In this episode we're taking a look at the Kirov Class and seeing how they would fare against the Iowa Class Battleships. To support this channel and the museum, go to: www.battleship...
You point about the ability to park a battleship to fly the flag in hostile territory where you would never risk a carrier is an excellent one. Having assets that are just so damn hard to kill really has some value.
@@erichvonmanstein6876 Unfortuately, it's you who is "wrong". Modern homing torpedoes detonate directly underneath the keel of the ship. There is no armour there. The ships own weight results in it breaking in two and sinking. Any ship ever built, armoured or not is vulnerable to these silver bullets. You would need WW1 era torpedo nets around the ship at all times to survive. And they can't be used while moving.
@@boobah5643 Enterprise nearly single-handedly held the line in the Pacific until the US Fleet could get back on it's feet after Pearl Harbor and America's industry could get rolling replete with 20 battlestars. The Japanese bombed, torpedoed, and reported her sunk so many times they started referring to her as "the grey ghost" and what finally took her out of the war was a direct hit by a Kamikaze that blew one of her elevators hundreds of feet into the air requiring major repairs before being sent back in only for the war to end. From what I hear, Warspite was an incredible ship (with easily one of the most awesome names for a battleship) but it's difficult to image her exploits bumping Enterprise for number one ship most deserving of preservation.
@@177SCmaro Agreed 100%. At the very least the BB North Carolina to whom the Enterprise was her charge...became a museum. USS Enterprise to North Carolina - "Are you afire?" after seeing for the 1st time the full scale anti-air fury of the BB.
@@RuralTowner Add her sistership USS Washington to the list. Only US battleship to sink another battleship 1v1 and had she had been preserved, we would have had a complete ship class museum. The Iowas do not technically count since two were cancelled.
I'd say the loss of IJN Nagato and the Prinz Eugen are pretty high on my list. Mostly because they did survive to the end of the war. In the case of Prinz Eugen she is still capsized on a reef and is still exposed on the surface.
If NJ was being fired on by the Kirov, the crew would probably know that the armored box launchers wouldn’t survive, so they’d salvo all the missiles regardless of the hit probability because they’re going to lose the missiles anyway and firing them gets the fuel and warheads off the ship so they don’t start fires. So if they had any probability of hitting the Kirov and were under fire, they’d probably salvo all of the Tomahawks, not just 2 or 3.
@@emmitt169 Its cause those countries see how the US has fared during Vietnam, and the Afghan conflict and the North Korean conflict (which is still on going) North Korea: US and Korea South were actually winning the conflict but the Chinese got involved sending waves of soldiers pushing US and Korean forced back to the 45th parrelle. Literally the Allies was running out of ammunition due to the amount of soldiers the Chinese were willing to throw into the meat grinder. (Well this is considered yeah the US lost har har har I question the fact that a country sent thousands of soldiers into a meat grinder.) Vietnam: After the Tet Offensive the North lost the ability to launch a offensive and was unable to do so until months after the US left in the 70s. The US broke the back of the North forces it was that devastating. The US pulled out due to political and social issues that was at home and during the conflict it was limited in its ability to wage war. Afghan Conflict: US (people have forgotten due to lack of studying history) entered to hunt down and destroy the taliban and the terrorist faction that was there including its leaders. for 20 years the US maintained some control but the Afghan military was never able to prove effective, and political decisions a year or 2 before the pull out really devestated US, Afghan relations that when the pullout happened the ones that were reconized by the administration 2 years previously took advantage and reclaimed the country and the US backed government disolved overnight although technically it was destroyed 2 years previously. All of those conflicts were police action or limited fighting. In a actual engagement such as a actual war with the US able to use both hands. Its literally a straight up nightmare for any opponent except Russia. The Current one people say the US would lose is against a conflict with China. Problem is people don't really pay attention to except for size number and oh look its shiny it must be better. The US i would say likely could never invade China by itself it would need support to defeat a country that is about the same size of the US. However in a naval engagement that was perhaps defending Japan or Tawiian or if China was dumb enough to attack a US base. Its likely the US would stomp anything China had crushing them to the point of rendering the Chinese Navy extinct. Its that still one sided. (not because of tech as china is rapidly updating the fleet, but due to the US being a technologically advanced navy that is combat experienced and has a massively complicated and functional command and control system that allows all branches of the military to work with each other. )
@@emmitt169 there is some merit to those claims as in wargame type situations there have been cases where they've been able to potentially sink aircraft carriers, but those are of course only theoretical
"...if we get into gun-fighting range with a Kirov, that's a no contest, and something has gone horribly wrong if a Kirov chooses to get within gun-fighting range of an Iowa." hahaha love it!
Well this proofs he has no idea what the granit is capable they are 7.5t robotic missiles that are designed to kill 100k tons cvs the iowa would die fast and even if they nuked kirows because its in gun range well big uff these rockets are not ship guided .
Only proof here is that you are a clown if you for you Iowa is easier target than super CV... Conventional Granit would never breach Iowa citadel, which means Kirov wouldn't be able to sink it.
@@peterwolf8395 Good luck going through Iowa armor, considering during the time Granit was developed, no ships at that time has armor, unlike Iowa. Of course warhead would do damage but the question is how much.
@@Boomkokogamez sorry but again do you think us cvs that displace more than a yamato have no armour the granit is 5 times a yamato shell in mass and nearly as fast .And again its supposed and designed to kill us cvs that dwraf the iowa class in sieze .Also a sap thomahak warhead penns 300 mm and this rockets cruises hat some hundret miles per hour woth a mass of i believ 800 kg .You see were this is going iowa is a easy pen but i will give her the sturdyness to not sink fast then again kirov has 20 of those.
The thing about _Kirov_ is that IF you can score a hit on her, it's probably going to land pretty close to something that will cause lots of fun and exciting secondary explosions (the downside of being *absolutely jam-packed* with missiles). The difficulty is scoring that hit, especially if you're an _Iowa_ in a 1v1 scenario with no offboard support.
Yeah, pretty much. The downside to bristling with that many VLS's is that you have an absolute ton of explosive just sitting there near one another. If one of those silos gets hit right, a Kirov would pull a pretty good impression of the HMS Hood.
They've results of a direct high energy head on a cure of reminds me of the firecrackers I used to get at South of the border in South Carolina. Pedro sezs!
That "probably going to land pretty close to something that will cause lots of fun and exciting secondary explosions" reads like a quote from Drachinifel.
Considering the quality of design, surplus buoyancy, and how the class has weathered over time, was there ever any thought of converting the class to nuclear power.. As a frequent visiter, I am proud of the way the ship is maintained. No easy job in northern climates. Now that I am retired, I am giving serious thought to volunteering to help maintain the ship. I have no special skills,, other then my knowledge of the ships history, but I can wield a paint brush with the best of them.. Thank you Ryan for getting inmto some of the smaller topics that only a battleship geek like me gets into.
Although steam power would make in theory possible to convert those ships to nuclear powered, in reality it will be impossible due space constraints. Boilers are generally very compact, because they have quite large power density (larger then common naval nuclear reactors) and their total volume is "inflated" by fuel supply. But that fuel was in Iowa class deployed on whole ship in relatively narrow tanks. So it could not be used for extra space needed by nuclear reactor and primary circuit. Space of boilers would be occupied by heat exchangers between primary and secondary circuit. And no other space savings would occur. So you would not have really space for reactor nad primary circuit. This is general reason, why non-nuclear ship can not be converted into nuclear one, but vice versa it is not such problem and was done on multiple occasions.
The real problem is that you wouldn't even be able to get to the boilers to replace them, not without cutting through armour that is not practical to replace.@@tomascernak6112
Man I love your videos. I got my masters in US Naval History. I'm trying to get hired on for USS North Carolina. You have been a huge influence on that decision.
Late 80s 2cd Fleet oporders were written that the preferred method of taking out a Kirov was to send in a Los Angeles. They had very little chance of even knowing they were under attack until the Mk 48s were inbound.
My favorite answer to the Iowa vs. Missiles question comes from the Missouri's commander during the gulf war, that time when missiles got shot at her battlegroup. A reporter interviewed the commander and asked him what he would do if a missile were to hit his ship. His responded that he would send a sailor out with a broom to go sweep the deck off.
There was a PC game called 5th Fleet and in one scenario it was a US Surface Action Group (centered on an Iowa class battleship) against a Soviet one (centered on the Kirov). Usually the two sides end up lobbing missiles at each other, with each side losing a destroyer or two. But on two or three occasions, a "close range" gun battle would occur and it always ended up with the Kirov going under from 16" shell fire, usually followed by the smaller ships - as the Iowa class are fast.
I love this comparison format. I served during this era and my destroyer operated with USS Iowa in a SAG during exercises and later on an operational deployment to the Mediterranean. Fun sea story ... during an exercise off the Virginia Capes our SAG pretended to be Soviets against a CVBG built around carrier Kennedy. Iowa played the part of ... (you guessed it) ... Kirov. We BEAT the Kennedy by 'cheating,' by using every surface sailor's dream camouflage, heavy fog, electronic silence and other ship traffic to hide ourselves. The carrier sailors considered it cheating but it allowed us to detect, track and engage our opposite numbers successfully. Iowa got within 20 miles of the Kennedy before revealing herself. She then gave the carrier a nine gun 16" salute both audible and visible through the fog. The exercise referees made us reset the exercise and run it again ... after the surface sailors among them stopped laughing their butts off. Ryan, I think it's true that a Kirov would have had trouble sinking an Iowa. That said, I think only 3 or 4 hits by those big anti-ship missiles would electronically BLIND the New Jersey by taking down her exterior radar antennas as you said. Those 'Armored box launchers' (eight of them) would not be able to take a hit from the 'Shipwreck' missiles without triggering major topside fires and cooking off ordinance, and the four unprotected Harpoon launchers ... more fires with exploding warheads adding to the mayhem. The Kirov might not SINK the New Jersey but she certainly could mission kill her. Of course your Tomahawk ASMs (not land attack) and Harpoons could do the same to her if they got through. I don't think NJ could get close enough to engage with 16" fire, though if she could there was that lovely nuclear power plant in the Kirov, and you probably wouldn't need Armor Piercing shells to bust it open. Tomahawk missile ranges were considerably longer than the 200 or so miles you credit. The TLAM (Land Attack Missile) had an effective range of over 1,000 miles along with a terrain following guidance system. The TASM (Anti Ship Missile) was essentially a long range Harpoon with a credited range of 600 miles. It had a similar radar target seeker and guidance system to the Harpoon and a similar size warhead although the fuel remaining aboard would add to the fires the missile would start.
That's the thing with jet propelled cruise missiles, the residual fuel. That was one of the big problems with kamikazes hitting warships during World War II the gasoline. In the Falklands War the ships lost to exit were lost to fire not the warhead.
If I recall correctly a Kirov is basically a anti air defense fortress with a 20 kamikaze punch to knock out anything that dares to be detected by russian targeting sattelites. If a Kirov got in range of an Iowa battlegroup it would open up with a 20 plane salvo (the shipwreck is more comparable to a plane than to a missile in size) and shower that iowa battlegroup with a combination of conventional and nuclear tipped shipwreck missles, these missiles are even armoured to resist CIWS and use passive / active homing and jamming / evasive manouvers to resist being shot down. The Kirov would also be the command ship of a russian battlegroup supported by underwater assets (Oscars) and air assets with equally lethal missile batteries that would launch an coordinated attack against the american battlegroup. There is just about nothing an Iowa could do to her without the support of a carrier group which would, with brute force, overcome a KIROVs air defenses. After showering the american battle group with her P700s the Kirov would bring up the boilers and fuck off as fast as possible. The kirov, by this time of action, would propably be at the bottom of the ocean, being a prime target for any carrier group interested in its own survival. In Difference to an oscar, she cannot dive to evade. An Iowa is a blunt weapon brought back to smash land targets cheaper than an air plane strike, a Kirov is the russian way of saying hello to invading maritime strike groups. Different jobs for different purposes.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Exactly. It was the fuel in those two Iraqi Exocets that caused the majority of the damage to USS Stark. IIRC only one of the warheads detonated, but the combination of jet fuel from the missiles and the aluminum superstructure ... The Spruance class DD I was serving in at the time also had an aluminum superstructure so we paid close attention to the lessons from that attack, what worked and what didn't just as the Navy as a whole did with the lessons from the Forrestal fire. We rewrote major portions of the ship's firefighting doctrine and practiced it constantly, refining it where needed.
@@robertf3479 I put a lot on the commanding officer. His ship in being painted by target acquisition radar and does not got to GQ. Did not activate the CIWS, or alter course to unmask it. He thought his crew was tired. I feel a tired and live crew is preferable to a dead one. His first responsibility is ship and crew. The only exception is orders, or situation making ship and crew expendable. As in the Battle of Samar.
I know it’s not the same class of ship, but it is very interesting hearing about what the capabilities of the defenses of the Kirov’s are after seeing what happened to the Moskva.
Yes, they were operated under the same design philosophy; safety last, firepower first. Of course Moskova was not at its prime. Poor maintenance was certainly a factor.
It's funny when Ryan talks about the battleship like it's his car or like there are other people out there who own battleships too! 😆 "as an American battleship owner..." Or " what colour do you paint your battleship?" We should try and crowd fund a replica HMS Vanguard for Drachinifel to curate so we can watch transatlantic battleship banter 🙂
One thing is for certain! I do hope the Kirov's get to go in a museum at the end of their military careers, reactors or not. They are after all, the last of the Battlecruiser breed, even different, they are very historically significant!
One is so dilapidated it can't even be moved and had a "reactor incident" which took it out of service the second ship is currently being scrapped after it was completely gutted by fire, the other two are still in service/undergoing upgrades.
@@Casket-Man And, as we have learned from the Russian submarine fleet, "in for overhaul" for a decade means what in the west would be a major reactor incident, and if they actually say the words "reactor incident", it just means "be thankful we aren't all glowing". The Russians may have stepped back from Soviet political ideals, but their warm embrace of a cavalier approach to nuclear safety remains constant. Honestly, can we also take a moment to mask in the sheer brilliance of the approach to the end life cycle, which means "let's spend all our money on building weapons systems to massacre our adversaries, and when they're at the end of life, we will make them foot the bill for disposing of them safely, while we build the next generation"
I was in the Marine Corps in the early 80's, and one of the factors we heard was the lack of shore bombardment capability in the Navy. The fleets destroyers and cruisers were starting to be armed primarily with missiles and the Marines were concerned with a lack of fire support from vessels off shore. The battleships of course were a remedy for that situation.
Same here. GUIAK gap scenario. A number of times they nuked me. A couple of time I made it within gun range. A couple of times I got a Los Angeles into the Russian formation. Sank everything.
@@1337flite same here. I actually have the hardware and software to put together a computer and run it right now. Another good game from that error was fighting steel. I found a way to defeat the Russians missile swarm in the GUIAK Gap Scenario. You put all your escort ships in line of rest ahead of your heavy ships. You use the helicopters for the screen on the flanks and stern of the formation all you have to do is to turn into the missile swarm and you can shoot down most of the missiles. You'll still lose a couple smalls ships like Perry class frigates. But you basically take down the swarm with the sm2 launch from all the ships being in the line abreast. And then you launch your tomahawks and when you get a little closer you launch your harpoons and if that doesn't get them eventually you end up in gun range. It is an old formation from the age of sail. In that case it would be the frigates in the line of brass and the ships of the line behind them.
@@someguy8732 SCRAM isn't an acronym but was used as far back as the first nuclear pile at the University of Chicago. The best story that I have heard about it was that if anything went wrong you hit the OFF button (which inserted certain control rods into the reactor) and ran like hell.
@@ghost307 too bad molten salt reactors didn't get more development. If they overheat the liquid core simply melts a plug and drains into a space that disperses it enough to stop the reaction
@@someguy8732 There's also a relatively simple method to kill a heavy water fission reactor, but it is so effective that the reactor vessel needs to be heavily serviced before it can be refueled and restarted.
I disagree about the Iowa only firing a few tomahawks at a time. As you said, the tomahawks are poorly protected, and Iowa's defenses are limited, so it makes sense to off load as many tomahawks as possible. That way there's fewer things to go BOOM on your decks when the Kirov's missiles arrive.
true. But consider that at the time, what the mix of TASM/TLAM on board was loaded. Even a "full salvo" of TASM likely still would not overwhelm the point defenses of the Kirov.
@@lsdzheeusi if half the Tomahawks were TASMs, that would be 12 of them. A Kirov isn’t going to shoot down 12 missiles, especially if the Harpoons are launched as well.
@@bluemarlin8138 Kirov was designed to shoot down several dozens of such missile at a time. This is why it has so many layers of AA defense. S-300, Tor/Osa, kortik/AK-630, AK-130, PK-10... They were not afraid of several Harpoons or Tomahawks fired from surface ships, but of dozens of same missiles fired from dozens of aircraft launched from carrier. Without ability to defend against 50+ missiles at time, it will be not able to get into fire position towards CVNBG.
@@bluemarlin8138 Kirov'd pick off most of the TASMs using their long range SAMs, most of the rest using their short range SAMs, and then the CWIS would get the rest. Only chance you'd have to get a TASM or 2 through is to ripple fire the Harpoons as decoys for the TASMs.
You are partially correct. He reinstated them because it was easier to upgrade than to build from scratch. Especially with a ship that can not only take a hit but give a care package back.
I remember during the reactivation of one of the Iowa's, might have been Wisconsin, it was right after the Falklands War. A reporter went up to the captain and asked him what he would do if an Exocet missile hit the ship. The captain replied man the brooms. That isn't to say that the missile was incapable it's just that it wasn't designed for this kind of Target. The biggest hazard from an Exocet striking in Iowa class would be the residual fuel supply catching fire from the missile. Some of the lighter portions of the ship it would put a hole in like the bow. But none of the critical systems would be affected. Well maybe except the antennas for the various radars and communications.
Exactly. Modern weapons systems are designed to attack modern counterparts. An Iowa getting into a slugging match would be like local cops trying to take out the Killdozer.
@@lsdzheeusi during the Falklands War of the ships that were lost to Exocet missiles were damaged by the WarHeads but were destroyed by the fires resulting from the residual jet fuel in the missile. The same result would happen from a harpoon. I think the harpoon has gone to a shape charge though now. Which would be really nasty on today's ships. Something that might surprise you is there was some testing done to see how A10s would work in the anti shipping role. Without any change to their weapons loadout they would trash any ship they came in on. Excluding of course the Iowa. But then it would do some heavy damage to the superstructure don't think the Maverick would penetrate anywhere heavily armored though. But like an a-10 against Kirov if it gets passed the Kirov's gun defenses and missiles, it could disable if not kill the Kirov in one pass.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer No surprise. Let's objectively consider that the A-10 is just a modern B-25. It almost verges on comedy how many guns and cannon they crammed into those gunships in the Pacific in World War 2. The Japanese heavily relied on DD, DE, and transports to supply their numerous island bases, and those Mitchells nearly cut them in half. I remember reading an autobiography by one Japanese DD captain sunk by a B-25, and it was a slaughter. The USAF has a culture of pilots, the leaders tend to be pilots, and it's a culture that has always, by nature of "like likes like" been one dominated by a love of fast movers and strategic power, with less love for ground support. The mission has always been a bitter pill to swallow for many in the leadership. No disrespect to the Hog drivers as they are truly committed to their craft and mission. But there's always been resistance to the A-10 from the fast mover community. They need to give Army Air the straight wing mission back, the A-10 will be updated and in production again in no time. And to agree with your sentiment, I'm sure the Navy would gladly add the A-10 for maritime support.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer The Iowas’ armor scheme would actually be ideal against shaped charges. Those charges are calibrated for the metal jet to penetrate when they detonate at a certain distance from armor. If they go off further away than they are designed to, their effectiveness is greatly reduced. This is why the US put steel grates on light armored vehicles in Iraq-they kept shaped charge RPGs from penetrating relatively light armor. So a shaped charge missile hitting an Iowa would detonate when it hit the outer hull, and wouldn’t be that effective against the main belt because of the spacing between the two. Of course, a turret would be a different story. I don’t think residual fuel would be a huge problem on the Iowa, due to their size and extensive compartmentalization.
Interesting, and I like the archer analogy. However I think you underestimate the punch from a SS-N-19 Shipwreck missile. 1650 lb warhead, nevermind the rest of the 7 ton missile traveling at Mach 2 would make a heck of an impact. Which is what it was supposed to do against its primary target, an American carrier.
I would like to note the granit missile was designed to penetrate into american carrier compartments shielded by more than a meter of reactor shielding (for radiation protection for the crew) the missile itself is 5 tons and travels at mach 2.5 for comparison the 16 inch shell of the iowa (which can penetrate its own armor at long range) is only a bit over 1 ton in weight and travels under mach 1 at longer ranges the granit has an armor piercing cap on the warhead which means the warhead (not the missile body) would probably cut right through the iowa armor and explode inside missile body would just smash into the ship but the warhead of the missile would work like a sabot missile and the missile body like the sabot body separating from the projectile on impact in addition to that the granit armor piercing warhead still has 750 kg of explosives so once it penetrates the belt or turrets it is essentially like a torpedo warhead going off right inside the ship
The US's heavy anti-ship missiles are called (in the cold war) A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsairs. Now they are F-18F Super Hornets and F-35C Lightning IIs.
@@pg1171 Just to be thorough, what I meant was the US never developed heavy anti-ship missiles BECAUSE we already had a powerful shipborne air force and didn't need to have missiles like the Granite.
Former coworker of mine was a tomahawk operator of some kind on the USS Missouri in the Gulf War. Very strange mashup: guided missile operator on a WWII battleship
Your right. The SLQ-32 I believe was on board the New Jersey 2 suites, and if in a battle group with a CG-47 class then you have SLQ-32 sub and surface search SPY-1A (valley forge had the SPY-1d) over the horizion air and surface search radar through link11, plus SPS-73 and SPS-49 surface and air search radars through LINK4&5, and one fucking crazy ass SQQ-89 sonar suite. Shit would wake me up everytime they pingged for a contact, never got any sleep in forward berting. Dam still can still here that thing ping 27 years later. The MK-26 missle launcher were slow to post and slew and only four missles could luanch at a given time (two forward and two aft in two position single rails), and I know we had the RGM-84 Harpoon (8 tubes) on the Valley Forged with the 2-5"/52 MK45 Gun systems. We also, had two MK32 launchers which could shoot the MK46 or MK48 torpedos but not the MK50, not great but can get the job done if needed. The valley had 2-Phalanx CIWS block 1B (amid ship port and starboard). Oh and for a Sub shooting Torp's at our asses we had SLQ-25 which I remember once payed out 1400" line and it snapped and had to retrieve the Nixie decoy, fun day that was! Skipper was pissed. All in all I tell you, I did not like landing those SH-60B helos. Not fun, out on deck for 12 hours in the heat of the gulf of Oman in a fire suit just in case the B1RD hit the deck. Don't miss that at all. But do however, miss the Valley Forge constently gone 50! Miss all those guys I was stationed with for 21 years. Sorry went off on a tangent. Back to the BB-61's um yah, joined the navy to late to be stationed on those girls. But I knew alot of sailors that served on the big girls. All told me it was the best time they ever had. But the Navy did me good and sent me to a great ship. The USS Bristol County LST-1198, loved that ship! Alot of memories, almost got kicked out the navy twice onboard her, but that is another story. Dam did it again, off and a tangent. I would like to say, thanks to all my brothers and sisters that serve/d with me. Except for one which almost got my whole fire team killed. Ran off crying when the helo crashed on deck lefdt my team stranded with no agent. Not cool, and she got a NAM that year. Again not cool. But I'm so glad we can still visit these big bitches, in fact I plan on seeing the New Jersey very soon. Can't wait to see her! For my second ship the Valley Forge was not so luckey as she was target practice and she is now with Davey Jones. Take care of my girl Davey! I would like to add the following RIPs: USS Valley Forge, USS Bellalu Wood, USS Peleliu, USS Bristol County, USS Durham, USS Constellation, USS Shitty Kitty (Kitty Hawk) and USS Jason. Rest in peace my ladys, I miss you all! But still got two ladies left: USNS Mercy (meh), and my baby the USS Preble DDG-88 keeping up the fight. Stay strong PREBEL, nothing can stop you girl!! Sorry, again if you made it this far thank you for reading and keep these ladies afloat as much as you can for we lost alot of good girls over the years.
When I was on an SSN in the mid-80s, we did a few operations simulating operations against a Kirov surface action group. Easiest way to neutralize that threat was a MK-48. 1 and done for pretty much any surface ship under 50K tons.
@@bic1498 ehm, did you really served on that SSN? Because If so, you should know, that at 55 knots, range of that torpedo in MOD 6 version was less then 20 nm. So Kirov would just outrun it without even trying. Taking burst speed of Kirov into consideration, maximum distance to prevent outrun is 7 nm. Yep SEVEN NAUTICAL MILES!!! So good luck to get in such position without being detected either by his powerful sonar suites or sonars of his ASW helis. With such luck, you will be able to win national lottery.
@@tomascernak6112 Your Wiki knowledge doesnt match experience. The Mk48 Mod 6 didn't enter service until the mid 90s. We had Mod 4s. Even those had range/speed ability you don't have need to know of. Your assumption is that Kirov would be aware of a weapon outside of 7nm in order to outrun, much less aware of the presence of a sub to start using its active sonars. That is a large assumption .. from experience.
While serving aboard the Iowa returning from operation Northern wedding in October 1986 the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K 219 suffered an explosion and sank. The Soviets sent many ships to assist including the Kirov! The kirov remained at Horizon distance. I had heard that Captain Seaquist had requested to change course to steam parallel with her. But his request was denied so we never got to steam close to the ship but I did get a few photos through the "big eyes"
This is a really neat viewpoint on Iowa-vs-X comparisons. The Iowa was designed for fighting cruisers and battleships, but the Kirov is a 'carrier-killer'. Two entirely different ships built in entirely different eras, for entirely different reasons. It certainly gives me a whole new perspective on the scenario. Thank you for making this video! =^x^=
In the open ocean, attacking a carrier would be suicide. AEW, aircraft, i.e. Hawkeye would spot your group, the CAG would know your exact location, and you would know nothing about the carriers location. The carrier could steam away at maximum speed, while launching all aircraft. The aircraft effectively have unlimited range because of midair refuelling. They could target your fleet with wave after wave of Harpoon missiles. You might manage to shoot down one or two aircraft, but eventually harpoons would take out the Kirov and its escorts, one by one. Of course, subs would likely be thrown in the mix. That would make things much more complicated. Kirov was a surface action ship. Surface to surface action was what it was designed for, but taking on a carrier task force was probably outside its design intent.
Drach is planning to visit USS New Jersey this year. I believe he said August. That would mean the video sometime in the winter. Drach has also stated that he will not do videos about ships that still exist unless he does the video on them. Which makes total sense. What better video prop than the actual ship?
@@dotwill almost totally different styles but that’s what would make it a dream team. I’d pay good money for that collaboration. I’m not a rich man but if Ryan and Drach team up, I will contribute $500.00. Any other takers?
@@jameschenard7691 I have Drach on Patreon. I was one of his voice actors in his Jutland series and he always gets back to me. I'll try to connect him and Ryan.
P-700 (NATO name Shipwreck tells a lot ) anti ship missile with 7000kg mass, 2500km/h speed. The kinetic energy, and 750kg explosive, or armor piercing head, and shaped charge would definetaly destroy that armor belt of the Iowa class. Please do not compare to a 1600kg Zero with let say 300km/h speed at the moment of impact. That armor has designed to defeat a 1200kg conventional armor piercing shell. And sorry, but the Iowas did not scared the Soviet Union. There were many other weapon system (mostly submarines) that scared them. By the way this is another great and unbiased video. You have proved again that Battleship New Jersey has a valuable curator. Hats off Ryan!
You are absolutely correct. The Granits warhead is armor piercing. Contemponary American BGM-71 Tow missiles warhead weighs 6.14 kilograms and can penetrate almost meter of armour. How do you think that 750kg of similiar warhead is going to perform? In my opinion a single hit from P-700 would atleast mission kill an iowa class ship.
This video seems to be gladly omitting the capabilites of the Granit missile which is not the standard toy rocket like for example the Exocet, Harpoon or Tomahawk. -Granit missiles fly at sea level to remain undetected while one single missile will fly in a higher altitude and use its passive radar in order to guide the swarm. -Granit missiles have ECM and will perform very high g counter maneuvers if necessary. -Granit missiles have a titan armored hull carrying a 750 Kg of armor piercing warhead. -Granit missiles fly at Mach 1,5 - 2,5 (sea level, high altitude) -Granit missiles have a range of 350 miles. [edit] forgot to finish the third phrase with "will perform very high g counter maneuvers if necessary."
...I mean for this target phalanx is more or less a non factor, and BB armor versus any missile is already questionable. Any close defence gun is more or less worthless against maneuvering targets, it's just that against targets AK630/Kortik are nominally more useless than most. At least Kortik has missile launchers...
A suggestion. Battleship ammunition. There were the Two Main ones, but even within them there were 8 modifications of the AP Mark 19 and Two whole Marks of HC, then there are "Target" Shells and the Nuclear shell. During Vietnam the Gunfighter Program reached the 16" guns with reused 11" shells in sabots (Just in time for New Jersey to be decommissioned) and with the planned dedicated 8" Darts and two types of rocket assisted projectile. During there 1980s commission the new? HE-CVT Mark 143, ICM Mark 144 & HE-ET/PT Mark 145 shells, but also a number of planed shells with things like 666 SADARM (which is terrifying), new longer-heavier HC and two new sub caliber shells of 13.65" and 11" respectively (the latter being Guided). Edit: oh and there was this silly little thing that Pratt and Whitney proposed in 2003 (don't ask me why) for a new Scramjet shell with a pedestrian 400 NAUTICAL MILES of range. Who would ever want that? What were they thinking?
There were all kinds of radicle ideas for advanced munitions for the Iowa class battleships. The two biggest problems were the daily operating costs of the ships. The Iowa's were very expensive ships to run on a daily basis and that is the main reason they were decommissioned. The second would have been the fire control system, being analog, operating with cams and gears I believe it was preconfigured for the 2700 pound AP shell and the 2250 pound high explosive round. I don't believe you could tell the system that you were firing a 13 or 11 inch sabot round. I could be wrong, I was a gunners mate and worked in 16 inch turret one and only had a basic amount of training on the fire control system for ESWAS qualifications. If they would have had to replace the fire control system to accommodate these advanced new shells t would have been very expensive.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 I have read that USS Saint Paul used the LRBA projectile (the product of the Gunfighter program for the 8" gun) however I don't know what they did for fire control other than that they managed it. I'd hazard a guess that they bodged it because they only fired at one target, that they probably already new they'd be shelling and the ship was decommissioning before the year was out so it seems unlikely they did anything to elaborate.
@@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan Take those same guns and match them with new technology and rearm those now near useless mistakes.....Zumfarts. Redesignate them as surface support or landing support CRUISERS and NOT DESTROYERS. Any warship has to do three things 1) Locate. 2) Engage. 3) Destroy. If it cannot do even one of these it is NOT a warship.
@@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan A battleship shooting SADARM shells would be the end of the armored counterattack on the beachhead. "Terrifying" is indeed an accurate description.
I have to say that this channel is easily becoming one of my favorite on YT. You are such a great mediator of information! You're doing an amazing job! Cheers! Question: I would love to hear more about how a modern anti-ship missile would affect an Iowa-class BB? Like would it detonate on the outer 1.5" hull and explode in the void up against the belts or would it detonate on the belt? How about pup-up maneuvers, would a Harpoon missile penetrate the deck of the Iowa? Reading online there are a lot of different takes on what a Harpoon could or could not do against an Iowa-class battleship... There seem to be very little consensus on the actual effectiveness of the Iowa's armor against anti ship missiles!
It is highly unlikely, that attack from above by slow and weak harpoon will be able to penetrate armored deck, but explosion itslef would create serious damage to superstructure and any equipment there, so several Harpoons and Iowa will be blind, deaf and on fire. Same effect would have any western modern AShM except supersonic ones. Common supersonic missiles will be able to do more serious damage and probably penetrate in some degree even armored deck. And last type are massive supersonic missiles with SAPHE(I) warhead and missiles with shaped charge warheads. These will easily penetrate any armor on Iowa and do extreme damage depending on their warhead size. Missiles like Granit, KH-32, Kinzhal, DZ-ZF and Zircon would probably kill Iowa in single hit. Especially destructive power of Zircon and DZ-ZF missiles would be insane (up to 18GJ of impact energy, 4 GJ of explosive energy and 180 GJ of burning energy if attack is on short range for Zircon missile, for comparison 16" Mark 8 AP shell has 300MJ muzzle energy and 75MJ of explosive energy).
@@Mechanized85 yea you know that the kirovs have s300 f , osa2, 4 kastam ciws and 4 ak 630 ciws and the main Canon of 130mm with he VT. The hardpoon is a subsonic misile of 4 m long and 340mm of wide. Are you serious launching a tomahawk vs a ship with hudge amount of defensive armament? A harpoon yes but a tomahawk?
I guess another "likely" scenario is a "Red October/Tom Clancy" sort of scenario with escalating tensions and the Kirov and Iowa within moderate distance of one another when the shooting starts. If the Iowa is equipped with a spotting drone and sub-caliber rounds like in the novel, then it becomes much more interesting : ))
@@andyf4292 Yeah... But 16 inch shells are "a little" bigger and heavier than their 4.5 inch counterparts. Would be much harder to shoot down, if not impossible.
@@moose2577 the novel. The surface groups were pretty much completely cut out of the movie. And I want to say the battleship in question is, in fact, the New Jersey.
Iowa vs Godzilla for next April 1 :-) In the recent movie "Godzilla vs Kong" there are two Iowas in the naval task force attacked by Godzilla. (It's in the trailer, so I don't think this is a spoiler.) This needs proper analysis and comparison of the respective combatants and tactics.
Heli Pad: In addition to underway replenishment along side the supply ship; replenishment was also accomplished by another ship's helicopter by either landing on our ship or or by cable. The pad was needed for this purpose, not for a permanently assigned helicopter.
I could have sworn there was a hanger under that part of the deck for the kingfishers. I wonder if they sealed it off. I think most helicopters the Navy's had in the '80s are bigger than a kingfisher. I really like that little float plane.
This was a very reasoned and realistic prediction! I figured you'd give one, but this kind of question isn't usually answered with facts and logic, so I'm still very pleased by this video. Especially your admission as curator that NEW JERSEY had limited ability to effectively fight a KIROV-class in a one-on-one engagement. A lot of enthusiasts, and probably some curators, wouldn't be able to admit that sort of thing. You're an honorable man, Ryan! I think the specific rules of engagement--which might change regarding *what* kind of shooting war we'd theoretically be in with the Soviets--would also dictate tactics a lot. In the fleet engagement, too, much would depend on how the Soviet group conducted their withdrawal... a very well-planned and executed withdrawal would perhaps give the Soviets a good value for their casualties, but a disorganized and confused withdrawal might cause a long, drawn-out defeat for the Soviets, as the American survivors pick them off. It'd be interesting to know more about ranges and sustainable speeds, but that's always been some of the most secret of naval statistics. First strike capability emerged as a highly decisive factor in naval warfare in WW2. Many of the significant battles between artillery ships in WW2 were decided or largely influenced by who shot first. The battle of Savo Island is a clear example of this, although nobody could have called that a fair fight! But my point is, importance of the alpha strike has stuck around since that time. Probably because everyone's priority is maximum standoff attack capability.
What do you mean by withdrawal? Soviet navy had solely single purpose. In first strike annihilate NATO surface fleets and then hunting submarines. They did not count, they will return till end of war and they was counting on, that soon or later defeated side (americans in 80s, that was sure as Suns longevity) would bring nukes into play and Soviet navy would be eliminated too. So there were no real plans for VMF behind first strike.
"I loved the response by an Iowa class Battleship Captain when asked if he was worried about the enemy firing anti ship missiles at his Battleship. His said, "I'd be worried about my paint job." "
Similar systems on that Slava on the bottom of Black sea, makes one wonder how they would have handled a swarm of harpoons? Idk maybe well? Kirovs are impressive indeed.
I think your assessment is valid and well thought through. The ability to sling numerous anti-ship missles poses a severe threat to any ship, especially one that does not have modern anti-ship protection. The survivability of the Iowa class is it's ace in the hole however. And since it would be traveling with a battle group the Kirov, et-al in it's own group would be hard pressed to win the battle. "Where are the carriers?"
I would think that you could assign 2-3 F-35B's to each battleship instead of 2 Helicoptors. They could use the same landing pad or a slightly enlarged one. They could be the Data Link for GPS 16" Extended Renge Rounds or 3-5 part Missiles assembled and fired from the 16" Tubes.
In 86 the Iowa class battle ships deployed the RQ-2 Pioneer drone that could provide over the horizon targeting. Granted it was limited to being within 22 miles of its mothership doubling the effective range of Iowa's harpoon missiles.
Refited Iowa radar has range for ships like Kirov up to 50 nm. Only optical RQ-2 would be no use for Harpoon missiles range. In fact, he was designed as targeting aid for Iowa main canons.
@@becauseiwasinverted5222 You are know figures from late years of its deployment with digital link. initially it was analog video link (with digital command datalink) with much shorter practical range. Even in early 90s it was less then RQ-7s 31 miles.
15:18 I was at the base museum of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station and one artifact they had was a piece of metal with a big hole punched in it and a placard that read something like "Harpoon penetration test." No other context. The piece was maybe 2 to 2-1/2 inches thick.
Hey Ryan the US actually has developed a missile point defense system. SeaRAM is essintaly a block 1B CIWS with R.A.M.s. Which New Jersey could easily mount if she continued service past 1992.
Already in the 80s, since no surface action happened between 2 ships for most of 40 years, the Iowa's were good for 2.things: force projection aka propaganda and shore bombardment. But even if a 16 inch shell.is cheaper than a missile, the cost of the platform with 1000+ sailors to get it offshore of the target is too much compared to a.submurine with 100 sailors that is also better protected. A few silkworm missiles fired in a salvo may overwhelm ciws and one hit, even if non penetrating, will for sure screw up every antenna in the suprastructure. Let museums be museums
@@Gunni1972 Not on Iowas. Their bow and stern yes (except Missouri) with just 32mm but the armor deck plating at the superstructure is 5 inches. There is still the armored bulkhead below with another 12-14 inches. This Missouri is not usually brought out because its a superheavy. 6 flat inches of armor on the deck which was considered excessive. The superstructure is not vital for ship operations as the guidance computers are not housed there. You also have to consider this is not your normal steel, this stuff is built specifically to withstand explosives.
All in all, the Russians would have probably ended up surrendering to the drone. On a serious note, Iowas made it very clear to the Russians that all they could do was play tough guys in their home ponds of White Sea (and part of Barents Sea), Baltic (rather enclosed), Black Sea (even more enclosed) and the Sea of Okhotsk. That was that. Survivability of Kirov class simply wasn’t designed to go against anything like a battleship. Nuclear power plant doesn’t cut it in surface action (and limp mode steaming would not get them very far). The crew size of Iowas made damage control and maintenance way more effective as well. This is a rare case, when an older (and much heavier built) upgraded asset compares favorably against a modern built asset not designed to deal with the level of threat like a battleship. Thanks for a great video!
load out of Iowa was approximately 75 land /25 air It was seen that other ships in the fleet would supply the majority of ant-air in defense which left the Iowa to concentrate on hardened targets on land
So, I'm going to be honest. 'Battleship comparisons' are kind of a video-game mentality thing IMHO. I think their sudden popularity is driven by WoW primarily. When I saw that BNJ started doing comparisons, I smirked a little to be honest. But I understood. It's a good way to get traffic going to the BNJ channel. Having said that, Ryan Szymanski does a really good job with these videos. By constantly reminding us of the operational and logistics constraints of the vessels in question, he takes the conversation out of the realm of geeky stat contests and into a more nuanced discussion of economics, design and deployment. My impression is that RS is aware that 'who would win?' comparisons are usually of only marginal historical validity, (I mean, honestly, New Jersey vs Nelson? Like that would ever happen?) and the reticence in his voice plays to good effect on these occasions. BUT HERE.... Here we have possibly the most valid comparison of all, apart from the Iowas vs Yamatos. The Iowas actually _were_ deployed in part as a response to the Kirovs. It's not only a valid comparison, it's an important one. I watched this video with great interest. Excellent content as always.
Actually the Kirov's had a hybrid Nuclear/Gas Turban power system. On pure nuclear power the Kirov's could achieve 20 knots and was used for the most economical means of propulsion. For higher speeds the gas turbans would work with the nuclear power plant to give speeds in excess of 30 knots however in this configuration high speed range was limited.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 It's an old technology, but not really antiquated. The US Navy still has ships that are steam powered. Wasp class, Blue Ridge class and Emory S. Land class. (the last Wasp class that's steam powered commissioned in 2001, so not ancient)!
@@dundonrl The Blue Ridge's are 51 years old. I remember after the explosion on the Iowa I was assigned to be a driver for the commander of Destroyer Squadron 2. I am pretty sure it was the Mount Whitney that was ALWAYS tied up to the pier right outside, it NEVER moved lol.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 Yep, Blue Ridge is old, Wasp class isn't too bad. With that being said, I'm sure the Bonhomme Richard being steam powered had a lot to do with the scrapping decision.
LOL, just heard Ryan say missiles are expensive and you wouldn't fire very many. LOLOLOLOL In Iraq in 2004 I spent close to 6 million dollars from various weapons systems to bring down a building full of ''hostiles.", In war, fuck the cost, if you have it, USE IT. You don't get a bill at the end of the day and you don't get credits for anything unused brought back to base/port.
Pacing yourself and using adequate ordnance to do what you need done so you have ammunition for a long fight if necessary is absolutely how war should be conducted. Of course cost be damned in war, it's life or death...but at the same time pointlessly wasting munitions simply because you have them and don't get any special reward for not using it all is foolish. This isn't a video game where you always have infinite ammo sources.
the armchair admirals/generals whom go on and on about costs usually have more in common with economists and other such chart-readers than the men whose chances of dying go up exponentially with every breath. if cost was as much of a factor as they make it, we would have never invaded iraq, simply out of fear of having to replace their body armor. better yet, we would have never developed it simply because it costs so much more compared to web gear. actually, now that i think of it: firing m855a1 out of all these m4's is really expensive! replacing the barrels, buying mag pouches, buying optics... let's bring back the garand!
I agree. If war had been declared, I don't think the Iowa would have just fired a couple of missiles and hoped for the best. I think it would have probably fired about half its TASMs and Harpoons and reserved some for a follow-up salvo. But if it saw 20 missiles coming at it, then the captain might just say "screw it" and fire them all.
Enjoyed this one. One thing you have to consider is a design flaw common in ussr surface ships. This was the lack of passive cross flooding. This means that combat damage is more likely to result in capsizing of the vessel. While hull voids flooding will cause some loss of trim on any ship, flooding a large space that is divided port-starboard can lay a ship over quickly.
The more I have thought about the Iowas with the Tomahawks was a bridge to the next destroyers. If you could disable a Kirov enough that it could no longer launch missiles then maybe you bring the 16in guns in to attack.
Hey! Love your videos and I love to see how much they evolved! Waking up in the morning and having my coffee watching your videos is such an amazing treat
My understanding is that the Russians built the Kirov class as “carrier killers” that would close and overwhelm our anti-air defense by a saturation missile attack which freaked the Navy out; the job of the Iowa’s was to stand between the carrier and the Kirov and take the hits. Once the Kirov’s entire missile store had splattered itself on the battleship’s armor they would be free to run her down and return the favor with 18 16”/50 HE Volkswagens/min; Plus ~150 5”/38 per min if they get close enough.
As for a one on one engagement it is more than likely a one sided roflestomp by the Kirov. Even in a pure anti ship configuration with 32 tomahawk ASM's and 16 Harpoons it is unlikely that in a saturation attack that would be enough to penetrate the Kirov's extensive air defense systems.
It's also unlikely that Kirov would have been able to stop ALL of the Tomahawks and Harpoons launched in an attempt to saturate Kirov's defenses. The only question then is, do enough get through to mission kill the cruiser? I think both ships would have been mission killed, very badly damaged through fire and blast effect.
The Kirov can engage 12 targets long range(S-300)+2 short range(OSA)+4 Very Short Range(CIWS) simultaniously. They can stop even that many missles,since those are slow ones,on the other hand,against P-700s the Iowa only could bear 2 CIWS,which can engage 2 targets simultaniously.They can shot down 1-2 P-700 at best,maybe jam 1,but the 4th,5th will be a hit.Crippling hits as well,since a P-700 can penetrate dozens of meters of armor,with its HEAT warhead.Once the Iowa is hit,its is mission killed at best,it would have no fire control,no EW,no power to the CIWS.if not blown out of the water via ammo rack hit,at worst
I would like to respectfully make a suggestion for another video. What if the the Royal Navy, had still had HMS Vanguard during the Falklands War? Would it have been a significant game changer? I personally think that it might have been.
For me the fight between Kirov and a iowa class would depend on many factors, For example how far away are they, Is the Iowa modernized, What Kirov class ship is brought in since each Kirov class ship have different armaments, What way are they facing each other and do they know of each other capabilities. Though in a realistic battle, a kirov would probably engage at long range out of range of Iowa's guns and harpoons, firing her granits missiles at which point I would give the kirov chance of sinking the Iowa a 7-8/10(assuming Kirov fires her entire granit missiles at once) meanwhile Iowa got no way to engage her with the only weapon she has that got the range to engage Kirov is the tomahawks missile, however from what I gather the tomahawks Iowa was given was not made for Ant ship purposes(Some tomahawks were modified to engage ships) and Kirov would probably shoot them down with her extensive AA and CIWS capabilities.
@@petersouthernboy6327 20 cruise missiles moving at Mach 2 with a high explosive load would cause serious damage to the Iowa, probably causing it to sink later probably by flooding.
I live like 45 min away from the NJ and have not yet visited. I asked a couple of my friends if they wanted to go but they just dont get the whole concept but after my father recovers from his stroke I will hope to go with him. Hopefully see you soon!
You have to evaluate these ships as part of the battlegroup they sail with. The Hawkeye and carrier air cap extend the detection range of the Iowa battlegroup. It's a game of rock paper scissors and the battle group has all 3 at once. The Iowa's never operated alone ever.
Here is a different comparison - an Iowa stationed at the Falklands vs the Argentinian navy and air forces at the time of the Falklands war. I remember reading one description that thought an Exocet missile would just have bounced off an Iowa's armor.
Realistically, if the Royal Navy was of a size and strength that they still had a battleship in commission (most probably HMS Vanguard, the last UK built battleship) then the Falklands conflict would not have happened.
An Exocet COULD damage a battleship. The amount of damage would depend on where the ship was hit. A 1980's Iowa had all those vulnerable missile launchers. Hitting one would probably start very large jet fuel fires as well as blast damage from detonating warheads. A sea skimming missile striking the hull ... if it hit the belt, slap on a coat of paint and you're good. A Kamikaze hit Missouri on her belt, leaving a shallow dent and a small fire to put out, plus repainting.
@@robertf3479 yeah, they wouldn't be immune like some people make it out. It would probably take a lot of them to mission kill the ship and a completely unreasonable amount to sink it though.
One thing not mentioned was that the Soviets had a reputation for truly abysmal crew training and rotten damage control. So while one hit by a Harpoon on a Kirov might not do enough damage in theory to put the ship in danger, what might happen in practice could be different.
The main problem with the modern Iowa’s are their lack of anti air/missile protection. They would have multiple vampires coming in and the only real defense would be the phalanx as well as decoys/jamming, the later most people never mention of forget about With 20 deadly vampires coming in, the Iowa would be in real trouble
The most fair fight would be a late 80s Kirov and a late 80s Iowa. Kirov has a good chance of dealing pain from outside the range of the guns, and has a decent shot of incapacitating New Jersey. If New Jersey survives the missiles, it’s her fight to win if she can close the distance.
Yeah, and the Iowas were faster. 33 knots to the Kirovs' 32. And the Iowas could put on a burst of 35 knots. Surprising since the Kirovs were lighter and had nuclear engines, plus conventional backup. You'd think the Kirovs would be able to fire up their conventional boilers as a booster to add speed to the nuclear plants when needed. Most other combined marine propulsion systems (like diesel and turbine) do that.
@@GeraldMMonroe Of course, hence why I said "if she can close the distance." Unless the engagement happens in neutral coastal waters, where landmasses block the surface search radars, or unless New Jersey's missile battery was able to damage Kirov's propulsion system, the engagement would end after the missile exchange.
@@IrishCarney I think Ryan had a very good point in saying that the accumulated wear and tear on the Iowas would push the speed lower to 32 kts. Though, if there was a thorough boiler and turbine cleaning and overhaul just prior to this engagement, New Jersey would be able to operate at that higher speed, and eventually close to within main battery range.
It would be cool to see a comparison of the Iowa’s compared to a ship my father served on the USS Chicago CG-11. I think this would be interesting because I feel like the Chicago CG -11 and Albany CG-10, and Columbus CG-12 represent the Navy’s transition from a gun force to a missile force as the Chicago CG-11 ex CA-136 and her sister ships in the Albany class were converted from guns to missile CG cruisers. Other cruisers of that transition time were converted to missile systems and still retained some guns as well. The Chicago and sister Albany are interesting with regards to the design of the ships and their full conversion to Missile CG cruisers.
But those missiles were AA only. So those conversion has limited surface attack capability and against iowa this capability will be completely useless.
please compare the iowa class battleship against a squadron of german speedboats class 148 (10 boats with 4 MM38 Exocet each) . i like what u do... your videos are very good to watch. greetings.
Man, Ryan and company, I know I'm a stuck record, but you folks do a GREAT job!! Interesting question though. IMHO, it's apples and oranges in a 1 v 1 scenario that probably would happen, given what we can guess about US and post-soviet naval battle doctrine. :)
#1 reason a Iowa or comparable battleship would be a viable asset today is exactly what you said. Roll into a port and have the ability to do considerable bombardment if necessary. How much of the world's population lives within 20 miles of the coast? A significant amount. How many Nations can remain operational if a battleship is blockading their ports?
Yeah. This is NOT an academic channel where you have to defend every choice, but a channel for Iowa-enthusiasts. OF COURSE you are comparing to an Iowa. The smaller the grape you compare this apple to, the better. Big Apple guns go booom, grape goes down.
Actually the limiting factors on how fast you can make a standard hull construction surface ship go are waterline length (longer is faster) and the amount of abuse the screws, the shafts and the hull itself can take. No significant improvements in those areas since before WW II.
The Kirov is vastly newer, vastly more powerful ton-for-ton, and vastly outranges the Iowa class. However, if we're talking QUALITY into account, the Kirov is also a rusting bucket of Russian scrap riveted together by drunken labor conscripts and overseen by drunken embezzlers. Pretty much every Russian ship is laughed at for either how old and decrepit it is or how it rarely leaves port because of how broken it is (and they can't afford to fix it). The only Russian aircraft carrier is in precisely the same situation. The heretofore unthinkable loss of the Slava-class Moskva cruiser to two subsonic cruise missiles has further degraded the perceived effectiveness of the Russian Navy. That ship should have eaten two subsonic cruise missiles for breakfast. But when push came to shove, they were blind and helpless.
Very interesting topic. As I served as CICO on USS IOWA, there are a few points of clarification that may help. Our battlegroup had continual coverage by P-3 Orion aircraft that would link us the location of any surface ships. We would attack such targets with TASM. There were 8 ABL launchers with 4 missiles in each. One ABL had TASM and the others were all TLAM. So we could attack a Kirov with 4 TASM. These had a range of 1280 miles and flew using waypoints at low altitude with the seeker off. The result is that the Kirov would be attacked from all directions simultaneously. They would not be able to defend against 4 TASM with one coming from each direction --- surrounded. The seeker would turn on at a range of 12nm. So, essentially a no-notice surprise attack with missiles approaching from everywhere. IOWA would sink the Kirov.
Impossible. Orion has too small combat range to be capable to operate so far from land to give Iowa class continual coverage. Even with aerial refueling, it will be logistical hell. Also Orion in that era would not survive contact with Kirovs long range AAM. Kirov would know about orion far earlier than P-3 about Kirov because simple physics. TASM did not have range 1280 nm, never. This was range of TLAM with nuclear (130kg) warhead and space occupied by normal TLAM warhead (454 kg) was filled with fuel. Conventional TLAM had then range just over 600nm, TASM had range just under 250nm. Attacking Kirov from all side would be mistake and shows how off you are. Kirovs medium and short range AA defense was not omnidirectional so If you attack from both sides, you will allow to use all kirovs short range systems, meanwhile onsided attack, would allow to use only half of its short range systems. So four TASM? Piece of cake. Seeker turn on at range 12nm would mean that Tomahawk would never found Kirov, because kirov would be 15nm from original position when missile left Iowas launchers. Yeah, also I forgot, if you are bringing whole USN capabilities into play, then Kirov would know location of Iowa BG and all its vessel 24/7 thanks to Legenda. So Iowa and her BG would met her doom being 330nm from Kirov ;-)
I pretty much agree with the way you described the battle. The only tricky part is if the Russians have a part of the Legenda constellation that could detect the Iowa sooner, but that only changes the engagement range, not how much the missiles could do. Maybe if they do a maneuver like the Harpoon's pop-up they might get a chance at some lighter armor, but I don't think it'd do much. One thing that gets me is how overhyped Anti-ship missiles get sometimes. I mean, yea, they can pack a punch, but most isn't going to sink a ship in one hit.
th-cam.com/video/caqRJUFOMlA/w-d-xo.html Do you even know, with what energy is striking Granit and with what energy is striking 16" Mark 8 AP???! There is order of magnitude difference and no, it is not in favor of latter shell. Granit could do pop-up maneuver and had library of best maneuvers against virtually any ship and formation, NATO had. That missile was expensive as f... full of electronics and space-grade materials.
My understanding is for the reasons to bring Iowa and her sisters back was twofold. First , it was a cheap way to reach Reagan ‘s goal of a 600 ship fleet. The Navy considered bring Oriskany back as another carrier deck at the same time but decided she could not operate modern jets lie the F14 and F18. The second reason was that at the start of the 80’s, we only had 13 carriers and the Carter administration that was leaving dithered on more Nimitz class carries beyond Nimitz, Eisenhower, and Stennis. Remember, they proposed that stupid sea control carrier concept as cheaper replacement. Therefore, the Navy’s striking power at sea was being threatened by the Soviet sub force and the new generation of Soviet surface ships. The Soviet subs with their 605mm torpedo tubes could fire the long range, wake finding/homing torpedos at US carriers. The only defense we had, as one Admiral said during Compressional testimony was to position a Frigate behind a carrier so it could take the instead . The Navy was concerned that they could lose enough carriers to sub attack that they would forced out of the fight. The Iowa’s were the hedge should that happen.
I wonder if the 5 inch guns being radar directed and equipped with VT fuses would have offered any protection against anti ship missiles or was the system not capable of tracking supersonic objects?
They couldn’t track supersonic targets, I don’t think. My late grandfather was a destroyer man on the Gearing Class USS Frank Knox (DDR-742), and a gun turret captain, and he seemed skeptical of the ability to shoot down *jets* with those same 5 in mounts. Now, given, that was pre Korea, so the mounts & their fire control may have had some upgrades subsequently, but I think they’d struggle to hit any supersonic targets.
The turrets wouldn't train fast enough to deal with supersonic _crossing_ targets, but that shouldn't matter so much against missiles inbound toward the battleship herself. Still, at best it would be a marginal capability. There's another possible problem, too. The proximity fuse in the VT shell might be too short-ranged to detect a M2 missile in time, or even just too slow to fire, causing even a well-aimed round to burst harmlessly _behind_ the incoming missile.
I would expect a 0-0 draw. An _Iowa_ is unlikely to be seriously damaged by _Kirov’s_ weapons, but will probably be rendered combat ineffective. Meanwhile, _Kirov_ can keep the range beyond those of an _Iowa’s_ guns and relatively easily deal with the dozen or so missile lobbed by the American.
The Kirov had 20 P-700 Grani shipwreck 388 mile range. With 1,653 Lb warhead SS missiles. The Tomahawks TASM only had a range of 250 miles. And warhead of 1,000 lbs.
Watching fellow TH-camr JiveTurkey's Patreon video on the Kirov they can only make around 20knots on nuclear power and need the steam plants online to reach the 30+knot top speed.
Let's see we have the Kirov with two Russian built and maintained nuclear reactors and a ship covered with explosives and rocket propellant? What could go wrong?
@OP Not just that, but from what i gathered from that video is that Ryan here underestimates the target-prioritzation of the missiles quite a bit. Remember.. they were supposed to clear out the perimeter first. Meaning if fired at a battlegroup, the ships on the edges would get a lot of explosive attention...
"I can neither confirm or deny the existence of nuclear weapons on this ship." Been a few decades since I had to use that sentence. Great video.
the 16 inch Nuclear shell
We did that pulling in to Japan on westpac 86
Pretty sure I saw a radioactive sticker inside the midship armor box on the port side of Wisky ;)
@@jasonrideout6786 Xposed x-rays films in there?
But an Aircraft Carrier on deployment, I will leave that logic up to you.
You point about the ability to park a battleship to fly the flag in hostile territory where you would never risk a carrier is an excellent one. Having assets that are just so damn hard to kill really has some value.
Hope you are protecting it the same as a carrier though. Methinks you forget that torpedo technology drastically improved since 1945 to now.
A modern homing torpedo with proximity fuse would break the back of any ship, armored or not.
@@B52Stratofortress1 wrong
@@juangonzalez9848 so has torpedo defense
@@erichvonmanstein6876 Unfortuately, it's you who is "wrong". Modern homing torpedoes detonate directly underneath the keel of the ship. There is no armour there. The ships own weight results in it breaking in two and sinking. Any ship ever built, armoured or not is vulnerable to these silver bullets. You would need WW1 era torpedo nets around the ship at all times to survive. And they can't be used while moving.
The absolute worst crime against ship preservation was the loss of CV-6. That was the worst. The second was of course the loss of HMS Warspite.
I'm an American _Star Trek_ fan and I'm still not certain you've got that the right way 'round.
@@boobah5643 Enterprise nearly single-handedly held the line in the Pacific until the US Fleet could get back on it's feet after Pearl Harbor and America's industry could get rolling replete with 20 battlestars. The Japanese bombed, torpedoed, and reported her sunk so many times they started referring to her as "the grey ghost" and what finally took her out of the war was a direct hit by a Kamikaze that blew one of her elevators hundreds of feet into the air requiring major repairs before being sent back in only for the war to end.
From what I hear, Warspite was an incredible ship (with easily one of the most awesome names for a battleship) but it's difficult to image her exploits bumping Enterprise for number one ship most deserving of preservation.
@@177SCmaro Agreed 100%. At the very least the BB North Carolina to whom the Enterprise was her charge...became a museum. USS Enterprise to North Carolina - "Are you afire?" after seeing for the 1st time the full scale anti-air fury of the BB.
@@RuralTowner Add her sistership USS Washington to the list. Only US battleship to sink another battleship 1v1 and had she had been preserved, we would have had a complete ship class museum. The Iowas do not technically count since two were cancelled.
I'd say the loss of IJN Nagato and the Prinz Eugen are pretty high on my list. Mostly because they did survive to the end of the war. In the case of Prinz Eugen she is still capsized on a reef and is still exposed on the surface.
If NJ was being fired on by the Kirov, the crew would probably know that the armored box launchers wouldn’t survive, so they’d salvo all the missiles regardless of the hit probability because they’re going to lose the missiles anyway and firing them gets the fuel and warheads off the ship so they don’t start fires. So if they had any probability of hitting the Kirov and were under fire, they’d probably salvo all of the Tomahawks, not just 2 or 3.
Doubt they would be able to do that with a missile sighted on the horizon
@@andreifotache3311 missile would be picked up by radar way before impact
@@Galf506 😂 no as as a SSN Granit flies at 20m.off the deck and has terminal own guidance
@@andreifotache3311
I guess you have never heard of CIWS 🙄
@@FP194 I guess you never saw 20 San granits come up against the same.target at supersonic speed .
I love that statement "... because we HAVE an Iowas class battleship!"
Reminds me of GalaxyQuest when the captain says, ".. we're dragging mines!"
Helluva flex.
@@emmitt169 Its cause those countries see how the US has fared during Vietnam, and the Afghan conflict and the North Korean conflict (which is still on going)
North Korea: US and Korea South were actually winning the conflict but the Chinese got involved sending waves of soldiers pushing US and Korean forced back to the 45th parrelle. Literally the Allies was running out of ammunition due to the amount of soldiers the Chinese were willing to throw into the meat grinder. (Well this is considered yeah the US lost har har har I question the fact that a country sent thousands of soldiers into a meat grinder.)
Vietnam: After the Tet Offensive the North lost the ability to launch a offensive and was unable to do so until months after the US left in the 70s. The US broke the back of the North forces it was that devastating. The US pulled out due to political and social issues that was at home and during the conflict it was limited in its ability to wage war.
Afghan Conflict: US (people have forgotten due to lack of studying history) entered to hunt down and destroy the taliban and the terrorist faction that was there including its leaders. for 20 years the US maintained some control but the Afghan military was never able to prove effective, and political decisions a year or 2 before the pull out really devestated US, Afghan relations that when the pullout happened the ones that were reconized by the administration 2 years previously took advantage and reclaimed the country and the US backed government disolved overnight although technically it was destroyed 2 years previously.
All of those conflicts were police action or limited fighting.
In a actual engagement such as a actual war with the US able to use both hands. Its literally a straight up nightmare for any opponent except Russia.
The Current one people say the US would lose is against a conflict with China.
Problem is people don't really pay attention to except for size number and oh look its shiny it must be better.
The US i would say likely could never invade China by itself it would need support to defeat a country that is about the same size of the US. However in a naval engagement that was perhaps defending Japan or Tawiian or if China was dumb enough to attack a US base. Its likely the US would stomp anything China had crushing them to the point of rendering the Chinese Navy extinct. Its that still one sided. (not because of tech as china is rapidly updating the fleet, but due to the US being a technologically advanced navy that is combat experienced and has a massively complicated and functional command and control system that allows all branches of the military to work with each other. )
@@emmitt169 there is some merit to those claims as in wargame type situations there have been cases where they've been able to potentially sink aircraft carriers, but those are of course only theoretical
"...if we get into gun-fighting range with a Kirov, that's a no contest, and something has gone horribly wrong if a Kirov chooses to get within gun-fighting range of an Iowa." hahaha love it!
Well this proofs he has no idea what the granit is capable they are 7.5t robotic missiles that are designed to kill 100k tons cvs the iowa would die fast and even if they nuked kirows because its in gun range well big uff these rockets are not ship guided .
Only proof here is that you are a clown if you for you Iowa is easier target than super CV... Conventional Granit would never breach Iowa citadel, which means Kirov wouldn't be able to sink it.
@@peterwolf8395 Good luck going through Iowa armor, considering during the time Granit was developed, no ships at that time has armor, unlike Iowa. Of course warhead would do damage but the question is how much.
Pyotr meet davy
@@Boomkokogamez sorry but again do you think us cvs that displace more than a yamato have no armour the granit is 5 times a yamato shell in mass and nearly as fast .And again its supposed and designed to kill us cvs that dwraf the iowa class in sieze .Also a sap thomahak warhead penns 300 mm and this rockets cruises hat some hundret miles per hour woth a mass of i believ 800 kg .You see were this is going iowa is a easy pen but i will give her the sturdyness to not sink fast then again kirov has 20 of those.
The thing about _Kirov_ is that IF you can score a hit on her, it's probably going to land pretty close to something that will cause lots of fun and exciting secondary explosions (the downside of being *absolutely jam-packed* with missiles). The difficulty is scoring that hit, especially if you're an _Iowa_ in a 1v1 scenario with no offboard support.
Yeah, pretty much. The downside to bristling with that many VLS's is that you have an absolute ton of explosive just sitting there near one another. If one of those silos gets hit right, a Kirov would pull a pretty good impression of the HMS Hood.
They've results of a direct high energy head on a cure of reminds me of the firecrackers I used to get at South of the border in South Carolina. Pedro sezs!
That "probably going to land pretty close to something that will cause lots of fun and exciting secondary explosions" reads like a quote from Drachinifel.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 Thanks.
It will also glow in the dark.
Considering the quality of design, surplus buoyancy, and how the class has weathered over time, was there ever any thought of converting the class to nuclear power.. As a frequent visiter, I am proud of the way the ship is maintained. No easy job in northern climates. Now that I am retired, I am giving serious thought to volunteering to help maintain the ship. I have no special skills,, other then my knowledge of the ships history, but I can wield a paint brush with the best of them.. Thank you Ryan for getting inmto some of the smaller topics that only a battleship geek like me gets into.
Although steam power would make in theory possible to convert those ships to nuclear powered, in reality it will be impossible due space constraints. Boilers are generally very compact, because they have quite large power density (larger then common naval nuclear reactors) and their total volume is "inflated" by fuel supply. But that fuel was in Iowa class deployed on whole ship in relatively narrow tanks. So it could not be used for extra space needed by nuclear reactor and primary circuit. Space of boilers would be occupied by heat exchangers between primary and secondary circuit. And no other space savings would occur. So you would not have really space for reactor nad primary circuit.
This is general reason, why non-nuclear ship can not be converted into nuclear one, but vice versa it is not such problem and was done on multiple occasions.
The real problem is that you wouldn't even be able to get to the boilers to replace them, not without cutting through armour that is not practical to replace.@@tomascernak6112
Man I love your videos. I got my masters in US Naval History. I'm trying to get hired on for USS North Carolina. You have been a huge influence on that decision.
The North Carolina is a beautiful ship. Take care of her if you get that dream job.
I’m jealous, but I mean it as a compliment. I wish you luck.
that sounds like a great opportunity! i hope they hire you.
Cool - I want to check out USS North Carolina museum ship if I have some vacation days after the pandemic ends.
2 years later, you got that job ?
Late 80s 2cd Fleet oporders were written that the preferred method of taking out a Kirov was to send in a Los Angeles. They had very little chance of even knowing they were under attack until the Mk 48s were inbound.
Yes! I actually requested this one in the comments a few vids back, glad to see it made it to the list. Can't wait! Thanks so much BB-62 museum crew.
thanks because 43 awesome minutes to watch :D
My favorite answer to the Iowa vs. Missiles question comes from the Missouri's commander during the gulf war, that time when missiles got shot at her battlegroup.
A reporter interviewed the commander and asked him what he would do if a missile were to hit his ship. His responded that he would send a sailor out with a broom to go sweep the deck off.
Not true.
"... because we HAVE an Iowa Class Battleship" 🤣🤣 brilliant!
Love you guys. Had my scouts aboard several times and every one came home excited and educated. Thanks for the experience.
There was a PC game called 5th Fleet and in one scenario it was a US Surface Action Group (centered on an Iowa class battleship) against a Soviet one (centered on the Kirov). Usually the two sides end up lobbing missiles at each other, with each side losing a destroyer or two. But on two or three occasions, a "close range" gun battle would occur and it always ended up with the Kirov going under from 16" shell fire, usually followed by the smaller ships - as the Iowa class are fast.
I love this comparison format. I served during this era and my destroyer operated with USS Iowa in a SAG during exercises and later on an operational deployment to the Mediterranean. Fun sea story ... during an exercise off the Virginia Capes our SAG pretended to be Soviets against a CVBG built around carrier Kennedy. Iowa played the part of ... (you guessed it) ... Kirov. We BEAT the Kennedy by 'cheating,' by using every surface sailor's dream camouflage, heavy fog, electronic silence and other ship traffic to hide ourselves. The carrier sailors considered it cheating but it allowed us to detect, track and engage our opposite numbers successfully. Iowa got within 20 miles of the Kennedy before revealing herself. She then gave the carrier a nine gun 16" salute both audible and visible through the fog.
The exercise referees made us reset the exercise and run it again ... after the surface sailors among them stopped laughing their butts off.
Ryan, I think it's true that a Kirov would have had trouble sinking an Iowa. That said, I think only 3 or 4 hits by those big anti-ship missiles would electronically BLIND the New Jersey by taking down her exterior radar antennas as you said. Those 'Armored box launchers' (eight of them) would not be able to take a hit from the 'Shipwreck' missiles without triggering major topside fires and cooking off ordinance, and the four unprotected Harpoon launchers ... more fires with exploding warheads adding to the mayhem.
The Kirov might not SINK the New Jersey but she certainly could mission kill her. Of course your Tomahawk ASMs (not land attack) and Harpoons could do the same to her if they got through. I don't think NJ could get close enough to engage with 16" fire, though if she could there was that lovely nuclear power plant in the Kirov, and you probably wouldn't need Armor Piercing shells to bust it open.
Tomahawk missile ranges were considerably longer than the 200 or so miles you credit. The TLAM (Land Attack Missile) had an effective range of over 1,000 miles along with a terrain following guidance system. The TASM (Anti Ship Missile) was essentially a long range Harpoon with a credited range of 600 miles. It had a similar radar target seeker and guidance system to the Harpoon and a similar size warhead although the fuel remaining aboard would add to the fires the missile would start.
That's the thing with jet propelled cruise missiles, the residual fuel. That was one of the big problems with kamikazes hitting warships during World War II the gasoline. In the Falklands War the ships lost to exit were lost to fire not the warhead.
If I recall correctly a Kirov is basically a anti air defense fortress with a 20 kamikaze punch to knock out anything that dares to be detected by russian targeting sattelites. If a Kirov got in range of an Iowa battlegroup it would open up with a 20 plane salvo (the shipwreck is more comparable to a plane than to a missile in size) and shower that iowa battlegroup with a combination of conventional and nuclear tipped shipwreck missles, these missiles are even armoured to resist CIWS and use passive / active homing and jamming / evasive manouvers to resist being shot down. The Kirov would also be the command ship of a russian battlegroup supported by underwater assets (Oscars) and air assets with equally lethal missile batteries that would launch an coordinated attack against the american battlegroup. There is just about nothing an Iowa could do to her without the support of a carrier group which would, with brute force, overcome a KIROVs air defenses. After showering the american battle group with her P700s the Kirov would bring up the boilers and fuck off as fast as possible. The kirov, by this time of action, would propably be at the bottom of the ocean, being a prime target for any carrier group interested in its own survival. In Difference to an oscar, she cannot dive to evade. An Iowa is a blunt weapon brought back to smash land targets cheaper than an air plane strike, a Kirov is the russian way of saying hello to invading maritime strike groups. Different jobs for different purposes.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer Exactly. It was the fuel in those two Iraqi Exocets that caused the majority of the damage to USS Stark. IIRC only one of the warheads detonated, but the combination of jet fuel from the missiles and the aluminum superstructure ...
The Spruance class DD I was serving in at the time also had an aluminum superstructure so we paid close attention to the lessons from that attack, what worked and what didn't just as the Navy as a whole did with the lessons from the Forrestal fire. We rewrote major portions of the ship's firefighting doctrine and practiced it constantly, refining it where needed.
@@robertf3479 I put a lot on the commanding officer. His ship in being painted by target acquisition radar and does not got to GQ. Did not activate the CIWS, or alter course to unmask it. He thought his crew was tired. I feel a tired and live crew is preferable to a dead one. His first responsibility is ship and crew. The only exception is orders, or situation making ship and crew expendable. As in the Battle of Samar.
I know it’s not the same class of ship, but it is very interesting hearing about what the capabilities of the defenses of the Kirov’s are after seeing what happened to the Moskva.
Russian propaganda on how good their stuff works
Kirov class roughly same level modernization.
Weapons complex... Everything, more or less same cold war standard.
I was thinking this. I'd love to see if Ryan has any changed thoughts since the war
The moskva was also in a state of disappear at the time of it's sinking and should have never been allowed to leave port.
Yes, they were operated under the same design philosophy; safety last, firepower first. Of course Moskova was not at its prime. Poor maintenance was certainly a factor.
It's funny when Ryan talks about the battleship like it's his car or like there are other people out there who own battleships too! 😆
"as an American battleship owner..."
Or
" what colour do you paint your battleship?"
We should try and crowd fund a replica HMS Vanguard for Drachinifel to curate so we can watch transatlantic battleship banter 🙂
One thing is for certain! I do hope the Kirov's get to go in a museum at the end of their military careers, reactors or not.
They are after all, the last of the Battlecruiser breed, even different, they are very historically significant!
One is so dilapidated it can't even be moved and had a "reactor incident" which took it out of service the second ship is currently being scrapped after it was completely gutted by fire, the other two are still in service/undergoing upgrades.
@@Casket-Man
And, as we have learned from the Russian submarine fleet, "in for overhaul" for a decade means what in the west would be a major reactor incident, and if they actually say the words "reactor incident", it just means "be thankful we aren't all glowing".
The Russians may have stepped back from Soviet political ideals, but their warm embrace of a cavalier approach to nuclear safety remains constant.
Honestly, can we also take a moment to mask in the sheer brilliance of the approach to the end life cycle, which means "let's spend all our money on building weapons systems to massacre our adversaries, and when they're at the end of life, we will make them foot the bill for disposing of them safely, while we build the next generation"
It's utterly criminal that we (the US) didn't preserve the USS Alaska (ake: the USS Totally-not-a-battlecruiser).
@@warcrimescostextra3992 it's just-a-little-heavy cruiser. Lol
@@moose2577
Yeah, because you totally spell "large" with a B, right? :p
I was in the Marine Corps in the early 80's, and one of the factors we heard was the lack of shore bombardment capability in the Navy. The fleets destroyers and cruisers were starting to be armed primarily with missiles and the Marines were concerned with a lack of fire support from vessels off shore. The battleships of course were a remedy for that situation.
I don’t know how many times I played this exact scenario as a kid in the old Harpoon video game...
Same here. GUIAK gap scenario. A number of times they nuked me. A couple of time I made it within gun range. A couple of times I got a Los Angeles into the Russian formation. Sank everything.
Me too, I loved that game - went well with the Tom Clancy books I also loved (the ones actually written by Tom Clancy).
me too!
Command Modern Operations has a scenario that has the New Jersey in the Mediterranean in 1986 when a fictional WW3 breaks out.
@@1337flite same here. I actually have the hardware and software to put together a computer and run it right now. Another good game from that error was fighting steel. I found a way to defeat the Russians missile swarm in the GUIAK Gap Scenario. You put all your escort ships in line of rest ahead of your heavy ships. You use the helicopters for the screen on the flanks and stern of the formation all you have to do is to turn into the missile swarm and you can shoot down most of the missiles. You'll still lose a couple smalls ships like Perry class frigates. But you basically take down the swarm with the sm2 launch from all the ships being in the line abreast. And then you launch your tomahawks and when you get a little closer you launch your harpoons and if that doesn't get them eventually you end up in gun range. It is an old formation from the age of sail. In that case it would be the frigates in the line of brass and the ships of the line behind them.
The tendency to scram the reactors when hit is what is known in boxing as a glass jaw :).
What does "scram" mean? Does it have any more specific of a meaning other that "to be damaged"?
@@someguy8732 SCRAM isn't an acronym but was used as far back as the first nuclear pile at the University of Chicago. The best story that I have heard about it was that if anything went wrong you hit the OFF button (which inserted certain control rods into the reactor) and ran like hell.
@@ghost307 ah
@@ghost307 too bad molten salt reactors didn't get more development. If they overheat the liquid core simply melts a plug and drains into a space that disperses it enough to stop the reaction
@@someguy8732 There's also a relatively simple method to kill a heavy water fission reactor, but it is so effective that the reactor vessel needs to be heavily serviced before it can be refueled and restarted.
A Kirov vid by Sub Brief and now one by the New Jersey crew, truly a miracle!
I disagree about the Iowa only firing a few tomahawks at a time. As you said, the tomahawks are poorly protected, and Iowa's defenses are limited, so it makes sense to off load as many tomahawks as possible. That way there's fewer things to go BOOM on your decks when the Kirov's missiles arrive.
true. But consider that at the time, what the mix of TASM/TLAM on board was loaded. Even a "full salvo" of TASM likely still would not overwhelm the point defenses of the Kirov.
@@lsdzheeusi if half the Tomahawks were TASMs, that would be 12 of them. A Kirov isn’t going to shoot down 12 missiles, especially if the Harpoons are launched as well.
@@bluemarlin8138 Kirov was designed to shoot down several dozens of such missile at a time. This is why it has so many layers of AA defense. S-300, Tor/Osa, kortik/AK-630, AK-130, PK-10... They were not afraid of several Harpoons or Tomahawks fired from surface ships, but of dozens of same missiles fired from dozens of aircraft launched from carrier. Without ability to defend against 50+ missiles at time, it will be not able to get into fire position towards CVNBG.
@@bluemarlin8138 Kirov'd pick off most of the TASMs using their long range SAMs, most of the rest using their short range SAMs, and then the CWIS would get the rest.
Only chance you'd have to get a TASM or 2 through is to ripple fire the Harpoons as decoys for the TASMs.
@@tomascernak6112 shooting down dozens of missiles at once? LOL...
You are partially correct. He reinstated them because it was easier to upgrade than to build from scratch. Especially with a ship that can not only take a hit but give a care package back.
I remember during the reactivation of one of the Iowa's, might have been Wisconsin, it was right after the Falklands War. A reporter went up to the captain and asked him what he would do if an Exocet missile hit the ship. The captain replied man the brooms. That isn't to say that the missile was incapable it's just that it wasn't designed for this kind of Target. The biggest hazard from an Exocet striking in Iowa class would be the residual fuel supply catching fire from the missile. Some of the lighter portions of the ship it would put a hole in like the bow. But none of the critical systems would be affected. Well maybe except the antennas for the various radars and communications.
Exactly. Modern weapons systems are designed to attack modern counterparts. An Iowa getting into a slugging match would be like local cops trying to take out the Killdozer.
@@lsdzheeusi during the Falklands War of the ships that were lost to Exocet missiles were damaged by the WarHeads but were destroyed by the fires resulting from the residual jet fuel in the missile. The same result would happen from a harpoon. I think the harpoon has gone to a shape charge though now. Which would be really nasty on today's ships. Something that might surprise you is there was some testing done to see how A10s would work in the anti shipping role. Without any change to their weapons loadout they would trash any ship they came in on. Excluding of course the Iowa. But then it would do some heavy damage to the superstructure don't think the Maverick would penetrate anywhere heavily armored though. But like an a-10 against Kirov if it gets passed the Kirov's gun defenses and missiles, it could disable if not kill the Kirov in one pass.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer
No surprise. Let's objectively consider that the A-10 is just a modern B-25. It almost verges on comedy how many guns and cannon they crammed into those gunships in the Pacific in World War 2. The Japanese heavily relied on DD, DE, and transports to supply their numerous island bases, and those Mitchells nearly cut them in half. I remember reading an autobiography by one Japanese DD captain sunk by a B-25, and it was a slaughter.
The USAF has a culture of pilots, the leaders tend to be pilots, and it's a culture that has always, by nature of "like likes like" been one dominated by a love of fast movers and strategic power, with less love for ground support. The mission has always been a bitter pill to swallow for many in the leadership. No disrespect to the Hog drivers as they are truly committed to their craft and mission. But there's always been resistance to the A-10 from the fast mover community. They need to give Army Air the straight wing mission back, the A-10 will be updated and in production again in no time. And to agree with your sentiment, I'm sure the Navy would gladly add the A-10 for maritime support.
@Chandler White Thanks
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer The Iowas’ armor scheme would actually be ideal against shaped charges. Those charges are calibrated for the metal jet to penetrate when they detonate at a certain distance from armor. If they go off further away than they are designed to, their effectiveness is greatly reduced. This is why the US put steel grates on light armored vehicles in Iraq-they kept shaped charge RPGs from penetrating relatively light armor. So a shaped charge missile hitting an Iowa would detonate when it hit the outer hull, and wouldn’t be that effective against the main belt because of the spacing between the two. Of course, a turret would be a different story. I don’t think residual fuel would be a huge problem on the Iowa, due to their size and extensive compartmentalization.
Interesting, and I like the archer analogy. However I think you underestimate the punch from a SS-N-19 Shipwreck missile. 1650 lb warhead, nevermind the rest of the 7 ton missile traveling at Mach 2 would make a heck of an impact. Which is what it was supposed to do against its primary target, an American carrier.
I would like to note the granit missile was designed to penetrate into american carrier compartments shielded by more than a meter of reactor shielding (for radiation protection for the crew)
the missile itself is 5 tons and travels at mach 2.5 for comparison the 16 inch shell of the iowa (which can penetrate its own armor at long range) is only a bit over 1 ton in weight and travels under mach 1 at longer ranges
the granit has an armor piercing cap on the warhead which means the warhead (not the missile body) would probably cut right through the iowa armor and explode inside
missile body would just smash into the ship but the warhead of the missile would work like a sabot missile and the missile body like the sabot body separating from the projectile on impact
in addition to that the granit armor piercing warhead still has 750 kg of explosives so once it penetrates the belt or turrets it is essentially like a torpedo warhead going off right inside the ship
The US's heavy anti-ship missiles are called (in the cold war) A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsairs. Now they are F-18F Super Hornets and F-35C Lightning IIs.
Those are Aircraft, not missles....
He knows they're aircraft. That's the joke! ("Whoosh" is the sound they all make as they fly over your head)
Don't forget the Mk 48 ADCAPs.
@@pg1171 Just to be thorough, what I meant was the US never developed heavy anti-ship missiles BECAUSE we already had a powerful shipborne air force and didn't need to have missiles like the Granite.
Well. Yes. They indeed was. You can see cruise missile ship as aircraft carrier carrying kamikaze like drone aircrafts.
Former coworker of mine was a tomahawk operator of some kind on the USS Missouri in the Gulf War. Very strange mashup: guided missile operator on a WWII battleship
The thing no one talks about is "EW". We were easily 10 to 20 years ahead of the soviets in the early 80s
Based
Your right. The SLQ-32 I believe was on board the New Jersey 2 suites, and if in a battle group with a CG-47 class then you have SLQ-32 sub and surface search SPY-1A (valley forge had the SPY-1d) over the horizion air and surface search radar through link11, plus SPS-73 and SPS-49 surface and air search radars through LINK4&5, and one fucking crazy ass SQQ-89 sonar suite. Shit would wake me up everytime they pingged for a contact, never got any sleep in forward berting. Dam still can still here that thing ping 27 years later. The MK-26 missle launcher were slow to post and slew and only four missles could luanch at a given time (two forward and two aft in two position single rails), and I know we had the RGM-84 Harpoon (8 tubes) on the Valley Forged with the 2-5"/52 MK45 Gun systems. We also, had two MK32 launchers which could shoot the MK46 or MK48 torpedos but not the MK50, not great but can get the job done if needed. The valley had 2-Phalanx CIWS block 1B (amid ship port and starboard). Oh and for a Sub shooting Torp's at our asses we had SLQ-25 which I remember once payed out 1400" line and it snapped and had to retrieve the Nixie decoy, fun day that was! Skipper was pissed. All in all I tell you, I did not like landing those SH-60B helos. Not fun, out on deck for 12 hours in the heat of the gulf of Oman in a fire suit just in case the B1RD hit the deck. Don't miss that at all. But do however, miss the Valley Forge constently gone 50! Miss all those guys I was stationed with for 21 years. Sorry went off on a tangent. Back to the BB-61's um yah, joined the navy to late to be stationed on those girls. But I knew alot of sailors that served on the big girls. All told me it was the best time they ever had. But the Navy did me good and sent me to a great ship. The USS Bristol County LST-1198, loved that ship! Alot of memories, almost got kicked out the navy twice onboard her, but that is another story. Dam did it again, off and a tangent. I would like to say, thanks to all my brothers and sisters that serve/d with me. Except for one which almost got my whole fire team killed. Ran off crying when the helo crashed on deck lefdt my team stranded with no agent. Not cool, and she got a NAM that year. Again not cool. But I'm so glad we can still visit these big bitches, in fact I plan on seeing the New Jersey very soon. Can't wait to see her! For my second ship the Valley Forge was not so luckey as she was target practice and she is now with Davey Jones. Take care of my girl Davey! I would like to add the following RIPs: USS Valley Forge, USS Bellalu Wood, USS Peleliu, USS Bristol County, USS Durham, USS Constellation, USS Shitty Kitty (Kitty Hawk) and USS Jason. Rest in peace my ladys, I miss you all! But still got two ladies left: USNS Mercy (meh), and my baby the USS Preble DDG-88 keeping up the fight. Stay strong PREBEL, nothing can stop you girl!! Sorry, again if you made it this far thank you for reading and keep these ladies afloat as much as you can for we lost alot of good girls over the years.
us was ahead in some certain field ussr was equally ahead in other fields, so don't display your ignorance here
More like they're 10-20 years behind the rest of the world
@@leprechaunbutreallyjustamidget not really
When I was on an SSN in the mid-80s, we did a few operations simulating operations against a Kirov surface action group. Easiest way to neutralize that threat was a MK-48. 1 and done for pretty much any surface ship under 50K tons.
But how to you get the mk-48 close enough?
@@someguy8732 Haha. Within 15 or 20 miles???
@@bic1498 seems a bit close to something with as many weapons as a Kirov
@@bic1498 ehm, did you really served on that SSN? Because If so, you should know, that at 55 knots, range of that torpedo in MOD 6 version was less then 20 nm. So Kirov would just outrun it without even trying. Taking burst speed of Kirov into consideration, maximum distance to prevent outrun is 7 nm. Yep SEVEN NAUTICAL MILES!!! So good luck to get in such position without being detected either by his powerful sonar suites or sonars of his ASW helis. With such luck, you will be able to win national lottery.
@@tomascernak6112 Your Wiki knowledge doesnt match experience. The Mk48 Mod 6 didn't enter service until the mid 90s. We had Mod 4s. Even those had range/speed ability you don't have need to know of.
Your assumption is that Kirov would be aware of a weapon outside of 7nm in order to outrun, much less aware of the presence of a sub to start using its active sonars.
That is a large assumption .. from experience.
While serving aboard the Iowa returning from operation Northern wedding in October 1986 the Soviet ballistic missile submarine K 219 suffered an explosion and sank. The Soviets sent many ships to assist including the Kirov! The kirov remained at Horizon distance. I had heard that Captain Seaquist had requested to change course to steam parallel with her. But his request was denied so we never got to steam close to the ship but I did get a few photos through the "big eyes"
On the horizon? Sheesh, they REALLY wanted that job done, that was suicidal close.
This is a really neat viewpoint on Iowa-vs-X comparisons. The Iowa was designed for fighting cruisers and battleships, but the Kirov is a 'carrier-killer'. Two entirely different ships built in entirely different eras, for entirely different reasons. It certainly gives me a whole new perspective on the scenario. Thank you for making this video! =^x^=
In the open ocean, attacking a carrier would be suicide. AEW, aircraft, i.e. Hawkeye would spot your group, the CAG would know your exact location, and you would know nothing about the carriers location. The carrier could steam away at maximum speed, while launching all aircraft. The aircraft effectively have unlimited range because of midair refuelling. They could target your fleet with wave after wave of Harpoon missiles. You might manage to shoot down one or two aircraft, but eventually harpoons would take out the Kirov and its escorts, one by one. Of course, subs would likely be thrown in the mix. That would make things much more complicated.
Kirov was a surface action ship. Surface to surface action was what it was designed for, but taking on a carrier task force was probably outside its design intent.
Hey Ryan, you should do a collaboration with Drachinifel about the Iowa class.
Drach is planning to visit USS New Jersey this year. I believe he said August. That would mean the video sometime in the winter.
Drach has also stated that he will not do videos about ships that still exist unless he does the video on them. Which makes total sense. What better video prop than the actual ship?
@@dotwill almost totally different styles but that’s what would make it a dream team. I’d pay good money for that collaboration. I’m not a rich man but if Ryan and Drach team up, I will contribute $500.00. Any other takers?
@@jameschenard7691 I have Drach on Patreon. I was one of his voice actors in his Jutland series and he always gets back to me. I'll try to connect him and Ryan.
@@dotwill I emailed Ryan asking if I can set up an introduction just now.
@@mattblom3990 Thank you! I’m excited!
P-700 (NATO name Shipwreck tells a lot ) anti ship missile with 7000kg mass, 2500km/h speed. The kinetic energy, and 750kg explosive, or armor piercing head, and shaped charge would definetaly destroy that armor belt of the Iowa class. Please do not compare to a 1600kg Zero with let say 300km/h speed at the moment of impact. That armor has designed to defeat a 1200kg conventional armor piercing shell. And sorry, but the Iowas did not scared the Soviet Union. There were many other weapon system (mostly submarines) that scared them. By the way this is another great and unbiased video. You have proved again that Battleship New Jersey has a valuable curator. Hats off Ryan!
You are absolutely correct. The Granits warhead is armor piercing. Contemponary American BGM-71 Tow missiles warhead weighs 6.14 kilograms and can penetrate almost meter of armour. How do you think that 750kg of similiar warhead is going to perform? In my opinion a single hit from P-700 would atleast mission kill an iowa class ship.
This video seems to be gladly omitting the capabilites of the Granit missile which is not the standard toy rocket like for example the Exocet, Harpoon or Tomahawk.
-Granit missiles fly at sea level to remain undetected while one single missile will fly in a higher altitude and use its passive radar in order to guide the swarm.
-Granit missiles have ECM and will perform very high g counter maneuvers if necessary.
-Granit missiles have a titan armored hull carrying a 750 Kg of armor piercing warhead.
-Granit missiles fly at Mach 1,5 - 2,5 (sea level, high altitude)
-Granit missiles have a range of 350 miles.
[edit] forgot to finish the third phrase with "will perform very high g counter maneuvers if necessary."
...I mean for this target phalanx is more or less a non factor, and BB armor versus any missile is already questionable.
Any close defence gun is more or less worthless against maneuvering targets, it's just that against targets AK630/Kortik are nominally more useless than most.
At least Kortik has missile launchers...
A suggestion. Battleship ammunition. There were the Two Main ones, but even within them there were 8 modifications of the AP Mark 19 and Two whole Marks of HC, then there are "Target" Shells and the Nuclear shell. During Vietnam the Gunfighter Program reached the 16" guns with reused 11" shells in sabots (Just in time for New Jersey to be decommissioned) and with the planned dedicated 8" Darts and two types of rocket assisted projectile. During there 1980s commission the new? HE-CVT Mark 143, ICM Mark 144 & HE-ET/PT Mark 145 shells, but also a number of planed shells with things like 666 SADARM (which is terrifying), new longer-heavier HC and two new sub caliber shells of 13.65" and 11" respectively (the latter being Guided).
Edit: oh and there was this silly little thing that Pratt and Whitney proposed in 2003 (don't ask me why) for a new Scramjet shell with a pedestrian 400 NAUTICAL MILES of range. Who would ever want that? What were they thinking?
There were all kinds of radicle ideas for advanced munitions for the Iowa class battleships. The two biggest problems were the daily operating costs of the ships. The Iowa's were very expensive ships to run on a daily basis and that is the main reason they were decommissioned. The second would have been the fire control system, being analog, operating with cams and gears I believe it was preconfigured for the 2700 pound AP shell and the 2250 pound high explosive round. I don't believe you could tell the system that you were firing a 13 or 11 inch sabot round. I could be wrong, I was a gunners mate and worked in 16 inch turret one and only had a basic amount of training on the fire control system for ESWAS qualifications. If they would have had to replace the fire control system to accommodate these advanced new shells t would have been very expensive.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 I have read that USS Saint Paul used the LRBA projectile (the product of the Gunfighter program for the 8" gun) however I don't know what they did for fire control other than that they managed it. I'd hazard a guess that they bodged it because they only fired at one target, that they probably already new they'd be shelling and the ship was decommissioning before the year was out so it seems unlikely they did anything to elaborate.
@@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan Take those same guns and match them with new technology and rearm those now near useless mistakes.....Zumfarts. Redesignate them as surface support or landing support CRUISERS and NOT DESTROYERS. Any warship has to do three things 1) Locate. 2) Engage. 3) Destroy. If it cannot do even one of these it is NOT a warship.
@@Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan A battleship shooting SADARM shells would be the end of the armored counterattack on the beachhead. "Terrifying" is indeed an accurate description.
I have to say that this channel is easily becoming one of my favorite on YT. You are such a great mediator of information! You're doing an amazing job! Cheers!
Question: I would love to hear more about how a modern anti-ship missile would affect an Iowa-class BB? Like would it detonate on the outer 1.5" hull and explode in the void up against the belts or would it detonate on the belt? How about pup-up maneuvers, would a Harpoon missile penetrate the deck of the Iowa? Reading online there are a lot of different takes on what a Harpoon could or could not do against an Iowa-class battleship... There seem to be very little consensus on the actual effectiveness of the Iowa's armor against anti ship missiles!
It is highly unlikely, that attack from above by slow and weak harpoon will be able to penetrate armored deck, but explosion itslef would create serious damage to superstructure and any equipment there, so several Harpoons and Iowa will be blind, deaf and on fire.
Same effect would have any western modern AShM except supersonic ones. Common supersonic missiles will be able to do more serious damage and probably penetrate in some degree even armored deck. And last type are massive supersonic missiles with SAPHE(I) warhead and missiles with shaped charge warheads. These will easily penetrate any armor on Iowa and do extreme damage depending on their warhead size. Missiles like Granit, KH-32, Kinzhal, DZ-ZF and Zircon would probably kill Iowa in single hit. Especially destructive power of Zircon and DZ-ZF missiles would be insane (up to 18GJ of impact energy, 4 GJ of explosive energy and 180 GJ of burning energy if attack is on short range for Zircon missile, for comparison 16" Mark 8 AP shell has 300MJ muzzle energy and 75MJ of explosive energy).
It would be interesting to see a discussion of the crew numbers aboard an Iowa in wwii vs the 80's.
Or just over time
In a nutshell:
WW2 crew: Who are you?
80's crew: I'm you, but better
@@flyingbusa3407 very mature
@@flyingbusa3407 p700 granit on the way
@@Mechanized85 yea you know that the kirovs have s300 f , osa2, 4 kastam ciws and 4 ak 630 ciws and the main Canon of 130mm with he VT. The hardpoon is a subsonic misile of 4 m long and 340mm of wide. Are you serious launching a tomahawk vs a ship with hudge amount of defensive armament? A harpoon yes but a tomahawk?
“Will 1 hit sink a Kirov?”. Maybe now that we have seen what happened to a Slava
I guess another "likely" scenario is a "Red October/Tom Clancy" sort of scenario with escalating tensions and the Kirov and Iowa within moderate distance of one another when the shooting starts. If the Iowa is equipped with a spotting drone and sub-caliber rounds like in the novel, then it becomes much more interesting : ))
they could probably shoot the shells down. the RN used to use 4.5 inch shells as targets for Seawolf sams
@@andyf4292 That would actually be a good and cheap way to test those systems capabilities
@@andyf4292 Yeah... But 16 inch shells are "a little" bigger and heavier than their 4.5 inch counterparts. Would be much harder to shoot down, if not impossible.
I don't remember Iowas being in Hunt for Red October.
@@moose2577 the novel. The surface groups were pretty much completely cut out of the movie.
And I want to say the battleship in question is, in fact, the New Jersey.
Iowa vs Godzilla for next April 1 :-)
In the recent movie "Godzilla vs Kong" there are two Iowas in the naval task force attacked by Godzilla. (It's in the trailer, so I don't think this is a spoiler.) This needs proper analysis and comparison of the respective combatants and tactics.
I've seen that in Evangelion ;)
Godzilla for the win!
I'm so thrilled you guys actually read the comments . I requested this some time ago. Stellar work as always. Keep it up BSNJ! You got my 👍
I've been hoping to see this one. Thank you for making it.
Thx Ryan and everyone else in crew for these videos my favorites on YT nowdays!
Fun fact: Offical designation of the Kirov's type of ship is Heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser.
Heli Pad: In addition to underway replenishment along side the supply ship; replenishment was also accomplished by another ship's helicopter by either landing on our ship or or by cable. The pad was needed for this purpose, not for a permanently assigned helicopter.
I could have sworn there was a hanger under that part of the deck for the kingfishers. I wonder if they sealed it off. I think most helicopters the Navy's had in the '80s are bigger than a kingfisher. I really like that little float plane.
This was a very reasoned and realistic prediction! I figured you'd give one, but this kind of question isn't usually answered with facts and logic, so I'm still very pleased by this video. Especially your admission as curator that NEW JERSEY had limited ability to effectively fight a KIROV-class in a one-on-one engagement. A lot of enthusiasts, and probably some curators, wouldn't be able to admit that sort of thing. You're an honorable man, Ryan!
I think the specific rules of engagement--which might change regarding *what* kind of shooting war we'd theoretically be in with the Soviets--would also dictate tactics a lot. In the fleet engagement, too, much would depend on how the Soviet group conducted their withdrawal... a very well-planned and executed withdrawal would perhaps give the Soviets a good value for their casualties, but a disorganized and confused withdrawal might cause a long, drawn-out defeat for the Soviets, as the American survivors pick them off. It'd be interesting to know more about ranges and sustainable speeds, but that's always been some of the most secret of naval statistics.
First strike capability emerged as a highly decisive factor in naval warfare in WW2. Many of the significant battles between artillery ships in WW2 were decided or largely influenced by who shot first. The battle of Savo Island is a clear example of this, although nobody could have called that a fair fight! But my point is, importance of the alpha strike has stuck around since that time. Probably because everyone's priority is maximum standoff attack capability.
What do you mean by withdrawal? Soviet navy had solely single purpose. In first strike annihilate NATO surface fleets and then hunting submarines. They did not count, they will return till end of war and they was counting on, that soon or later defeated side (americans in 80s, that was sure as Suns longevity) would bring nukes into play and Soviet navy would be eliminated too. So there were no real plans for VMF behind first strike.
"I loved the response by an Iowa class Battleship Captain when asked if he was worried about the enemy firing anti ship missiles at his Battleship. His said, "I'd be worried about my paint job." "
Either he was and idiot or you are just lying. Even Harpoon missile would cause significant damage to Iowa class. Granit would rip her apart.
Similar systems on that Slava on the bottom of Black sea, makes one wonder how they would have handled a swarm of harpoons? Idk maybe well? Kirovs are impressive indeed.
I think your assessment is valid and well thought through. The ability to sling numerous anti-ship missles poses a severe threat to any ship, especially one that does not have modern anti-ship protection. The survivability of the Iowa class is it's ace in the hole however. And since it would be traveling with a battle group the Kirov, et-al in it's own group would be hard pressed to win the battle. "Where are the carriers?"
I would think that you could assign 2-3 F-35B's to each battleship instead of 2 Helicoptors. They could use the same landing pad or a slightly enlarged one. They could be the Data Link for GPS 16" Extended Renge Rounds or 3-5 part Missiles assembled and fired from the 16" Tubes.
In 86 the Iowa class battle ships deployed the RQ-2 Pioneer drone that could provide over the horizon targeting. Granted it was limited to being within 22 miles of its mothership doubling the effective range of Iowa's harpoon missiles.
Refited Iowa radar has range for ships like Kirov up to 50 nm. Only optical RQ-2 would be no use for Harpoon missiles range. In fact, he was designed as targeting aid for Iowa main canons.
@@tomascernak6112 So there is no way to manually enter the targeting data? That's doesn't sound right in our very conservative navy.
I don't know if 22 miles was some sort of practical limitation but the figure I've known was "up to 100nm from the control station".
@@becauseiwasinverted5222 You are know figures from late years of its deployment with digital link. initially it was analog video link (with digital command datalink) with much shorter practical range. Even in early 90s it was less then RQ-7s 31 miles.
15:18 I was at the base museum of the China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station and one artifact they had was a piece of metal with a big hole punched in it and a placard that read something like "Harpoon penetration test." No other context. The piece was maybe 2 to 2-1/2 inches thick.
Hey Ryan the US actually has developed a missile point defense system. SeaRAM is essintaly a block 1B CIWS with R.A.M.s. Which New Jersey could easily mount if she continued service past 1992.
Already in the 80s, since no surface action happened between 2 ships for most of 40 years, the Iowa's were good for 2.things: force projection aka propaganda and shore bombardment. But even if a 16 inch shell.is cheaper than a missile, the cost of the platform with 1000+ sailors to get it offshore of the target is too much compared to a.submurine with 100 sailors that is also better protected. A few silkworm missiles fired in a salvo may overwhelm ciws and one hit, even if non penetrating, will for sure screw up every antenna in the suprastructure. Let museums be museums
You can see the smug ass look on Ryan's face when he talks about an Iowa's armor compared to a Kirov
Thought about Deck armor too? usually the weak point of ALL ships.
@@Gunni1972 Not on Iowas. Their bow and stern yes (except Missouri) with just 32mm but the armor deck plating at the superstructure is 5 inches. There is still the armored bulkhead below with another 12-14 inches. This Missouri is not usually brought out because its a superheavy. 6 flat inches of armor on the deck which was considered excessive. The superstructure is not vital for ship operations as the guidance computers are not housed there. You also have to consider this is not your normal steel, this stuff is built specifically to withstand explosives.
All in all, the Russians would have probably ended up surrendering to the drone.
On a serious note, Iowas made it very clear to the Russians that all they could do was play tough guys in their home ponds of White Sea (and part of Barents Sea), Baltic (rather enclosed), Black Sea (even more enclosed) and the Sea of Okhotsk. That was that. Survivability of Kirov class simply
wasn’t designed to go against anything like a battleship. Nuclear power plant doesn’t cut it in surface action (and limp mode steaming would not get them very far). The crew size of Iowas made damage control and maintenance way more effective as well.
This is a rare case, when an older (and much heavier built) upgraded asset compares favorably against a modern built asset not designed to deal with the level of threat like a battleship.
Thanks for a great video!
This is the fairest and Best assesment that I heard in a very long time!!!
load out of Iowa was approximately 75 land /25 air
It was seen that other ships in the fleet would supply the majority of ant-air in defense which left the Iowa to concentrate on hardened targets on land
What??? 75% TLAM (land)/25% TASM (sea) I would agree with. IOWAs had no AAW capability beyond CIWS.
So, I'm going to be honest. 'Battleship comparisons' are kind of a video-game mentality thing IMHO. I think their sudden popularity is driven by WoW primarily. When I saw that BNJ started doing comparisons, I smirked a little to be honest. But I understood. It's a good way to get traffic going to the BNJ channel.
Having said that, Ryan Szymanski does a really good job with these videos. By constantly reminding us of the operational and logistics constraints of the vessels in question, he takes the conversation out of the realm of geeky stat contests and into a more nuanced discussion of economics, design and deployment.
My impression is that RS is aware that 'who would win?' comparisons are usually of only marginal historical validity, (I mean, honestly, New Jersey vs Nelson? Like that would ever happen?) and the reticence in his voice plays to good effect on these occasions.
BUT HERE....
Here we have possibly the most valid comparison of all, apart from the Iowas vs Yamatos. The Iowas actually _were_ deployed in part as a response to the Kirovs. It's not only a valid comparison, it's an important one.
I watched this video with great interest. Excellent content as always.
Actually the Kirov's had a hybrid Nuclear/Gas Turban power system. On pure nuclear power the Kirov's could achieve 20 knots and was used for the most economical means of propulsion. For higher speeds the gas turbans would work with the nuclear power plant to give speeds in excess of 30 knots however in this configuration high speed range was limited.
From what I've read, they have two GT3A-688 steam turbines, not gas turbines.
@@dundonrl You are correct, Steam is so antiquated I just assumed they were gas turbines lol.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 It's an old technology, but not really antiquated. The US Navy still has ships that are steam powered. Wasp class, Blue Ridge class and Emory S. Land class. (the last Wasp class that's steam powered commissioned in 2001, so not ancient)!
@@dundonrl The Blue Ridge's are 51 years old. I remember after the explosion on the Iowa I was assigned to be a driver for the commander of Destroyer Squadron 2. I am pretty sure it was the Mount Whitney that was ALWAYS tied up to the pier right outside, it NEVER moved lol.
@@CRAZYHORSE19682003 Yep, Blue Ridge is old, Wasp class isn't too bad. With that being said, I'm sure the Bonhomme Richard being steam powered had a lot to do with the scrapping decision.
LOL, just heard Ryan say missiles are expensive and you wouldn't fire very many. LOLOLOLOL In Iraq in 2004 I spent close to 6 million dollars from various weapons systems to bring down a building full of ''hostiles.", In war, fuck the cost, if you have it, USE IT. You don't get a bill at the end of the day and you don't get credits for anything unused brought back to base/port.
Pacing yourself and using adequate ordnance to do what you need done so you have ammunition for a long fight if necessary is absolutely how war should be conducted. Of course cost be damned in war, it's life or death...but at the same time pointlessly wasting munitions simply because you have them and don't get any special reward for not using it all is foolish. This isn't a video game where you always have infinite ammo sources.
the armchair admirals/generals whom go on and on about costs usually have more in common with economists and other such chart-readers than the men whose chances of dying go up exponentially with every breath. if cost was as much of a factor as they make it, we would have never invaded iraq, simply out of fear of having to replace their body armor. better yet, we would have never developed it simply because it costs so much more compared to web gear. actually, now that i think of it: firing m855a1 out of all these m4's is really expensive! replacing the barrels, buying mag pouches, buying optics... let's bring back the garand!
@@nobstompah4850 or the M-14
I agree. If war had been declared, I don't think the Iowa would have just fired a couple of missiles and hoped for the best. I think it would have probably fired about half its TASMs and Harpoons and reserved some for a follow-up salvo. But if it saw 20 missiles coming at it, then the captain might just say "screw it" and fire them all.
It’s actually the same mount. With only the gun and magazine being swapped out for 21 laterally launched ROLLING AIRFRAME MISSILES.
Enjoyed this one. One thing you have to consider is a design flaw common in ussr surface ships. This was the lack of passive cross flooding. This means that combat damage is more likely to result in capsizing of the vessel. While hull voids flooding will cause some loss of trim on any ship, flooding a large space that is divided port-starboard can lay a ship over quickly.
and that information is based on what?
The more I have thought about the Iowas with the Tomahawks was a bridge to the next destroyers. If you could disable a Kirov enough that it could no longer launch missiles then maybe you bring the 16in guns in to attack.
Should do a comprehensive video on teak deck replacement deck below teak deck the history of the teak decks on the iowas
I really enjoyed those films of the ships. Those Iowa’s are so beautiful.
Yep. But I gotta admit the Yamatos look even better; I think it's the backward tilted funnel giving them a streamlined look.
Hey! Love your videos and I love to see how much they evolved! Waking up in the morning and having my coffee watching your videos is such an amazing treat
My understanding is that the Russians built the Kirov class as “carrier killers” that would close and overwhelm our anti-air defense by a saturation missile attack which freaked the Navy out; the job of the Iowa’s was to stand between the carrier and the Kirov and take the hits. Once the Kirov’s entire missile store had splattered itself on the battleship’s armor they would be free to run her down and return the favor with 18 16”/50 HE Volkswagens/min; Plus ~150 5”/38 per min if they get close enough.
As for a one on one engagement it is more than likely a one sided roflestomp by the Kirov. Even in a pure anti ship configuration with 32 tomahawk ASM's and 16 Harpoons it is unlikely that in a saturation attack that would be enough to penetrate the Kirov's extensive air defense systems.
It's also unlikely that Kirov would have been able to stop ALL of the Tomahawks and Harpoons launched in an attempt to saturate Kirov's defenses. The only question then is, do enough get through to mission kill the cruiser? I think both ships would have been mission killed, very badly damaged through fire and blast effect.
The Kirov can engage 12 targets long range(S-300)+2 short range(OSA)+4 Very Short Range(CIWS) simultaniously. They can stop even that many missles,since those are slow ones,on the other hand,against P-700s the Iowa only could bear 2 CIWS,which can engage 2 targets simultaniously.They can shot down 1-2 P-700 at best,maybe jam 1,but the 4th,5th will be a hit.Crippling hits as well,since a P-700 can penetrate dozens of meters of armor,with its HEAT warhead.Once the Iowa is hit,its is mission killed at best,it would have no fire control,no EW,no power to the CIWS.if not blown out of the water via ammo rack hit,at worst
I would like to respectfully make a suggestion for another video. What if the the Royal Navy, had still had HMS Vanguard during the Falklands War? Would it have been a significant game changer? I personally think that it might have been.
It would depend on how they set it up and modified it. In general, I agree.
For me the fight between Kirov and a iowa class would depend on many factors, For example how far away are they, Is the Iowa modernized, What Kirov class ship is brought in since each Kirov class ship have different armaments, What way are they facing each other and do they know of each other capabilities.
Though in a realistic battle, a kirov would probably engage at long range out of range of Iowa's guns and harpoons, firing her granits missiles at which point I would give the kirov chance of sinking the Iowa a 7-8/10(assuming Kirov fires her entire granit missiles at once) meanwhile Iowa got no way to engage her with the only weapon she has that got the range to engage Kirov is the tomahawks missile, however from what I gather the tomahawks Iowa was given was not made for Ant ship purposes(Some tomahawks were modified to engage ships) and Kirov would probably shoot them down with her extensive AA and CIWS capabilities.
Your probability for sinking an Iowa is greater than the Soviets thought
@@petersouthernboy6327 20 cruise missiles moving at Mach 2 with a high explosive load would cause serious damage to the Iowa, probably causing it to sink later probably by flooding.
@@officeran9581 - the host said it a few minutes into the video. Maybe listen to it before you comment.
@@officeran9581 this video
@@officeran9581 - the Soviets indeed deployed many missiles on the Kirov - but the reason had more to do with Soviet weapons reliability at the time
I live like 45 min away from the NJ and have not yet visited. I asked a couple of my friends if they wanted to go but they just dont get the whole concept but after my father recovers from his stroke I will hope to go with him. Hopefully see you soon!
You have to evaluate these ships as part of the battlegroup they sail with. The Hawkeye and carrier air cap extend the detection range of the Iowa battlegroup. It's a game of rock paper scissors and the battle group has all 3 at once. The Iowa's never operated alone ever.
As of 1987, Missouri carried drones for spotting. That was it
I like that. If you want to intimidate and show power, you send a Battleship near your enemy's shore.
Here is a different comparison - an Iowa stationed at the Falklands vs the Argentinian navy and air forces at the time of the Falklands war. I remember reading one description that thought an Exocet missile would just have bounced off an Iowa's armor.
That could be a good video. But iowa would need some help with air cover and anti submarine at minimum.
Realistically, if the Royal Navy was of a size and strength that they still had a battleship in commission (most probably HMS Vanguard, the last UK built battleship) then the Falklands conflict would not have happened.
An Exocet COULD damage a battleship. The amount of damage would depend on where the ship was hit. A 1980's Iowa had all those vulnerable missile launchers. Hitting one would probably start very large jet fuel fires as well as blast damage from detonating warheads. A sea skimming missile striking the hull ... if it hit the belt, slap on a coat of paint and you're good. A Kamikaze hit Missouri on her belt, leaving a shallow dent and a small fire to put out, plus repainting.
@@robertf3479 yeah, they wouldn't be immune like some people make it out. It would probably take a lot of them to mission kill the ship and a completely unreasonable amount to sink it though.
Well if you’d assume the missile hit the main armour belt then sure but it would still cause damage anywhere else
One thing not mentioned was that the Soviets had a reputation for truly abysmal crew training and rotten damage control. So while one hit by a Harpoon on a Kirov might not do enough damage in theory to put the ship in danger, what might happen in practice could be different.
I think the video is about about both ships being in prime condition and crewed by sailors who know their jobs. No caveats were mentioned.
The main problem with the modern Iowa’s are their lack of anti air/missile protection. They would have multiple vampires coming in and the only real defense would be the phalanx as well as decoys/jamming, the later most people never mention of forget about With 20 deadly vampires coming in, the Iowa would be in real trouble
Yes this is what I wanna see
Tom Clancy had this possibility in The Hunt For Red October.
The most fair fight would be a late 80s Kirov and a late 80s Iowa. Kirov has a good chance of dealing pain from outside the range of the guns, and has a decent shot of incapacitating New Jersey. If New Jersey survives the missiles, it’s her fight to win if she can close the distance.
Problem with that is once the kirov is out of missiles it's time to withdraw. No reason let the Iowa ever get into gun range.
Yeah, and the Iowas were faster. 33 knots to the Kirovs' 32. And the Iowas could put on a burst of 35 knots. Surprising since the Kirovs were lighter and had nuclear engines, plus conventional backup. You'd think the Kirovs would be able to fire up their conventional boilers as a booster to add speed to the nuclear plants when needed. Most other combined marine propulsion systems (like diesel and turbine) do that.
@@GeraldMMonroe Of course, hence why I said "if she can close the distance." Unless the engagement happens in neutral coastal waters, where landmasses block the surface search radars, or unless New Jersey's missile battery was able to damage Kirov's propulsion system, the engagement would end after the missile exchange.
@@IrishCarney I think Ryan had a very good point in saying that the accumulated wear and tear on the Iowas would push the speed lower to 32 kts. Though, if there was a thorough boiler and turbine cleaning and overhaul just prior to this engagement, New Jersey would be able to operate at that higher speed, and eventually close to within main battery range.
Why is everyone forgetting that the Iowa’s were equipped with Tomahawk LR cruise missiles and Harpoon anti shipping missiles?
Great channel, love your videos, thank you
It would be cool to see a comparison of the Iowa’s compared to a ship my father served on the USS Chicago CG-11. I think this would be interesting because I feel like the Chicago CG -11 and Albany CG-10, and Columbus CG-12 represent the Navy’s transition from a gun force to a missile force as the Chicago CG-11 ex CA-136 and her sister ships in the Albany class were converted from guns to missile CG cruisers. Other cruisers of that transition time were converted to missile systems and still retained some guns as well. The Chicago and sister Albany are interesting with regards to the design of the ships and their full conversion to Missile CG cruisers.
But those missiles were AA only. So those conversion has limited surface attack capability and against iowa this capability will be completely useless.
assets was a term usually used at the higher levels....on ships we more often use the term weapon systems or just systems
please compare the iowa class battleship against a squadron of german speedboats class 148 (10 boats with 4 MM38 Exocet each) . i like what u do... your videos are very good to watch. greetings.
Man, Ryan and company, I know I'm a stuck record, but you folks do a GREAT job!! Interesting question though. IMHO, it's apples and oranges in a 1 v 1 scenario that probably would happen, given what we can guess about US and post-soviet naval battle doctrine. :)
#1 reason a Iowa or comparable battleship would be a viable asset today is exactly what you said. Roll into a port and have the ability to do considerable bombardment if necessary. How much of the world's population lives within 20 miles of the coast? A significant amount. How many Nations can remain operational if a battleship is blockading their ports?
The fact that you have to explain WHY you compare things to an IOWA class is hilarious
Yeah. This is NOT an academic channel where you have to defend every choice, but a channel for Iowa-enthusiasts. OF COURSE you are comparing to an Iowa. The smaller the grape you compare this apple to, the better. Big Apple guns go booom, grape goes down.
Iowa class battleship vs Trident Missile
Weird a nuclear surface ship can only keep up with a much heavier ship with only boiler power.
Actually the limiting factors on how fast you can make a standard hull construction surface ship go are waterline length (longer is faster) and the amount of abuse the screws, the shafts and the hull itself can take. No significant improvements in those areas since before WW II.
The Kirov is vastly newer, vastly more powerful ton-for-ton, and vastly outranges the Iowa class. However, if we're talking QUALITY into account, the Kirov is also a rusting bucket of Russian scrap riveted together by drunken labor conscripts and overseen by drunken embezzlers.
Pretty much every Russian ship is laughed at for either how old and decrepit it is or how it rarely leaves port because of how broken it is (and they can't afford to fix it). The only Russian aircraft carrier is in precisely the same situation. The heretofore unthinkable loss of the Slava-class Moskva cruiser to two subsonic cruise missiles has further degraded the perceived effectiveness of the Russian Navy. That ship should have eaten two subsonic cruise missiles for breakfast. But when push came to shove, they were blind and helpless.
I hope that Tomas Cernak ( a Russian Bot ) hasn't read your post, he'll have kittens.
@@simonpitt8145 good
Very interesting topic. As I served as CICO on USS IOWA, there are a few points of clarification that may help. Our battlegroup had continual coverage by P-3 Orion aircraft that would link us the location of any surface ships. We would attack such targets with TASM. There were 8 ABL launchers with 4 missiles in each. One ABL had TASM and the others were all TLAM. So we could attack a Kirov with 4 TASM. These had a range of 1280 miles and flew using waypoints at low altitude with the seeker off. The result is that the Kirov would be attacked from all directions simultaneously. They would not be able to defend against 4 TASM with one coming from each direction --- surrounded. The seeker would turn on at a range of 12nm. So, essentially a no-notice surprise attack with missiles approaching from everywhere. IOWA would sink the Kirov.
Impossible. Orion has too small combat range to be capable to operate so far from land to give Iowa class continual coverage. Even with aerial refueling, it will be logistical hell.
Also Orion in that era would not survive contact with Kirovs long range AAM. Kirov would know about orion far earlier than P-3 about Kirov because simple physics.
TASM did not have range 1280 nm, never. This was range of TLAM with nuclear (130kg) warhead and space occupied by normal TLAM warhead (454 kg) was filled with fuel. Conventional TLAM had then range just over 600nm, TASM had range just under 250nm.
Attacking Kirov from all side would be mistake and shows how off you are. Kirovs medium and short range AA defense was not omnidirectional so If you attack from both sides, you will allow to use all kirovs short range systems, meanwhile onsided attack, would allow to use only half of its short range systems.
So four TASM? Piece of cake.
Seeker turn on at range 12nm would mean that Tomahawk would never found Kirov, because kirov would be 15nm from original position when missile left Iowas launchers.
Yeah, also I forgot, if you are bringing whole USN capabilities into play, then Kirov would know location of Iowa BG and all its vessel 24/7 thanks to Legenda. So Iowa and her BG would met her doom being 330nm from Kirov ;-)
I pretty much agree with the way you described the battle. The only tricky part is if the Russians have a part of the Legenda constellation that could detect the Iowa sooner, but that only changes the engagement range, not how much the missiles could do. Maybe if they do a maneuver like the Harpoon's pop-up they might get a chance at some lighter armor, but I don't think it'd do much.
One thing that gets me is how overhyped Anti-ship missiles get sometimes. I mean, yea, they can pack a punch, but most isn't going to sink a ship in one hit.
th-cam.com/video/caqRJUFOMlA/w-d-xo.html
Do you even know, with what energy is striking Granit and with what energy is striking 16" Mark 8 AP???! There is order of magnitude difference and no, it is not in favor of latter shell.
Granit could do pop-up maneuver and had library of best maneuvers against virtually any ship and formation, NATO had. That missile was expensive as f... full of electronics and space-grade materials.
My understanding is for the reasons to bring Iowa and her sisters back was twofold. First , it was a cheap way to reach Reagan ‘s goal of a 600 ship fleet. The Navy considered bring Oriskany back as another carrier deck at the same time but decided she could not operate modern jets lie the F14 and F18. The second reason was that at the start of the 80’s, we only had 13 carriers and the Carter administration that was leaving dithered on more Nimitz class carries beyond Nimitz, Eisenhower, and Stennis. Remember, they proposed that stupid sea control carrier concept as cheaper replacement. Therefore, the Navy’s striking power at sea was being threatened by the Soviet sub force and the new generation of Soviet surface ships. The Soviet subs with their 605mm torpedo tubes could fire the long range, wake finding/homing torpedos at US carriers. The only defense we had, as one Admiral said during Compressional testimony was to position a Frigate behind a carrier so it could take the instead . The Navy was concerned that they could lose enough carriers to sub attack that they would forced out of the fight. The Iowa’s were the hedge should that happen.
I wonder if the 5 inch guns being radar directed and equipped with VT fuses would have offered any protection against anti ship missiles or was the system not capable of tracking supersonic objects?
Well I suppose the turrets would need replacement
They couldn’t track supersonic targets, I don’t think. My late grandfather was a destroyer man on the Gearing Class USS Frank Knox (DDR-742), and a gun turret captain, and he seemed skeptical of the ability to shoot down *jets* with those same 5 in mounts. Now, given, that was pre Korea, so the mounts & their fire control may have had some upgrades subsequently, but I think they’d struggle to hit any supersonic targets.
The turrets wouldn't train fast enough to deal with supersonic _crossing_ targets, but that shouldn't matter so much against missiles inbound toward the battleship herself. Still, at best it would be a marginal capability.
There's another possible problem, too. The proximity fuse in the VT shell might be too short-ranged to detect a M2 missile in time, or even just too slow to fire, causing even a well-aimed round to burst harmlessly _behind_ the incoming missile.
If they were replaced by the modern 5" then most likely
Not so confident that the traverse and elevation rates of the old 5"s were high enough to be effective in that role, but they might have been
I would expect a 0-0 draw. An _Iowa_ is unlikely to be seriously damaged by _Kirov’s_ weapons, but will probably be rendered combat ineffective.
Meanwhile, _Kirov_ can keep the range beyond those of an _Iowa’s_ guns and relatively easily deal with the dozen or so missile lobbed by the American.
Hey Ryan, i know this video was made 2 years ago, but can you make a video on the enterprise (cvn-6) and the shinano I think it was?
The Kirov had 20 P-700 Grani shipwreck 388 mile range. With 1,653 Lb warhead SS missiles. The Tomahawks TASM only had a range of 250 miles. And warhead of 1,000 lbs.
Watching fellow TH-camr JiveTurkey's Patreon video on the Kirov they can only make around 20knots on nuclear power and need the steam plants online to reach the 30+knot top speed.
Yeah, the nuclear was for cruising and the fossil was additive for full speed and power.
I had forgotten about that. The oil fired part of the plant was to provide the 'superheat' needed for maximum engine power.
I deleted my comment cause you where first :(
Let's see we have the Kirov with two Russian built and maintained nuclear reactors and a ship covered with explosives and rocket propellant? What could go wrong?
@OP Not just that, but from what i gathered from that video is that Ryan here underestimates the target-prioritzation of the missiles quite a bit. Remember.. they were supposed to clear out the perimeter first. Meaning if fired at a battlegroup, the ships on the edges would get a lot of explosive attention...