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?
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Guided missiles and aircraft carriers happened.
The trend is going to precision and stealth. If a tomahawk missile can take out a warship in a hit or two precisely.. same way with aircraft. If a modern jet can just take out / cripple uss iowa sized targets with single missiles.. you much rather have lots of missile based ships that excel in stealth that potentially guard aircraft carriers.
The age of the battleship died in ww2 with yamato getting swarmed by like 600 planes. Nowadays the yamato would be taken out with a handful of modern aircraft or a few tomahawks…which **vastly** outrange warship guns.
Smaller guns work against smaller vehicles/ bombardements, can be cased munition and so it can fire a lot faster thanks to being autoloaders
Near the end of ww2 we had the uss des moines.. that ship only has 203mm guns but they are autoloading, it can lay waste to more stuff than a battleship because it fires more weight downrange in the same time… this trend just continued with main guns… so most guns you find are something like 75mm-150mm guns…due to them being capable of autoloading without a breech charge like a battleship gun needs..larger guns basically cannot be fired like a normal rifle with a cased munition but more like a cannonball.
Additionally: you beat armor with speed. Not caliber. Those guns are really capable…which is why some research and development goes towards railguns..hence why 406mm uss iowa guns and bismarcks 380mm gunsand yamatos 460mm guns. are pretty similar in danger, iowas shells are about as lethal as yamatos shells were… longer barrels, speedier shell.
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