Shipbucket

Well, they have the Iowa class hanging about, though I don't know, can they still be reactivated if needs be?
So they could be noted as having the biggest guns still floating.

But yeah, peru has the biggest guns on an active ship. But only really because they haven't been replaced in the last 70 years. It doesn't make them good.

Oh and no, a modern day battleship would not be useful. Not really. They're too expensive, and too vulnerable to air attack. (unless accompanied by a carrier, but then you may as well just have the carrier, because it can do the job better)

ALMIRANTE GRAU!!!!!!!!!!! The former Dutch the De Ruyter!

Despite what the BB club claims, reactivating any of the Iowas isn't an option any more.

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Didn't think so.
Not that they would be particularly (read: at all) useful these days. You don't need enormous guns for shore bombardment... ever...

The USN did trial the 8-in automatic, which could have been shipped forward on a Spruance; but the project was terminated. Notwithstanding the current excellent 5-in there was still a good argument for a larger calibre weapon for shore bombardment. There was also the RN 6-in project that was never completed.

The 8" didn't deliver the accuracy the project demanded, so they terminated it.

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Thanks I know that during the 1st Iraq Kuwait war the Iowa guns rained down fear among the Iraqi troops on the receiving end. I just wanted to see if something like this would be viable, I know during the Falklands Britain did do some shore bombardment of different areas to harass and disrupted the Argentinians but would it be viable for a whole class of vessels.

What about something like Korea or say the Balkans to suppress areas where you may not want to send in manned planes and or expensive missiles.

Yeah, we did some disruption during the Falklands. Hell, we even sank an enemy vessel using a ships gun. But you know what we used? A 4.5 inch gun. It's big enough for basically anything you need really.
You don't need a big gun ship for any real reason, because it would be an expensive development for no real reason.

The plans and a certain amount of the tooling are still floating around someplace. I think it was evaluated for placement on a Burke at one point. Also the accuracy issues were influenced by the size of the hull that it was tested on. If placed on something like a CSGN it would have most likely worked wonderfully.
I salute your thought processes.

Oh, it's a lot more viable than a full on battleship, the problem is that time has passed it by for the most part. Don't get me wrong, I could see a ship mounting several 155mm+ guns in the next 50 years, but I'll explain bellow what has over taken it in the past ten years or so.
That's just about the perfect mission for a UAV swarm. Cheep, light UAVs each carrying a handful of PGMs (of various sizes up to and including SDBs and JDAMs). This option wasn't available ten years ago, but was on the horizon.

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Rather than a ship mounting several 155's, would a ship mounting a naval rail gun not be a better choice of armament. I mean they are in testing phases now, and yes, they will need a bunch of hardware developments before being viable, but still in the next 20-30 years I wouldn't be surprised if they became the main mounting on ships (well... maybe not all. A normal gun can do some things a rail gun couldn't)