RoG Bismarck, Pray for me!

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?

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? 

subfixer wrote:

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

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

KevM wrote:

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

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.

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.

...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!!

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... 

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'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...

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

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...

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.

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.....

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...

Manny's point about radiation exposure could be true if subsequent ship design did not take this into consideration. Modern ships are designed with NBC warfare protection in mind.  First, the men inside the ship would have had a large degree of protection depending largely on where they were. Radiation decontamination is practised quite regularly on warships with any sort of nuclear capabilities. Second, shipboard washdown capabilities can reduce or eliminate surface contamination. Third, topside damage did heavily damage the battleships' offensive capabilities. But, my comment was that those ships could survive. I said nothing about their ability to fight an immediate battle after undergoing such an explosion. Admiral Tirpitz said it best when he said that a surviving ship, no matter how heavily damaged, could be repaired at a fraction of the cost at a fraction of the time of building a new ship.

As for Manny's additional comment that it is incorrect that battleships were the only ships to survive at Bikini, at no time did I say that they were.  Battleships are more likely to survive than other surface ships, but there are many factors to consider.  What was the type of explosion, its yield, the location of the ship in relation to the explosion, etc.  These factors being equal, the better protected ship would have a better chance of survival.  The Exocet missile that hit HMS Sheffield and sank her would have been shrugged off by a better protected ship. And, don't forget that USS Saratoga, the carrier that survived, was designed as a battlecruiser with a very stout hull. 

Bill Morrison

subfixer wrote:

Actually, the USS Dentuda, a Balao class sub, was moored submerged just outside of the 1,000 yard perimeter of the Baker blast. As she was submerged, she avoided the highly radioactive base surge and hull damage that the surface ships (including surfaced subs) did. She was decontaminated rather easily, underwent minor repairs, and was briely returned to active service. None of the surface ships (at least none of the surface ships in the immediate area of the blast) could make that claim. Although the Saratoga and Prinz Eugen were still afloat, they were so highly radioactively contaminated that crew survival would have been unlikely. I think I would have preferred to take my chances in a submerged submarine.

warshipguy wrote:

Whereas I agree that aircraft carriers changed the role of the battleship I disagree with the common assessment that they rendered the battleship obsolete.  Carriers became the primary strike weapon of the fleet, but there were many examples of carrier airpower being unable to deal with shore bombardment problems.  Carriers also depended heavily on antiaircraft firepower of battleships; many more would have been lost had it not been for their battleship escorts!There are indeed roles for them to play in today's concern over the littoral environment. The limiting factor is cost not effectiveness. Otherwise the Soviets/Russians would not continue to operate the Kirov class. Besides the U.S. Navy, no other navy operates carriers in any number. Only a few exist elsewhere, and the U.S. Navy only has 12. The limiting factor, again, is cost not effectiveness. Most navies are operating missile oriented surface ships. The Falklands conflict saw what missiles can do to unprotected warships.   Bill Morrison

true the missile that destroyed sheffield didnt even go off!! fire an excoset at a bb and it would barely even dent it

I'm not interested in joining this debate, as it's way beyond my knowledge, just a listener.

Here's a point I thought of a few pages back. BB's were a big political statement, an expression of national pride and empire, and to lose one, let alone five, would be a national tragedy on the greatest scale. For the British and the Germans, the Italians and the French to a lesser extent, that must have figured into their war plans.

If I was forced to be at Bikini, I'd pick a submarine.

warshipguy wrote:

Searat12 is right when he said that the Bikini nuclear tests demonstrated that the only ships capable of surviving a nuclear attack are battleships. Bill Morrison

I really doubt anyone believes that ANY ship, after suffering from a nuclear blast would still be in any capacity to conduct offensive operations...Had there been real people on those ships at Bikini, most probably all would have been killed outright, severly injured and/or had radiation exposure that would have killed them within days or weeks...the "surviving" ships themselves were so radioactive that they could never be used again for their original purpose, so I'm not sure what your point is about them "surviving".

Whereas I agree that aircraft carriers changed the role of the battleship I disagree with the common assessment that they rendered the battleship obsolete.  Carriers became the primary strike weapon of the fleet, but there were many examples of carrier airpower being unable to deal with shore bombardment problems.  Carriers also depended heavily on antiaircraft firepower of battleships; many more would have been lost had it not been for their battleship escorts!There are indeed roles for them to play in today's concern over the littoral environment. The limiting factor is cost not effectiveness. Otherwise the Soviets/Russians would not continue to operate the Kirov class.

Besides the U.S. Navy, no other navy operates carriers in any number. Only a few exist elsewhere, and the U.S. Navy only has 12. The limiting factor, again, is cost not effectiveness. Most navies are operating missile oriented surface ships. The Falklands conflict saw what missiles can do to unprotected warships.

Searat12 is right when he said that the Bikini nuclear tests demonstrated that the only ships capable of surviving a nuclear attack are battleships.

Bill Morrison

searat12 wrote:

Manny, I still don't think you have quite understood what I have been saying, but I will try one more time...The record shows exactly the opposite of 'battleships being husbanded,' with battleships repeatedly committed in every theater of the war, and in every kind of operation, from convoy escort, to carrier support, to shore bombardment, to search and destroy missions against other heavy warships, etc, etc.....  I STILL don't know why people keep saying battleships were 'obsolete' at any time in WW2, or even well after (Heck!  Even today!).  As I have said repeatedly, battleships kicked butt in every operation they were involved in during WW2, but because there were so few of them available in WW2 (and NOT because they were in any way 'obsolete,' but because of the treaties of the '20's and '30's), they did not operate as they were intended, in squadrons, and against squadrons. After WW2, the only nations that had any number of battleships were the US and the UK, and the UK could no longer afford to operate even ONE battleship, let alone a fleet of them (the cost of TWO world wars finally bankrupted the empire, which collapsed shortly after), and so the Brits scrapped them all.  This left the US as the ONLY nation with any number of battleships (the French still had two, and committed them at Suez in the '50's, you may recall), but as there were NO adversaries left in the world with any real pretensions to seapower, the battleship was retired by the US (though repeatedly reactivated as need required).  Again, this was NOT because of 'nuclear warfare threats' (the Bikini Atoll atomic tests showed that battleships were in fact the ONLY ships likely to survive a direct nuclear strike!), or the aircraft carrier either, as naval warfare had evolved to feature balanced task forces with carriers AND battleships for mutual defense.  However, as the US was ALSO just about the only nation with any appreciable number of aircraft carriers either, it was easier and cheaper to mothball the battleships, rather than the carriers.  Even today, there is a role for the battleship which has YET to be equalled by any other ship-type (shore bombardment), but as long as no other nation decides to BUILD battleships (and in fact the technology and industry to do so has been lost for at least 50 years!), then there is no reason for the US to reactivate the Missouri's again, or design any new ones either.  In other words, that particular hatchet HAS been buried, but not because it wasn't sharp!

"...luckily, the two US carriers were not in port during the Japanese raid on Pearl; otherwise, the US could not have rebounded so quickly and strike the devastating blow to the Japanese fleet at Midway..."

...Midway...that about sums it up...