If The Cold War Got Hot: Battleship Edition

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There is a great section of "The Hunt For Red October" where the commander of the New Jersey battle group was deliberating whether he should be at gun (20 miles) or missile (50 miles) range from the Kirov, as his mission would be to kill it with his first shot if fighting broke out.

Red Storm Rising... man, I haven't read that in a long while. Might have to break it back out. That and 'Cardinal of the Kremlin". Clancy was an excellent writer.

the iowa class ships defense against air craft, and other ships were her escorts. just like a CV, they didnt go anywhere alone. an iowa's main purpose during the cold war was the tomohawks they carried.

Any ship can get involved in surface combat, whether they would belong there or not. The Battle off Samar illustrates that. The key would be to figure out how to use them in the surface role most effectively. If an Iowa could pretend to be a carrier battlegroup, then they could be a potent decoy. Or if the Iowa could catch the enemy fleet at night after a high speed run.

"Red Storm Rising" was the first Tom Clancey novel I read! I think part of having the Iowa's deployed in the 1980's was also for psychological value. Their perceived capabilities are at least as important as their actual capabilities.

If you want to game this scenario out, grab an old copy of Harpoon. It featured several scenarios of BB battle groups in the North Sea and guarding the GIUK Gap.

I have to say that this time I disagree. It probably would have been the other way around. As much as we love the Iowas, they were more expendable than a carrier in the 80s. I think they would have been sent where it was hot and also where the air cover would have been provided by land based fighters, so in the Med or in the North Sea because those areas were surrounded by NATO countries.

The Commander - In - Chief of the Soviet Navy during the 1980's was Admiral Sergei Gorshkov who famously stated that he felt the Iowa class Battleships were our most formidable ships and the ones he was most fearful of. He stated that the Soviet Fleet would expend all their weapons against the Iowa's and then they would steam up over the horizon and proceed to sink the balance of their Fleet. We will never know whether Gorshkov was right as the Cold War never went hot.

Yamato is back on Crunchyroll

Think the Fulda Gap is a little too far inland even for the 16" guns...

The Iowa Classes biggest contribution would be to General Dynamics profit margins....

If the Cold War got hot, at least it would have been over quickly 😅

At the time, there were a couple of blood-n-guts SWO talking about how the armor of an Iowa would allow rather a lot of "duking it out" at sea. Most anti-ship missiles of the day were not designed to cope with 3-5" armored deck plate, let alone the hull's armored belt. There's a logic there, if one reminiscent of how JPJ basically rammed /Bonnhomme Richard/ versus /HMS Serapis/.

The last images of the Yamato flash in my mind thinking of what battleships face today…

the Iowa's as they were brought back I think would be primarly up against shore bombardment missions and maybe go up against the smaller surface forces of the Soviets. had the the Cold War went on into the 90's and 2000's, then I really think they would have undergone a massive overhaul which would seen them armed with a significant amount of missile defenses. with vertical launch tubes and those Rolling Airframe Missiles. which along with the other anti-air type ships would have provided a pretty tough nut to crack for the Soviets. If battleships were needed for longer, then a new class would be created that was specifically built for both shore bombardment, anti-ship and anti-missile defense.

Red storm rising is a free audiobook on YT, folks, excellent reader too.

aw yeah getting that War Thunder sponsorship!

At one time there seemed to be a lot of discussion of EMP's taking out electrical systems; I used to imagine analog weaponry like the Iowa's being dusted off and brought out as a result. The "Battleship" movie kind of relegated this idea to the goofball bin some years back, but I would imagine this would not have been completely ignored in the '80's and '90's.

Ryan if you ever get the chance to play the computer game Red Storm Rising based on and with input from Tom Clancy you will find that the majority of the battle between NATO and Warsaw pact naval forces were back and forth between submarines and the majority of surface combatants play a minor role.