The History
Time was when a warship was measured by her guns. In fact, for most of the times there have been organized navies, that’s how it was done: Warships were basically floating gun platforms. That all changed, but pretty recently as such things go. World War 2, especially in the Pacific, changed all that. In the Pacific theater, the first naval battles were fought in which the ships of the two forces were never in visual range of one another. The battleships and heavy cruisers of the old order were out; it was the age of the aircraft carrier.
Leave it to the United States, though, to not only perfect the aircraft carrier and, more to the point, perfect the art of making a whole bunch of aircraft carriers really quickly, but also to produce the greatest battleships and the greatest naval guns ever. I refer, of course, to the Iowa-class battlewagons and their amazing 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 guns. Oh, I know, the Japanese fielded two battleships with bigger guns, but the Iowa-class in many ways still had those ships beat. More on that in a moment. First, let’s look at the ships, because they are worth looking at.
The Ships
Personally, as an old Army type, I was always a little bemused about the idea of riding around in a ship. Movement draws the eyes, and if one can see it, one can shoot it. But the Iowa-class could soak up a lot of hostile attention and stay in the fight. These were the ultimate development in American battleships: Tough, heavily armed, fast, and specifically designed to be able to (barely) transit the Panama Canal. There were originally six planned, but only four were built: BB-61, the Iowa, BB-62, the New Jersey, BB-63, the Missouri, and BB-64, the Wisconsin. Remember, it was one of these ships, the Missouri, that sailed into Tokyo Bay for the signing of the surrender that ended World War 2.
These were mighty ships indeed: 48,880 tons displacement, 887 feet long, 108 feet wide, with a draft of from 37 to 41 feet. They had a top speed of 33 knots, or 38 miles per hour, making them one of the fastest ships of their time, able to keep up with the Essex-class fast fleet carriers. Their armament when new included the big guns, nine 16in/50 caliber Mark 7s, but also 12 5in/38 caliber guns, 80 40mm AA guns, and 49 20mm AA guns. Later, they were fitted with Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles and the 20mm Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, or CIWS.
These big babies had a 12-inch armor belt. They were, by the standards of their time, almost unbeatable.
Note also that all four of the Iowa-class ships are now museums, while the ships built by our enemies from World War 2 are now all rusting away at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.
But the guns, that was what the ship’s purpose was: Taking those guns from place to place to take care of business. And what guns!
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The Guns
The 16-inch/50-caliber Mark 7 was the ultimate development in heavy naval guns. The 50-caliber, by the way, refers to the length of the barrel from chamber to muzzle as a multiple of the bore diameter. The Mark 7 guns had a 16-inch bore and a roughly 68-foot barrel length. That’s a lot of gun by any measure.
The reload cycle was fast and efficient, as these things go. According to the naval history site NavWeaps, the cycle went like this:
- Breech Opening
- Priming
- Cradle Opening
- Projectile Ramming
- Powder Transfer
- Powder Ramming
- Firing
This is, mind you, with projectiles waiting from 1,900 to 2,700 pounds, and bags of powder weighing 100 pounds each. This could be done twice per minute, meaning that the Iowa-class ships could send 36,000 pounds of bad news downrange every minute.
Speaking of downrange: The Mark 7 had an effective range of 24 miles, or 42,000 yards, more or less. They tossed several pieces of ordnance, including the Mark 8 armor-piercing, a 2,700-pound beast of a projectile, as well as the Mark 13 high-explosive round, a relative lightweight at 1,900 pounds, and later, after the war, the Mark 23 nuclear shell, which made the Iowa-class able to yeet a 20-kiloton hot rock at the bad guys.
Now, when it comes to World War Two, some will point out that the Japanese ships Yamato and Musashi had 18” guns. Bigger isn’t always better, though. The Iowa-class ships’ Mark 7 guns had a shorter reload cycle and a higher muzzle velocity, meaning that they were more accurate, had a greater range, and were significantly faster to reload. Rate of fire counts for a lot, and sometimes accuracy by volume counts, no matter how big the guns are.
The Iowa-class was America’s ultimate battleship, and the Mark 7 was America’s ultimate development in naval artillery.
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What About Now?
President Trump wants a new generation of battleships. Sadly, if perchance these get built, which doesn’t really seem likely, they probably won’t have nine 16-inch guns in three-gun turrets. That’s kind of too bad. Missiles are expensive, but shells are cheap, and it seems there are still instances where it might be useful to have a big, heavy brute of a ship that can park ten miles offshore and chuck high-explosive shells the size of sedans at targets well inland. For the cost of a few missiles, a new ship with guns like these could just sit out there and keep shoveling a ton of high explosives downrange with each shot, which could ruin a bad guy’s whole day. With today’s drone and satellite technology, finding and engaging targets for those guns would be easier than ever, as would adjusting fire. But that would require standing up an entirely new infrastructure to build guns and ammunition, since we’ve let all that sadly slide.
But we can always look back on those wonderful days, when the ships were big and had big guns, some of the best and biggest guns ever, chucking one-ton loads of attitude adjustments at targets over 20 miles distant. That’s a heck of a thing for America’s last big-gun ships.
