Post by simon darkshade on Sept 9, 2020 12:38:44 GMT
I came across this extensive article from the NYT in 1982 and thought it might be of interest to some:
RETURN OF THE BATTLESHIP
By William H. Honan
It is June 1983. The Government of Fidel Castro has been overthrown. A mob gathers outside the northeast gate of the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay - long a source of contention between Cuba and the United States. Insults are shouted at the marines on guard and demonstrators fire shots in the air. At first, there seems little danger of an actual attack. ''Gitmo,'' as the 45-square-mile enclave is known to American sailors, is surrounded by the largest mine field in the world, and air support is only minutes away in Key West. But then aerial reconnaissance reveals disturbing signs. Emplacements for antiaircraft guns and missiles, long abandoned by the Cubans, have been reoccupied, and troop concentrations are forming near Guantanamo.
What should the American Presi-dent do? He can reinforce the 420-man Marine Corps garrison, but even a sizable buildup of ground troops would not withstand a determined attack, and the sudden arrival of troops might actually destabilize the tense situation. He can threaten to bomb Cuban military installations, but that might only serve to unite the populace against the United States. There are other options, ranging from diplomatic initiatives at the United Nations to a naval blockade, but the President decides on another course - one that Teddy Roosevelt might have chosen. He sends the battleship New Jersey. In 1981, inspired by upheavals in the third world and the sense that America needed stronger conventional forces to fight limited wars, Congress appropriated $237 million to return the 39-year-old New Jersey to the active fleet and another $88 million to start taking out of mothballs her sister ship the Iowa. The Reagan Administration also plans to seek funds to reactivate the Missouri and the Wisconsin, the other two Iowa-class battleships. The total cost for all four is estimated to run between $1.5 billion and $3.5 billion. The return of the battleship has injected a significant new element into strategic planning. At facilities such as the Center for War Gaming of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., data describing the military forces and capabilities of opposing nations, along with facts about geographical and political realities, are fed into computers. War games are played by as many as 275 participants - including both adversaries and umpires -seated at video terminals on a floor the size of a ballroom. An aircraft carrier is represented on the video screens by a square of light with a slash through it; a battleship is a simple square. In recent months, these unadorned squares have figured importantly in at least two major games.
Although much of what goes on at the war games is highly classified, it is no secret that the Navy is convinced that battleships can play a crucial role in three basic limited-war situations. In the article that follows, these situations are presented in the form of three scenarios that, according to naval strategists, accurately reflect current thinking about the uses of the battleship. Also included are the views of critics who dispute the value of these World War II weapons in the age of the supersonic aircraft and the ''smart'' missile.
Show the Flag. In this first scenario, which poses the threat of an attack on the naval base at Guantanamo, the battleship is valuable for its power to inspire respect. ''You get a tremendous psychological effect from a battleship wherever it goes,'' says Gen. Robert H. Barrow, Commandant of the Marine Corps. ''People quickly realize this is something they can't deal with. North Vietnamese foot soldiers stood their ground and fired their rifles at supersonic jet airplanes, but nobody ever stood up to the New Jersey.''
Forcible Entry. Because of her remarkable ability to absorb punishment, and to dish it out, the battleship is widely believed to be ideally suited for supporting amphibious landings. The New Jersey showed what her nine 16-inch guns could do in 1969 when she nosed up to a small, heavily fortified island off North Vietnam. The enemy soldiers were allowed to escape unharmed. Then the dreadnought opened fire. A newspaper headline later told the result: ''The New Jersey Sinks an Island.''
Nonnuclear Global Conflict. Modified to serve as a launching platform for long-range cruise missiles, the four Iowa-class battleships will increase by 40 percent the number of capital ships the Navy can deploy at any one time. The battleships are seen as especially valuable offensive platforms in a nonnuclear conflict with the Soviet Union because of their extraordinary 32-knot speed, 1,500-mile range and exceptional survivability. The Presidential order to send the New Jersey to Cuba finds her cruising in the Atlantic. The next day, she and her four destroyer escorts appear 15 miles off Havana - clearly visible from shore but not in violation of Cuba's territorial waters. Then she vanishes, and 24 hours later appears in all her threatening majesty at the other end of Cuba off Santiago. These visitations create anxiety and uncertainty among Cuban leaders as to American intentions.
Such an initial gambit is a specialty of the battleship. The New Jersey's massive, 12-inch-thick armor belt enables her to go in harm's way. In contrast, the Navy's most potent surface vessel, the aircraft carrier, would normally be deployed 200 miles out at sea. Laden with highly combustible aviation fuel and protected only by lightweight armor, she would never dare venture so close to a potentially hostile shore. In terms of a show-the-flag mission, submarines lack the battleship's formidable presence, and aircraft lack staying power.
Three days after her arrival off Cuba, the New Jersey brazenly steams into Guantanamo Bay. The sudden sight of the giant warship frightens away a good many demonstrators. More flee when the New Jersey slews around her 65-foot-long turret guns and points them toward shore.
The next morning, the battleship is gone. She has demonstrated the power of the United States, but in a measured way, and without making a commitment from which it might be awkward to withdraw. It is March 1986. The Government of Indonesia has been overthrown by a group of ultranationalist army officers. One of their first acts is to announce that no vessel will be permitted to pass through the Strait of Malacca, which lies between Indonesia and Malaysia, without the express approval of the Indonesian Government. Furthermore, a levy will be placed upon all ships granted passage. This plan - similar to one proposed in 1972 by Razaleigh Hamzah, a high-level Malaysian Government official - threatens the vital movement of oil tankers from the Persian Gulf to Japan and the United States. The shortest alternative route would add 900 miles to the tankers' journey, but of greater consequence is the threat to the freedom of the seas.
The President of the United States decides to send American warships through the strait to reaffirm what admiralty lawyers call ''the right of innocent passage.'' A similar course was taken in August 1981 when the aircraft carrier Nimitz was dispatched to the Gulf of Sidra to challenge a Libyan claim that the entire gulf lay within her territorial waters. (It was during this mission that aircraft from the Nimitz shot down two Libyan fighters.)
But the Strait of Malacca is so narrow that an aircraft carrier cannot maneuver in order to launch and recover her aircraft. Furthermore, there is evidence that shore batteries are being set up along the Indonesian coast bordering the strait, creating a gantlet no carrier would dare run. In Washington, the Chief of Naval Operations recommends the use of battleships.
The New Jersey and the newly re-commissioned Missouri, on station in the South Pacific, are to be accompanied by eight destroyers, to provide antisubmarine and antiaircraft defense. A Japanese and a South Korean destroyer will also join the armada. The aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk and Constellation, on station in the Indian Ocean, are to move east to provide air cover.
The battleships and their escorts round Singapore without incident. But as they move into the Strait of Malacca, two Indonesian fast-attack craft dash out from an inlet on the coast of Sumatra, second largest of the Indonesian islands, firing missiles and torpedoes. Several missiles strike the battleships, without effect. Torpedo wakes boil harmlessly past the New Jersey, but on the Missouri the crew feel two violent jolts, and geysers of sea water spout up the port side.
Such torpedo explosions sank three World-War-I-vintage American battleships at Pearl Harbor. In the case of the World-War-II-era Missouri, however, they merely breach the outer hull, in no way endangering the safety or function of the ship.
It is possible that so-called shaped-charge missiles might have a more lethal effect. The shaped charge is an antiarmor weapon that penetrates a surface by focusing upon it, at the instant of impact, a torch of hot plasma. Norman Polmar, former United States editor of Jane's Fighting Ships and a prominent writer on naval subjects, believes that battleships may be vulnerable to the shaped-charge missile, and the issue was raised during the debate over reactivation of the battleships. The Navy quickly admits that there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. Unquestionably, a direct hit by a small nuclear weapon would do the job. And if an enemy were able to hit a battleship simultaneously with a multitude of shapedcharge warheads - one of which might penetrate the magazine, for example - the vessel could go down. The Navy points, however, that the battleship remains by far the toughest capital ship afloat.A case in point was the 73,000-ton Japanese battleship Musashi, which shrugged off no fewer than 16 American bomb hits without suffering any appreciable damage, and succumbed only after six waves of American torpedo planes drove 21 torpedoes into her hull, one of which chanced to slide through the hole punched by a predecessor and explode against the inner hull. When word of the Indonesian attack on the American vessels in the Strait of Malacca reaches the United States, Congress quickly grants the President the power to make war. But the President chooses to take only those steps that will assure free passage through the strait for all nations. An amphibious brigade of 8,000 marines is to be landed on Sumatra and the shore batteries there destroyed. A forcible entry, the second scenario for the use of the battleship, is about to unfold. The New Jersey and Missouri, along with their escorts, have cleared the Strait of Malacca and reached the Indian Ocean. There, an American assault force is quickly assembled, built around the battleships. It steams east at 20 knots, four antisubmarine destroyers leading the way. The New Jersey and Missouri cruise abreast, two miles apart, followed by 11 amphibious assault ships ranging in size from the 39,000-ton Belleau Wood, which carries 1,700 marines and 26 helicopters, to the 8,400-ton tank-landing ship Tuscaloosa.
The marines are drawn from amphibious ready-groups assigned to assault ships already stationed in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Once they have landed and established a beachhead, they will come under the command of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force.
As the assault force bears down on Sumatra, the carriers Kitty Hawk and Constellation, deployed 200 miles from shore in the Indian Ocean, launch their aircraft. Swarms of A-6 Intruders, low-level attack planes, sweep the sea of any Indonesian naval vessels and strike air bases throughout the country. F-14 Tomcat interceptors are sent along to destroy any hostile planes that manage to become airborne, but several of the enemy escape and fire their missiles at the American assault force. The battleships brush off these munitions as if they had come from peashooters, but the Belleau Wood is badly hit, suffering casualties and losing most of her troop-lift helicopters.
The Indonesians know that the Americans are coming, but they have no idea what orders the American commander has received from Washington. Will the Americans bombard Indonesian cities? Will carrier aircraft strike at Jakarta? Will the Americans attempt a landing? There is little the Indonesians can do other than to alert all forces, pack their armor on flatbed trucks - and wait.
The assault force is heading toward Banda Atjeh, a small port with its own airstrip, located on the northern tip of Sumatra. When the American force is 25 miles from Banda Aceh, the troop-carrying ships and their destroyer escorts part company with the battleships. They will remain just over the horizon from the shore while the battleships forge ahead, their paths cleared by twin-rotor helicopters trailing mine-sweeping gear.
When the New Jersey and the Missouri are within five miles of the port, salvo after salvo from their 16-inch guns light up the sky. Shore defenses are demolished. The roads leading to Banda Atjeh become as pockmarked as a lunar surface, preventing the arrival of reinforcements.
As soon as the fire ceases, troop-lift helicopters start landing marines on a plateau a few hundred yards from the airstrip. The troops are barely in place when the weather turns against them. A tropical deluge forces temporary cancellation of planned air strikes in support of the marine position by A-6 and A-7 attack planes from the American carriers. The Indonesian garrison at Banda Atjeh, which has survived the naval shelling until now, seizes the opportunity to attack. But a naval gunfire spot team that landed with the marines radios coordinates of the new targets to the New Jersey and the Missouri.
''Shot!'' calls the Iowa as she fires a spotting round. ''Splash!'' reports the spotter on seeing the impact. When the smoke clears, the spotter determines that the first shell has burst 50 yards behind the target. He calls to the Iowa: ''Beautiful! Drop five zero and fire for effect.''
Shells from the behemoths pound the shore relentlessly. It is this capacity of the battleship to provide uninterrupted gunfire support at times when air strikes are not possible, or when they cannot be continuous, that makes many strategists regard the battleship as indispensable in amphibious operations of this kind.
With local opposition suppressed, the marines quickly take possession of the the port and its airstrip. Now that they have secured the means of receiving fresh supplies and reinforcements, they can prepare for further operations. Soon the marines will start leapfrogging down the coast of Sumatra, destroying one shore battery after another, restoring free passage through the strait. It is June 1986. Nine Soviet divisions, consisting of the armor and mechanized infantry units based in the Transcaucasian military district, have suddenly and unexpectedly driven into northwestern Iran. They must cover some 800 miles, snaking their way through the rugged Zagros Mountains, before they can seize their prize, the oil fields near Abadan. Success would place oil-hungry Japan and much of Western Europe at the Russians' mercy.
On the first day, the Soviet troops gain 50 miles, the next day a little less. In Washington, the Secretary of State issues a warning that the United States is pledged to protect the integrity of Iran, and the President calls the Soviet party chairman on the ''Moscow hot line.'' But all is to no avail. Meanwhile, the Russian armor reaches the outskirts of Tabriz, almost half the distance to Abadan.
Even as the diplomatic initiatives are under way, the United States Navy is on the move, and it has options for dealing with the situation that were not available only a few years before. As a result of having reactivated the four Iowa-class battleships, the Navy has increased its forward-deployed strength by a remarkable 40 percent.
Naval strength is measured in terms of the number of available offensive platforms - ships that mount weapons capable of taking war to the enemy. In 1982, after launching the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Vinson, the Navy had 13 such surface platforms - the 13 aircraft carriers. But the aircraft carrier is a thoroughbred; for every carrier in deployment there are two others back home being overhauled or resupplied or having their pilots and crew brought up to peak performance levels. Thus, in practical terms, at any one time only four or five aircraft carriers were spread around the globe ready for action. The four Iowa-class battleships were transformed into major offensive platforms by being fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Tomahawks look like flying torpedoes with stubby wings; they can hit ships from 300 miles away, or land targets from 1,500 miles. The return of the battleships thus increased the Navy's number of offensive platforms from 13 to 17, but the practical impact was even greater. Battleships are workhorses and require fewer overhauls than carriers. Since only two of the four battleships needed to be back home at any one time, the Navy was able to increase the number of forward-deployed major offensive platforms from four or five to six or seven. By 1986, each of the battleships had become the nucleus for a so-called surface-action group whose power was second only to that of a carrier group.
Naval strategists saw this increase in offensive platforms as particularly important in the event of a major nonnuclear conflict between the superpowers. In such a situation, the adversaries would each try to prevent the other from concentrating military and naval forces at the battlefront. And that would lead to confrontations around the world that would rapidly turn a local conflict into a global war.
The wisdom of using battleships in this kind of conflict was hotly debated before Congress approved the battleship reactivation plan. Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, has argued that if the battleship was to be ''nothing but a floating missile silo,'' submarines would serve the purpose better. Submarines, he explains, are ''much harder for an enemy to find.'' John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, agrees about the utility of submarines and points out that four nuclear-powered attack subs are already being fitted with cruise missiles. However, he points out that refitting attack submarines is a slow and costly business, and he opposes converting submarines that are part of the nation's nuclear deterrent into platforms for conventional weapons. In sum, he says, ''reactivating a battleship is quicker and cheaper than building a submarine.'' The New Jersey is being recommissioned for about a million dollars less than the cost of a new attack submarine.
Norman Polmar, the naval writer, prefers Spruance-class destroyers as bearers of cruise missiles. It may take three destroyers to carry the number of missiles that will ultimately be carried by a battleship, he says, but the battleship gives the enemy a single large target. ''To a satellite,'' he says, ''that battleship will stand out like a sore thumb. Also, if we've got our cruise missiles on three destroyers and the enemy detects 50 destroyers he doesn't know which ones have the cruise missiles. Thus we have forced the enemy to send a plane out over each destroyer to find out.'' Secretary Lehman says the Navy does intend to put cruise missiles on Spruance-class destroyers when they come in for refitting. Eventually, the Navy plans to have 100 submarines and surface ships refitted with the missiles.
However, Lehman does not agree that battleships are such sitting ducks. ''With satellites and other sensors,'' he says, ''a 10,000-ton ship is just as easy to find as a 70,000-ton ship.'' That being so, he argues, the ship might as well be as big and tough as possible, with all the armor, damage-control equipment and other defenses that enable it to absorb hits and keep on fighting. The Iowa-class battleships are particularly survivable today, he says. They were built to withstand the kind of armor-pierc-ing shells used in World War II naval warfare, and those shells had far greater penetrative power than today's weapon of choice, the cruise missile, with its high-explosive warhead. Such a warhead can wreak havoc with the superstructures of post-World-War-II-ships, which are made of aluminum and fiberglass, but not with the heavily armored Iowas.
The debate over the ''survivability'' of the battleship is certain to continue, but meanwhile naval strategists are considering just how these new-old additions to the Navy can be used. One example is illustrated by the American response to a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Iran.
As soon as the first Soviet tank crosses the Iranian border, new orders are dispatched to the fleet. The battleship Iowa and her escorts in the North Atlantic are to wheel northward between Greenland and Iceland. The battleship New Jersey, on station in the North Pacific, is to lay a course for Kyushu, the southernmost of the major Japanese islands. These are carefully calculated moves on the chessboard of naval strategy, obscure only for the moment.
Meanwhile, the 80,000-ton aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the South Pacific begins racing ahead of her escorts at 32 knots through the Strait of Malacca; she will join the nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz, heading north in the Indian Ocean toward Iran. The carrier Saratoga in the Mediterranean is also boiling over the ocean - steaming eastward. The three carriers are like giant pincers converging on Iran. Within two days, with the Nimitz and the Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Oman, and the Saratoga east of Cyprus, all three are within striking distance of the long Soviet column grinding its way through the Zagros Mountains. And by the third day of the Soviet advance, the United States Air Force has ferried the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Myrtle Beach, S.C., to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis having granted the use of an airbase after some high-level diplomacy.
The American President has tried every peaceful means to dissuade Moscow from its course. He finally gives the order for United States forces to halt the Soviet advance.
The American carriers point their shovellike prows into the wind and send their jets shrieking aloft. Minutes later, the F-15's flying out of Saudi Arabia are engaged in furious dogfights with Soviet MIG's, while low-flying American land-based and carrier-based planes launch their television- and laser-guided bombs and missiles. They are particularly intent on destroying bridges and blocking passes and tunnels.
During the first three days, the Americans lose 18 planes, demonstrating again the lesson of the Yom Kippur and Six Day wars - the ability of armor to resist air attack. But the terrain has worked against the Russians. With bridges collapsed and tunnels blocked, the highway through the Zagros Mountains has become the biggest parking lot west of Teheran. The Soviet advance grinds to a halt.
For the time being, American air power has triumphed, but the Soviet Union is not about to accept defeat. The Russians have a number of formidable nonnuclear weapons ready to hurl at the American carriers that have been the chief source of Moscow's frustration.
The Soviet submarine squadron in the Indian Ocean, which includes a new Oscar - a nuclear-powered submersible cruiser of 18,000 tons with 24 cruise missiles - is unleashed against the Nimitz and the Kitty Hawk. Simultaneously, from the Crimean Peninsula, comes a flight of Soviet Backfire fighter-bombers -swing-wing supersonic aircraft equipped with long-range air-to-surface missiles.
The American forces dispatch a combination of attack submarines and carrier-based Lockheed S-3B Viking sub hunters to parry the Soviet underwater threat, and F-14 Tomcat interceptors are sent aloft to fend off the Backfires. But the Kitty Hawk sustains two missile hits that put her out of commission for 12 hours.
A still greater danger faces the Americans. Moscow had withheld significant outlying naval forces from the battle area so as not to tip its hand that an invasion of Iran was imminent. But now naval headquarters in the Kremlin contacts Rear Adm. V.N. Chernavin, commander of the Soviet Northern Fleet, embarked on the 25,000-ton nuclear-powered battle cruiser Kirov in the North Atlantic. Chernavin is ordered to take his surface-action group south into the Mediterranean; there he is to assist the Soviet squadron already on station in the destruction of the carrier Saratoga.
The Kirov is the largest warship, apart from aircraft carriers, to be built since World War II and the Soviet Union's first nuclearpowered surface vessel; she mounts both guns and 20 cruise missiles. When she was commissioned in 1981 at the Baltic Yard in Leningrad - the first of four new Soviet battle cruisers - the Kirov seemed a throwback to the 1930's, but she may well have been born of the same perceptions that led to battleship reactivation in the United States. Along with the Kirov, Chernavin's surface-action group includes the Kiev, a 42,000-ton VTOL aircraft carrier; two nuclear-powered missile cruisers; two older Sverdlov missile cruisers, and several Krestaclass cruisers and fast Kashin-class gas-turbine destroyers - all loaded with many dozens of antishipping cruise missiles with ranges of up to 300 miles.
Chernavin sets his course for the the G.I.U.K. Gap - the strategic ''choke point'' between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom. Suddenly his Rorsat radar satellite reveals the presence of a hostile surface-action group in his path. Two reconnaissance aircraft are dispatched, and soon their report comes back - it's the 43-year-old battleship Iowa, newly fitted out with advanced cruise missiles, blocking his way.
Chernavin has no desire to tangle with the Iowa. His surface-action group, he has been told, offers the Soviet Union its last chance to destroy or drive off the American carrier in the Mediterranean that has helped stop his country's invasion of Iran, and he feels he must save all of his cruise missiles for the Saratoga. He signals his fleet to increase speed to 28 knots, trying an end run around the Iowa, but the 32-knot battleship easily counters the move.
The frustrated Soviet admi-ral radios to naval headquarters for instructions. If the American force consisted only of missile cruisers and Spruance destroyers, Chernavin says, he would consider it an honor to trade cruise missiles with the Americans and take his chances. He might still have enough offensive punch left over to sink the Saratoga. However, in the case of the Iowa, the giant battleship would certainly survive his missile barrage, and then the American vessel would simply overhaul him with her extraordinary speed and blast him out of the water with her 16-inch guns. ''Should I take that risk?'' the admiral asks.
The Kremlin does not reply immediately. More bad news has just been received. While Chernavin was heading for the Mediterranean, Adm. V.V. Sidorov, the com-mander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, was proceeding under orders for the Indian Ocean. His goal was to eliminate the American carriers Nimitz and Kitty Hawk. But once again, an American battleship was in the way - this time, it was the New Jersey, on station off Kyushu. And along with those bad tidings, Moscow learned that the American 82d Airborne Division had just landed in Saudi Arabia. The presence of American ground troops in the area threatens a major escalation of the conflict, dramatically raising the stakes.
In the Kremlin, the Soviet leaders reassess the situation, and decide that the time has come to sit down at the peace table. Admirals Chernavin and Sidorov are ordered to withdraw.
The most important lesson of this hypothetical conflict, in the view of many naval strategists, is that the probable victor in any such struggle is the side that can bring the greatest number of resources to bear quickly. In Iran, as in all of the potential trouble spots around the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union has two enormous advantages. It is close by, and it has a huge and well-equipped standing army ready to move. For the United States to win in this area, American forces must be capable of reaching a trouble spot rapidly, before the situation has become hopeless. And the American military must also be capable of interdiction -of preventing the Soviet Union from bringing all its far-flung resources to bear upon the local conflict. The interdiction mission is one that the cruisemissile battleship can fulfill, not marginally, but with speed and power to spare.
To be sure, a real war, outside the war-gaming rooms in the Soviet Union and the United States, might not end so neatly as in the scenario above. Once the flag-draped coffins started coming home, it is a serious question as to whether or not both sides could refrain from resorting to nuclear arms. But short of such an Armageddon, in that range of conflict where it remains possible to think twice and where reason may yet prevail, the long-disparaged battleship can play a useful role in the arsenal of democracy.
www.nytimes.com/1982/04/11/magazine/return-of-the-battleship.html
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So much material here. If nothing else, it shows how the relative quality of articles in American newspapers has changed over the last 38 years.
RETURN OF THE BATTLESHIP
By William H. Honan
It is June 1983. The Government of Fidel Castro has been overthrown. A mob gathers outside the northeast gate of the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay - long a source of contention between Cuba and the United States. Insults are shouted at the marines on guard and demonstrators fire shots in the air. At first, there seems little danger of an actual attack. ''Gitmo,'' as the 45-square-mile enclave is known to American sailors, is surrounded by the largest mine field in the world, and air support is only minutes away in Key West. But then aerial reconnaissance reveals disturbing signs. Emplacements for antiaircraft guns and missiles, long abandoned by the Cubans, have been reoccupied, and troop concentrations are forming near Guantanamo.
What should the American Presi-dent do? He can reinforce the 420-man Marine Corps garrison, but even a sizable buildup of ground troops would not withstand a determined attack, and the sudden arrival of troops might actually destabilize the tense situation. He can threaten to bomb Cuban military installations, but that might only serve to unite the populace against the United States. There are other options, ranging from diplomatic initiatives at the United Nations to a naval blockade, but the President decides on another course - one that Teddy Roosevelt might have chosen. He sends the battleship New Jersey. In 1981, inspired by upheavals in the third world and the sense that America needed stronger conventional forces to fight limited wars, Congress appropriated $237 million to return the 39-year-old New Jersey to the active fleet and another $88 million to start taking out of mothballs her sister ship the Iowa. The Reagan Administration also plans to seek funds to reactivate the Missouri and the Wisconsin, the other two Iowa-class battleships. The total cost for all four is estimated to run between $1.5 billion and $3.5 billion. The return of the battleship has injected a significant new element into strategic planning. At facilities such as the Center for War Gaming of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., data describing the military forces and capabilities of opposing nations, along with facts about geographical and political realities, are fed into computers. War games are played by as many as 275 participants - including both adversaries and umpires -seated at video terminals on a floor the size of a ballroom. An aircraft carrier is represented on the video screens by a square of light with a slash through it; a battleship is a simple square. In recent months, these unadorned squares have figured importantly in at least two major games.
Although much of what goes on at the war games is highly classified, it is no secret that the Navy is convinced that battleships can play a crucial role in three basic limited-war situations. In the article that follows, these situations are presented in the form of three scenarios that, according to naval strategists, accurately reflect current thinking about the uses of the battleship. Also included are the views of critics who dispute the value of these World War II weapons in the age of the supersonic aircraft and the ''smart'' missile.
Show the Flag. In this first scenario, which poses the threat of an attack on the naval base at Guantanamo, the battleship is valuable for its power to inspire respect. ''You get a tremendous psychological effect from a battleship wherever it goes,'' says Gen. Robert H. Barrow, Commandant of the Marine Corps. ''People quickly realize this is something they can't deal with. North Vietnamese foot soldiers stood their ground and fired their rifles at supersonic jet airplanes, but nobody ever stood up to the New Jersey.''
Forcible Entry. Because of her remarkable ability to absorb punishment, and to dish it out, the battleship is widely believed to be ideally suited for supporting amphibious landings. The New Jersey showed what her nine 16-inch guns could do in 1969 when she nosed up to a small, heavily fortified island off North Vietnam. The enemy soldiers were allowed to escape unharmed. Then the dreadnought opened fire. A newspaper headline later told the result: ''The New Jersey Sinks an Island.''
Nonnuclear Global Conflict. Modified to serve as a launching platform for long-range cruise missiles, the four Iowa-class battleships will increase by 40 percent the number of capital ships the Navy can deploy at any one time. The battleships are seen as especially valuable offensive platforms in a nonnuclear conflict with the Soviet Union because of their extraordinary 32-knot speed, 1,500-mile range and exceptional survivability. The Presidential order to send the New Jersey to Cuba finds her cruising in the Atlantic. The next day, she and her four destroyer escorts appear 15 miles off Havana - clearly visible from shore but not in violation of Cuba's territorial waters. Then she vanishes, and 24 hours later appears in all her threatening majesty at the other end of Cuba off Santiago. These visitations create anxiety and uncertainty among Cuban leaders as to American intentions.
Such an initial gambit is a specialty of the battleship. The New Jersey's massive, 12-inch-thick armor belt enables her to go in harm's way. In contrast, the Navy's most potent surface vessel, the aircraft carrier, would normally be deployed 200 miles out at sea. Laden with highly combustible aviation fuel and protected only by lightweight armor, she would never dare venture so close to a potentially hostile shore. In terms of a show-the-flag mission, submarines lack the battleship's formidable presence, and aircraft lack staying power.
Three days after her arrival off Cuba, the New Jersey brazenly steams into Guantanamo Bay. The sudden sight of the giant warship frightens away a good many demonstrators. More flee when the New Jersey slews around her 65-foot-long turret guns and points them toward shore.
The next morning, the battleship is gone. She has demonstrated the power of the United States, but in a measured way, and without making a commitment from which it might be awkward to withdraw. It is March 1986. The Government of Indonesia has been overthrown by a group of ultranationalist army officers. One of their first acts is to announce that no vessel will be permitted to pass through the Strait of Malacca, which lies between Indonesia and Malaysia, without the express approval of the Indonesian Government. Furthermore, a levy will be placed upon all ships granted passage. This plan - similar to one proposed in 1972 by Razaleigh Hamzah, a high-level Malaysian Government official - threatens the vital movement of oil tankers from the Persian Gulf to Japan and the United States. The shortest alternative route would add 900 miles to the tankers' journey, but of greater consequence is the threat to the freedom of the seas.
The President of the United States decides to send American warships through the strait to reaffirm what admiralty lawyers call ''the right of innocent passage.'' A similar course was taken in August 1981 when the aircraft carrier Nimitz was dispatched to the Gulf of Sidra to challenge a Libyan claim that the entire gulf lay within her territorial waters. (It was during this mission that aircraft from the Nimitz shot down two Libyan fighters.)
But the Strait of Malacca is so narrow that an aircraft carrier cannot maneuver in order to launch and recover her aircraft. Furthermore, there is evidence that shore batteries are being set up along the Indonesian coast bordering the strait, creating a gantlet no carrier would dare run. In Washington, the Chief of Naval Operations recommends the use of battleships.
The New Jersey and the newly re-commissioned Missouri, on station in the South Pacific, are to be accompanied by eight destroyers, to provide antisubmarine and antiaircraft defense. A Japanese and a South Korean destroyer will also join the armada. The aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk and Constellation, on station in the Indian Ocean, are to move east to provide air cover.
The battleships and their escorts round Singapore without incident. But as they move into the Strait of Malacca, two Indonesian fast-attack craft dash out from an inlet on the coast of Sumatra, second largest of the Indonesian islands, firing missiles and torpedoes. Several missiles strike the battleships, without effect. Torpedo wakes boil harmlessly past the New Jersey, but on the Missouri the crew feel two violent jolts, and geysers of sea water spout up the port side.
Such torpedo explosions sank three World-War-I-vintage American battleships at Pearl Harbor. In the case of the World-War-II-era Missouri, however, they merely breach the outer hull, in no way endangering the safety or function of the ship.
It is possible that so-called shaped-charge missiles might have a more lethal effect. The shaped charge is an antiarmor weapon that penetrates a surface by focusing upon it, at the instant of impact, a torch of hot plasma. Norman Polmar, former United States editor of Jane's Fighting Ships and a prominent writer on naval subjects, believes that battleships may be vulnerable to the shaped-charge missile, and the issue was raised during the debate over reactivation of the battleships. The Navy quickly admits that there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. Unquestionably, a direct hit by a small nuclear weapon would do the job. And if an enemy were able to hit a battleship simultaneously with a multitude of shapedcharge warheads - one of which might penetrate the magazine, for example - the vessel could go down. The Navy points, however, that the battleship remains by far the toughest capital ship afloat.A case in point was the 73,000-ton Japanese battleship Musashi, which shrugged off no fewer than 16 American bomb hits without suffering any appreciable damage, and succumbed only after six waves of American torpedo planes drove 21 torpedoes into her hull, one of which chanced to slide through the hole punched by a predecessor and explode against the inner hull. When word of the Indonesian attack on the American vessels in the Strait of Malacca reaches the United States, Congress quickly grants the President the power to make war. But the President chooses to take only those steps that will assure free passage through the strait for all nations. An amphibious brigade of 8,000 marines is to be landed on Sumatra and the shore batteries there destroyed. A forcible entry, the second scenario for the use of the battleship, is about to unfold. The New Jersey and Missouri, along with their escorts, have cleared the Strait of Malacca and reached the Indian Ocean. There, an American assault force is quickly assembled, built around the battleships. It steams east at 20 knots, four antisubmarine destroyers leading the way. The New Jersey and Missouri cruise abreast, two miles apart, followed by 11 amphibious assault ships ranging in size from the 39,000-ton Belleau Wood, which carries 1,700 marines and 26 helicopters, to the 8,400-ton tank-landing ship Tuscaloosa.
The marines are drawn from amphibious ready-groups assigned to assault ships already stationed in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. Once they have landed and established a beachhead, they will come under the command of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force.
As the assault force bears down on Sumatra, the carriers Kitty Hawk and Constellation, deployed 200 miles from shore in the Indian Ocean, launch their aircraft. Swarms of A-6 Intruders, low-level attack planes, sweep the sea of any Indonesian naval vessels and strike air bases throughout the country. F-14 Tomcat interceptors are sent along to destroy any hostile planes that manage to become airborne, but several of the enemy escape and fire their missiles at the American assault force. The battleships brush off these munitions as if they had come from peashooters, but the Belleau Wood is badly hit, suffering casualties and losing most of her troop-lift helicopters.
The Indonesians know that the Americans are coming, but they have no idea what orders the American commander has received from Washington. Will the Americans bombard Indonesian cities? Will carrier aircraft strike at Jakarta? Will the Americans attempt a landing? There is little the Indonesians can do other than to alert all forces, pack their armor on flatbed trucks - and wait.
The assault force is heading toward Banda Atjeh, a small port with its own airstrip, located on the northern tip of Sumatra. When the American force is 25 miles from Banda Aceh, the troop-carrying ships and their destroyer escorts part company with the battleships. They will remain just over the horizon from the shore while the battleships forge ahead, their paths cleared by twin-rotor helicopters trailing mine-sweeping gear.
When the New Jersey and the Missouri are within five miles of the port, salvo after salvo from their 16-inch guns light up the sky. Shore defenses are demolished. The roads leading to Banda Atjeh become as pockmarked as a lunar surface, preventing the arrival of reinforcements.
As soon as the fire ceases, troop-lift helicopters start landing marines on a plateau a few hundred yards from the airstrip. The troops are barely in place when the weather turns against them. A tropical deluge forces temporary cancellation of planned air strikes in support of the marine position by A-6 and A-7 attack planes from the American carriers. The Indonesian garrison at Banda Atjeh, which has survived the naval shelling until now, seizes the opportunity to attack. But a naval gunfire spot team that landed with the marines radios coordinates of the new targets to the New Jersey and the Missouri.
''Shot!'' calls the Iowa as she fires a spotting round. ''Splash!'' reports the spotter on seeing the impact. When the smoke clears, the spotter determines that the first shell has burst 50 yards behind the target. He calls to the Iowa: ''Beautiful! Drop five zero and fire for effect.''
Shells from the behemoths pound the shore relentlessly. It is this capacity of the battleship to provide uninterrupted gunfire support at times when air strikes are not possible, or when they cannot be continuous, that makes many strategists regard the battleship as indispensable in amphibious operations of this kind.
With local opposition suppressed, the marines quickly take possession of the the port and its airstrip. Now that they have secured the means of receiving fresh supplies and reinforcements, they can prepare for further operations. Soon the marines will start leapfrogging down the coast of Sumatra, destroying one shore battery after another, restoring free passage through the strait. It is June 1986. Nine Soviet divisions, consisting of the armor and mechanized infantry units based in the Transcaucasian military district, have suddenly and unexpectedly driven into northwestern Iran. They must cover some 800 miles, snaking their way through the rugged Zagros Mountains, before they can seize their prize, the oil fields near Abadan. Success would place oil-hungry Japan and much of Western Europe at the Russians' mercy.
On the first day, the Soviet troops gain 50 miles, the next day a little less. In Washington, the Secretary of State issues a warning that the United States is pledged to protect the integrity of Iran, and the President calls the Soviet party chairman on the ''Moscow hot line.'' But all is to no avail. Meanwhile, the Russian armor reaches the outskirts of Tabriz, almost half the distance to Abadan.
Even as the diplomatic initiatives are under way, the United States Navy is on the move, and it has options for dealing with the situation that were not available only a few years before. As a result of having reactivated the four Iowa-class battleships, the Navy has increased its forward-deployed strength by a remarkable 40 percent.
Naval strength is measured in terms of the number of available offensive platforms - ships that mount weapons capable of taking war to the enemy. In 1982, after launching the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Vinson, the Navy had 13 such surface platforms - the 13 aircraft carriers. But the aircraft carrier is a thoroughbred; for every carrier in deployment there are two others back home being overhauled or resupplied or having their pilots and crew brought up to peak performance levels. Thus, in practical terms, at any one time only four or five aircraft carriers were spread around the globe ready for action. The four Iowa-class battleships were transformed into major offensive platforms by being fitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Tomahawks look like flying torpedoes with stubby wings; they can hit ships from 300 miles away, or land targets from 1,500 miles. The return of the battleships thus increased the Navy's number of offensive platforms from 13 to 17, but the practical impact was even greater. Battleships are workhorses and require fewer overhauls than carriers. Since only two of the four battleships needed to be back home at any one time, the Navy was able to increase the number of forward-deployed major offensive platforms from four or five to six or seven. By 1986, each of the battleships had become the nucleus for a so-called surface-action group whose power was second only to that of a carrier group.
Naval strategists saw this increase in offensive platforms as particularly important in the event of a major nonnuclear conflict between the superpowers. In such a situation, the adversaries would each try to prevent the other from concentrating military and naval forces at the battlefront. And that would lead to confrontations around the world that would rapidly turn a local conflict into a global war.
The wisdom of using battleships in this kind of conflict was hotly debated before Congress approved the battleship reactivation plan. Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, has argued that if the battleship was to be ''nothing but a floating missile silo,'' submarines would serve the purpose better. Submarines, he explains, are ''much harder for an enemy to find.'' John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, agrees about the utility of submarines and points out that four nuclear-powered attack subs are already being fitted with cruise missiles. However, he points out that refitting attack submarines is a slow and costly business, and he opposes converting submarines that are part of the nation's nuclear deterrent into platforms for conventional weapons. In sum, he says, ''reactivating a battleship is quicker and cheaper than building a submarine.'' The New Jersey is being recommissioned for about a million dollars less than the cost of a new attack submarine.
Norman Polmar, the naval writer, prefers Spruance-class destroyers as bearers of cruise missiles. It may take three destroyers to carry the number of missiles that will ultimately be carried by a battleship, he says, but the battleship gives the enemy a single large target. ''To a satellite,'' he says, ''that battleship will stand out like a sore thumb. Also, if we've got our cruise missiles on three destroyers and the enemy detects 50 destroyers he doesn't know which ones have the cruise missiles. Thus we have forced the enemy to send a plane out over each destroyer to find out.'' Secretary Lehman says the Navy does intend to put cruise missiles on Spruance-class destroyers when they come in for refitting. Eventually, the Navy plans to have 100 submarines and surface ships refitted with the missiles.
However, Lehman does not agree that battleships are such sitting ducks. ''With satellites and other sensors,'' he says, ''a 10,000-ton ship is just as easy to find as a 70,000-ton ship.'' That being so, he argues, the ship might as well be as big and tough as possible, with all the armor, damage-control equipment and other defenses that enable it to absorb hits and keep on fighting. The Iowa-class battleships are particularly survivable today, he says. They were built to withstand the kind of armor-pierc-ing shells used in World War II naval warfare, and those shells had far greater penetrative power than today's weapon of choice, the cruise missile, with its high-explosive warhead. Such a warhead can wreak havoc with the superstructures of post-World-War-II-ships, which are made of aluminum and fiberglass, but not with the heavily armored Iowas.
The debate over the ''survivability'' of the battleship is certain to continue, but meanwhile naval strategists are considering just how these new-old additions to the Navy can be used. One example is illustrated by the American response to a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Iran.
As soon as the first Soviet tank crosses the Iranian border, new orders are dispatched to the fleet. The battleship Iowa and her escorts in the North Atlantic are to wheel northward between Greenland and Iceland. The battleship New Jersey, on station in the North Pacific, is to lay a course for Kyushu, the southernmost of the major Japanese islands. These are carefully calculated moves on the chessboard of naval strategy, obscure only for the moment.
Meanwhile, the 80,000-ton aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk in the South Pacific begins racing ahead of her escorts at 32 knots through the Strait of Malacca; she will join the nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz, heading north in the Indian Ocean toward Iran. The carrier Saratoga in the Mediterranean is also boiling over the ocean - steaming eastward. The three carriers are like giant pincers converging on Iran. Within two days, with the Nimitz and the Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Oman, and the Saratoga east of Cyprus, all three are within striking distance of the long Soviet column grinding its way through the Zagros Mountains. And by the third day of the Soviet advance, the United States Air Force has ferried the 354th Tactical Fighter Wing out of Myrtle Beach, S.C., to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis having granted the use of an airbase after some high-level diplomacy.
The American President has tried every peaceful means to dissuade Moscow from its course. He finally gives the order for United States forces to halt the Soviet advance.
The American carriers point their shovellike prows into the wind and send their jets shrieking aloft. Minutes later, the F-15's flying out of Saudi Arabia are engaged in furious dogfights with Soviet MIG's, while low-flying American land-based and carrier-based planes launch their television- and laser-guided bombs and missiles. They are particularly intent on destroying bridges and blocking passes and tunnels.
During the first three days, the Americans lose 18 planes, demonstrating again the lesson of the Yom Kippur and Six Day wars - the ability of armor to resist air attack. But the terrain has worked against the Russians. With bridges collapsed and tunnels blocked, the highway through the Zagros Mountains has become the biggest parking lot west of Teheran. The Soviet advance grinds to a halt.
For the time being, American air power has triumphed, but the Soviet Union is not about to accept defeat. The Russians have a number of formidable nonnuclear weapons ready to hurl at the American carriers that have been the chief source of Moscow's frustration.
The Soviet submarine squadron in the Indian Ocean, which includes a new Oscar - a nuclear-powered submersible cruiser of 18,000 tons with 24 cruise missiles - is unleashed against the Nimitz and the Kitty Hawk. Simultaneously, from the Crimean Peninsula, comes a flight of Soviet Backfire fighter-bombers -swing-wing supersonic aircraft equipped with long-range air-to-surface missiles.
The American forces dispatch a combination of attack submarines and carrier-based Lockheed S-3B Viking sub hunters to parry the Soviet underwater threat, and F-14 Tomcat interceptors are sent aloft to fend off the Backfires. But the Kitty Hawk sustains two missile hits that put her out of commission for 12 hours.
A still greater danger faces the Americans. Moscow had withheld significant outlying naval forces from the battle area so as not to tip its hand that an invasion of Iran was imminent. But now naval headquarters in the Kremlin contacts Rear Adm. V.N. Chernavin, commander of the Soviet Northern Fleet, embarked on the 25,000-ton nuclear-powered battle cruiser Kirov in the North Atlantic. Chernavin is ordered to take his surface-action group south into the Mediterranean; there he is to assist the Soviet squadron already on station in the destruction of the carrier Saratoga.
The Kirov is the largest warship, apart from aircraft carriers, to be built since World War II and the Soviet Union's first nuclearpowered surface vessel; she mounts both guns and 20 cruise missiles. When she was commissioned in 1981 at the Baltic Yard in Leningrad - the first of four new Soviet battle cruisers - the Kirov seemed a throwback to the 1930's, but she may well have been born of the same perceptions that led to battleship reactivation in the United States. Along with the Kirov, Chernavin's surface-action group includes the Kiev, a 42,000-ton VTOL aircraft carrier; two nuclear-powered missile cruisers; two older Sverdlov missile cruisers, and several Krestaclass cruisers and fast Kashin-class gas-turbine destroyers - all loaded with many dozens of antishipping cruise missiles with ranges of up to 300 miles.
Chernavin sets his course for the the G.I.U.K. Gap - the strategic ''choke point'' between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom. Suddenly his Rorsat radar satellite reveals the presence of a hostile surface-action group in his path. Two reconnaissance aircraft are dispatched, and soon their report comes back - it's the 43-year-old battleship Iowa, newly fitted out with advanced cruise missiles, blocking his way.
Chernavin has no desire to tangle with the Iowa. His surface-action group, he has been told, offers the Soviet Union its last chance to destroy or drive off the American carrier in the Mediterranean that has helped stop his country's invasion of Iran, and he feels he must save all of his cruise missiles for the Saratoga. He signals his fleet to increase speed to 28 knots, trying an end run around the Iowa, but the 32-knot battleship easily counters the move.
The frustrated Soviet admi-ral radios to naval headquarters for instructions. If the American force consisted only of missile cruisers and Spruance destroyers, Chernavin says, he would consider it an honor to trade cruise missiles with the Americans and take his chances. He might still have enough offensive punch left over to sink the Saratoga. However, in the case of the Iowa, the giant battleship would certainly survive his missile barrage, and then the American vessel would simply overhaul him with her extraordinary speed and blast him out of the water with her 16-inch guns. ''Should I take that risk?'' the admiral asks.
The Kremlin does not reply immediately. More bad news has just been received. While Chernavin was heading for the Mediterranean, Adm. V.V. Sidorov, the com-mander of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, was proceeding under orders for the Indian Ocean. His goal was to eliminate the American carriers Nimitz and Kitty Hawk. But once again, an American battleship was in the way - this time, it was the New Jersey, on station off Kyushu. And along with those bad tidings, Moscow learned that the American 82d Airborne Division had just landed in Saudi Arabia. The presence of American ground troops in the area threatens a major escalation of the conflict, dramatically raising the stakes.
In the Kremlin, the Soviet leaders reassess the situation, and decide that the time has come to sit down at the peace table. Admirals Chernavin and Sidorov are ordered to withdraw.
The most important lesson of this hypothetical conflict, in the view of many naval strategists, is that the probable victor in any such struggle is the side that can bring the greatest number of resources to bear quickly. In Iran, as in all of the potential trouble spots around the Persian Gulf, the Soviet Union has two enormous advantages. It is close by, and it has a huge and well-equipped standing army ready to move. For the United States to win in this area, American forces must be capable of reaching a trouble spot rapidly, before the situation has become hopeless. And the American military must also be capable of interdiction -of preventing the Soviet Union from bringing all its far-flung resources to bear upon the local conflict. The interdiction mission is one that the cruisemissile battleship can fulfill, not marginally, but with speed and power to spare.
To be sure, a real war, outside the war-gaming rooms in the Soviet Union and the United States, might not end so neatly as in the scenario above. Once the flag-draped coffins started coming home, it is a serious question as to whether or not both sides could refrain from resorting to nuclear arms. But short of such an Armageddon, in that range of conflict where it remains possible to think twice and where reason may yet prevail, the long-disparaged battleship can play a useful role in the arsenal of democracy.
www.nytimes.com/1982/04/11/magazine/return-of-the-battleship.html
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So much material here. If nothing else, it shows how the relative quality of articles in American newspapers has changed over the last 38 years.
