How does a battleship defend itself against submarines?

Question

if a battleship cant fire beneath itself, how does it defend against enemy submarines? and do they require assistance by the air force?

Answer 1

Battleships are no longer in service unless you mean in the old days. They used depth charges

Answer 2

The battleship would have escorts of crusiers and destroyers that carry depth charges for anit submarine warfare.  If a torpedo was in the water the ship in the old days would try to manuver so that the torpedo would miss.

Answer 3

It really depended on what was viewed as a battleship.  They got very large in WII, but between WWI and WWII they were fairly small and so were the subs.  I doubt many of those ships even survived attacks.  The larger battleships like the Bismark could actually take the blows from the torpedoes of the time and did.  It took several ships and aircraft to sink the Bismark.  The best the subs could do was to knock out it's ability to maneuver.   Many battleships and aircraft carriers  had escorts and aircraft carriers still do.

One of the things about subs during WWII was they only dove to attack so at least their tower was sticking out of the water at any other time.  They were prime targets by aircraft and even long range cannons.

Answer 4

for one their are no active battleships since WWII but cruisers and frigates drop depth charges which are basically under water bombs

Answer 5

It uses a screen of smaller ships like destroyers or frigates.  Also a battleship, if it were to be deployed for propaganda purposes, would not be left without the protection of an aircraft carrier and submarines.

Answer 6

Old time battleships had no real defense against subs.

There were / are smaller ships that try to hunt subs. They are not very good at it though.

In today's Navy, since there is no 100% method for a surface ship to detect subs, every battle group is required to have a sub as their escort.

Only subs can hope to detect other subs.

We have tried many methods of detecting subs, for many years, but really only a sub can do it.

As for Air Force methods; they can not detect subs either.