Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
The battleship group would have pretty good teeth as part of any attack on the Soviets - Iowa has 32 Tomahawks all on her own and could easily have nuclear armed versions if need be and the Tico's would help defend her and add more Tomahawks as well - and she is a lot more survivable than a carrier
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The problem is: All of the resilience of an Iowa is doing the mission no good, once the vampires from Kaliningrad have sent the Tico and all other ships in the task force to the - admittedly shallow - bottom of the Baltic Sea. Whatever the USN feared the Soviets could muster against it in a battle for the Atlantic would have been available to the Baltic Fleet as well; just more of it and in fewer time. There is no hiding and no evading radars in the Baltic, so a Soviet commander just needs to spam the task force and overwhelm the AA defense. None of the ships, except the BB, can take more than two hits to sink. Most will only take one hit and be a mission kill at least.
The Iowa then is completely unprotected against all threats an has nothing except it's armor to survive. It won't even see the torpedoes coming.
And as was pointed out: For its TLAMs to attack, an Iowa would not need to get into the Baltic Sea. You can do that from Norway and that's only because INF took out the BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile that previously sat in Germany, the UK, Netherlands and Belgium.