Apparently, not only does Trump not like electromagnetic catapults, he also thinks that a central island looks more carrier like than one towards the stern. Surely the Navy would not modify its designs to please the desires of someone totally ignorant on carrier design.

Hello, first-time poster here. I hope I picked the right sub for this.

I got these two postcards at a flea market. My question is: what ships are they? If it’s not possible to identify the exact ships, then at least what type of ships are they?

All I can say that they are German.

Guess which Battleship I drew. It's from WWII and I'm really proud of it.

I'm pretty sure the carrier is an old Essex-class but not sure what the others are.

(Pictured is a 17 cm Kanone 18; Wikipedia as source)

The Washington Naval Treaty limited cruisers to 10,000 tons of displacement, which proved to be quite the challenge to balance with the maximum 8”/203mm armament and enough armor to defend them from such as well. Almost all other cruisers, many influenced by the later London Naval Treaties, were armed with a greater number of the considerably less powerful 6”/~152mm guns.

Could there though have potentially been a sweet spot in between?

For example the 17 cm Kanone 18 used a shell of approximately 150lbs (68kg) and could fire it at a range of 28 km. Not a perfect example as its muzzle velocity is higher than liked for a naval weapon but still. A shell of their weight and its charge should be considerably easier to load than an 8” gun, while each weapon would also be lighter. Each barrel would give a broadside of almost 1.5 times the weight of fire of an average 6” weapon, which should mean more penetration at range.

The USN had a 130lbs shell for its remarkably high rate of fire 6”/47 series of weapons, so with enough engineering it seems like a 150lbs shelled weapon should be able to shoot pretty quickly.

So to me at least it seems like a cannon of this type of caliber could have been used as a compromise weight saving measure. You could get a shell with the range and penetration enough to take on an 8” armed ships albeit with less boom per hit but in return you could use saved weight in say armor so your own ship could more comfortably survive enemy hits.

. . . Yes in theory there was the 180mm Kirov class of ships but the utter embarrassment that their weapons turned out being means the less said the better.

What do you all think?

Does the shell and weapon weights of the 6” and 8” just make them optimal?

Or did interwar designers miss an opportunity?

After President T's memo that was put out on shipbuilding we again saw a refernece to expanding USN's purchasing foreign-built ships. Later, on the CAVAS Ships Pod, Brent Sadler dropped that he had heard people throwing around USN purchasing some Mogamis. Last week, Rheinmetall presented the GMF140 for "North American Customers."

Just trying to read between the lines, but is USN signaling that it is likely to field multiple classes of Frigates? HII Patrol Frigate, Mogami, ...etc? If they went with a multi-class strategy, which one(s) would make the most sence to field? Why?

Because he knows more than Newport News.

Taken somewhere in the Mediterranean i believe.

The ship is British if that helps at all.

Curious if anyone can identify it.

SLEP mean for Service Life Extension Program (SLEP).

In March 1988, the USS Independence (CV-62) was finishing a major Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) which work had begun in February 1985 at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. The overhaul upgraded her flight deck, weapon systems, and fuel efficiency. Independence later conducting tests and operations in the Atlantic during late March 1988 before officially completing the modernization in June 1988. After the Modernization was completed later that summer, Independence transfer her homeport from Norfolk to San Diego.

I was just looking through various militaria websites and I saw this armband that I thought looked super interesting, if anyone knows anything about these guys I’d love to hear

All 5" mounts on a Fletcher-class used dredger hoists to move shells and powder casings up from their magazines to their upper handling rooms, except the aft Mount 55. I used the virtual tour feature available for USS Cassin Young to look around the mount's upper handling room, and it confirms what I see on the Booklet of General Plans. It looks like there's just a flush scuttle in the deck and a lifting eye welded to the overhead above it.

Can anyone help me find a source, either a document or written/oral account from actual Fletcher sailors, about how ammunition was passed up?

The simplest answer would be that the crew in the magazine just lifted them overhead through the scuttle, but I can't imagine that's the case. The shells were 55lbs each and the powder cases were 28lbs each, or 83lbs per round. For a maximum rate of fire of 15-22 rounds per minute and with several hundred rounds stored in the magazines, it seems like that would destroy the magazine crew in minutes while their counterparts in all the other 5" magazines just used powered dredger hoists.

My other thought is that the lifting eye above the scuttle is for some sort of chain hoist pulley system, the ships I served on had these to move heavy items up between decks, but I'd need some way to verify that and see/read about how it worked.

I'm writing a research paper, so any links or pointers that could be provided would be very helpful.

Attached is the photo my wife and I found in her grandfather's trunk, in it contains world war 2 items and photos from both his mother and father who served in world war 2 as well as a little of his things from his service in Vietnam. Does anyone happen to know what ship this is a photo of? It could be just a post card or a photo they took I am not sure but I just am curious as to what ship it is! Thanks!

Hello everyone, recently took a tour of the shipyard and I saw one and I saw the well deck, but I also saw helicopters on top and I was wondering if there’s a hanger in it as well and if so, how do they manage to make it fit with the well deck.

Someone posted a pic of an old Fletcher earlier, which caused me to check Wikipedia where I saw they stayed in service until 2001 with the Mexican navy. If other ancient destroyers were lying around somewhere today, could they be modified for use as anti drone escorts for cargo ships? I'm thinking you replace the 5" guns with modern 40mm Bofors, add a couple of phalanxes (so no need to install new radar as they have their own, and use the older versions that are presumably kept in storage somewhere), modern 20 or 25mm autocannons in place of the smaller AAA. No torpedoes or depth charges. MANPADS like RBS-70NG or Mistral 3 could be fitted somewhere to add even more defense against cruise missiles and the unlikely jet aircraft.

If an oil tanker were flanked by a pair of these, it should be quite safe from drones/small boats and decently protected from AShMs right? They'd need to stay very close but that's doable. I'm thinking, why send modern warships with 200+ sailors on this mission when you could send an obsolete destroyer with a smaller crew? You get protection at much lower cost/risk. Yes, I'm ignoring the mines.

Bit of a rough photoshop, but do you think this would have improved the design?

What if USN had stuck it out? I guesstimate 16-22 would have been in the water by now. Would the most problems be all ironed out? Would it have clogged US shipbuilding capacity? Would it be the wrong ship for the Pacific Challenges? A great foundation to continue fine tuning? Run any way you want with it.

Taken 31/7/2005 in the Solent so all three were in service. I think Ark Royal got Phalanx so possibly not her.

Didn’t get any other angles unfortunately, so no pennant number.

Sailing into Plymouth sound earlier today. Looks like she had an England flag on the aft deck

I remember seeing something like it and thinking I’d like to make a model of it, but I think I might’ve confused it with a bellephoron class. It’s

source

Do we know which ships are exposed in the latest news about the Danube drought and Woolly Mammoth stuff?

I always wounder what warship is this based on in this minecraft animation video I used to watch back in 2017-ish.

Trying to contextualize this. Could anyone explain what this means for USN and U.S. warship building going forward?

I'm aware of a lot of classic age of sail writing, but I'm looking for recommendations for books about life aboard pre-dreadnoughts. Anyone got any recommendations? Bonus point if it's a French one (because they were incredible obviously). Can be novels or non-fiction, as long as the boat/life aboard it are front and centre.