Re:The F-35 still has a long way to go
by lostlogin on Sunday April 02, 2017 @02:05AM
(#14016046)
The point wasn't that they couldn't attack ones enemy, it was that they had become vulnerable to attack. The reason they could be used for bombardment was that air superiority had been claimed by carrier based aircraft. I don't recall ever reading of battleships being used for air defence. Have you a source? Smaller ships certainly were but big, slow firing guns that can't point upwards seems like a pointless and wasteful accessory on a huge target.
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What kind of source are you looking for? It's right there in any history of WW2 in the Pacific. US battleships were stuffed full of smaller caliber cannons that were very effective for air defense, especially after proximity fuses were introduced.
Re:The F-35 still has a long way to go
by gjjrfcbugxbhf on Sunday April 02, 2017 @02:32AM
(#14016134)
Most ww2 era battleships had a plethora of smaller guns many of which were antiaircraft. The exception was the Japanese battleships which were relatively light on the smaller guns - which they even attempted to mitigate using shotgun like shells.
Sure, but unguided antiaircraft fire tops out pretty low in effectiveness, and aircraft are dangerous to battleships out of all proportion to their size, quantity, and cost - even if you shoot down ninety-eight out of every hundred, the two you miss can still achieve a mission-kill, if they don't sink you outright. And you'll never shoot down anything close to that proportion.
Battleships sided aircraft carriers for two reasons: one was to thicken their inner defense ring a little, and the other was because battleships alone, without a friendly air wing to keep the other side's strike aircraft away, were doomed.