[General Battuta]

They were obsolete when they were built

I wouldn't go that far.  They were rendered obsolete by the introduction of air power into naval warfare (so, yeah, the Iowas and similar were obsolete when built, but earlier battleship designs weren't).  If sensors are a warship's most important system, then its air wing if it has one is certainly the second.

I dunno, the history of battleships as ships that do battle is littered with them dying in stupid ways even before the advent of the combat aircraft. They did occasionally blow each other up, but they were also fond of blowing themselves up, stepping on mines, getting interdicted by sailboats dropping mines, and befriending torpedoes or being so terrified of said torpedoes that they did all kinds of goofy things, ilu jellicoe, call me

[yuezhi]

* pecenipicek sighs in sadness...

at least you folks have some ships to be proud of. Croatian navy has a grand total of 5 missile boats, 2 of which were bought off from Finland. And thats about it. )if you want to read up)

at least you guys have salty beaches to brag about.

bolivians are so stubborn it's unbelievable.

[The E]

Earlier BB designs were just as obsolete. Their primary mission (killing other BBs) never materialized in a big fashion in either of the World Wars, as submarines turned out to be much more efficient at killing ships.

[newman]

If you happen to be playing a ww2 submarine simulator and manage to find and sink a battleship, then the BB is actually useful for the first time in it's life. For getting your tonnage score up

[Mongoose]

All of that being said, I was able to go on a tour of the USS New Jersey, and man, Iowa-class battleships look freaking AWESOME.

[The E]

They sure do. Meaning they are successful in their most important secondary mission, which is public relations

[NGTM-1R]

Earlier BB designs were just as obsolete. Their primary mission (killing other BBs) never materialized in a big fashion in either of the World Wars, as submarines turned out to be much more efficient at killing ships.

Sadly, as a thesis, that doesn't really appear to hold up. You're equating the ability to kill ships with the ability to kill battleships; more importantly, you're equating the ability to kill ships with primary mission of a battleship. Like most surface ships they are designed to kill similar ships, but that does not make it their primary mission.

Battleships are power-projection tools, like most military objects. Their mission is to assert control of the sea, securing it for the passage of friendly shipping and denying passage to enemy shipping. In that mission, they were in general wildly successful. The British Grand Fleet decided the course of the First World War. They did it in the legislature, by building more dreadnaught battleships than the High Seas Fleet could realistically destroy, but they did it nonetheless.

[The E]

I will defer to your judgement on this issue.

[NGTM-1R]

I'd also note that the aircraft carrier didn't immediately change the equation of the need for battleships as a counterforce to other battleships, and nor did the submarine. Submarines and aircraft are, in essence, weapons of sea denial. They can make an area unsafe for the enemy, but their respective limitations mean they can't really make it safe for the passage of your forces. That was good enough to starve an island nation like the UK or Japan, but it would not suffice against Germany or the United States. Surface ships are required to take and hold water much as infantry are required to take and hold ground. (Hence why carriers have escorts.) There was a time before the carrier was able to sweep away enemy surface craft reliably and with little danger.

The turning point is about mid-1943, as the tools and doctrine of the aircraft carrier were not yet sufficiently developed before that to render them safe against a fast battleship making a run in under cover of darkness from outside the range of their strike and recon aircraft. (Spruance avoided this very fate at Midway explicitly over the objections of his carrier commanders, while Hornet, if it hadn't already been a blazing hulk, would have become one rather quickly at Santa Cruz. The repeated Japanese bombardments of Guadalcanal also offer good evidence that the range of aircraft was not quite sufficient to always catch enemy ships in the open.) Even if only to defend the carriers against others of their kind in a night engagement, they had a purpose and a place until then.

After that, though, the equivalent tonnage in destroyers would have been a better use.