Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "The Drydock - Episode 045" video.

  1. The correct answer to the last question is - the existence of enemy naval mines and ground-based anti-ship missiles which have the same or longer ranges than any monitor gun. Even if you have air supremacy they can be hidden and fired at your monitor - During the 1999. NATO bombing of FR Yugoslavia, even with almost total air supremacy NATO failed to locate and destroy a single P-15 system, (either based on land or on Yugoslav frigates and missile boats) and NATO ships stayed well outside their range of 80kms (except a few times when they closed to 70kms trying to bait the Yugoslavs to take an easy to dodge maximum range shot and reveal their position). Here is the description of the naval component of that war from the Yugoslav perspective (in Serbian, use google translate, but note that the text and pics are copyrighted https://vojnopolitickaosmatracnica.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/ratna-mornarica-vojske-jugoslavije-u-odbrani-od-nato-agresije-iskustva-i-pouke/. ) NATO probably learned their lesson during the First Gulf War when the battleship USS Missouri, which was escorting a minesweeper that was clearing Iraqi naval mines was targeted by two Silkworm missiles (Chinese copy of the P-15) and was saved by the escorting British ship that intercepted one missile while the other missed. But had the Iraqis been in a position to fire a large number of them in a salvo, the Missouri would have probably been hit and either sunk or heavily damaged and knocked out of the war.
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