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Two Random Thoughts, and a Question About the Long Lance

Discussion in 'Ships & Shipborne Weaponry' started by F8F, Dec 11, 2014.

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  1. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Thanks for the correction on the Town class Carronade, the Belfast is the Town I am most familiar with.

    Now, that I had a chance to look over the others(aside of the Belfast & Edinburgh), they do look fairly pleasing to me.
     
  2. Sheldrake

    Sheldrake Member

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    One issue with the type 42 is that for a biggish ship it didn't carry much of an armament - and had no point AA defence. I think the RN event for number of hulls at the expense of weapon systems - ever played Seastike?

    Some of the fittings would not have been allowed in Nelson;s time. The formica panelling in the galley turned into glass projectiles and the electrical wiring generated poisonous smoke.
     
  3. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    It is/was quite common for varying navies to tweak the definitions of a ship type.

    The USS Constitution was called a 'Frigate' but was in reality a small ship of the line that regularly overpowered English Frigate's of a more common design.
     
  4. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Thus illustrating that I should check my sources before pushing publishing my hypothesis. Thanks for the corrections.
     
  5. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    The Consitution was a Frigate not a ship of the line. The distinguishing feature was that Ships of the line had multiple gun decks. Some of the British did refer to that class as "Yankee Razees" a "Razee" being a ship of the lilne that had had a gund deck removed. The Razee's were typically on a par or a actually a bit more powerful than the Constition class frigates having sturdier structures and heavier main guns but about the same number. It's also worth noteing that at least at times during the age of sail British Frigate capatains preferred captured French frigates to British built ones.
     
  6. mac_bolan00

    mac_bolan00 Member

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    i dunno. to me a beautiful ship is one bristling with weapons and armor. the new mexico with 12 main guns:

    [​IMG]
     
  7. mac_bolan00

    mac_bolan00 Member

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    and the anti-aircraft battleship USS texas: 40 40mm guns, 44 20mm guns

    [​IMG]
     
  8. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    I have seen a couple of books which suggested that Constitution and United States were laid down as ships of the line but completed as frigates, but that's not accurate (one of these books also claimed that President and Philadelphia were sister ships). They were frigates, similar in design to other frigates, just larger. Large frigates were not unusual; the French had built several of them, most of which ended up being captured by the British, leading them to assume that their 38-gunners could deal with just about anything. During the Revolution we had a frigate named South Carolina whose dimensions were very similar to Constitution, carrying 36-pounders on the main deck; incidentally she spent some time in Philadelphia where Joshua Humphreys lived and worked (as it happens about 1/4 mile from my home).

    It's often suggested that Constitution et. al. had the scantlings of ships of the line, for example by Captain Carden of Macedonian in his report to the Admiralty on the loss of his ship. The American ships did have one advantage in being built of live oak, an unusually strong variety of oak. Long wooden ships often had problems with hogging (sagging at the ends) but Humphreys designed an innovative system of transverse framing to maintain the ships' structural integrity.
     
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  9. bronk7

    bronk7 Well-Known Member

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    I read that also....isn't course and speed computed from the actual ship they are targeting at that time?, and not notebook figures?? [ like a sub's targeting of a running ship <>multiple marks?? or did they take into account if it is mis-IDd, and combine the targeting data?? good points on the ID deal.....
     
  10. Carronade

    Carronade Ace

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    Noticed something in the photo of Texas, the 20mm guns on top of turret 2 partially obscure the view from the conning tower - an indication of changing priorities.
     
  11. TiredOldSoldier

    TiredOldSoldier Ace

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    WW2 Cruisers were often very graceful ships, (the last pair of Towns being a notable exception) but late WW1 battlecruisers must be the most elegant "steel navy" ships ever built, IMO nothing afloat ever looked better than Kongo, Tiger, or Lutzow.
     
  12. arca

    arca Member

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    IMO battle cruisers are most beautiful ships. They make optimal ratio between elegance and grace of cruisers and toughness and self confidence of a battle ship :)
    Denquerque class being one of my favorites
     

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  13. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    For me the opposite, ships with the 'all forward' weapons always seemed unbalanced to me, but that is just my personal peeve.
     
  14. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    But were they really BC's? Certainly the French considered them Battleships and like the twins but perhaps more so they were a good match for any of the WWI era battleships.
     
  15. arca

    arca Member

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    Yes, they were something in between, a bit lighter than standard BS of that time, but significantly faster than any of them.
     
  16. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    IIRC, only the French Navy considered them battleships...The rest of France called them by several names: Battleships, battlecruisers, armored cruisers, armored ships(akin to the panzerschiff which they were designed to defeat), etc.

    In the original designs(of which the Dunkerque was not that far off), they were called Croiseur de Combat. Most of the French sources that I have seen have the, as Croiseur de Bataille.

    Finally, the Strasbourg had more armor than her near-sister Dunkerque. Which would possibly move the Strasbourg closer to "battleship" territory, however the roughly 9 inch(maximum) main belt of the Dunkerque leaves her firmly in "battlecruiser" territory.
     
  17. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    Some sources I've seen call both them and the twins 2nd rate battleships. The problem really is that there were no defintions that were standard over either time or national origin.
     
  18. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Agreed.

    And since battleships were more prestigious than battlecruisers, of course the respective owning nations will take the option of calling them battleships instead of battlecruisers.
     
  19. lwd

    lwd Ace

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    The definiton I like to use (other than how the owning country rated them) were they a balanced design (i.e. did they have a reasonable imune zone ot their own guns). By these standards the twins were battleships I believe. I haven't really looked at Dunkirk and Strassburg closly enough to see how they rate this way. It's even possible that Strassburg might be a battleship and Dunkirk a battle cruiser by this definition (there's also the question of what is a reasonable imune zone). One problem with this is that the German BC of WWI might even rate as BBs as well. If one were using that definition then one would probably want to include a 2nd class battleship which would be a battleship by the above definitions but one whose primary armament was significantly lighter than contemporary first line battleships.
     
  20. USS Washington

    USS Washington Active Member

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    What enabled the Type 93 to travel at higher speeds than the USs Mk.15, did it just simply have a more powerful motor?
     

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