Cobar wrote:The funny thing about dreadnought and later battleships is that they were improvements on ships of the line, except we stopped fighting that way.
Sort of a stop-gap between that and aircraft and missile combat.
So they got developed and left behind really fast.
To top it all off, everyone figured out to just not really fight the things straight up, which is all they can do.
I think we stopped fighting that way by a sheer flip of history's coin...
Realistically, had Enterprise and Lexington been in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, we would have probably had a much more battleship-centric fleet in the Pacific for at least a year or more longer than we did... Keep in mind that the first damaged battleship to return to service did not do so until June 1942. It is my understanding that the US Navy's upper ranks were not huge fans of carriers at that time and I have suspicions that if both of the carriers in the Pacific fleet had been hit hard, which they almost certainly would have been, that their mentality would have overshadowed the reality of the need for carriers. The Doolittle raid may have never happened and the Battle of The Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway might not have either...
“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” - Norman Thomas, a six time candidate for president for the Socialist Party, 1944
mekender wrote:
Realistically, had Enterprise and Lexington been in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, we would have probably had a much more battleship-centric fleet in the Pacific for at least a year or more longer than we did... Keep in mind that the first damaged battleship to return to service did not do so until June 1942. It is my understanding that the US Navy's upper ranks were not huge fans of carriers at that time and I have suspicions that if both of the carriers in the Pacific fleet had been hit hard, which they almost certainly would have been, that their mentality would have overshadowed the reality of the need for carriers. The Doolittle raid may have never happened and the Battle of The Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway might not have either...
June 1942 was the battle of Midway.
In World War 2, Japan was doomed the minute they bombed Pearl Harbor. They probably would never have been able to take and hold Midway. If you want to see how the Japanese would probably have fared in an opposed landing, you should study how they did at Wake Island. Now, imagine those marines with more firepower and with armor support. And more Marines.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
mekender wrote:Keep in mind that real BBs had multiple occasions where hundreds and hundreds of shells were fired without a hit... I think there are what, 2 or 3 actual cases where a BB was legitimately responsible for sinking an enemy ship in WWII. More often, they were credited with helping to sink an already damaged and abandoned allied ship.
What occasions? In WW2, the only direct, decisive battleship-vs-battleship fight I know of was Washington vs Kirishima. That was a night night battle, too.
I don't play computer games, but since you asked.
WWII Battleship on Battleship engagements:
4 Battle of the Denmark Strait (Bismark and [strike]Hipper[/strike] Prinz Eugen vs Prince of Wales and Hood)
FIFY. I just watched a show about this last night.
"What is this, the Congress Avenue Independence Day Parade?" - Capt. Karl von Stahlberg, RTN Republic of Texas Navy Archives
mekender wrote:I think we stopped fighting that way by a sheer flip of history's coin...
Realistically, had Enterprise and Lexington been in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, we would have probably had a much more battleship-centric fleet in the Pacific for at least a year or more longer than we did... Keep in mind that the first damaged battleship to return to service did not do so until June 1942. It is my understanding that the US Navy's upper ranks were not huge fans of carriers at that time and I have suspicions that if both of the carriers in the Pacific fleet had been hit hard, which they almost certainly would have been, that their mentality would have overshadowed the reality of the need for carriers. The Doolittle raid may have never happened and the Battle of The Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway might not have either...
We might have seen a few more battleship fights but the Japanese were using carriers and good torpedoes by that point. Basically everyone had the tech to out do a battleship by that point. If our carriers had been there and ready, they may have blunted the attack, or even followed them back to their carrier and sunk it. We could have lost both and kept more BBs leaving us with them instead of carriers. Either way technology had already surpassed the BBs. It just took the duration of the war for the actual equipment to catch up to the tech level. There is a reason we cancelled the Montana class.
Not that I don't like battleships, but their time was just passing. Just like the machine gun outclassed a massed infantry charge in WWI.
mekender wrote:I think we stopped fighting that way by a sheer flip of history's coin...
Realistically, had Enterprise and Lexington been in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941, we would have probably had a much more battleship-centric fleet in the Pacific for at least a year or more longer than we did... Keep in mind that the first damaged battleship to return to service did not do so until June 1942. It is my understanding that the US Navy's upper ranks were not huge fans of carriers at that time and I have suspicions that if both of the carriers in the Pacific fleet had been hit hard, which they almost certainly would have been, that their mentality would have overshadowed the reality of the need for carriers. The Doolittle raid may have never happened and the Battle of The Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway might not have either...
We might have seen a few more battleship fights but the Japanese were using carriers and good torpedoes by that point. Basically everyone had the tech to out do a battleship by that point. If our carriers had been there and ready, they may have blunted the attack, or even followed them back to their carrier and sunk it. We could have lost both and kept more BBs leaving us with them instead of carriers. Either way technology had already surpassed the BBs. It just took the duration of the war for the actual equipment to catch up to the tech level. There is a reason we cancelled the Montana class.
Not that I don't like battleships, but their time was just passing. Just like the machine gun outclassed a massed infantry charge in WWI.
I do not disagree but...
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe that SOP for a carrier in port is for the aircraft to be flown in to a ground field before they even dock.
So had the carriers been in port, they would have both been just extra AA coverage for the area. The mooring locations were either right in line with Battleship Row or on the opposite side of the island, either way their nice flat decks would have been easy targets. The aircraft would have been at Ford Island, Hickam or Wheeler and their pilots would have likely been on R&R so I can't see them doing anything other than adding to the number of planes lost during the attack.
Now, that might mean that Arizona is not hit as badly... And it likely means that Saratoga is not torpedoed on its way to Pearl...
“I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” - Norman Thomas, a six time candidate for president for the Socialist Party, 1944
There's a nice little turn-based game (plays in a browser) called Fighting Flattops that will teach you a great deal about scouting and about flight deck cycles. It's not perfect -- nothing ever goes wrong on your deck ops (no crashes, no elevator malfunctions, etc.) -- but it's pretty good.
Another winner is Carriers at War. I still have the old DOS and MacOS versions of CAW; the newest version has more eye candy and can be found at Matrix Games.
Shop at Traitor Joe's: Just 10% to the Big Guy gets you the whole store and everything in it!
Jericho941 wrote:
What occasions? In WW2, the only direct, decisive battleship-vs-battleship fight I know of was Washington vs Kirishima. That was a night night battle, too.
I don't play computer games, but since you asked.
WWII Battleship on Battleship engagements:
4 Battle of the Denmark Strait (Bismark and [strike]Hipper[/strike] Prinz Eugen vs Prince of Wales and Hood)
FIFY. I just watched a show about this last night.
True, typing from memory and all that. It was Hipper class but the actual Hipper was sunk during the invasion of Norway.
I don't know how much of it is true or just war stories, but I heard something about one of the heavy German tanks during WWII that was really great, except it was really slow, got stuck a lot, and, was really just too complicated and expensive for them to field many of.
I find that whole concept of weapons development and tactics interesting. Out do battleships with planes, torps, and missles. Out do the missles with close in weapons systems, planes with AAA, SAMs, and other planes. How many times did we go from armor, to light or no armor, to back, just in foot combat?
