does the Zumwalt being canceled change anyone's opinion on the Iowas?

[Michigan_Guy]

I kinda think the navy keeps a toe hold on the Iowa's not because of thier big guns at all, but because of their armor, speed, and utility. Not saying for conventional use, but more of an emergency situation thing. Likely to never happen, but who would have thought a little ski boat would blow a big hole in the USS Cole?

[Gun Grape]

nah. The navy would have cut the knot with the Iowas long ago if it hadn't been for ignorant Congressmen that insisted they be kept up.

[DreadnaughtHelper]

The Armor from the Scrapped Battleships and Cruisers was used for making the actual labs themselfs, once you melt the steal down, it is no longer pre 1945 steal.

[looking4NSFS]

I kinda think the navy keeps a toe hold on the Iowa's not because of thier big guns at all, but because of their armor, speed, and utility. Not saying for conventional use, but more of an emergency situation thing. Likely to never happen, but who would have thought a little ski boat would blow a big hole in the USS Cole?

I agree with this, well, not the "Navy keeps" part, since they seem at times to not to really want to keep them, the relatively small cost to maintain these ships in their current status seems fairly insignificant (yikes! in relationship to our current spending the comparison is ludicrous) in relationship to the fact we simply cannot make anything like them anymore. Regardless of "can they should they will they come back - and - "do they will they can they have value if brought back" the very fact we have them, we simply should not let them go. If you cannot imagine a reason we might need them again........ well........ our best and brightest minds didn't "imagine" airplanes being flown into buildings either. Since you cannot know the future, keep 'em, cause if in your wildest imaginations you come up with a plausible scenario for them, once they are gone........ they are gone. Never to return. This isn't sentimentality. It's the fact we have a relatively low cost asset that does not exist anywhere else in the world that is completely unique in design and capability.

[SnowLeopard]

Is pre-1945 steel really that hard to come by? There have got to be thousands of ships, tanks, planes, etc still in existance from pre-1945, not to mention all the non-military stuff like buildings, cars, etc. Does it have to be in massive pieces in order to be useful to physicists?

Where do you have these things in mind that they are still in existence? Aside from the museums, they might be kind of hard to find or at least get to.

Let's talk aircraft for a moment ....... and look at the problems that the CAF has in finding workable planes or parts. The history they portray of even a few years after WWII is quite dismal, targets and smelters.

Tanks. Well, a lot of them were used in the Arab-Israeli wars afterwards. Shermans, Panzer IV, Matildas (45 reported left), Cromwells (5 left) Numbers according to Wiki on others:

Panthers: 24
Tiger II: 11
Tiger I: 5
Black Prince: 1
Etc..

T-34's might be the best bet as that they are reported in the 100's. Shermans might also be a good bet.....depending on when they were made. This, of course, is assuming that anyone who has their hands on one or more is willing to give them up.

Keep in mind at least two things. First of all, at the end of fighting such a costly war as WWII, those still around are going do what they can to restore their economies.....and keeping the old stuff around doesn't figure into it. So they are scrap and sell as they can. Secondly, those buying the stuff to fight are going to use it to the maximum capability....and keeping things around that aren't doing a service isn't reasonable. Ie, scrap it instead. IMHO.

Ships: Now, those are the really interesting things, in what happened to them after WWII.

Operation Crossroads: 4 US BB's. 2 CV's, 2 cruisers, 11 DD's, 8 SS's, numerous other ships, the Sakawa and Nagato (Japan), Prinz Eugen (Germany).

Operation Deadlight: 110ish U-boats scuttled.

Go thru navsource and look at all the ships commissioned during WWII. Of those not lost during the war, odds are they have either been scrapped already or sunk as targets, either by the US or a foreign navies.

This is why they continued salvage for so long at Scapa Flow and on the Tirpitz. It's high quality metal that is radiation free....and was relatively easy to get to.

Things tend to get complicated, though, when it is sitting under several thousand feet of water, sitting under several thousand tons of dirt like the Admiral Scheer, is under someone else's ownership, it's a war grave, it's a source of diplomatic contest, it's in a heck of a place that makes scrapping not worth the cost (ie, the USS West Point), or not knowing where it is at all as with the Sao Paulo.

Happy Treasure hunting!
_______________________________________
(After being informed that the spy ship has gone down in unfriendly waters. "My God, Jack. How deep is the water there?"--Defense Minister Gray
"Not deep enough!"--First Sea Lord, (w,stte), "For Your Eyes Only")

[Kev 99]

Is pre-1945 steel really that hard to come by? There have got to be thousands of ships, tanks, planes, etc still in existance from pre-1945, not to mention all the non-military stuff like buildings, cars, etc. Does it have to be in massive pieces in order to be useful to physicists?

Divers have salvaged metals from Kronprinz William (German WW1 battleshipt) from the bottom of Scarpa Flow to use in satellites and medical equipment.

[SnowLeopard]

I think the need for this "pre-radiation" Iron may be historical. Some early nuclear weapons designs valued such steel, but those were from the 1940's and 50's, modern weapons (which aren't in production) don't really require this kind of material. The only application for significant amounts that I can think of would be some of the neutrino detectors proposed. And this is "pure" science, without any current applications, and probably no budget for large scale installations. The amount of radiation involved is so minute, that it only becomes important in sensitive instruments. Also we haven't been doing nuclear testing for many years and much of this radiation has decayed to background levels. Do you have any current infomation on this need?

Well, it is a number of things.

First of all, it isn't really about weapons design at all. It is about instrumentation and how steel is made. What the weapon is made out of has about zero to do with the issue.

Steel is made by sucking in large qualities of air. As of July 16, 1945, the background radiation of steel being made changed. And while we may or may not have been nuclear testing for years, this or that disaster has continued to put radiation into the air. Further, for stuff that has a half life of 3 or 4 digits or more, I'd say what we've done in testing or not over the past 40 years is something of a drop in the bucket.

At any rate, this site http://history.fnal.gov/vessels.html
explains what they do with the armor they have acquired.

Off hand, I'd say it's still a matter of consideration....when one considers the effort to recover U-Boats from Operation Deadlight in this century.
__________________________________________________ _
("And she was hot - as she kissed my mouth, She was hot - as I wiped her brow, She was hot - she pinned me to the ground....."--lyrics, (wtte), "She Was Hot", Rolling Stones)

[eocoolj]

Where do you have these things in mind that they are still in existence? Aside from the museums, they might be kind of hard to find or at least get to.

Well, for example, there were several WWII era cruisers in the US mothball fleet well into the 1990s. To the best of my knowledge, all of these were scrapped (except a museum ship or two). Did they use the steel from these ships for scientific instruments? The last ship to be scrapped was the USS Des Moines in 2006. Thats a massive amount of pre-nuke steel right there. I believe there are still a fair number of WWII era destroyers and support ships rusting away in reserve fleets around the world as well.

[edit] I may have to take that back about the Des Moines. After looking at her stats, I guess she wasnt commissioned till after the A bomb usage. Not sure how likely it is that all or some of her gun turrets, etc, were manufactured prior to the test.

[Maxor]

First nuclear bomb was july 16th 1945 the Des Moines was allready laid down at that point. She was launched in september of 46. Most of her structural major members are going to be pre blast. I'm betting alot of her superstructure plating was forged afterwards though.

[SnowLeopard]

Well, for example, there were several WWII era cruisers in the US mothball fleet well into the 1990s. To the best of my knowledge, all of these were scrapped (except a museum ship or two). Did they use the steel from these ships for scientific instruments? The last ship to be scrapped was the USS Des Moines in 2006. Thats a massive amount of pre-nuke steel right there. I believe there are still a fair number of WWII era destroyers and support ships rusting away in reserve fleets around the world as well.

[edit] I may have to take that back about the Des Moines. After looking at her stats, I guess she wasnt commissioned till after the A bomb usage. Not sure how likely it is that all or some of her gun turrets, etc, were manufactured prior to the test.

The rapid fire 8 inch cruisers are out of the consideration, 2 of them anyhow, as they were after Trinity. It's hard to say what the state of the Des Moines was at Trinity seeing how the keel was laid only two months before. Keep in mind that as a more modern design, it saw lots of use beyond WWII....but in WWII, ships may have had their keels laid but then took forever to be completed as resources were diverted elsewhere, as with the Alaska class.

The Okie was sent to the bottom by a Korean Mk 48 I believe. I imagine the Albany's armor was used somewhere but I have not been able to find confirmation of that but what it really comes down to that when one wants to find a WWII ship these days, look in a museum.

Quite frankly, they're gone!
_____________________________________
("Last time I saw one of these (a car) was in a museum."--West
"This car is ancient to us but new to them."--Robinson, realizing that they have gone back in time, (w,stte), "Lost in Space")

[eocoolj]

Well, we just sank an Essex Class carrier as an artificial reef in 2006. If obtaining the pre-nuke steel is such an issue, wouldnt they have cut her up and sold her rather than turning her into a scuba diver's tourist attraction?

[SnowLeopard]

Well, we just sank an Essex Class carrier as an artificial reef in 2006. If obtaining the pre-nuke steel is such an issue, wouldnt they have cut her up and sold her rather than turning her into a scuba diver's tourist attraction?

Look at the history: http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/34.htm ...... both for scrapping and construction. That ship had a lot of construction work done after Trinity. Now maybe the belt armor was never touched, but it takes a lot of scrapping before that section of the ship can be reached.

Scrapping ships takes a lot of capital, a lot of adherring to the environmental standards. Coral Sea was a disaster story
http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/43s.htm

and even for experts like those overseas, doing the Bennington almost bankrupted them.

Remember, the Navy is selling according to regulations and cash value.....not to be the primary source of radiation free steel.
__________________________________
("How long would it take you to arrange for something big?"--The Chess Burglar talking to his fence, (w,stte), "The Thief Who Came to Dinner")

[eocoolj]

Well, the Oriskany was laid down more than a year before Trinity, so I think its a safe bet that a large portion of the ship is radiation-free. And I realize that recovering the steel, whether its from an Iowa or an Essex, is probably pretty expensive. I'm just pointing out that its not as impossible to come by as you make it out to be, if you have the money.

[Dreadnought]

Only problem with the Iowas is that you would literally have to cut them to pieces just to get at the armor belt, barbetts and bulkheads. Everything is is pretty much superficial. And that will take money because of the time involved and the machinery needed to lift and remove them.

[eocoolj]

Only problem with the Iowas is that you would literally have to cut them to pieces just to get at the armor belt, barbetts and bulkheads. Everything is is pretty much superficial. And that will take money because of the time involved and the machinery needed to lift and remove them.

Aren't the 16" turrets and the citadel about the heaviest armor on the ship, and reasonably accessible?