Why Did the Battleship Become Obsolete?

Many people wonder why today's navies no longer deploy battleships. The answer is simple: it became obsolete. Why did it become obsolete? The answer to this second question is also simple; it did not have the long range fire projection an aircraft carrier does. The emergence of a warship that could carry a large number of fighters and dive bombers on board was what put an end to the reign of the battleship as the most powerful naval weapon. Thus, at the beginning of WW2, it had already become obsolete as a decisive weapon to alter or influence the course of a naval battle. Although battleships were protected by thick steel armor and armed with powerful, large-caliber guns, they lacked the enormous power projection capacity of fleet carriers, which they exert through the destructive might of their bombers and fighter aircraft they carry onboard.

Either to provide fire support to landing troops or confront an enemy fleet, the battleship fighting range was limited by the range of her naval guns, which means she could not put up a fight further away from the limit beyond which their guns projectiles could not reach. For example, the maximum fighting range of a World War II battleship was 23 miles, for that was the range of the 16″ guns it was armed with. Whereas as the fighting range of a carrier from the same epoch was 1,100 miles, for that was the range of a Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber. Today’s super carriers can project a fighting or destructive capacity up to 1,300 miles + 600 miles, which are the F/A-18 Hornet’s range plus the AGM-158 JASSM’s air-to-surface missile’s.

The Japanese were the first to envision this obsolescence of the battleship, since to carry out the attack on Pearl Harbor they used their fleet carriers instead of these heavy steel sea monsters. Although during the Cold War the USS Missouri, USS Iowa, and USS New Jersey were recommissioned, updated, and armed with long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, which gave them great power projection, all three of them were phased out after that period, for the cost of keeping each one of them operating was too high as they were too big and too heavy, guzzling up large amount of fuel and needing a large number of sailors and officers to keep them working. And today the job of anti-ship and cruise missile launching ship platform is performed by submarines, cruisers, and destroyers, which are smaller, lighter, and, therefore, less expensive to run.

Below, a World War II battleship bristling with powerful naval guns of all sort, whose fire power lacked the range of the carrier-based dive bombers.