rtrapasso -> RE: OT - Bringing back the battleship? (4/22/2005 3:52:12 PM)
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quote:
Regarding the idea that the recommissioning of the ships was a waste. Ask the marines what the response of the militia in Lebonon was when a single shell from that ship was fired on their positions. How many sorties do you think it would take by aircraft to deliver the ordinance of a 20 min bombardment by Iowa? Well, given previous quoted 17,500 pounds/sortie figure - vs. 9 x 2700 x 10 salvoes = about 14 sorties, less if we park the carrier just off the coast and put on a heavy load. Despite the claimed "pinpoint accuracy" of the 16" shells - they don't all wind up hitting at the exact same spot, and when firing inland in Lebanon, they often came nowhere near the enemy, as demonstrated by reports from bitter Lebanese civilians and footage showing new "swimming pools" out in the middle of an empty field (and not anywhere near the fighting). How many new El Qaida members were created by this action. Who knows? quote:
For those of you who say the shells could be shot down by phlanx or equivlent, I would say, how many? A salvo of several shells fired over a few min. would be more difficult to stop. First of all, the statement was made that nothing can stop the 16" shell ("no countermeasures") - so now that it is shown that maybe something CAN stop the 16" shell, the cry goes up, "Yeah, but there would be too many to stop". This seems like a fruitless argument. I could reply that you don't need to stop every shell, just the ones about to hit your ship, but i won't say this.[:'(] quote:
The argument that they would be vulnerable to modern surface to surface missles. Are you kidding? These weapons dont carry the penetrating payload of 16 in shells. The Sheffiled was killed by SSMs that would not even damage Iowa. True enough. No need to put an AP (including shaped charged) warhead on a missile today (unless you count torpedoes as missiles), since no one bothers with much armor. However, if someone fielded a BB, it would be a simple matter to produce such a warhead (not really high tech, nor hard to make). However, you don't really need that - you can use napalm or a FAE (Fuel Air Explosive). The vulnerability of the BB to these has been pointed out numerous times in the professional naval literature (well, USN Proceedings, anyway).
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