Back then big turrets and big calibers ruels the seas, but now even with more advance technology, ship guns are becoming smaller and smaller, why is that?
In: 2
Two reasons:
Reason one: missiles. Missiles is what happened to the big guns on of warships.
To put it in perspective, the maximum range of the 16-inch guns of the *Iowa*-class Battleships, the largest gun used by the US in WWII, was 32,000 meters (about 20 miles). That’s it. The AGM/RGM/UGM-84 (aircraft, surface, and submarine-launched, respectively) has a max range of about 77 miles for ship or submarine-launched weapons and about 138 miles for air-launched weapons.
Whereas before you had to get within 20 miles and hope the math was right and lob an unguided shell through the air to drop on target multiple times, now you can fire a missile from beyond the horizon, watch it fly just above the surface of the water to target, acquire its target on its own, pop-up and slam down into the target from above, most often breaking the keel of the target ship *in half* in a single shot.
Why rely on big guns when you can sink a navy without even seeing it?
Reason two: aircraft. WWII *really* drove home the point that the Age of the Battleship was over when entire fleets (and subsequent invasions) were destroyed without ever actually seeing each other. The Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway both mark that turning point. The Imperial Japanese Navy never learned the lesson (well, *they* did, but their higher-ups back on Japan didn’t) and that’s why they never recovered from Midway. The US (and subsequently the UK) figured that out pretty quickly and have since adopted their respective navies around air defense.
Modern navies don’t have big guns because it’s expected that the missiles and aircraft are going to be doing all of the damage. That’s why the Battleships were phased out of service; they were largely useless. Modern cruisers and desroyers are designed with air defense being the top priority, both against aircraft and incoming missiles.
Latest Answers