Why US Military Stopped Building Battleships

Why did the United States retire one of the most powerful battleships of all time and what replaced these versatile heavily armored vessels? Join us in today's shocking video and learn what was wrong with ships with thick armor, large shells, insane turrets, guns, and cannons that used to rule the ocean.

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[Mount]

In Navy bootcamp I remember being taught that the 16" guns on a navy battleship were consistently accurate within 50ft, not 150ft as stated in the video.

[ccoder]

Technically, the USS New Jersey isn't currently in Camden, New Jersey right now. It's been in drydock in Philadelphia for the last couple of months for maintenance and repairs.

[JustSomeGuyWhoisLost]

Whoever controls the ocean, controls the war.

-Coach Anzai

[edwardtdm]

1:22 The little detail of the little sunken ship was funny. 😆

[lightspeedvictory]

Corrections: the world’s first ironclad was the Korean Turtle ship aka gwiseon, first introduced in 1413. Also, you make it sound like the Iowa was smaller than the Bismarck but this is incorrect. You gave the displacements of the Bismarck and Yamato class ships at their full warload but the Iowa when they’re empty. Iowa class at full warload weigh in at 58, 000 tons, making them bigger than the Bismarck’s full warload of 52, 000. Furthermore, the 16 inch rifles of the Iowa class have a range of 26 miles. Not to mention that in ideal circumstances, the accuracy of said guns were to within 40 ft

[FiendWS]

The largest shells fired by a battleship were 18 inch shells by Yamato. They were used in both the Battle off Samar, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Granted the bad fire control systems of the Yamato-class battleships made them less effective than their 16 inch counterparts, and at long range the Yamato had similar performance to the 16 inch shells. The only real benefit of the 18 inch guns was in close to medium distance engagements, but the Japanese battleships never seem to fight their intended target of other battleships. This meant that their time fused shells ended up going through some targets as they did against Taffy 3.

[Wallyworld]

When the War of the Worlds was written in 1897 By HG Wells mans last and final hope to take out the Martian Tripods was the Battleship HMS Thunder Child. HMS Thunder Child took out 2 Martian Tripods before succumbing to her wounds. The Battleship was the Apex of mans technology of it's time and continued to do so until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Thank goodness the US has saved 8 of these Mechanical Wonders as Museum Ships. Hopefully they will maintain the funding to keep these machines available to see for hundreds of years to come. The British Scraping HMS Warspite is a crime to it's history. Surely they could have found a place willing to keep and maintain such a historical ship.

[cleaterose]

Now that we find ourselves needing to clear cubic acres of space surrounding a carrier battle group, those big dumb guns are looking pretty good again.

[seancarter]

Please continue the "I survived 100 Days" videos! 🙏🙏🙏 Those are the best!!!

[Mindgoblin]

I remember being on USS New Jersey and they had Harpoon missiles on her along with a couple of CWIS turrets on her

[J.Walker]

Mr. infographics, please make a video explaining in depth, the why’s and ways of classification for both civilian and naval vessels. Besides knowing there’s tonnage, water displacement, # of guns, caliber of the guns, and I think weapons class. I still lack any understanding. Thank you for all your hard work. Keep them coming.

[Darkwizzrobe]

Honestly the HMS Majestic was closer to what we would think as being the first Battleship than the HMS Dreadnought.

[SageofIrrelevance]

7:00 That is an image of the French Battleship Richelieu, not the Bismarck or Tirpitz.

[seancarter]

1:22 - I love the little detail of the little sunken ship lol

[asandrik]

Not to pick nits but "Operation Blue Bat" in Lebanon was in 1958 (Before I was born). We were the Multi-National Force Beirut in 1983-84.

[steelrideproductions]

While I do agree the battleships were costly and required a high number of crew, having a vessel that size with at least one or two turrets with large caliber guns with guided munitions may very well be a good modern solution. It gives you firing solutions to line of sight targets as well as out of site targets. We live in a world now where artillery pieces can literally fire smart self-adjusting shells that can change course within a certain radius to be more precise. We could even have the turrets and fire control systems fully automated and computer controlled or remotely controlled. Make the mechanisms autoloading systems with a bunch of failsafes to help prevent jams and give the computers a bunch of subsequences to fix jams themselves. We also live in a world now with a lot of automated anti-air defenses. Do you have any idea just how many anti-air defenses that you could fit on the deck of a battleship? A lot. That's not even counting the fact that we could literally put double or triple the amount of missiles inside of a battleship's hull then what you can typically get on a destroyer. You throw a nuclear reactor or two on board and man it with about 750 personnel and you are good to go. If you automate 75% or more of the vehicles weapon systems, you have a competent and low maintenance ship. You mostly need technicians on board to help with repairs or troubleshooting issues, but everything else can basically take care of itself. With modern-day reactive armor for tanks, imagine throwing some form of reactive armor onto a battleship that lets it absorb a few impacts from enemy missiles. I know we also have a large amount of anti torpedo weapons these days too and countermeasures that would give a modern battleship a few judge against almost anything that can come at it. If you convert the rear deck of a battleship to a giant helicopter pad, you could easily feel six to 12 helicopters depending on the size of the pad, basically making it a hybrid helicarrier and battle cruiser

[thomfiel]

In addition to the four Iowa-class battleships, there are a few others on display. They include the USS Texas in Galveston, the USS North Carolina in Wilmington, the USS Massachusetts in Fall River, and the USS Alabama in Mobile. Check them out.

[Pyro]

9 battleships at pearl. Everyone forgets the Utah

[jopiaspieder]

The Big Gun Battleship is my favorite naval vessel

[rogersheddy]

The irony here is that when the first battle ship came into being the means of ending, their ascendency already was well underway.
Three years later, the first airplane would take off from a ship purposely altered to Permit aircraft to lift off and land