I once met a man who was telling me that he was on an island in the Makong Delta. The island was about to be overrun, and they called for support. They got a reply from a call sign they didn't recognize. They gave them the coordinates and were told to get down. The first round was on target, which they reported. The source then fired for effect. The other end of the island was leveled. So his unit reported the effect and asked who they were talking to. The Reply was: "This is the U.S.S. New Jersey 25 miles off the coast."
Bringing out a BB from retirement and then quickly and quietly putting back into mothballs is just one example of how shortsighted and f--ked up the McNamara SECDEF era was.
McNamara was the head of FORD. Not a millitary man at all. Destroying the tooling for the SR-71, Mothballing BB72. Between Johnson and this fool, we were doomed in Vietnam
The US army and USMC both used the M110 8”/203mm self-propelled howitzer in Vietnam. They actually had a shorter range than the 155mm guns. The 175mm M107 SP howitzer was also used and it outranged both the 155mm and 8” guns.
The M110 8" had a range of ~16,000 meters, while the M114 155mm had a range of ~14,000 meters. The M107 175mm had a range of ~32,000 meters-about the same range as a 16" gun. I served in a 8"/175mm battery in Viet Nam.
@@chash7335 I should have specified I was comparing the ranges of SP guns and not towed artillery, though from what I read the M109s weren’t in-country for very long. My time was 20-30 years after yours (86-98) and I was MLRS, not a cannon-cocker LOL
@@philsmith2444 There were no 155mm guns in Viet Nam, only howitzers. The towed M114 and the SPH M109 both had the same ~14,000 meter range. Later versions of the 109 had longer tubes and increased range.
Yes Ryan - All four should have been brought back for Vietnam and we would have saved many a pilot and aircraft. However there is no lobby group for battleships as there is for Carriers and submarines, and the armament industries did not stand to make much on battleship reactivations. Even during the Reagan years the battleships did not receive the support from the Navy brass that they should have for primarily the same reasons. Even former Navy pilot John McCain realized the importance of the battleships in a letter to me in the 1990's when the Clinton Administration was trying to dispose of the decommissioned battleships.
I would love to jump on the Shore Bombardment wagon BUT … with a 24-ish mile range, I have to give Naval Aviation the thumbs up. Yes there were places where bombing the hell out of areas within reach would have been possible and fantastic. Yes, the ‘brown shoes’ ops caused a great deal of human trauma with flights terminated prior to carrier landing. Biggest Navy mistake - transporting Agent Orange to VN. It is still taking a toll.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head there, Ryan. The old Battleship Admirals had their comeuppance at Pearl Harbor, and in terms of fleet actions, the carriers have dominated ever since. The flexibility and reach of carrier-based aircraft is also something to consider. But the sheer intimidation factor of a heavy cruiser (esp. the Des Moines class with their autoloading guns) or a full-fledged battleship cannot be discounted. They have true armor; they were built to slug it out with other big gun ships, and some standard anti-ship missile is not going to penetrate the armored "citadel", though it might wreck things topside and start fires. The battleship is designed to continue in the fight even after taking hits that would sink ordinary (modern) naval vessels. Plus, as you mentioned, in terms of economy, gun systems are far cheaper to operate than aircraft, and cost less per ton of ordinance on target that aircraft-launched bombs and missiles. But despite bean counters like McNamara in power in those days, the gun ship crowd had no chance whatsoever against the Carrier Air Wing Mafia. The entire Navy and the DoD was spun up to promote the concept of Naval Aviation as being able to do things better that some old-timey gun tub, and Congress and the American public bought into that. Of course, 20 years later in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the Iraqis were terrified of the Iowa's over there, and their shore bombardment capabilities -- and the Marines storming the beaches. So, yeah, we played along with that, all the while with Schwartzkopf's big "left hook" plan to be the knockout blow, catch them from the direction they're not anticipating. And it worked, of course. (Just hope our advisors to the Ukrainians have convinced them of the wisdom of hitting the Russians where they're not expecting it . . .) Probably would have been best to have three of each class (at least); one on the gun line, one in maintenance, and one working up for deployment. Maintain a moderate op tempo, you know, not wear everyone down with back-to-back deployments.
The thing today is that the PGM is longer-ranged, more precise, and costs less when you factor in the cost of ship crew and escorts needed. A lot of the Vietnam war took place outside the 25 mile limit of BB guns.
@@gregorywright4918 Sure, if your talking about the more modern stuff. most ground attack PGM's simply didn't exist in Vietnam though. During the vietnam war, the US navy didn't even have any antiship missiles. They only had three classes of anti aircraft missiles, which the larger ones could be used in a dual antiship role, and they did not have any land attack missiles at all and did not gain that capability until the 80's with tomahawk. So before the 80's guns where the only means that surface ships had to conduct shore bombardment. Even when it came to aircraft, JDAM's didn't come out until the late 70s and 80's. What AGM's existed at the time where far more limited in capability and they put an aircraft at risk with Vietnams very capable air defenses. So the vast majority of bombing runs done in vietnam where using conventional dumb iron bombs.
Whoever had those bright ideas at the time should have been taken to a test site, sat down range of the ship and made to watch and feel an HE salvo fly overhead and land on whatever unfortunate target the Navy picked out. Then do the same with them watching a Skyraider of F4 drop a a payload. No offence to either of those, they were great aircraft (the Skyraider in particular was a hell of a ground support plane...), but let's be honest here: if you wanted something obliterated with 0 risk to your own military, it's hard to argue with a set of very large guns :|
My Dad served in Vietnam in the Army. He told me on more than one occasion those Navy boys loved to shoot and were good at doing it. We were glad they were there.
Your absolutely right. The battleships and guns over 8" would have been an unanswered offensive weapons system. The North would have had to retreat their shore based assets and would have opened up more entry points for aircraft or Marine landings. This is probably another example of how we got in our own way and couldn't close the war out sooner.
3 Wespac deployments and 1 year on the Mekong River, the war was an enormous waste of men and equipment. Too bad our politicians can’t have a go on the ground in Ukraine.
The #1 mistake was thinking we could keep the dysfunctional and corrupt South Vietnamese government propped up indefinitely. It's like trying to bail water out of a rotting old wood boat.
Reminds me of “McNamara’s 100,000”. He was more of a moron than them. What else did he f up? More importantly, have those lessons been learned yet. Not a question, as wars since then say no. “Oof” is kind of too flippant an expression of dismay for all this. IMO.
I got work all evening tomorrow so i just wanna give a early "happy birthday" 🎉 to Battleship New Jersey and her crew of volunteers. 80 years a good stretch of time. But i think we all agree another 80 more would be much deserved for "The Garden Lady"
your shore bombardment argument is immaculate. that is why we saw so many battleships constructed after 1945. as for that "bringing more back" to active duty, have you considered what the ussr could have supplied north Viet nam in response? the ussr supplied migs and sams because they were the immediate threat. guessing the ussr did not see the battleship as a potent threat.
Thank you, Ryan. I happened to be an Army guy at the Naval station at Nha Trang in the fall of 1969. I think New Jersey was already off station, but there were three (3) very large shells fired from the edge of horizon west over our heads. They were so far east we did not hear the firing, and were landing so far west we did not hear the explosions well inland of us. Sounded like a VW bug flying overhead. A memorable moment. Thanks, Navy!
“You’re not shooting down a 16 inch shell … or at least you’re not losing sailors…” Thanks for giving me the classic image from Dr Strangelove, but riding a 16 inch shell rather than a nuke.
I understand during WW2 when a ship came home for maintenance and repair there was a good chance a lot of the crew might be redeployed elsewhere as opposed to staying with the ship for months. But did the stay with the ships in the Vietnam era? Since there wasn’t another similar ship to go to
The fact we lost over half the production of F-105’s in Vietnam, I bet a lot of guys in the Hanoi Hilton wished all 4 Iowas could have been hitting their targets rather than them.
I was in Vietnam. The reason for bringing out a battleship was a demand by the marines - as I was told. I did know a marine that was on Guadalcanal when the Japanese BBs shot up Henderson Field. He said it was terrifying and made him hurt internally. We could have used the ships the Korean War had active. 8" and 16" did a better job than the smaller guns. One issue was the bigger shells would go deeper into the ground before exploding. And at the DMZ, New Jersey could shoot across Vietnam into Laos. The NJ really damaged the commie underground bunkers and ammo storage. That's probably why decommissioning the NJ was a condition of the peace talks. The big mistake was not taking the war to North Vietnam. If we would have invaded, kicked the commie butts into the jungle and then let South Vietnam take over, the US would have spent less time, money, fewer casualties, and fewer FU people like me.
I will add, there was a big battle in D.C. about budgeting that shapes what gets activated and sent into theater. Its always the case, but McNamara really screwed the pooch on a lot of bits here. Army was trying new Air Mobile tactics to prevent needing to physically hold everything in the country, Air Force was trying to justify their massive expenditures on new fighters and bombers, Navy was still trying to justify its existence in a nuclear age and demonstrate they brought something modern to the table. Lots of politics go into that war.
Sure about that? The DMZ ran some 47 miles from the coast to Laos, which I think is longer than the range of New Jersey. Plus I spent most of my tour as a marine in Vietnam on the DMZ from Con Thien west to Khe Sahn. This was from late 1967 midway through 1968, during which time we never received naval gunfire support due to the range. But we were supported by the self propelled 8 inch guns at Camp Carroll.
Attacking North Vietnam was too risky. No one wanted the situation to turn into another Korean war, especially not against a China with nuclear capabilities and that's without taking the Soviets into account.
@@oceanmariner Just checked a map of Vietnam, and did a google also. It seems Vietnam is 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, which puts Laos out of range.
A big gun ship for naval bombardment would have been very useful during the Falklands War. HMS Vanguard would have the Argentinians holed up in Port Stanley something to think about.
They would’ve surrendered at the sight of the guns. The intimidation factor of a big ass battleship aiming their giant fucking guns at you cannot be understated.
Because the Des Moines class ships rendered the fast battleship obsolete. For both shore bombardment and gun ship engagement. They had similar range and volume of fire which meant in a gun battle a Des Moines would have been a match for an Iowa in term of rendering the opposition combat killed even if it could not sink it. And you get 3 for the price of one Iowa. However I do prefer the Iowa as my kinky friend Margret had some fun with me behind the number 2 turret on a Tuesday back in 2016. She had a thing for hallmarks.
Not even remotely the case. The IOWA’s 16” guns were not only FAR more effective than the 8” on the DES MOINES, they were more cost effective as well. This was thoroughly documented by the Navy after the Korean War.
I was in Vietnam from Dec 1965 to Nov 1968, I was there and saw the USS Jersey in action. The ship arrived in Vietnam Sept 1968 and left Vietnam in April 1969 for a total of only 7 months. Normal rotation of troops was one year. The range of their 16" guns is 24 miles, each round weigh 2,700 lbs. The USS New Jersey was just for show, it really didn't do much. The aircraft from the Carriers in Yankee Station did a hell of a lot more damage in support of the combat troops than the New Jersey ever did.
My guess is the same geniuses that thought the F-4 phantom didn’t need a gun. There was a general belief that the Vietnam war was still just a sideshow and that the Soviets would drive their T-64s through the Fulda Gap. Therefore I believe the Navy was still thinking convoy protection, sealanes abd WW3 things which limited how much material they were willing to commit to Vietnam
The F4 flew with wing-mounted guns, the problem in Vietnam was training and dumb Rules of Engagement, Only USAF F-4s were given guns, Navy F-4s didn't, and considering the USAF F-4s with guns only scored 5 kills with the gun, didn't have to big of an effect Not to mention the fact the F-4 is an INTERCEPTOR, not a fighter, which will require different training to operate as such Unfortunately, media has the idea that all jets fight WW2 style (top gun) when most engagements are at ranges exceeding 1 km Thanks, fighter mafia for everyone thinking otherwise The F-35 is designed to kill the enemy before being detected, NOT engage in a turning dogfight (Pierre Spray doesn't care about this fact)
I learned, somewhere, that the NV really feared the New Jersey's guns. It was part of the negotiations, as mentioned by Ocean Mariner. If this is actually the case, then all four of the Iowa's roaming the coast may have pushed for an earlier conclusion. With that in mind, not having the16 inchers pounding away, was a large mistake. BuT !!! hindsight is always so much better than decisions in the moment. As for what goes forward, shore bombardment may only be economically produced with missile technology. Probably the main driver there is a smaller launch platform required, hence a much smaller cost. I have long thought that a submarine centered shore bombardment force would be a way to go. We had all that technology worked out for many years and all that was necessary was to change the warhead to a non nuclear weapon.
You guys need a proper studio setup with sound dampening for discussion videos it should help to eliminate the echo and also lav mics reduce the distant part of the sound
Basically shore bombardment in WW2 while impressive did not, for the most part, deliver on its promise. It rearranged the landscape but generally did not effectively reduce the defenders capabilities to mount strong resistance to a landing. Not to be overly cynical, but I suspect a lot of the big ship deployments in Vietnam where done to get the officers combat ranking on their records for aid in future promotions.
the vietnam war is what happens when you let politicians and bean counters run war operations. im sure the politically restricted targets also played a part in which ships were activated and what wasnt.
@@ralphgesler5110 as it can be with aerial observation. the main reason the bombardment at iwo accomplished so little was that the japs were so deeply dug in. but you cant discount the morale effects. theres no doubt the bombardment lowered japanese morale and raised american morale.
Naval guns could reach only so far inland. As you say, the North was very well defended, which limited how close ships could get to the shore, which reduced even more what could be reached from the sea. And the North Vietnamese did indeed shoot back at our ships. These days, it is even more dangerous for a ship to get within gun range of the coast, since there are now land-based, mobile, anti-ship cruise missiles, such as those that got _ Moskva._ I'm not sure there's a future for shore bombardment, except in special circumstances.
Intelligence, various special ops, and an air wing can mitigate the missile issue considerably. A big gun platform can thus remain on station for weeks at a time to support land forces and/or disrupt enemy industry at a fraction of the cost of keeping an air wing in the sky all the time.
What did the Iowa-class have for CIWS, 4 mounts? Put another 5 or 6 on each beam, that should cut down the missile threat quite a bit. Plus, how do even the most capable ASMs compare to a 16”/50 AP shell when it comes to armor penetration?
@@philsmith2444 I think it’s a situation where each type of ship is complemented by the other ships in the fleet. It’s not as though a BB should ever be on its own; submarines and planes would put any battleship on the bottom with ease, if not for destroyers and carriers to screen it.
🙋🏽♂️LBJ did not have a endless Visa card or Manpower pool. 💳 Hyman Rickover and his Nuclear Navy took budget priority. And with people already griping about the draft, getting a ship with their high crew requirements we're getting difficult to fulfill. Most targets for fire support missions were well inside 5 inch range. The Destroyers and cruisers could fill the bill.
Another thing to consider is that 5 inches translates to 127MM. this means that troops trained on calling in fire from a 155 could be easily trained to call in fire from the 5in without the risk of the shells producing a drastically different blast radius. The 16in guns have a millimeter size of 406mm. That massive jump in size adds a larger risk of troops dropping shells in themselves.
My feeling was at that time the USSR was still top priority to military planners and budget. Also LBJ was creating todays welfare state with his Great Society programs.
I served on a destroyer in Vietnam 1972, the 5in guns were more than adequate for the targets. There were very few targets along the coast that needed 16in ordanance. We also did hit run raids in North Vietnam which required 3 ships sailing in close, under cover of darkness shooting up designated targets and then hauloing ass at high speed to escape the shore batteries. Most of the targets were convoys, munition storage and bridges, all of which could be taken out by 5in destroyer guns or 6in cruiser guns. There wer very few hardened bunkers or defenses along the coast. A battleship steaming along the North Vietnam coast especially in daylight would have been a sitting duck for aircraft. A couple of our ships were hit by missiles fired by jets that homed in to the ships radar. The shore batteries at night were mostly ineffective since they were firing at our muzzleflashes, we could feel and hear the concussions as they hit nearby and on one occassion one detonated at the bow with no damage to the ship. There is an official Navy video on TH-cam "US Navy Hit-Run Raids in North Vietnam" that covers the action up North. My ship USS Davis DD937 makes a cameo appearance.
A documentary series called Brute Force or Weapons at War claimed 35 years ago in their episode about battleships that North Vietnam complained in Paris that the New Jersey was a destabilizing influence, with Washington DC deciding to return her to the mothball fleet as a result. Not sure if that's accurate, especially with the drawdown of the older vessels in the fleet at the same time that suggests it sadly was probably a foolish economic decision. But if it is correct that she was doing her job too well, it does help explain the bizarre decisions made in Washington to kill hundreds of additional airmen by quickly re-retiring the New Jersey after her successful deployment and the navy's failure to reactivate her sisters for service off North Vietnam. They had a habit of murdering American servicemen to make gestures like this to Hanoi in the futile hope that it would be reciprocated in kind.
It would probably be easier to recount what went right during the Vietnam War (and that is in no way aimed at or dismissing those who gave their lives or fought in that horrible conflict), than what went wrong....but more so aimed at those that tried to throw standard military doctrine against an unconventional enemy...as was once again so displayed in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent so far againt the Houthi...and as the Russians also found out in the mountains of Afghanistan and again in the Ukraine....anyway....great video as always Ryan and team USS New Jersey....thank you!!!! Cheers from Aus!!!!🍻🍻 🍻🍻
Very interesting. Thank you. Any videos on morale aboard the ship during Vietnam? Was there a branch of SOS on New Jersey? Was the crew reservists? Were there any morale issues/drug use on the ship that was significant during Viet Nam?
Morale was high onboard the ship during the Vietnam deployment. The crew was composed of first time enlistees and career personel. We were proud of who we were and what we were doing. Captain Snyder never missed an opportunity to have shore based Marines/Army helo out to visit us. We met the people we were there to support.
Do you think the war could have gone a different way if we relied more on 4x Iowa class battleships and well as a good complement of other shore bombardment capable ships
I would offer that the whole way the war was processed would need to be change and one piece of that change could be having the Iowa's overwhelming the north with gun fire and NOT stopping just because the North said they wouldn't "come to the table" if they didn't stop. If and enemy say, "stop or we won't talk" your answer should be, "we will stop once you talk". Not the other way around and this is just one issue upon many. Very many.
I thought I had read back in the day the reason for the USS New Jersey to be mothballed so quickly after re-activation during Vietnam was a lack of gun barrel liners for the 16's. Only after she was being decommissioned were a stockpile of barrel liners found. Hopefully someone can fill in the rest of that story.
Man. All the mythology runs rampant. From the 8” cruisers being “more effective” to the “battleship guns didn’t have enough range” to the “the Marines demanded it.” None of that stuff is true. The NEW JERSEY was deployed to Vietnam precisely because she could reach many, not all, the targets that planes were at great risk to take out. And she could do so with great destructiveness. As you might imagine, the BIG J was VERY effective. Unfortunately, as she was reactivated, all targets north of the DMZ were prohibited, which severely cut into the reason for bringing the NEW JERSEY out in the first place. Of course, she could provide support to ground units, including the Marines, and did so with both her 5” and 16” guns. But that wasn’t the primary reason she was in Vietnam. The New Jersey’s mere presence forced the North Vietnamese to move troops and materiel to avoid her reach. The reason she was withdrawn is precisely because many of the targets she was reactivated to hit were taken off the table, and her presence was threatening the Paris Peace Talks. Moreover, as Ryan suggests, there is always political opposition to the battleships-both from within the Navy and outside it. Sadly, that opposition is based on emotion, not an analysis of capability over cost. The North Vietnamese hated NEW JERSEY and for good reason. FYI, the record distance for an accurate 16” Mark 7 shoot is 27 miles by the USS IOWA.
@@garywayne6083 From what I’ve heard she was the one in the worst material condition at that time. Apparently at some point during her time in mothballs there had been some sort of not-insignificant electrical fire. From what I gather this was the principal reason that she was the last ship to be reactivated in the 1980s.
All the missiles used on navy ships during the Vietnam War had anti-surface capability and an anti-radiation variant. The Talos ARM was used to take out several coastal early warning sites. The air launched Standard ARM was just a variant of the ship launched SM-1.
I remember 3 or 4 Talos ARM shots and all failed when the transmitting sites shut down after detecting a missile launch. I didnt know any had been successful.
08:30 activating one of each class also gives you the advantage of selecting whichever is in bed condition, meaning it can be bought back into service faster.
The problem with only having 1 of each class is that you effectively have none. As each ship stays on station for only so long, there will be gaps in your coverage as the ships leave to go back home for refit and repairs and then there's the time it takes to conduct the refits and repairs, time to prepare for its next deployment, then the the time it takes to get back on station. This is why you need at least 2 of ever tying, esp. ships, with 3 being ideal, With 3 you have one at home, one on station, and one heading out to replace the ship currently on patrol, This why the US Navy has so many aircraft carriers, there's the rule of 3 divided by 2 coasts.
BUDGET & manpower.... The war was unpopular and costly. And the Manpower requirements were already high. Battleships are manpower needy. Especially in key ratings. You can't fund a war and build a Nuclear Navy.....
I think the biggest mistake we've ever made was to get rid of our shore bombardment capabilities. Even if it only using a 8 or 12 in gun. The 16 in are way better.
I would rather have a modern Atlanta with modern guided shells such as the M982 Excalibur, and a automated reloading system to quickly fill up a magazine. The idea is spam guided shells that can go through windows. The 16 inch shells weren't something you lobbed at a few guys behind behind a berm.
Ryan, I didn't catch all of this video regarding the gunships in Vietnam. Did you mention anything about the SoDak class, (Massachusetts and Alabama). Could they have been reactivated?
Speaking about shore bombardment. Are there still any talks of the about bringing the Iowa's back into commission IF a large-scale war ever does happen in the future? I know we've got the new Gearld R. Ford-class carriers coming into the fleet with brand-new laser weapon tech if the ship ever gets attacked, and we do have a sufficient number of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers making up the backbone of the navy. But I think the Iowa's still have it where it counts, despite lack of people signing up to join the navy, and the large amount of money it would cost to update all 4 Iowa's.
In short: no. The things the Iowas bring to the table - size, speed, protection, and firepower, are of very limited use. The limited missile battery compared to modern vessel them a poor choice there, speed isn't unique, protection against modern weapons is limited, and firepower is only superior in hardened armor penetration - something we don't need because no adversary is putting battleship grade armor on anything. And size can be made up for by just using more ships. The SSGN, CG, and DDG more than fill the role of big missile trucks; a heavy torpedo (Mk 48) is better at sinking enemy ships than a 16" rifle and has been since pre-Jutland; and you can load an MLRS onto the flight deck of a few amphibs or LCS and get battleship level shore bombardment capability for cheap. And, yes, the replacement for the Zumwalt's AGS and Iowa's rifles is really just to use HIMARS on Gator Freighters, which as we've seen in Ukraine is devastating levels of firepower. Oh, and one other thing: the most likely large scale naval conflict involves Taiwan. The strait isn't conducive to battleship engagements even during WWII, it's too confined of a space and too dangerous to bring in large surface combatants. But it would be a war where we'd be fighting a numerically superior enemy with closer bases over the right to resupply an island - and if that doesn't sound familiar, it should, because we've fought that before - Guadalcanal. Battleships got one outing, and even Willis Lee knew he got lucky.
@@jec6613 So, basically speaking, battleships are just out of the loop entirely. Understandable. Still, you can't deny the pure power projection just one Iowa, or any battleship in history, has over the modern day CVN's. God. Now I wish I was born during the golden age of the battleship. I would serve on one of the Iowa's in an instant. Even though I was born in '93, I love things old-fashion.
@@NFS_Challenger54 yeah that's the one place where battleships still provide advantage of the more modern replacements - it's a visual symbol that we can park offshore of most countries and they can't take it out, and it's very obvious to the average person on the street. No other Navy vessel has the same visceral impact, and nothing encourages surrender like being on the receiving end of battleship fire. But it's a lot of money that could go elsewhere just for intimidation via literal gunboat diplomacy against nations without large navies.
@@jec6613 When you count the cost of refitting, crew, and protective escorts, the Precision Guided Munition like Tomahawk or MLRS is a longer-ranged, more accurate, cheaper deal. BBs are still vulnerable to torpedoes, and diesel subs love the areas within 20 miles of the coast.
@@gregorywright4918 Hold on. Diesel subs are still a thing? I thought conventional propulsion for naval submarines was phased out after many countries went with nuclear power.
I often get drawn into these discussions and end up spouting an opinion based on fresh air and maybe something I've googled. Have read a lot about WW II but very little about Vietnam and think it probably best if I spared people what I think about Battleship deployment there.
Why is there what appears to be a port hole behind Ryan to his Left? Must have had something to do with battle & compartment separation/water tightness?
We needed "big bangs" near Cambodia, way beyond the range of naval bombardment. By the time that NVA march all the way to within naval gun range, one has already lost the country. They came down through Cambodia.
For one Laos should have been invaded to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail. I agree with naval gun support. Reports I hear you would want 8" or greater. No need to wait for air support and it's cheaper than missiles. I see mentions about army 8" & 175mm guns but what is interesting is the army still had the Atomic Annie's back then. It would have been interesting if the army would have used an 11" Annie in Nam, but conventional of coarse. Probably would have been over run. Yep it was a messed up mismanaged war.
Ryan, not in this video but in others featuring you and The New Jersey you've said a number of times that the big guns required a long lead time. Why was this?
Drach answered this somewhat recently. Oversimplified, these big guns have to be perfectly made out of massive pieces of the strongest metals. Possibly even more than the amour (the other long lead time item). Any imperfection means the entire barrel is trash and you need to start a new one. Once you start the riffling process you can not stop or again the entire barrel is trash. Drach explains this better in one of his more resent "Drydocks" but I don't remember which one.
@@lennyhendricks4628 They take very specialized and very large equipment to build them from start to finish, which means there were only a very few places able to handle them, so just to get a handful took quite a lot of time
Hindsight is always 20/20. In hindsight it would have been better to have more big-gun ships in service for the Vietnam war. Especially early. But, it would've taken time to re-activate them for that purpose. Had they known what would've happened I hope they would've foresaw the need for the shore bombardment and reactivated at least another Iowa, as well as a few more heavy cruisers earlier. Odd, the navy has been doing everything in their power to come up with a ship that doesn't have guns to do what gun armed cruisers and BBs do so well ever since. For a time some of the destroyers didn't even have guns. "Missiles are the end-all/be-all of Navy munitions.".. Then they smarten'd up and put the 5/155s on DDs.
First, the war wasn't fought to win. Where are we bombarding, the North? Reaching 20 miles inward on the coast doesn't get one much. And I don't feel it helps prevent air losses. Any Coastal air defenses could have been dealt with. In the South, BB's could have been supportive of Coastal regions, but, most of the big battles were inland and out of range.
If they brought back battleships today how far do you think they would be able to shoot with modernized big guns and targeting systems? Seeing as how a 155mm can hit targets almost 70 miles away with certain ammo how far could we get a modern 16" shell? As an American I wish we'd create new classes of ships or modernized battleships of some sort. But we can't even take care of what we have bc we don't have the shipyards like we used to. That's a entire rant on its own.
I believe the in development round was an 80 mile range saboted using GPS guidance, somewhere around 10" in diameter with high penetrative capability. It would have been the first GPS guided round, and that's where the rub was in development - the 16"/50 can already shoot farther than you can reasonably aim the gun, and shot dispersion caused by manufacturing tolerances becomes the major issue at those ranges, so GPS guidance was a must. And the 16" bore left you plenty of room for guidance systems even after using a sabot. For unarmored targets, dispersion might not matter much as with couple of salvos and the area is neutralized anyway, but for anything where you needed the heavy hitting of the 16" it took far too many shells to take it out, and you might as well just drop a guided bomb at that point. Today, we'd just use HIMARS from the deck of a gator freighter, with 90-150 miles of range. Guided, long range, and heavy hitting.
Forget a battleship, if there should be a need for a large gun build a smaller ship with maybe two single gun turrets. What is no longer needed is the speed to keep up with carriers or heavy antiaircraft defense. 20 knots would be sufficient speed. Some of the newest AA armament for that protection. Firing a sabot projectile as mentioned GPS guidance. The turret being as close to fully automated as possible. Now a question; When the barrels of the large , 16", 8" and 6" were shot out were they scrapped or re-lined?
@@glennrishton5679 They were re-lined so long as the gun remained in service somewhere, and stored as long as the gun was on a reserve ship. As for a big gun coastal monitor, cool idea, but what you describe is basically a slower Zumwalt - which was designed with 6.1" high penetration rapid fire shore bombardment guns that would have been better than the 16" rifles if we had procured ammunition for them. And as a taxpayer, a Burke with HIMARS on the flight deck instead of a helicopter will provide more firepower per hull, on more hulls, for much less money. And of course, coastal monitors are extremely vulnerable until you have sea control, while a multirole destroyer is capable of surviving in a threat rich environment and fulfilling more than just shore bombardment and local air defense role (Mahan goes into great detail on this in the part of his writing that's still relevant).
A ship is an asset that needs to be protected as well. The ships that were there did a helluva lot of work, but if the US had committed more big gun ships at the expense of aircraft... Well, the soviet union might just have decided to supply some of their anti-ship missiles. Even the early soviet anti-ship missiles had 1000 pound warheads.
Mistakes in the Viet Nam War:: getting caught up in a French problem, and not getting out for 10 years. It seems we have learned nothing from that period of time.
I do not know many things. Some logical idee'. If i send 4-10 BB's to Vietnam ther are higher cost als crueser's (fuel, food, personal), more vulnearble for some attacks like torpedos, airattacks, i can think the support line for ammo and barrel can run out of material faster. Other side if i give up air supperiority the land army got more trouble, the tactics of the US army is build around mobilty, and fire support air, artelery, air evac the troops, wounded. The same airsuperoirity is a help to cover the BB's from enemy plans to.
Had the Vietnam conflict (not a war as war is declared by an act of Congress) not been a political conflict I do believe the outcome would have been different. Had the conflict been left solely to the military leaders and planners, I do believe the NVA and VC would have been irraticated. That being said, the Navy severely underutilized the ships available for shore bombardment and an all out naval blockade of Vietnam . I do believe unrestricted warfare should have been conducted and allowed. You cannot tie a soldiers hands and expect them to win in a fight. You cannot blind a soldier and expect them to see and eliminate their enemy. Anyone who was precieved to be a combatant would be treated as such. Hell, I would have authorized the use of tactical nuclear weapons and biological weapons in order to eliminate the communists in Vietnam, win by any means necessary and if other countries had a problem with that they would be branded as an enemy of the US and dealt with accordingly. Fighting sa war is not pretty, just or politically correct. You do whatever is necessary to win your objectives, the hell with being nice. The enemy doesn't want to give up? Fine, make sure the cost is so great they will have no choice but to surrender. Bomb them into oblivion, those who want to live will get the hint to get out of the way. You cannot be reasonable with unreasonable people. You inflict as much hurt on them as possible to let them know you aren't playing games. When a country loses 500,000 troops in a matter of a few weeks, they'll get the picture or they'll all die. Either way, you pound them into the ground without mercy until they surrender without conditions. Doing anything less is a show of weakness. Vietnam was lost because of scared politicians, not because the lack of will from the US military forces there. Take the politics out of military decisions and strategy and you can achieve your ultimate objective. Period.
Still need those massive ships today but the navy is fascinated by ships such as the littoral ships, Zumwalt class destroyers threat cost billions and are now useless.
I'd recommend the HBO movie "A Bright Shining Lie" starring Bill Paxton. Basically the US never got it right in Vietnam because the US failed to embrace what the Vietnamese people were. That is a country of rice farmers. Bill Paxton's character points out to win the war, it's all about the rice to the people. I really can't see no matter how much naval fire power the US threw at North Vietnam,it would have won the war in the long run.
We left the "nation building" and pacification to the South Vietnamese government, who were regarded by the majority of the people as corrupt city-dwellers who did not care about the rest.
Syria and North Korea. We are currently using Submarines in that role. Out of site...out of mind. Imagine something like the New Jersey parked neat Ponyang...think of what it looked like in Beirut
No. The first USS Canberra was named after HMAS Canberra after the crews brave actions during a sea battle in WW2. It is the only US warship named after a foreign navy’s ship.
Part of the issue with Haiphong was the Russians kept a couple freighters there to deter us from attacking. The bigger issue was that the 8" gun could only reach 15 miles inland, and the 16" about 20 miles. A lot of targets were further inland than those ranges, particularly the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
the Mistakes made in vietnam (talking about shore bombardment and reactivation of ships) is all due to what i call "orginizational inertia" the US military as a whole. has a tendancy to go way overboard with stuff even if its not that good. like Naval airpower proving itself in WW2. and right after WW2. its the bees knees. its the cool new thing. even if its not perfected. or good. since they were swinging that way they just swung even harder. like today with the marine corps. they realized to be an expiditionary force meant you don't need Tanks, Scout Snipers, Tube(cannon) Artillery, Mine clearing and breeching assets, or Amphibious Capability and as many combat aircraft. all you need is some infantry and helicopters. if you ask them knee jerk reaction i'd like to think so.
Not really. While you can't get through the citadel the AoN-Armor scheme meant that about everything else would be blown to pieces: living quarters, mess, food preparation, stores, even a lot of the secondary gun batteries (apart from the 5/38th maybe) and their ready locker ammo would be suceptible to 155 mm rounds. And all the sensors (antenna, cables, range finders) are fragile pieces of equipment which are at most lightly armored if at all. Case in point would be the Graf Spee which wasn't impeded so much in her battleweorthiness at la plata but lost lots of service utilities which made her uninhabitable for any longer voyage.
@@ricardokowalski1579 Sorry, this seems to have been a misunderstanding: I thought you argued that a battleship could shrug off 155 mm impacts, not that they were out of range.
@@qwertzundefinedapfel3830 both things are correct. For one, the battleship can outrange the smaller guns and be completely inmune. 👍 At the outer edge of the 155 range, even if they score hits, the shells are now plunging with a descent angle well over 30 degrees, and lost most of their velocity. This will greatly reduce the effect of such shells. This is what I mean by brush it off, maybe loose a fire director or have added ventilation to the mess hall. No biggie. Steam away to inmune range and reply in kind. Rinse and repeat. The battleship will never come along the shore to give the 155mm a flat trajectory. I understand that point blank 155mm raking fire cannot be "shrugged off", but that is not the case. Finally, Graff Spe was hurt by an 8in shell from Exeter, not 155mm (6in). We have to square-cube that difference as well. Respectfully.
Could the supply of 16 inch shells supported more than one Iowa class? Flip side, would using the New Jersey be seen as a way of disposing of some remaining munitions? Honestly, nothing about Vietnam made sense.
Indeed, the USN could’ve hit many point targets all around Haiphong to where USN aircraft would never have had to make any Alpha Strike airstrikes on the city……leave it to the BBs and CAs to bombard the place. Even with Soviet and other ships in the harbor, our ships could’ve easily shot past them and never even remotely damaged them, whilst reigning hell on North Vietnam’s largest port city.
@@gunhog11 To get close enough they would probably have had to do some mine sweeping, and then we'd need some spotter AC for that kind of precision fire.
To this day we can see that air power isnt enough to win a war or even supplant artillery. Its just one of the gears of war. Look at the war Russia wages against Ukraine: Despite having a respectable air force in terms of size, Russia was never able to seize air superiority because Ukraine's GBAD doesnt allow them. And so the war has become an artillery slugfest. Its always good to have artillery. BTW, loving these types of videos supported by historic footage! But whats with the audio over the last few videos? Is your mic dying? 😬
@@Masada1911 Little Crappy Ships are NOT "monitors" - heavily armored, heavily gunned ships for inshore bombardment. The initial dream was "littoral", but what they really built is a thin-skinned, poorly-engineered, under-armed dockside queen that could barely act as an offshore patrol vessel. They are a disgrace to the Navy and deserve their upcoming fast retirements.
You newer know what will happen. Mostly fighting inland in west and north west of >south< vietnam some in demilitariezed zone + dealing with all the guerilla action in south. So a waste to have a Iowa in veitnam. The airforce take care of most problems. Still fighting is everywhere all around what they call 360 battle. Then suddenly the enemy go on the offensive capture coastal cities and now it be good to have a Iowa. Hopless to predict.
I’d argue we should have continued to have the big gals roaming the seas, Coast Guard Battleships? Yea baby. Yes, they’re expensive, but Congress has proven their ability to continually spend money on basically anything, so why not.
I once met a man who was telling me that he was on an island in the Makong Delta. The island was about to be overrun, and they called for support. They got a reply from a call sign they didn't recognize. They gave them the coordinates and were told to get down. The first round was on target, which they reported. The source then fired for effect. The other end of the island was leveled. So his unit reported the effect and asked who they were talking to. The Reply was: "This is the U.S.S. New Jersey 25 miles off the coast."
Wow! Great story :)
😯
So Awesome!! Thank you for sharing that
Vietnam was probably an ideal case for using naval shore bombardment. It's a long skinny country next to an ocean.
Hey, Korea had two coasts!
Sounds like you never served over there with your stupid statements...
Love watching footage of New Jersey and other Iowas in action and sailing under their own power. So majestic ✨️
Bringing out a BB from retirement and then quickly and quietly putting back into mothballs is just one example of how shortsighted and f--ked up the McNamara SECDEF era was.
McNamara was the head of FORD. Not a millitary man at all. Destroying the tooling for the SR-71, Mothballing BB72. Between Johnson and this fool, we were doomed in Vietnam
The US army and USMC both used the M110 8”/203mm self-propelled howitzer in Vietnam. They actually had a shorter range than the 155mm guns. The 175mm M107 SP howitzer was also used and it outranged both the 155mm and 8” guns.
I have an 8" shell from one of those - sure is a heavy sucker!
The M110 8" had a range of ~16,000 meters, while the M114 155mm had a range of ~14,000 meters. The M107 175mm had a range of ~32,000 meters-about the same range as a 16" gun. I served in a 8"/175mm battery in Viet Nam.
@@chash7335 I should have specified I was comparing the ranges of SP guns and not towed artillery, though from what I read the M109s weren’t in-country for very long. My time was 20-30 years after yours (86-98) and I was MLRS, not a cannon-cocker LOL
@@philsmith2444 There were no 155mm guns in Viet Nam, only howitzers. The towed M114 and the SPH M109 both had the same ~14,000 meter range. Later versions of the 109 had longer tubes and increased range.
Also had M55 SPG that had 8in gun.
Yes Ryan - All four should have been brought back for Vietnam and we would have saved many a pilot and aircraft. However there is no lobby group for battleships as there is for Carriers and submarines, and the armament industries did not stand to make much on battleship reactivations. Even during the Reagan years the battleships did not receive the support from the Navy brass that they should have for primarily the same reasons. Even former Navy pilot John McCain realized the importance of the battleships in a letter to me in the 1990's when the Clinton Administration was trying to dispose of the decommissioned battleships.
I would love to jump on the Shore Bombardment wagon BUT … with a 24-ish mile range, I have to give Naval Aviation the thumbs up. Yes there were places where bombing the hell out of areas within reach would have been possible and fantastic. Yes, the ‘brown shoes’ ops caused a great deal of human trauma with flights terminated prior to carrier landing.
Biggest Navy mistake - transporting Agent Orange to VN. It is still taking a toll.
I think you probably hit the nail on the head there, Ryan. The old Battleship Admirals had their comeuppance at Pearl Harbor, and in terms of fleet actions, the carriers have dominated ever since. The flexibility and reach of carrier-based aircraft is also something to consider. But the sheer intimidation factor of a heavy cruiser (esp. the Des Moines class with their autoloading guns) or a full-fledged battleship cannot be discounted. They have true armor; they were built to slug it out with other big gun ships, and some standard anti-ship missile is not going to penetrate the armored "citadel", though it might wreck things topside and start fires. The battleship is designed to continue in the fight even after taking hits that would sink ordinary (modern) naval vessels.
Plus, as you mentioned, in terms of economy, gun systems are far cheaper to operate than aircraft, and cost less per ton of ordinance on target that aircraft-launched bombs and missiles.
But despite bean counters like McNamara in power in those days, the gun ship crowd had no chance whatsoever against the Carrier Air Wing Mafia. The entire Navy and the DoD was spun up to promote the concept of Naval Aviation as being able to do things better that some old-timey gun tub, and Congress and the American public bought into that.
Of course, 20 years later in Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the Iraqis were terrified of the Iowa's over there, and their shore bombardment capabilities -- and the Marines storming the beaches. So, yeah, we played along with that, all the while with Schwartzkopf's big "left hook" plan to be the knockout blow, catch them from the direction they're not anticipating. And it worked, of course. (Just hope our advisors to the Ukrainians have convinced them of the wisdom of hitting the Russians where they're not expecting it . . .)
Probably would have been best to have three of each class (at least); one on the gun line, one in maintenance, and one working up for deployment. Maintain a moderate op tempo, you know, not wear everyone down with back-to-back deployments.
The thing today is that the PGM is longer-ranged, more precise, and costs less when you factor in the cost of ship crew and escorts needed. A lot of the Vietnam war took place outside the 25 mile limit of BB guns.
@@gregorywright4918 Sure, if your talking about the more modern stuff. most ground attack PGM's simply didn't exist in Vietnam though. During the vietnam war, the US navy didn't even have any antiship missiles. They only had three classes of anti aircraft missiles, which the larger ones could be used in a dual antiship role, and they did not have any land attack missiles at all and did not gain that capability until the 80's with tomahawk. So before the 80's guns where the only means that surface ships had to conduct shore bombardment.
Even when it came to aircraft, JDAM's didn't come out until the late 70s and 80's. What AGM's existed at the time where far more limited in capability and they put an aircraft at risk with Vietnams very capable air defenses. So the vast majority of bombing runs done in vietnam where using conventional dumb iron bombs.
Whoever had those bright ideas at the time should have been taken to a test site, sat down range of the ship and made to watch and feel an HE salvo fly overhead and land on whatever unfortunate target the Navy picked out.
Then do the same with them watching a Skyraider of F4 drop a a payload. No offence to either of those, they were great aircraft (the Skyraider in particular was a hell of a ground support plane...), but let's be honest here: if you wanted something obliterated with 0 risk to your own military, it's hard to argue with a set of very large guns :|
My Dad served in Vietnam in the Army. He told me on more than one occasion those Navy boys loved to shoot and were good at doing it. We were glad they were there.
Your absolutely right. The battleships and guns over 8" would have been an unanswered offensive weapons system. The North would have had to retreat their shore based assets and would have opened up more entry points for aircraft or Marine landings. This is probably another example of how we got in our own way and couldn't close the war out sooner.
Listing the mistakes of the Vietnam War would require a Master’s thesis.
3 Wespac deployments and 1 year on the Mekong River, the war was an enormous waste of men and equipment. Too bad our politicians can’t have a go on the ground in Ukraine.
The #1 mistake was thinking we could keep the dysfunctional and corrupt South Vietnamese government propped up indefinitely. It's like trying to bail water out of a rotting old wood boat.
Agree 100%
The reason is the US didn't want to win the war.
Reminds me of “McNamara’s 100,000”. He was more of a moron than them. What else did he f up?
More importantly, have those lessons been learned yet. Not a question, as wars since then say no. “Oof” is kind of too flippant an expression of dismay for all this. IMO.
I got work all evening tomorrow so i just wanna give a early "happy birthday" 🎉 to Battleship New Jersey and her crew of volunteers. 80 years a good stretch of time. But i think we all agree another 80 more would be much deserved for "The Garden Lady"
your shore bombardment argument is immaculate. that is why we saw so many battleships constructed after 1945. as for that "bringing more back" to active duty, have you considered what the ussr could have supplied north Viet nam in response? the ussr supplied migs and sams because they were the immediate threat. guessing the ussr did not see the battleship as a potent threat.
Thank you, Ryan. I happened to be an Army guy at the Naval station at Nha Trang in the fall of 1969. I think New Jersey was already off station, but there were three (3) very large shells fired from the edge of horizon west over our heads. They were so far east we did not hear the firing, and were landing so far west we did not hear the explosions well inland of us. Sounded like a VW bug flying overhead. A memorable moment. Thanks, Navy!
The whole Vietnam experience is a masters class in miss-management
“You’re not shooting down a 16 inch shell … or at least you’re not losing sailors…”
Thanks for giving me the classic image from Dr Strangelove, but riding a 16 inch shell rather than a nuke.
And now I'm imagining him riding a Katie shell.
I understand during WW2 when a ship came home for maintenance and repair there was a good chance a lot of the crew might be redeployed elsewhere as opposed to staying with the ship for months. But did the stay with the ships in the Vietnam era? Since there wasn’t another similar ship to go to
The fact we lost over half the production of F-105’s in Vietnam, I bet a lot of guys in the Hanoi Hilton wished all 4 Iowas could have been hitting their targets rather than them.
I was in Vietnam. The reason for bringing out a battleship was a demand by the marines - as I was told. I did know a marine that was on Guadalcanal when the Japanese BBs shot up Henderson Field. He said it was terrifying and made him hurt internally. We could have used the ships the Korean War had active. 8" and 16" did a better job than the smaller guns. One issue was the bigger shells would go deeper into the ground before exploding. And at the DMZ, New Jersey could shoot across Vietnam into Laos. The NJ really damaged the commie underground bunkers and ammo storage. That's probably why decommissioning the NJ was a condition of the peace talks.
The big mistake was not taking the war to North Vietnam. If we would have invaded, kicked the commie butts into the jungle and then let South Vietnam take over, the US would have spent less time, money, fewer casualties, and fewer FU people like me.
I will add, there was a big battle in D.C. about budgeting that shapes what gets activated and sent into theater. Its always the case, but McNamara really screwed the pooch on a lot of bits here.
Army was trying new Air Mobile tactics to prevent needing to physically hold everything in the country, Air Force was trying to justify their massive expenditures on new fighters and bombers, Navy was still trying to justify its existence in a nuclear age and demonstrate they brought something modern to the table. Lots of politics go into that war.
Sure about that? The DMZ ran some 47 miles from the coast to Laos, which I think is longer than the range of New Jersey. Plus I spent most of my tour as a marine in Vietnam on the DMZ from Con Thien west to Khe Sahn. This was from late 1967 midway through 1968, during which time we never received naval gunfire support due to the range. But we were supported by the self propelled 8 inch guns at Camp Carroll.
Attacking North Vietnam was too risky. No one wanted the situation to turn into another Korean war, especially not against a China with nuclear capabilities and that's without taking the Soviets into account.
@@duster1968 At the DMZ, Vietnam is 17 miles wide.
@@oceanmariner Just checked a map of Vietnam, and did a google also. It seems Vietnam is 30 miles wide at its narrowest point, which puts Laos out of range.
A big gun ship for naval bombardment would have been very useful during the Falklands War.
HMS Vanguard would have the Argentinians holed up in Port Stanley something to think about.
They would’ve surrendered at the sight of the guns.
The intimidation factor of a big ass battleship aiming their giant fucking guns at you cannot be understated.
Indeed. I’ve often had that thought.
All four battleships should have been sent.
I was proud to serve aboard the USS Newport News (CA-148) The last all gun Heavy Cruiser. My time aboard 1968-69-70 Call sign THUNDER.
Because the Des Moines class ships rendered the fast battleship obsolete. For both shore bombardment and gun ship engagement. They had similar range and volume of fire which meant in a gun battle a Des Moines would have been a match for an Iowa in term of rendering the opposition combat killed even if it could not sink it. And you get 3 for the price of one Iowa. However I do prefer the Iowa as my kinky friend Margret had some fun with me behind the number 2 turret on a Tuesday back in 2016. She had a thing for hallmarks.
Not even remotely the case. The IOWA’s 16” guns were not only FAR more effective than the 8” on the DES MOINES, they were more cost effective as well. This was thoroughly documented by the Navy after the Korean War.
Which would you rather experience - a salvo of 16” hitting a Des Moines or a salvo of 8” hitting an Iowa?
There is hardly a comparison between the lethality and penetration of 16" ordinance vs 8" .
I was in Vietnam from Dec 1965 to Nov 1968, I was there and saw the USS Jersey in action. The ship arrived in Vietnam Sept 1968 and left Vietnam in April 1969 for a total of only 7 months. Normal rotation of troops was one year.
The range of their 16" guns is 24 miles, each round weigh 2,700 lbs. The USS New Jersey was just for show, it really didn't do much.
The aircraft from the Carriers in Yankee Station did a hell of a lot more damage in support of the combat troops than the New Jersey ever did.
My guess is the same geniuses that thought the F-4 phantom didn’t need a gun. There was a general belief that the Vietnam war was still just a sideshow and that the Soviets would drive their T-64s through the Fulda Gap. Therefore I believe the Navy was still thinking convoy protection, sealanes abd WW3 things which limited how much material they were willing to commit to Vietnam
And the BBs needed large crews.
The F4 flew with wing-mounted guns, the problem in Vietnam was training and dumb Rules of Engagement, Only USAF F-4s were given guns, Navy F-4s didn't, and considering the USAF F-4s with guns only scored 5 kills with the gun, didn't have to big of an effect
Not to mention the fact the F-4 is an INTERCEPTOR, not a fighter, which will require different training to operate as such
Unfortunately, media has the idea that all jets fight WW2 style (top gun) when most engagements are at ranges exceeding 1 km
Thanks, fighter mafia for everyone thinking otherwise
The F-35 is designed to kill the enemy before being detected, NOT engage in a turning dogfight
(Pierre Spray doesn't care about this fact)
The US Army did have the 8 inch (203 mm) M110 self-propelled howitzer in Vietnam but 16" Fire Support really trumps that.
I learned, somewhere, that the NV really feared the New Jersey's guns. It was part of the negotiations, as mentioned by Ocean Mariner. If this is actually the case, then all four of the Iowa's roaming the coast may have pushed for an earlier conclusion. With that in mind, not having the16 inchers pounding away, was a large mistake. BuT !!! hindsight is always so much better than decisions in the moment.
As for what goes forward, shore bombardment may only be economically produced with missile technology. Probably the main driver there is a smaller launch platform required, hence a much smaller cost. I have long thought that a submarine centered shore bombardment force would be a way to go. We had all that technology worked out for many years and all that was necessary was to change the warhead to a non nuclear weapon.
I agree.
Just imagine the poor guy once in captivity. How were you captured soilder? I fell overboard, sir.
You guys need a proper studio setup with sound dampening for discussion videos it should help to eliminate the echo and also lav mics reduce the distant part of the sound
Did those rooms have air conditioning by the time of 1944? I wonder if theses computer machines may generate a lot of heat.
Basically shore bombardment in WW2 while impressive did not, for the most part, deliver on its promise. It rearranged the landscape but generally did not effectively reduce the defenders capabilities to mount strong resistance to a landing. Not to be overly cynical, but I suspect a lot of the big ship deployments in Vietnam where done to get the officers combat ranking on their records for aid in future promotions.
the vietnam war is what happens when you let politicians and bean counters run war operations. im sure the politically restricted targets also played a part in which ships were activated and what wasnt.
@@ralphgesler5110 as it can be with aerial observation. the main reason the bombardment at iwo accomplished so little was that the japs were so deeply dug in. but you cant discount the morale effects. theres no doubt the bombardment lowered japanese morale and raised american morale.
Naval guns could reach only so far inland. As you say, the North was very well defended, which limited how close ships could get to the shore, which reduced even more what could be reached from the sea. And the North Vietnamese did indeed shoot back at our ships.
These days, it is even more dangerous for a ship to get within gun range of the coast, since there are now land-based, mobile, anti-ship cruise missiles, such as those that got _ Moskva._ I'm not sure there's a future for shore bombardment, except in special circumstances.
Intelligence, various special ops, and an air wing can mitigate the missile issue considerably. A big gun platform can thus remain on station for weeks at a time to support land forces and/or disrupt enemy industry at a fraction of the cost of keeping an air wing in the sky all the time.
Not saying shore bombardment will make a big return, but if it did, it certainly has a place.
What did the Iowa-class have for CIWS, 4 mounts? Put another 5 or 6 on each beam, that should cut down the missile threat quite a bit. Plus, how do even the most capable ASMs compare to a 16”/50 AP shell when it comes to armor penetration?
@@philsmith2444 I think it’s a situation where each type of ship is complemented by the other ships in the fleet. It’s not as though a BB should ever be on its own; submarines and planes would put any battleship on the bottom with ease, if not for destroyers and carriers to screen it.
@@philsmith2444 You don't need to penetrate the armor to put a ship out of action.
🙋🏽♂️LBJ did not have a endless Visa card or Manpower pool. 💳 Hyman Rickover and his Nuclear Navy took budget priority. And with people already griping about the draft, getting a ship with their high crew requirements we're getting difficult to fulfill. Most targets for fire support missions were well inside 5 inch range. The Destroyers and cruisers could fill the bill.
Another thing to consider is that 5 inches translates to 127MM. this means that troops trained on calling in fire from a 155 could be easily trained to call in fire from the 5in without the risk of the shells producing a drastically different blast radius. The 16in guns have a millimeter size of 406mm. That massive jump in size adds a larger risk of troops dropping shells in themselves.
My feeling was at that time the USSR was still top priority to military planners and budget. Also LBJ was creating todays welfare state with his Great Society programs.
I served on a destroyer in Vietnam 1972, the 5in guns were more than adequate for the targets. There were very few targets along the coast that needed 16in ordanance. We also did hit run raids in North Vietnam which required 3 ships sailing in close, under cover of darkness shooting up designated targets and then hauloing ass at high speed to escape the shore batteries. Most of the targets were convoys, munition storage and bridges, all of which could be taken out by 5in destroyer guns or 6in cruiser guns. There wer very few hardened bunkers or defenses along the coast. A battleship steaming along the North Vietnam coast especially in daylight would have been a sitting duck for aircraft. A couple of our ships were hit by missiles fired by jets that homed in to the ships radar. The shore batteries at night were mostly ineffective since they were firing at our muzzleflashes, we could feel and hear the concussions as they hit nearby and on one occassion one detonated at the bow with no damage to the ship. There is an official Navy video on TH-cam "US Navy Hit-Run Raids in North Vietnam" that covers the action up North. My ship USS Davis DD937 makes a cameo appearance.
@@Edward-wr4dk as a general rule of thumb, MIGs don't like to go far offshore. And carry no anti ship weapons.
The army had 175 mm and 8 inch self propelled artillery
you need to read up on the uss newport news 3 tours in vietnam she had a hell of a lot of firepower
I would suggest the the Vietnam War was a testing ground of new equipment; so that the known effects of shore bombardment wasn't a priority.
A documentary series called Brute Force or Weapons at War claimed 35 years ago in their episode about battleships that North Vietnam complained in Paris that the New Jersey was a destabilizing influence, with Washington DC deciding to return her to the mothball fleet as a result. Not sure if that's accurate, especially with the drawdown of the older vessels in the fleet at the same time that suggests it sadly was probably a foolish economic decision. But if it is correct that she was doing her job too well, it does help explain the bizarre decisions made in Washington to kill hundreds of additional airmen by quickly re-retiring the New Jersey after her successful deployment and the navy's failure to reactivate her sisters for service off North Vietnam. They had a habit of murdering American servicemen to make gestures like this to Hanoi in the futile hope that it would be reciprocated in kind.
Because the one man army "John Rambo" was there.
I agree with you on the shore bombardment. Hindsight is 20/20.
Great vintage footage.
It would probably be easier to recount what went right during the Vietnam War (and that is in no way aimed at or dismissing those who gave their lives or fought in that horrible conflict), than what went wrong....but more so aimed at those that tried to throw standard military doctrine against an unconventional enemy...as was once again so displayed in Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent so far againt the Houthi...and as the Russians also found out in the mountains of Afghanistan and again in the Ukraine....anyway....great video as always Ryan and team USS New Jersey....thank you!!!!
Cheers from Aus!!!!🍻🍻 🍻🍻
Very interesting. Thank you. Any videos on morale aboard the ship during Vietnam? Was there a branch of SOS on New Jersey? Was the crew reservists? Were there any morale issues/drug use on the ship that was significant during Viet Nam?
Morale was high onboard the ship during the Vietnam deployment. The crew was composed of first time enlistees and career personel. We were proud of who we were and what we were doing. Captain Snyder never missed an opportunity to have shore based Marines/Army helo out to visit us. We met the people we were there to support.
Do you think the war could have gone a different way if we relied more on 4x Iowa class battleships and well as a good complement of other shore bombardment capable ships
I would offer that the whole way the war was processed would need to be change and one piece of that change could be having the Iowa's overwhelming the north with gun fire and NOT stopping just because the North said they wouldn't "come to the table" if they didn't stop.
If and enemy say, "stop or we won't talk" your answer should be, "we will stop once you talk". Not the other way around and this is just one issue upon many. Very many.
I thought I had read back in the day the reason for the USS New Jersey to be mothballed so quickly after re-activation during Vietnam was a lack of gun barrel liners for the 16's. Only after she was being decommissioned were a stockpile of barrel liners found. Hopefully someone can fill in the rest of that story.
Man. All the mythology runs rampant. From the 8” cruisers being “more effective” to the “battleship guns didn’t have enough range” to the “the Marines demanded it.”
None of that stuff is true.
The NEW JERSEY was deployed to Vietnam precisely because she could reach many, not all, the targets that planes were at great risk to take out. And she could do so with great destructiveness. As you might imagine, the BIG J was VERY effective. Unfortunately, as she was reactivated, all targets north of the DMZ were prohibited, which severely cut into the reason for bringing the NEW JERSEY out in the first place. Of course, she could provide support to ground units, including the Marines, and did so with both her 5” and 16” guns. But that wasn’t the primary reason she was in Vietnam.
The New Jersey’s mere presence forced the North Vietnamese to move troops and materiel to avoid her reach. The reason she was withdrawn is precisely because many of the targets she was reactivated to hit were taken off the table, and her presence was threatening the Paris Peace Talks. Moreover, as Ryan suggests, there is always political opposition to the battleships-both from within the Navy and outside it. Sadly, that opposition is based on emotion, not an analysis of capability over cost.
The North Vietnamese hated NEW JERSEY and for good reason. FYI, the record distance for an accurate 16” Mark 7 shoot is 27 miles by the USS IOWA.
If the Navy had decided to reactivate an additional Iowa-class battleship during the Vietnam War, which unit would they have gone with?
Maybe Wisconsin - she had the least amount of sailing miles on her
@@garywayne6083 From what I’ve heard she was the one in the worst material condition at that time. Apparently at some point during her time in mothballs there had been some sort of not-insignificant electrical fire. From what I gather this was the principal reason that she was the last ship to be reactivated in the 1980s.
All the missiles used on navy ships during the Vietnam War had anti-surface capability and an anti-radiation variant. The Talos ARM was used to take out several coastal early warning sites. The air launched Standard ARM was just a variant of the ship launched SM-1.
I remember 3 or 4 Talos ARM shots and all failed when the transmitting sites shut down after detecting a missile launch. I didnt know any had been successful.
@@glennrishton5679 A friend of mine was in an EA-3 who coordinated a successful shoot.
@@johnshepherd9676 Very good Our shots only meant someone repainted around the forward Talos Launcher.
@@glennrishton5679 What ship were you on?
@@johnshepherd9676 Chicago CG 11
08:30 activating one of each class also gives you the advantage of selecting whichever is in bed condition, meaning it can be bought back into service faster.
The problem with only having 1 of each class is that you effectively have none. As each ship stays on station for only so long, there will be gaps in your coverage as the ships leave to go back home for refit and repairs and then there's the time it takes to conduct the refits and repairs, time to prepare for its next deployment, then the the time it takes to get back on station. This is why you need at least 2 of ever tying, esp. ships, with 3 being ideal, With 3 you have one at home, one on station, and one heading out to replace the ship currently on patrol, This why the US Navy has so many aircraft carriers, there's the rule of 3 divided by 2 coasts.
I was feel it was a shame not to save the USS Newport News as a museum ship.
Has anyone thought about how difficult it is to get a battleship into the jungle lol Seriously a great talk Ryan keep up the good work.
Isn't that mostly because a lot of the battleships had gone by then and they were really expensive to operate
BUDGET & manpower.... The war was unpopular and costly. And the Manpower requirements were already high. Battleships are manpower needy. Especially in key ratings. You can't fund a war and build a Nuclear Navy.....
submarines and planes. Submarines even more than planes. Nuclear submarine nowadays would have no problem with an Iowa sadly
Um.
Last I checked those 16” guns don’t have the range to get past the coastal mountains.
I think the biggest mistake we've ever made was to get rid of our shore bombardment capabilities. Even if it only using a 8 or 12 in gun. The 16 in are way better.
I would rather have a modern Atlanta with modern guided shells such as the M982 Excalibur, and a automated reloading system to quickly fill up a magazine.
The idea is spam guided shells that can go through windows. The 16 inch shells weren't something you lobbed at a few guys behind behind a berm.
Ryan, I didn't catch all of this video regarding the gunships in Vietnam. Did you mention anything about the SoDak class, (Massachusetts and Alabama). Could they have been reactivated?
Speaking about shore bombardment. Are there still any talks of the about bringing the Iowa's back into commission IF a large-scale war ever does happen in the future? I know we've got the new Gearld R. Ford-class carriers coming into the fleet with brand-new laser weapon tech if the ship ever gets attacked, and we do have a sufficient number of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers making up the backbone of the navy. But I think the Iowa's still have it where it counts, despite lack of people signing up to join the navy, and the large amount of money it would cost to update all 4 Iowa's.
In short: no. The things the Iowas bring to the table - size, speed, protection, and firepower, are of very limited use. The limited missile battery compared to modern vessel them a poor choice there, speed isn't unique, protection against modern weapons is limited, and firepower is only superior in hardened armor penetration - something we don't need because no adversary is putting battleship grade armor on anything. And size can be made up for by just using more ships.
The SSGN, CG, and DDG more than fill the role of big missile trucks; a heavy torpedo (Mk 48) is better at sinking enemy ships than a 16" rifle and has been since pre-Jutland; and you can load an MLRS onto the flight deck of a few amphibs or LCS and get battleship level shore bombardment capability for cheap. And, yes, the replacement for the Zumwalt's AGS and Iowa's rifles is really just to use HIMARS on Gator Freighters, which as we've seen in Ukraine is devastating levels of firepower.
Oh, and one other thing: the most likely large scale naval conflict involves Taiwan. The strait isn't conducive to battleship engagements even during WWII, it's too confined of a space and too dangerous to bring in large surface combatants. But it would be a war where we'd be fighting a numerically superior enemy with closer bases over the right to resupply an island - and if that doesn't sound familiar, it should, because we've fought that before - Guadalcanal. Battleships got one outing, and even Willis Lee knew he got lucky.
@@jec6613 So, basically speaking, battleships are just out of the loop entirely. Understandable. Still, you can't deny the pure power projection just one Iowa, or any battleship in history, has over the modern day CVN's. God. Now I wish I was born during the golden age of the battleship. I would serve on one of the Iowa's in an instant. Even though I was born in '93, I love things old-fashion.
@@NFS_Challenger54 yeah that's the one place where battleships still provide advantage of the more modern replacements - it's a visual symbol that we can park offshore of most countries and they can't take it out, and it's very obvious to the average person on the street. No other Navy vessel has the same visceral impact, and nothing encourages surrender like being on the receiving end of battleship fire.
But it's a lot of money that could go elsewhere just for intimidation via literal gunboat diplomacy against nations without large navies.
@@jec6613 When you count the cost of refitting, crew, and protective escorts, the Precision Guided Munition like Tomahawk or MLRS is a longer-ranged, more accurate, cheaper deal. BBs are still vulnerable to torpedoes, and diesel subs love the areas within 20 miles of the coast.
@@gregorywright4918 Hold on. Diesel subs are still a thing? I thought conventional propulsion for naval submarines was phased out after many countries went with nuclear power.
I often get drawn into these discussions and end up spouting an opinion based on fresh air and maybe something I've googled. Have read a lot about WW II but very little about Vietnam and think it probably best if I spared people what I think about Battleship deployment there.
😄
Why is there what appears to be a port hole behind Ryan to his Left? Must have had something to do with battle & compartment separation/water tightness?
The navy should have dredged the Mekong river and sent the New Jersey and other Iowas deep into enemy territory and blasted everything.
The military-industrial complex makes more money buying expensive planes and ordinance then paying to activate old ships and keep them running.
yeah why shoot a $2000 shell when they can fire off $1 000 000 missles
ordnance...
We needed "big bangs" near Cambodia, way beyond the range of naval bombardment. By the time that NVA march all the way to within naval gun range, one has already lost the country. They came down through Cambodia.
For one Laos should have been invaded to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail.
I agree with naval gun support. Reports I hear you would want 8" or greater. No need to wait for air support and it's cheaper than missiles.
I see mentions about army 8" & 175mm guns but what is interesting is the army still had the Atomic Annie's back then. It would have been interesting if the army would have used an 11" Annie in Nam, but conventional of coarse. Probably would have been over run. Yep it was a messed up mismanaged war.
Ryan, not in this video but in others featuring you and The New Jersey you've said a number of times that the big guns required a long lead time. Why was this?
Drach answered this somewhat recently.
Oversimplified, these big guns have to be perfectly made out of massive pieces of the strongest metals. Possibly even more than the amour (the other long lead time item). Any imperfection means the entire barrel is trash and you need to start a new one. Once you start the riffling process you can not stop or again the entire barrel is trash.
Drach explains this better in one of his more resent "Drydocks" but I don't remember which one.
@@willpat3040 -- Thanks!!
@@lennyhendricks4628 They take very specialized and very large equipment to build them from start to finish, which means there were only a very few places able to handle them, so just to get a handful took quite a lot of time
Hindsight is always 20/20. In hindsight it would have been better to have more big-gun ships in service for the Vietnam war. Especially early. But, it would've taken time to re-activate them for that purpose. Had they known what would've happened I hope they would've foresaw the need for the shore bombardment and reactivated at least another Iowa, as well as a few more heavy cruisers earlier.
Odd, the navy has been doing everything in their power to come up with a ship that doesn't have guns to do what gun armed cruisers and BBs do so well ever since. For a time some of the destroyers didn't even have guns. "Missiles are the end-all/be-all of Navy munitions.".. Then they smarten'd up and put the 5/155s on DDs.
First, the war wasn't fought to win.
Where are we bombarding, the North? Reaching 20 miles inward on the coast doesn't get one much. And I don't feel it helps prevent air losses. Any Coastal air defenses could have been dealt with.
In the South, BB's could have been supportive of Coastal regions, but, most of the big battles were inland and out of range.
If they brought back battleships today how far do you think they would be able to shoot with modernized big guns and targeting systems? Seeing as how a 155mm can hit targets almost 70 miles away with certain ammo how far could we get a modern 16" shell? As an American I wish we'd create new classes of ships or modernized battleships of some sort. But we can't even take care of what we have bc we don't have the shipyards like we used to. That's a entire rant on its own.
I believe the in development round was an 80 mile range saboted using GPS guidance, somewhere around 10" in diameter with high penetrative capability. It would have been the first GPS guided round, and that's where the rub was in development - the 16"/50 can already shoot farther than you can reasonably aim the gun, and shot dispersion caused by manufacturing tolerances becomes the major issue at those ranges, so GPS guidance was a must. And the 16" bore left you plenty of room for guidance systems even after using a sabot. For unarmored targets, dispersion might not matter much as with couple of salvos and the area is neutralized anyway, but for anything where you needed the heavy hitting of the 16" it took far too many shells to take it out, and you might as well just drop a guided bomb at that point.
Today, we'd just use HIMARS from the deck of a gator freighter, with 90-150 miles of range. Guided, long range, and heavy hitting.
Forget a battleship, if there should be a need for a large gun build a smaller ship with maybe two single gun turrets. What is no longer needed is the speed to keep up with carriers or heavy antiaircraft defense. 20 knots would be sufficient speed. Some of the newest AA armament for that protection. Firing a sabot projectile as mentioned GPS guidance. The turret
being as close to fully automated as possible.
Now a question; When the barrels of the large , 16", 8" and 6" were shot out were they scrapped or re-lined?
@@glennrishton5679 Ah, something like a big-gun monitor like the Royal Navy kept using through WWII. Neat idea.
@@glennrishton5679 They were re-lined so long as the gun remained in service somewhere, and stored as long as the gun was on a reserve ship.
As for a big gun coastal monitor, cool idea, but what you describe is basically a slower Zumwalt - which was designed with 6.1" high penetration rapid fire shore bombardment guns that would have been better than the 16" rifles if we had procured ammunition for them. And as a taxpayer, a Burke with HIMARS on the flight deck instead of a helicopter will provide more firepower per hull, on more hulls, for much less money. And of course, coastal monitors are extremely vulnerable until you have sea control, while a multirole destroyer is capable of surviving in a threat rich environment and fulfilling more than just shore bombardment and local air defense role (Mahan goes into great detail on this in the part of his writing that's still relevant).
@@glennrishton5679 a smaller ship would not be able to withstand the forces created when the guns fire
A ship is an asset that needs to be protected as well. The ships that were there did a helluva lot of work, but if the US had committed more big gun ships at the expense of aircraft... Well, the soviet union might just have decided to supply some of their anti-ship missiles. Even the early soviet anti-ship missiles had 1000 pound warheads.
Ryan, the u s army had self propelled eight inch guns well into the nineteen nineties
Pretty rare that all ships in the Iowa class are still around
That would not be fun having a battleship shooting at your position on shore. Must be so scary.
Mistakes in the Viet Nam War:: getting caught up in a French problem, and not getting out for 10 years. It seems we have learned nothing from that period of time.
I do not know many things. Some logical idee'. If i send 4-10 BB's to Vietnam ther are higher cost als crueser's (fuel, food, personal), more vulnearble for some attacks like torpedos, airattacks, i can think the support line for ammo and barrel can run out of material faster. Other side if i give up air supperiority the land army got more trouble, the tactics of the US army is build around mobilty, and fire support air, artelery, air evac the troops, wounded. The same airsuperoirity is a help to cover the BB's from enemy plans to.
Had the Vietnam conflict (not a war as war is declared by an act of Congress) not been a political conflict I do believe the outcome would have been different. Had the conflict been left solely to the military leaders and planners, I do believe the NVA and VC would have been irraticated. That being said, the Navy severely underutilized the ships available for shore bombardment and an all out naval blockade of Vietnam . I do believe unrestricted warfare should have been conducted and allowed. You cannot tie a soldiers hands and expect them to win in a fight. You cannot blind a soldier and expect them to see and eliminate their enemy. Anyone who was precieved to be a combatant would be treated as such. Hell, I would have authorized the use of tactical nuclear weapons and biological weapons in order to eliminate the communists in Vietnam, win by any means necessary and if other countries had a problem with that they would be branded as an enemy of the US and dealt with accordingly. Fighting sa war is not pretty, just or politically correct. You do whatever is necessary to win your objectives, the hell with being nice. The enemy doesn't want to give up? Fine, make sure the cost is so great they will have no choice but to surrender. Bomb them into oblivion, those who want to live will get the hint to get out of the way. You cannot be reasonable with unreasonable people. You inflict as much hurt on them as possible to let them know you aren't playing games. When a country loses 500,000 troops in a matter of a few weeks, they'll get the picture or they'll all die. Either way, you pound them into the ground without mercy until they surrender without conditions. Doing anything less is a show of weakness. Vietnam was lost because of scared politicians, not because the lack of will from the US military forces there. Take the politics out of military decisions and strategy and you can achieve your ultimate objective. Period.
Alaska class Battlecruiser best looking Warship of all Time.
Well, yeah.
Audio quality could be better, thank you for the video anyway.
You would think the navy would have reactivated at least two of the Iowas for the war. So they could rotate them in and out of the gun line.
If you control the seas you control every lifeline
Yes ,,and I was one of the unlucky sailors handling the brass of these badass babies,,,,
Which ship?
Still need those massive ships today but the navy is fascinated by ships such as the littoral ships, Zumwalt class destroyers threat cost billions and are now useless.
I'd recommend the HBO movie "A Bright Shining Lie" starring Bill Paxton.
Basically the US never got it right in Vietnam because the US failed to embrace what the Vietnamese people were. That is a country of rice farmers.
Bill Paxton's character points out to win the war, it's all about the rice to the people.
I really can't see no matter how much naval fire power the US threw at North Vietnam,it would have won the war in the long run.
We left the "nation building" and pacification to the South Vietnamese government, who were regarded by the majority of the people as corrupt city-dwellers who did not care about the rest.
N. Vietnam would have stayed out of the South if Nixon had still been President. They didn’t want Linebacker III.
Didn't the marines have an 8 inch spg, or do I have the wrong timeline?
I think we should bring back a limited number of big gun ships today...for shear intimidation to places like Sire
Syria and North Korea. We are currently using Submarines in that role. Out of site...out of mind. Imagine something like the New Jersey parked neat Ponyang...think of what it looked like in Beirut
As an Australian, I'm curious about the name of the cruiser Canberra. Was it named after the Australian capital city?
No. The first USS Canberra was named after HMAS Canberra after the crews brave actions during a sea battle in WW2. It is the only US warship named after a foreign navy’s ship.
Thanks for your reply. as a n ex Werving RAN member it's intersting to know these things. @@tomnewham1269
At least for awhile...we weren't allowed to bomb Haiphong harbor...there may have been other coastal targets. More BB's may not have been needed...
Part of the issue with Haiphong was the Russians kept a couple freighters there to deter us from attacking. The bigger issue was that the 8" gun could only reach 15 miles inland, and the 16" about 20 miles. A lot of targets were further inland than those ranges, particularly the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Sound like from early videos. 😮
All the battleships in reverse should have been reinstated.
"Tell us some of the mistakes of the Vietnam War"
The vietnam wa..."please limit it to naval stuff"
Ah...ok
the Mistakes made in vietnam (talking about shore bombardment and reactivation of ships) is all due to what i call "orginizational inertia" the US military as a whole. has a tendancy to go way overboard with stuff even if its not that good. like Naval airpower proving itself in WW2. and right after WW2. its the bees knees. its the cool new thing. even if its not perfected. or good. since they were swinging that way they just swung even harder.
like today with the marine corps. they realized to be an expiditionary force meant you don't need Tanks, Scout Snipers, Tube(cannon) Artillery, Mine clearing and breeching assets, or Amphibious Capability and as many combat aircraft.
all you need is some infantry and helicopters. if you ask them knee jerk reaction i'd like to think so.
I love this table. Appetite for destruction. Rock on!!
One advantage of a battleship is that they can just brush off 155mm counter-battery fire.
Not really. While you can't get through the citadel the AoN-Armor scheme meant that about everything else would be blown to pieces: living quarters, mess, food preparation, stores, even a lot of the secondary gun batteries (apart from the 5/38th maybe) and their ready locker ammo would be suceptible to 155 mm rounds. And all the sensors (antenna, cables, range finders) are fragile pieces of equipment which are at most lightly armored if at all.
Case in point would be the Graf Spee which wasn't impeded so much in her battleweorthiness at la plata but lost lots of service utilities which made her uninhabitable for any longer voyage.
@@qwertzundefinedapfel3830 here is the thing, the 155mm doesn't have the range to hit the battleship
@@ricardokowalski1579 Sorry, this seems to have been a misunderstanding: I thought you argued that a battleship could shrug off 155 mm impacts, not that they were out of range.
@@qwertzundefinedapfel3830 both things are correct.
For one, the battleship can outrange the smaller guns and be completely inmune. 👍
At the outer edge of the 155 range, even if they score hits, the shells are now plunging with a descent angle well over 30 degrees, and lost most of their velocity. This will greatly reduce the effect of such shells. This is what I mean by brush it off, maybe loose a fire director or have added ventilation to the mess hall. No biggie. Steam away to inmune range and reply in kind. Rinse and repeat.
The battleship will never come along the shore to give the 155mm a flat trajectory. I understand that point blank 155mm raking fire cannot be "shrugged off", but that is not the case.
Finally, Graff Spe was hurt by an 8in shell from Exeter, not 155mm (6in). We have to square-cube that difference as well.
Respectfully.
Allowing the North Vietnamese to con United States Navy in the US state department to pull USS New Jersey away as a way to come to the peace table.
Could the supply of 16 inch shells supported more than one Iowa class? Flip side, would using the New Jersey be seen as a way of disposing of some remaining munitions? Honestly, nothing about Vietnam made sense.
If all 4 Iowas were reactivated, we could have probably leveled Hai Phong into oblivion.
The Russians rotated freighters in the harbor to keep us from that kind of attack. We could not risk the escalation.
@@gregorywright4918 Really??? Well damn
Indeed, the USN could’ve hit many point targets all around Haiphong to where USN aircraft would never have had to make any Alpha Strike airstrikes on the city……leave it to the BBs and CAs to bombard the place. Even with Soviet and other ships in the harbor, our ships could’ve easily shot past them and never even remotely damaged them, whilst reigning hell on North Vietnam’s largest port city.
@@gunhog11 To get close enough they would probably have had to do some mine sweeping, and then we'd need some spotter AC for that kind of precision fire.
To this day we can see that air power isnt enough to win a war or even supplant artillery. Its just one of the gears of war.
Look at the war Russia wages against Ukraine: Despite having a respectable air force in terms of size, Russia was never able to seize air superiority because Ukraine's GBAD doesnt allow them. And so the war has become an artillery slugfest.
Its always good to have artillery.
BTW, loving these types of videos supported by historic footage! But whats with the audio over the last few videos? Is your mic dying? 😬
Background noise...
If there is another world war, I could see the return of monitors for coastal bombardment.
That’s kind of the thought behind the littoral combat ships
@@Masada1911 Little Crappy Ships are NOT "monitors" - heavily armored, heavily gunned ships for inshore bombardment. The initial dream was "littoral", but what they really built is a thin-skinned, poorly-engineered, under-armed dockside queen that could barely act as an offshore patrol vessel. They are a disgrace to the Navy and deserve their upcoming fast retirements.
You newer know what will happen.
Mostly fighting inland in west and north west of >south< vietnam some in demilitariezed zone + dealing with all the guerilla action in south.
So a waste to have a Iowa in veitnam.
The airforce take care of most problems.
Still fighting is everywhere all around what they call 360 battle.
Then suddenly the enemy go on the offensive capture coastal cities and now it be good to have a Iowa. Hopless to predict.
I’d argue we should have continued to have the big gals roaming the seas, Coast Guard Battleships? Yea baby.
Yes, they’re expensive, but Congress has proven their ability to continually spend money on basically anything, so why not.
Everyone is more scared of America's hidden nuclear submarines cruising around undetected. Battleship is bling
They had at least three battleships viable if they had the sense to use them.
I cannot think of a better illustration of the failure of US tactics in South Vietnam than the deployment of WW2 battleships and cruisers.
Why take the Iowas outta comission?