What Happens When You Merge a Battleship and an Aircraft Carrier?

[rangerrebew]

September 6, 2020

What Happens When You Merge a Battleship and an Aircraft Carrier?

In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration considered adding flight decks to U.S. Navy battleships.
by Kyle Mizokami

Key Point: The naval gunfire argument rages on to this day.

In the early 1980s, four Iowa-class fast battleships originally built during World War II—Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin—were taken out of mothballs and returned to active duty.

Nearly 900 feet long and displacing close to 60,000 tons, the battlewagons could fire a nine-gun broadside sending 18 tons of steel and explosives hurtling towards their targets.

The battleships were modernized to include cruise missiles, ship-killing missiles and Phalanx point-defense guns. Returned to the fleet, the ships saw action off the coasts of Lebanon and Iraq. At the end of the Cold War the battleships were retired again. All were slated to become museums.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/what-happens-when-you-merge-battleship-and-aircraft-carrier-168400

[PeteS in CA]

Ise and Hyuga were converted to hybrids by the IJN in WW2, but I don't think they were very effective (though plane and pilot shortages probably affected how they could be used).

Vertical take-off planes like the F-35 change the need for a long flight deck. Hypothetically, something that could carry a dozen F-35s and had a couple of three-gun auto-loading turrets of 6" guns (akin to what the Booklyns and Clevelands had) would be interesting.Shells heavy enough to do significant damage but possibly light enough to auto-loaded, resulting in a high volume of fire. Throw in an up to date Phalanx suite and other radar ... Whether that's practical, ...