NOTE: I have no idea what specific type of ship this is.
https://www.tohokingdom.com/aliens_sdf/ ... isers.html
Four Single Shot Frontier Missile Launchers:
Four large missile launchers capable of launching one cruise missile before needing reloading were used against Godzilla to either slow down, change direction or kill the monster. Most the shots missed though some did get a direct hit and even set him on fire! In terms of effectiveness, the results were mixed. Once more Godzilla proved too powerful to kill with normal weapons, but unlike most this actually managed to hurt him rather than just anger him. The damage was minor and non-lethal to the monster but enough to deter him even shooting back at the ships let alone get in the water to attack them up close. He just wanted to get away. It caused the surrounding hills and beach to collapse into craters, slowing him down and the monster even changed direction, going a more roundabout way then he was originally, buying civilians more time to evacuate.
The downside was the dust and debris kicked up made it hard to keep visual on Godzilla, and by the time it did, the monster had already left the area or gotten behind tall hills preventing anymore barrages to slow him down. Still it did buy the JSDF time to get their Artificial Lightning Generators up and their helicopters armed with metal nets, which nearly did what so many weapons fail to do, kill Godzilla.
Anti-Aircraft Guns:
As was shown with the 1954 incident, AA Guns are too small a caliber to do anything to Godzilla and thus went unused. Powerful against warplanes, not so much against giant monsters.
ASW Torpedo Tubes:
Powerful Anti-Sub Weapons, Godzilla did not enter the water and indeed rather get away from the battleships than fight them, so these weapons went unused, though one has to wonder if they would have had similar results to the cruise missiles or if he would have powered through them like he has depth charges in the past.
Much like the Japanese planes that buried him under ice & snow in an avalanche during the 1955 incident, the U.S. Navy's battleships showed that conventional weapons still had a place among their anti-kaiju brethren like the Artificial Lightning Generator and Maser Cannon Tanks. Even if they can't harm a monster enough to injury or kill them or even harm them at all, they can still be used to beat them or buy time under the right circumstances, it is for this reason they continued to use normal weapons as support for super weapons in the coming years where monster attacks became more common. War had changed, it was no longer about nations or boarders but a species survival against large animals and invaders from other worlds.
I normally don't cover conventional weapons, since most times they end up as useless heaps of scrap metal and I find the more sci-fi weapons or unconventional ones like power lines itresting but I decided to cover this one cause it did get results. In a post World War 2 Japan, their military had many of the more power weapons taken away, destroyed or decommissioned and were left with basic firepower to defend themselves but not invade, hence why a lot of anti-kaiju weapons we see early on just wouldn't be conventional for warfare, they are frail or immobile and have a crippling specialization, fighting monsters.. Here we got to see Godzilla get slammed with really heavy firepower and while it had better results, it still wasn't enough. The Artificial Lightning Generator ends up coming the closest to actually beating Godzilla.
It's also interesting seeing Godzilla's character evolved. He ran away from these in Mothra vs Godzilla but by the time the 80's rolled around we actively see Godzilla destroying large naval fleets in the Heisei and Millenium films occasionally. It's a shame we don't see him or another monster fight the U.S. Navy in the American films, as many ships have nuclear reactors, that power source combined with their large size could carry and power up laser guns, maser guns and railguns which fun fact, the U.S. Navy has a laser gun and railgun in real life.
It's also interesting to note that this scene was in the U.S. cut but not Japanese. I don't know if it was made after the fact or if it was simply cut out of the Japanese version but kept in the U.S. cut cause, you know, Japan's people might not be happy seeing the U.S. military firing bombs on their shores only 20 years after WW2 ended.
