It's been said that a soldier with fixed bayonet has a certain calming effect on belligerents. Well, the same can be said for a capital ship sitting at anchor in a belligerent nation's harbor.
An aircraft carrier with all those airplanes looks bad, but what's it going to do sitting there? It's got to go to sea, turn into the wind, and launch the sortie, which, a flotilla of fishing boats can cause a CANC EX without too much trouble.
A Battleship is another thing entirely. Even the duty dog catcher can envision that serenely anchored bad boy turning those three turrets with the nine 16" guns in his direction and letting loose with a salvo of baby killer sabots or HE rounds that would ruin his and his town's day for an eon or two.
A battleship has a certain calming effect on petty despots when it is detected off said depot's coast.
The Iowa class BBs were built to take a direct hit from the Japanese navy's biggest guns, 18 inchers on the Yamato which fired one ton shells. The class A armor in the Iowas' 'citadel' was 18" thick, and if the bridge got blown away, the CHENG could run the ship the ship from main control.
While the Yamato never came up against an Iowa class BB, it's worth mentioning that US Naval Air sent her to the bottom, dooming perhaps, all the big capital ships as effective surface combatants.
Or did it?
Stay tuned. Just as a note, the Jersey took a direct hit on her number one turret from a shore battery during her tour off Korea. While the round's shrapnel killed one of the crewmen, the damage to the ship was cleaned up during evening sweepers.
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