Wild_Bill_Kelso
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,231
- Mar 18, 2022
It seems like an awful lot of them were used in various kinds of tests or just sunk, though I'm not sure what the percentage is.
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I think the question was why blow them up with nukes in the first place instead of just sailing to the scrap yards.
My answer is that that was indeed what was done to the majority of surplus military hardware after WWII (after a time in reserve in many cases, but still). Those used for nuke tests were, in the end, relatively few, and I guess the navy had a legitimate reason to see how warships would react to the newfangled nuclear weapons.
Sometimes I wonder whether there would have been alternative ways to structure the interwar naval treaties instead of via tonnage limits for different classes of ships, and how that would have affected ship design.
For a modern example, one motivation for the Queen Elizabeth class carriers being so big was apparently that "air is free and steel is cheap". Evidently only about 20% of the cost was the steel. A bigger ship has more space for stores, less cramped working spaces, more damage resiliency due to sheer size, etc etc. Though I'm sure back in the interwar era steel was a much higher fraction of the total cost, and thus tonnage limits in a way were a useful tool to avoid a ruinious naval arms race, which after all was the goal of the treaties.
Sure, and available drydocks, as we read a few posts above.The tradeoff with a bigger ship, aside from fuel of course, is often a deeper draft, which limits where it can make port, what channels it can pass through etc.
You inspired a tin foil hat conspiracy thought. U.S. Steel, Kaiser and the rest conspired to get rid of many of those warships as possible to prevent the price of metals from crashing as what happened when the Admiralty scrapped a load of obsolete warships in the Dreadnaught era.Oh yeah for sure, once you nuke them all bets are off. I'm just a bit shocked at the number of warships which were destroyed this way, given the huge cost, time and amount of labor that went into them, and the investment in raw materials. The latter seems like it could have payed off pretty well, though I'm sure the price of scrap iron etc. went way down in the commodities markets right after the war. Maybe tie them up on a dock as a museum for 5 or 10 years and then scrap them.
Once the nuke has gone off though, it ain't good. Radiation lingers in metal. Scrapping a ship is dangerous work regardless, I wouldn't want that job if it was radioactive!
You inspired a tin foil hat conspiracy thought. U.S. Steel, Kaiser and the rest conspired to get rid of much of those warships as possible to prevent the price of metals from crashing as what happened when Admiralty scrapped a load of obsolete warships in the Dreadnaught era.
For my next trick, I will prove the platypus is a hoax.
Well at its heart the tests at Bikini were a continuation of the pre-war Army-Navy rivalry with each needing to prove the need for its continued existence and funding from Congress.I think the question was why blow them up with nukes in the first place instead of just sailing to the scrap yards.
My answer is that that was indeed what was done to the majority of surplus military hardware after WWII (after a time in reserve in many cases, but still). Those used for nuke tests were, in the end, relatively few, and I guess the navy had a legitimate reason to see how warships would react to the newfangled nuclear weapons.
we are getting into hull speed and the Iowa is a bad example.Sure, and available drydocks, as we read a few posts above.
As for fuel consumption, to a point. Bigger ships tend to be much more efficient in terms of engine power per displacement required to reach some particular speed. If you compare a cruiser to a fast battleship, say, Cleveland to Iowa, the BB needs only twice the engine power to push four times the displacement to very similar top speed.
(though at normal cruise speed the fuel consumption is much closer to corresponding to the difference in displacement.)
There is a YouTube video by Drachinifel where he interviews a former skipper of U.S.S. New Jersey. This very point is brought up in the context of underway fleet replenishment. The Admiral brought up some interesting facts about how useful BB 62 was in providing underway refueling of her escorts and how important her machine shops were to them. Granted this was in the area of the Red Sea and not the Pacific. I think the show is "What's it like to actually command a battleship?"It seems though from articles I've read, the battleships used up fuel resources on a strategic scale, which was a major impediment to their deployment for both the Japanese and the USN.
An un-modernized QE needed 3425 tons of fuel to go 8400 miles at 10kts.It seems though from articles I've read, the battleships used up fuel resources on a strategic scale, which was a major impediment to their deployment for both the Japanese and the USN.
An un-modernized QE needed 3425 tons of fuel to go 8400 miles at 10kts.
At full speed (25kts) assuming the machinery would do it, that 3425 tons of fuel would last 83.5 hours and the ship could make 2088 miles.
The real problem was the lack of replenishment oilers to keep them supplied. That was 1942 not 1944/45. The Pacific Fleet started the Pacific War with but 4 oilers capable of replenishment at sea. Before the huge USN Service Squadrons were built up to keep the whole fleet at sea.I don't remember the exact ratios but I read a couple of articles which got into basically that the battleships required as much fuel as dozens of other warships. This was allegedly one of the reasons why most of the US battleships were kept out of the Solomons area, until Lee's exploits. And part of why the Japanese were not doing much with the Yamato and Musashi.
I wonder if U.S.S. Reluctant AK-601 was there.Here is the breakdown of the Bikini fleet:-
5 BB - Arkansas, New York, Nevada, Pennsylvania (4 out of 5 of the oldest USN BB. Pennsylvania was only patched up after being torpedoed and nearly sinking in Aug 1945) + IJN Nagato
2 CV/CVL - Saratoga & Independence (Saratoga had been reduced to a training carrier in mid-1945 with only 1 lift and a hangar part full of classrooms)
4 CA/CL - Pensacola. Salt Lake City (oldest 2 USN 8" cruisers), Prinz Eugen & Sakawa (enemy ships already thoroughly inspected)
13 DD - all from the pre-war classes. How many Fletchers/Sumners/Gearings did the USN have?
8 SS - 3 pre-war boats. Other 5 were Gato & Balao class. The USN was still commissioning the later Tench class in early 1946
19 APA - the USN built 239 APA of various classes with few losses
6 LST - over 1,000 built less some losses and transfers to other nations
1 LSM - over 500 built
16 LCT
3 Auxiliaries
6 LCI
6 LCM
6 LCVP
Total 95
Given the numbers that the USN had of each type in 1945, I think that they could spare what was sunk at Bikini.
RN QE class battleships were refueling destroyers during operations off Crete in May 1941.There is a YouTube video by Drachinifel where he interviews a former skipper of U.S.S. New Jersey. This very point is brought up in the context of underway fleet replenishment. The Admiral brought up some interesting facts about how useful BB 62 was in providing underway refueling of her escorts and how important her machine shops were to them. Granted this was in the area of the Red Sea and not the Pacific. I think the show is "What's it like to actually command a battleship?"
In practice, there was nothing wrong with the KGV's 14" guns, once they were properly sorted. PoW achieved two 14" penetrating hits to mission kill Bismarck, with her sister KGV scoring multiple crippling hits on the same. DoY hit Scharnhorst with multiple penetrating 14" shells that led to her destruction.The KGVs were considered good enough to fight the KM.