Quote:
Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b
The last use of a US Navy Battleship was (IIRC) was the USS Missouri during the Gulf War in 1991. If we posit (as many here seem to do) that Desert Storm and Shield did occur in the T2K v2 and 2.2 timelines, the US Navy may have one or more of these vessels on active duty during the Twilight War (whether they were sunk is fodder for another post). It's what I imagine, anyway.
For that matter, do any other countries in the Twilight War have such ships (or their version thereof) in service (again, whether they got sunk or not during the War)?
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I always figured that at least one, and probably 2-3 of the
Iowa class were recommissioned during the Twilight War. The other one or two would have been kept for spare parts to keep the others running. I really don't think the tourist BBs (
North Carolina, Alabama, Massachusetts) would be considered worth the effort, except as more parts storage or training. The
Texas, certainly not! Post 1999, if these are still afloat and given power and fuel sometime, they would make great accommodation hulks for a thousand or so souls.
Ditto for the heavy cruisers of the
Des Moines class. Three were active in Vietnam,
Newport News was scrapped in 1993, but the other two were still in mothballs. I think I saw them in Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1994?
No, I don't think there were any other battleships existing in the 1990s.
{Scan of wikipedia}
Soviets: scrapped all of theirs between 1947 and 1956, it seems. They did keep 13 of the
Sverdlov-class cruisers with 6" guns through the late '80s, but all were gone by 1991 IRL. It's believed that they were kept around in the faint hope that once the American carriers and subs had been defeated, there could still be a role for an all-gun ship. Maybe if the USSR is still breathing in 1992, these would have been saved? Exception: the
Kutuzov, now a museum ship in Novorossysk. There's a candidate for a late-war revival in the Black Sea Fleet?
Germany, Japan: all their BBs were gone by 1946. About half of Italy's made it into the 1950s.
France scrapped their last two in 1966 and 1970.
The Royal Navy cut up the
Vanguard in 1960.
The Turkish
Yavuz Sultan Selim, more famous as the S
MS Goeben, made it to 1973.
Argentina, Brazil and Chile each had a very few BBs, all were gone by 1960.
Spain lost its last two in its civil war.
There are some other museum ships around, but I'd think those aren't worth the trouble, since I'd bet nearly all of them were decommissioned in the '50s, and most of them might be even older than WW2. Example: HMS
Belfast, turned into a museum in 1978.
I think that's everyone?
I love battleships, can you tell?
Allow me to quote from the novel
Ghostrider one, by Gerry Carroll (1993). "The battleships have all been mothballed again now and it doesn't seem the same anymore. When one sees a battleship steaming along, one is seeing
Navy and all that that has meant through the centuries. There is no weapon on earth that will make a little tinpot dictator sit up and take notice like a battleship slowly cruising off his coast well out of
pistola range with her guns trained on his presidential palace. It sort of gives him a little peek at his relative importance in the grand scheme of things. If that peek stops one firefight, however small, or saves one life, or ensures the fairness of one election, then the battleship has earned her keep."
Well-spoken for a brown-shoe, don't you think?