The Mysterious 1944-45 Gibbs & Cox Battleship

Also, in March 1945 the reactors at Oak Ridge, Tenn. began delivering weapons-grade enriched uranium to Los Alamos, while those at Hanford, Wa. had begun delivering plutonium to Los Alamos in Feb. 1945.

Thus, FDR was aware that building and testing of actual atomic weapons were only a few months away (planned for the summer of 1945).

So he was well-aware that the near-term defeat of Japan was suddenly an even more-certain thing, thus spending all that money on warships was not needed.
 
RyanC said:
fishpond said:
Too, battleships did not figure in the projected late-war programs, apart from continued work on the two last Iowas. All of this makes me wonder where the King-Forrestal discussion was found.
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I believe some context is needed. This discussion was in SECNAV's office on 6 January 1945.

At this time, it's around December 1944 - January 1945. In Europe, the German War is raging on. The German collapse that looked inevitable suddenly reversed itself on 16 December 1945 with Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein; making it look like the War in Europe might drag on to possibly Summer 1945.

If Germany doesn't fall until late Summer 1945, it hopelessly dislocates US planning for the PTO (see attachment). I made a typo in that graph (labelled "V-J Day" as "V-E Day") but you can see how the longer Germany survives, the higher the probability of WW2 lasting into 1947 is).

The US has taken the Philippines in the Fall of 1944 and encountered the Kamikaze in it's first form. Wiki claims for the Leyte Gulf area: In total, seven carriers were hit, as well as 40 other ships (five sunk, 23 heavily damaged, and 12 moderately damaged) and about 2000 attempts during that phase.

Hence why we saw the FY1945 Fleet Program (2 x CVB, 6 x CV, 12 x CVE, 4 x CA, 6 x CL, 36 x DD, 18 x SS, 84 x total combatants) approved by FDR in one of his last major policy decisions -- as "fleet insurance"; i.e. pay for these ships now when they're at their cheapest, thanks to wartime wage restrictions in the shipyards and mass production of spare parts for all the components of the ships; and use them to replace hypothetical 1945-1946 (or 1947) war damaged ships in the post-war fleet; instead of spending $$$ to repair them.

However, by March 1945, the 1945 Combatant program was all but killed.

What changed by March 1945?

1.) Germany was pretty much done

Atlas of the World Battle Fronts in Semimonthly Phases to August 15 1945 - Wikisource, the free online library

en.wikisource.org en.wikisource.org
March 1, 1945 Front Lines

Atlas of the World Battle Fronts in Semimonthly Phases to August 15 1945 - Wikisource, the free online library

en.wikisource.org en.wikisource.org
March 15, 1945 front lines

This meant that an enormous amount of ASW resources in the Atlantic could be freed up and either decommissioned, or sent to the Pacific as replacements for damaged ships.

In the Pacific, Iwo Jima was ten days away from being secured (26 March 1945), while Okinawa was about to launch in about 15 days (1 April 1945.

Scheduled vs actual losses in warships were probably running lower than estimates.

This led to the decision to kill everything but the CVE section of the FY1945 program.
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"The German collapse that looked inevitable suddenly reversed itself on 16 December 1945 with Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein; making it look like the War in Europe might drag on to possibly Summer 1945." Don't you mean 16 December 1944?
 
BlackBat242 said:
Also, in March 1945 the reactors at Oak Ridge, Tenn. began delivering weapons-grade enriched uranium to Los Alamos, while those at Hanford, Wa. had begun delivering plutonium to Los Alamos in Feb. 1945.

Thus, FDR was aware that building and testing of actual atomic weapons were only a few months away (planned for the summer of 1945).

So he was well-aware that the near-term defeat of Japan was suddenly an even more-certain thing, thus spending all that money on warships was not needed.
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My Dear BlackBat, I would like to point out something:

On 30 December 1944; Groves and SecWar Stimson met with FDR in the White House; and Groves took with him a Memo that he had prepared for General Marshall a day before, dated 29 December 1944 that stated:

It is now reasonably certain that our operation plans should be based on the gun type bomb, which, it is estimated, will produce the equivalent of a ten thousand ton TNT explosion. The first bomb, without previous full scale test which we do not believe will be necessary, should be ready about 1 August 1945.

Our previous hopes that an implosion type of bomb might be developed in the late spring has now been dissipated by scientific difficulties which we have not been able to solve. However, we are continuing our efforts to overcome these difficulties and if the implosion type is brought to fruition this will not affect our plans for the use of this gun type bomb. We should have sufficient materiel for the first implosion type bomb some time in July. At this time this bomb would have a lesser effect being equivalent to about 1000 tons of TNT.
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There's not a lot about that conference known -- bits and pieces; Groves in his book says that it was "lengthy".
So in Late 1944/Early 1945, we know that:

Uranium Gun Bomb = 10,000 tons of TNT assured, but we can only get them every three months or so (imprecise approximation) due to slowness of U235 production at the enrichment level needed.

Plutonium Implosion = "Thousands of tons of TNT", not assured, but will be much more available than the U235 bombs.
 
Antonio said:
Aren't we going a bit off-topic here?
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Slightly; but you need to understand the context behind:

"Why is FADM King talking seriously about 'new 60,000 ton battleships' to be built in 1947 in a meeting in 1945?"

Also...

Another thing to keep in mind is that at the time, an "All Weather" attack capability was still a ways away for aircraft carriers.

Yes, you had radar equipped Avengers and Helldivers at the time; but the fit was rather primitive, and they were thinking doctrinally about keeping one CV in a Fast Carrier TF equipped specifically as a night carrier; due to the problems of mixing day/night ops with 1945 technology.

For a clear weather attack; a Fast Carrier Task Force (FCTF) with the following ships and loadout:

[Numbers taken from the March attack on Kure Japan by TF58]

9 x CV (69 x VF, 4 x VF[N], 15 x VSB, 15 x VTB ea.)
1 x CV(N) (1 x VF, 36 x VF[N], 18 x VTB(N) ea.)
6 x CVL (24 x VF, 9 x VTB ea.)

766 x Fighters
72 x Night Fighters
135 x Dive Bombers
189 x Torpedo Bombers
18 x Night Torpedo Bombers

1,180 A/C total theoretical capacity

Would be able to generate an "alpha strike" of about 158 x Bombers escorted by 163 x Fighters [321 A/C] (the rest being held back for CAP and other duties).

If you assume that the 158 bombers are carrying a 1000 lb GP bomb each, that's about 80 short tons of boom boom you can send in the daytime.

If, however you force a night attack; then your offensive strike capability drops to just 15~ bombers; or 7.5 short tons of offensive night capability.

So there was a need to consider battleships for nighttime contingencies -- besides the AA support they provided to Fast Carrier TFs.
 
Slightly relevant, the company is okay but the date is not. These are the export designs for the Soviets from 1936/37
4 Designs, 1 full Battleship (2x3,1x4 16") Design D and 3 Hybrid Battlecarriers with 4x2 18", 4x3 16" or 1x4,2x3 16" Designs A-C.
While we were searching for the 1944/45 design(s)
 
Tzoli said:
Slightly relevant, the company is okay but the date is not. These are the export designs for the Soviets from 1936/37
4 Designs, 1 full Battleship (2x3,1x4 16") Design D and 3 Hybrid Battlecarriers with 4x2 18", 4x3 16" or 1x4,2x3 16" Designs A-C.
While we were searching for the 1944/45 design(s)
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Sorry about that, the same channel has posted a video discussing the Hybrid Battlecarriers which Gibbs & Cox staffers allegedly referred to as 'Weapon X' while they were working on them. Fingers crossed something turns up about these shadowy 1944/45 proposals.
 
FLEET ADMIRAL KING: CA’s; four more.

CHAIRMAN VINSON: Building 27 of them now, and you propose 4 additional?

FLEET ADMIRAL KING: Four additional. That would give us 12 of these rapid-fire 8-inch. What is that tonnage?
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Oh, man, if only... 12x Des Moines class cruisers! :eek:
 
When were proximity-fused AA introduced ? And how quickly did they thwart the Japanese kamikase attacks ??

Sorry, lost the reference, but I vaguely remember reading that prox-fused AA promptly gave a factor-of-10 improvement in knock-down rates, astonishing every-one...

So, with nukes in the pipe-line and the kamikase menace stemmed...
 
Nik said:
And how quickly did they thwart the Japanese kamikase attacks ??
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Actually, they weren't particularly effective against kamikaze. The fragments from 5-inch shells were too light to ensure the complete destruction of kamikaze from single burst, and both train rate and rate of fire of 5-inch guns weren't sufficient to saturate. That's why USN, facing kamikaze threat, turned toward new solutions - 3-inch automatic guns (which could fire faster, and which shells were big enough for proximity fuze), and guided surface-to-air missiles (which could carry warhead big enough, to guarantee kamikaze destruction by one burst).
 
Nik said:
Sorry, lost the reference, but I vaguely remember reading that prox-fused AA promptly gave a factor-of-10 improvement in knock-down rates, astonishing every-one...
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It's against usual attack planes. Against kamikaze situation was much worse. The general idea of long-range air defense is not to destroy enemy planes, but to break the attack, damaging them and forcing them to evade. Problem is - kamikaze could not be stopped by damaging it. It would merely continue to press the attack, unfazed by damage (because it have no intention to return anyway). So the only way to reliably stop kamikaze is to destroy it completely. And proximity fuzed shells... well, they aren't exactly good for that. Unless the direct hit is scored, it took too many close bursts to reliably saturate kamikaze with fragments during its - very short! - attack run.
 
An idea formed in me...
Could it be that this Gibbs & Cox design mentioned by the Admirals have some connection to the King-Nimitz redesign of the last two Iowas, USS Illinois and Kentucky?
The date is quite close as well.

dd71uv6-c6b4dbd3-1e9b-4a98-a764-1d11df13e1d2.png
 
Dilandu said:
Would came too late to participate in the WW2 anyway... and would rapidly became obsolete in the missile era. Some would probably get their turrets removed & "Talos" missiles installed.
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Not sure about that, the Navy left all 3 of the "Des Memes" alone when planning the guided-missile conversions of other ships.

The Des Moines class was very good for flag operations and naval gunfire support. Could have had 3-4 of the class along the coast of Vietnam all the time (with allowances for port visits to reload).
 
I doubt that Gibbs & Cox was responsible for any USN battleship design. They were outsiders; USN designs, particularly for major ships, were very much the property of the Bureau of Ships and its large design organization. Gibbs himself, however, had strong political ties to the Roosevelt Administration, so I can believe King mentioning a Gibbs & Cox design to Vinson. It is usually claimed that King was still pressing for more ships in 1945 in order to preclude a postwar crash in naval construction -- there is abook called 'the Unsinkable Fleet' which says as much. In March 1945, however, FDR killed nearly the whole requested 1945 program. Gibbs & Cox were essentially outsiders, whcih is why there was no objection to them designing a battleship for the Soviets -- they would not be giving away USN design secrets. Probably ditto for the destroyers.

They did, however, design the machinery for many USN destroyer classes -- and on that basis said they had 'designed' the ships (which they had not done in any sense which would be familiar to this Board). At the end of the war they produced a brochure about their terrific deisgn accomplishments, which seem to have included the Kaiser CVEs, the Eastwind class icebreakers, and the LST (and posisbly the LSD, too -- I don't have the brochure at hand). The Kaiser story is credible because the ships were built by the Maritime Administration, not the Navy, and I think MarAd had ties with Gibbs & Cox.

USN files include references to changes wanted in BB 65 and 66, but you don't get the impression that there was any 60,000 ton battleship design. There would have been references, I think, in General Board papers -- there are files for virtually all important designs, other than auxiliaries. Battleship designs disappear after the Montanas, though modifications don't. I can imagine Gibbs trying to sell something at the end of the war, but no one seriously buying.

I should tell a story. About 1952-53 (an Olympic year, don't remember which) Gibbs wrote that the existing CVA 60 design was terrible; he proposed an alternative. His main improvement was higher speed, which turned him on (remember the liner United States). The response inside BuShips was that he had 'retained his amateur status.' On speed, the Gibbs & Cox office used to have a display of photos of prewar US destroyers, with their trial speeds -- it highlighted what it claimed was the fastest US destroyer of all. What that had to do with capability in real conditions I don't know.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Not sure about that, the Navy left all 3 of the "Des Memes" alone when planning the guided-missile conversions of other ships.

The Des Moines class was very good for flag operations and naval gunfire support. Could have had 3-4 of the class along the coast of Vietnam all the time (with allowances for port visits to reload).
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I think the Des Moines were included in planned conversions in the 1950s. By the time they would have been done, the Navy was going broke,a nd the cruiser conversion program was stopped (think the stress of Polairs and gross cost overruns on a lot of new technology). They were considered again (when there were two of them) for Tomahawk conversions in the 1980s, but the four Iowas were considered enough. I also think they were considered too cramped compared to the Iowas, which were also a lot more survivable.
 
fishpond said:
I think the Des Moines were included in planned conversions in the 1950s. By the time they would have been done, the Navy was going broke,a nd the cruiser conversion program was stopped (think the stress of Polairs and gross cost overruns on a lot of new technology). They were considered again (when there were two of them) for Tomahawk conversions in the 1980s, but the four Iowas were considered enough. I also think they were considered too cramped compared to the Iowas, which were also a lot more survivable.
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If they were included in the conversion plans, they were left till the end as the best all-gun cruisers.

IMO they should not have been converted, and left all-gun (or minimal conversions, dropping a pair or quartet of Mk13 launchers in place of the 5"/38s), for use as landing force command ships.
 
Scott Kenny said:
If they were included in the conversion plans, they were left till the end as the best all-gun cruisers.

IMO they should not have been converted, and left all-gun (or minimal conversions, dropping a pair or quartet of Mk13 launchers in place of the 5"/38s), for use as landing force command ships.
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The Des Moines nearly became the Albany/Boston/Providence class.

Like they were looking at them over the older classes due to their newness and size. Was felt that they would have less issues with... everything from hogging to overweight compare to them.

But they were in use and it was cheaper and easier to yank a Baltimore/Oregon/Cleveland class from the mothball yard then pull them off the line.
 
Dilandu said:
But why would navy of late 1950s be interested in gun cruisers?
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Because the recent Korean Conflict had re-invigorated the whole concept of conventional naval warfare - having proved that naval gunfire support of amphibious operations, naval shore bombardment of tactical targets (road/rail transport), and naval air support of ground operations were still a vital part of the nuclear world.
 
BlackBat242 said:
Because the recent Korean Conflict had re-invigorated the whole concept of conventional naval warfare - having proved that naval gunfire support of amphibious operations, naval shore bombardment of tactical targets (road/rail transport), and naval air support of ground operations were still a vital part of the nuclear world.
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Actually no. The universal conclusion among military was, that Korean War was aberration - it happened before suitable numbers of stratrgic and tactical nuclear weapons could be produced. By the late 1950s, gun-armed cruisers were viewed as relics of the past; why would anyone need to operate those costly, vulnerable ships, if tactical nuclear bomb (dropped by carrier plane or launched on missile from destroyer) could do their job much faster and cheaper?
 
Dilandu said:
Actually no. The universal conclusion among military was, that Korean War was aberration - it happened before suitable numbers of stratrgic and tactical nuclear weapons could be produced. By the late 1950s, gun-armed cruisers were viewed as relics of the past; why would anyone need to operate those costly, vulnerable ships, if tactical nuclear bomb (dropped by carrier plane or launched on missile from destroyer) could do their job much faster and cheaper?
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US still justified much of its building program around fighting Limited Wars like Korea, hence the reason why the Forrestal class had significant amounts of aviation fuel aboard for launching large conventional strikes.

We had this same conversation before, in a different thread if I remember correctly, when drawing plans for cruiser conversions as part of SCB-173, although they were briefly considered, the Des Moines and Worcester classes were explicitly rejected from conversion plans because they had the best gun armament, and thus were better suited to shore bombardment roles than the masses of Baltimore and Cleveland hulls that could be converted into Missile Cruisers.
 
Firefinder said:
The Des Moines nearly became the Albany/Boston/Providence class.

Like they were looking at them over the older classes due to their newness and size. Was felt that they would have less issues with... everything from hogging to overweight compare to them.

But they were in use and it was cheaper and easier to yank a Baltimore/Oregon/Cleveland class from the mothball yard then pull them off the line.
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Exactly. They were left to the last.

And then Korea showed it was a good idea to keep some all gun ships around.
 
And radar-directed naval gunfire was FAR more accurate than the unguided artillery rockets those rocket support ships fired, in addition to being much longer-ranged.

The USN had dozens of rocket-launcher fitted landing craft at the end of Ww2 - by the start of the Korean Conflict most had been scrapped or sold off. Yes, those remaining were sent to Korea, but more of those were disposed of after the armistice. The USN built 1 (and only 1) new rocket support ship in the 1950s - USS Carronade, laid down in 1952 and commissioned in 1955 - the concept was then dropped save for a handful of the type in reserve (including Carronade). These were reactivated for Vietnam, but were used for inshore (short-range) fire support only, while the guns of the heavy cruisers and battleships destroyed targets much further inland.
 
BlackBat242 said:
And radar-directed naval gunfire was FAR more accurate than the unguided artillery rockets those rocket support ships fired, in addition to being much longer-ranged.

The USN had dozens of rocket-launcher fitted landing craft at the end of Ww2 - by the start of the Korean Conflict most had been scrapped or sold off. Yes, those remaining were sent to Korea, but more of those were disposed of after the armistice. The USN built 1 (and only 1) new rocket support ship in the 1950s - USS Carronade, laid down in 1952 and commissioned in 1955 - the concept was then dropped save for a handful of the type in reserve (including Carronade). These were reactivated for Vietnam, but were used for inshore (short-range) fire support only, while the guns of the heavy cruisers and battleships destroyed targets much further inland.
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There were some other issues. The rocket craft couldn't deploy at fleet speed, and they were not designed for long voyages in the open sea. During the Vietnam War, there was a serious effort to design a new amphibious fire support ship (LFS), but it was not pursued. I think it was linked with the effort to develop a new long-range naval bombardment gun, initially a 175mm (to use Army ammunition) and then the lightweight 8in gun tried on USS Hull.

On the question of adding missiles to Des Moines class cruisers, the point of hte missile conversions of the 1950s was to supplement fleet air defense against Soviet jet bombers and then against missiles like AS-1. That inevitably meant big long-range weapons like Talos and, to a much lesser extent, Terrier. By the late 1950s the missile system involved was the abortive Typhon. Adding Tartars to Des Moines would certainly have improved her AA defense, but at a high cost -- the idea would have been a total conversion leaving few if any guns and a long-range missile system. Incidentally, Boston and Canberra were kept in commission after their early Terrier systems were obsolete (and perhaps deactivated) because their 8in guns were badly wanted. I should add that for a time about 1966 there was serious interest in fitting them to fire bombardment missiles (I think a navalized Lance) from their launchers.

As for the joys of Des Moines in the 1960s, remember that postwar rapid-fire gun mounts had a poor reputation, due to jamming (think Mk 42 5in'/54 gun, which had to be derated). I don't remember what caused the turret explosion in 1972 on board her sister ship.
 
fishpond said:
As for the joys of Des Moines in the 1960s, remember that postwar rapid-fire gun mounts had a poor reputation, due to jamming (think Mk 42 5in'/54 gun, which had to be derated). I don't remember what caused the turret explosion in 1972 on board her sister ship.
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I'm going to say off the top of my head, WW2 ammunition that had been poorly stored.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm going to say off the top of my head, WW2 ammunition that had been poorly stored.
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It was bad powder that underwent some sort of chemical breakdown that also result ed in the smoke becoming a warcrime.


That ended up condemning over half the the US Gun Cruiser ammo the old trash heap due to the navy not wanting it crews to need to wear gas masks while firing. Also slight resulted in the Iowa Powder being fuckered for their reactivation as they remixed the stuff to avoid similar break down, messing up the burn times.

Turns out storing powder for 40 year old while it made for only 10 years is a bad idea.

The 5 inchers were used often enough to avoid all that.
 
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Scott Kenny said:
fishpond said:
As for the joys of Des Moines in the 1960s, remember that postwar rapid-fire gun mounts had a poor reputation, due to jamming (think Mk 42 5in'/54 gun, which had to be derated). I don't remember what caused the turret explosion in 1972 on board her sister ship.
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I'm going to say off the top of my head, WW2 ammunition that had been poorly stored.
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The official cause of the gun barrel explosion on Newport News was "a defective auxiliary detonating fuze which caused the projectile to detonate almost immediately upon firing".
 

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