Whats with the iowa?

Dread Knot · 07-24-14, 02:17 PM

Well, other than the obvious issues like being vulnerable salvos of cheap missiles and torpedoes there is the personnel problem. People are the most costly expense for the military, and the Navy has been on a campaign to reduce the numbers of sailors per ship. The newest surface ships call for a crew of fewer than 150, whereas in its 1992 configuration, the New Jersey required a crew of almost 2,000 sailors. Except for Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (with compliments of about 3,200) no ship in the U.S. Navy approaches that many crew. And the Nimitz is a far more versatile vessel.

More important, the shells from the battleships are unguided. Even with a talented gunner the accuracy of the ship’s main guns was only about 32 percent at nine miles against a battleship-size target, according to a Naval War College study during World War II. For ground targets that could mean shells striking hundreds of yards away from the intended point of impact.

(To be fair, during the battleships’ last hurrah in the 1980s and early 1990s, improvements to the Iowa-class guns were paired with a radar system to increase the accuracy. Noncombat tests saw hits with in 150 yards of a target at a range of about 19 miles).

In the modern era of guided weapons, the margin of error for those old 16-inchers is too high to justify the cost and the trouble of getting the battleships back to sea.

There are, of course, a host of other issues that make reactivation of the Iowas impractical—parts, training and maintenance among them. At some point even the venerable B-52 bombers will have to be retired due to the same issues.

07-24-14, 02:17 PM	#2
Dread Knot Ace of the Deep Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,288 Downloads: 85 Uploads: 0	Well, other than the obvious issues like being vulnerable salvos of cheap missiles and torpedoes there is the personnel problem. People are the most costly expense for the military, and the Navy has been on a campaign to reduce the numbers of sailors per ship. The newest surface ships call for a crew of fewer than 150, whereas in its 1992 configuration, the New Jersey required a crew of almost 2,000 sailors. Except for Nimitz-class aircraft carriers (with compliments of about 3,200) no ship in the U.S. Navy approaches that many crew. And the Nimitz is a far more versatile vessel. More important, the shells from the battleships are unguided. Even with a talented gunner the accuracy of the ship’s main guns was only about 32 percent at nine miles against a battleship-size target, according to a Naval War College study during World War II. For ground targets that could mean shells striking hundreds of yards away from the intended point of impact. (To be fair, during the battleships’ last hurrah in the 1980s and early 1990s, improvements to the Iowa-class guns were paired with a radar system to increase the accuracy. Noncombat tests saw hits with in 150 yards of a target at a range of about 19 miles). In the modern era of guided weapons, the margin of error for those old 16-inchers is too high to justify the cost and the trouble of getting the battleships back to sea. There are, of course, a host of other issues that make reactivation of the Iowas impractical—parts, training and maintenance among them. At some point even the venerable B-52 bombers will have to be retired due to the same issues.