USS Gerald R Ford, another huge win for Trump

[FriendlyFire]

The US more or less kept their pre-Washington Naval Treaty battleships away from the front lines after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese, on the other hand, sent their dreadnoughts into battle, and got slaughtered accordingly.
The Battleship classes the US built after the WNT (North Carolina, South Dakota, and Iowa) were designed with much better AA systems than dreadnoughts, making them much more durable in the era of naval aviation. All of the Japanese capital ships in WWII were horribly outdated, save the aforementioned Yamato & Musashi, which sank without ever seeing a US Battleship.

Japan had no choice, the vast majority of the aging and about to be retired flotila of destroyers and other ships were at there end of service life and no retrofitting could fix
Ship maintance facilities could not even keep up with the demands of the exisiting fleet let alone keep up with new construction, essentialy Japan naval strength had peaked and many of the older ships just had to be used or shortly scrapped
Then the Japanese could not upgrade there ships with the new changing war demands such as more AAA, the Japanese never even managed to solve the problems with the exisitng triple AAA mount which would shake so much when firing that it would throw of accurate shooting. I think Japan only manage to put radar onto there main ships within the last year of the war

 

[danjuno]

Were the Iowa's build to WNT limits, or were they built after it was obvious to everyone but the British the WNT was dead in the water?

The latter, same for the North Carolina and South Dakota.

US battleships in WWII didn't see much combat against other battleships.

Yeah, even the new Battleships were attached to the carriers as escorts and to landing groups for bombardment. Guadalcanal and Surigao were the sole exceptions.

In the naval battles around Guadalcanal 2 US battleships eventually got into it, and 2 Japanese battleships were sunk.

The Japanese capital ships at Guadalcanal weren't even full-sized dreadnoughts, but rather battlecruisers. And one (the Hiei) was felled by destroyer and air attacks in the first phase of the battle before the US battleships even showed up. (The Naval battle of Guadalcanal was actual two separate battles several days apart.) The second, Kirishima managed to knock out the electronics on South Dakota, but while she was distracted, the Washington snuck up to about 5,800 Yards (basically point blank for battleships) and blew Kirishima to pieces.

These were new American ships, not ones that were at Pearl Harbor.

When did I say they were?

5 of the battleships which were 'sunk' at Pearl Harbor fought in the last ever battleship on battleship Battle of Surigao Strait.

Yes. There were six dreadnoughts in total (one of which, the Mississippi was absent at Pearl.) The West Virginia, California, & Tennessee had been rebuilt after being damaged at Pearl Harbor. Like Guadalcanal, only one Japanese dreadnought (Yamashiro) was still operational when the US battleships got involved, and the six-to-one fight was even worse for the IJN than the two-on-one at Guadalcanal.

The US only lost 2 battleships are Pearl Harbor. And "officially" only 1. Oklahoma was eventually refloated. But never returned to service.

Yep. Oklahoma was written off for scrap, but sank while being towed back to the mainland. The Arizona was the only active Battleship totally destroyed. Utah was also sunk and left where it was, but it was so outdated it had already been demoted a training ship ten years earlier under the London Naval Treaty. The West Virginia sank upright in her berth in the shallow waters of Battleship Row, and was eventual returned to service, but did not see action until Leyte.

 

[r16]

in a similar vein , one can enlarge that to "all Allied battleships" , once they figured out CAPs were a good thing to break up formations of enemy planes . Leaving the rest to the lack of accuracy of planes in those days and flak guns to get more of the attackers . Whatever Japanese successes they had in '44 and beyond was down to fluke ,lucky hits and the like . Though apparently there was a single case of Japanese "stacked" in formation and they got USS Princeton out of that .