Yes it would. Even better if they had Hornets for the Navy and Marines to fly against the Zero's and Betty's... But that's not how progress works.

Wasn't it the Newport News that had the accident where one of the guns blew up?

@@downunderrob That is correct. In 1972 while conducting shore bombardment off the coast of Vietnam, one of the 8-inch guns on the Newport News suffered a premature detonation of one of its projectiles while still in the barrel. If memory serves me correct the culprit was a faulty fuse. Probably worth noting that the USS St. Paul also suffered a turret explosion while conducting shore bombardment off the coast of Korea. The St. Paul was a traditional bag propellant gun though, not the semi-fixed auto loading guns like on the Des Moines class.

Was a crew member of Newport News. 12 shipmates lost in that explosion.

@@rickstone6633 dam...thats awful man...

The three Des Moines class cruisers that were completed. A number of others were canceled at the end of the war. Only Salem is still around, she is a museum ship in Quincy, MA at the location of the shipyard where she was built.

If I stumble across one in the various archives ... yes.

I believe some US amhib shups in the 80's had a single 8" for shore bombardment.

I've not yet found one. Though I'll keep an eye out for it.

No thanks. Alcohol poisoning is not my friend.

The weight is better spent on missiles. They reach a lot farther, and hit a lot harder for a lot less weight. Guns are still useful for cheaper, prolonged, bombardments. As long as you keep the price per round down (looking at you Zumwalt class.) Any ships big enough to mount one of these at present would be a glass cannon.

@@Einwetok the line I was trying to draw, was on how in a very short time warships went from massively armored to minimally armored. Missiles and sensors are the way for sure, it just seems rapid to me how quickly the armor disappeared in favor of good radar.

@@SuperDriver379 There's no doubt an armored ship from that period would stand up better to an Exocet, for example. Lot's of smaller navies use similar missiles now. The Soviets , as soon as they could copy or equal our missile tech, pushed designs that were floating missile barrages. Their ant-ship mission was to volley all their ship killers at once to swamp our carrier group's defenses. If the Cold War went hot, any of the missiles in that volley could be nuclear. All the armor in the world won't save you if a blast gets close enough. The ship might still be floating, but it's irradiated, the electronics are cooked, and the crew will be dying or dead. We had nuclear torpedoes, air to air nukes, air to surface, surface to air, take your pick. Our boomers had a different launch authority too, more localized. That's the philosophy that pushed designs from that era.

The ship and crew is just too expensive for that, and artillery shells pack a lot less explosive than cruise missiles, rockets, and bombs. Marines would be ill-served by these when aircraft and missiles and rockets provide literally a lot more bang for the buck. These are fantastic machines, but obsolete.

Probably 'electrically primed'.

They did have an early form of radar directed gun control and I'm sure they wouldn't rapid untill they had thier target bracketed. Besides at that time an actual ship to ship gun battles had become less likely and big guns were put to good use in shore bombardment.

90 rounds per min.

I'd you not listen to the part about the gun directors... Its radar guidance for the guns

@@nigelsmith7366 When firing 10 salvos a minute. A salvo every 6 seconds. There will be continuous water splashes and spray. But, because there are so many salvos flying through the air at the same time you won't be able to know which splashes are from which salvo. So you won't be able to know what corrections need to be made for the next salvo.

They're not going to fire max rate, and they wouldn't be able to sustain it for long. They'd shoot the liners out of the barrels pretty quickly.