LC "Iowa". 32 cruise missiles for striking along the coast, 16 missile launchers “Harpoon”, UAV “Pioneer”, satellite communications and a terminal with an automated naval control system. And another 406 mm gun. These were battleships at the end of the XNUMXth century
The disappearance of the battleships as a class of warships is in some ways very instructive. However, this process is shrouded in myths that were created relatively recently and make it difficult to perceive the “battleship” history right. It is worth considering this issue in more detail. On the one hand, it has no practical value: battleships in their traditional form of armored artillery ships with artillery of extra-large caliber are dead, and this is final. On the other hand, the question is quite interesting, because it allows you to understand the patterns in the development of systems weapons and military thought, but that just matters.
Defined in terms
To discuss such a serious issue, you need to determine the terminology. In the English-speaking world, instead of the term “battleship” (battleship), the word “battleship” was used — a ship for battle or a ship for battle. This term automatically lets us know that we are talking about ships that can both fire at other ships and withstand their return fire. So, the squadron battleships of the Russian-Japanese war in the Western consciousness are also battleships, and, in fact, the fate of these ships is very consistent with their foreign name. In an entertaining way, once a battle ship was a line-of-battle ship, or a battle line ship. The analogy with the Russian word “battleship” is obvious, but the difference in the perception of the terms by an outside observer is obvious.
What is the difference between battleship and another artillery ship? The fact that the first one is at the top of power fleet. Ships that would be stronger than him in battle do not exist. It is the battleship-battleship that is the basis of the battle order of the fleet in the battle; all other classes of ships occupy a subordinate or dependent position in relation to it. At the same time, it inflicts the most important damage to the enemy (in this case, other forces can finally finish off the enemy’s ships).
We define the battleship as follows: a large armored artillery warship, capable, based on its firepower, security, survivability and speed, of conducting a long-term fire battle with enemy ships of all classes, firing on them from on-board weapons until they are completely destroyed, maintaining combat effectiveness when the ship is defeated the enemy’s ammunition, for which there is no class of ships armed with the same or more powerful weapons and at the same time having the same or better protection.
This definition, although not ideal, but describes in the most detailed way what battleships were and what they were not, and allows us to move on.
Today, no fleet has battleships in service. But how did these lords of the oceans go down in history?
First myth. It sounds like this: During the Second World War, it turned out that armored artillery ships were not able to withstand the deck aviation, which entailed the end of the "era" of battleships and the beginning of the "era of aircraft carriers."
There is another version of it, it was popular in our country during the years of the USSR - with the advent of nuclear missile weapons, large-caliber guns and armor became a rudiment, yielding nothing during the hostilities, which led to the refusal of the leading naval powers from battleships. Say right away, this myth in some places intersects with reality, it is closer to it, but still it is a myth. Let us prove it. Let's start with the aircraft carriers.
Carrier myth and the realities of World War II
During World War II, military operations were conducted in the seas washing Northern Europe (Norwegian, Barents, Northern, Baltic), in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and the Pacific Ocean. Occasional clashes took place in the Indian Ocean, South Atlantic, unlimited submarine war was fought mainly in the North Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. Throughout this array of battles and battles, sometimes very large and accompanied by heavy losses, aircraft carriers were the main striking force only in the Pacific Ocean. Moreover, the main thing does not mean at all the only one. With a coordinated attack and air cover, the Japanese could theoretically use their large artillery ships against U.S. aircraft carriers. Moreover - albeit by accident, but once used, in the Leyte Gulf in 1944, near the island of Samar.
The death of the escort aircraft carrier "Gambier Bay" from the fire of the cruisers. Other ships were damaged, including the fire of battleships, some left due to the mistakes of the Japanese, who believed that the ships were destroyed. The price of salvation was the death of three escort destroyers, one aircraft carrier, another was completed kamikaze a little later
Then the connection of Taffy 3 - a group of six American escort aircraft carriers with escort ships came across a connection of the imperial fleet with battleships and cruisers. The small escort crews had to flee, one of them was sunk, the others were badly damaged, while the American commander Admiral Sprague had to literally deplete their cover ships, 7 destroyers, throwing them in a suicidal attack against superior Japanese ships. The planes themselves from aircraft carriers, despite the desperate attacks, were able to sink one cruiser and damage two, another was destroyed by the destroyers, and the Americans themselves lost one aircraft carrier, three destroyers, all the other aircraft carriers and four destroyers were badly damaged, with heavy losses of personnel.
In general, this episode of the battle (the battle near Samar Island) leaves the impression that the Japanese simply broke psychologically, faced with desperate, stubborn resistance from the Americans, which included numerous examples of personal sacrifice of sailors and pilots who saved their aircraft carriers from death, including mass self-sacrifice . And the day before, the formation was subjected to air strikes for many hours in a row, losing one of its most powerful ships, the battleship Musashi. The Japanese could well “break”, and, apparently, it was.
Should the Japanese commander Smoke go to the end, ignoring the losses and fierce resistance, it is not known how it would end. The battle near Samar Island showed that armored artillery ships are quite capable of inflicting losses on aircraft carriers, while ensuring the surprise of the attack.
The battle in Leyte Gulf also showed the limits of aviation capabilities when striking large surface ships in general and battleships in particular. The day before the battle near the island of Samar, the Kurita compound underwent massive air strikes, in which air groups of five American aircraft carriers participated. During almost the entire daylight hours, 259 American aircraft continuously attacked Japanese ships completely devoid of air cover. The result of attracting such forces, however, was modest. Having sunk the Musashi, the Americans could only get into the Yamato twice, twice into the Nagato and damage several smaller ships. The unit retained combat effectiveness and continued to participate in battles the next day. Once again, all this without a single Japanese aircraft in the air.
Was it a real option for the Japanese to throw their artillery ships into battle against American aircraft carriers, using air cover, or, taking advantage of the employment of aviators to disassemble each other? Quite. Leyte showed that the life time of a surface formation under massive air strikes can be calculated over many days, after which it still maintains combat effectiveness.
Well, what happens when an artillery ship suddenly finds itself at a range of fire at an aircraft carrier, the destruction of Glories by German raiders in 1940 showed well.
Could all this lead to change during the war?
Not. Why? Because with a successful exit at a distance of artillery fire, Japanese battleships would collide with the American. In the first year of the war, the Americans had serious power imbalances caused by both the loss in Pearl Harbor and the initial lack of strength in the Pacific Ocean, but everything changed since 1943 and they formed very balanced formations from aircraft carrier and artillery ships.
And regardless of whether the American aviation would be busy or not, whether it could attack the Japanese or not, the weather would allow it to fly or not, and the Japanese would not succeed in attacking the American aircraft carriers, it would result in an artillery battle in which the Americans had overwhelming superiority and in the number of trunks, and as a fire control.
In fact, battleships were the "insurance" of aircraft carriers, providing them with air defense, guaranteeing the impossibility of their destruction by artillery ships and insuring against the event of bad weather or large losses in aircraft. And this really was a necessary element of their power, which by the very fact of its existence deprived the enemy of the opportunity to arrange a massacre, leaning on aircraft carriers with an armored mass.
In turn, Japanese aviation against American battleships proved even worse than American against Japanese, at times. In fact, the Japanese’s attempts to attack the American battleships from the air, when the latter could be "reached" by the aircraft, ended in the beating of the aircraft, not the ships. In fact, American battleships in the Pacific War often performed the tasks that are now being accomplished by URO ships with AEGIS systems - they reflected massive air strikes and the effectiveness of this defense was very high.
October 26, 1942, Japanese aviation is trying to smash his head once again, now on the defense of the South Dakota. With a known result
But all this pales against a comparison of the effectiveness of battleships and aircraft carriers in strikes along the coast. Contrary to popular belief, US carrier-based aircraft in strikes against ground targets showed themselves poorly - much worse than army aviation could have shown itself under the same conditions. Compared to the devastating effect of artillery bombardment with large-caliber guns, the strikes from the decks were simply “nothing.” The battleships and heavy cruisers of World War II and the first years after it, by the power of their fire along the shore, have remained unreachable to this day.
Yes, aircraft carriers pushed battleships out of first place in importance. But that they allegedly “survived from the light” was out of the question. Battleships remained valuable and needed warships. Now not being the main force in the war at sea, they continued to be a necessary element of a balanced fleet, and without them its combat power turned out to be much lower than with them, and the risks were much higher.
As one American officer rightly pointed out, the main force at sea in the war in the Pacific was not an aircraft carrier, but an aircraft carrier consisting of aircraft carriers and high-speed battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
And all this, we repeat, in the war in the Pacific Ocean. In the Atlantic, the main force turned out to be escort carriers with anti-submarine air groups and basic aviation, on the remaining theater of operations the role of aircraft carriers was auxiliary, artillery ships, destroyers and submarines were more important. Part of the matter was geography, often surface ships could rely on basic aviation, but only partly.
Thus, the idea that the battleships disappeared due to the appearance of aircraft carriers, on closer examination, does not withstand any criticism. During World War II, nothing of the kind happened. Moreover, and this is the most important thing - nothing of the kind happened after the Second World War.
The place and role of battleships in the first post-war decade
The myth that the battleships were "eaten up" by aircraft carriers is shattered by the fact that their story did not end with the end of World War II. In this sense, the attitude to these ships in different fleets is indicative.
Great Britain and France put into operation one battleship mortgaged or built earlier. In France it was the Jean Bar returned to the French and returned to service in 1949, a battleship of the Richelieu type, in Britain the brand new Vengard in 1946. At the same time, old and worn ships designed in the late 30s massively wrote off all countries except the USSR, where there was a severe deficit of surface ships and literally everything was used, right down to the Finnish battleship. The United States, which had a colossal excess of warships of all classes, massively put unwanted and obsolete ships in reserve, but two of the four newest Iowa battleships remained in service. At the same time, it must be understood that the Americans were able to withdraw from the reserve and reactivate old ships after decades of sludge and the fact that their South Dakota were in storage until the early sixties was somewhat indicative.
"Jean Bar". It went into operation in 1949, decommissioned in 1957. France then had aircraft carriers. Strange, huh?
Indicative are the years when the cancellation of battleships went on a massive scale. This is the mid-fifties. Before this, the picture looked like this.
Battleships in service for 1953 (we don’t count the reserve, only active ships, different Argentinean and Chilean scrap do not count either):
USA - 4 (all Iowa).
USSR - 3 ("Sevastopol" / "Giulio Cesare", "October Revolution", "Novorossiysk").
France - 1 (“Jean Bar”, the same type “Richelieu” was also in service, but was reclassified to “training artillery ship”, Lorraine of 1910 was also used as a training ship).
Italy - 2.
Great Britain - 1.
It should be understood that the American South Dakota and the English King George could well be quickly reactivated and thrown into battle. Thus, the battleships didn’t disappear even after the Second World War.
“Wangard” and someone from “King George” in the parking lot reserve, the second half of the 50s
After 1953, there was a landslide write-off, and in 1960 only the USA had the opportunity to use battleships in battle. Thus, we have to admit that until at least the beginning, and rather even until the mid-50s, the battleships were quite a valuable combat weapon. As subsequent experience will show, this also remained in later years. A little later, we will return to the reasons for the collapse of battleships, this is also a very interesting question.
Consider the views on the use of battleships of that era.
Some theory
No matter how powerful aviation was in the mid-fifties, but its use had (and still has in many respects) some limitations.
Firstly, the weather. Unlike a ship, weather restrictions are much stricter for airplanes, a banal strong lateral wind above the runway makes flying impossible. For an aircraft carrier, this is simpler, it unfolds in the wind, but pitching and visibility limit the use of carrier-based aviation no worse than fog and wind limit the use of base aircraft. Today, for a warship and a large aircraft carrier, the restrictions on the use of weapons and flights, depending on the unrest, are approximately the same, but then it was different, aircraft carriers with 90 tons of displacement did not exist.
Secondly, geography: if there are no airbases nearby, from which enemy aircraft can attack a ship, and the enemy has no aircraft carriers (in general or nearby), then surface ships operate relatively freely. A special case - there is an air base, but it was destroyed by an air strike, for example, by bomber aircraft. In such circumstances, no one prevents a powerful warship from destroying ships weaker, ensuring the combat use of destroyers and mine-layers, and by the fact of its striking power, to ensure the blockade and interruption of enemy naval communications. And, most importantly, nothing to do with it. The battleship’s speed is such that no nuclear-powered submarine of those years would have kept up with it, and torpedo boats, as combat experience has shown (including during Leyte), did not pose any threat to a high-speed and maneuverable ship with a large number of universal fast-firing guns.
To cope with the battleship, you actually needed either a heavy aircraft carrier covered by artillery ships and destroyers or ... yes, your own battleships. So it was during the Second World War, it remained so after it.
Adding aviation covering the battleship here, we get a real problem for the enemy - the battleship can behave like a fox in a chicken coop, and attempts to hit it from the air first require air supremacy.
Of course, the enemy will gather and strike sooner or later. The bombed-off runways will be restored, additional aviation strike forces and fighters will be deployed, the battleship will be monitored by forces of faster warships than it, the weather will improve and the planes from the coast will be able to repeat what the Japanese showed in 1941 Kuantan battle time, sinking the English battleship and battlecruiser.
But only by that time there is much that can be done, for example, you can manage to land an airborne landing, capture the coastal airfield with the forces of this landing, then, when the weather improves, transfer your aircraft there, set up minefields, conduct a couple of light-force raids at naval bases . With impunity.
In some ways, an example of similar actions during the Second World War was the Battle of Guadalcanal, where the Japanese planned to land under the cover of artillery ships and lost in battle with American artillery ships - one particular aircraft could not stop them. Ten or twelve years later, nothing has changed.
It is significant how the battleship issue was seen in the Navy of the USSR. Seeing the danger in the attack of superior naval forces of the enemy, the USSR understood that it would have to be decided mainly by aviation and light forces. At the same time, combat experience clearly stated that it would be extremely difficult, if at all possible, but there were no options for the post-war devastation.
At the same time, there was a problem. To understand it, we quote a document called "The need to build linear ships for the Navy of the USSR" Authorship of Vice Admiral S.P. Stavitsky, Vice Admiral L.G. Goncharov and Rear Admiral V.F. Chernysheva.
As the experience of the First and Second World Wars shows, solving strategic and operational tasks at sea only by means of submarines and aircraft, without the participation of sufficiently strong groups of surface ships, is problematic.
The immediate strategic and operational tasks facing our Navy are:
- Prevention of enemy invasion of our territory from the sea;
- assistance to offensive and defensive operations of the Soviet Army.
The following tasks may be:
- ensuring the invasion of our troops on enemy territory;
- interruption of enemy ocean communications.
The immediate and subsequent strategic and operational tasks of the USSR Navy require for their solution the presence of strong and full-fledged squadrons in our fleets at the main naval theaters.
To ensure the proper combat power of these squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groups of enemy surface ships, these squadrons should include battleships.
The situation at any of our main theaters does not exclude the possibility of an adversary entering their battleships onto them. In this case, in the absence of battleships in our naval theater’s main naval theaters, their solution to operational and combat missions in the open sea off the coast of the enemy is greatly complicated.
The tasks of combating large groups of enemy surface ships, which include his battleships, only by aviation, submarines, cruisers and light forces require a number of favorable conditions for their successful solution, which may not exist at the right time.
Strengthening cruisers and light forces interacting with aviation and submarines, battleships, immediately gives this entire group of diverse forces the character of universality, expanding the combination of its combat use.
Finally, one cannot but take into account the fact that only surface forces are able to keep the occupied water area, and to increase their combat stability in the struggle for its strong hold, battleships are again needed.
Thus, battleships are needed by our Navy at each of the main maritime theaters to ensure the proper strike power of our squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groups of enemy surface ships, and for reliable support of the combat stability of other formations in solving the latter problems, associated with the retention of occupied water areas. At the same time, it should be noted that the issue of building ships of the line immediately puts the question of building aircraft carriers on the line.
The immediate strategic and operational tasks facing our Navy are:
- Prevention of enemy invasion of our territory from the sea;
- assistance to offensive and defensive operations of the Soviet Army.
The following tasks may be:
- ensuring the invasion of our troops on enemy territory;
- interruption of enemy ocean communications.
The immediate and subsequent strategic and operational tasks of the USSR Navy require for their solution the presence of strong and full-fledged squadrons in our fleets at the main naval theaters.
To ensure the proper combat power of these squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groups of enemy surface ships, these squadrons should include battleships.
The situation at any of our main theaters does not exclude the possibility of an adversary entering their battleships onto them. In this case, in the absence of battleships in our naval theater’s main naval theaters, their solution to operational and combat missions in the open sea off the coast of the enemy is greatly complicated.
The tasks of combating large groups of enemy surface ships, which include his battleships, only by aviation, submarines, cruisers and light forces require a number of favorable conditions for their successful solution, which may not exist at the right time.
Strengthening cruisers and light forces interacting with aviation and submarines, battleships, immediately gives this entire group of diverse forces the character of universality, expanding the combination of its combat use.
Finally, one cannot but take into account the fact that only surface forces are able to keep the occupied water area, and to increase their combat stability in the struggle for its strong hold, battleships are again needed.
Thus, battleships are needed by our Navy at each of the main maritime theaters to ensure the proper strike power of our squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groups of enemy surface ships, and for reliable support of the combat stability of other formations in solving the latter problems, associated with the retention of occupied water areas. At the same time, it should be noted that the issue of building ships of the line immediately puts the question of building aircraft carriers on the line.
This applies, apparently, to 1948. In any case, the commission for determining the shape of the future Navy of the USSR, created by Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, made all her conclusions precisely then and V.F. Chernyshev was a part of it precisely. In addition, 1948 is a year in which both King Naval Forces, the United States Navy, and the French and Italian Navy are still in operation, and King George with Wangard and South Dakota with Iowa, and Richelieu ”(on the approach of“ Jean Bar ”) and“ Andrea Doria ”. Before the "sunset battleships" is not far away, but it has not yet come. What is important here?
These quotes are important:
The tasks of combating large groups of enemy surface ships, which include his battleships, only by aviation, submarines, cruisers and light forces require for their successful solution a number of favorable conditions, which may not exist at the right time.
Namely, the weather, the availability of their own aviation in the right amount - enormous from the experience of the Second World War (remember how many planes it took to drown the Musashi and the fact that the Yamato needed even more later), the fundamental ability of this aviation to break through the air defense to the enemy fleet (not guaranteed), the possibility of low-speed submarines to unfold in advance in the curtains in a given area, the fundamental possibility of using light ships (destroyers and torpedo boats).
The battleship in this case was insurance, a guarantee that if these actions fail - all together or separately, then the enemy will be something to delay. And then, in 1948, these considerations were completely true.
Finally, one cannot but take into account the fact that only surface forces are able to keep the occupied water area, and to increase their combat stability in the struggle for its strong hold, battleships are again needed.
In this case, in fact, we are talking about gaining time - surface forces deployed in the designated area can be there for weeks, or even months. No aviation can do that. And when the enemy appears, these surface forces can immediately engage in battle, gaining time to lift attack aircraft from the coast and providing them with accurate target designation. The latter, by the way, is still relevant today, according to the instructions adopted by the Navy, surface ships should provide guidance for naval assault aircraft and until now the Russian Navy has an order in which control of planes that flew to strike at the moment of their passage of the coastline is transferred to KPUNSHA (ship control and guidance point for attack aircraft).
And how to join the battle against three or four King George? Even in 1948? Or against two and one Wangard in 1950?
Actually, such considerations determined the presence of battleships in the arsenal of many countries in large numbers after the Second World War. It was just that some had a question of how to meet the enemy linear forces, when they would go ahead to clear the way for aircraft carriers, and others - how to clear the way for aircraft carriers. But everyone gave the same answer to it.
The last year of battleships of domestic construction. It all ends once
At the same time, you need to clearly understand that in the second half of the forties, the presence of several battleships in the fleet could even be affordable for Argentina, but only Americans could overpower full-fledged and numerous deck aircraft, and the British were also able to overpower them. The rest had to be content with symbolic carrier forces, hardly capable of independently carrying out important operational tasks, or even doing without them. And, importantly, outside of the potential conflict with the United States and England, the battleship was still a superweapon in a naval war.
Thus, the idea that battleships were supplanted by aircraft carriers during World War II is untenable. They did not disappear, but remained in the ranks, for a long time there existed and developed a theory of their combat employment, they even modernized. Crash battleships began to be withdrawn from service in 1949-1954, while some ships were forced to leave their fleets - the British obviously did not spend military expenses, and the USSR lost Novorossiysk in a famous explosion. If not for this, then at least one Soviet battleship would have been in service for some time. World War II is clearly not connected with the disappearance of battleships. The reason is different.
American way. Big guns in battles after the Second World War.
Speaking about battleships and why they disappeared, we must remember that finally the last battleship in the world ceased to be at least formally a combat unit already in 2011 - it was then that the Iowa LC was finally decommissioned and also sent to the Navy reserve museumification. If we take the date of the final disappearance of the battleships when they were put out of service, it’s 1990-1992, when all Iowas left the system, as we now know, forever. Then, by the way, this "forever" was not at all obvious.
What was the last battleship war? It was a war in the Persian Gulf in 1991. It is worth remembering that the battleships were reactivated for the Last War with the USSR in the 80s. Reagan conceived the “Crusade” against the Soviet Union, a campaign that was supposed to kill the USSR, it could well end in a “hot” war, and the United States was actively preparing for such a development of events. They would not back down. And the “600 Ships” program to create a mega-fleet capable of cracking down on the USSR and its allies everywhere outside the Warsaw Bloc was a very important part of this training, and the return to service of battleships in a new quality was an important part of the program. But first, these ships had to fight in other wars.
In 1950, the war in Korea began. The American command, considering it necessary to provide powerful fire support to the UN forces, attracted battleships to operations against the DPRK troops and Chinese people's volunteers (DPRK, the Chinese military contingent in the DPRK). Hurriedly, two of the four Iowas that were available were reactivated (two battleships were in active service at that moment) and consistently began to head towards the shores of the Korean Peninsula. Thanks to powerful communications, the battleships were well suited as a command center, and the power of their fire along the coast could be simply unparalleled.
"Missouri" firing at the facilities of the DPRK troops, 1950.
From September 15, 1950 to March 19, 1951 in Missouri fought in Korea. From December 2, 1951 to April 1, 1952 - Wisconsin. From May 17, 1951 to November 14, 1951, the New Jersey FC. From April 8 to October 16, 1952, the Iowa launcher withdrawn from the reserve took part in the hostilities. Subsequently, huge ships periodically returned to the Korean shores, delivering blows from their monstrous guns along the coast. Missouri and New Jersey have been to Korea twice.
An important point in understanding the fate of battleships - after Korea, they were not sent to the reserve, but continued active service. The reason was simple - the Soviet Union clearly demonstrated foreign policy ambitions, actively arming China, showing its real military capabilities in the Korean sky, and creating nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles — moreover, successfully. However, the USSR could not boast of something serious at sea. In conditions when it was not clear whether the Russians would build a fleet or not, the presence of an armored fist in the hands of the US Navy was more than useful and the battleships remained to serve.
Then, at the beginning of the fifties, it was completely justified - the USSR could not have opposed anything other than a nuclear bombardment to these ships, if they were covered by destroyers.
Again, they began to be put into reserve only in 1955, when the beginning of the missile era, the mass appearance of jet attack aircraft, and the much more massive proliferation of nuclear weapons than in the past had already become facts. We can mark the years 1955-1959 as a certain stage in the fate of battleships - somewhere around this time, and not earlier, in their original form, they ceased to be considered as a real means of waging war for supremacy at sea.
It was then that the Americans took the Iowa to the reserve, now for a long time, at the same time the British made the final decision to write off the battleships in the reserve, including Wangard, and it was in 1957 that Jean Bar left the active service in the French Navy.
By the way, he almost had to fight during the Suez crisis, in 1956. The Jean Bar was supposed to bombard Port Said before landing, but the bombardment was canceled immediately after it began. "Jean Bar" managed to make four rounds in Egypt and became strictly formally the sixth battleship in the world, which participated in hostilities after the Second World War, after four "Iowa" and the French "Richelieu", noted in Indochina. The following year, "Jean Bar" was already retrained in the floating ship.
So the ideologists of the installation that “battleships were supplanted by aircraft carriers” should pay close attention to these years.
The next time the battleship entered the battle only in 1968. From September 25, 1968 to March 31, 1969, New Jersey was sent to the South China Sea, where it was involved for delivering fire strikes on the territory of South Vietnam.
South Vietnam is a narrow strip of land along the sea and the bulk of its population lives in coastal areas. Vietnamese rebels also acted there. There, American troops fought against them. The attacks of the New Jersey began with attacks on the demilitarized zone, or rather, on the North Vietnamese troops present in it. In the future, the battleship, as a “fire brigade,” darted along the coast either south or north, urgently destroying the Vietnamese units surrounding Americans, destroying bunkers and fortifications in caves, whose arches could not protect against 16 inch shells, field fortifications, warehouses, shore batteries, trucks, and other rebel infrastructure.
The red bar is the range of the actual fire of 406 mm guns, the blue is 203 mm guns. Green - proposed in the 90s hypersonic active-reactive 406-mm projectile with ramjet engine
More than once or twice, his fire unlocked the American units, literally burning the Vietnamese surrounding them from the face of the earth. Once the battleship sank a whole caravan of small cargo ships with supplies for the rebels. In general, it was the most successful artillery bombardment in recent history, the number of rebel objects, their positions, units of heavy weapons and equipment that died under the shells of “New Jersey” was estimated at many hundreds, the number of killed - at thousands, more than a dozen small vessels were destroyed with cargo. Repeatedly battleship with its fire ensured the success of American attacks on a scale up to and including the division. During the operation, the battleship spent 5688 rounds of the main caliber and 14891 127-mm round. This was incomparably more than any battleship expended during World War II.
Nevertheless, such a combat example, with all the effectiveness of the battleship fire, turned out to be the only one. Moreover, as is known today, precisely because of extreme success, Nixon planned to use the threat to use the battleship again as an incentive for the Vietnamese to return to negotiations, and his recall as encouragement for fulfilling American requirements.
In 1969, the battleship was again withdrawn from service, although at first they wanted to use it to pressure North Korea, which shot down an American reconnaissance aircraft in neutral airspace, but then changed their minds and the ship again went to reserve.
The combat use of the battleship in Vietnam, as it were, somehow drew a line in its existence as an artillery warship. If until the end of the fifties it was a means of warfare both against the fleet and against the coast, in Vietnam a purely artillery ship was used as a means against the coast. He did not have an adversary at sea, but assuming that the battleship would have to fight against the same Navy of the USSR, we have to admit that in its pure form it was of dubious value.
On the other hand, supported by missile ships capable of “taking on” the entire missile salvo of the USSR Navy, the battleship still had serious combat value in the early seventies. In any case, if the volley of Soviet ships had not reached the target, and if the missiles had already been used up, then the only option for our ships would have been flight. Moreover, this flight would be a problem - the modernized Iowas could reach 34 knots and it was still impossible to counter anything with their guns and armor in the 70s. But, with the caveat, if other ships would repulse the missile strike of the Navy completely, before the missiles are exhausted.
Thus, the classic purely artillery battleship was no longer in second place after the aircraft carrier, but followed the modern ships, both aircraft carriers and missile ones. Now its combat value was limited to the narrow scope of the situation of finishing off the enemy, who shot all his missiles and no more. Again, in conditions when the number of anti-ship missiles aboard any Soviet ship was calculated in a few units, battleships protected by URO ships could play a role in the battle. Let it be secondary. So by the end of the sixties - the beginning of the seventies, it could already be said that the classic battleship with artillery as the only weapon was almost in the past.
Almost, but not quite. And at least the Vietnamese could tell a lot about this.
In reality, “almost in the past” soon turned into its exact opposite. On the approach was a new and very unexpected turn in the evolution of battleships. And before their real departure into the past, there were still many more years. Dozens.
The most shock and missile ships in the world
The brightest page in the history of the battleship as a weapon system is the last decade of the Cold War. The Reagan Crusade against our country, which America won. Including won at sea, albeit without real battles. In the rout.
A team from Reagan himself, his Minister of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Minister of the Navy John Lehman was able to ensure a sharp change in the balance of power in the oceans, so fast and large-scale that the Soviet Union could not answer. Together with the unbridled pressure that the Americans launched against the USSR in Europe and the enormous support for the militants in Afghanistan, along with other measures to sabotage and pressure exerted on the Soviet state, the growth of American power at sea directly contributed to Gorbachev's surrender.
The Americans were preparing for war. And they prepared in such a way that they were able to literally hypnotize the Soviet leadership with their power - quite real, I must say.
The U.S. Navy was decisive in this crusade. This concerned all and first of all, new means of warfare, such as the Tomahawk cruise missiles and the AEGIS system, new, almost untraceable Soviet submarine submarines, and qualitatively modernized old ones, the anti-submarine defense efficiency jumped, the carrier fleet and numerical superiority in ships all classes convincingly showed the Soviet leadership the complete futility of attempts to resist.
Battleships were given a significant role in these plans. Since the 70s, Americans knew about the progress made in the USSR in anti-ship missiles and knew about new shipbuilding programs, such as Project 1164 missile cruisers, Project 1144 heavy nuclear missile cruisers, and the latest multi-mode supersonic Tu-22M missile carriers. They knew that the USSR was planning to create a new supersonic aircraft for vertical take-off and landing for aircraft-carrying cruisers, and understood that this would sharply increase their combat potential, and they were also aware of the work being started on future aircraft carriers for aircraft with horizontal take-off and landing. All this required, firstly, numerical superiority, and secondly, superiority in firepower.
In the early 80s, the services of American sailors had a symmetrical response to Soviet anti-ship missiles - the anti-ship version of the Tomahawk missile. And there was Harpoon, mastered by industry and the Navy, a very difficult target for the then Soviet naval air defense systems. Conceptually, the Americans were going to fight with aircraft carrier groups (ship connection with one aircraft carrier) and aircraft carrier formations (more than one aircraft carrier with the corresponding number of escort ships). In the early eighties, when the program for increasing the number of naval forces was launched, the idea was born to strengthen the aircraft carrier groups, which it was intended to have 15, and 4 surface combat groups (Surface action group-SAG), created not "around" the aircraft carriers, but with battleships in as the main combat force, which would have to operate in areas of the oceans that are either outside the combat radius of Soviet aviation (meaning the combat radius without refueling in the air) or close to the limiting radius, or in other cases when the threat is from Soviet aviation Iation would be low.
Such a region, for example, could be the Mediterranean Sea, if it were possible to ensure the presence of NATO aviation in the airspace of Turkey and Greece, the Persian Gulf and the entire Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, where the USSR had a reliable ally in the person of Cuba and in other similar places. The main objective of surface combat groups was to become Soviet surface forces.
This is a very important point - the battleships, which in the sixties could no longer be full-fledged instruments for gaining dominance at sea, returned to service in such a capacity as an instrument of struggle against the enemy fleet.
The evolution of views on the combat use of the battleship in the 80s was not easy, but in principle it fits into the following chain. Beginning of the 80s - the battleship will support the landings with artillery fire and hit Soviet ships with missiles and, in the mid-80s, everything is the same, but the tasks are changing, now the fight with the Soviet fleet is priority, and support for the landing is secondary, the second half of the 80s now the support of the landing has been removed from the agenda altogether, but the Tomahawks with a nuclear warhead have been added to strike along the coast, which meant that the USSR now has one more headache - besides SSBNs with SLBMs, besides aircraft carriers with nuclear bombs, now Soviet Ugric territories zhayut and more ships with "Tomahawk" of which at the beginning of the 80 most armed planned to make "Iowa".
Naturally, for this they needed to be modernized, and they were modernized. By the time of modernization, the anti-ship version of the Tomahawk was removed from the agenda and these missiles hit the battleships only in the option for coastal strikes, and the Harpoon anti-ship missile and, if possible, artillery were assigned the tasks of hitting surface targets.
The upgraded ships received completely new radars, upgraded radio-electronic weapons to modern standards, systems for the mutual exchange of information, which included ships in automated naval control systems, and satellite communications systems. It was possible to use the instruments of hydroacoustic resistance to torpedoes "Niksi". Battleships later received everything necessary for the use of the Pioneer UAV. Then such a UAV in real military operations was used by Wisconsin. Aft were equipped landing sites for helicopters. But the main thing was the update of weapons. Instead of a portion of the Iowa’s 127-mm universal cannons, they received 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles deployed in lifting launchers with armored protection ABL (Armored Box Launcher). Now this amount is not impressive, but then there was nothing like that anymore.
UAV landing on the Iowa, 1986. We look at the equipment of the sailors, then for a year, we think
The Mk.41 launchers were just around the corner, and the battleships turned out to be the rocket salvo champions. Each battleship had 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles against surface ships, which was also a lot. A larger number could only be loaded into launchers of the mk.13 or mk.26 type, but these launchers made it possible to launch Harpoons with an interval of at least one rocket in 20 seconds for mk.13 and two rockets in 20 seconds for mk.26.
But mk.141 for the “Harpoons” on the battleships made it possible to carry out a very dense volley with a small scope, which was critical for the “breakdown” of air defense of the latest Soviet missile ships, such as the cruiser 1144, for example.
View of the launcher "Harpoon" and Zak "Falanks". From the other side the same thing.
In their final version, the battleships each carried 32 Tomahawks, 16 Harpoons, 3 HA towers with three 406 mm guns each, 12 127 mm universal artillery mounts and 4 20 mm six-barrel Falanks. Launchers for Stinger MANPADS were equipped. Their armor, as before, provided impenetrability with light (250 kg) bombs and unguided missiles, as well as light guided ones.
The attack of the ship’s assault aviation regiment on the Yak-38, delivered without nuclear weapons, the battleship was almost guaranteed to survive.
Start KR "Tomahawk" on board the battleship.
Were the ideas to use these ships against the Soviet Navy realistic? More than.
The composition of the surface combat group was supposed to be a battleship, one missile cruiser of the Ticonderoga type and three destroyers Arly Burke. Actually, battle groups began to form before the United States turned on the Burke production line and their composition turned out to be different. But missile ships with highly effective air defense were part of them from the very beginning. And the situation when the Soviet KUG and the American NBG came closer, exchanging first salvos of anti-ship missiles, then firing at each other with anti-aircraft missiles (which after repulsing multiple attacks of anti-ship missiles would be few), and as a result, would leave the remaining forces of artillery battle distance, it was quite real one.
Surface combat group with the call sign "Romeo". The collision of the Soviet Kug from, for example, RKR pr. 58, KRL pr 68bis, a couple of three of any TFR or destroyers (except for the 956th project) with such an NBC would become fatal for our
And then 406-mm guns would say a very weighty word, no less than the 16 "Harpoons" before. Naturally, this would be true if the missile ships could protect the battleship from Soviet missiles, albeit at the cost of their death.
American and Australian ships in a joint battle group. The destruction of such a compound without nuclear weapons would require the efforts of a whole fleet and would have a great price
The joint use of battleships and aircraft carriers was also planned. Unfortunately, the Americans, who have declassified their strategic and operational documents regarding the revival of battleships, still keep their tactics secret, and we can only speculate on some issues. But the fact that battleships regularly practiced the destruction of surface targets with artillery fire during the SINKEX surface ship destruction exercises is a fact.
SINKEX'89 ship destruction exercises, fired by Missouri
One way or another, but in the first half of the 80s, the battleships again got into operation. In its original quality - instruments of the struggle for supremacy at sea. Now, however, they were more likely an element of a single Navy system, an element that was responsible for specific tasks, and did not occupy the first or second place in importance. But the fact that the power of surface combat groups without aircraft carriers with battleships was much higher than without them is a fact that simply cannot be denied.
Further known. Ships went into operation in the amount of four units. The first, in 1982 - LK “New Jersey”, the second, in 1984 “Iowa”, in 1986 “Missouri”, and in 1988 “Wisconsin”. From 1988 to 1990 in the world there were four battleships in the ranks. As many as the USSR had aircraft-carrying cruisers and more than there were aircraft carriers in the UK.
Not bad for a class of ships that were replaced by aircraft carriers in World War II!
Battleships were actively used by the US Navy as an instrument of pressure on the USSR. They went to the Baltic Sea and carried out artillery fire there, went to Norway, made voyages in the Sea of Okhotsk. The American nation was on the rise, the idea of confronting the Communists captured the masses, in response to creating Tom Clancy, the game “Harpoon” and films about “fur seals”. Despite the “cranberries” of these works, they convey the spirit of the era like nothing else, however, from the American side. Few people know, but in cinemas during the screenings of the action movie about Top Gan naval aviation, navy recruiting centers worked, and a lot of young people went directly to the fleet from the movie show. This ideological upsurge affected how American sailors prepared to fight the USSR and how they demonstrated this readiness to their Soviet "colleagues." Battleships, with their military glory from World War II and the latest missile weapons for the 80s, were here to a place like nowhere else.
Perry fully provided air defense and partially anti-aircraft defense, battleship - offensive capabilities. Even such a couple was dangerous and required serious forces for its destruction
The battleships had to fight, however, again against the shore. “New Jersey” twice, on December 14, 1983 and February 8, 1984, fired from the main caliber guns at the positions of the Syrian army in Lebanon.
"Missouri" and "Wisconsin" were noted during the 1991 Gulf War. Battleships conducted very intense and painful shelling of Iraqi positions and structures, using UAVs for reconnaissance and guidance of guns, with the number of main projectile shells shot in the hundreds, and in total two ships exceeded a thousand.
The Americans claim that one of the Iraqi units even intentionally showed UAV operators from Wisconsin their intention to surrender (and surrendered) so as not to fall under fire from 406-mm shells again. The ships also used Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraq, Missouri fired 28 missiles, and Wisconsin 24. The operations of these ships again proved to be very successful, as before in all the wars where they were used.
The Gulf War (1991). Launch of the Tomahawk CD from the Missouri missile launcher across Iraq
Of the four battleships, only the Iowa did not fight during the last reactivation, due to an accidental explosion in one of the main-caliber towers that put an end to the ship’s real military career. However, this ship also had a propaganda and psychological effect on the enemies of the United States.
Since 1990, the era of battleships ends truly. October 26, 1990 is withdrawn to the reserve "Iowa", February 8, 1991 "New Jersey", September 30 of the same year, "Wisconsin" and March 31, 1992 "Missouri".
This day became the real end of active military service of battleships in the world, and not some other. At the same time, one must understand that they were not written off at all, they were simply taken back to the reserve. The Navy no longer needed these ships. Their operation was a problem - for a long time no spare parts were manufactured for them, maintaining technical readiness required a lot of effort and money. The last reactivation alone stood at $ 1,5 billion. The problem was specialists in ancient boiler-turbine power plants and turbo gear units. For a long time neither gun barrels nor liners for their barrels were produced. Such platforms were justified as long as it was necessary to squeeze the USSR and until ships appeared with installations for the vertical launch of missiles. Then they were no longer there, there were no such enemies with whom they would have to fight. Perhaps, if the renaissance of Chinese power had begun in the early 90s, we would again have seen these giants in service, but in the 90s the United States simply had no enemies at sea.
Congress, however, did not allow these ships to be completely decommissioned from the reserve until 1998, and only then they began to be remade into museums, removing the last battleship - "Iowa" from the lists of reserve warships already in 2011.
So why are they no more?
To summarize, to begin with: we cannot talk about any “death of a battleship” as a military weapon during the Second World War, until the mid-fifties, battleships regularly served in the fleets of different countries, they even had to fight with the Americans and French. Battleships remained a popular combat weapon in a war at sea another 10 years after the Second World War ended, their theory of combat use continued to be developed in many countries, and two countries - France and Great Britain even introduced a battleship into the combat structure of the Navy after the war. At the same time, in the USA and Britain, battleships from the time of the war were not written off, but kept in reserve. The Americans regularly upgraded their ships.
The USSR was left without battleships in 1955 and forced - due to the explosion of Novorossiysk, otherwise, this ship would have been in service for a long time.
After 1962, only four Iowa-class battleships remained in the US Navy reserve. Subsequently, they participated in three military conflicts (Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq) and in the “cold” confrontation with the USSR. Moreover, in terms of their strike potential in the late 80s of the twentieth century, they were one of the most powerful ships in the world, although they could no longer act without the support of more modern URO ships. The theory of the combat use of modernized missile-armed battleships was also actively developed, these were real warships and not museum exhibits in the service, and they fought effectively, albeit a little. Finally, the last battleship dropped out of the active combat personnel in 1992, and from the reserve in 2011.
So what finally led to the disappearance of the battleships? These are clearly not aircraft carriers, the examples above show well that aircraft carriers have nothing to do with it, if this were so, then the battleships would not have had 46 years of service after WWII, including combat use. Perhaps the authors of the second version of the myth of the disappearance of the battleship are right - those who believe that the point is the appearance of missile weapons and nuclear warheads to it?
But this purely logically cannot be the reason - otherwise the same Americans would not have done with their battleships what they did with them in the 80s. The battleship, of course, is vulnerable to nuclear weapons - but this is true for all ships, the first ships in which protective measures against nuclear weapons were constructively implemented appeared much later.
The battleship is naturally vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. But much less than, for example, frigates of the Knox type or the previous ones, Garcia. But these ships served for a long time and the class “frigate” itself did not disappear. So this argument is not consistent. In addition, the battleship itself, as the 80s showed, was a fully-fledged carrier of missile weapons; its dimensions made it possible to place a very impressive missile arsenal on it. For the old large missiles of the 60s, this was all the more true, and projects for remaking battleships into missile ships existed.
And if you divide the question "why did the battleships disappear" into two - why were the existing battleships written off and why they did not build new ones? And here suddenly the answer appears to be partially “hidden” - all countries that had battleships “pulled” them for a rather long time and often wrote off them only when they were no longer fit for nothing simply due to physical wear and tear. An example is the USSR, in which battleships designed before World War I were in service until 1954. And the US is also an example - the South Dakota stood in reserve, ready to return to duty before the early sixties. With the "Iowa" and so everything is obvious.
Only Great Britain wrote off the battleships that could still serve, and we know that it was a banal lack of money, operational and tactical arguments that required to leave at least a couple of battleships, the British had exactly as much as light in the Soviet Navy Project 68 bis cruisers.
Speaking of extinction. Battleships left the battlefield only by the physical depreciation and obsolescence of each particular ship, with the exception of Great Britain, which had no money. There was simply no such thing as a good and relatively new battleship that the economy could contain that was cut into needles. Nowhere. And this means that such ships had combat value to the very end. And it really was.
The key to answering the question “why did the battleship disappear” lies in the answer to the question: why did they stop building them? After all, the battleships fought before the early nineties and fought well, and even their large guns in all the wars where they were used were “out of place”.
In fact, a complex set of reasons led to the disappearance of the battleship. There was not one, one would not have led to the disappearance of this class of ships.
The battleship was an expensive and complex ship. Very large-caliber guns alone required a high-class industry, to speak of artillery fire control devices or radars. The same USSR simply “did not pull” the battleship, although the gun was made, but the gun is only a gun. Equally difficult and expensive was the training of the crew for such a ship. These costs, both from the point of view of money and from the point of view of waste of resources, were justified exactly as long as the "battleship" tasks could not be solved in other ways. For example, fire support for the landing using naval artillery. Was it worth it to build a battleship?
No, it was possible to concentrate more ships with medium caliber artillery. An assault force with enemy resistance may have to land once every fifty years, and less often in some countries. If for such cases "in stock" there is a battleship - good. No, it’s okay there are other ships, they will have to spend a total of a hundred shells instead of one battleship, but if necessary, they will solve the problem. There is aviation, if we have an enemy in the trenches and are dispersed in the terrain, then it can literally be napalm, if it is in the bunker, that is, it is possible to accurately put a bomb in the bunker. Both aviation and smaller classes of ships are inferior in strength to a battleship ... but the task is solved without building a battleship. So, you can not build it.
Or take the destruction of surface ships. For this there is aviation, there are cruisers, and just from the end of the fifties, there were nuclear submarines. And they are more useful than a battleship, they still have to be built, and they carry out the task of destroying NKs, so why a battleship?
Of course, everything fell into this piggy bank - an aircraft carrier, pushing the battleship to second place in the “ranking card” of warships, anti-ship missiles, which really represented a threat to such a ship, and nuclear weapons against which the battleship had no advantages over the ship easier.
Ultimately, the battleship left because there were no tasks for which its construction would be justified. They could be solved by other forces, which in any case would have to have. And there was simply no room left for the battleship. It is not conceptually obsolete, if we talk about its hypothetical modern missile and artillery version, and those battleship models that served, remained in demand and useful for the very end, just after a certain moment it became possible to do without it. Moreover, it was better with him than without him, but it was no longer important. The expenditure of the enormous money that the construction of the battleship cost was not justified under the conditions when other forces could solve all its tasks. Often, solving is worse than a battleship. But then, it’s “shareware”.
The battleship in the final version disappeared because it turned out to be too expensive and difficult to solve the tasks that it was intended to solve. While it was non-alternative as a tool, one country after another was invested in its possession. As soon as it became possible to do without him, everyone began to do without him. Save. And saved. This is the real reason, and not in aircraft carriers, atomic bombs, missiles, or something like that.
We can safely say today that the battleships “died for natural reasons” - physically aged. And new ones did not appear because of the unjustifiably high price, laboriousness and resource-intensiveness of production, because all the tasks that they solved earlier could now be solved differently. Cheaper.
However, if we remove the word “artillery” from the definition of a battleship given earlier, the idea that such ships have disappeared will in general become somewhat dubious. But this is a completely different story.
For the West, this is an atomic linear cruiser with guided missile weapons. So they classify these ships. And if there was more serious armor? After all, the difference between battlecruiser and battleship is in it. The question "where did the battleship disappear" could lose its meaning, at least in the West. But, again, this is another story ...