How America’s Battleships Almost Became Part Aircraft Carrier

By Robert Farley,The National Interest

With World War II finished, the U.S. Navy faced a huge dilemma: what to do with the massive fleet of ships that it had constructed to defeat Japan and Germany. Some of the ships were sunk as part of the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll; others were quickly scrapped. Many were mothballed, put into reserve in anticipation of a future war against the Soviet Union. For decades, this reserve fleet would wait for a war that never came.

The Iowa-class battleships symbolized the Navy’s problem. Constructed at great expense over the course of the war, the four huge battleships ([Iowa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_(BB-61%29), [New Jersey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_New_Jersey_(BB-62%29), [Wisconsin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64%29), and [Missouri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_(BB-63%29); two sisters, [Illinois](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Illinois_(BB-65%29) and [Kentucky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66%29), would never enter service) offered capabilities that no foreign navy could match. However, technology had begun to render the battleship obsolete even before the end of the war; although the Iowas could perform carrier-escort and shore-bombardment duties, they would never face another battleship in combat (especially after the cancellation of the last Soviet battleship project).

But the Iowas were nevertheless magnificent ships, and various proposals emerged in and around the Navy to bring them back into service (indeed, even before the war was over some suggested converting the ships to aircraft carriers). These proposals would result in reactivations for the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the last stages of the Cold War. Indeed, some hopes for modernization persisted even into the 2000s.

Battleships in Reserve

The United States Navy preserved seventeen battleships in the immediate aftermath of World War II, including the prewar “Big Five,” the twoNorth Carolinas, the four South Dakotas, the twoAlaskas and the four Iowas. The Iowas exceeded the rest in size and speed, and thus represented better candidates for future modernization. Three of the four Iowas entered the reserve fleet in the late 1940s. The beginning of the Korean War, however, brought the ships back into service, with all four conducting shore bombardment operations along Korea’s coast. The Iowas lost their World War II-era floatplanes in favor of helicopters, but otherwise remained largely unmodified (although they did pick up some nuclear-capable 16” shells) All four ships returned to the reserve fleet over the course of the 1950s.

In 1968 the United States Navy reactivated the USS New Jersey as a platform for shore bombardment of Vietnam. New Jersey lost many of her smaller anti-aircraft guns (almost useless against modern jet aircraft) and received electronic upgrades during the process of reactivation, but otherwise remained close to original conditions. For six months between October 1968 and March 1969, the battleship patrolled the Vietnamese coastline in search of targets.

USS New Jersey was eventually withdrawn, due both to the demands of the peace process, and because the Newport News heavy gun cruisers could adequately fulfill the shore bombardment mission. However, New Jersey and her sisters remained in the thoughts of Navy planners. The construction of the Kirov-class nuclear battlecruiser (at twenty-eight thousand tons, considerably larger than any U.S. surface combatant) lent weight to the pro-battleship voices at the Pentagon. The naval and military buildup that began in the late Carter administration and that would continue during the Reagan years would see all four battleships returned to service.