The disappearance of battleships as a class of warships is instructive in some way. However, this process is shrouded in myths that were created relatively recently and make it difficult to perceive the "battleship" history correctly. 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 super-large caliber artillery are dead, and this is final. On the other hand, the question is quite interesting, as it allows us to understand the patterns in the development of weapons systems and military thought, but this is just what matters.
Defining in terms
To discuss such a serious issue, you need to define the terminology. In the English-speaking world, instead of the term "battleship" (ship of the line), the word "battleship" was used - a ship for battle or a ship for battle. This term automatically makes us understand that we are talking about ships capable of both firing at other ships and withstanding their return fire. So, battleships of the times of the Russo-Japanese War in the Western mind are also battleships, and, in fact, the fate of these ships is very consistent with their foreign name. In a curious way, a battle ship was once a line-of-battle ship, or 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 a battleship and another artillery ship? The fact that the first of them is at the top of the power of the fleet. There are no ships that would be stronger than him in battle. It is the battleship battleship that is the basis of the battle order of the fleet in battle, all other classes of ships occupy a subordinate or dependent position in relation to it. At the same time, he also inflicts the main damage to the enemy (in this case, other forces can also finally finish off the enemy's ships).
Let's define a battleship as follows: a large armored artillery battleship capable, based on its firepower, protection, survivability and speed, to conduct a long fire battle with enemy ships of all classes, firing at them from onboard weapons until they are completely destroyed, to maintain combat effectiveness when the ship is hit ammunition of an enemy for which there is no class of ships armed with the same power or more powerful weapons and at the same time having the same or better protection
This definition, although not perfect, but as succinctly as possible describes what battleships were and what they were not, and allows us to move on.
Today, not a single fleet has battleships in service. But how did these lords of the oceans go down in history?
First a myth. It sounds like this: During the Second World War, it became clear that armored artillery ships were not able to withstand carrier-based aircraft, which led to 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 cannons and armor became a rudiment that did not give anything in the course of hostilities, which led to the refusal of the leading naval powers from battleships. Let's say right away that this myth in some places intersects with reality, it is closer to it, but still it is a myth. Let's prove it. Let's start with the aircraft carriers.
Aircraft carrier myth and realities of World War II
During the Second World War, hostilities were fought in the seas washing Northern Europe (Norwegian, Barents, North, Baltic), in the North Atlantic, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea, Pacific Ocean. Episodic clashes took place in the Indian Ocean, South Atlantic, unlimited submarine warfare was fought mainly in the North Atlantic and the Pacific. 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 does not mean the only one. With a coordinated attack and air cover, the Japanese could, in theory, use their large artillery ships against US aircraft carriers. Moreover - albeit by accident, but once used, in Leyte Gulf in 1944, off the island of Samar.
Then the connection Taffy 3 - a group of six American escort aircraft carriers with escort ships came across a connection of the Imperial Navy with battleships and cruisers. The little escorts had to flee, one of them was sunk, the rest were seriously damaged, while the American commander Admiral Sprague had to literally put out his cover ships, 7 destroyers, throwing them into a suicidal attack against the superior Japanese ships. The aircraft themselves from aircraft carriers, despite desperate attacks, were able to sink one cruiser and damage two, destroyers damaged one more, and the Americans themselves lost one aircraft carrier, three destroyers, all other aircraft carriers and four destroyers were severely damaged, with heavy losses of personnel.
In general, this episode of the battle (the battle near the island of Samar) leaves the impression that the Japanese simply psychologically broke down, faced with desperate, stubborn resistance from the Americans, which included numerous examples of the personal sacrifice of sailors and pilots who saved their aircraft carriers from death, including mass self-sacrifice. … And the day before, the unit had been exposed to air strikes for many hours in a row, having lost one of its most powerful ships - the battleship Musashi. The Japanese could well have "broken", and, apparently, they did.
If the Japanese commander Kurite went to the end, regardless of losses and fierce resistance, it is not known how it would have ended. The battle near the island of Samar showed that armored artillery ships are quite capable of inflicting losses on aircraft carriers, while ensuring a surprise attack.
The battle in Leyte Gulf also showed the limits of aviation's capabilities when striking large surface ships in general and battleships in particular. The day before the battle near the island of Samar, the Kurita formation was subjected to massive air strikes, in which the air groups of five American aircraft carriers participated. For 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 were only able to hit the Yamato twice, twice in the Nagato and damage several smaller ships. The compound retained its combat capability and continued to participate in the battles the next day. Once again, we will repeat - all this without a single Japanese aircraft in the air.
Was it a realistic option for the Japanese to throw their artillery ships into battle against American aircraft carriers, using air cover, or, taking advantage of the busyness of the aviators, showdowns with each other? Quite. Leyte showed that the lifetime of a surface formation under massive air strikes can be calculated for many days, after which it still retains its combat effectiveness.
Well, what happens when an artillery ship suddenly finds itself in the range of fire on an aircraft carrier was well shown by the destruction of "Glories" by German raiders in 1940.
Could all this lead to a change in the course of the war?
No. Why? Because with a successful entry into the range of artillery fire, the Japanese battleships would collide with the American ones. It was in the first year of the war that the Americans had serious imbalances in forces caused by both the losses at Pearl Harbor and the initial lack of forces in the Pacific, but since 1943 everything has changed and they have formed very balanced formations of aircraft carrier and artillery ships.
And regardless of whether the American aviation was busy or not, it could attack the Japanese or not, the weather would allow it to fly or not, and the Japanese would not be able to attack American aircraft carriers, an artillery battle in which the Americans had an overwhelming superiority and in the number of trunks, and in the quality of fire control.
In fact, battleships were the "insurance" of aircraft carriers, providing their air defense, ensuring that they could not be destroyed by artillery ships and insuring against bad weather or large losses in aircraft. And this was really a necessary element of their power, which by the very fact of its existence deprived the enemy of the opportunity to arrange a massacre, piling on the aircraft carriers with an armored mass.
In turn, the Japanese aviation against the American battleships proved to be even worse than the American against the Japanese, at times. In fact, the attempts of the Japanese to attack American battleships from the air, when the latter could be "got" by aviation, ended with the beating of the aircraft, not the ships. In fact, in the war in the Pacific, American battleships often performed tasks that are nowadays performed by URO ships with AEGIS systems - they repulsed massive air strikes and the effectiveness of this defense was very high.
But all this pales against the backdrop of a comparison of the effectiveness of battleships and aircraft carriers in strikes along the coast. Contrary to popular belief, US carrier-based aircraft performed poorly in strikes against ground targets - much worse than army aircraft could show themselves under the same conditions. Compared to the devastating effect of large-caliber artillery bombardment, the strikes of the deck ships were simply "nothing." Battleships and heavy cruisers of World War II and the first years after it, by the power of their fire along the coast, remained unattainable until now.
Yes, aircraft carriers have pushed battleships out of the first place in importance. But there was no question that they allegedly "survived from the light". Battleships were still valuable and useful warships. No longer 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 was much lower than with them, and the risks were much higher.
As one American officer quite rightly pointed out, the main force at sea in the war in the Pacific was not an aircraft carrier, but an aircraft carrier formation consisting of aircraft carriers and fast battleships, cruisers and destroyers.
And all this, we repeat, in the war in the Pacific. In the Atlantic, the main force turned out to be escort aircraft carriers with anti-submarine air groups and base aviation, in the rest of the theater of operations, the role of aircraft carriers was auxiliary, artillery ships, destroyers and submarines turned out to be more important. It was partly a matter of geography; often surface ships could rely on basic aircraft, but only partly.
Thus, the idea that battleships disappeared due to the appearance of aircraft carriers does not hold up to scrutiny on closer inspection. During the Second World War, nothing of the kind happened. Moreover, and this is the most important thing, nothing of the kind happened after the Second World War.
Place and role of battleships in the first post-war decade
The myth that battleships were "eaten" by aircraft carriers is shattered by the fact that their history did not end with the end of World War II. In this sense, the attitude towards these ships in different fleets is indicative.
Great Britain and France put into operation one battleship each, laid down or built earlier. In France it was the "Jean Bar" returned to the French, returned to service in 1949, the battleship of the "Richelieu" class, in Britain the new "Vanguard" in 1946. At the same time, old and worn-out ships designed in the late 30s were massively written off all countries, except for the USSR, where there was a severe shortage of surface ships and literally everything was used, up to the Finnish battleship. The United States, which had a colossal surplus of warships of all classes, massively removed unnecessary and obsolete ships to the reserve, but two of the four newest battleships "Iowa" remained in service. At the same time, one must understand that the Americans were able to withdraw from the reserve and reactivate old ships after decades of sludge, and the fact that their South Dakotas were in storage until the early sixties is somewhat indicative.
The years when battleships were scrapped are also indicative. This is the mid-fifties. Before that, the picture looked like this.
Battleships in service for 1953 (we don’t count the reserve, only active ships, we don’t count various Argentine and Chilean scrap metal 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 as a "training artillery ship", "Lorraine" of 1910 was also used as a training ship).
Italy - 2.
Great Britain - 1.
It should be understood that both the American South Dakotas and the British King Georgies could have been quickly reactivated and thrown into battle. Thus, battleships did not disappear anywhere after World War II.
After 1953, there was a landslide write-off, and in 1960, only the United States had the opportunity to use battleships in battle. Thus, we have to admit that until at least the beginning, but rather even until the mid-50s, battleships were quite a valuable weapon of war. As subsequent experience will show, this also remained in later years. A little later we will return to the reasons for the landslide decommissioning of battleships, this is also a very interesting question.
Consider the views on the use of battleships of that era.
A bit of theory
No matter how powerful aviation was in the mid-fifties, its use had (and still has in many ways) some limitations.
First, the weather. Unlike a ship, for airplanes, weather restrictions are much stricter, the banal strong crosswind over the runway makes flights impossible. An aircraft carrier is easier with this, it turns in the wind, but pitching and visibility limit the use of carrier-based aircraft 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 excitement, are approximately the same, but then everything was different, there were no aircraft carriers with a displacement of 90,000 tons.
Secondly, geography: if there are no air bases nearby, from which enemy aircraft can attack a ship, and the enemy has no aircraft carriers (generally or nearby), then surface ships operate relatively freely. A special case - there is an airbase, but it was destroyed by an air strike, for example, by bomber aircraft. No one in such conditions prevents a powerful warship from destroying weaker ships, ensuring the combat use of destroyers and minelayers, ensuring the blockade and interruption of enemy sea communications by the fact of its striking power. And, most importantly, nothing can be done with it. The speed of the battleship is such that no non-nuclear submarine of those years would have caught up with it, and torpedo boats, as combat experience (including under Leyte) showed, posed no threat to a high-speed and maneuverable ship with a large number of universal rapid-fire guns.
To cope with the battleship, in fact, they needed either a heavy aircraft carrier covered by artillery ships and destroyers or … yes, their own battleships. So it was during the Second World War, so it remained after it.
Adding aircraft 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 establishing air superiority.
Of course, sooner or later the enemy will get together and strike. The bombed airstrips will be restored, additional strike forces of aviation and fighters will be deployed, the battleship will be monitored by units of warships faster than it, the weather will improve and aircraft from the coast will be able to repeat what the Japanese showed in 1941 in during the battle at Kuantan, having sunk an English battleship and battle cruiser.
But by that time, a lot of things can be done, for example, you can manage to land a landing, seize a 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 forces raids on naval bases … With impunity.
In a way, an example of similar actions during the Second World War was the Battle of Guadalcanal, where the Japanese planned a landing under the cover of artillery ships and lost in a battle with American artillery ships - one separate aircraft could not stop them. Ten or twelve years later, nothing has changed.
It is significant how the battleship issue was seen in the USSR Navy. Seeing the danger in the attack by the superior naval forces of the enemy, the USSR understood that it would have to be solved mainly by aviation and light forces. At the same time, combat experience clearly indicated that it would be extremely difficult, if at all possible, however, given the post-war devastation, there were no options.
At the same time, there was a problem. To understand it, we will quote a document called "The need to build battleships for the Soviet Navy" by Vice Admiral S. P. Stavitsky, Vice Admiral L. G. Goncharov and Rear Admiral V. F. Chernyshev.
As the experience of the First and Second World Wars shows, the solution of strategic and operational tasks at sea only by means of submarines and aviation, without the participation of sufficiently strong groupings of surface ships, turns out to be problematic.
The immediate strategic and operational tasks facing our Navy are:
- preventing the enemy from invading our territory from the sea;
- assistance to offensive and defensive operations of the Soviet Army.
Subsequent tasks could be:
- ensuring the invasion of our troops into enemy territory;
- interruption of enemy ocean communications.
The immediate and subsequent strategic and operational tasks of the USSR Navy require the presence of strong and full-fledged squadrons in the composition of our fleets in the main naval theaters for their solution.
To ensure the proper combat power of these squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groupings of enemy surface ships, these squadrons should include battleships.
The situation at any of our main theaters does not exclude the possibility of the enemy entering their battleships on them. In this case, in the absence of battleships in the composition of our squadrons in the main naval theaters, their solution of operational and combat missions in the open sea off the enemy's coast becomes much more complicated.
The tasks of combating large groupings 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 grouping of heterogeneous forces the character of versatility, expanding the combinations of its combat use.
Finally, one cannot ignore the fact that only surface forces are capable of holding the occupied water area, and battleships are again needed to increase their combat stability in the struggle to hold it firmly.
Thus, our Navy needs battleships in each of the main naval theaters to ensure the proper striking power of our squadrons and their sufficient combat stability in battle against large groups of enemy surface ships, as well as to reliably ensure the combat stability of other formations when solving the latter tasks. associated with the retention of the occupied water area. At the same time, it should be noted that the question of building battleships is now putting on the agenda the question of building aircraft carriers.
This apparently refers to 1948. In any case, the commission to determine the appearance of the future Navy of the USSR, created by Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, made all her conclusions just then and V. F. Chernyshev was definitely part of it. In addition, 1948 is the year when both in the Royal Navy of Great Britain, and in the US Navy, and in the French and Italian navies, King George with Vanguard and South Dakota with Iowa are still in service. Richelieu”(on the way“Jean Bar”) and“Andrea Doria”. The "sunset of battleships" is not far away, but it has not yet come. What's important here?
These quotes are important:
The tasks of dealing with large groupings 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.
Namely - the weather, the availability of its aircraft in the required quantity - huge from the experience of World War II (remember how many aircraft were needed to drown the Musashi and what was required on the Yamato later), the fundamental ability of this aircraft to break through the anti-aircraft cover to the enemy's fleet (not guaranteed), the ability for low-speed submarines to deploy in advance in 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 have something to delay. And then, in 1948, these considerations were completely correct.
Finally, one cannot ignore the fact that only surface forces are capable of holding the occupied water area, and battleships are again needed to increase their combat stability in the struggle to hold it firmly.
In this case, in fact, we are talking about gaining time - the surface forces deployed in the designated area can stay there for weeks, or even months. No aviation can do that. And when the enemy appears, these surface forces can immediately join the battle, gaining time to lift attack aircraft from the shore and providing them with accurate target designation. The latter, by the way, is still relevant, according to the instructions adopted in the Navy, surface ships must provide guidance to the target of naval assault aircraft, and the Russian Navy still has a procedure according to which control of aircraft that have taken off for a strike is transferred to KPUNSHA (naval control and guidance point for assault aircraft).
How do you go into battle against three or four King George's? Even in 1948? Or against two and one Vanguard in 1950?
Actually, such considerations determined the presence of battleships in service with many countries in massive numbers after the Second World War. It's just that some had the question of how to meet the enemy line forces when they go forward to clear the way for aircraft carriers, while others - how to clear the way for aircraft carriers. But everyone gave the same answer.
At the same time, it is necessary to clearly understand that in the second half of the forties, the presence of several battleships in the fleet was affordable even for Argentina, it would be necessary, but only the Americans could master a full-fledged and numerous carrier-based aircraft, with a bunch of exaggerations - also the British. The rest had to be content with symbolic aircraft carrier forces, hardly capable of independently performing important operational tasks, or even doing without them at all. And, importantly, outside the scope of a potential conflict with the United States and England, the battleship was still a superweapon in naval warfare.
Thus, the idea that battleships were driven out by aircraft carriers during World War II is untenable. They did not disappear, but remained in the ranks, for a long time the theory of their combat use existed and was developed, they were even modernized. Abruptly battleships began to be decommissioned in 1949-1954, while some ships left the combat strength of their fleets forcibly - the British clearly did not pull military spending, and the USSR lost the Novorossiysk in the well-known 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 related to the disappearance of battleships. The reason is different.
The American Way. Large cannons in battles after World War II
Speaking about battleships and why they disappeared, we must remember that the last battleship in the world finally ceased to be at least formally a combat unit already in 2011 - it was then that the US Navy Iowa was finally decommissioned and sent to museification. If we take as the date of the final disappearance of battleships that when they were withdrawn from service, then this is 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 the 1991 Gulf War. It is worth remembering that the battleships were reactivated for the Last War with the USSR in the 80s. Reagan conceived a "Crusade" against the Soviet Union, a campaign that was supposed to finish off the USSR, it could well end in a "hot" war and the United States was actively preparing for such a development of events. They wouldn't back down. And the "600 ships" program to create a mega-fleet capable of dealing with the USSR and its allies everywhere outside the Warsaw bloc was a very important part of this preparation, and the return to service of battleships in a new capacity was an important part of the program. But first, these ships had to fight in other wars.
In 1950, the Korean War broke out. The American command, considering it necessary to provide the UN troops with powerful fire support, attracted battleships to operations against the DPRK troops and Chinese people's volunteers (CPV, Chinese military contingent in the DPRK). Two of the four existing Iowas were hastily reactivated (two battleships were in active service at that moment) and successively began to head towards the shores of the Korean Peninsula. Thanks to their powerful means of communication, battleships were well suited as a command center, and the power of their fire along the coast could be simply unparalleled.
From September 15, 1950 to March 19, 1951, the Missouri LK fought in Korea. From December 2, 1951 to April 1, 1952 - LC "Wisconsin". From May 17, 1951 to November 14, 1951 LC "New Jersey". From April 8 to October 16, 1952, the Iowa LK, previously withdrawn from the reserve, took part in the hostilities. Subsequently, huge ships periodically returned to the Korean shores, striking the coast with their monstrous guns. 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 - and 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 in service.
Then, in the early fifties, it was completely justified - the USSR could not have opposed anything other than nuclear bombing to these ships, if they were covered by destroyers.
They began to be withdrawn to the reserve again only in 1955, when the beginning of the missile era, the massive appearance of jet attack aircraft, and the much more massive proliferation of nuclear weapons than in the past became facts. We can mark the years 1955-1959 as a certain stage in the fate of battleships - somewhere at this time, and not earlier, they, in their original form, ceased to be considered as a real means of waging a war for supremacy at sea.
It was then that the Americans brought Iowa into reserve, now for a long time, then the British made the final decision to write off the battleships in reserve, including Vanguard, and it was in 1957 that Jean Bar left active service in the French Navy.
By the way, he almost had to fight during the Suez crisis in 1956. Jean Bart was supposed to bombard Port Said before the landing, but the bombing was canceled immediately after it began. "Jean Bar" managed to fire four volleys across Egypt and became strictly formally the sixth battleship in the world that took part in hostilities after World War II, after four "Iowas" and the French "Richelieu", which was noted in Indochina. The following year, "Jean Bar" was already retrained into a floating barracks.
So the ideologists of the attitude that "battleships were ousted 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 LK "New Jersey" was sent to the South China Sea, where he was involved in 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 operated there. American troops fought against them there. The New Jersey attacks began with strikes against the demilitarized zone, or rather, against the North Vietnamese troops present in it. In the future, the battleship as a "fire brigade" dangled along the coast, then to the south, then back to the north, urgently destroying the Vietnamese units that surrounded the Americans, destroying bunkers and fortifications in caves, the vaults of which could not protect from 16 inch shells, field fortifications, warehouses, coastal batteries, trucks, and other rebel infrastructure.
More than once or twice his fire unblocked the American units, literally burning the Vietnamese who surrounded them from the face of the earth. On one occasion, a battleship melted an entire caravan of small cargo ships carrying supplies for the rebels. In general, it was the most successful artillery bombardment in modern history, the number of insurgent objects, their positions, units of heavy weapons and equipment that died under New Jersey shells numbered in many hundreds, the number of killed - in thousands, more than a dozen small ships were destroyed with a load. Repeatedly, the battleship with its fire ensured the success of American attacks up to and including the division. During the operation, the battleship used up 5688 rounds of the main caliber and 14891 127-mm rounds. This was incomparably more than any battleship used up during World War II.
Nevertheless, such a combat example, with all the effectiveness of the battleship's fire, was the only one. Moreover, as it is known today, it was precisely because of the 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 an encouragement for fulfilling American requirements.
In 1969, the battleship was again withdrawn from service, although at first they wanted to use it to put pressure on North Korea, which shot down an American reconnaissance aircraft in neutral airspace, but then they changed their minds and the ship went back to reserve.
The combat use of the battleship in Vietnam, as it were, somehow summed up its existence as an artillery warship. If until the end of the fifties it was a means of waging war both against the fleet and against the coast, in Vietnam a purely artillery ship was used as a means against the coast. In principle, he did not have an enemy at sea, but, assuming that the battleship would have to fight against the same Soviet Navy, 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 over" 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 the missiles had already been used up, then the only option for our ships would have been flight. Moreover, this flight would have been a problem - the modernized Iowas could reach 34 knots, and it was still impossible to oppose anything to their guns and armor in the 70s. But, already with a proviso - if other ships would repel the missile strike of the Navy completely, until the missiles are exhausted.
Thus, the classic purely artillery battleship was no longer in second position after the aircraft carrier, but was following modern ships, both aircraft carrier and missile ones. Now its combat value was limited by the narrow framework of the situation of finishing off the enemy, who had fired off all their missiles and no more. Again, in conditions when the number of anti-ship missiles on board any Soviet ship was numbered in 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 - early 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 direct opposite. On the way there was a new and very unexpected round in the evolution of battleships. And there were still many years before their real departure into the past. Dozens.
The most shock and most rocket 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. Into the rout.
A team from Reagan himself, his Secretary of Defense Kaspar Weinberger and Minister of the Navy John Lehman was able to ensure a sharp change in the balance of power in the world's oceans, so rapid and large-scale that the USSR could not respond to it. Together with the unbridled pressure that the Americans began against the USSR in Europe and colossal support for the militants in Afghanistan, along with other measures of sabotage and pressure 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 managed to literally hypnotize the Soviet leadership with their power - quite real, I must say.
The US Navy played a decisive role in this crusade. This concerned all, and above all, new means of warfare, such as the Tomahawk cruise missiles and the AEGIS system, new submarines almost untraceable by the Soviet submarine, and the qualitatively made modernization of the old, abruptly increased effectiveness of anti-submarine defense, the aircraft carrier fleet and the numerical superiority in ships of all classes convincingly showed the Soviet leadership the complete futility of attempts to resist.
Battleships played a significant role in these plans. Since the 70s, the 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 Tu-22M multi-mode supersonic missile-carrying aircraft. They knew that the USSR was planning to create a new supersonic vertical take-off and landing aircraft for aircraft-carrying cruisers, and understood that this would dramatically increase their combat potential, and they were also aware of the beginning work 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 1980s, American sailors had a symmetrical response to Soviet anti-ship missiles - the anti-ship version of the Tomahawk missile. And there was also the Harpoon, which was mastered by the industry and the Navy, a very difficult target for the then Soviet shipborne air defense systems. Conceptually, the Americans were going to fight with aircraft carrier groups (ship formation with one aircraft carrier) and aircraft carrier formations (more than one aircraft carrier with a corresponding number of escort ships). In the early eighties, when the program for increasing the size of the Navy was launched, the idea was born to strengthen the aircraft carrier groups, which were planned to have 15, and also 4 surface combat groups (Surface action group-SAG), created not "around" aircraft carriers, but with battleships in as the main combat force that would have to operate in areas of the oceans, which are either outside the combat radius of Soviet aviation (meaning the combat radius without refueling in the air) or close to the maximum radius, or in other cases when the threat from Soviet aviation was would be low.
Such a region, for example, could be the Mediterranean Sea, if it was possible to ensure the presence of NATO aircraft in the airspace of Turkey and Greece, the Persian Gulf and the entire Indian Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, where the USSR had a reliable ally in the person of Cuba and in other similar places. The main target of the surface combat groups was to be the Soviet surface forces.
This is a very important point - battleships, which in the sixties could no longer be full-fledged instruments for conquering supremacy at sea, returned to service in this very capacity - as a weapon of struggle against the enemy fleet
The evolution of views on the combat use of a battleship in the 80s was not easy, but in principle it fits into the following chain. The 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 reversed, now the priority is the fight against the Soviet fleet, and the support of the landing is secondary, the second half of the 80s Now the support of the landing force was completely removed from the agenda, but Tomahawks with a nuclear warhead were added to strike the coast, which meant that now the USSR had one more headache - in addition to SSBNs with SLBMs, in addition to aircraft carriers with nuclear bombs, now Soviet the territory is also threatened by ships with "Tomahawks" of which at the beginning of the 80s it was planned to make "Iowa" the most armed.
Naturally, for this they had 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 strikes on the shore, and the tasks of defeating surface targets were assigned to the Harpoon anti-ship missile and, if possible, artillery.
The modernized ships received completely new radars, electronic weapons updated to modern standards, systems for mutual information exchange, which included ships in the automated control systems of the Navy, satellite communication systems. The possibility of using instruments for hydroacoustic counteraction to Nixie torpedoes was provided. A little later, the battleships received everything they needed to use the Pioneer UAV. Then such a UAV was used by Wisconsin in real military operations. Helicopter landing pads were equipped at the stern. But the main thing was the renewal of weapons. Instead of part of the 127-mm universal cannon, Iowa received 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles placed in lifting launchers with ABL (Armored Box Launcher) armor. Now this number is not impressive, but then there was simply nothing like that anymore.
The Mk.41 launchers were just on the way, and the battleships proved to be champions in missile salvo. Against surface ships, each battleship had 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, which was also a lot. A larger number could only be loaded into launchers of the mk.13 or mk.26 type, but these installations allowed the Harpoons to be launched at intervals of at least one missile of 20 seconds for the mk.13 and two missiles of 20 seconds for the mk.26.
But the mk.141 for "Harpoons" on battleships made it possible to perform a very dense volley with a small range, which was critical for the "breakdown" of the air defense of the newest Soviet missile ships, such as the cruiser 1144 for example.
In their final version, the battleships carried 32 Tomahawks, 16 Harpoons, 3 main battery turrets with three 406-mm guns each, 12 127-mm universal artillery mounts and 4 20-mm six-barreled Phalanxes. Launch pads were equipped for operators of the Stinger MANPADS. Their armor, as before, ensured immunity with light (250 kg) bombs and unguided missiles, as well as light guided missiles.
The attack of the ship's assault air regiment on the Yak-38, delivered without nuclear weapons, the battleship was almost guaranteed to survive.
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 Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser and three Arleigh Burke destroyers. In fact, the battle groups began to form before the United States turned on the assembly line for the production of Burks and their composition turned out to be different. But missile ships with very effective air defense were included in their composition from the very beginning. And the situation when the Soviet KUG and the American NBG approached, exchanging first volleys of anti-ship missiles, then firing anti-aircraft missiles at each other (which, after repelling repeated attacks of anti-ship missiles, would have been few), and as a result, the remnants of forces would have reached the distance of an artillery battle, was quite real.
And then 406-mm cannons would have said a very weighty word, no less than 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.
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, are still secret "tactics", and some questions can only be guessed at. But it is a fact that battleships regularly practiced the destruction of surface targets with artillery fire during the exercises for the destruction of SINKEX surface ships.
One way or another, but in the first half of the 80s, the battleships were back in operation. In their original capacity, they are instruments of the struggle for dominance at sea. Now, however, they were more likely an element of a single system of the Navy, an element that was responsible for specific tasks, and did not rank first or second in importance. But the fact that the power of non-carrier-based surface combat groups with battleships was much higher than without them is a fact that simply cannot be denied.
The rest is known. The ships entered service in the amount of four units. The first, in 1982 - LC "New Jersey", the second, in 1984 "Iowa", in 1986 "Missouri", and in 1988 "Wisconsin". From 1988 to 1990, there were four battleships in service in the world. As many as the USSR had aircraft-carrying cruisers and more than Britain had aircraft carriers.
Not bad for the class of ships that were replaced by aircraft carriers back 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 and conducted artillery fire there, went to Norway, made voyages in the Sea of Okhotsk. As the American nation was on the rise, the idea of opposing the communists took over the masses, in return spawning Tom Clancy, the Harpoon game, and the SEAL movies. For all the "cranberry" 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 naval aviation "Top Gun" recruiting points of the Navy worked, and a lot of young people went straight from the movie show to the navy. 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 combat glory from World War II and the latest missile weapons for the 80s, were here to the place like nowhere else.
The battleships had to fight, however, again against the coast. "New Jersey" twice, on December 14, 1983 and February 8, 1984, fired from the main battery at the positions of the Syrian army in Lebanon.
"Missouri" and "Wisconsin" were marked during the 1991 Gulf War. The battleships conducted very intense and painful shelling of Iraqi positions and structures, using UAVs for reconnaissance and targeting guns, and the number of shells fired from the main caliber was counted in hundreds, and in total, two ships exceeded a thousand.
The Americans claim that one of the Iraqi units even specifically indicated to the UAV operators from Wisconsin their intention to surrender (and surrendered) so as not to fall under fire with 406-mm shells again. Also, the ships used Tomahawk cruise missiles against Iraq, Missouri fired 28 missiles, and Wisconsin 24. The actions of these ships again proved to be very successful, as earlier in all wars where they were used.
Of the four battleships, only Iowa did not fight during the last reactivation, due to an accidental explosion in one of the main battery turrets, which 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 has truly come to an end. October 26, 1990 withdrawn to the Iowa reserve, February 8, 1991, New Jersey, September 30 of the same year, Wisconsin, and March 31, 1992, Missouri.
This day became the real end of the 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 - no spare parts were produced for them for a long time, 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 barrels for guns, nor liners for their barrels were produced. Such platforms were justified as long as it was necessary to pressurize the USSR and until ships with vertical missile launchers appeared. Then - there were no longer, there were no such enemies with whom they would have to fight. Perhaps, if the renaissance of Chinese power began in the early 90s, we would again see these giants in the ranks, but in the 90s the United States simply did not have enemies at sea.
Congress, however, did not allow these ships to be finally written off from the reserve until 1998, and only then they began to be converted into museums, removing the last battleship, Iowa, from the lists of reserve warships already in 2011.
So why aren't they anymore?
Let us summarize for a start: we cannot talk about any "death of a battleship" as a means of combat during World War II, until the mid-fifties, battleships regularly served in the fleets of different countries, they even had to fight for the Americans and French. Battleships remained a popular means of combat in the war at sea for another 10 years after the end of World War II, their theory of combat use continued to be developed in many countries, and two countries - France and Great Britain - even introduced the battleship into the combat composition of the Navy after the war. At the same time, in the United States and Britain, battleships during the war were not written off, but were kept in reserve. The Americans regularly upgraded their ships.
The USSR was left without battleships in 1955 and was 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. Later they took part in three military conflicts (Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq) and in the "cold" confrontation with the USSR. Moreover, in terms of their strike potential at the end of the 80s of the twentieth century, they were one of the most powerful ships in the world, although they could no longer operate without the support of more modern URO ships. The theory of the combat use of modernized battleships with missile weapons was also actively developing, these were real warships and not museum exhibits in service, and they fought effectively, albeit a little. Finally, the last battleship dropped out of active combat strength in 1992, and from the reserve in 2011.
So what ultimately led to the disappearance of battleships? These are clearly not aircraft carriers, the examples above show well that the aircraft carriers have nothing to do with it, if this were the case, then the battleships would not have had 46 years of service after WWII, including combat use. Maybe the authors of the second version of the myth about the disappearance of the battleship are right - those who believe that the matter is in the appearance of missile weapons and nuclear warheads for 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, the Knox-class frigates or the Garcia preceding them. But these ships served for a long time and the "frigate" class itself did not disappear anywhere. This means that this argument is not valid either. In addition, the battleship itself, as shown by the 80s, was a fully-fledged carrier of missile weapons, its dimensions made it possible to place a very impressive rocket arsenal on it. For old large missiles of the 60s, this was all the more true, and projects for converting battleships into missile ships existed.
And if we divide the question "why did the battleships disappear" into two - why were the existing battleships decommissioned and why weren't new ones built? And here the answer suddenly turns out to be partly "hidden" - all countries that had battleships "pulled" them for quite a long time and were often written off only when they were no longer good for anything simply due to physical wear and tear. An example is the USSR, which had battleships designed before the First World War were in service until 1954. And the United States is also an example - the South Dakotas were in reserve, ready to return to service until the early sixties. With "Iowami" and so everything is obvious.
Battleships that could still serve were written off only by Great Britain, and we know that it was a banal lack of money, operational and tactical arguments that required leaving at least a couple of battleships, the Britons had exactly as many as there were light ones in the Soviet Navy. cruiser project 68-bis.
Speaking of disappearance. Battleships went out of service only due to the physical wear and tear of each specific 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 support. Nowhere. This means that such ships had combat value until the very end. And it really was
The key to the answer to the question "why did the battleship disappear" lies in the answer to the question: why did they stop building them? After all, battleships fought until the beginning of the nineties and fought well, and even their large guns in all wars where they were used were "to the point."
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. Super-large-caliber guns alone required a high-class industry, what to speak of artillery fire control devices or radars. The same USSR simply did not "pull" the battleship, although they made a cannon, but a cannon is just a cannon. Equally difficult and expensive was the preparation of the crew for such a ship. These costs, both in terms of money and in terms of waste of resources, were justified exactly as long as the "battleship" tasks were not possible to solve in other ways. For example, fire support for an assault force using naval artillery. Was it worth building a battleship for this?
No, it was possible to concentrate more ships with medium-caliber artillery. Landing forces with enemy resistance, maybe once every fifty years, have to be landed, and in some countries even less often. If there is a battleship in stock for such cases, good. No, it's okay there are other ships, they will have to spend a total of one 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 dispersed over the terrain, then it can literally be poured with napalm, if it is in the bunker, that is, it is possible to accurately put a bomb in the bunker. Both aircraft and ships of smaller classes are inferior to a battleship in fire power … but the task is solved without building a battleship. This means that you don't have to 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 - nuclear submarines. And they are more useful than a battleship, they still have to be built, and they carry out the task of destroying the NK, so why a battleship?
Of course, everything fell into this piggy bank - an aircraft carrier, which pushed the battleship to second place in the "table of ranks" of warships, anti-ship missiles that really posed a threat to such a ship, and nuclear weapons, against which the battleship had no advantages over a simpler ship.
Ultimately, the battleship left because there were no such 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 conceptually not obsolete, if we talk about its hypothetical modern missile and artillery version, and those samples of battleships that were in service 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 that was no longer important. The expense of the huge money that the building of the battleship cost was not justified in conditions when all its tasks could be solved by other forces. Often, the decision is worse than the battleship. But then "shareware".
The final version of the battleship disappeared because it turned out to be too expensive and complicated tool for solving the problems it was intended to solve. While it was uncontested as a tool, one country after another invested in its possession. As soon as it became possible to do without him, everyone began to do without him. Save. And they saved. This is the real reason, not aircraft carriers, atomic bombs, missiles or anything like that.
We can safely say today that battleships "died of natural causes" - they have aged physically. And new ones did not appear due to the unjustifiably high price, labor intensity and resource intensity of production, because all the tasks that they solved earlier could now be solved differently. Cheaper.
However, if the word "artillery" is removed from the earlier definition of a battleship, then the idea that such ships have disappeared will generally become somewhat dubious. But that's a completely different story.
