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Military Ships (was Your Typical Beneteau!)
On Aug 17, 3:42*pm, Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 17 Aug 2009 19:52:31 +0100, Andy Champ wrote: Wayne.B wrote: On Sun, 16 Aug 2009 20:02:15 +0100, Andy Champ wrote: Reagan recommissioned a couple of battleships. *While it seemed crazy they performed very well for shore bombardment duties. It was crazy. *They performed well for a battleship but not compared to modern precision guided munitions. *Accuracy at typical range was something like plus or minus 400 feet, close enough to scare your target but not necessarily destroy it. Odd, I thought I recalled them being used a cruise missile launchers among other things... They might have had some cruise missles also but that was secondary to the big battleship guns. * A battleship is a very inefficient platform for launching missles since the historical advantages were heavily armored hulls and massive artillery, none of which is required for missle launching since it can be safely done from hundreds of miles away. * Cruise missles have an accuracy of about 10 feet or better vs maybe 400 ft for a battleship's guns on a good day. Nah, the battleship guns were quite accurate... many times in WW2 they could blow open shore fortifications quicker & easier (and with a lot less risk) than an attack bomber. It's been recorded that many ships not only hit the target with great accuracy but then put another shell thru the same hole. And that was with 60+ year old technology. Nowadays they track the shell in-flight with the SPY-1 radar & AEGIS system.... no need for forward observers. Another point... 16" shells are relatively cheap & a battleship holds a LOT (iirc the lower magazines can carry 800 per turret). It's a very efficient fighting platform, especially considering the survivability. Suicide bombers can blow themselves up against the side of the hull, a- la Cole, all day every day. The reason why the battleships are history is that they are out of gun barrels. They had a huge stockpile of 16/45 gun tubes left over from WW2 but nobody can make them any more. I think the USS IOWA & her sisters are officially retired and placed as memorials, but the machinery is still under nitrogen blankets, so they might just be able to be recalled. Regards- Doug King ...ex-BT1(SW) |
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