[in_vino_vomitus]

Originally Posted by Dread Knot

On a sort of sociological note, I find it fascinating how much passion for battleships still exists. We had a thread not too along about resurrecting the Iowas from their current museum ship status. As a naval weapon system they have been off the stage for more than 70 years. It's sort of like longing for the return of the ironclad ships of the line in 1930. Maybe it's the still lingering prestige that surrounded them when they were the core of any major navy. For all the press that was written about battleships, they really saw very little ship to ship action over the entire time they were part of the world's navies. The times battleships engaged each other is even rarer. But then maybe that's what makes the battleship engagements more famous and well-known.

A battleship looks big and brutal, but in the end they were pretty much expensive showboats. They turned out to be useful for shore bombardment, but if someone purpose built a ship for that mission, they could have built a much cheaper ship. By WW2 a carrier or a squadron of destroyers was a much better bang for the buck, even if they don't look as sexy.

Yeah - I'm no Naval historian, but it doesn't take the brains of an archbishop to see how putting air power to sea changed everything.