Modernized Iowa Class versus Essex WWII Carrier Class

RustyBattleship said:
Hundreds of aircraft? From how many carriers?
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Well, we're talking about Essex-class carriers, so it doesn't have to be all that many.

Even one Essex has a complement of 90-100 aircraft each, with every last one of them being "attack" type aircraft, able to put heavy ordnance on the target, so you're talking about a sizeable strike even by a single CV.

RustyBattleship said:
You are also forgetting that the standard method of attack was one dive bomber at a time. Two at a time rarely of torpedo planes at a very long ship.
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Well, yes.
But my point is, if I'm flinging a hundred aircraft at a ship (any ship) with only CIWS, it's eventually going to run out of 20mm, whether it shoots them down 1 at a time or 20 at a time. They do carry quite a bit, 8000 rds per mount, if I recall correctly. But how long would it take to reload a mount once it's gone dry?

And at nearly 900 ft long, an Iowa qualifies as long enough for 2 torpedos planes, right?

The 5"/38's will do yeoman's service certainly, but you're simply not going to be able to knock down enough to keep from getting hit.

I guess it's possible for an 80's Iowa to beat back a single Essex air group, but I wouldn't want to be on the Iowa when it happened.
 
RustyBattleship said:
Not true. The gun mounts can traverse a full 360 degrees. The only open cone would be directly above each gun mount. But then the other three mounts would zap the plane.
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maybe at low level but the cone expands the higher you go while still staying above the ship plus how high can the CIWS reach? 3000' 4000' max? USN divebomber pilots might not be that accurate at that hieght (how high were they dropping in WW2?) but it only takes 1 or 2 big bombs in the right spot and the ship is dead in the water
 
zraver said:
but it only takes 1 or 2 big bombs in the right spot and the ship is dead in the water
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Disagree.... there's a ton of redundancy in the engineering spaces so it would take a lot of well placed hits to stop a BB dead in the water. You have 8 boilers, 4 main engines, 4 screws and 2 rudders. You can cross connect any boiler to any main engine to keep it going.
 
RAL's_pal? said:
I worked in CIWS control room shortly after the gunnery sea trials and one of the EW's came up and said, "Did you see the jet we almost shot down?" The EW said one of the jets flying by was unauthorized and they called out a warning to it a couple of times, and finally they reminded the jet that they had live ammo in the CIWS. I remember the CIWS being locked onto the jet and it finally left. It was live ammo because I remember the constant reminders on the 1MC that the rounds had depleated uranium and the spent casings were not to be picked up by unauthorized personnel.....
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That must have been a later gunnery trial. I know for a fact that on the one I refer to they used dummy ammunition and merely recycled it through the magazine.

Also, the .43 caliber DU penetrators are encased in a 20mm plastic Sabot with a 20mm aluminum pusher plug behind it. The DU itself is very low radiation hazard but dust from it (zipping through a target) is toxic and has been banned for use over land. The casings do not pick up any radiation.

Also, they cannot be picked up off the deck. As the gun fires, the empty casings are put back into the drum maqazine. When the magazine is reloaded, a special loading tool is attached that feeds belted ammunition into the drum and puts the empty cases into the belt links. A very interesting operation to watch.

Reloading is done quickly ONCE the gunners mates figure out how to properly install the loading tool. I have seen them trying to install one with a ball pein hammer.

I walked away on that one.
 
I'd be willing to bet a cup of coffee that your CIWS recollections are from the USS Misery trials....
 
RAL's_pal? said:
I'd be willing to bet a cup of coffee that your CIWS recollections are from the USS Misery trials....
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I was on CIWS gunnery trials of both New Jersey and Missouri. The tests with dummy ammo but real airplanes was on New Jersey. Also the live fire tests on towed target sleeves.

The Missouri trials I was on didn't shoot at any targets. Just spit a few thousand rounds of DU out into the ocean for confirmation of weapon operability. (say THAT fast five times while eating a Ritz cracker).

I take my coffee with milk and one Sweet and Low.
 
Goalkeeper upgrade

Goalkeeper upgrade

RustyBattleship said:
The sub-bases were even designed to take the 30mm Goal Keeper should it be adopted by the Navy. Just in case.
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Was there any issues with using the deck below for the bottom half of the unit? I assume the extra weight of a Goalkeeper on levels 4 and 5 would not be noticeable on a ship that size.
A Millennium would be a nice bolt on replacement, but at least you'd be under cover while rearming the Goalkeeper.
 
RustyBattleship said:
Just spit a few thousand rounds of DU out into the ocean for confirmation of weapon operability.
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That's funny, the Jersey trial I was on they "Just spit a few thousand rounds of DU out into the ocean for confirmation of weapon operability."
Since I didn't make the Misery trials, I have nothing to confuse it with.....
 
RAL's_pal? said:
That's funny, the Jersey trial I was on they "Just spit a few thousand rounds of DU out into the ocean for confirmation of weapon operability."
Since I didn't make the Misery trials, I have nothing to confuse it with.....
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I was on three sea trials with New Jersey. I missed her first one but she couldn't do her stuff because she caught the tail end of a Hurricane out of Mexico. The second one was where she did her speed runs, high speed turns and initial gun firing when SECNAV Lehman came aboard. On THAT trial we only spit wasted ammo out for demonstration. The next trial I was on was when the CIWS with dummy rounds acquired and "fired" upon live aircraft. The third one I was on was with Dahlgren as they tested the overpressure (muzzle blast) of the 16-inch guns with surrounding structures. That is also when we fired both the 5"/38's and the CIWS at towed target sleeves.

Also, on that trial, Dahlgren loaded up colored dye shells to fire just aft of a target sled on the surface. The dyes were Orange, Yellow and Green. But it was a hazy day and the yellow was filtered out. So when the waterspouts came up, they were a very patriotic Red, White and Blue.

That is, if memory serves.
 
Cheating?

Cheating?

How about gas - or should that be Gas? Just an unpleasent thought. I assume the ships are sealed. Wind direction could help a few WWII crop sprayers do vile things before they were worth the intercept.

I remember the "vs." threads a few years back on the tank thread. I consider it more informative to go cost vs cost (no spying allowed. I'm sure the old lags are quite sick of me labouring that point). I suggested that, say an M1A costing, for the sake of argument £1000 would be defeated by T34s even if the former ran out of ammo and they rammed it to a standstill and laid siege. If in modern cash a T34 cost £10. That's 400 blokes at the very least, for the same cash, let alone 100 tanks.

Sooo ... for the cost of an upgraded, retro-fitted Iwowa, just HOW many WWII Essex etc.:)
 
well.. not sure how the older CIWS would do, but the new block 1B, with infared camera and LLTV cameras would do much better against a slow moving target such as a WW2 torpedo bomber or dive bomber.. (just lock the camera on the incoming aircraft and let it do it's work)

What I've recently though of, take an Arleigh Burke back in time, loaded with ESSM in it's vertical launchers and use it too take out the incoming Japanese aircraft.. wonder if any of them( *** planes) would have survived?

96 missile cells, and 4 missiles in each cell = 384 missiles total...
 
On the clock

On the clock

I s'pose a nip in time would save etc:biggrin:

Sorry, but to slant the issue would have been short-sighted of me. Given the rules it would have been szu awful of me to go all kamikaze. Not wanting to appaear at all yellow or surprise anyone I would feel ashamed by my highly inflamatory fly by words.:biggrin:

Beat that for rotten puns. There are most likely guys on Pacific Islands who should be told!:tongue:
 
How about gas - or should that be Gas? Just an unpleasent thought. I assume the ships are sealed. Wind direction could help a few WWII crop sprayers do vile things before they were worth the intercept.
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To much wind a battleship is fast and it doesn't matter its a dead calm its still an effectice wind and so dispersal would be amajor problem no real way to introduce it into the ship.
 
Iowa center of buoyancy

Iowa center of buoyancy

Rick DeBay said:
RustyBattleship said:
The sub-bases were even designed to take the 30mm Goal Keeper should it be adopted by the Navy.
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...I assume the extra weight of a Goalkeeper on levels 4 and 5 would not be noticeable on a ship that size.
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BTW, what was the center of buoyancy/gravity on an Iowa? Also, where was the waterline with respect to the decks? Was it about even with the third deck? Any issues with it becoming top heavy?
 
What was the range on WWII aerial torpedoes? Seems like that's the key, how far out the bombers could release their weapons. The Vulcan is a great close in system, but it is, after all, a 20 mm weapon. Not really good for long range fire. I wonder how long 900 rounds would last against a strike from 90 aircraft? Rusty said it was 18 seconds worth of firing time, so maybe half second bursts would give you 36 shots per gun, two guns on a side gives 72 shots, assuming 100% accuracy. So if they concentrated on one side, which they would do in order to capsize the ship anyway, they could possibly empty the guns. Leaving 3 twin 5"/45s, pretty effective AA guns themselves. I wonder how many planes an Essex could launch at a time? If they couldn't launch the whole air wing, the Iowa might have time to reload between strikes.
 
Rick DeBay said:
BTW, what was the center of buoyancy/gravity on an Iowa? Also, where was the waterline with respect to the decks? Was it about even with the third deck? Any issues with it becoming top heavy?
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Oh dear! I would have to dig very deep into my stuff to find the calculations done by Jim Kaping and Isaac Cavalier in the Scientific Design Section to find the CG of the ship.

Waterline at full load was just above third deck. This meant that the armor belt at torpedo bulkhead 3 would still be about 7 feet above an incoming torpedo.

At first I was overly concerned with too much topside weight when designing the new deckhouses, armored compartments, etc. We had problems with other ships of being too top heavy.

Then Kaping reminded me that the battleship could probably take a 45 degree roll and even with decks awash (provided all hatches are battened down) would still right herself.

I felt better then and added a bit more armor here and there when the budget allowed it.

Fortunately, I never had to ride one heeling over 45 degrees.
 
RustyBattleship said:
Oh dear! I would have to dig very deep into my stuff to find the calculations done by Jim Kaping and Isaac Cavalier in the Scientific Design Section to find the CG of the ship.
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Vertical Center of Gravity (VCG) for USS New Jersey (BB-62), before and after 1982 reactivation :

* Baseline VCG : 34.7 feet
* Modernized VCG : 35.5 feet
 
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