Alternate warships of nations

Ah - by "survivors," I meant the most damaged British and Allied *ships* still afloat at the end of Trafalgar.

Oh, I understand that - my point is that if the night after Jutland had been marked by a storm as severe as that which came after Trafalgar, Seydlitz would have sunk within minutes, possibly less. The ships that came home from Trafalgar rode out the storm after the battle, and had therefore obviously taken less serious punishment than Seydlitz did at Jutland.
 
The Russians had trouble with screw design and milling, sound isolation, rafting and QC in construction. Their nuke boats were built to be fast and deep and were thus biased to engineering solutions that way.

That QC problem meant they built in redundancy, but Americans have always built in redundancy in their own boats, so I do not weight it as much as others might as a reason for the rafting and screw noise problems. Russian reactors have been "problematic" from a design flaw point of view as far as noise is concerned.

See previous comments. Those who think Russian boats are "crap" are "mirroring". The Russians made deliberate design compromises for what they wanted their boats to do; go fast and dive deeply. If your tactics are to ambush and then run after launch, it matters not how noisy one is after the speed burst or if one's reactor designs produces crews who will die of radiation sickness. There is the American way and there is the Russian way. Both work. Both are extremely deadly and effective against their enemies. How they work against each other is the big question.
Soviets boats were crap until the Victor 2 and 3. The Toshiba milling machine in the late 80s, early 90s didn’t help. Their ability to sound isolate machine noise was not as good as the WAllies. They also had a different purpose, sink US carriers. There were always 2 subs assigned to a CBG. One US SSN to protect it (what the 688 class was designed for) and one Soviet boat to attack it (what the Oscar class was designed for). They also didn’t have the ability to quiet their reactor cooling pumps like the US. 688s have the ability to run cooling pumps at a reduced speed. Tridents can turn cooling pumps off and run on natural circulation. US and British boats have always had the best trained crews. They have been operating boats for decades now. This is a huge advantage in sub operations. We are/were professional sub sailors. It takes an enlisted Nuke almost 2 years of schooling before they even set foot on a boat. Then another 1-2 years before being fully qualified. You have to learn the basics of everything on board to get your Dolphins. I was a Nuke but I knew how to fire a torpedo. You have to know where all DC gear is blindfolded. Because of that we operated better. The difference now is computing power and wide aperture arrays. Virginia’s are floating computers with very advanced sonars. They are able to pick up a crap ton of acoustic data and process it all. They still have the training advantage as well. It is said by sub sailors that 2 SSNs fighting is like 2 blindfolded people fighting inside a phone booth.
 
The ships that came home from Trafalgar rode out the storm after the battle, and had therefore obviously taken less serious punishment than Seydlitz did at Jutland.

Right -- though of course, some of the damaged Trafalgar ships (L'Aigle, Berwick, Fougueux, and Monarca) didn't survive the storm!
 
US and British boats have always had the best trained crews. They have been operating boats for decades now. This is a huge advantage in sub operations. We are/were professional sub sailors. It takes an enlisted Nuke almost 2 years of schooling before they even set foot on a boat. Then another 1-2 years before being fully qualified. You have to learn the basics of everything on board to get your Dolphins. I was a Nuke but I knew how to fire a torpedo. You have to know where all DC gear is blindfolded. Because of that we operated better.

Yeah, training was always an advantage US and British submarine crews - specifically, the NCO's -- had over the Soviets to the very end. For starters, the Soviet conscripts did not serve as long...so even as the hardware gap began to narrow somewhat by the 80's, they were always much more audible than their Anglo-American counterparts.
 

McPherson

Banned
Yeah, training was always an advantage US and British submarine crews - specifically, the NCO's -- had over the Soviets to the very end. For starters, the Soviet conscripts did not serve as long...so even as the hardware gap began to narrow somewhat by the 80's, they were always much more audible than their Anglo-American counterparts.
Russians got around that one the way anyone would. Their subs are highly automated. And back in the day, there were a lot of them.
 
Soviets boats were crap until the Victor 2 and 3. The Toshiba milling machine in the late 80s, early 90s didn’t help. Their ability to sound isolate machine noise was not as good as the WAllies. They also had a different purpose, sink US carriers. There were always 2 subs assigned to a CBG. One US SSN to protect it (what the 688 class was designed for) and one Soviet boat to attack it (what the Oscar class was designed for). They also didn’t have the ability to quiet their reactor cooling pumps like the US. 688s have the ability to run cooling pumps at a reduced speed. Tridents can turn cooling pumps off and run on natural circulation. US and British boats have always had the best trained crews. They have been operating boats for decades now. This is a huge advantage in sub operations. We are/were professional sub sailors. It takes an enlisted Nuke almost 2 years of schooling before they even set foot on a boat. Then another 1-2 years before being fully qualified. You have to learn the basics of everything on board to get your Dolphins. I was a Nuke but I knew how to fire a torpedo. You have to know where all DC gear is blindfolded. Because of that we operated better. The difference now is computing power and wide aperture arrays. Virginia’s are floating computers with very advanced sonars. They are able to pick up a crap ton of acoustic data and process it all. They still have the training advantage as well. It is said by sub sailors that 2 SSNs fighting is like 2 blindfolded people fighting inside a phone booth.
Roles that were taken by professional enlisted in the USN were taken by warrant and commissioned officers in the VMF. Something the Soviet Union had no shortage of with its comprehensive military education complex.

You're comparing apples to oranges. The VMF was not meant to contest the rule of the oceans from the USN; it's primary job was to deter US force projection against the territorial waters of the USSR and Warsaw Pact states. The weakness of shipbuilding technology was less an innate defect of their military industrial complex and more the fact that funding priorities in the USSR relegated naval engineering to a tertiary importance. In terms of precendence, by official doctrine the VMF only ranked above the Internal Troops of the MVD, whereas in the US the Navy has historically been the senior service and only barely lost out on the pole position due to the Air Force's commanding role in the delivery of nuclear weapons.
 
Russians got around that one the way anyone would. Their subs are highly automated. And back in the day, there were a lot of them.
They tried that on their Mike class boat. We were told one of the reasons for her loss was crew fatigue in fighting the fire. Virginia’s have some automation now. Personnel will always be one of your highest cost items. US DOD is still paying me. I’ll always believe that we would have slaughtered them in the 80s. Even with their numbers. The boats were crap and they operated them poorly.
 

McPherson

Banned
They tried that on their Mike class boat. We were told one of the reasons for her loss was crew fatigue in fighting the fire. Virginia’s have some automation now. Personnel will always be one of your highest cost items. US DOD is still paying me. I’ll always believe that we would have slaughtered them in the 80s. Even with their numbers. The boats were crap and they operated them poorly.
I was not a submariner, and I was not fighting them. You were. Note the term "fighting"? All I did was watch carefully.
 
I apologize if you thought I was saying you were wrong. I was not. I just try and clarify points and information about boats and Cold War sub ops. My information is all speculation as well. All we did was perform oceanographic research and the ability to stay deployed for long periods of time. We were never ever anyplace we were not supposed to be.
 
1928 The trade protection aircraft carrier HMS Whitechapel on her builders trials. Her diesel engines give her a lot of trouble throughout her 15 years service.

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2009

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary converts a containership to replace the RFA Argus as an aviation training ship and serve as a back up to the LHA HMS Ocean.

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Sargon

Donor
Monthly Donor
2009

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary converts a containership to replace the RFA Argus as an aviation training ship and serve as a back up to the LHA HMS Ocean.

View attachment 661556

This is a good one.

A project like this was actually considered which you probably already know about, but others here may not. It was called SCADS (Shipborne Containerised Air Defence System) having its roots in the conversions of Atlantic Causeway and Atlantic Conveyor for the Falklands conflict, as well as the purchase and conversion of what would become RFA Argus as well as other vessels.

See more here in the part two thirds down the page "Developing the Concept".


Sargon
 
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