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The Bob Cesca Show: Disruption

102
Nerdy Fish11/14/2017 5:39:52 pm PST

re: #98 freetoken

I guess that is my point. Small guns are easier, you can carry more rounds on the ship, you can have more redundancies.

16” guns are impressive, but not the best. And they used mechanical calculators that are impressive to see but really seem like an aeon ago.

Sure, if a shell lands on you you’re toast.

But in the history of the Iowa class, when did the 16” guns really make a difference in achieving the ultimate goal?

And were the Congressional debates done by big-gun fetishists?

Mostly it was related to cost. Sure, we could fill their firepower gap with Tomahawk missiles, or a fleet of cruisers with 5” deck guns, but both options turned out to be much more expensive than the cost of maintenance of a 50-year-old battleship. In the end, the rise of relatively cheap and effective tactical air power (here’s looking at you, A-10 and F/A-18) is really what spelled the demise of the close-fire-support battleship.