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Originally Posted by brandon_tortle
what the us navy needs is the ddx class battleship with a power plant strong enough to power several rail gun turrents would greatly reduce the need for aircraft carriers. someone mentioned that the iowa class battle ships have only fixed guns and no aircraft. that is untrue the iowa class lost its broadside turrets for tomahawk missle turrets the iowa class battleship also lost its manned prop plane they used to cat apult from the rear main turret . the mannned plane was replaced with a smaller remote controlled plane. both of these planes served the same pupose on the battleship target aquistion and veryify that target was destroyed.the ddx will use sattelites for targetting
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The Iowa's only gave up two pairs of the 5"/38 on each side when they recieved their overhaul in the eighties (1981-1982) leaving them with three 5"/38 mounts two fore and one aft to make up her secondary battery. Upon overhaul she also recieved four Tomahawk missle batteries on each side of the ship as well as two batteries of Harppon missles on each side of the ship. Also added was the phalanx cannons (CIWS) being two mounts on each side of the ship along with various electronic upgrades. So in reality she only lost two sets of 5"/38 on each side and still very capable of broadsides with the remaining three sets along with the main 16"/50 guns.
The picture below shows New Jerseys secondary mounts while being towed to her berth in New Jersey. Note you can only see two 5"/38 on each side. The aft set is out of view. But three sets remain. All of the Iowas carried float planes. 3 OS2U Kingfisher planes (1943-1945) 2 Curtiss SC1 Seahawk floatplanes ( 1945-1947) 1 Sikorsky HO3S-1 helicopter (1951-1953) and finally from 1983 on they carried 1 Kayman SH-2 Seasprite helicopter. These ofcoarse were before they started carrying the unmanned drone planes for recon purposes.