsolete after Midway...

Too bad that the Military Channel got another fact wrong. Battleships shot down many aircraft during the war; many more aircraft carriers would have been sunk without their AA protection. Many amateur historians confuse the issue of changing roles with obsolescence.  The role of the battleship was changed in WWII in large measure because carrier aircraft could strike farther. But many very suitable roles emerged for battleships that carrier aircraft could not fulfill.  One has only to look at the makeup of most surface fleets today to see that most navies rely on missile-firing surface combatants, with carriers being much too expensive to operate in terms of money and manpower.  The word "obsolete" is greatly overused.

Anyway, again, let's agree to disagree. I wish I could meet you and discuss this amicably over a beer.  This forum was supposed to be about the RoG 1/350 kit of the Bismarck. It is an exceptional kit of an interesting ship. I have both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz by RoG and am looking forward to building them. And that fully justifies them to me.

Bill Morrison

warshipguy wrote:

Too bad that the Military Channel got another fact wrong. Battleships shot down many aircraft during the war; many more aircraft carriers would have been sunk without their AA protection. Many amateur historians confuse the issue of changing roles with obsolescence.  The role of the battleship was changed in WWII in large measure because carrier aircraft could strike farther. But many very suitable roles emerged for battleships that carrier aircraft could not fulfill.  One has only to look at the makeup of most surface fleets today to see that most navies rely on missile-firing surface combatants, with carriers being much too expensive to operate in terms of money and manpower.  The word "obsolete" is greatly overused. Anyway, again, let's agree to disagree. I wish I could meet you and discuss this amicably over a beer.  This forum was supposed to be about the RoG 1/350 kit of the Bismarck. It is an exceptional kit of an interesting ship. I have both the Bismarck and the Tirpitz by RoG and am looking forward to building them. And that fully justifies them to me. Bill Morrison

I get that you are a huge battleship fan...I happen to like them as well; I have a dio in progress of Glowworm ramming the Hipper...Noone needs to justify building a particular ship...But, if BB's were relevant, the US would be sending BB's to the "hot spots" in the world today instead of carriers...I'll have a brew with you anytime... 

...I DO seem to recall an American BB showing in the Gulf War not TOO long ago, laying down some serious fire for the Marines and firing missiles into Baghdad as well  How's that for a 'hot spot?'...... I agree, the myth of battleship 'obsolesence' has been around for a long time, it's in a lot of books, and it is one I used to believe in myself.  The trouble is, once you really start to pick apart the facts, you will come to a different conclusion!  It's funny, the battleship has been claimed to be 'obsolete' on many different occasions, over 150 years, and each time with the rise of different and new technologies.  The first was the invention of the mine, then the torpedo was supposed to make all capital ships completely helpless, then submarines obviously made battleships obsolete, then the airplane, then the nuclear bomb, blah, blah, blah... Yet still they show up, again and again, and for one simple reason, and that is that nothing has been invented that can throw that much metal downrange with such accuracy, and survive a counterblow of the same weight of metal or more.... And still hasn't!  I'd put the good old Missouri up against the Kirov, or the Kiev, OR the Kuznetsov any day of the week, and I know full well who would end up swimming, and they wouldn't be wearing 'dixie cup' hats!!

Just as an aside; the 18 escort carriers at Leyte were for covering the amphibious landings and weren't armed for anti-ship attack. They had no armor piercing bombs nor torpedoes.

The Iowas have been reconfigured to mount 32 Tomahawks, by the way, which considerably ups their ante.

subfixer wrote:

Just as an aside; the 18 escort carriers at Leyte were for covering the amphibious landings and weren't armed for anti-ship attack. They had no armor piercing bombs nor torpedoes.

KevM wrote:

Hey Rabbiteatsnake  any headway on the build yet?The pics I have seen of the built one's look really good.

I think the battleship has a great place within even todays navy, and that place is with the marines. These guys are expected to conduct amphibous assaults on beaches. This event has occured in Somalia and Iraq (at least twice publicly). Now I conceed that both landings were unopposed unless you count CNN but suppose that was a different story. An Iowa even just with guns would make a good fire support platform. 9 big guns plus her batteries of 5 inchers? Can't get that kind of firepower out of todays crusiers and destroyers. Add the cruise missle upgrade and your looking at every marines wet dream.

As far as the Bismarck I have been working on one for at least three years now. Three things have conspired against me:

• Going through a divorce
• Moving twice
• and trying to get a good wood color on that stupid deck!!!

I have overcome the first two!!!!

Rich

subfixer wrote:

Who knows, maybe they thought that they were from Halsey's task force.

One final thought on the debate:

The issue here seems to turn on the word 'obsolete'.

Manny seems to be saying that BB's were obsolete in the sense that they were no longer the primary capital ships of the navy, and were not able to fulfill the same role that they had in the past.  Plus the often tentative handling of the ships limited their utility even further. I don't think he is arguing that they should have been melted down for razor blades in 1941. But their role was definately diminished with the introduction of the fleet carrier.

Searat and other seem to be saying that BB's were not obsolete because they ably fulfilled a different role in the fleet and remained very dangerous and valuable ships.  I don't think they are arguing that BB's retained their former role as the primary striking arm of the fleet.  And there are probably a few panzers-at-Dunkirk scenarios where more aggressive handling of BB's might have made for a different outcome.

So it seems we are in vigorous agreement in large part.

N'est pas? 

That's pretty much correct, with one exception.... If there had simply been as many battleships around in WW2 as there was in WW1, you would have seen battleships used as intended and as designed, in squadrons, squaring off against other squadrons, with carriers forming a very useful adjunct, but not so much THE capital ship as they in fact turned out to be.  As for the 'panzers-at-Dunkirk' scenario, it is important to remember the crucial role played by battleships at Normandy, and for quite some time afterwards in the drive across France, breaking up panzer columns and assembly points, and generally making life a misery for the Germans... And much the same happened at Anzio in Italy as well... In other words, it wasn't the role that was diminished, or the battleships ability to fill that role per se, but that there simply were not enough around to fill it (just like there is a role for a tank battalion.  But if you only have a platoon of tanks, you can't expect that platoon to function, or have the same impact as a tank battalion, nor can you claim that because the tank platoon can't fill the role of the tank battalion, that somehow tanks as a whole are 'obsolete').

Verstehen?

searat12 wrote:

That's pretty much correct, with one exception.... If there had simply been as many battleships around in WW2 as there was in WW1, you would have seen battleships used as intended and as designed, in squadrons, squaring off against other squadrons, with carriers forming a very useful adjunct, but not so much THE capital ship as they in fact turned out to be.  As for the 'panzers-at-Dunkirk' scenario, it is important to remember the crucial role played by battleships at Normandy, and for quite some time afterwards in the drive across France, breaking up panzer columns and assembly points, and generally making life a misery for the Germans... And much the same happened at Anzio in Italy as well... In other words, it wasn't the role that was diminished, or the battleships ability to fill that role per se, but that there simply were not enough around to fill it (just like there is a role for a tank battalion.  But if you only have a platoon of tanks, you can't expect that platoon to function, or have the same impact as a tank battalion, nor can you claim that because the tank platoon can't fill the role of the tank battalion, that somehow tanks as a whole are 'obsolete'). Verstehen?

However, others have pointed out that the existing number of BB's that the British had at the begining of WW2 was already bankrupting the English economy, so I guess we can't have it both ways...thank God for the limitations, otherwise the British may have been totally insolvent and their economy ruined more than it was...

Let's assume though that there were no limitations on tonnage and navies built more BB's...IMO, that would have just meant more targets for airplanes than actually occured in the event...it probably saved lives that there weren't more BB's...

Yet, no American or British battleships were sunk by aircraft after Pearl Harbor.  Many of them came under intense aircraft attack in the Pacific and Mediterranean, yet none were sunk. A can't think of any that were even so heavily damaged that they couldn't fight, except Pennsylvania.  This fact is due in large part to the heavy and modern AA weapons each carried.  This armament was far superior to that of the Axis navies.

Some might argue that the Allies had control of the air and that Axis aircraft could not get through.  Tell that to the survivors of the radar picket ships, the survivors of the Princeton, or the Franklin.  And, the Axis had air control throughout much of the Mediterranean campaign.  Yet, the battleships successfully fought off many air attacks.

It is an irrelevant issue today. The only navy that operates aircraft carriers in number is the U.S. Navy. Again, most navies center their offensive capabilities on ships that carry missiles. There are several arguments for this.  Carriers have become prohibitively expensive to maintain and operate. Additionally, why waste pilot's lives when a saturation attack by missiles can be just as effective?  In other words, carriers are no longer the threat to surface operations.  The situation is far different than in 1939, when the Japanese , Americans, and British had powerful carrier fleets.

Given the technological shift towards missile capable ships and the relative decline of naval airpower, building a durable, stout modern battleship makes sense. Also, given that strategic ****** to littoral warfare, having ships with powerful gun armament makes sense.

Bill Morrison

Admiral Rickover just stopped in.

He wants you to know that nuclear submarines are in fact the new capital ships of the navy, and both carriers are BB's are nothing but expensive targets.

(for those of you who are wondering, Rickover looks good. In fact, he was positively glowing.)

Speaking as a retired Submariner, you just won my heart! But they, too, have their limitations.

Bill Morrison

warshipguy wrote:

Yet, no American or British battleships were sunk by aircraft after Pearl Harbor.

I stand corrected. But, it in no way changes my basic point of view. One can equally argue that, by sinking HMS Glorious, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau proved the superiority of battleships over carriers. But, that would be preposterous.

Neither PoW or Repulse had updated AA weapons or fire control that were later fitted to Allied battleships.  I will restate that no Allied battleship was lost to airpower after December, 1941.

Bill Morrison

warshipguy wrote:

I stand corrected. But, it in no way changes my basic point of view. One can equally argue that, by sinking HMS Glorious, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau proved the superiority of battleships over carriers. But, that would be preposterous. Neither PoW or Repulse had updated AA weapons or fire control that were later fitted to Allied battleships.  I will restate that no Allied battleship was lost to airpower after December, 1941. Bill Morrison

...that's also why the CA was always in the center of battlegroups--they were the prime target, because they posed the biggest threat to other surface vessels... 

PaintsWithBrush wrote:

This thread has been a true blast to read. Obviously, there is much love for the battleship. I still believe the aircraft carrier and the ballistic missile submarine are the top dogs of the modern sea force but they do need their supporting cast to perform at their best. Warfare evolves and certain designs fall by the wayside. That does not diminish what they once were, it just means that the needs of commanders have changed and newer weapons have emerged that fill those needs to a better degree. There can be no doubt, if another "hot spot" flares up in the world tomorrow, President Obama is not going to ask "Where are the battleships"?, his first question is going to be: "Where is the nearest carrier"?

Really, this is something like the old 'chicken and egg' scenario.  The biggest reason the existing battleships are no longer in service is not that they can't 'do the job,' but because they were designed in the 1930's, were completed in the '40's, and that is some 60 years worth of wear and tear and an awful lot of of miles under the keels, and the cost of replacing the engines and upgrading other systems was prohibitive in the post Cold-War environment (just like after 'the war to end all wars,' with much the same result).  At the same time the battleships were taken out of commission, several armored and mech infantry divisions were also demobilized, but with no talk of them being in any way 'outmoded.' 

Can you imagine any submarine remaining in the first rank after 60 years?  Or a carrier, or any of its aircraft, or any other weapon system?  Yet with comparatively small modifications, the battleships have managed to do so, always rising to the needs and technology of the moment. 

And once again, the technology to build replacement battleships no longer exists, not in the US, not anywhere.   And since no other nation has the wherewithall to either challenge the US Navy for supremacy at sea, or the technology to do so either, why try to resurrect what has for the moment become a 'redundant weapon system?'  I will say one thing though, if another navy DOES eventually make a bid to challenge the US (say, the Chinese or a resurgent Russia), it would not at all surprise me to see the old battleships dragged out of their berths and upgraded once again (it has happened three times in the last 60 years!).  Why?  Because there isn't anything else like them, no-one else can build them, and thus, there is no opposing military 'answer' to their existence if they showed up all of a sudden-like, and for that reason alone, they constitute a wonderful 'ace in the hole' for the US Navy that no-one else can match....

searat12 wrote:

PaintsWithBrush wrote: This thread has been a true blast to read. Obviously, there is much love for the battleship. I still believe the aircraft carrier and the ballistic missile submarine are the top dogs of the modern sea force but they do need their supporting cast to perform at their best. Warfare evolves and certain designs fall by the wayside. That does not diminish what they once were, it just means that the needs of commanders have changed and newer weapons have emerged that fill those needs to a better degree. There can be no doubt, if another "hot spot" flares up in the world tomorrow, President Obama is not going to ask "Where are the battleships"?, his first question is going to be: "Where is the nearest carrier"? Well, that is true, the submarine and aircraft carrier are the current 'top dogs' of the modern seaforce, but again, that is because there are no battleships in service.  For the same reason, Obama will of course ask for the nearest carrier in the event of a hotspot, because that is what is available NOW (though back in the 80's, the battleships were called on to Middle East service several times, cruising off the coast of Lebanon, and Libya, and the Persian Gulf too.).  And the Marines and other US forces in the area were very happy to have them do so, as those big guns and missiles suddenly showing up either offshore, or in the harbor is something that EVERYONE takes notice of, and as was clearly demonstrated in Kuwait, and in Baghdad, for very good reason!  Really, this is something like the old 'chicken and egg' scenario.  The biggest reason the existing battleships are no longer in service is not that they can't 'do the job,' but because they were designed in the 1930's, were completed in the '40's, and that is some 60 years worth of wear and tear and an awful lot of of miles under the keels, and the cost of replacing the engines and upgrading other systems was prohibitive in the post Cold-War environment (just like after 'the war to end all wars,' with much the same result).  At the same time the battleships were taken out of commission, several armored and mech infantry divisions were also demobilized, but with no talk of them being in any way 'outmoded.'  Can you imagine any submarine remaining in the first rank after 60 years?  Or a carrier, or any of its aircraft, or any other weapon system?  Yet with comparatively small modifications, the battleships have managed to do so, always rising to the needs and technology of the moment.  And once again, the technology to build replacement battleships no longer exists, not in the US, not anywhere.   And since no other nation has the wherewithall to either challenge the US Navy for supremacy at sea, or the technology to do so either, why try to resurrect what has for the moment become a 'redundant weapon system?'  I will say one thing though, if another navy DOES eventually make a bid to challenge the US (say, the Chinese or a resurgent Russia), it would not at all surprise me to see the old battleships dragged out of their berths and upgraded once again (it has happened three times in the last 60 years!).  Why?  Because there isn't anything else like them, no-one else can build them, and thus, there is no opposing military 'answer' to their existence if they showed up all of a sudden-like, and for that reason alone, they constitute a wonderful 'ace in the hole' for the US Navy that no-one else can match....

I mean, are we to believe that the carrier just stumbled into the position it is in today by accident...If you remember, in the 20's, Billy Mitchell was COURT MARTIALED for daring to challenge the supremecy of the BB.  Every Admiral wanted him drummed out of the service in disgrace (or worse)...that's because, as many in this Forum believe, that the BB was, and always would be, the King of the seas....history proved Billy right and despite all of the resistance, airpower (and hence the carrier) won out...not because it was more favored, but because it was the superior weapon...