The End of the Battleship Era
By Bob Henneman
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This was originally posted on another web
site, in response to a question on if the
date of the sinking of Force Z was the the
day the battleship became obsolete, or if
some other date/ development was more significant.
I have reproduced it here out of request,
not ego :)
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I must disagree with the folks who point
to a certain date as the end of the battleship
era. The destruction of Force Z was significant,
but it certainly did not mark the obsolescence
of the battleship. All it really proved was
that pre-war planners were right: land-based
aircraft could easily spot and attack a fleet,
so larger, longer-ranged, and higher-performance
carrier aircraft were needed to provide cover
for the ships. Neither of the British ships
was of a design that addressed the threat
of aircraft in an adequate manner, and both
suffered from inadequate/ broken equipment
and/or poor crew performance. Leave ANY asset
without air cover in broad daylight, and
let nearly a hundred enemy aircraft attack
unmolested for two to three hours, and that
asset is going to be destroyed. It really
doesn't mater if that asset is a battleship,
a carrier, a sub, or an air force base on
dry land. Just as the submarine threat in
WWI led to the ASW patrol, the aircraft threat
of WWII led to the Combat Air Patrol.
As for the one event that proved that the
battleship was no longer the measure of sea
power, I am not sure that there was ONE single
event. The loss of the Roma marked the day
when a single aircraft could destroy a battleship
with a single weapon, so it certainly demands
consideration. Yet this was still a land-based
plane tied to the coastline, one that the
Italian thought was friendly, and even a
token effort at air cover would have again
prevented the incident. Carrier aircraft
could not project this power to eliminate
the world's battle fleets, and several ships
did survived hits from these German guilded
weapons. As soon as jamming was developed,
these weapons were no longer a threat.
Each generation of battleships rendered the
past generations obsolete, so it can be argued
that battleships made battleships obsolete, by making it
economically impossible to build a ship that
could survive a clash with its own kind.
This is closer to what I subscribe to, but
it's the economic side I blame. The expense
of these ships limited their numbers, and
encouraged the development of cheaper weapons
systems, so the writing was on the wall well
before the war.
The wartime mass-production efforts of WWII
killed the battleship. Tanks, trucks, jeeps,
aircraft, escort vessels, Liberty ships,
and even carriers were being cranked out
at an astounding rate. But there is simply
no way to mass-produce battleships. No matter
how quickly you assemble the parts, it still
takes YEARS to manufacture the heavy armor,
turrets, and main guns. The manufacturing
process simply cannot be rushed, and the
facilities capable of this type of work are
limited in capacity. The US completed a handful
of battleships after the war started, but
all were pre-war projects. Not one US battleship
laid down or authorized after the entry into the war was finished. Those
not already well advanced in construction
were suspended, so that the money, manpower,
and steel could go into projects with a more
immediate return. The battleship died not
in combat, but at the hands of bean counters.
By contrast, almost 150 carriers of all types,
and over 300,000 aircraft, were churned out
by the US war industry in the same time period.
Battleships simply became irrelevant as they
became greatly outnumbered due to economic
necessity. Once the battleships became outnumbered
15 or 20 to 1 by carriers, they HAD to become
a secondary feature to the world's navies.
It still took dozens, or even hundreds of
planes several hours to sink a battleship,
but with thousands of aircraft costing less
money and taking less time to build than
a single battleship, the odds were always
against the battleship.
The final nail in the coffin of the battleship
was the elimination of the Scharnhorst, Tirpitz, Yamato, and the other Axis battleships. If battleships
were designed to fight battleships, and the
enemy didn't have any, why not just build
more carriers and planes?
This assured that the battleship, killed
by wartime economics, stayed dead after the
war. It is hard to justify the expense and
effort needed to build these beasts when
there is no like threat.
Even today, no one argues that a battleship
is not a powerful weapon. They instead argue
that other, cheaper weapons can do the job
instead.