US Battleships in T2K

[Olefin]

We know that at least one battleship was in the Twilight War as its in the Gateway to the Spanish Main

Page 18

The war did have some effects on Grenada. The tourists have
stopped coming, the freighters have stopped coming, and the
tankers have stopped coming. There was a brief flurry of military
activity early in the war as U.S. military aircraft bound for the
fighting in Africa and the Mideast made stopovers en route, and
a U.S. Navy battle group built around the USS New Jersey met
and sent to the bottom a Soviet battle cruiser that had been rampaging
in the South Atlantic sea lanes. The citizens of St.
George's had a front row seat to one of the last gun duels between
rival warships in the 20th century


Thus we know by canon that that the USS New Jersey was in the war for sure - and if New Jersey was in the war, then Missouri and Wisconsin were in for sure and most likely Iowa as well

As for shells - there was a lot of 16 gun ammo still available for the battleships as well as 5 inch for their secondary guns - so ammo isnt a problem

The real thing to look at would be barrel life - you can only shoot so many shells thru the gun barrels before they need to be replaced - and even if there are replacements available (there were as far as I know but not sure where they were) you need an active Navy Yard that can take battlehships to do the replacement

And they would have been of huge use - in fact you can tell they must have been used elsewhere because they arent in Iran - i.e. Korea, Europe, etc.. took first priority so Iran only got the Des Moines class instead of a battleship

As for where - Scandanavia of course, off of Italy, possibly in the Aegean against the Greeks, the Baltic and Korea of course

and their engines can burn bunker oil - you dont need refined products for their engines - you could take it straight out of a oil well and a BB would run on it

as for other gun ships - possibly Massachusetts and Arkansas - they used parts from them for the Iowas so they might have been able to get one of them going as well -

as for other battleships - how about Japan? Mikasa was preserved in working condition including her engines and guns - all she needs is ammo - and her hull is in good order as well

there are other WWII gun ships left as museums as well

HMAS Belfast was in the UK in London - possibly the Brits may have moved her to Portsmouth

USS Little Rock is in Buffalo along with USS The Sullivans (DD)

Several WWII era DD's are still active in that time period, mostly with Latin American navies (Mexico has at least one Gearing DD still in commission today)

[Olefin]

As for manpower - with many more modern ships either sunk or looking at maintenance issues from their high tech gear breaking down the USN may have more than enough manpower to keep at least one BB fully manned even as late as 2000

they have the manpower for the Des Moines class off Iran - and she is not exactly a low manpower ship either

especially as the manpower assigned to one Nimitz class carrier could man Iowa or Missouri several times over

[Legbreaker]

When a ship goes down, so does a lot of it's crew, far more are lost than say if an infantry brigade is destroyed - it's very hard to drown on dry land.

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by Olefin

As for manpower - with many more modern ships either sunk or looking at maintenance issues from their high tech gear breaking down the USN may have more than enough manpower to keep at least one BB fully manned even as late as 2000

Once we're talking the 2000 time frame, though, the collapse of good lines of communication and just plain spotty communications themselves are going to come into play. MilGov and CivGov's biggest problems don't involve a lack of resources in an absolute sense, they involve a lack of an ability to move, manipulate, and mobilize those resources effectively across a nation that has collapsed into lawless chaos outside of tiny military zones of control.

[Olefin]

Their areas arent that tiny - MilGov controls a big piece of Colorado, plus a lot of Kansas and down into Oklahoma, from Cairo IL down to Memphis TN, a good piece of Louisiana and a pretty big piece of CA, plus the big areas in the Northwest - thats a lot of territory when you add it up, bigger than most European countries in peacetime - and now they have the Ozarks as well

and I dont use HW and Kidnapped as canon (most likely most dont actually) -
and one place they could get manpower is from all the sailors who manned the Omega evac fleet plus guys who can get retrained from Omega - between all of them (and a good amount of them had to be sailors stranded in Europe when their ships either were sunk, damaged beyond repair or just plain out of fuel) you could easily man a battleship

[The Rifleman]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Their areas arent that tiny - MilGov controls a big piece of Colorado, plus a lot of Kansas and down into Oklahoma, from Cairo IL down to Memphis TN, a good piece of Louisiana and a pretty big piece of CA, plus the big areas in the Northwest - thats a lot of territory when you add it up, bigger than most European countries in peacetime - and now they have the Ozarks as well

and I dont use HW and Kidnapped as canon (most likely most dont actually) -
and one place they could get manpower is from all the sailors who manned the Omega evac fleet plus guys who can get retrained from Omega - between all of them (and a good amount of them had to be sailors stranded in Europe when their ships either were sunk, damaged beyond repair or just plain out of fuel) you could easily man a battleship

Also the museum BBs North Carolina, Masschussets and Alabama do not share the same main armament as the Iowas due, however all of the other spares including the secondary armament is the same. Some parts were taken from them to refit the Iowas in the 80s and frankly, although I could see looters boarding the ships to take some limited machinery, a lot of it is useless to them. For example, turret rings, breech blocks, 5" barrels... there are piles of scrap metal everywhere, why go through the aggravation of trying to carry away a 90 ton gun director?

[natehale1971]

Before the Battleships where retired, there was a move to turn them into half-deck carriers that would be equipped with attack helios and harrier jumpjets so they could be used to support amphibous operations... I remember this since i was in the Navy at the time. And our gaming group inculded an Operations Specialist and a Gunner's Mate whom both joined the Ike thanks to their getting recovered after the turret explosion... and they were always talking about the future of the battleships in the future.

And when we played T2k they were talking about how quickly the mothball fleet could be rembilized, and which ships would be first on the list for refit and refurbishment.

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by natehale1971

...how quickly the mothball fleet could be rembilized, and which ships would be first on the list for refit and refurbishment.

In theory.

Reality would be significantly different given it's not just the mechanicals which need a quick wipe and oil change, but a whole new crew of 1,800 or so (per ship) which need to be found and trained, not to mention the shore bound support crew, replacements for battle casualties, etc, etc, etc. And all this with the background of WWIII ramping up and a serious shortage of the necessary materials and components in the face of competing priorities.

Not saying it can't be done, but there are some serious hurdles to overcome along the way.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Olefin

and their engines can burn bunker oil - you dont need refined products for their engines - you could take it straight out of a oil well and a BB would run on it

I don't doubt this point, especially pre-modification. They had boilers to generate steam, which powered steam turbines. I'm no steam engineer but presumably these sorts of boilers can be powered by a variety of liquid fuels. My guess is that until the 1980s the Iowa-class BBs were run on heavy, low grade bunker oil. So why were they converted during the 1980s to burn navy distillate fuel? Obviously if the existing burners and boilers could already handle the slightly more refined and processed navy distillate fuel a conversion wouldn't have been necessary. Did the conversion make it any harder to go back to using low grade bunker oil? Was the conversion itself in any way complicated or requiring of complicated components? Was it for some odd reason like pressure to make the older USN vessels less polluting? Was it to improve their fuel efficiency/range?

These questions probably aren't important to the original discussion but I haven't been able to glean the answers with Google-Fu so far.

[Legbreaker]

My understanding is the older engines were able to burn "bunker oil" which is thick, tarry, and very, very sticky. It requires heating to be applied to the fuel in the storage tanks, just so it can be pumped through the lines to the engine.
My guess is as part of the effort to reduce the crew by approximately 900 men (from pre 1980's refit) this heating system was removed. If so, the ship(s) would no longer be able to utilise this type of fuel - the boilers could probably still burn it, but pumping it from the tanks would be impossible.

[Panther Al]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

My understanding is the older engines were able to burn "bunker oil" which is thick, tarry, and very, very sticky. It requires heating to be applied to the fuel in the storage tanks, just so it can be pumped through the lines to the engine.
My guess is as part of the effort to reduce the crew by approximately 900 men (from pre 1980's refit) this heating system was removed. If so, the ship(s) would no longer be able to utilise this type of fuel - the boilers could probably still burn it, but pumping it from the tanks would be impossible.

I would actually say the old preheating equipment is still there: I don't have anything that says yes or no on that, but I have three datums that make me go with this:

First up is the amount of work to strip it all out (A coworker is a ex Navy Nuke who is pretty sharp on all the various sorts of systems the Navy uses is my source) is no small thing: a lot of work, time, and holes to be cut into things to get it all gone. Thats the sort of work that would take too much time and cost to pull off... especially since you just have to never turn it on and you are good to go.

Second, When they recommisioned the New Jersey in the 80's, the budget for the job was considered very low (350 Million - less than the cost of a new Perry Class fig). And they then came in *under* budget. That to me says that since they did a massive electronics upgrade, with radars, CIWSs, Harpoons, and Tomahawks, thats where the bulk of the money went - which might also help with reducing the manning that they managed to a degree since they stripped out a lot of the secondary AAA systems.

And third, they used a lot of the black gang crew off of the Sacramento and Camden (Which used the exact same propulsion plant of the Iowa's) to get the New Jersey staffed, and then later on the rest in the 80's.

Now, this isn't set in stone, but I think its a pretty good argument to say that it would still be able to fuel the BB's with bunker fuel or cruder.

[dragoon500ly]

New Jersey had been refitted for the Korean War as well as for Vietnam, by the 1960s, she had only her 16-inch/5-inch batteries, her light aa had been stripped. She also had a fairly extensive rebuild of her electronics suite for Vietnam. Her Regan-era rebuild was to emplace Tomahawk/Harpoon and CIWS and update her electronics. She had been modified to butn NDF back in the 1960s. The primary drive for that portion was to insure that the fleet only had to transport one type of fuel for the ships. According to a couple of Navy types in my office, the conversion from bunker to NDF involves burner plates and injectors, the supposed figure for the New Jerey refit was roughly 250,000 dollars. I'm checking the Congressional Records from that time to see if there is a detailed breakdown of the budget.

[Olefin]

There is probably a lot of manpower available from ships that are damaged, non-operational or been sunk and the crews abandoned ship

Take a look at a carrier - if even 1/3rd of the crew survived a sinking you are looking at 1600 men or so

And ships dont go down with everyone aboard that often - and reading the canon I dont get the impression of a nuclear war at sea - i.e. its not nuclear torpedoes and bombs taking out ships,its good old fashioned torpedoes, guns and missiles

plus keep in mind how many old timers there are out there that can be pressed into service on various ships (especially given the prospect of being able to be properly fed as compared to being a civilian)

so manpower wont be the issue here - if anything they probably have more men then they have operational ships to put them on

[Olefin]

We know the BB's were active during the war (thats canon for at least one BB for sure) - the real question is are they still active and are any still afloat, as was dealt with in the 1st article of the fanzine

[Legbreaker]

Correct, it is very unlikely nukes were used in any great numbers at sea since sea power on all sides had been virtually destroyed by the time they started to see use in China.

How many life boats does a warship carry? How long could the people in a life boat expect to be at sea before they were found and rescued? Not everyone is going to die in the first half hour of a sinking, many, many more may survive, perhaps wounded, and die later before ever seeing land again - it's not like a full scale air/sea search and rescue operation is going to be able to be mounted while the enemy are still a threat.

We also know navies on all sides were decimated and virtually eliminated relatively early in the way - by June 97. Tactical nukes began to see use a month later, strategic nukes a couple of months after that. Why would any navy carry on a wide scale recruiting/recall campaign when they didn't have ships? Wouldn't the army have a greater need for and ability to actually use the manpower?

Those recruits which were called up might well see a large number of desertions the moment word of nukes was heard. Most people wouldn't want to be caught in a military training facility if they thought it was about to be turned to glass! Once the nukes died down and the military began to be perceived as an easy way to a free meal, the ability of any navy of any nationality to put recruits to use was virtually gone.

We also know from the Last Sub trilogy that skilled naval personnel where in extremely short supply - Milgov threw a lot of resources into scouring continental USA for crew and came up very short...

To be blunt, it's just not logical for military leaders to try rebuilding a navy when a) the army needs the manpower more, and b) there's next to no enemy naval forces to worry about. Resources are limited. They must be used to best effect.

[Olefin]

The USN is expert in search and rescue as well as recovering sailors from ships that have been abandoned. If anything taught them the importance of that it was WWII and the level of ships they lost in that conflict.

And keep in mind - shattering a fleet is not sinking all its ships - the Japanese fleet was shattered at Leyte Gulf in WWII - but even after that they still had battleships, cruisers and destroyers afloat in considerable numbers

you can see that even in the modules and Challenge magazine articles - even as late as early 2001 between Iran and Cape May/Norfolk/Going Home you have several DD's,frigates, a baby carrier and at least two cruisers still afloat and still very much in commission along with an SSN

and we dont have any idea from a canon standpoint what there is off Korea for instance or what got out of Pearl before she got hit

[Olefin]

Found a reference where it says they retained their old 600 psi boilers.

Still not sure what changes were made to burn distillate fuel but they may still be able to burn the black oil, but would mean they need to take on more oil than with the distillates, which provided better fuel economoy.

the quote is from

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/america...attleships.pdf

When the four IOWA Class battleships were re-commissioned between 1982-87, they retained their old 600 psi boilers while switching from Navy Special Fuel Oil to Distillate Fuel.

As to their effectiveness as warships - lets give this quote as to what the Soviets thought of these ships

"You Americans do not realize what formidable warships you have in these four battleships. We have concluded after careful analysis that these magnificent vessels are in fact the most to be feared in your entire naval arsenal. When engaged in combat we could throw everything we have at those ships and all our firepower would just bounce off or be of little effect. Then we are exhausted, we will detect you coming over the horizon and then you will sink us."

-Soviet Fleet Admiral Sergei I. Gorshkov,1985- Quote after watching the Iowa in a NATO exercise

[Raellus]

The surface action I mentioned would have occured pre-exchange.

If an Iowa survived past '97-'98, I could see it being used as a fixed long-range artillery battery. In WWII, the Germans uses a couple of large surface warships as floating batteries in their defense of East Prussia and the Baltic shelf during the last few months of the war. These vessels probably wouldn't have survived long at sea, but close to shore, under the protection of additional AAA, they provided very effective heavy long-range fire support to the hard-pressed German ground forces in the "fortress" cities of Danzig, Gydnia, and Konigsberg- in some cases decisively, prolonging the duration of the defenses.

I can see an Iowa doing much the same thing in northeast German or northwest Poland. It would be beached/moored close to friendly-controlled shore and out of range of enemy artillery. Since the ship would no longer retain its mobility due to a lack of fuel and/or because of mechanical problems with its engines, much of the crew could be removed to shore (likely farmed out to a nearby man-power starved ground unit). Only enough crew to effectively operate its guns and power them would remain aboard. An Iowa could really strengthen a shore-based cantonment. Even once the 16" shells are gone, its 5" batteries should still be able to provide local fire support for nearby ground forces.

[bobcat]

actually i hate to disagree with Admiral Gorshkov but there is a reason the ground forces are still trained to coordinate naval gunfire from the old battle ships. we KNOW how devastating that power can be when wielded properly. my theory is these old gun boats would mostly be used in Korea where they can support the majority of the ground combat.

(personally i still wish they would have taken the Missouri up the Tigris to deal with a few IED factories during the surge. show AQI a real explosion)

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by Olefin

The real thing to look at would be barrel life - you can only shoot so many shells thru the gun barrels before they need to be replaced - and even if there are replacements available (there were as far as I know but not sure where they were) you need an active Navy Yard that can take battlehships to do the replacement

I'm not 100% sure on barrels, but most of the other turret machinery was handled by Naval Ordnance Station Louisville in the 1990s.

- C.