US Battleships in T2K

[HorseSoldier]

Going by the v1.0 timeline, even if the first war against Iraq didn't happen, the Iowas might still have been around by the time the Twilight War began in '96. Since in the v1.0 timeline, the Cold War never ended, the USN had reason to keep the Iowas around.

+1. The BBs got recommissioned as part of the Reagan-era build up, so even without the '91 Gulf War they'd have been on the books and in the ver 1.0 alternate history the unrest in the Middle East before the Sino-Soviet war kicked off would have provided ample employment opportunities for them.

I can see an Iowa class supporting amphibious/ground operations in Scandinavia. I can also see it getting caught up in one or two of the fleet battles in the Norwegian/North Sea.

The Norwegian front is probably the best venue in the European theater for a battleship to make a contribution as a fire support asset, at least until the fighting moves into Finland. Given the road network in Norway any Soviet attempt to move south would provide lots of serious targets for 16" naval gunfire as long as the NATO side of the naval fight could maintain enough superiority to keep ships in close to the land front.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

The Norwegian front is probably the best venue in the European theater for a battleship to make a contribution as a fire support asset, at least until the fighting moves into Finland. Given the road network in Norway any Soviet attempt to move south would provide lots of serious targets for 16" naval gunfire as long as the NATO side of the naval fight could maintain enough superiority to keep ships in close to the land front.

I can conceive of a naval engagement brought about by the success of an Iowa's 16"ers against Soviet ground columns in Norway- it's such a hinderence to the road-bound Red Army that the Soviet navy is called on to sally forth in an attempt to eliminate or drive off the battleship task force, leading to a major surface action. I'd love to wargame some naval battles in the Norwegian/North Sea. I almost got the latest iteration of the venerable Harpoon series for my PC but I just don't have the time to play with it- and if I create the scenario, playing it out wouldn't be as satisfying.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by Raellus

I can conceive of a naval engagement brought about by the success of an Iowa's 16"ers against Soviet ground columns in Norway-

That reminds me of something I read in one of the Horatio Hornblower novels. He was commanding (IIRC) a 74-gun ship of the line off the Spanish coast when they spotted a French cavalry brigade moving along a coastal road, with bluffs behind them that prevented their escape. It was target practice, essentially.

USS New Jersey in the Norwegian Sea might play hide & seek among the fjords, like the Germans did with Tirpitz in WW2. Sure, a big missile could sink her, but it would be a bear to get a clear line of attack to her. If she survived to 1998, she'd be pretty dominant until she ran out of fuel.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

The Norwegian front is probably the best venue in the European theater for a battleship to make a contribution as a fire support asset, at least until the fighting moves into Finland.

In my mind it's the only place they could have been used to any real effect. The supporting ships were basically all gone by June 1997 so it would be suicide for them (if any survived that long) to sortie into the Baltic, or even just cruise around in the North Sea within useful bombardment range of the coastline. Given the likely heavy use of sea mines by the Pact, going into the shallows without minesweepers, etc would be pure idiocy!

In my mind, if any survived beyond June 97, they'd have quickly been reassigned to the other "secondary" fronts where the threat to them would have been greatly diminished. From memory, we can find one in the Gulf as per the RDF book?

[Targan]

I've held off from commenting on this discussion but I feel compelled to point out, they use sooooo much fuel. Even if a couple of the Iowa class survived, that's a massive commitment of scarce, oh-so-precious diesel. I know it's tempting and attractive to have these gods of war still roaming the high seas at MilGov's behest late in the Twilight War but the logical part of my brain suggests to me that their fuel requirements would render the Iowa class battleships all but unusuable in a mobile role from '98 onwards.

[Legbreaker]

Very good point that. Between fuel requirements, 1,800 crew, limited ammo (how many 16 inch shells are going to be available after 97 anyway compared to smaller guns), and battle damage/wear and tear, any hulls still floating aren't going to be of much use.

Just the crew alone could be better used to (for example) create two new infantry battalions, or the supporting elements of an entire pre-war brigade, perhaps even division. And what about food? Men on the ground can grow their own given time and a suitable patch of dirt - it's a bit hard for ship borne crew to do that...

However, in late 1996, early 1997, provided the manpower can be found, it's my opinion all four battleships might see at least limited action somewhere. As the war drags on, it's likely they will be stripped of crew and equipment rather than be repaired, with those resources sent to smaller ships, the marines, or even logistical units behind the lines.

[Panther Al]

Very good points on Manpower and Fuel issues, but there is a couple of countervailing points:

The steam plants in those ships used bunker oil - not diesel. Bunker oil is also considered garbage production in modern refining compared to the higher grade fuels: in essence, its the leftovers after making good fuel as far as I can tell by reading up on it. So fuel will be scarce yes, but it won't be anywhere near as bad to source it as it would be the high test. Even better; the engines that burn it - particularly the ones built in the first half of the 20th Century, such as those in the Iowa's, are sufficiently crude that in a pinch it could use the raw stuff at the cost of decreased efficiencies, more maintenance, and much more pollution (IE: Very a dark exhaust plume).

As far as maintenance on the plants go, as long as they can get raw materials, a majority of its power plant (That is, the small(er) parts that typically break now and then) can be supported by the on board machine shops.

Compared to the other ships in the Navy, the Iowa's was maintenance nightmares yes: but thats because of old simpler equipment. Once the nukes fly however, the high tech supply line that the newer ships require more than air will dry up - but the simpler, older equipment (less the upgraded electronics such as the radars and such) on the Iowa's can still be made with relative ease in small to medium sized machine shops either afloat in depot ships or the smaller ports that didn't get nuked.

And while yes, that manpower can be used elsewhere, but will it be worth it?

In 2000, in a perverse way, the Iowa's might become the most seaworthy and available ships in the fleet because of its maintenance intensive but simple nature.

Of course, that leaves ammo.

This is actually the larger problem, but not for the reasons you think.

Producing the shells is easy: all you need is a casting shop, of which there is thousands in the US, to cast the shells. It's the boomenstuff that is the problem. But not as large or insurmountable as it sounds. If the US industry can supply small arms with the newer fancier powders for rifles and machine guns, as well as the courser stuff for mortars and tube arty, then they can easily provide the propellent (a even larger and simpler powder to manufacture - again due to the age of the basic design of the gun) for the 5" and 16" guns. Explosive filling is the handicap though. Good news though can be found here: The stuff used in Mortars could be used in the 16" shells as it is sturdy enough to handle the (relatively) lighter impulse of the propellant as it launches the rounds out the tube - and the 5" shells can use the same stuff they are filling howitzer rounds with.


And yes, the actual impulse delivered to the shell of a 16" gun is actually lighter than that of a 5" or 155mm shell. Larger amount of powder yes, bigger boom, oh hell yeah... but the scale of it actually works for us for the same reason Dr. Bull twigged on to the idea that the Superguns he made could actually loft fragile satellites with a powder load that can only be described as massive. Thats the reason he made them for Iraq: the money he was to be paid for them he was already planning spending on building a 60" Supergun to loft communication and other sats into orbit with. An lifelong desire he picked up when he worked on the HARP project, which was *almost* able to put a round into orbit. The gun? A 16" gun that was in stocks as a replacement for wrecked guns from battle damage on the Iowa's and was declared surplus at the end of the war.

In short:

Are the Iowa's the end all be all?

No.

Are they a massive drain on resources, both pre TDM and post?

Oh hell yes.

But can they be supported after the TDM when the supply of high tech parts and high end fuels are scarce at best and non-existant at worst?

Yep. The only ships in the fleet save perhaps, the old Knox Class Figs.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

Very good points on Manpower and Fuel issues, but there is a couple of countervailing points:

The steam plants in those ships used bunker oil - not diesel. Bunker oil is also considered garbage production in modern refining compared to the higher grade fuels: in essence, its the leftovers after making good fuel as far as I can tell by reading up on it. So fuel will be scarce yes, but it won't be anywhere near as bad to source it as it would be the high test. Even better; the engines that burn it - particularly the ones built in the first half of the 20th Century, such as those in the Iowa's, are sufficiently crude that in a pinch it could use the raw stuff at the cost of decreased efficiencies, more maintenance, and much more pollution (IE: Very a dark exhaust plume).

As I said in my previous post, I had held off on making a post in this thread. I've learned the hard way that 9 times out of 10, the knowledgeable people here will find some gaping flaw in whatever I post. However, in this case I had looked around on the interwebs shortly after this thread started, and found in the Wikipedia article on the Iowa class, this:

Iowa class battleship (From the section "1980s refit") Plans for these conversions were dropped in 1984, but each battleship was overhauled to burn navy distillate fuel and modernized to carry electronic warfare suites, close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for self-defense, and missiles.

It's common knowledge that most diesel engines will burn lower grade fuels, at least for a while. I haven't searched exhaustively enough to be sure but I would assume that even after the conversions, the Iowa-class battleships were still running steam turbines and it was just the boilers that were converted (I'm happy to be corrected on this) so converting them back to burning lower grade fuels probably wouldn't be a huge deal. Still, I can't help but wonder why any conversion was necessary at all, for boilers to burn diesel instead of bunker oil. So maybe they really did swap the boilers and steam turbines for gigantic marine diesel engines?

In any case I just wanted to show that I'd put some thought into my comments before I made them

[dragoon500ly]

The engines on the Iowa class are the same geared turbines that they were built with back in the 1940s. The boilers were modified to burn NDF.

The major part of the rebuild was to modified their armament, electronics, air conditioning plants as well as to install some automated systems in an effort to reduce their crew requirements.