Nuclear Powered Battleships
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- Today we're tackling the age old question, why not just put nuclear plants on the Iowas, or build new battleships with nuclear power plants?
This video is primarily a follow up to this video, What the Navy Doesn't Like about the Iowas: • What the Navy Doesn't ...
Please consider supporting this channel and the museum by going to:
www.battleship...
![[กูเพิ่งซื้อมึงปิดหนี] 20 นาที ผมรีวิวเกมที่แย่ที่สุดในโลก CONCORD](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XhC-3q3Ii7I/mqdefault.jpg)
I’m a nuclear field Machinist Mate. Navy Nuclear power plants are not fragile. I served on the Nimitz back in the 80’s. There was back in the 80’s a plan to put two of the Nimitz class power plants on the battleships. The plan was canceled because the conversation would have been prohibitively expensive. The trade off would have been the removal of most of the fuel tanks as they would have not been needed. A battleship never went out without her own escort of destroyers and cruisers. If the Navy wanted to have nuclear powered battleships they would have been better served by building them from the keel up. They would be able to design in the facilities for refueling the reactor, which is a 2 plus year shipyard Evolution.
You touch on an important point: fuel. It's not commonly discussed but battleships were used to refuel other ships quite frequently in WW2. Removal of that function would require battle groups to be supplemented with additional oilers.
@@ThePrisoner881 Not necessarily... you wouldn't need to remove those fuel bays and pumps... you could just continue to use them. If anything, it'd ADD value to a Nuclear Powered battleship. There is also the issue, at least for the Iowa's, a lot of the fuel bays were part of the torpedo protection system, so you could just keep it there. It's not like a BBN would notice the added weight anyway...
The battleships could be retro fitted with more efficient engines, with a better cleaner fuel
@@Towerbrian23 Building new nuclear battleships would make more sense. Add in fuel bays and pumps to refuel the conventionally powered ships of the battle group, if you must. The real question is why do you want battleships? Would they have a mission now and into the foreseeable future that would justify the costs? Is there a needed mission a battleship can perform that cannot be done any other way, or at least do far cheaper that how it is currently done?
I am not trying to say we shouldn't have battleships. Personally, I love the concept. I just don't know why we should have them outside of the glamor of it all.
@@garygrant91 besides the gun sizes and armor that comes with a battleship is the fear factor. If there’s a surface ship to surface ship battle in the pacific the survivability of our cruisers and destroyers that protect the carriers are slim . 1 exercet or harpoon and they’re finished. A battleship can take a pounding and protect the carrier much longer and has tow capability so if a carrier get damaged it can be towed back to port. Those 16in/50cal bag guns plus the tomahawk and harpoon launchers can help. Missionwise, you can send the Missouri alone or with 1cruiser and 4 destroyers into the South China sea and leave the carriers to fulfill other missions. Of a ship is attacked, those guns will send any chinese man made island back into the sea. Plus the search plane adds longer range pair of eyes is a plus too.
When I was designing fantasy warships (in seventh grade), a nuclear powered battleship was one of the first things to come to my mind. I appreciate you taking the idea seriously in this video.
To the curator: I was an EM3 in those engineering spaces from 5/82-5/84. That time i served on the Big J was special and a fine ship to serve on. We logged in over 30k miles in 11 months. I have many stories i can share with you about the cruise and Beirut . I'll send you my email to your website. Unfortunately our reunion got cancelled in Sept.
Interesting could u make a video on the nuclear warhead sheels that were made for the Iowa's
Check this out: th-cam.com/video/Pq3WYY9Aiys/w-d-xo.html
The Kirov class comes to mind. Although not technically a battleship but the closet thing to them in service today. The Kirov class ships have backup diesel systems in the event like you talked about.
One of the things that I don't recall you mentioning were the training requirements for the crew. The U.S. Navy's nuclear power program is one of the toughest and most rigorous technical training programs in existence. The enlisted theory section is the rough equivalent of a 30 quarter hour engineering course load. Then you go to prototype for hands on training. Then when you get to your ship or sub you qualify all over again on that specific vessel. None of that is easy, and the Navy has to be able to offer good pay and bonuses to get and more importantly retain the people they need who can complete all the qualifications and do the job. The training needed to operate a conventional steam plant is nowhere near as intensive. And all that regardless of the fact that you're basically looking at 600 lb steam plants with different sources of heat.
But if things go wrong with a conventional steam plant you simply flick a switch and the plant is shut down. On a nuclear power plant you can flick a switch and shut down the nuclear chain reaction, but it will still be producing decay heat at roughly 7% of the power level it had been operating at for an extended period of time until it actually cools down completely.
If building from keel up, I'd be seriously considering liquid fuel reactors (such as FLiNaK or FLiBe), but also having diesel backup so if all reactors were knocked offline, diesel can still get the ship out of harm's way. Liquid fuel has several advantages, one, when it comes to refueling, holes need not be cut (or hatches opened up), rather, use pipes to swap the fuel out.
It all really boils down to one statement "if it was that simple" so many things fit in that one little phrase.
The battleships, all of them representative of an unbelievable period of heavy engineering and projection of power, their like will sadly never be seen again. However it is clear that the future of naval strategy and engineering lies not with ships like these, they are to be marvelled at, revered and preserved but not put into service again now. We look upon these with the same affection that we look at a steam locomotive, again engineering marvels that define their times.
Sad, but they belong to a glorious past.
We heard those grand style of speeches in the 1950's, when everyone was desperate to join the "kool kids" crowd of spitting on naval artillery. They even got new ships to stop carrying main guns completely! The result? They had to bring back old mothballed ships for naval artillery missions, and had to put guns back on new ships.
The "we can do everything with missiles and the air force" crowd was wrong back then. The "we can do everything with smart missiles and drones" crowd lost Afghanistan and still tries to pretend it can, by itself and without traditional "stupid" tech like artillery, win the next wars and dominate the globe.
Everyone wants to bury everything in the "past" and pretend that somehow, some way, the current time is magic and unique and different. Like physics and people have magically been altered, that somehow new things are better by magic, not because of actual objective quality.
The "bury everything and embrace the new", neophile crowd has been wrong on so many things the last 70+ years, it is hard to keep count. A sane, rational, objective view on the matter would say "armor and gunships still have value somewhere", and instead it seems like these things always go back to people who idolize old ships too much, but mostly debutantes who are riding the current, hip, kool kid trend of pish poshing anything old, and blindly embracing what is new.
Claw hammers have not changed in over 2,000 years. There are things that a 70+ year old battleship can do that a new ship in production today can't possibly do. Romantically writing this reality off is potentially dangerous.
@@kingduckford Also very true... I don't think you will find a better power projection vessel in the current US Navy! And if modernized, they would be very capable against modern threads. Not only are modern CIWS capable of taking down modern anti-ship missiles, but since they would sail in a strike group with missile cruisers, destroyers, and subs, they would not be more vulnerable than carriers... The question is only whether or not its even possible or if the ships is rusted through or the metal brittle...
I never really thought about trying to retro fit the Iowas. They are just too old to consider trying to reactivate at this point. Everything you said about nuclear power on a battleship I agree with and have said myself.
I don't know if it would be worth the money to build a new battleship but there would be one great advantage to having a non-nuclear battleship in the fleet. There are some friendly ports that our carriers can't go into because they don't allow nuclear power or weapons in their waters. This would be a great way to show support for such an ally when the carriers would not work. There is also some value in having a big armored capital ship that can take a few hits, something you can park right in front and let them potential enemy see. One scenario put forth back in the day was if the Cubans tried to take Gitmo by force. Putting something like the New Jersey right there in sight would do a lot to discourage that sort of thing.
If they really needed our support, they would allow it in!
@@mahbriggs ABSOLUTELY. If they’re a so called “ ALLY”, then it must be presumed that as an Ally, they’re depending on the power of the United States Navy to protect THEIR FREEDOM. However, as a citizen of the country with the world’s most powerful Navy, I’m NOT expecting their subpar Navy to be doing the same for either myself of that of my family. Thus, as a retired Veteran of our Navy, I’m under absolutely NO ILLUSION OR OBLIGATION to show support to another country for which MY LIFE WAS ON THE LINE TO PROTECT. Henceforth, it’s quite the opposite. As the protector of ANOTHER country other than that of my own, it’s THEIR OBLIGATION AND RESPONSIBILITY TO SHOW OUR SAILORS THEIR SUPPORT AND APPRECIATION. And they can start by stopping their anti-nuke nonsense and allowing our Sailors to visit the countries that we’re being asked to protect.
I remember when I was in the marine corps and in Vietnam and i could hear new Jersey firing guns when it went over and going in land there was such a screaming really cool...that's nothing compared to the blast...
imagine being trapped on a tiny pacific atoll with dozens of BBs raining down shells as they did on Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and countless others in the Marshalls, Gilberts, and Marianas.
@@pizzafrenzyman those marines were real men during the second world war...they were fighting for real freedom..not just a police action....
@@LeatherneckJoe133 true
USS Enterprise CVN65 was designed in such a way as to switch to regular propulsion if the political support for nuclear changed. This design is was the main reason why the ship was so inefficient compared to the Nimtz. the bigger the reactor is the more efficient, but when you have to build a reactor in the dimensional constraints of traditional boilers, you end up with a system that takes more space, burns it fuel twice as fast,and does not deliver as much power. I would also like to point out that the naval reactors used are of the PWR type and in the unlikely event that something happens one does not need to worry about runaway reaction or critical mass because PWR's have what's called a negative void coefficient. the reaction only sustains itself when the pressure in the reactor is maintained.
The part missing here is what happens when you DO have a loss of coolant accident in said PWR... the other advantage is that Navy PWR's in a loss of coolant event, if they were to lose ALL coolant, will not have enough thermal mass to melt through their steel reactor vessel thanks to the smaller overall size. This is NOT true in a civilian PWR/LWR.
Ideally, you wouldn't use an LWR/PWR to power a future battleship. A reactor like Molten Salt Reactors would provide significant safety advantages and don't require pressure to operate (except on the steam side).
Ah, wondering when this one would come up considering the number of times I've seen the "nuclear refit the Iowas" argument made. Totally agree with what you said re it not being viable. Between the weight of the reactor plant and all its shielding outweighing the boilers it'd replace by a good margin and the different steam conditions nuclear plants produce requiring significant reworking of the rest of the systems it'd likely cost almost as much as a new Iowa to refit even if somehow we didn't have to design a new reactor system from scratch. If there were to be a propulsion change because for whatever reason we've committed to bring back the Iowas I'd probably think it'd be hybrid gas turbines or gas turbine-electric as the only financially viable options. What I am curious about and hope the Pentagon is watching and planning for is the potential military use of SMR technology. Using a modular integrated reactor that can take less space, have fewer components, run with more automation and less maintenance, and be swapped out whole once its fuel load is exhausted. That may be able to help cut down the biggest hurdle to future nuclear combatants: the staggering costs involved, 'cause I want nuclear cruisers back!
Nuclear cruisers just don't have a role in the modern navy. Not because of tactical or strategic concerns, but because of the geopolitical considerations due to their nuclear reactors. Lets face it: nuclear vessels are a significant investment, not from a cost perspective but from a political standpoint. They cannot be sent on the sorts of high-risk, independent operation missions that cruisers are intended to perform. Imagine if a CGN were to suffer a terrorist attack like the USS Cole, but instead of a damaged ship and a few dead sailors you got a damaged ship and a Chernobyl-scale nuclear incident. As such, the only role a nuclear cruiser could ever realistically be used for is a carrier escort. And there are cheaper, better ships for that job.
It's OK though, the modern DDG is the size of a cruiser, the cost of a cruiser, and fulfills all the roles of a cruiser. It's just called a destroyer so Congress will pay for them ;)
Please understand I am not trying to pick a fight or be disrespectful but are you sure on the weight issue? The steam power plant on the Iowas was MASSIVE it was the most powerful steam plant ever put on a Warship. I am an Iowa vet and I remember learning about the Steam plant in ESWAS qualifications and I could not get over how big it was.
My Daughter is a nuclear Machinist Mate First Class who is now doing a tour as a recruiter. The biggest problem is getting enough qualified recruits to crew the aircraft carriers and submarines with nuclear power plants. The nukes need to be straight "A" students and wizards at math.
What if they laydown a brand new BB, Iowa or Montana, take your pick. Design the armor to be modular, at least around engineering. Time consuming, but they could disassemble the ship in drydock to refuel.
Also, what if they designed a reactor able to withstand the shock of battle without scramming (within reason)?
If the Navy was going to design a new battleship, it wouldn’t be an Iowa, and it certainly would not be a Montana class. I love the idea of a Montana class battleship, but that’s just not what we do anymore. Building one from scratch, we’re not going to give it triple gun turrets. It would probably be something more along the lines of what the army is designing for their (Reportedly 1000 mile range) cannon...ramjet projectiles. If it were nuclear powered, it would be because of the power consumption of future laser defense systems and to serve as a RAILGUN platform . Basically what you would get would be an up- armored Zumwalt DDG style cruiser with Nuclear power, a larger VLS system...And long range shore bombardment capability. The days of a true battleship are gone, nobody fields them anymore and because nobody fields 16 inch guns...You don’t require a vessel armored to withstand 16 inch shells. Advanced Missile systems, hypervelocity weapons, ICBMs...Armor alone can’t defend the ship any longer. The future of naval defense is active protection systems... which means a future design would More heavily favor an MUCH lighter armored cruiser then it would a heavy battleship.
Right now our Navy warships survive by shooting down the missile before they get hit. So it would be interesting to see a modern battleship designed to shrug off big missile hits like the Iowa class did shells. Maybe composite and reactive armor
kinda like a scaled up zumwalt?
This is an excellent video with clear and carefully chosen articulation.
As to the content my only critique is that we really can't properly evaluate the sensitivity of a nuclear reactor to adverse conditions because it is classified. I think it would be fair to allow for the present possibility of shock/damage hardened nuclear propulsion.
While such details are indeed classified, we can draw useful conclusions from the few Cold War-era nuclear submarines that were lost at sea. They suffered extreme structural failure due to implosion yet their reactor pressure vessels remained intact. It's reasonable to assume the reactors are designed to remain intact under most battle damage scenarios that would otherwise destroy the ship.
Good Argument! Robust systems that can withstand combat situations. Listen to that DARPA!
With contemporary technology, I completely agree with your take, but I also think that future developments in reactor miniaturization, safety, etc. could very well open up the possibilities down the line. If it were up to me, I would probably go with a large cruiser hull rather than a BB. If modern advances in artillery technology were properly integrated (cough AGS on the DD(X), a few 6" or 8" guns could probably outperform 16" in everything but payload and penetration. Using a more compact gun system would also permit installation of missile armament that a modern combatant cannot be without.
Nice Boilerfront! I cut my teeth on a 7 burner B and W on USS Forrestal CV59. Fond memories.
Hi Ryan,
I really enjoy your videos. Growing up I fell in love with Iowa class Battleships. So to hear someone give so much background about them is a real treat. I'm very glad you made this video because nuclear power is my absolute passion. I do jobs for nuclear plants, and advocate for nuclear to help with climate change. I do have some thoughts Id like to share.
First, I firmly agree with you that trying to retrofit the currently Iowa's with nuclear reactors (then reactivating them) is wildly impractical. Even though all four ships technically have several decades worth of potential life, they are almost 80 years old and would not be in service long enough to justify the costs of nuclear and overall modernization. I think that starting from scratch is definitely the only serious option, and this is where I do have some respectful disagreements.
I will admit that you brought up some excellent points about the "delicacy" of nuclear reactors when not protected. Commercial nuclear plants are some of the most hardened facilities in the world, which is why nuclear overall as an energy source is so incredibly safe. It frankly annoys me how the anti-nuke crowd has done such a great job demonizing it. All that said, a floating platform not fully protected is not the same, so you do have some points there I didn't think of.
That said, I think that if the Navy were ever to considered building new battleships (which I definitely think it should) and it doesn't use nuclear, then I think it kills the justification for their return. My reasons are as follows.
- It would drastically limit the amount of extra internal & external space available for other roles.
- It limits the amount of power it will have.
- Finally, and I will actually concede I may be wrong on this, but it will potentially have a major impact on their lifetime cost.
When we look at any battleship from the past, we have to think of what the main reason for its existence was and why we do not have active ones today. It was to have an effective platform to use large caliber guns. With the exception of shore bombardment/land fire support, aircraft and missiles have effectively replaced the need for large caliber guns. Thus why carriers are the primary focus and not battleships. Carriers have a much longer and more flexible striking range. Point being, although the Navy has not effectively been able to replace the battleships for fire support, they need to be able to do more than just fire support. I think if the navy was ever going to justify developing a new class of battleship, they would have to be able to perform more tasks like:
- Carrying a lot of VLS modules like the Arsenal Ship Concept - Definitely something the navy is thinking about.
- Making fuel from sea water to refuel other vessels - Related to really exciting technology in development.
- Carrying more advanced directed energy weapons or even railguns
- Having an advanced Hospital center on board
- Being able to potentially perform amphibious operations like the zumwalts and LCS class ships
I think my overall point is, that with nuclear it opens up more possibilities to what the ship can do for the Navy. Love to hear your thoughts though. Thanks again for the video :)
Matthew…..I am certainly not as versed and learned as you and many other commenters. I was a land-based Intel guy. Your ideas about retro-use of aged battleships in my mind does have merit, but not as a primary vessel. Look at a retro-fitted battleship as becoming….a slave external “hard-drive” plug and play extension from the primary CPU - the Ops deck from the Carrier. The battleship be fitted out to be a launch pad for long-range ICBM’s, Exocet’s, land bombardment (multi-warhead) rockets - not guns. Guns require too much close in proximity as required back when. GPS now can and has replaced old battleship thinking, and wouldn’t it seems, be involved in any upper brass war-time planning sessions. Now days war planning contingencies surround scram-jet deliveries, space vehicles, along with close air deliveries like B-1’s, and drones. Keep all battleships please….they are great for museum quality displays and history lessons.
@@s.ford2290 I hate when I understand the Navy POV, but they forgot the Romance of serving your country with such beautiful ship, moral is an important factor for the sailor, talk economical value against a Great Symbol of power is pointless
I am a retired Naval Officer and worked at Naval Reactors for nine years. I have 30 years of nuclear power experience. Here are some relevant points:
Assuming you absolutely had to have a battleship's 16-inch guns for a vital war fighting task (a big assumption) and you had to reactivate an Iowa at any cost, then it would be far more cost effective to stick with fuel oil. The only way you could even begin to justify a nuclear conversion is if you were to assume high operating tempo (similar to the carriers) for many decades. Otherwise there is not enough cost savings from saved fuel oil to justify it.
Of the technical points you made, most were wrong.
1. Assuming you could just remove the boilers and insert a couple of nuclear reactors and their ancillaries, the cost would be tremendous; on the order of a billion dollars, probably much more. Retaining the boilers would be much easier and far cheaper and faster.
2. Nuclear reactors and their shielded bulkheads weigh more than boilers. You might think that the weight could be made up by eliminating tons of fuel oil. But the torpedo defense on these ships assumes these tanks are filled with liquid. Figuring out the displacement and weight distribution problems would be challenging.
3. The engine rooms are too small. Nuclear reactors produce steam at different temperatures and pressures than boilers. They make little if any super heat. That means the turbines and much of the steam plant would have to be redesigned and replaced. The redesigned steam plant might not even fit into the existing space because the turbines would be physically larger. On the plus side, the stacks could be removed and the gained deck space used for other equipment.
4. Speaking of the stacks, each one represents a large opening in the existing armored deck doesn't it? This might help solve the reactor access problem, depending on current configuration. These openings would have to covered by armor/shielding.
5. Refueling a nuclear reactor would be expensive, but not cost prohibitive assuming the original conversion was cost justified in the first place. Frequency of refueling would depend on operating tempo, probably exceeding 30 years given that battleships would spend far less time steaming around the world at high speed compared to the nuclear carriers. You could install removable armored plugs above each reactor to facilitate refueling. In any event, I wouldn't assume the reactor would ever be refueled given that the rest of the ship would be 120 years old at that point. De-fueling would still be required.
6. Modern Naval reactors are certainly not "delicate." They are robustly designed to keep operating under shock conditions and have been tested successfully at sea on surface ships in shock tests using underwater explosions to create the kind of shock waves experienced in battle. Given the engineering challenges described above, the robustness of a modern Naval Reactor would be the least of my concerns.
Coal and b&w boilers
Would the development of a supercritical naval reactor mostly solve problem #3?
@@hailexiao2770 If you mean a superheating nuclear / steam generator (supercritical means something else in the context of a nuclear reactor), then yes, a reactor that produced dry steam the same quality as a fuel oil boiler would obviate the need for a new design engine room. No such reactor design currently exists. Even if possible, development of the new technology would multiply the cost. (Never mind the fact that New Jersey's steam system is worn out and would need replacement in any case.)
@@boyscoutmatt Current reactor designs are around a PWR. Something like a Molten Salt Reactor which operates at twice the operating temperature, and, as far as the reactor is concerned, at near vacuum pressures, would offer a lot more power in a smaller size while still providing better steam. It's a far less proven technology (only two such reactors have ever existed, the aircraft reactor experiment and the molten salt reactor experiment, both at Oak Ridge National Labs) and would need a lot of verification, but the development of one for the Navy would be of massive benefit to the civilian power sector.
Doesn't even need to be Thorium fueled, but that's a different subject all together.
I agree with you on your points on a nuclear battleship, but I've always thought using the LHD-8 style power plant on a "Future Battleship" would be an interesting idea.
Carriersnuclear are also "Stand off combatants" They do not close with and directly engage the enemy. This makes power feasable for carriers but not for any front line ship.
Depending on the fuel or type of reactor it is a good idea if we were going to build something new. Oil fired boilers are no longer used in any actively commissioned ship nor are resources in place to fuel a Iowa class ship with the bunker C class fuel. The modern alternative would be large diesel engines OR gas turbine powered with turbo-electric drives and electronic systems not reliant on steam power.
I' m a Nimitz plank owner , I served on the Nimitz 2 years, we never went anywhere without our escorts. The escorts were all nuclear. The older systems of WWII would be outdated, even if the ships tested out spec-wise, most of the systems since not being in use deteriorate from lack of use. Even if the old Iowas were returned to conventional service they would have to be yarded first for inspection, testing, repairs, and upgrades. Anything steam driven that sits for any length of time is usually a candidate for a refit, and that includes Nuclear. Rust and sitting water deteriorate systems, as well as steam in a fully active system. I've torn apart old fire sprinkler systems when we were converting to a dry fire system. You could see all the black water that came out of the pipes.
Great arguments well stated. Also a reactor can’t really superheat the steam so you would have to change the turbines in all of your pumps and generators and the main engines as well. Also way too heavy. Also agree with the decommissioning of the nuclear cruisers, was very premature and a very poor decision.future weapon systems could possibly be powered by diesels but thats not the best idea. Put the rail guns onto the escorts and leave the Iowa’s as they are, still think they have a lot to bring to the table and still should be in commission.
That may be an issue with a LWR/PWR but it wouldn't be for a modern reactor like a Molten Salt Reactor which operates at ~650ºC
I'm sorry but reactors are designed to superheat the steam, otherwise you'd cause impingement damage in your steam pipe and turbine blades from being hit with liquid water. The existing turbines would be more than adequate for that application
How about either a molten sodium-chloride fast reactor burning uranium? If that seems a bit much, take a look at supercritical water reactors.
I would also advise everyone to look into hybrid railguns which are cross between railguns and coilguns. Their advantage is halving the current requirements for a given acceleration. If we step back from hypersonic velocities, it becomes more feasible to actually field them.
Excellent analysis.
I'm a nuclear engineering major, so I obviously have really positive opinions of nuclear power, however, I think you're point of robustness is very important. Even assuming the shock does destroy a plant, I would rather have a diesel spill than a radiated section of a battleship.
Of course, this would probably never happen because the concept of designing something with the idea of taking damage as one of its primary roles is a bit outdated but it's possible.
Ultimately it doesn't matter, naval reactors are designed to be damaged and the reactor compartments are obviously shielded, worst case scenario you can flood a compartment on a ship to add more shielding
@@Hostilegeese Exposing a ship to eemy fire is a violation of rector safety regulations. We no longer have any submarines left in the Navy, we only have underwater reactor safety drilli platforms. This is why after 13 years in Submarines, I refused to re enlist. Upon my fnal checkout interview, I removed my Submarine Dolphins and threw them down on the Captians desk. I "Finished my 20" In the Reserves as an EOD Diver. (Actually did another 13) On dril weekend, we had a uniform insection. The CO stops and stares at me. "I believe you were in Submarines?" "Yes sir! I WAS!" "Where are your Dolphins?" "I no longer wear them Sir! I consider myself an ex submariner!" "Either you put the fish on or submit a request to remove your sub quals!" "It will be on your desk by 1630 Sir!" And so it was.
@@bernieeod57 Presume you enjoy being under the water. From subs to diving… respect & BZ. I am a little confused by your statement, are you saying the submarine community is trained to run away from a fight, or am I missing something?
@@stevedoe1630 The sub force is nothing more than a nuclear reactor safety drill platform. They cannot fight nobly spit shine and do reactor safety drills
@@stevedoe1630 Which is why after 13 years in the sub force, I refused to te enlist. In my final checkout interview, I ripped my Submarine Dolphins off my uniform and threw them on the Captain's desk. I did another 13 years in the Reserves. When my Reserve unit CO ordered me to wear my Dolphins, I had my Submarine Qualifications administratively removed rather than wear them
I would have to agree with captfjparks. Systems that are designed for shipboard use are anything but fragile. As a Data Processing Technician, before PC's, I learned something about what went into the building of computers that went to sea. They had to withstand vibrations, rolling and pitching, big changes in humidity and temperatures. Even with the air conditioning aboard ship, it was anything but perfect. And, during GQ, a lot of that is shut down. In those days we still used punch cards. High humidity could cause the cards to swell and not feed into the machines. The reactors have to put up with the same or even more due to the location in the ship.
You mentioned the problems with the BBs taking hits. You didn't mention the shock that occurs when a broadside is fired. That's a pretty heavy jolt. The BBs might primarily use missiles and rail guns, but a salvo of 9 2700# HE rounds has a very devastating effect.
I was a Nuc MM on USS Eisenhower in '80s. I am in complete agreement with all you arguments Pro and Con. I had the pleasure of a tour of USS Iowa on an occasion when she was moored at pier 12 Norfolk across from Ike. Impressive for 1940's technology.
A big reason for the Iowa's being so "underpowered" in the late 80' and 90's was that they were put into service to quick, and anyone even remotely familiar with the in's and outs of how to work and maintain the boilers (and other parts, all of which were not given a proper overhaul to begin with) were long retired or dead. They were poorly serviced. Not trying to say the crews were incompetent, but they were hardly equipt experience and knowledge wise to deal with such gear properly. I'm sure they did the best they could with what they could figure out on fly.
They had been in layup and not attended to in a very long time. I was a BT and got out in 86. I remember in 85 while in drydock overhaul on Lexington in PNSY cross decking Wisconsin to ShangriLa to salvage parts in mothballs. She was in pretty sorry shape. When they started the recommissioning of the battle ships I got a letter asking If I would reenlist for that duty. I had done a year on USS Coronado COMIDEASTFOR FLAGSHIP In the Persian Gulf and told the wife. We had our chance when Libia was being assholes and when Iran took our people hostage plus during the tanker wars. I am done! Then a little more than ten years later we had 911. I regretted my decision after that!
He's talking about being underpowered electrically. That's what the mention of railguns is about. The Iowas were capable even with their old boilers to keep up with modern battlegroups, although not necessarily with the carriers. They weren't that underpowered mechanically. However, the electric power requirements of a modern warship with all the radars, ECMs, satnav, missile illuminators, NBC, automation systems, etc. far exceeded what the Iowa's original generators were capable of outputting.
@@andrewsuryali8540 I understand that. What I was saying is there was plenty of steam to turn more SSTGs if they could find space for them. I would imagined these days there are more powerful units available.
I was a crew member and you dont know what you're saying. We could go from a 1/3 bell to flank in 3 minutes. I lived it. I was there in those engineering spaces for 2 years. 5/82- 5/84 including Beirut. We steamed for 11 months straight without shutting down. We had the best engineering crew in the 3rd fleet.
@@donsvideos1985 it's not like swapping out Legos. There would have been questions about the rated capacity of the main switchboards, feeder cables, downstream transformers, load centers, panelboards, motor generator sets, and all the feeder and bus tie breakers in between. As for the generators themselves, you can't just yank one out and expect an exact replacement to fit in the same spot but with higher output. Source: electrical engineer now who was qualified load dispatcher on an A4W.
I pretty much agree with you. A reactor is too fragile to put on a ship that expects to take battle damage. Just like the Yamato, a battleship in a modern war would be held in reserve on the sidelines until naval and air dominance is achieved. Nuclear subs are the way to go. Carriers are too vulnerable in a modern world war scenario, even with an entire fleet protecting them!
The Yamato was a special case because IJN at the time couldn't afford the fuel needed to sail her. The other battleships, especially the Kongos and Nagatos, needed far less fuel and were therefore deployed in the front lines all the time. Doctrinally, the Japanese didn't wait for air superiority to be won or lost before deploying their battleships forward. The idea was to get the battleships as close as possible to the enemy fleet before the loss of air superiority could be leveraged by the enemy side to bomb the battleships. Kirishima was sunk in one of the last battleship duels of the war, but it got to the point of a battleship duel precisely because she was already deployed into range before any aircraft could be tasked with bombing her. Yamato's sister Musashi was sunk while attempting to execute the same kind of maneuver, although in her case she didn't manage to get in range before the planes started bombing her.
A battleship for modern warfare would be designed like a Kirov on steroids but with a stealth hull like the Zumwalt. It would be a giant surface combatant able to carry missiles too large to mount on destroyers and cruisers, equipped with the equivalent capability of a ground air defense regiment.
@Andrew Suryali during the war they were afraid to commit the Yamato class ships and rightly so. Losing one would have been a devastating blow to moral. Being commissioned at the end of 1941 they probably had enough fuel at the beginning of the war. Not so much at the end. I just found out she could only cruise for than 7,200 nmi. miles.
All surface ships are vulnerable. They are easily found by airborne radar or satellite and no amount of stealth can remove the sound from the water. A cheap, small, well positioned diesel boat can take out a capital ship with ease.
Now that you do not need a 16 inch gun to reach over the horizon there just isn't a need for a battleship.
@@fishua5564 Look, go read the history of Yamato's deployments. She was all over the place in the front lines whenever the IJN managed to scrounge up enough fuel to sail her. She was the flagship in Midway and was present in Guadalcanal. This idea that the IJN won't commit their battleships under threat of air power is just erroneous. All the way to the end of the war they continued committing their battleships even as their air power dwindled. They even tried to equip Ise and Hyuga with seaplane versions of their naval fighters to address that deficiency. The Kongos spent most of the war duking it out with US airfields in the Pacific islands.
@Andrew Suryali was she all over the place or barely had any fuel oil? How many times did she fire her main guns at enemy ships? How many times did the Iowa's punch it out with other ships? I never commented on how the IJN used the other classes of battleships.
The sailors of the IJN thought Yamato was invincible, to lose it early in the war would have destroyed the moral of the whole IJN. They were not going to take that risk.
Reactors can be designed to be very solid, i have no doubt you could make a reactor the most sturdy part of the entire ship, especially with the modern molten salt concepts.
I really like this discussion. In general, I think you could make the equipment sufficiently robust against some level of shock. In submarines and carriers, and of course land based systems, this may not be necessary and this is not done, or not done to a large degree, but that does not make it impossible. In the end, a reactor is a pressure vessel. So are the boilers in a conventional steam powerplant. Those too do not react terribly well to a great deal of shock, and certainly not to penetrating damage, but a nuclear system would not have undo greater chances of being incapacitated with remote damaging effects in my mind, were the proper design goals achieved.
That said, these ships were designed not only to absorb weapon impacts with armor, but also to take and survive penetrating damage. No matter your active defenses, some hits will impact, as you mention. But likewise, no matter your armor...well, time and again it's been proven to be less than foolproof, even on ships with greater tonnage devoted to it than the Iowas. Losing one fireroom and one turbine for a conventional plant won't make anyone in those workspaces very happy (or indeed very alive, most likely), but nuclear breaches have a greater chance of causing even greater casualties. I think this is their biggest failure mode within the concept of a brawling surface vessel, and why I agree entirely with the conclusion that I actually fully expected you to make here when clicking.
Good topic!
1. There are nuclear powered ice breakers designed with shock in mind.
2. The video author states he was for the old CGN's. He somehow thinks it is safer to be in a ship designed to receive anti-ship missiles (instead of the CVN) without armor than an armored battleship.
1 the Russians built 3 of them(that I can recall off the top) all designed to bull through extremely thick ice. They operate on Russia's northern seas and interestingly can never leave said waters as they use the insanely cold(it'd be frozen if not for the salt) water to cool thier reactors
2) yeah caught that as well. All milspec vessals are constructed with the knowledge you'll take damage
Realistically speaking, the only threats to a modern battleship are from Submarines and Mines. Carriers can provide the air protection. Modern anti-ship missiles are not designed to penetrate much armor, and even if they are, the Iowa's have 12" of belt armor, and 6" of main deck armor. Both of which are buried under 1.5" thick STS (structural armor steel, effectively) outer materials. The outer hull is something like a foot and change away from the main armor belt so you are dealing with spaced armor there and the weather deck is a full 8 feet above the main armor deck so once again, spaced armor.
It's not impossible to design a system which is designed to take hits, and chances are the reactor area would be the heaviest armored part of the ship.
@@Whiskey11Gaming To be fair, modern anti-ship systems are designed to tackle threats of their times. In the case that someone should develop a battleship with armour to be penetrated, then someone else will inevitably try to build a means to do the penetrating, or better still, bypass it altogether. Regardless, a battleship's main issues come to roost when one does a cost-benefit analysis. It's one centralised missile or gun platform which costs as much as an aircraft carrier, yet doesn't have the same flexibility nor is subject to the same economies of scale, and resultantly is readily substitutable with many smaller vessels.
Love your WoWs vids!
I agree when you discourage nuclear on battleships. Trying to use nuclear on a ship whose purpose is to directly attack other vessels leaves the battleship likely to be damaged to the point where it could have flooding. A regular boiler type propulsion system is susceptible to water inundation causing explosions. A nuclear reactor is even more susceptible to flooding problems. We haven’t even touched on the fact that before battleships sink they usually capsize. It’s near 100% certain the vessel will explode in this scenario. If any retrofit is possible it would be with marine diesels. Even supertankers use diesels. The most severe occurrence would be the diesels flooding and hydro locking. It would certainly destroy the engine but I don’t think it would explode into flames. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
I would think though, if that upgrade were to occur, it would need to include engineering a method to more easily access the engine area for refueling.
They never have for the carriers, they wouldn't for this application. Making it easier to access means taking away from something better which would include weakening that area of the ship from attack and you couldn't put equipment over top of that area. That's the problem now is the Tomahawk ABLs are over the existing engineering plates. There's a thread on the navweaps forum about this it's an interesting read.
It would be easier to design the reactor to be refueled without opening up the ship.
@@johnlee8523 do you have the link to that?
@@johnlee8523 interesting. I also did learn that I am a “reactivationist”. My ideological viewpoint must be reactivationism. :)
@@rfjohns1 lol I'd love to reactivate them and while it can definitely be done the money will never be there. Would love to make a working replica though!
You might also have to replace or reengineer most of the steam systems and possibly the turbines too, since Nuclear powered steam ships use saturated steam (wet steam), and the New Jersey used Superheated steam(dry steam)
You make some really good points, and offer some interesting insights. I have considered some of the points you mentioned, especially retrofitting a reactor into an existing hull, and yes that would be extremely difficult and expensive, probably compromising the armored decks and hull.
Building a new ship, would be a better option as technology has evolved and newer operating systems would be more efficient. But as you stated, a reactor could become an issue, but if a sub, or a carrier were hit, the same thing could happen, your argument about damage to the reactor and defense systems are still in play there,
A battleship does not live alone either, it has escort vessels also. So I think more discussion could be made and arguments for both sides are valid.
The other issue is, where would we today make new 16" rifles? And projectiles? And powder?
No one has done any real research in those technologies for a very long time
No one has factored in a BB's battle group to compensate for any short-comings, such as in the WWII Atlantic Theater escorts. She would not be without.
As a former NPO what stands for nuclear power equipment operator. I can tell you that the Navy style of nuclear reactor can be installed as a package deal. It can be so small that it can be carried through hatchways.. barring that because a battleship requires a lot of steam. Any deck plates that need to be cut through initially. Can be turned into deck plate hatch weighs roughly equivalent to like a Cheyenne mountain hatchway but what you don’t realize perhaps is that nuclear power And I don’t want to give away any of the classified information but it is very highly in Riched fissionable material and they will last one reactor for 20 years
The idea that i had read about in the past was one involving pebble bed reactors. As I recall it many of the issues involving how vulnerable they are became non-issues. The money side of the house prevented the idea from moving further though
Lets say you managed to build a passive safe naval pebble bed reactor. You still have to deal with the fact that any breach of the closed loop is going to instantly render the ship "sunk" as it will be too radioactive to save. Even a leak between the open loop and the closed look is going to very quickly become a catastrophic problem. Neither of these breaches seem all that unlikely when someone starts lobbing exocets at you.
Geometry of the pebble pile affects power of the reactor. That means taking a heavy roll, pitch, yaw, surge, sway, heave, list, heel, loll, etc. could affect the pile, affecting criticality, and ultimately affect the vessel’s ability to fulfill her mission. It’s interesting technology for terrestrial applications, but I don’t think any admiral is going to accept this for a ship.
I definitely agree with you, 10,000%. TOTALLY not worth retrofitting an 80 year old museum ship with nuclear power. Now, a new ship? Maybe... But design and build it from the ground up (or keel up) with nuclear
Ryan - I've never visited your ship but am really loving your series. I've been on other battleships but mostly the ones in the Southeast (North Carolina - Alabama -all the ships at Patriots Point in Charleston, and a few junk ships dong contract work). The videos I like best are the ones which go into the deepest darkest crevasses to areas which would never be seen on any tour (splinter deck, triple bottom). Through the necessity of the virus you have come up with a great educational tool which will be viewed for years to come.
I have a small suggestion - We need a "frame" of reference - literally. Could you make available a map, blue print, etc. which you could reference in your videos which shows exactly where you are in the ship. Might be something you could sell or maybe provide online. It could help with understanding, but could also give some framework to your videos ie. today I'm on 3rd deck looking at frames 20 to 30. This way you could systematically work your way through the ship and document in the video titles. Just a thought - or - continue as it is, I will enjoy either way. All the best to you and I hope you are back to work (and getting paid) soon. BCB
I'd really like to know Ryan's opinion on the Kirov and the future of designs of that nature.
I also comments on this as it appears the russian navy is committed to keeping them going for quite some time.
The other thing about carriers is they generally operate at the range of their aircraft ie, far away from the enemy. If you look at the Kirovs, their primary weapons are cruise missiles, again designed to operate at long range. Essentially the things that will threaten them are things like missiles, aircraft and submarines, threats that are countered by defensive systems/weapons rather than armour. They are not intended to get involved in direct slogging match where munitions hit the Hull. If that happens, something has gone wrong with their defensive systems, and indeed having a nuclear reactor in the event of a Hull impact could be a major liability.
USS Long Beach CGN 9 was a nuclear powered cruiser that served from the 60's til 94 when the navy decided that nuclear power was to expensive for use on any surface ships smaller then a Carrier, Battleships were not considered do to the Iowa's just recently being put back in retirement and no future plans to build new ones as far as fragile goes if a cruiser could run one then a battlewagon would have no problem.
Heres an idea, tow a Iowa battleship with a nuclear carrier to save fuel 😉
Yup…it’s an idea. A really dumb one, but an idea nonetheless.
One of the things that I have heard is that even if the Navy wanted to reactivate any of the Iowas that their power plants are near their end of life and would need to be replaced. So no matter what reactivating the Iowas would be a massive expenditure and the would end up basically rebuilding the ships if they were to undertake that decision.
In general, the steam plants are used to a certain number of hours then rebuilt. They can be rebuilt pretty much indefinitely. The Iowas boilers don't have that much use. Sure are old though and finding damage because of age is certainly a factor. Spare parts is another big one.
@@jth877 agreed, ask any russian tanker about spare parts.
do you see any need for a 16" gun platform with limited range when the stockpiles of cruise missiles are also aging? It would be a lot easier and cost effective to fire off 1000s of old cruise missiles than it would be to reactive the New Jersey.
@@jth877 Yes they will need to be rebuilt, I have been listening to Drachinifel who has a lot of videos on the subject. One of the things that he has brought up is the use of the Engines and Wear and tear on them. If you take ships from that era as an example say the Hood, she when she was sunk in 1940 her engines were in desperate need of an over haul which the Bismark permanently cancelled. Then if you look at the Iowa's service life they had steamed around the world for a good 25 years in active service. So it is about time for the engines to be rebuilt which would be done in a major refit, but is it worth the cost?
@russel Collins are you related to BBNJ's Russ Collins?
I do have a question. You mentioned the hassle of trying to get a reactor in there (6" armoured deck, 12" belt, or triple bottom. In the event a turbine, turbogenerator, or boiler needed to be replaced, how would they have done this?
Cut through the side of the ship and replace the boiler.
The key here is that the entire boiler doesn't get replaced, only pieces. And the pieces are small enough to be moved around. As long as they are small than 26 inches wide
@speed150mph: these bulky and heavy units are generally repaired at the component level, not renewed at the unit level. A turbine casing is generally not going to be replaced, but the casing can be disassembled and the stator vanes inside may be renewed. The main condenser shell is not going to be replaced, but the heads can be opened and a tube can be plugged at anchor and/or replaced during a big overhaul period. This is heavy, industrial-grade machinery and is designed for a long service life. For unplanned maintenance, component level servicing is the norm.
If the damages are really bad, SUPSHIP would spend 6-12 months preparing a cost effectiveness analysis to recommend if it’s worth making full repairs, or other alternatives (decommission the equipment and derate the ship, decommission the entire ship, etc.), and senior brass would have to decide the way forward.
as a nuclear carrier sailor, I disagree with reactors are delicate. Any hit that would shut down a reactor would shut down a conventional plant
You’re right. The reactors in military vessels aren’t fragile. They’re designed, like everything else in a Navy vessel, to take a jarring impact and keep working. These most certainly aren’t fragile civilian ships. They’re warships after all.
Refueling New-Klee-Arrr (Support a pirate navy!) reactors on a heavily armoured warship is a trivial exercise. See the fueling arrangement of a CanDu (Canadian Deuterium) reactor. Each CANDU fuel bundle is about 0.5 metre long, has a diameter of about 0.1 metre, contains about 20 kilograms of uranium, and has a total mass of about 24 kilograms, so they are way easier to move in and out of your reactor space than than a 16" shell, even including the shielded containers for expended bundles. (The unused bundles do not require shielding on their containers.) And here's the REALLY BIG DEAL ... You can swap fuel bundles without shutting down the reactor. Not that it's required given the duration of reactor "core" life, but you could refuel as an underway replenishment activity.
Having said that, I concur with Ryan that nuclear reactors are too finicky to power a "big boom boat".
The best propulsion choice for a modern build gun surface combatant is already in use ... gas turbines. As a thought exercise consider changing New Jersey's boilers and steam turbines with immense amount of extra fuel and 8 x Rolls-Royce MT30 marine gas turbines (2 per propeller shaft each @ 50,000 SHP) as used in the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, which use only 2. What would flank speed be with 400,000 SHP? :-o
One possible for a future BBGN, would be a COLANOG (Cooperative Electric Nuclear and/or Gas Turbine), this way you have a secondary/supplimental system where the nuclear power is good up to let's say 28 knots, and the gas turbine can be use to provide power for additional speed or to power newer weapon systems (like fiber-optic lasers or railguns); to get the ship underway as the nuclear reactor is brought up to speed. At the very least, a future BBG should use gas turbines driving generators like the Zumwalt, and in this case using the GE LM-6000+...
Battleship New Jersey crew, I love you all and I hope your channel keeps growing like crazy, but I feel physical pain every time Ryan pronounces it 'noo-kyu-ler.'
Is it possible for you to do a video on the internal armor belt/torpedo defense from inside that actual area? I have taken the tour of bull halsey's battleship but that was 2017. And I've always marveled at the raw strength she has, even after I've toured massachusetts and north Carolina. Iowa's are unbelievably more powerful
We will add it to the list!
I'm a little late to the comments here but say they decided to do a nuclear retrofit for whatever reason. Could the 16" guns create enough shock to scram a reactor? I guess this would kind of extend into, how much did the ship firing a Salvo rattle her?
To further add to what Captain Parks said, naval reactors have a means to replace fuel rods - it isn't necessary to cut through the hull or decking in order to replace them. It'd be a lot of labor and a lot of bolts, but easily something accomplished with a week or two in port, not even in drydock.
More importantly, though, is the reality that gun-ships are really just not a viable piece of naval warfare anymore, more's the pity. Any application suitable for guns with calibers larger than about six inches (with debatable arguments for an upper limit of eight inches) is better suited for modern missile systems and torpedoes in the overwhelming majority of situations.
In the context of existing LWR (light water reactor) refueling is an issue , as is the bulky reactor core and heavy steam pipe, redundant systems,pumps etc. However the big progress in nuclear power since the archaic 1950's design chosen by admiral Rickover (and copied by everyone) is using liquid,molten salt reactors which have no fuel rods or massive steam/water system as cooling. Instead the Uranium or Thorium fuel is dissolved into the fuel on a continual basis, and fission products are easily separated in operation which have very short half lives for subsequent release. Since the efficiency of fuel burn goes from a pathetic 0.7% to 99% the amount of waste product as unburned fuel is negligible. Also since the salt coolant is at 700C instead of 250C its more efficient at producing usable power. Another innovation is replacing the legacy steam turbine plant with supercritical CO2 (carbon dioxide) turbines which occupy about 1/5th the footprint of conventional steam turbines. So the answer is that with what we have today nuclear power is easy,simple engineering . As to re-powering an Iowa class ship................still a huge amount of work.
I agree with Captfjparks; a weapons grade uranium reactor using 99.99% fuel is NOT fragile by any means- unless they were completely flipped upside down (I'm speaking as a Boeing Engineer who was put on loan from time to time to give Puget Sound Naval Shipyard a hand when they were short on qualified hands) but if that happens you've got other more pressing issues anyway. But the cost? To build an Iowa class battleship today would easily cost $30 billion dollars if not more- we no longer have the tooling, to make the armor, because ships are no longer armored. You say the Iowa's was underpowered- this is true. To move something "that big" you're going to need at least a two-reactor, 1Gigawatt power plant- they're not cheap, around $3 billion dollars each. But more importantly? 1)The engines on all 4 battlewagons are shot. They're at the end of a life cycle and would need to be totally rebuild- not impossible, but not economically feasible either. 2)Yes, cutting through the hull would be a pain in the ass- but you'd only have to cut through it ONCE, and then simply patch with a slab of 2" plate- putting in a 14" slab of armor would be useful for what? Such armor won't stop a missile. 3)But the biggest reason why they'll never be used again? There's simply no mission for them. You could in theory- IN THEORY- take off the guns, hollow out the magazines, and install something like the Soviet Kirov or one of her sisters. Other than that what could it fight? What other ship(s) on the planet would it fight? OK- load it up with cruise missiles- like the USS Ohio submarine. And,,,,the Ohio's overhaul cost $3 billion, and has 214 Cruise missiles. So we've spent $10 billion out of the 30 billion required to reactivate it. It's just not economically feasible to bring them back.
Nuclear reactors on main combat ships have been done on the Kirov in Russia, but they have decided to also have the traditional fuel boilers as well.
But the truth is, when it comes down to it, most shipborne nuclear propulsion doesn't provide electricity, they are usually direct drive.
And that direct drive lets you put a lot of power to that screw or jet, but if you want to be stealthy, it requires a really precisely engineered turbine, bearings and assembly.
That is another lesson the Russians learned during the cold war, while the British decided to have an electric motor for silent running, and open up for direct drive if they needed to run.
But yes, the Iowa's would be very cost ineffective to retrofit, building something new would be better, because the bare hull is the cheapest part of the ship, but the stuff in it with the work that requires is what makes them cost the big bucks.
A peculiar thing is that heavily protected surface vessels (like battleships) armed with missiles and modern AA and ASW suits may be virtually unsinkable. Nobody is going to use nukes nowadays and 1-2 anti-ship missiles is nowhere near enough to sink a battleship like vessel. And smaller hostile combatants cannot get in close enough (or if they can, there are still nine 16” democracy delivery tubes).
Nuclear Engineer here 👍. The Ford Class reactors don’t require refueling for the life of the vessel. Having said that, I agree that retrofitting a 60 year old hull is a bad idea. It needs to be designed nuclear ☢️ from the drawing board - many support systems are required.
If a ship’s hull hasn’t warped and/or rusted, then it’s age is completely IRRELEVANT. The steal doesn’t loose any of it’s strength with age unless it’s been allowed to deteriorate.
@@mudman6156 - as I mentioned, retrofitting a non-nuclear hull for a reactor(s) is an engineering and construction nightmare. It would be cheaper and faster and safer to start with a properly engineered design meant for nuclear ☢️ power.
@@mudman6156 - you simply cannot just yank out the boiler and substitute a reactor vessel. At least half of the below-deck systems and bulkhead general arrangements are completely different than an oil fired system. It would take several years and billions of dollars to strip an Iowa down to its bare hull. And as I said - at least half the bulkheads are going to have to be completely removed. You’re talking millions of man-hours. The economics and Shipyard time are wildly skewed against it.
Ship structures are built around their propulsion plants… this is a norm for naval architecture. Repowering conventional-to-conventional is hard enough. Repowering conventional-to-nuclear would be a military contractor’s dream come true!
Are dilithium reactors safer to operate than nuclear reactors in the long term?
A Dilithium based matter-antimatter reactor is not safe to use at our current technology level.
on losing containment they violently explode putting out sufficient energy that you needed to be a few light seconds away to be safe from the blast in a vacuum if you wanted to be safe, so if one failed inside Earth's atmosphere the Earth would be at very least rendered uninhabitable, possibly vaporized.
…unless, of course, you had balanced the neutron flux with a _flux-capacitor._ ¡Jumpin’ gigawatts!
The reason to build a new heavy bombardment ship is the lesson of WWII. In the Pacific it was found that naval bombardment of dug in defensive positions was inefficient. When an amphibious landing was made with the heavy bombardment highly curtailed there were high casualties in the landing troops. A review found that the shell craters that provided cover for the landing troops were missing and heavy naval bombardment was returned as the doctrine.
Modern naval ships rely on as little as one cannon dependent on high speed automated reloading and computer controlled targeting. One malfunction or hit on a turret completely knocks out a ships bombardment capability. So it must withdraw from the engagement or remain as a target for the enemy.
There is nothing right now demanding the capability of massive amphibious landings. The US is committed to landing small units at strategic points. It takes years to design and build a battleship type of heavy bombardment vessel and should the need arise the US is unprepared.
Maybe a heavy ship with main turrets holing 4 guns of maybe 10” shells size. Batteries of 5” guns that offer high rates of fire. Modern antiaircraft batteries of guns and missiles. The Falklands battle showed antiaircraft guns still have a place.
The Falklands battle also showed the vulnerability of aluminum construction in warships so steel armor still has a place. When the Exocet missiles punched through the aluminum construction of the British ships the burning solid fuel gut through the ship like a cutting torch through butter.
Modern nonnuclear propulsion for a ship that still needs the 33 knot capability of the WWII battleships to keep pace with carrier battle groups. Still have the large fuel capability giving it range an the ability to refuel escort ships.
Sounds like an updated version of the WWII "pocket battleship" or Panzerschiffe from Germany. Excellent idea, just don't put a nuclear reactor on it.
That's what VLS cells full of missiles are for. If you need a bigger payload or just more missiles, build bigger ships with more, larger VLS cells. The only advantage of guns is cheap ammo, but for guided shells the price isn't too different, and missiles can be cheap enough if you buy in large quantities and use more COTS technologies.
@@hailexiao2770 I agree that modern missiles with smart guidance and targeting systems are much better for destroying individual known targets and should be part of a ships armament. Cheap artillery shells would be a better choice for shore bombardment where pinpoint accuracy is not needed. Also when equipped with proximity fuses, a WWII technology, air bursting shells would keep and enemy burrowed in while your landing craft were approaching the beach.
The 16 inch naval shell and guns were primarily for engaging other battleships and cruisers. They came in a heavy armorer piercing round and a lighter round with a longer range to strike inland targets. While a devastating shore bombardment weapon today large fortified shore targets can be taken out with more efficiently with missiles. Which is why I suggested a 10” or so gun in perhaps quadruple turrets.
I do think that, at the beginning of ship to ship warfare, a nuclear powered bb would be quite powerful with modern laser powered close defense systems. In fact, a bb with frikkin lasers would be extremely powerful. That one torp that blows up under the keel would be more devastating to a nuke bb than one powered conventionally.
Ryan - Not offended at all regarding your opinions, or your sharing of knowledge, its great and your videos are very valuable at educating us all on the systems within the battleship New Jersey and the Iowas in general. Thank you for taking such good care of The Big J! [Praise done, discussion starts here!] - I guess I'm not sure now, why the USN decommissioned the California and South Carolina Class Cruisers, You expressed that you agree that Nuclear Power for those Cruisers was a great idea, yet they were not armored vessels and would surely have gone into harms way to protect themselves and the Capital ships they sailed with? The Navy claims it was crew size? is what I believe I've read/heard discussed! Well I bet they are regretting that decision now however! I will debate your idea that shipboard Nuclear Power plants are not robust/hardened enough to be placed at the heart of a US Battleship! My counter to your argument is first take a look at the Russian Kirov Class Battlecruisers. These vessels are designed for both offensive air and offensive surface warfare missions, and are built around 2× KN-3 marine nuclear reactors with 2× GT3A-688 steam turbines that produce 140,000 shp (100,000 kW). Then also consider that EVERY fast attack and boomer Submarine in the active USN is Nuclear Powered and they are designed to take Very High G-levels of shock and punishment, certainly as much as a WWII Battleship was designed to take and keep on functioning! From a mechanical engineering standpoint, we certainly know how to build shock isolated structures. Imagine an armored self contained Nuclear Reactor module that is shock isolated yet it communicates with the rest of the ship using metal bellows flex ducts, flex lines and hermetically sealed control and power circuit conduits. No doubt it would be a big job to cut out 2 very big 6" armor windows in 2 spots, then lift those plates out, remove boilers from the 4 Firerooms through those 2 holes along with the old plumbing, cabling etc, but once the old equipment is out, those new pre-engineered/constructed armored Nuclear Reactor modules and new Boiler modules would be lowered down through those 2 big holes and into position on pre-installed support bases in the various positions in Firerooms 1-4. Then all the hookups would be made. When installation of the Nuclear Reactors modules and new Boiler modules was complete, those 2 big armor plate windows, now modified with lighter armored (openable) Trunk hatches would be re-positioned back in place and welded back up! Then those hatches would be opened up to conduct the Reactor Fueling of the two Reactors, just like the CVN's all have the Nuclear Reactor refueling Trunks that go down several decks in the Ship. I actually stood on top of the Reactor Refueling Trunk Hatch in the ships store, while touring the USS Harry S. Truman CVN-75 in Norfolk in May 2019 as well as visiting the USS Wisconsin BB64 and the USS New Jersey BB62 on the same trip up east coast with my wife!. Anyway the refueling Trunk went up a couple of decks and down a couple of decks below me to one of the reactors on CVN-75. I really believe the right US Shipyard or Shipyards, Marine Contractors and Nuclear Reactor Propulsion design company could get this portion of a BBG retrofit done right. Its just a matter of convincing a new Defense Secretary and Joint Chiefs that these modernized BBG's would be well worth the refurbishment program costs, especially if the refurbishment program was run efficiently, like prior Battleship refurb. programs! USN Spruance Class Destroyer Vet 1976-1984.
i tend to agree that refitting an existing, museum no less, with nuclear power would be probably more expensive than just building a whole new ship. but nuclear power plants are not all that fr4agile, and there are modern designs that might even make refurbishing possible. something like a molten salt reactor could be built in place and have fuel pumped in from the dock when it was ready to commission.
with that said, i cant think of any particularly good reasons for a battleship class in modern warfare. we have very heavy shore bombardment and ship to ship capability on existing lighter classes, and the advantage no longer lies in surviving hits, but in avoiding being seen altogether. and our carriers, all 14 of them and counting, are very good at projecting force.
i just cant see a use case for a ship in the fleet designed to take hits the way a battleship is. and as i said, we have aircraft and destroyers who can fire anything up to nuclear armed missiles and torpedoes at anything you might conceivably want to fire big guns at. keep in mind that a modern fighter jet carries more weight in ordinance than a B17 did in WW2 and can be launched and recovered from a carrier and arrive at a target at supersonic speeds and land precision munitions wherever they want.
BBs were useful in the era when very few shells hit the mark, and those shells could be deflected by armor. that simply has not been true since aircraft started dropping accurate bombs.
I wonder if giving up some top speed and increasing the size or adding SSTGs in the Auxilary machine rooms could give the extra electrical boost needed. I get space constraints. I served on USS Lexinton int he the boielr rooms for 3 years inthe early 80's. We could go 25 knots pretty easy with only 6 of 8 boilers online.
One could take the plan for a super tanker (multiple hulls makes it more survivable), power it with nukes, arm it with extremely long range rail guns for shore bombardment, add directed energy weapons to back up the antiaircraft weapons and put a few VLMS on the rear deck. Ouala, you have a modern battleship that can remain more than 50 kilometers off the coast and still reach deep inland with shore bombardment.
Army tried some BWR’s from 1950’s to 1970’s for stationary and mobile applications. Lots of safety lessons learned _(reference SL-1),_ and lots of contributions to the nuclear energy industry as a whole, but ultimately stood down because it was just damn expensive.
Why spend 52-weeks training operators for a nuclear plant; when they can operate a similarly rated, conventionally fueled plant with only 6-weeks of training?…amongst other things.
One question: even if there were some simple, easy way to simply replace the boilers on the ships with modular reactors - didn't you previously mention that the fuel oil is an integral part of the torpedo protection system? And I don't know much about ship design, but I'd think that the millions (?) of gallons of fuel are given a lot of consideration during the design of the ship. Something like a nuclear carrier is designed from the keel up to never need all that fuel storage. So even if we could just snap our fingers and replace the boilers, wouldn't the ship still have to carry all the oil, and it's not like you would get any additional space, as the carriers did?
Ya know except for carries and submarines, the navy has scraped its DDGN, DLGN and CGN ships. Bainbridge, Tuckston and Long Beach, etal... were fast beautiful ships.
one other point about naval nuclear reactors is that they use weapon's grade fuel. If in a fight the reactor vessel was breached, the contamination would be significant. Greater than that which would come out of a reactor with a similar mass of fuel of a lower, civil enrichment. it's for this reason that the cruisers were decommissioned, even though their primary combatant would likely be aircraft, being in a carrier group means they would be a prime target for enemy subs, as aircraft carriers are nearly impossible to sink. I'm sure the navy makes their reactors pretty damn strong, but as you said in the video, there is always a chance. That being said, I do agree that they were relatively low risk and it was a huge waste of tax dollars to decommission them so early. At the very least, they could have been repurposed.
If you dropped the conventional propulsion systems onboard the Iowas and put into the same nuclear powered propulsion system as used onboard the Nimitz or the Ford class carriers the Iowas would become hotrods. Same is true with the Alabama, Massachusetts, and the North Carolina. They maybe the fastest ships in our navy. The funnels can be replaced by vertical missile launch systems.
In this day and age, Battleships are more nostalgic than practical. Those big guns have a 20 mile range while ship killer missiles have 100's mile range. In reality, if you were to make the Iowa class a modern warship, the turrets would be removed and discarded, the power plants removed and discarded, the entire electrical grid removed and discarded, the superstructure removed and discarded, leaving basically an empty shell. Then you can install either a nuclear power plant or turbine propulsion and upgraded genset, all new electrical grid to handle the increased amperage, then a slimline superstructure for better aerodynamics, and missile systems and railguns where the turrets used to be. At that point you might as well just start from the ground up with a hull specifically designed for such use. Lets face it, even with all it's armor, a direct hit by most ship killer missiles will do serious damage, maybe even fatal to the ship. Compared to Carrier groups, it is slower, which slows the whole group down. It is man power intensive, as well as a maintenance whore. It had it's time and place, just not in todays world.
Nuclear power math works for aircraft carriers. The whole point is that it frees up hull volume which would have been used for propulsion fuel in favor of additional jet fuel. This allows a carrier to sustain multiple days of round-the-clock flight ops for the initial "shock 'n awe" opener of a conflict. At-sea refueling of a conventional carrier may require coming off station, and at the very least takes many hours on a certain course and speed... they can't do combat flight flight ops during that period. Nuclear power for other surface ships makes less economic sense, cheaper just to refuel them at sea. I'm an ex Navy Nuke.
Jesus that would be one helluva task. I wonder though, I go put my nuke battleship right off your coast in some fishing or oil field areas, puts you in a spot. A Chernobyl underwater there would be pretty undesirable. I could see unique conversations in those places wade into CW use....
What a concept, “you can’t sink my battleship” ...Because the ecological disaster would harm your country
600 lb Babcock and Wilcox boiler. Spent many days down there in those firerooms
Number one, the need for at sea combat between warships ceased in the battle off Samar in 1944. The aircraft carrier became the number one Capitol ship long before the end of
World War II. There is definitely no longer a need for a battleship in any Navy.
You wouldn’t really be using it for ship to ship combat. What you need is an armored cruiser that can stand up to Iranian patrol boats, littoral conflicts, Some torpedoes...ect, With an advanced gun system that can lay the smack down on Over the horizon targets in a cost effective manner. You’re basically creating a mobile artillery platform, more difficult to defend against than missiles.
Not to bring science fiction into things, but if you are a fan of the TV series THE EXPANSE...That is basically what the Donnager class battleship is, In the future most peoples point defense systems can intercept missiles, but the Donnager brings two heavy railgun turrets to the fight that are essentially unblock-able.
Ryan some days you annoy the crap out of my wife. I put your videos on as background sound while I work on projects I need to get done. Usually I end up watching and neglecting the project. I've never seen the NJ, but I did watch either the MO or WI shell Kuwait one night from the deck of the Shreveport on my first float. You may have a video I haven't found yet, but one on the "ghosts" would be entertaining. Every ship I've deployed on has the legends and "haunted" spaces. I imagine NJ has the same stories. They are interesting, especially when the background of the stories is explained. Disclaimer, I wasn't a squid. I was a gator's primary weapon system.
As much as I love the battleships, and I really do, they're just not practical in the modern combat arena. You might as well come up with nuclear chariots or nuclear catapults. It's not a matter of whether you can make it work, but a matter of how much it would be worth even if it does work.
I am definitely in favor of using smaller reactors for our ships. They work on carriers and subs. With new MSR technology breakthroughs, we can put nuclear power on smaller ships. I'm so in favor of them that I think we ought to size the ships to the reactors. If we can make a reactor small enough to make sense on a 200 ft ship, then we ought to make that the minimum size for 98% of the ships.
There are 4 problems with battleships.
a. The enormous cost in building and manning the ship.
b. Their main purpose was traditionally to fight other battleships, of which there are none.
c. The armor is no longer useful against modern missiles.
d. The limited range of the weapons.
For all of these, the primary answer becomes the aircraft carrier. They can hit a battleship from such a distance that the battleship really has nothing to fight back against.
Adding rail guns and lasers doesn't solve the problem.
Lasers are a line of sight weapon. You're limited by the horizon.
Rail guns have more range, but nowhere near as much as a CVN.
It seems to me the way ahead would be to increase the lethality range of the CVN. Right now, that's around 400 miles. Double the range of the aircraft and you've made battleships even more obsolete. Instead of putting lasers on the battleship (mainly a defensive weapon) put them on the aircraft and they become an offensive weapon.
I'm still not sure how or if rail guns would ever make sense in a modern combat arena. Sure they're fun to use, but are they useful? You need to get so close to the enemy that you become a target. Any platform large enough to operate a rail gun (Zumwalt cruiser) would be a very high-value target that close to the enemy. And stealth isn't as useful at sea as it is in the air.
Air - 3 dimensions
Sea - 2 dimensions
Someone could just lob shells or missiles at the Zumwalt and get a lucky hit. Get an aircraft in close enough and the Zumwalt gets sunk. Using stealth to hide a huge, slow, 2-dimensional target is infinitely harder than hiding a small, fast, 3-dimensional target. The Zumwalt just isn't the answer.
I'm thinking scratch the rail guns entirely. Lasers and hypersonic missiles make so much more sense. We know those can be useful in modern combat. For the rail gun, it only makes sense on the Zumwalt, which itself doesn't make sense. You can't stealth up an Iowa to be a Zumwalt either. You'd have to start over, which is what the Zumwalt already did. Still no good.
The only way I see a modern battleship working is if there was a way to extend the line of sight for the lasers. A super high laser turret, or a floating laser turret, or aerial mirrors. Those are about it. If you can get that working, you have a new battleship, in which case you'd want the nuclear reactor. Normal turrets on the ship would be pointless and we're back to being limited by the horizon.
Rail guns and lasers can't even be used effectively on nuke ships. Rail guns take too much power to fire more than once and lasers are only effective for drones and other thin-skin, small aircraft. While I can see drone warfare becoming useful in ground combat (as we can see in the recent Armenia-Azerbaijan border war), I doubt it'd be useful in naval combat as anything other than spotter craft, unless some program comes about to automate WW2-esque drone attack waves.
Just as a point of contention here, modern anti ship missiles are not intended to impact armor and penetrate huge thicknesses of it. The outer hull of the Iowa is 1.5" thick armor steel and at the closest point, about one foot away, is the main armor belt of 12" thick. The deck is covered by a similarly thick weather deck to the outer hull of the Iowa and the actual armor deck itself is 6" thick and 8 feet away from it. These aren't small numbers when we are talking about modern antiship missiles. You have to penetrate the outer hull/weather deck to get to the main armor belt, and then penetrate it into the critical systems. It was no small feat in WWII for most modern AP shells weighing north of a ton each (the vast majority of navies fielding 16" guns were firing 2250lb AP shells) and there was still a significant amount of range in which the Iowas were immune to 16" shell fire.
The biggest threat to a battleship will be from the air or from under water (torpedoes and mines). Above the surface is fairly easy to protect against, below is much harder. Less warning.
Also, the rail gun technology out today is intended to fire hundreds of miles compared to the ~24 miles of the Iowa Class' 16"/50 Cal Mark 7 guns. I'm also pretty sure they don't require THAT MUCH power... if they did they wouldn't be test firing them on land very often...
When you talk about the nuclear powered cruisers, you have to understand their particular vulnerability to damage of the engineering plant by enemy action. Cruisers are not heavily armored, so hitting one with an anti-ship missile is probably going to get into the engineering spaces. Naval nuclear power plants are not like conventional plants, where your can cut out the shot up parts and weld in the new boiler tubes and rebuild the fire boxes, and except for the fire damage from the fossil fuel fires, you can clean it up with a hose. If you breach the primary loop or reactor vessel, you are going to have a radioactive release from the coolant alone, followed by a release of fission products to the engineering spaces when the fuel structure fails under the decay heat that always accompanies nuclear reactor power history. Cleanup and repair of nuclear power plant battle damage would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive, provided you can obtain the forgings, pumps, electronics etc that will be needed to restore it to service. By the time the last nuke cruiser was retired, its power plant was more than thirty years old and its place in the supply chain almost nonexistent.
Naval reactors are designed with battle damage in mind, often to an extreme degree. Keep in mind these have been in submarines for decades. They're designed to passively go safe in the event of battle damage. Their pressure vessels are incredibly robust, designed to remain reasonably intact even if the rest of the vehicle is destroyed. The few US nuclear subs lost during the Cold War are routinely monitored for leakage. Despite the submarines being completely imploded and in some cases with the hull shredded into small bits, the pressure vessels did not rupture.
@@ThePrisoner881 I served in the Navy as a Nuclear Power Plant Operator NEC 3364 for more than 12 years. There are nuclear power plants in submarines in order to give them unlimited underwater operational capability, to maximize their ability to remain undetected by enemy surface and submarine forces. That capability is the rationale for putting a very vulnerable fission reactor plant design in those hulls. Please note that that is a vulnerability, not an asset, when it comes to battle damage.
If a submarine receives damage sufficient to interrupt power operation of the reactor powered steam plant, the ship must then rely on battery powered electrical propulsion to maneuver. The loss of the reactor plant, for any reason, but especially as a result of battle damage that doesn't breach the pressure hull, is very likely going to kill the boat. Whether or not if the reactor is shutdown safely, if it is scrammed when you need it most, you are definitely screwed, because the guy who just broke your power plant is waiting for you to surface or go to PD and start your single emergency diesel generator to finish you off. And, oh yes, the likelihood of the crew being able to repair the primary reactor plant piping or other major structures in combat in order to recover the reactor is approximately nil.
On a surface ship, the only viable answer to this vulnerability is redundancy. That's why the nuke carriers have two very large reactor plants. That is also why smaller hull forms, such as cruisers and frigates, are not good candidates for nuclear power. They are stuck in a two dimensional war space where they cannot go unseen, which means that they are targets, as are all other surface combatants in existence.
@@boydgrandy5769 one could make the argument that an oil-fired steam plant is similarly fragile although admittedly easier to repair than, say, the hot loop of a PWR. High pressure piping of any kind is not particularly forgiving of shocks.
You make good points about there being considerations beyond the reactor surviving damage that would otherwise destroy the ship. I did not address those in my prior posts. I would posit, however, that damage sufficient to cause a reactor SCRAM would likely render any surface ship out of action. And, as you pointed out, surface ships like nuclear-powered battleships would likely have two or more reactor plants. Damage sufficient to SCRAM both would likely be sufficient to sink the ship, making repair a moot point.
Modern combat is not like that of the battleship era with surface ships trading broadsides. Most attacks would be from missiles. I don't see a nuclear battleship engaging in these, especially refitted Iowa's. They're simply too outdated to last in such an engagement. They'd never get close enough to a well-armed surface combatant to use the guns. The battleship would, however, be much more resilient to any missile hits compared to something like a destroyer or cruiser. Sure, the topsides would get a lot of damage, but good luck trying to pierce the hull. Modern missiles are not built to defeat that kind of armor because no current surface ship carries it anymore.
I still stand by my original point, however: as a shore bombardment platform, battleships are unequaled. They don't need nuclear power to perform such a role. Too bad the Navy considers this role "obsolete." No doubt many Marines will be KIA if an amphibious landing is called for, along with many Naval Aviators flying missions to protect them, all sacrificed when a better platform already exists.
@@ThePrisoner881 The days when a Marine Division could make an amphibious landing onto a contested shore are over. A heavily armored vessel armed with guns with a range under 30 miles will not change that. Even if those guns are augmented by the use of cruise missiles, or other such munitions, the invasion boats are too far out and too slow to make a successful landing. When the over the horizon capable anti-ship missile came into the arsenals of just about every potential US opponent, the Marines on the water are vulnerable at ranges that make such exercises too costly.
Landing zone preparation for any future successful amphibious operation by the Marine Corps will have to include complete air mastery and total suppression of land based assets capable of striking the landing vehicles and their gator fleet home ships. That means Air Force, Naval Air, and Marine Corps air formations acting in concert to make the landing zone safe to put the boots on the ground. That also means that the long logistical tail of that effort has to be protected, because most of it will be on the water, vulnerable to surface and submarine attack.
The Desert Storm operation relied almost entirely on the cooperation we got from the Saudis, which allowed the US and the Coalition nations to pre-stage and deploy air and ground assets before the actual attack on the Iraqis went in. Without it, we would have been hard pressed to insert any significant ground forces there, and that is especially true of the armored units that would be needed. The maneuvering of the Navy off Kuwait, threatening a Marine landing in force, was a feint and was never a possibility because they knew that such a landing force would have been mauled badly even had it been successful.
@@boydgrandy5769 the Marine Corps, as you might expect, disagrees with most of your conclusion. To write off the need or plausibility for amphibious landings raises a very big question: how, exactly, do you plan to put boots on the ground if the enemy controls all the ports on his continent? Do you just assume that won't happen? Or that somehow, somewhere, you'll find a friendly port conveniently nearby? That is folly. Opposed landings will need to happen, and you'll need Marines to do it. That means defenses must be taken out.
The principle threats to such a landing are air-to-surface attacks, seaborne surface-to-surface attacks, and land-based defenses. Let's address these one at a time.
Airborne threats such as fighter/bombers and missiles are the most dangerous. An amphibious landing without air superiority would be suicide, but that's been true since before Omaha Beach.
Establishing a safe assembly zone is the Navy's job here and they're well-equipped for it. Carrier support and missile defense are pre-requisites for any landing.
Surface combat between naval powers is likely to closely resemble the air-to-surface battle, being done by missiles and aircraft instead of guns. Given the US Navy's supremacy in this area, any kind of serious surface engagement is unlikely. The bigger threat would probably be land-based aircraft carrying missiles or land-based cruise missiles. Again, this is a job for the Navy and they have the tools to deal with it.
Lastly there are land-based defenses, and that's where the Marines come in. The Navy has nothing to deal with this short of bombs and cruise missiles. Vietnam showed the futility of trying to bomb someone into submission. At some point you MUST put boots on the ground and the Navy has no means to do that. You need Marines. Those Marines require defenses be degraded, and the cheapest, safest, and easiest way to do that is with naval gunfire. Yes, it can be done with aircraft, at great risk and greater cost. Yes, it can be done safely with missiles, but at great cost per unit and with a chance of interception. But naval gunfire? It doesn't come any cheaper and is impossible to stop once the shell is in the air.
I'd like to point out that,like it or not,battle ships were basically obsolete when the New Jersey came into service. It's a magnificent piece of machinery but what it was designed for happened only once at Jutland. Now it's air power. Which is why the money's being spent on carriers.
"Nuclear weasels...N u c l e a r Wessels..... Hello! We are looking for nuclear wessels, can you tell me where the naval base in Alameda is?" Povel Chekov.
I think that's in Alameda ...
Would it be possible to get footage from one of the battleships’ spotter drones?
If they exist then they are probably buried in a US Military archive somewhere with a secrecy classification just waiting to expire.
I do agree that refitting the old Iwoa Battleships with nuclear power wouldn't be a good idea.
However a new battleship with it I could see.
The US Navy is developing weapons that require a lot of power, now you mount those weapons onto a battleship it looks like a good idea. We all know the fear those 16 inch guns generate, imagine those guns replaced with gause rifles, or laser based weapons. Yup not many foes would want to see that.
It's for the USN to consider if reviving the battleship as a viable platform for such weapons, but I don't see how how diesel or oil could be a viable energy source for weapons such as I mentioned.
The expense of refitting a 75 plus-year-old ship with a nuclear power system is ludicrous. The likelihood of the ship still being seaworthy until the first nuclear refueling evolution alone would be highly suspect in the first place. Possibly in some future ship, but not retrofitting the Iowas.
Yeah idea alone is stupid and what purpose is there to use old ship anyway. It only makes sense to make some new ship with nuclear reactor, something like kirov class missile cruiser.
To be perfectly fair, conventional boiler powered ships are not exactly immune to shock damage. There are several examples from the Mediterranean and Pacific of capital class vessels having all or a portion of their boiler fires put out by the shock of torpedo impacts near the engineering spaces or even very near misses by large aircraft bombs. Nothing is infallible in combat, but I do feel like a Boiler can be relit far faster and far safer is being done rapidly than a nuclear reactor can be safely brought down from SCRAM and restarted in the event it is brought offline.
I'd love to see an Iowa class lay a hurtin' on something, I don't care how it's powered (I am a steam fan). Sometimes when your enemy goes high tech, you should go low.
I was an armed security officer at a conventional nuclear power plant in the United States. The reactor there is encased in several feet of super-hardened concrete in order to withstand things like an earthquake, missile strike, etc. Are you saying that, inside the armored citadel, the reactor itself would not be encased in anything?
regarding refueling
a new build heavy combatant,
a "turret" like structure below the hanger with its own amour, make the whole thing modular so the reactor packs can be removed and upgraded and then refueled elsewhere.
I believe that nuclear power is to be used primarily in large aircraft carriers and long range attack or missile submarines. A nuclear reactor aboard a surface combatant like a cruiser, frigate or destroyer , would probably be miniaturized. The entire vessel would have to be built around the reactor. The technicians at the reactor would be a small group of about four or six to monitor the reactor 24 hours a day. And the vessel will have to have more guns and missiles than other vessels in the fleet.
I enjoy your observations. Keep it up.
The Kirov class are interesting in that they ran a combined Nuclear and conventional powerplant. I actually agree with everything you said because it's all grounded in logic not emotion. The Iowa class are fantastic and we are fortunate they got preserved. The only aspect you missed that i see on places like NAVWEAPS is the crew needed for an Iowa. Still loved the video.
I agree about nuclear power, but what about gas turbines? As I understand, modern "combined cycle" electrical power generation plants use gas turbines hooked to generators, then the waste heat is used to boil water and create steam which also creates electricity the old fashioned way. Is there enough room for a combined cycle plant in the battleship? This assumes that all the boilers would be replaced but the rest of the turbines could be reused.
Good points. Realistically, the battleship's day has long gone. That said they were and still are a technological marvel and ships like the New Jersey are an important piece of American and world history.
The obvious solution is to use Project Orion nuclear propulsion. Not only do you get to keep your armor, but you'd be adding even more!
6" vs 12" vs double bottom. We all know the navy would do things the hard way and go up from the bottom. But in regard to shore bombardment and possibly taking fire from enemy artillery. If they could increase the range of a gun from the 30ish mile range to 60 miles then that would negate the risk of fire from shore batteries. Missile protection would be the same worry as it always is. But I think a nuke BB would be better served to be designed as such. Then you could design a BBGN that takes what they learned from the Iowas and do it right. While they are doing that, they can redesign a sleeker Midway class sized carrier that doesn't need to be Ford sized and Ford expensive to hand bushfire conflicts. 10 of those would supplement the heavy carriers and paired with a BBGN would be more than enough for Somalia type engagements.
Great video, your arguments are sound. I think the conventional power systems on these ships are the pinnacle of 'analog' oil-fired steam propulsion. They're just about as good as these systems ever got, and they've only served a fraction of their working lives. These battleships are low-mileage vehicles. Fuel cost alone doesn't seem to be a good enough reason to replace a system that we know is reliable and extremely robust.
The only thing that really atrophies is the knowledge base on how to operate these great machines. Not that the Navy didn't write most of it down--it's the "what to do if it makes this noise" kind of expertise that sailors would have to relearn. Spare parts could also be an issue, but museum ships could serve as donors and American industry/technology could find a way to fill the gap.
There is the Zumwalt class destroyer designed for rail guns. They use gas turbines for the power plant. Weather the navy wants to come up with a BS to carry bigger rail guns,, I would assume new power plants would be part of the design. For something of that size I would take it would be a nuclear power of some sort and there are more designs for nuclear power already out there. As Captfjparks points out, it would be a keel up redesign. But right now the issue is ware on the rails of the gun.
The ship could have mixed system, say 2 props on nuclear, 2 props on oil. Nuclear used for cruising, and oil brought online for combat.
(And steam can be replaced w/gas turbines.... which spool up quick.)
Modern conventional weapons are not designed to deal with 17” armor, so, for awhile, the battleship would rule.
All said, what mission would a battleship have? Shore bombardment and surface interdiction. Lots of $$ for such a limited mission.
I agree about a retrofit being unfeasible, BUT! A NEW nuclear-powered surface ship should be DESIGNED from the start to have parts above the power system be removable in order to refuel. This IS possible, but still not practical until such a plan is developed.
The guy is right that the reactor is basically the replacement for the boiler, as everything else is the same once you get past the ROCK. As for the frailty of the Reactors I don't agree, but still they are a complex system that could break. Actually a more effective system to employ gas turbine engines may be more attractive. The old battleships should remain mothballed and if we need one why not start with a clean slate.