Originally Posted by perseus

Most 'modern' battleships designs must have dated from pre-WW2 or early WW2, before the impact of air power was fully realised. However, consider that with sufficient foresight the big guns of the Battleships were designed to elevate to high angles and fire fragmentation shells (I think some of the smaller calibre weapons were indeed dual purpose).

Now consider how these ships and fleets were engaged, by closely packed squadrons of aircraft. Imagine the effect of a large 1.5t shell of the Yamato exploding within the vicinity of such a squadron using radar controlled range detonation. I expect several dozen of these shells could be fired off before a squadron could get within dive bombing range since they would be within range for 20 miles or more. This type of tactical AA fire would surely consign squadron style attacks to history and force aircraft to disperse and change their approach strategy. As far as I know no battleship ever had this ability, therefore their AA potential was never fully tested.

Interestingly enough I read some accounts by Swordfish pilots that the Bismarck fired its main guns into the water in front them during their attack creating large walls of water in an attempt to force them up.

Whilst interesting I'm not sure that such tactics could b relied upon to give a reasonable defence against air attacks. For one thing the rate of fire of the main guns would seem to me to be a major weakness. Coming back to the the modern application of battleships it does seem to me that they are, for the moment, unequaled at providing close offshore support to an amphibious landing. With the application of cruise missile launchers, as the Americans did with their reactivated Iowa class, battleships can also perform the function of a guided missile destroyer on a larger scale. As with aircraft carriers they would need perimeter defence against air and submarine attack but that isn't a major issue for the US Navy.

It's really down to the cost of keeping these leviathans afloat. It's the same issue that the US and British tank armies found in the two Gulf Wars, that large concentrations of firepower, be they land based or naval based, are stupendously thirsty and expensive to maintain for long periods of time. Modern forces need to downsize whilst maintaining or increasing their combat effectiveness. That's another reason why battleships really are consigned to history, along with the MBT in it's current format, before too long.

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

Whilst interesting I'm not sure that such tactics could b relied upon to give a reasonable defence against air attacks. For one thing the rate of fire of the main guns would seem to me to be a major weakness. Coming back to the the modern application of battleships it does seem to me that they are, for the moment, unequaled at providing close offshore support to an amphibious landing. With the application of cruise missile launchers, as the Americans did with their reactivated Iowa class, battleships can also perform the function of a guided missile destroyer on a larger scale. As with aircraft carriers they would need perimeter defence against air and submarine attack but that isn't a major issue for the US Navy.

It's really down to the cost of keeping these leviathans afloat. It's the same issue that the US and British tank armies found in the two Gulf Wars, that large concentrations of firepower, be they land based or naval based, are stupendously thirsty and expensive to maintain for long periods of time. Modern forces need to downsize whilst maintaining or increasing their combat effectiveness. That's another reason why battleships really are consigned to history, along with the MBT in it's current format, before too long.

True but it should be realized that the ideal application of the Battleship's firepower is where circumstances can guaranteed there will be very poor or even non-existant capacity for launching a missile, air or a number of other modes of attack attack on said Battleship. They do have anti-missile capabilites installed, but send enough missiles at the same time and it's bye-bye battleship.
In terms of ship vs ship naval engagements, they present a very big target and concentrates a lot of firepower into 1 kill (rather than having it spread out among a large number of faster moving ships.) And I don't know if any good solution to air attacks has ever been envisioned.
I think that a big part of the reason that they took such a long time to retire the big WW2 battleships was because there was something glorious and grand about have a floating monster with such amazing destructive power. Certainly there were other benefits.