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In WW2 the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise ending to the dominance of the battleship, marking the first time that a power attempted to attack Battleship's
by lumost 6y ago
In WW2 the attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise ending to the dominance of the battleship, marking the first time that a power attempted to attack Battleship's by air. While this had been theorized for a few decades, all of the great powers continued to invest in battleships.
No power has attempted to sink a carrier since 1945, there is ultimately limited data on how effective any anti-carrier weapon developed in the last 80 years would be in practice.
- corty 6y agoModern naval mines are torpedoes waiting on the sea floor for a carrier swimming by. Place a few where you know the carrier will drive over by sub, carrier sunk. Or just use the sub directly, modern small electric subs are undetectable in exercises, the sub will only be sunk when firing torpedoes. By then it is too late for the carrier. Saturation by long-range antiship missiles is also possible to work, if the Falkland War is any indication. And then there are the "deorbit a tungsten telephone pole" kind of ideas that just might work on a carrier, have no defense and are within the realm of possibility for both China, Russia and basically every state with the capability to get a few tons into some low orbit. Against sophisticated enemies, carriers are giant billboards with "shoot me" written on them.
- m4rtink 6y agoThe Battle of Taranto preceded Pearl Harbor and was a direct inspiration for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto Italian battleships were targeted & 3 were disabled. Also the British tried to sink the Argentinian aircraft carrier during the Falkland War and it escaped preatty much just due to luck.