foeth wrote:With all the reasoning above we might just as use a 17th century ship of the line and add 16" guns and a nuclear reactor. The Iowa's are ancient history. They were obsolote the moment the came of the slipway and have been generally useless. If you have them, why not use them. But storing missiles and adding missile defenses could also be applied to container ships. Their armour is grossly insufficient against any modern weapon. I always laugh when people say her armour is inpenetrable. Just for the fun of it, a modern 120mm gun can peneratre more than 800mm of steel. If I roll a batalion of tanks on a roro ferry and somehow manage to get close to an Iowa, she's in trouble.
I really don't understand why people think a 16" shell cannot be stopped or is somehow superior to a missile. If a missile hits mach three and choses to follow a ballistic trajectory she is a 16" shell; more powerful and heavier. Can chose to go faster. And change course. Can do lots of things. Can be launched from a small frigate. All the things a 16" gun and shell cannot.
FYI - an M1 Abrams would need to be about 2,000 meters away from the Iowa in order to achieve the penetration level you just described. Max range on the M256 is about 4,000 meters. If you got that ferry that close to the Iowa, you might as well just board it!
While I don't believe anyone in this thread said that the Iowa's armor was impenetrable, it most certainly is better protected (purely from an armor standpoint) than any other warship afloat today. I couldn't begin to tell you if it would stand up to a Harpoon, Shipwreck, or Tomahawk missile, but my instincts tell me it would have a hard time against the latter two. Hence my suggestion that a newer battleship be built, perhaps one that could incorporate something like the DU-enhanced armor on our M1A1 tanks.
As far as shells vs. missiles: most of the missiles I looked up were not capable of reaching the speed of a 16" shell. The Tomahawks are still sub-sonic, while the Shipwreck can reach Mach 1.6. Regardless, there's no denying that missiles are extremely powerful weapons in any conflict, and in many cases are better weapons of choice than shells (better range comes to mind). However, missiles can be fooled, and they can be shot down. Perhaps shells can be shot down(?), but it's kinda hard to fool something that doesn't have a "brain". I'm inclined to think that there must be a place for gun-and-shell technology in today's conventional warfare, especially if that technology could be upgraded from WWII standards. I shudder to think about what a 16" shell with DU-penetrating technology could do!
Oh, and as far as the nuclear cruise-missile argument goes, I believe we're crossing a threshold with that. I don't think there's anything in the world that would be able to survive a low-grade tactical nuke. Forget the fact that there were battleships that remained afloat and somewhat operational during the A-bomb tests at Bikini. Today's nukes are tens, if not hundreds of times more powerful than those A-bombs. Even if the Iowas could survive the blast, most everybody on board would be dead or dying. Yes, one could argue that losing a BB means many more lives than a CG or DD with equivalent missile armaments. Then again, if we're talking a couple hundred kilotons, who's to say the resulting blast doesn't take out more than just one CG or DD?
Unless someone has a feasible defense against them, I suggest we leave the nukes out of the equation and deal with "conventional weapons" (whatever that means these days)
