Modern Gun Tech: What would WWII style battleship & cruiser guns look like with modern technology?

Modern guidance could turn a battleship shell into a protected sub-calibre or fin-deploying projectile rather than a simple unguided round.

Modern mechanisms might raise large-gun elevation to about 55 degrees, but steeper mountings would impose major turret and loading costs for little practical naval benefit.

Battleship armour is presented as protection against an initial hit at a designed range, not a guarantee against repeated accurate fire.

The simulation approximates Yamato's 18.1-inch battery, period radar and heavy protection to create a demanding target for the modernised British gun system.

The British test ship combines Admiral Chatfield's automatic 14-inch concept with a longer barrel, super-heavy shells and modernised fire control.

A long-range gun matters only where it can still hit and penetrate, so the simulated King George V tries to stay just outside Yamato's effective 18-inch range.

Automatic loading raises the rate of fire, demanding deeper magazines while shifting crews from loading work toward maintenance and supply.

A Duke of York variant tests what the King George V design might have achieved if four automatic quadruple 14-inch turrets had been practical.

Against a simulated Tirpitz with 15-inch guns, the automatic 14-inch ship can fight near 30 kilometres while its opponent remains unable to reply.

Reliable guidance would make repeated salvos more dangerous because follow-on shells could be launched before the result of the first hit was known.

A modernised 14-inch ship is powerful only if its supporting technologies mature first, and any advantage disappears once rivals apply them to larger weapons.

A claimed long-range gun requires a credible response, but that response might be a better gun, missiles, carrier aircraft or another asymmetric capability.

Closing from about 40 to 30 kilometres lets Tirpitz score a steering hit, but repeated British fire destroys its main guns and sinks it.

Continued Soviet construction of gun-armed battlecruisers could have kept prestige, imitation and threat response behind large naval guns even after missiles became dominant.

The Ticonderoga discussion separates an administrative cruiser label from the traditional ability to cruise independently as a global-presence ship.

The Arleigh Burke's longevity is compared with the Swordfish outlasting the Albacore, showing how early problems can prevent a successor from establishing itself.

A fleet that kept developing very large guns would judge railgun barrel wear against a different engineering and maintenance baseline.

Large shells may tolerate transfer and reloading at sea better than delicate missiles intended for vertical-launch cells.

The closing thought experiment asks whether some navies would choose radar-rich big-gun ships as a cheaper, simpler alternative to carrier aviation.