Why early missile ships kept their guns

Why did missile-era warships retain guns rather than rely wholly on missiles?

Limited missile stocks and difficult at-sea reloading made guns a useful reserve when a ship needed sustained firepower.

Missiles were powerful but carried in limited numbers, while replenishing them at sea posed practical difficulties. Naval guns offered a deeper and more flexible ammunition reserve for situations that did not justify expending a scarce missile. Officers shaped by the Second World War also understood the operational danger of exhausting a ship's principal weapon supply. The answer therefore frames retained guns as practical insurance for sustained combat rather than as mere institutional conservatism.