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Originally Posted by GoinAllTheWay
Useless? What sank the Hood? The bloody big battleship you mentioned, the Bismark. And in 10 mins flat. Seems fairly useful to me. That ship also took a monstrous beating but still stay afloat. It took the entire British Navy and Airforce to sink it and only because it's rudder was to damaged that it couldn't make it back to port.
The battleship didn't become useless until the missle became mainstream.
And no, I never did wonder why the carriers were out at sea, they were doing manoveurs.
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And the Bismark was effectively rendered to turn in circles, waiting for the British battleships to finish her off, by a few obsolete bi-planes. (The Hood was a WWI era ship, effectively obsolete compared to the Bismark).
As late as Gulf War I, the US Navy found it useful to have a great big battleship blowing things up on land but it had been many, many decades since that kind of behemoth could sail around without air cover for protection.
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The Pearl Harbor attack plan had two immediate goals; the destruction of American aircraft carriers known to frequent the area, and the sinking of as many other capital ships as possible, especially battleships.
http://www.wtj.com/articles/pearl_harbor/
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I'll stick by the point the Japanese found the Taranto ambush very instructive . . . . . and I think Japan had about 10 fleet carriers at the start of WWII versus about four for the Americans which indicates where their thoughts were lying.
The Japanese were doing pretty well holding their own initially but for every carrier sunk, they lost valuable, highly trained pilots which they could never replace.
America, in turn, could turn out an infinite supply of highly trained pilots and continually updated equipment, hence the Great Mariannas Turkey Shoot later on.
At the end of the war, America had about 100 aircraft carriers in the Pacific alone.
Cowperson