Gentlemen,alecsandros wrote:Well, I am quite confident about Iowa's AAA gunnery... 80 Bofors and 49 Oerlikons with 20 radar guided heavy AA guns was a lot... And if 2 IOwa's woudl be operating together, they would put up an umbrella of fire from nearly 300 AA guns...
Not enough to stop a massed air attack (with, say, 40-50 bombers), but enough to deal with an incoming squadron of 8-12 (slow) attackers.
I've been reading about hte Channel Dash lately, and the number of Swordfish and Beaufort destroyed by AA artillery was about 50% of the RAF losses that day (14 out of 29)
And that allthough the German formation did not have a massive AA defence that 2 Iowas would have...
I was watching a program on Leyte Gulf today and it showed pictures of Yamato and Musashi as well as other Japanese Battleships and it appeared that they were very well armed for AA defence but in the end they both succumed to air attack with Musashi at Leyte Gulf an Yamato later on, so I do wonder if any capital ship was doomed if attacked by torpedo carrying aircraft, I say torpedoes as I'm not sure if even armour piecing bombs such as those carried by carrier planes would sink a battleship on their own.