Battleships were knocked out by aircraft carriers. Even without missiles, battleships would still be obsolete.
The main thing is that the amount of firepower projected by the aircraft carrier, the delivery distance, and the delivery flexibility far exceed that of the battleship.
Naval warfare is essentially how to deliver enough firepower to the opposing ship at a greater distance and with greater precision.
Whether it is an aircraft carrier or a battleship, it is essentially the core firepower of the positioning fleet to deliver the battleship, that is, how to deliver the most firepower, longer distance, higher precision, and higher efficiency to the opponent, so as to eliminate the opponent.
Battleships used artillery, and artillery, as an ancient means of fire delivery, had the biggest advantage of fast reaction, relatively good accuracy, and low cost.
However, the disadvantage is that if the range and power are to be increased, the construction cost and use cost will increase rapidly, and there is actually a problem of delivery limit. No matter how big the tube is, how far can the cannonball be thrown?At the end of the period, the 406 460mm giant tube reached a range of more than 40km, which is the limit. In fact, the accuracy at this limit is very impressive.
In fact, artillery bombardment is a line-of-sight operation, which is also the reason.
The method of fire delivery of the aircraft carrier is the aircraft, and even without taking into account the later missiles, the aircraft itself drops bombs and torpedoes, and the advantages over artillery are too obvious.
The first is range. The distance of the aircraft's firepower is equal to the range of the aircraft, which is at least a few hundred kilometers, which is far beyond the visual range of surface ships.
The first is power, the upper limit of the bombs used by the aircraft can be easily increased, and the flexibility is also very high, which has a clear advantage over artillery.
In fact, it is precisely because of the strike distance and strike ability of the aircraft that the first pile of defense is useless after the appearance of the aircraft.
In the era of battleships, there was an upper limit to the power of the main gun, so you can also consider the armor belt, which can counteract the opponent's attack to a certain extent, so there can still be a back and forth** battle.
However, the high-yield bombs and torpedoes used by the aircraft could not be defended by armor belts. Anti-air defense can only be actively defended, and passive beating to death is certain.
That is to say, the aircraft changes the offensive and defensive modes, and finally makes ** abandon the road of armored passive defense.
Returning to the comparison of battleships and aircraft carriers, even without missiles, battleships have no advantage in purely comparing the effectiveness of aircraft carriers and battleships.
At the beginning of World War II, the status of the capital ship of the battleship was quickly replaced by the aircraft carrier, and the battleships in the middle and late stages of World War II were basically reduced to escort or ground fire support ships, and at the same time, the battleships were mainly aircraft carriers.
As for missiles, this is a type of ammunition or means of attack, which itself replaces artillery and bombs.
Missiles have a longer range of use than shells and bombs, accuracy of use, and naturally quickly replace the main position of artillery and bombs.
If there are no missiles, the attack advantage of aircraft against surface ships is still the same, the Navy's fire projection center is still the aircraft carrier, and then the other ** is to serve the aircraft carrier as the core, then its operation is to defend against other aircraft carrier attacks, that is, air defense and anti-submarine warfare.
Considering that there are no long-range missiles, then the aircraft attack on the ** or the continuation of the bomb and torpedo mode of World War II, then its surface ship defense circle can be relatively small, and its effectiveness will be increased.
Such a large surface ship is presumably an anti-aircraft fire platform filled with anti-aircraft guns.
In fact, there is no difference with the current aircraft carrier formation mode, only the difference between artillery and missiles.