Dread Nought but the Fury of the Seas

[Trevayne]

What if he got to experiment on a launched SoDak(so incomplete, but with torpedo protection and maybe deck armor)? Would a successful trial be more convincing than an old dreadnought?

I like this idea, but let's do it right. In addition to bombing trials to test how effective the bombs are against the ships, let's try out the other parts of the kill chain. Specifically, verify how well aircraft can find ships and how well can they hit them.

Have the USN provide a radio controlled target battleship and see how well bombers do trying to hit it. I expect this will embarrass the Army Air Corps and the Navy VP squadrons because I think they will both have big problems with level bombers trying to hit moving ships. Have the carriers try as well with light bombs and exercise torpedoes. They will probably do better.

As for search exercises, I think this was a big part of the Fleet Problems and the Army tried as well. IIRC the Army was quite happy about finding an Italian liner 700 miles off the East Coast in the 30s.

Either way, some real exercises could get the services thinking. Imagine WW2 if the US started with the anti-shipping know-how that the USN and USAAF had acquired the hard way by 43-44.

 

[Spencersj345.346]

What if he got to experiment on a launched SoDak(so incomplete, but with torpedo protection and maybe deck armor)? Would a successful trial be more convincing than an old dreadnought?

Over the General Board's dead bodies will someone willingly harm the most powerful capital ship of the USN and no BB-46 doesn't count as it had to be disposed because of the WNT.

 

[steamboy]

Don't forget the Mitchell bombing tests were hugely biast in favour of the aircraft. They came in at super low altitude to score a hit against targets that were not moving, with no DC teams aboard and with their watertight compartments open.

Mitchells bombers also broke the tests own rules because they came in so low because they were not scoring any hits at the altitude they were meant to come in at. Mitchells tests were a sham.

 

[CV(N)-6]

Over the General Board's dead bodies will someone willingly harm the most powerful capital ship of the USN and no BB-46 doesn't count as it had to be disposed because of the WNT.

I meant a cancelled SoDak, obviously you wouldn't bomb a brand new BB

 

[Thoresby]

And there hasn't been an HMS Trafalgar for a while...

I take back my post, forget Swiftsure and Triumph let's have a four ship class of HMS Trafalgar, HMS Agincourt, HMS Long Island and HMS Bladensburg.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

BB-46 doesn't count as it had to be disposed because of the WNT.

Disposed of? BB-46 had a full career from ‘21-‘47

 

[Trevayne]

Over the General Board's dead bodies will someone willingly harm the most powerful capital ship of the USN and no BB-46 doesn't count as it had to be disposed because of the WNT.

Disposed of? BB-46 had a full career from ‘21-‘47

I think he meant BB-47, the original Washington (Colorado class, not the later ship from the North Carolina class). That one was scrapped under the WNT.

 

[Trevayne]

I take back my post, forget Swiftsure and Triumph let's have a four ship class of HMS Trafalgar, HMS Agincourt, HMS Long Island and HMS Bladensburg.

The General Board would love those names. They would make it much easier to sell Congress on their wishlist of 28 new capital ships.

 

[Spencersj345.346]

I think he meant BB-47, the original Washington (Colorado class, not the later ship from the North Carolina class). That one was scrapped under the WNT.

Yep that's the one. Albeit she was used for gunnery practice and the data collected proved very useful indeed when the USN was designing capital ships for the end of the building holiday both in 1931( which of course got extented) and 1937

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

The General Board would love those names. They would make it much easier to sell Congress on their wishlist of 28 new capital ships.

RN can claim the USN started calling names first - Lexington, Saratoga...

 

[CV(N)-6]

RN can claim the USN started calling names first - Lexington, Saratoga...

And us Americans can argue that Lexington was a British victory

 

[Thoresby]

The General Board would love those names. They would make it much easier to sell Congress on their wishlist of 28 new capital ships.

I don't think they would actually, no one in Britain cared about the naming of Saratoga or any number of other US warships named after American War of Independence battles while the French and Spanish have never seemed all that bothered by the vast numbers of RN ships named after British victories against them.

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

And us Americans can argue that Lexington was a British victory

Hmm... don't remember a Yorktown in the RN. Might have been a Hastings. We don't tend to name our ships after defeats, but not been too many of them, at least not if you discount that scuffle with the Colonies

Still, we have some victories we haven't honoured AFAIK: Malplaquet (too French), Waterloo (a railway station!), Naseby (too Puritan), Bosworth (too Tudor), Medinah - sorry, that's golf!

 

[CV12Hornet]

Hmm... don't remember a Yorktown in the RN. Might have been a Hastings. We don't tend to name our ships after defeats, but not been too many of them, at least not if you discount that scuffle with the Colonies

Still, we have some victories we haven't honoured AFAIK: Malplaquet (too French), Waterloo (a railway station!), Naseby (too Puritan), Bosworth (too Tudor), Medinah - sorry, that's golf!

There was a Naseby, but she was Commonwealth Navy and was renamed Royal Charles after the Restoration.

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

There was a Naseby, but she was Commonwealth Navy and was renamed Royal Charles after the Restoration.

And King George V vetoed Churchill's idea that one super-dreadnought (think Iron Duke class) be named Cromwell.

These Royals have an awfully long memory. Like the Bourbons - forget nothing, learn nothing?

 

[Captain Oblivious]

In the immortal words of Alphonse Allais "you british always do things the opposite way. Not only driving on the wrong side of the road. We named a Paris railway station Austerlitz, from a victory. Yet for some incomprehensible reasons, you named that London square from a defeat - Trafalgar, really ?"

Alphonse Allais - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Deleted member 94680]

Still, we have some victories we haven't honoured AFAIK: Malplaquet (too French), Waterloo (a railway station!), Naseby (too Puritan), Bosworth (too Tudor)

There have been two ships named HMS Waterloo, albeit briefly it seems. There was nearly a third as well.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

And King George V vetoed Churchill's idea that one super-dreadnought (think Iron Duke class) be named Cromwell.

I believe Churchill also had a Richard III vetoed as well, due to what the Admiralty beloved to be the... scatalogical nature of Jack Tar’s sense of humour.

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

I believe Churchill also had a Richard III vetoed as well, due to what the Admiralty beloved to be the... scatalogical nature of Jack Tar’s sense of humour.

I believe the name proposed was Pitt the Elder or one of the Pitts (same story in Castles of Steel). It was King George V who pointed that out, and Churchill who complained about the Monarch's scatalogical humour.

Don't think we'd name a ship after probably England's most evil king - Princes in the Tower, Shakespeare - who was also ultimately a loser.

PS - I'm a Riccardian so don't buy into the Tudor propaganda!

 

[Coulsdon Eagle]

There have been two ships named HMS Waterloo, albeit briefly it seems. There was nearly a third as well.

Typical trains. None for ages then 3 turn up!