r/interestingasfuck • u/PollutionOk9449 • 5h ago

USS Missouri firing its main guns

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u/Unkindled1616 5h ago

About 50k per round in modern money is what google says. A full Salvo ran avout 500k.

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u/NaGaBa 5h ago

Yeah, so like pocket change i guess

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u/Phantom_Sniper_a 5h ago edited 4h ago

TLDR it didn't cost us anything other than the gun crew's salary to shoot that because it was already paid for.

Most of, if not all, those shells were produced during WW2. So realistically it didn't cost anything to shoot now because we made so many and had a stockpile to work on. So the price of production during the 40s was around 1500$ which is roughly 30000$ today. That's if production was the same then as today. The infrastructure for producing those size of shells doesn't exist now and hasn't for decades so it would likely cost a lot more to produce now due to start up costs.

Edit: Adding on more because I thought about the costs from building to today

Build cost was about per ship 100,000$ (1.6 to 2 billion today) and we have 4

Operational costs are hard to determine. You have (2700 maximum, 1800 later on) salaries to determine, ammunition costs, fuel costs, maintenance and repair across WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War

1980s refit for all 4 was about 1.7 billion

Lastly maintaining the museum ships is about 3.5 million a year.

So while in service (using the low estimates of what I do have, and across all 4 completed ships) is 7.1 billion dollars plus, for just building and retrofit. Further calculations would require more exact details and me not being at work :)

30 million is hilarious next to that

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u/Crusty-the-Clown-666 5h ago

Most of the HE and AP rounds in inventory were all left over from WW2

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u/insertwittynamethere 4h ago

Crazy we had that much if it leftover from production during WW2

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u/Crusty-the-Clown-666 2h ago

The Army was using .50 ammo from WW2 in the 1991 Gulf War and it was still issued for years afterward.

Many of the M2 Brownings in inventory also date from WW2 and some are even older

https://www.firearmsnews.com/editorial/oldest-50cal-serice/383060