Poll: Super carrier vs. Battleship

[Thaluikhain]

The Iowa class battleships were refitted with modern weapons including missiles during the 80s, mind.

Also, modern armour isn't designed to protect from cannon shells, because enemy battleships don't magically appear 1 mile away from you in real life.

 

[obi2012]

The Nimitz class aircraft carrier is not typically outfitted with anti-ship missiles, Sea Sparrows are AA, plus, the Iowa's have Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, the CIWS system is AA capable, and if simultaneously launched, the Sea Sparrows and CIWS systems on the carrier would have a very hard time blocking all of them

 

[ADeskofRichMahogany]

Uhhhh...at 1 mile? Oh jeez, hmm...

Well, the battleship will get the first volley, and I think that's going to be the deciding factor. If it hits a reactor or the elevator, it's gg. I have no idea the thickness of carrier armor around vital parts though, so I can't hazard a guess as toward how hard that will be. Alternatively, the battleship can try to damage the launch deck. That'll take some spot-on shooting though.

Assuming the first volley doesn't blow up anything important, the only chance the battleship has left is to close the distance between the ships and pummel away at something that will cause the carrier to blow up, i.e. reactors, ammunition, armed planes. The fastest recorded speed for an Iowa class battleship is around 35 knots; Nimitz carrier speed is estimated to be 30+ knots.

Honestly though, if the first volley fails, the carrier can just kite the battleship and win. The longer you leave the carrier functioning, the more aircraft it can put out.

 

[thublihnk]

Uh, I call D-12.

Did I win?

 

[Double A]

Based on what the Nimitz is packing, as in defense-wise, I'd go with it. A 16" shell won't do much good if it gets blown up before it reaches its target.

Also, considering a few carefully aimed bombs or torpedoes from the 40's could sink an Iowa, it wouldn't take many squadrons of jets to sink that baby.

boots on the ground control the war, not the air

Those boots would get a little wet.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Assuming the first volley doesn't blow up anything important, the only chance the battleship has left is to close the distance between the ships and pummel away at something that will cause the carrier to blow up, i.e. reactors, ammunition, armed planes. The fastest recorded speed for an Iowa class battleship is around 35 knots; Nimitz carrier speed is estimated to be 30+ knots.

Close the distance? Why? 1 mile is already bizarrely close for an engagement.

 

[MrCIA]

The Nimitz is used instead of the Iowa for the simple reason that a fighter has a greater effective range than even a 16 inch deckgun. In this particular scenario the Nimitz is at effectively point blank range for some of the biggest, nastiest and all round meanest guns ever produced by man. The Nimitz is going to take about 5 minutes to launch it's ready fighters. In those 5 minutes the Iowa is going to have fired about 80-90 16" diameter, 2700 pound rounds at the Nimitz. The Iowa can the at it's leisure return to port as the two fighters that we may presume got off from the Nimitz buzz around watch their missiles and bombs be blown out of the sky by the 4 Phalanx systems installed on the Iowa during the 80's.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

Since a Nimitz class carrier has a full complement of aircraft, including bombers and missile-armed fighters, I'd say the Nimitz. What the hell are some 16 cm shell going to do against modern armor?

I'm gonna have to correct there. The shells fired by the Iowa-Class are in fact 16 inches, which is pretty damn big. Here's a picture of the shell it fires.
[image=http://www.rcsouth.com/media/military_media/navy_media/uss_wisconsin/tour_pics/16in_shell.JPG]

Needless to say, that's going to do a metric shit tonne of damage to basically anything it hits.

That said, battleships are dead for a reason. Carriers are the superior class of vessel in terms of strategic capability, despite having no ship-to-ship weapons to speak of.

 

[obi2012]

Based on what the Nimitz is packing, as in defense-wise, I'd go with it. A 16" shell won't do much good if it gets blown up before it reaches its target.

Also, considering a few carefully aimed bombs or torpedoes from the 40's could sink an Iowa, it wouldn't take many squadrons of jets to sink that baby.

boots on the ground control the war, not the air

Those boots would get a little wet.

Yes, I'm talking strategically though, look at history, Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now Libya, controlling the skies does not mean you'll win the war

 

[mb16]

ok so starting at 1 mile the battle ship would win
reasons:
>Battle ships are armoured and designed to take damage - carriers are made to hang back
>Guns can be loaded faster than air craft can be launched, guns fire first so goodbye flight deck

i would like to see any ship take a full volley from a battleship and live

starting at more than say 10miles the battle ship still has a chance as it has
32 × BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles
16 × RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles
4 × 20 mm (78 inch).Phalanx CIWS

really it would need to be in the +100miles for the carrier to have a clean victory


EDIT: to people saying "the carrier has planes thus it wins" remember those planes have to get airborne, there crew have to get to the jets and even after they take off they have to wait some more whilst they get into a position to attack.

 

[Brandon237]

How the frek did they get 1 mile apart?!
At that range, Battleship. In a real-world scenario, Aircraft carrier owns the battle ship and pimp-slaps it from time to time to tell it to do its job with more passion.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Nimitz carries the day. Provided the aircrew are adequately trained, it is very hard to stop an aerial attack without cover of your own. Battleships cannot launch aircraft (well, besides maybe one or two floatplanes) and the war in the Pacific back in the 40's demonstrated that the battleship is obsolete in terms of an instrument of influencing sea power.

Uh, I call D-12.

Did I win?

 

[tgcPheonix]

The Battleships would co-ordinate attacks , one would fire a SALVO into the ships hull while the other fires AA Flak just above the flight deck making take off impossible
They would then switch while re-loading providing almost continuous fire until the air craft carrier is sunk, pursuit can be given without reducing efficiency

 

[JWAN]

Since a Nimitz class carrier has a full complement of aircraft, including bombers and missile-armed fighters, I'd say the Nimitz. What the hell are some 16 cm shell going to do against modern armor?

16 cm shell?
try 16 INCH shells.
(thats 40.64 centimeters)
The updated IOWA class battleship also carry cruise missiles.
"The Armor Piercing (AP) shell fired by these guns is capable of penetrating nearly 30 feet (9 m) of concrete, depending upon the range and obliquity of impact. The High Capacity (HC) shell can create a crater 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep (15 x 6 m). During her deployment off Vietnam, USS New Jersey (BB-62) occasionally fired a single HC round into the jungle and so created a helicopter landing zone 200 yards (180 m) in diameter and defoliated trees for 300 yards (270 m) beyond that."
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm

Im going to go with the battleship IF the carrier has yet to launch its aircraft but if it has launched its aircraft then I still may give the edge to the battleship because most of them do have 30mm AAA cannons.

 

[Red Albatross]

Absolutely no contest whatsoever. There's a reason that battleships no longer have a place in modern navies, and that reason is aircraft. If you'll take a look at history, especially World War II, most of the Nazi battleships were sunk or crippled by aircraft, not by battles with other naval vessels. It was, in fact, the success of aircraft against the Nazi naval vessels that prompted navies to start using aircraft carriers as the flagships of their fleets.

The idea of a navy is power projection. Sea, land, and air power are closely interconnected - a military must possess all of the above to be able to win decisive victories. I always want to slap people that say ridiculous things like China is going to take over the U.S. soon. Bullshit. They have a huge army that could indeed have the manpower to invade and take ground - but they have no way of getting that army to our soil in great enough numbers to matter. No power projection, because they don't have enough aircraft carriers. It doesn't matter how many troops you can cram on a landing vessel; if you don't control the air, it's just going to get sunk before it gets anywhere near a shoreline. Aircraft carriers are the ultimate tool in power projection. They control the air for hundreds of miles around them, and that gives other friendly units the ability to act with relative impunity. This is why the U.S. is widely considered to have the strongest military in the world. We may not have the most manpower, but our military is designed around the concept of power projection, and the aircraft carrier is the cornerstone of that philosophy.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Since a Nimitz class carrier has a full complement of aircraft, including bombers and missile-armed fighters, I'd say the Nimitz. What the hell are some 16 cm shell going to do against modern armor?

That's inch my friend, which is roughly 40 cm. That's a pretty damn big shell. Like, this big:

Regardless, if they're a mile apart, I reckon the Nimitz would be toast. Before they've prepped their fighters, the Iowa will have pounded it's flight deck into dust.

Yes, I'm talking strategically though, look at history, Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now Libya, controlling the skies does not mean you'll win the war

You have a point about Vietnam, because yay for jungles, but Libya is an example of "controlling the skies to win", because do you think the rebels would've come so far as they did without the NATO bombing a large chunk of Khadaffi's heavy weapons into dust?

 

[JWAN]

Nimitz carries the day. Provided the aircrew are adequately trained, it is very hard to stop an aerial attack without cover of your own. Battleships cannot launch aircraft (well, besides maybe one or two floatplanes) and the war in the Pacific back in the 40's demonstrated that the battleship is obsolete in terms of an instrument of influencing sea power.

Were going with the updated version of the IOWA class. Meaning the ones with cruise missles and 30 mm AA cannons. If the planes are already launched they would have to do some extreme high level bombing runs and even then the 30mm and the AA rockets will give them a run for their money.

 

[JWAN]

Since a Nimitz class carrier has a full complement of aircraft, including bombers and missile-armed fighters, I'd say the Nimitz. What the hell are some 16 cm shell going to do against modern armor?

That's inch my friend, which is roughly 40 cm. That's a pretty damn big shell. Like, this big:

Regardless, if they're a mile apart, I reckon the Nimitz would be toast. Before they've prepped their fighters, the Iowa will have pounded it's flight deck into dust.

Yes, I'm talking strategically though, look at history, Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan, and now Libya, controlling the skies does not mean you'll win the war

You have a point about Vietnam, because yay for jungles, but Libya is an example of "controlling the skies to win", because do you think the rebels would've come so far as they did without the NATO bombing a large chunk of Khadaffi's heavy weapons into dust?

not to mention the cruise missiles and the 20 and 30mm AA guns that can take out aircraft

 

[Soviet Steve]

In this tactical situation the battleship would win. It misses the entire point of why battleships no longer exist however; Namely that such a tactical situation can't ever arise because Battleships get mauled hundreds of miles before they can get within effective range and utilize their guns.

 

[Slycne]

For starters, Iowa significantly out armors the Nimtz( 2.5 inches of Kevlar in vital areas vs 7.5-19.7 inches of actual armor). They both have roughly equal number of Phalanax systems and roughly the same number of Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles, but the Iowa at most only has helicopters to field so only the Iowa has effective targets to fire upon with those weapons. Only the Iowa is armed with anti-ship missiles, although the Phalanax might not actually register those missiles as being hostile fast enough either due to the extreme closeness of the launch or the missile not moving fast enough yet to hit their thresholds for targets. They are designed to be self control systems, but it also means you have somewhat limited control of them (or at least the publicly available information and recounts of accidents suggest that). Those missile might not even be able to effectively fire at targets only a mile away too.

So I ultimately see it playing out as the Iowa guts the Nimtz with cannon fire first and using their extensive anti-aircraft array to deal with combat air patrol and any other craft the Nimtz miraculous was able to launch. These are crews trained to fire at targets beyond the curve of the Earth. At 1 mile they can probably forgo ranging fire and simply laser range the target for a firing solution.

Spoiler: Nimtz has 2.5 inches of Kevlar to defend against this.

In this unlikely scenario of these two ships loosing their escorts and stubbing upon each other at 1 mile of distance, I give it to the Iowa.