Saturday, November 22, 2008

Forum :: Equipment :: Recommissioning U.S. Battleships.

Page 2 of 3 Recommissioning U.S. Battleships.
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Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 21 August 2005 2:55 AM (Dammit! I want an EDIT function) The Tirpitz is actually an example of why super heavy armour is not the best way to stay alive. The first Tallboy that hit her did so much damage that even though the hull was still afloat, she wasn't seaworthy. The first shot killed the ship, and the follow up bombs just put her on the sea bottom. Also, I still think it is not correct that antiship missiles could not penetrate the armour. A 500 KG warhead traveling at 1400 M/S (yes thats fast, but most antiship missiles are easily supersonic these days) has the same KE as a point blank shot from a 16 inch gun. It is very true that most missiles are not set up to do so, because no ship carries such armour, but I bet that it is easier to design a penetrating warhead than it is to redisign a battleship. The things that keep a ship afloat are bulkheads and damage control. USS liberty had no armour, and stayed afloat under air attack, because it had clearly been well designed and had a good crew. I just feel that the best way to keep your ship active and fighting is not to be hit to start with. Post Reply
Nimrod1001 Joined: 04 February 2005 Posts in this thread: 6	Posted on 21 August 2005 2:59 AM Yes aquarius, I get you about the weight saving of modern tubine systems. I know how much a modern powerplant and propulsion weighs (Aproximately) and I can double that weight to get what you would install in your Super Iowa. But I don't know how much the old one weighs, so I can't work out how much weight we have to play with for the extra armour, and especially for the AEGIS system, which isn't light and adds topweight. This is important, because to some extent the machinery acts as balast. Post Reply
Aquarius1001 Joined: 21 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 7	Posted on 21 August 2005 2:42 PM the iowa class battleship's armor is a inclined i think 40 degrees so the explosive would not hit the side of the armor dirrectly vastly reduceing the effect's of the blast. And the iowa's are heavily compartmetalized. and the iowa's armor is higher quality than tirpitz. and you can't forget that the tirpitz was bombed several times before they dropped the 12,000 pound bomb's on her. and the damage form the bomb's be for the 12,000 pounder's was not repaired. yes it is possiable to penetrated a battleship's aromor but it take's a lot of explosive's to do so. during the bikini atoll atomic bomb test's the old japanese battleship kongo. survied the first bomb. and then they used a second bomb on the test fleet. and the kongo was still afloat after the second bomb. but sank several hour's after the blast. im not sure how close to the blast she was but i do know that she was pretty close to the blast. so know cruise missle exept maybe a nuclear tiped one will sink an iowa. Post Reply

Aquarius1001 Joined: 21 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 7	Posted on 21 August 2005 2:48 PM For Nimrod im not worried about the weight of the engines being lighter the could weigh the same as the old one's they just need to put out more horse power say from 275,000 to 312,000 horse power to keep them at the 33 to 35 knot speed. and i will look up the weight of the engines and post what i find. Post Reply
Aquarius1001 Joined: 21 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 7	Posted on 21 August 2005 5:07 PM oop's some corrections the iowa's armor is inclined 19 degree's and it was the japanese battleship nagato not the kongo. Post Reply
Foxtrot1003 Joined: 30 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 2	Posted on 30 August 2005 2:16 PM There is no way the Iowa's will be modernized to the point you all are speculating. The fact is to modernize them to todays standards would cost considerably more then even a brand new Nimitz class carrier. Even now carriers are being down-sized in favour of more small cruiser and destroyer sized ships with nearly as much firepower as a carrier Post Reply
Aquarius1001 Joined: 21 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 7	Posted on 31 August 2005 10:53 AM If the navy want's a fire support ship that can work close to the shore without fear of artilery or missle damage they will need the iowas. if they try that weak DDX there will be a lot of letter's home starting like. we are sorry to inform you. or something simular you get the point!!! NO MODERN WARSHIP CAN SURVIVE AND TAKE AS MUCH DAMAGE AS AN IOWAS CLASS BATTLESHIP. And NONE can provide as much FIREPOWER. It is pointless to even try to have smaller ships provide fire support they just don't got what it takes to get the job done. And the DDX is a joke!!! the only way the navy can provide the fire support needed is to recommision the iowas. it is sad that the navy can't even build a ship that has the qualities of a 60+ year old battleship!!! Post Reply
Foxtrot1003 Joined: 30 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 2	Posted on 31 August 2005 11:42 AM No ship not even Iowa can survive more than two or three hits from modern HARPOON, Peguin, or silk worm missles. the Iowa's were decently armoured except from just forward of turret "1" and just aft of turret "3", where she was only protected against 8-10in. shells. this leaves the better part of 270ft. relatively unprotected, especially from modern ASM's. Post Reply
Aquarius1001 Joined: 21 August 2005 Posts in this thread: 7	Posted on 31 August 2005 2:16 PM the iowas can survive modern anti ship missles it's not just the armor its is the fact that they are hevily compartmentalized and have void space's in the ship to protect damage from the shells and the missles as it were. and it would take about 15 to 20 anti ship missles to damage an iowas enought to matter any, any thing less would be minor damage. Post Reply
Dart1002 Joined: 19 November 2005 Posts in this thread: 1	Posted on 19 November 2005 3:56 AM First off, Foxtrot, it would not be abhorrently expensive to modernize the Iowa-class. In all honosty I get rather bored at work and spend my time reading the various articles and what not circulating the US Navy concerning recalling and refitting the Iowa's. But for my first point, the cost: The current cost to fully modernize a BB61 class vessel is roughly 1.5 Billion dollars as stated by several research papers into the matter on file with JANE'S. The unit cost for the new DDX the current US Navy leadership wishes to buy instead is 4 Billion dollars. And they don't want just 2 of these, they want dozens. Now for the cost efficiency. The new DDX design, with its single long range 5" gun is the current projected Naval Fire Support platform. I find this rather amusing because the long range 5" shells which are still under developement only put about 65lbs of explosive on target, out to about 75NM. While the Iowa-class with the -already developed- 512lb long range sabot shells can put 9 of these shells on target in excess of 110NM at the same time. When you crunch all the numbers (I'm drawing these from the papers I've been reading on it) a single modernized Iowa-class can put the same ammount of ordance on targets further away, than -NINETEEN- (19!) DDX's. Lets do the math here: 1 BB61 x $1.5B = $1.5B 19 DDX x $4B = $76B Thats the same ammount of firepower, only for 74.5 Billion dollars less. So are they really too expensive to modernize? Survivability: No missile short of a nuclear tipped one will be able to sink, or even cripple or even severely damage an Iowa with a single hit. I've looked at plunging missiles, cruise missiles (amazingly easy to be shot down due to their sub-sonic flight) and all other sorts. If an Exocet missile can't sink a 4000 ton Perry-class Frigate, what really makes anyone think it will be effective against a 56,000 ton Battleship? Now for diving missiles, most likely the more dangerous missile against an Iowa...until you consider how the deck armor was constructed on those ships. The Iowa-class incorporate 3 layers of deck armoring. You have from top to bottom the Splinter Deck, the Bomb Deck, and the Main Armor Deck. The bomb deck is 1.5 inches STS plate, the main armor deck is 4.75 inches Class B armor laid on 1.25 inches STS plate and the splinter deck is 0.625 inches STS plate. The bomb deck is designed to detonate general purpose bombs on contact and arm armor piercing bombs so they will explode between the bomb deck and the main armor deck. Within the immune zone, the main armor deck is designed to defeat plunging shells which may penetrate the bomb deck. The splinter deck is designed to contain any fragments and pieces of armor which might be broken off from the main armor deck. Can anyone tell me of any missile designed to defeat this arrangement, let alone actually capable of it? As for torpedos the Iowa-class were well designed in that respect, although many claim with the new Hull Buster torpedos, which no longer work on the basis of contact explosion on the hull, the Iowa is very vulnerable. I scoff at this for a very simple reason.. The Hull Buster torpedo was designed to actually go /under/ a ship and then detonate, blowing all the water away from under the ship and using the ships own weight to crack its keel and sink her. This wouldn't work against an Iowa for the very simple reason that the ship was built so strong that you could stand it up on two pedastals, one under the bow, and one under the stern, and the ship will stand up there on its own with no support without buckling. Finally, one of you brought up the Bikini Atoll nuclear tests. The Japanese battleship wasn't the only one used there, an older design of US battleship was also used there. The USS Pennsylvania (BB-38) if I recall correctly, which was present at Pearl Harbor, took 2 nuclear strikes, one above surface and the other below surface and escaped the incident with only minor fire damage and was only later scuttled because of the extensive radiation contamination. A standing testiment to the durability and survivability of these great ships. Post Reply
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