Battleships and missiles

[JAD1920]

Is it possible for a few Tiny Tim rockets to actually sink a battleship? The reason I ask was that I was playing battlestations and 6 missiles sank the Musashi and the description claims they were devastating weapons. I also ask the same think of the Japanese Ohka suicide rocket.

 

What about today's missiles? Can a Battleship withstand more punishment than an A. Burk class or modern cruisers/ destroyers?

[Macabe]

edit: Ya, i know. I had bad info. Don't need to dig up dead threads from over a year ago to tell me.

[tanker5795]

Does the Navy still use cruisers?

[Macabe]

Does the Navy still use cruisers?

 

Yes, i know there's 20ish guided missile cruisers in the USN although there may be more. I don't remember the class name though.

[jeanswithpockets]

 

Yes, i know there's 20ish guided missile cruisers in the USN although there may be more. I don't remember the class name though.

 

Ticonderoga-class?

[IronWolfV]

 

Yes, i know there's 20ish guided missile cruisers in the USN although there may be more. I don't remember the class name though.

 

Ticonderoga was the last Class I knew of. Still in service.

[2Floods1Ship]

Would a single missile obliterate a battleship? I doubt it, not even close really. Would an Arleigh Burke obliterate a battleship?

 

Yah, its not even a competition.

 

Current anti ship missiles fielded by the US are kinda poor in my opinion, they are slow, don't have much more explosive content then anti ship bombs used to, less in many cases. But if you can dump twenty harpoons into the skies who cares?

 

Honestly we need a new anti ship missile and the NAVY and Air Force agree, although they want a subsonic missile which is idiotic in my opinion. I think they should be shooting with a subsonic cruising profile that then dumps the cruise section, the missile then fires a rocket booster and accelerate past the speed of sound for terminal profile. Ideally the missile should have provisions for hyper sonic flight.

[Fuchsy]

A single missile from a modern ship would sink a 1940s Battleship if not obliterate a good portion of it.

Deploy the ICBM!

[enderdragon2025]

A single missile from a modern ship would sink a 1940s Battleship if not obliterate a good portion of it.

 

Mr. Macabe has a point there. Modern missles are a bit OP, and WG already said no to kamikazes/ohkas

[ryuukei8569]

Tiny tims, well, those where used as bunker busters mainly, but their warhead is only semi armor piercing, which means that they can probably go through 3 to 5 inches of armor, so they wold likely be a threat against a lightly armored target, but not a heavily armored one. However, since there doens't seem to be much data on them, I am not really sure.

 

As for the effectiveness of missiles against a world war 2 era battleship, unless the missile is nuclear tipped or really really big, no they'd be pretty worthless against a battleship. One thing worth noting about modern missiles as virtually all of them use high explosive warheads and are not intended for armor penetration, or some, have some penetration capability, but at best, even those missiles are good for penetrating maybe 3 to 5 inches of armor plate. 3 inches of armor plate is capable of stopping even 16 inch high explosive shells, and modern missiles, aside from the oversize Russian ones, usually aren't even that powerful.. Most modern ship carried torpedoes would be equally worthless as well. Modern ship mounted torpedoes don't usually carry warheads greater than a hundred pounds. An Iowa was designed to resist 700 pounds, and that torpedo protection scheme would laugh at a piddly 100 pound warhead. An arleigh burke or a ticonderoga, their only anti ship missiles would be the harpoons, and harpoons are sea skimmers that hit the target at the waterline, or close to it. Problem is, on a battleship, that is right where the belt armor is located, and a harpoon would be about as useful as a spitball against a 12 inch thick armor plate. and the torpedoes that the burkes or the ticonderogas carry are only the 12.75 inch 100 pounders. And most of their missile complement is either AA missiles, ASROC's or tomahawks, all equally worthless against a heavily armored target. Yeah they could maul the superstructure of the battleship, but that's about it. So really about the only thing that a burke, or a ticonderoga could to to a battleship is run away from it. I fact, without nuclear weapons, about the only ship that could reliably kill a battleship these days is a modern submarine with their much heavier torpedoes. even modern carriers don't carry heavy armor piercing weapons for their aircraft anymore. and before anyone asks, no shaped charge warheads on the missiles wouldn't be very useful either, Shaped charges can be stopped using spaced armor, which a ship as large as a battleship could easily carry.

 

Really the only thing that truly put the battleship down for good was nuclear weapons, which no amount of armor could stop, but more importantly nuclear weapons eclipsed both the battleship, and the aircraft carrier as a nations primary strategic deterrence. Nuclear weapons is one of the reasons why a big naval war hasn't occurred since world war 2, because such a large conflict would likely lead to nuclear war. But this has also led to the situation where not even top naval experts are sure as to what a modern naval war would look like anymore, hence no one is really sure what would truly work or not, and its why the battleship hasn't reappeared, because no one wants to invest in the concept again unless they are sure it would work. So really modern navies are in the position where they don't know what will work best and what wont. Admirals and General's also have a tenancy to fight the last war, and since the last big naval war was world war 2, its easy to see the precarious situation that modern navies are in right now.

[Guest]

A single missile from a modern ship would sink a 1940s Battleship if not obliterate a good portion of it.

 

Indeed, it definitely would cause quite the damage, especially if it was built to destroy and pen armour. 

Does the Navy still use cruisers?

 

Yes. 

[AtomicRocketCruiser]

To mission-kill a battleship, I think, is doable. Directors, radars, communications, etc are all very vulnerable. Sinking one would be more difficult. 

 

In truth we have no real examples of interaction between battleship armor and missile warheads, so any conclusions proclaimed in this thread are mere conjecture. 

 

The reason why the fleets of the world are not stocking up on battleship-killing weapons is because there are no battleships to be killed, not because it is difficult or impossible. 

 

The corollary to why there are no longer any battleships, or armored ships in general, is simple. Armor can no longer protect the primary combat systems of modern warships. You cannot place the massive phased-array radars of an Aegis-equipped vessel behind armor, nor its fire control radars or EWAR emitters. See the WW2 example of USS South Dakota at 2nd Guadalcanal- the ship was rendered deaf, blind and dumb by cruiser gunfire to the superstructure that knocked out radar and directors- shells that would normally have no chance of penetrating the armor made the mighty warship entirely combat ineffective. 

 

Additionally, armor is an extremely binary defensive technology. It is either adequate or inadequate, and if you don't bring enough to the party you might as well not have brought any. Modern warships spend the tonnage that they might have otherwise used on armor of dubious effectiveness on enhancing active defensive systems like CIWS, defensive missiles and electronic warfare, which can easily be upgraded to meet new threats. Armor layouts were historically rapidly overmatched, with new battleships enjoying only a few years at the top of the food chain before their armor layouts became increasingly useless deadweight.

[Fog_Battleship_Nelson]

 

Yes, i know there's 20ish guided missile cruisers in the USN although there may be more. I don't remember the class name though.

 

22 ticonderoga class cruisers currently

[JAD1920]

Even a few battleships survived nuclear testing. I understand that a BB can be combat ineffective after a few missile hits. It seems that the only battleship killers are their own guns and torpedoes.

[AtomicRocketCruiser]

Even a few battleships survived nuclear testing. I understand that a BB can be combat ineffective after a few missile hits. It seems that the only battleship killers are their own guns and torpedoes.

 

They survived, yes, but they would have been radioactive tombs for their crews. Dosimeters placed deep within the hull of Nevada registered lethal doses of radiation during Able shot, and Baker rendered the ships too radioactive to be safely re-spotted for the planned Charlie shot. Arkansas and Nagato were both sunk by Baker. 

[KiloWhiskey]

 

They survived, yes, but they would have been radioactive tombs for their crews. Dosimeters placed deep within the hull of Nevada registered lethal doses of radiation during Able shot, and Baker rendered the ships too radioactive to be safely re-spotted for the planned Charlie shot. Arkansas and Nagato were both sunk by Baker. 

 

Atomic the Navy found running the fire suppression systems before the detonation took care of most of the radioactivity problems. The combination of running water and salt helped alot.

[KiloWhiskey]

 

 

Additionally, armor is an extremely binary defensive technology. It is either adequate or inadequate, and if you don't bring enough to the party you might as well not have brought any. Modern warships spend the tonnage that they might have otherwise used on armor of dubious effectiveness on enhancing active defensive systems like CIWS, defensive missiles and electronic warfare, which can easily be upgraded to meet new threats. Armor layouts were historically rapidly overmatched, with new battleships enjoying only a few years at the top of the food chain before their armor layouts became increasingly useless deadweight.

Eh mission kill is probably almost as hard as sink, degrade is easy(er) After all if you don't kill the guns, command or the propulsion it can still fight, just not as well, but better than any other ship after a comparable attack, since a BBs primary means of fighting is not completely reliant on sensors not derived from the MK1 eyeball and a pen and paper.

 

Atomic, it's not so much the armor became ineffective but that the pace of development was extraordinarily high. We haven't seen anything like it since, it was a multi polar world and highly unstable.

 

In many ways we still use principles and equipment that are refinements from the 1940 there have been very few breakthroughs with the ease of application and ability to change things so dramatically as there was in the late 19th and early 20th century.

 

Even computers and atomics have not had the level fundamental changes that were present between the US Civil War and World War 1. The difference between Harvey's armor and Krupp is much bigger (and quantifiable) then multiple generations of computer chips. You can get by on a 486 and dial up today when it was obsolete 20 years ago (Sometimes even with just a pen and a map) better than not having the latest armor even though you know the armor going to be obsolete in 10 years.

 

Also keep in mind that at the time when this race stated you still had people who had captained wooden sailing vessels and saw nothing wrong with "short" lifespans. People who had seen the biggest improvement in ship longevity was coppering bottoms. The turnover rate of ships wasn't anything new. What was new was the "staggering" expenses involved in the ships.

[AtomicRocketCruiser]

 

Atomic the Navy found running the fire suppression systems before the detonation took care of most of the radioactivity problems. The combination of running water and salt helped alot.

 

Running fire suppression can help wash off radioactive fallout, which the underwater Baker Shot produced a lot of. However the Able test was an airburst, which produced a lot of energetic gamma radiation but little fallout, and water is a poor shield against gamma radiation (Water requires 7.2 inches of thickness to halve radiation strength, compare to 1" for steel or .4" for lead). Goats penned on the deck of the Nevada died 2 days after the test and goats penned within the turrets died in 4. However in both cases crew would have been immediately mission incapable due to radiation sickness (nausea, weakness, etc).

 

The deck of the ship received 10,000 rems of initial radiation (LD/50 is a mere 400-450 rems). Personnel in the "shadow" of the belt armor may have been able to avoid a lethal dosage, but because the Able shot was an airburst the radiation came from above, and even engine room personnel at the lowest levels would have received a lethal dosage. 

 

An effective fallout shelter requires a minimum of 10 "halving thicknesses" of material, and even on a battleship there are precious few places in the shadow of that much metal, especially from above. 

 

 

Eh mission kill is probably almost as hard as sink, degrade is easy(er) After all if you don't kill the guns, command or the propulsion it can still fight, just not as well, but better than any other ship after a comparable attack, since a BBs primary means of fighting is not completely reliant on sensors not derived from the MK1 eyeball and a pen and paper.

 

The captain of South Dakota certainly considered his ship to be mission ineffective. Could he have fought, if he had to? Probably, yes, at a vastly decreased range and accuracy that would have put his ship in mortal danger.

 

The point is that if the fight is happening across hundreds of kilometers of ocean retaining the capability to engage a surface target within the ~13km horizon range of your turret rangefinders is not very useful. Adequate at Jutland or Tsushima, perhaps, but questionable in WW2 and laughable today. Modern warships live and die by their electronic systems, which are exceptionally hard to armor meaningfully. 

 

 

[KiloWhiskey]

 

Running fire suppression can help wash off radioactive fallout, which the underwater Baker Shot produced a lot of. However the Able test was an airburst, which produced a lot of energetic gamma radiation but little fallout, and water is a poor shield against gamma radiation (Water requires 7.2 inches of thickness to halve radiation strength, compare to 1" for steel or .4" for lead). Goats penned on the deck of the Nevada died 2 days after the test and goats penned within the turrets died in 4. However in both cases crew would have been immediately mission incapable due to radiation sickness (nausea, weakness, etc).

 

The deck of the ship received 10,000 rems of initial radiation (LD/50 is a mere 400-450 rems). Personnel in the "shadow" of the belt armor may have been able to avoid a lethal dosage, but because the Able shot was an airburst the radiation came from above, and even engine room personnel at the lowest levels would have received a lethal dosage. 

 

An effective fallout shelter requires a minimum of 10 "halving thicknesses" of material, and even on a battleship there are precious few places in the shadow of that much metal, especially from above. 

 

 

The captain of South Dakota certainly considered his ship to be mission ineffective. Could he have fought, if he had to? Probably, yes, at a vastly decreased range and accuracy that would have put his ship in mortal danger.

 

The point is that if the fight is happening across hundreds of kilometers of ocean retaining the capability to engage a surface target within the ~13km horizon range of your turret rangefinders is not very useful. Adequate at Jutland or Tsushima, perhaps, but questionable in WW2 and laughable today. Modern warships live and die by their electronic systems, which are exceptionally hard to armor meaningfully. 

 

 

 

Functionally if you're getting nuked you're dealing with fallout as the major threat since your En is looking to get a kill on you. A miss might kill you slowly but you have a chance compared to any other ship not to mention there are some simple steps to take that heighten your chances of survival. Additionally Gama unless its a "small" bomb is less of a threat then the physical effects.

 

By and large if you're dealing with WMDs, things just got really scary and you don't have good odds of survival no matter what.

 

The thought of getting shot at didn't bother me as much as the possibility of getting gassed, if you do the numbers remediation is a joke against a gas attack. That and I really hate blood agents they are just fundamentally not fair, you can do everything right but the damn gas will eat through your filter and the way it kills you is just nasty.

 

And remember Atomic, missiles can only shoot once before they are RTB for a good long time. Longer than it takes to fix superficial damage on a BB, and yes fixing receivers is superficial. Not to mention data feeds from anything overhead will increase your LOS be it by MK1 Eyeball or from radar/lidar.

[AtomicRocketCruiser]

And remember Atomic, missiles can only shoot once before they are RTB for a good long time. Longer than it takes to fix superficial damage on a BB, and yes fixing receivers is superficial. Not to mention data feeds from anything overhead will increase your LOS be it by MK1 Eyeball or from radar/lidar.

 

Once times however many VLS cells or launch tubes there are on a ship. You know I disagree with you about missile effectiveness, no need to go over it again. 

 

By the way, I found an interesting modern warhead design called BROACH- its designed for popping bunkers but I think it would be effective against armored warships, if any were around. Its a dual stage warhead, the first stage is a shaped charge that burns a hole through soil, concrete and armor, allowing the second stage conventional HE to pass into the bunker and detonate. According to Raytheon a 450kg BROACH warhead has similar penetration capabilities to the GBU-28, which is over 20 feet of concrete! Its giving cruise missiles penetration capabilities that were previously only seen by heavy kinetic penetrators. 

[KiloWhiskey]

 

Once times however many VLS cells or launch tubes there are on a ship. You know I disagree with you about missile effectiveness, no need to go over it again. 

 

By the way, I found an interesting modern warhead design called BROACH- its designed for popping bunkers but I think it would be effective against armored warships, if any were around. Its a dual stage warhead, the first stage is a shaped charge that burns a hole through soil, concrete and armor, allowing the second stage conventional HE to pass into the bunker and detonate. According to Raytheon a 450kg BROACH warhead has similar penetration capabilities to the GBU-28, which is over 20 feet of concrete! Its giving cruise missiles penetration capabilities that were previously only seen by heavy kinetic penetrators. 

120 max which have to be spread across all missiles carried so you have possibly 45 offensive missiles at most and the rest are defensive.

 

I know you don't want to go over it again but lets try and keep it realistic 120 shots in one ship...and then that ship has nothing to defend itself with or the more common load of 30 to 45 offensive missiles. Every other ship carries 20 to 25 offensive missiles with their much smaller VLS. Time Space points out guns are vastly logistically superior even with 120 offensive missles.

 

Also BROACH after after over 20 years of development it has yet to be added to any missile or pass testing to the point the military, any military is interested. I'm getting the feeling that the warhead that can penetrate the concrete is too small to be worthwhile since it has to pass through the small hole the shaped charge made as well as the trade offs necessary to carry two warheads in one missile.

[Sukebe_von_Ecchi]

Don't forget that two hits from a Fritz X TV-guided glide bomb sank the Roma. And that was in 1943.

 

The thing is guided munitions have become deadlier and its warheads smaller through the ages. A flight of 10-12 Tu-22M Bombers carrying anti-ship missiles could potentially overwhelm AA defenses of ships, perhaps even battleships. There are way too many variables such as combat loadout, countermeasures, anti-missile defenses, etc.

 

But the large size of the battleship is not going to do it any favors against accurate munitions, that much is certain.

[KiloWhiskey]

 

 

The thing is guided munitions have become deadlier and its warheads smaller through the ages. A flight of 10-12 Tu-22M Bombers carrying anti-ship missiles could potentially overwhelm AA defenses of ships, perhaps even battleships. There are way too many variables such as combat loadout, countermeasures, anti-missile defenses, etc.

 

But the large size of the battleship is not going to do it any favors against accurate munitions, that much is certain.

Not really VLS is a great way to get a lot of munitions into the air quickly a flight of bombers will not overwhelm a Group's defenses. what was required was several attacks to remove the VLSes ability to salvo since even in the 80s reloading missiles at sea was slow and hard to do, and is not something that can be done today since we have retired the ships that were capable of supporting the operation and VLS is harder to load then the old swing arms.

 

And the ability to carry both armor as well as more defensive measures more than offsets the targetablity of a BB compared to a smaller ship, look up the sinking of the America sometime then compare that to a smaller target ship.

[AtomicRocketCruiser]

 

Also BROACH after after over 20 years of development it has yet to be added to any missile or pass testing to the point the military, any military is interested. I'm getting the feeling that the warhead that can penetrate the concrete is too small to be worthwhile since it has to pass through the small hole the shaped charge made as well as the trade offs necessary to carry two warheads in one missile.

 

You're 100% wrong here, BROACH type warheads are used on the British/French/Italian Storm Shadow cruise missile and the AGM-154C JSOW. I believe at least some of the 400+ JSOWs that have been expended in combat to date are the BROACH carrying C variant. 

 

  The AGM-154C variant incorporates a 500-pound blast/fragmentation/penetrator warhead effective against fixed-point targets such as industrial facilities, logistical systems and hardened tactical targets. The AGM-154C incorporates an uncooled, long-wave imaging infrared seeker with autonomous target acquisition algorithms for precise targeting. The AGM-154C was approved for full-rate production in December 2004. Initial operational capability was achieved in February 2005. Integration of a weapon data link and updated seeker software algorithms (termed AGM-154C-1 variant) began in fiscal year 2006 to provide a capability against at-sea moving/relocateable targets in fiscal 2010.

 

Most diagrams I've seen show that the shaped charge is noticeable smaller in volume than the blast/frag penetrator, but I'll assume a safe 50/50 split- which means BROACH is dropping a 250lb blast-fragmentation warhead inside the bunker. Apparently the upgraded C variant has a naval attack capability, which is very interesting. 

 

 

 

I know you don't want to go over it again but lets try and keep it realistic 120 shots in one ship...and then that ship has nothing to defend itself with or the more common load of 30 to 45 offensive missiles. Every other ship carries 20 to 25 offensive missiles with their much smaller VLS. Time Space points out guns are vastly logistically superior even with 120 offensive missles.

 

Guns didn't fall to secondary weapons status because they were logistically inferior to the missile, they fell out of favor because the missile is vastly more capable of inflicting damage upon the enemy at far greater ranges. Each of those 120 shots represents a potentially destroyed or crippled hostile ship. 

 

[KiloWhiskey]

 

You're 100% wrong here, BROACH type warheads are used on the British/French/Italian Storm Shadow cruise missile and the AGM-154C JSOW. I believe at least some of the 400+ JSOWs that have been expended in combat to date are the BROACH carrying C variant. 

 

 

Most diagrams I've seen show that the shaped charge is noticeable smaller in volume than the blast/frag penetrator, but I'll assume a safe 50/50 split- which means BROACH is dropping a 250lb blast-fragmentation warhead inside the bunker. Apparently the upgraded C variant has a naval attack capability, which is very interesting. 

 

 

 

Guns didn't fall to secondary weapons status because they were logistically inferior to the missile, they fell out of favor because the missile is vastly more capable of inflicting damage upon the enemy at far greater ranges. Each of those 120 shots represents a potentially destroyed or crippled hostile ship. 

 

 

I stand corrected on the warhead, I wonder however if it suffers from the same problems all shaped charges suffer from. IE will it do nothing more then explode outside the armored belt in the crew spaces. If it hits a turret it could do a number on that.

 

And we have gone over that missiles are great against soft targets but by and large lousy against armored targets, like a BB or targets where you need to keep firing. and each shot represents a possible damaged ship...after it passes multiple belts of defenses and in the BBs case armor. Basicly you need a little less than one offensive missile per defensive missile so if you're carrying 120 offensive missiles and your En has 150ish defensive missiles you're SOL but no shell bigger than 81MM has been intercepted yet so soon as even a piddling 5inch gun gets in range your getting shot up...relatively ineffectively but since your missiles did nothing....