"The Ultimate Weapon: Combining a Battleship and an..." Topic

…Aircraft Carrier?.

"In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was looking to fund high visibility defense programs. Reagan had been elected on a platform of rebuilding the armed services after the "hollowing out" of the early 1970s.

One example was the reactivation of four World War II-era Iowa-class battleships, which started in 1982. Each of the four ships, Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin was refurbished, their sixteen and five-inch guns brought back online. Each battleship was also equipped with sixteen Harpoon anti-ship missiles, thirtytwo Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and four Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense.

The four battlewagons were swiftly retired after the end of the Cold War because the manpower-intensive vessels each required a crew of nearly two thousand. That made them early victims of the post-Cold War drawdown as the defense budget was sharply reduced. Today, all four serve as memorials or floating museums. Retirement put an end to future upgrades, which might have included the boldest of them all…"
Full article here
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Amicalement
Armand

I've a model of the proposed Iowa hybrid – I use it in my 1/700 scale US MNB fleet

Wouldn't have been worth the conversion/operating cost. It's "carrier" function would have been better served by a LPH or any RN through deck cruiser

My mental picture of the "Floating Fortresses" of Orwell's "1984" was of a trimaran design, with a Nimitz-sized aircraft carrier hull flanked by a pair of Iowa-class battleships. Don't know if it would be practical, but they sure would have absorbed a lot of industrial production which was the point of the eternal war against Eastasia, with whom you may remember Oceania has always been at war…

So ultimate that it didn't happen.

they were required components of our 1/3000 modern fleets in the school wargames club in the 1980s :)

The Japanese tried it with the Ise and Hyuga. It didn't work all that well.

With VOTL and/or drone air groups I expect this concept or something like it (the less insane 'Flight Deck' cruisers concept perhaps) to reemerge.

-Will

Designs for battleship/carriers have been around since the First a World War. For example, HMS Furious had a flying-off deck forwards and an 18-inch gun aft.

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There were plenty of other proposed designs during the inter-war period, and consideration was given to hybridising the Lion-class battleships that were projected designs for the Royal Navy.

If you're close enough to fire the main armament then you are close enough to be hit back at – and hard. Carriers CANNOT take a hit and stay in the fight. The whole justification is that they can stand off over the horizon and only risk their aircraft.

Ronnie was wronger about a lot of things – but he was wrong about these battleships. I don't think they did much except 'look cool' and soak up human and financial resources that would have been better spent elsewhere.

The OP does have the gist of the issue:
"In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was looking to fund high visibility defense programs. "

My vision if the Orwellian "floating fortress" was along the lines of Habakkuk
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The Soviets were closer to the right idea with the Kirov-class. Missile armament, not guns.

I suppose you could dig up the plans for the Lexington-class CVs, with 4x twin 8" turrets. Replace those turrets with triple-mounted 155mm/62 guns like the Zumwalts have (or railguns). The 12x single 5"/25 turrets get replaced with Mk57 VLS cells (packing ESSMs, Standard Missiles, Harpoons, and VL-ASROCs). 9x Bofors platforms get replaced by CIWS, SeaRAM, and ESSMs.

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Yes, those Kirovs always struck me as a very nice design to build a battlegroup around. Of course, it would still need air cover.

Soviets sorta had a BB/CV with their Kiev class. SSMs on the foredeck, and jump jets and helos for the rest of it.

Hmmm, the ship's proposed support for Marine amphibious ops is interesting. 16" NGFS + additional aviation assets on a hull that can actually absorb damage? Not sure if it's worth the high operating costs/crew, but it's interesting enough to pique my curiosity.

Dont need 16" guns any more. 16" guns have a range of 24 miles while the new rail guns will have a range of 220 miles and can do equivalent damage with a 15-25lb slug. No need to maintain dangerous shell magazines either.

Rail guns are expected to be able to destroy overhead ballistic missiles (heat shields too tough for lasers).

Bolt a couple of these on the new Ford class carriers. Ample space and power to accomodate them.

What is the furthest a rail gun has thrown a shell to date?

@David: I think the Marconi-designed coilguns were range-competitive with their conventional competitors in the early 1900s (they were of similar bore and velocity, after all). I can't find any distance-test information for the USN railguns online.

I know the USN has a 155mm long-range shell that's been tested to at least 140km, and is claimed to reach 190km. That beast is both rocket-assisted and has glide wings to get the range, but it's also launched from a gun tube 1.5m longer than the current "long-range" land-based artillery (62 calibers instead of 52).