"Return of the Gun Line" Topic

"For decades, the Navy has struggled to provide adequate naval gunfire support (NGFS) to assist Marine Corps operations or supplement power projection ashore. But recent developments, including the launch of the first Zumwalt -class destroyer (DDG-1000) in October 2013, have put the Navy within striking distance of correcting that longstanding gap. Historically, NGFS has been critical in preparing the ground and supporting troop landings and their operations ashore. Similarly, the relatively low cost of naval gunfire has played a role in projecting power and influencing events near the shore.

World War II demonstrated this with an amazing array of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and other craft. The Korean War was in many ways a repeat of this performance, with the Korean peninsula providing even more opportunities for naval fires to regularly reinforce troops and operations ashore. U.S. forces during the Vietnam War continued to rely on this aging force of cruisers and gun destroyers. The battleship USS New Jersey (BB-62), decommissioned in 1957, was reactivated from 1968 to 1969 to reach even further targets with heavier blows. By the 1970s she was once again deactivated, and the gun cruisers were quickly being decommissioned as well.

To address the coming shortfall, the Navy experimented with a single 8-inch gun mount for a destroyer, hoping to retain some of the heavy and (relatively) long-range capability in the Fleet. Unfortunately, that mid-1970s experiment on the USS Hull (DD-945) failed. When the last of the cruisers decommissioned in 1980, long-range NGFS capability faded. With the onset of the 600-Ship Navy, NGFS shortly rebounded as the four Iowa -class battleships were once more placed in commission. From 1982 to 1992, Marines again had their great guns at their disposal…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Obviously the main problem with guns is that they have a relatively short range compared to missiles. Frankly, for any ships that are expected to come into close quarters, lack of a good hard hitting gun would seem to be a serious omission. Shorter range isn't as relevant and a ship can carry a lot more shells than missiles.

The major problem with the single 8" turret was that it was 20 tons heavier, carried far less ammunition for the same weight, and less accurate.

I'm halfway expecting to see either those 155mm/62cal guns from the Zumwalts showing up on every other USN hull, or the gator-freighters getting the older 155mm vertical guns installed. The vertical guns do have a nasty minimum range problem, but the gator-freighters have escorts for closer targets.