US Battleships in T2K

[Targan]

Very good points on Manpower and Fuel issues, but there is a couple of countervailing points:

The steam plants in those ships used bunker oil - not diesel. Bunker oil is also considered garbage production in modern refining compared to the higher grade fuels: in essence, its the leftovers after making good fuel as far as I can tell by reading up on it. So fuel will be scarce yes, but it won't be anywhere near as bad to source it as it would be the high test. Even better; the engines that burn it - particularly the ones built in the first half of the 20th Century, such as those in the Iowa's, are sufficiently crude that in a pinch it could use the raw stuff at the cost of decreased efficiencies, more maintenance, and much more pollution (IE: Very a dark exhaust plume).

As I said in my previous post, I had held off on making a post in this thread. I've learned the hard way that 9 times out of 10, the knowledgeable people here will find some gaping flaw in whatever I post. However, in this case I had looked around on the interwebs shortly after this thread started, and found in the Wikipedia article on the Iowa class, this:

Iowa class battleship (From the section "1980s refit") Plans for these conversions were dropped in 1984, but each battleship was overhauled to burn navy distillate fuel and modernized to carry electronic warfare suites, close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for self-defense, and missiles.

It's common knowledge that most diesel engines will burn lower grade fuels, at least for a while. I haven't searched exhaustively enough to be sure but I would assume that even after the conversions, the Iowa-class battleships were still running steam turbines and it was just the boilers that were converted (I'm happy to be corrected on this) so converting them back to burning lower grade fuels probably wouldn't be a huge deal. Still, I can't help but wonder why any conversion was necessary at all, for boilers to burn diesel instead of bunker oil. So maybe they really did swap the boilers and steam turbines for gigantic marine diesel engines

In any case I just wanted to show that I'd put some thought into my comments before I made them

[dragoon500ly]

The engines on the Iowa class are the same geared turbines that they were built with back in the 1940s. The boilers were modified to burn NDF.

The major part of the rebuild was to modified their armament, electronics, air conditioning plants as well as to install some automated systems in an effort to reduce their crew requirements.

[Legbreaker]

What's the absolute minimum crew needed for an Iowa class Guessing three shifts (more likely I'd think there were just two per day with everyone on duty during combat) that brings us down to 600. Remove some of the "excess" crew such as laundry staff, perhaps medical, QM staff, chaplain, etc and we might have half that many (mind you, I'm just stabbing in the dark here).
Even at those low numbers (and combat ability would be SEVERELY curtailed) in my mind at least, 300-400 able bodied men still have a greater utility on shore in other roles.

Regarding fuel consumption, this site is very informative. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/...l/Fuel-BB.html from "page 79" (near the bottom).

[Olefin]

We know that at least one battleship was in the Twilight War as its in the Gateway to the Spanish Main

Page 18

The war did have some effects on Grenada. The tourists have
stopped coming, the freighters have stopped coming, and the
tankers have stopped coming. There was a brief flurry of military
activity early in the war as U.S. military aircraft bound for the
fighting in Africa and the Mideast made stopovers en route, and
a U.S. Navy battle group built around the USS New Jersey met
and sent to the bottom a Soviet battle cruiser that had been rampaging
in the South Atlantic sea lanes. The citizens of St.
George's had a front row seat to one of the last gun duels between
rival warships in the 20th century


Thus we know by canon that that the USS New Jersey was in the war for sure - and if New Jersey was in the war, then Missouri and Wisconsin were in for sure and most likely Iowa as well

As for shells - there was a lot of 16 gun ammo still available for the battleships as well as 5 inch for their secondary guns - so ammo isnt a problem

The real thing to look at would be barrel life - you can only shoot so many shells thru the gun barrels before they need to be replaced - and even if there are replacements available (there were as far as I know but not sure where they were) you need an active Navy Yard that can take battlehships to do the replacement

And they would have been of huge use - in fact you can tell they must have been used elsewhere because they arent in Iran - i.e. Korea, Europe, etc.. took first priority so Iran only got the Des Moines class instead of a battleship

As for where - Scandanavia of course, off of Italy, possibly in the Aegean against the Greeks, the Baltic and Korea of course

and their engines can burn bunker oil - you dont need refined products for their engines - you could take it straight out of a oil well and a BB would run on it

as for other gun ships - possibly Massachusetts and Arkansas - they used parts from them for the Iowas so they might have been able to get one of them going as well -

as for other battleships - how about Japan Mikasa was preserved in working condition including her engines and guns - all she needs is ammo - and her hull is in good order as well

there are other WWII gun ships left as museums as well

HMAS Belfast was in the UK in London - possibly the Brits may have moved her to Portsmouth

USS Little Rock is in Buffalo along with USS The Sullivans (DD)

Several WWII era DD's are still active in that time period, mostly with Latin American navies (Mexico has at least one Gearing DD still in commission today)

[Olefin]

As for manpower - with many more modern ships either sunk or looking at maintenance issues from their high tech gear breaking down the USN may have more than enough manpower to keep at least one BB fully manned even as late as 2000

they have the manpower for the Des Moines class off Iran - and she is not exactly a low manpower ship either

especially as the manpower assigned to one Nimitz class carrier could man Iowa or Missouri several times over

[Legbreaker]

When a ship goes down, so does a lot of it's crew, far more are lost than say if an infantry brigade is destroyed - it's very hard to drown on dry land.

[Targan]

and their engines can burn bunker oil - you dont need refined products for their engines - you could take it straight out of a oil well and a BB would run on it

I don't doubt this point, especially pre-modification. They had boilers to generate steam, which powered steam turbines. I'm no steam engineer but presumably these sorts of boilers can be powered by a variety of liquid fuels. My guess is that until the 1980s the Iowa-class BBs were run on heavy, low grade bunker oil. So why were they converted during the 1980s to burn navy distillate fuel Obviously if the existing burners and boilers could already handle the slightly more refined and processed navy distillate fuel a conversion wouldn't have been necessary. Did the conversion make it any harder to go back to using low grade bunker oil Was the conversion itself in any way complicated or requiring of complicated components Was it for some odd reason like pressure to make the older USN vessels less polluting Was it to improve their fuel efficiency/range

These questions probably aren't important to the original discussion but I haven't been able to glean the answers with Google-Fu so far.

[Legbreaker]

My understanding is the older engines were able to burn "bunker oil" which is thick, tarry, and very, very sticky. It requires heating to be applied to the fuel in the storage tanks, just so it can be pumped through the lines to the engine.
My guess is as part of the effort to reduce the crew by approximately 900 men (from pre 1980's refit) this heating system was removed. If so, the ship(s) would no longer be able to utilise this type of fuel - the boilers could probably still burn it, but pumping it from the tanks would be impossible.

[Olefin]

There is probably a lot of manpower available from ships that are damaged, non-operational or been sunk and the crews abandoned ship

Take a look at a carrier - if even 1/3rd of the crew survived a sinking you are looking at 1600 men or so

And ships dont go down with everyone aboard that often - and reading the canon I dont get the impression of a nuclear war at sea - i.e. its not nuclear torpedoes and bombs taking out ships,its good old fashioned torpedoes, guns and missiles

plus keep in mind how many old timers there are out there that can be pressed into service on various ships (especially given the prospect of being able to be properly fed as compared to being a civilian)

so manpower wont be the issue here - if anything they probably have more men then they have operational ships to put them on

[Olefin]

We know the BB's were active during the war (thats canon for at least one BB for sure) - the real question is are they still active and are any still afloat, as was dealt with in the 1st article of the fanzine

[Legbreaker]

Correct, it is very unlikely nukes were used in any great numbers at sea since sea power on all sides had been virtually destroyed by the time they started to see use in China.

How many life boats does a warship carry How long could the people in a life boat expect to be at sea before they were found and rescued Not everyone is going to die in the first half hour of a sinking, many, many more may survive, perhaps wounded, and die later before ever seeing land again - it's not like a full scale air/sea search and rescue operation is going to be able to be mounted while the enemy are still a threat.

We also know navies on all sides were decimated and virtually eliminated relatively early in the way - by June 97. Tactical nukes began to see use a month later, strategic nukes a couple of months after that. Why would any navy carry on a wide scale recruiting/recall campaign when they didn't have ships Wouldn't the army have a greater need for and ability to actually use the manpower

Those recruits which were called up might well see a large number of desertions the moment word of nukes was heard. Most people wouldn't want to be caught in a military training facility if they thought it was about to be turned to glass! Once the nukes died down and the military began to be perceived as an easy way to a free meal, the ability of any navy of any nationality to put recruits to use was virtually gone.

We also know from the Last Sub trilogy that skilled naval personnel where in extremely short supply - Milgov threw a lot of resources into scouring continental USA for crew and came up very short...

To be blunt, it's just not logical for military leaders to try rebuilding a navy when a) the army needs the manpower more, and b) there's next to no enemy naval forces to worry about. Resources are limited. They must be used to best effect.

[Olefin]

The USN is expert in search and rescue as well as recovering sailors from ships that have been abandoned. If anything taught them the importance of that it was WWII and the level of ships they lost in that conflict.

And keep in mind - shattering a fleet is not sinking all its ships - the Japanese fleet was shattered at Leyte Gulf in WWII - but even after that they still had battleships, cruisers and destroyers afloat in considerable numbers

you can see that even in the modules and Challenge magazine articles - even as late as early 2001 between Iran and Cape May/Norfolk/Going Home you have several DD's,frigates, a baby carrier and at least two cruisers still afloat and still very much in commission along with an SSN

and we dont have any idea from a canon standpoint what there is off Korea for instance or what got out of Pearl before she got hit

[Olefin]

Found a reference where it says they retained their old 600 psi boilers.

Still not sure what changes were made to burn distillate fuel but they may still be able to burn the black oil, but would mean they need to take on more oil than with the distillates, which provided better fuel economoy.

the quote is from

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/american&military_history/World's%20Fastest%20Battleships.pdf

When the four IOWA Class battleships were re-commissioned between 1982-87, they retained their old 600 psi boilers while switching from Navy Special Fuel Oil to Distillate Fuel.

As to their effectiveness as warships - lets give this quote as to what the Soviets thought of these ships

"You Americans do not realize what formidable warships you have in these four battleships. We have concluded after careful analysis that these magnificent vessels are in fact the most to be feared in your entire naval arsenal. When engaged in combat we could throw everything we have at those ships and all our firepower would just bounce off or be of little effect. Then we are exhausted, we will detect you coming over the horizon and then you will sink us."

-Soviet Fleet Admiral Sergei I. Gorshkov,1985- Quote after watching the Iowa in a NATO exercise

[Raellus]

The surface action I mentioned would have occured pre-exchange.

If an Iowa survived past '97-'98, I could see it being used as a fixed long-range artillery battery. In WWII, the Germans uses a couple of large surface warships as floating batteries in their defense of East Prussia and the Baltic shelf during the last few months of the war. These vessels probably wouldn't have survived long at sea, but close to shore, under the protection of additional AAA, they provided very effective heavy long-range fire support to the hard-pressed German ground forces in the "fortress" cities of Danzig, Gydnia, and Konigsberg- in some cases decisively, prolonging the duration of the defenses.

I can see an Iowa doing much the same thing in northeast German or northwest Poland. It would be beached/moored close to friendly-controlled shore and out of range of enemy artillery. Since the ship would no longer retain its mobility due to a lack of fuel and/or because of mechanical problems with its engines, much of the crew could be removed to shore (likely farmed out to a nearby man-power starved ground unit). Only enough crew to effectively operate its guns and power them would remain aboard. An Iowa could really strengthen a shore-based cantonment. Even once the 16" shells are gone, its 5" batteries should still be able to provide local fire support for nearby ground forces.

[Olefin]

A great place for that would also be Korea - there are places her guns would basically deny the North Koreans or Soviets any ability to use coastal roads -
would have been a great ship to use during the retreat from the Yalu to give a bastion of safety for US and South Korean units that were retreating