South Dakota class of 1920 is built

Blair152

Banned
Which is why Langley was strictly an experimental unit for the Navy. And why it was refitted as a seaplane carrier once the US got some proper carriers. At 15 knots or so, it really just did not measure up, and we wanted that tonnage for better CVs.

Even 18 to 25 knots was really escort carrier territory. The fleet carriers in all navies tended to start at 28 or so, and 33 was considered far superior.

Wind over the deck is a good thing. :cool:
Langley was also the first carrier to have a steam catapult. Something not seen on carriers until the '50s, at the earliest.
 

Bearcat

Banned
Are you sure about that?

I know Langley had two catapults (originally one), but I was always under the impression it was one of the early kinds - hydraulic / compressed air or powder. Many carriers had catapults of those kinds; the US had hangar deck catapults for a while (not that they were ever used in combat).

AFAIK the British Perseus was the first carrier with a true steam catapult.
 

Blair152

Banned
The Connecticut class became obsolete in one fell swoop in 1905. No navy on earth was going to do any more than maintenance and running repairs on a pre-dread after about 1907, certainly not the USN after South Carolina hit the water.

One of the key things about Dreadnaught was her turbine machinery, it enable a ship to run at maximum speed for much, much longer than the reciprocating engines in earlier ships. Notice that the first dreads the USN scrapped were those built with reciprocating engines, and try and think of a reason an already obsolete design with reciprocating engines would be kept in service.

The only reason the USN kept the "Big Ten" armoured cruisers in service as long as they did was because they didn't have anything else. If any of the "Big Ten" had actually run into even the earliest of the dreadnaught armoured cruisers, or even the semi-dreads, they were toast.
The Connecticut class was built, and commissioned, between 1905 and 1907. USS Connecticut was one of the flagships. If, strictly speaking,
the Connecticut class was sent to the 16th Naval District, which had the
Asiatic Fleet, USAFFE, (United States Air Forces, Far East), and the United
States Army, Far East. The Asiatic Fleet was made up of obsolete ships.
These included flushdeck destroyers, and cruisers like USS Marblehead.
 

Larrikin

Banned
The Connecticut class was built, and commissioned, between 1905 and 1907. USS Connecticut was one of the flagships. If, strictly speaking,
the Connecticut class was sent to the 16th Naval District, which had the
Asiatic Fleet, USAFFE, (United States Air Forces, Far East), and the United
States Army, Far East. The Asiatic Fleet was made up of obsolete ships.
These included flushdeck destroyers, and cruisers like USS Marblehead.

Exactly, they were obsolete before they even hit the water, made so not just by HMS Dreadnaught, but by the USN's own naval designers with the South Carolina. Why would you want to spend all that time, money and space refurbishing them when they started to wear out? In military parlance it is know as a "waftam".
 

Blair152

Banned
Exactly, they were obsolete before they even hit the water, made so not just by HMS Dreadnaught, but by the USN's own naval designers with the South Carolina. Why would you want to spend all that time, money and space refurbishing them when they started to wear out? In military parlance it is know as a "waftam".
But even ships like USS Delaware, were just fast enough to keep up with the
Connecticuts, and only averaged 23 knots. The same would have been true of the South Dakota class of 1920. The Nagatos, and the Kongos, were faster. It wasn't until you got to the Yamatos that you got the largest naval
rifles ever mounted on a battleship-------18 inches. The British King George
V class only had 15 inch guns, and the Iowas only 16 inch guns. The same
would have been true of the Montana class, had it been built.
 

Blair152

Banned
Blair152

Various points come to mind:

a) As David says the pre-dreads will be scrapped anyway. Their just too obsolete and costly to operate. If the US does complete most/all of the 1916 programme then probably all the 12" dreadnoughts will also go and possibly some of the 14" ships.

b) The US was already concerned about the design of the Lexingtons and the lack of carriers so the conversion of a couple might well go ahead. [Unless an unholy combination of battleship-admirals and Congress blocks the move].

c) If the POD is that for some reason the Washington Conference fails the key point will be what happens in/with Japan. Sooner of later, especially after the Tokyo quake, it will either stop its own programme or suffer very, very serious economic problems. If somehow it does complete the entire force its going to be left with a highly unbalanced fleet as there's going to be little capacity for other construction, block obsolescence when they start to get old and a crippled economy trying to support them. This could lead to earlier militarisation as parliament complains about the costs, a serious clash between the army and navy as the former loses out very heavily, or the military being seriously trimmed and hopefully their power and influence greatly reduced.

Far more likely they will stop before the programme is completed. At that point, possibly before, the US will stop its programme, which was bitterly unpopular in Congress and on a drip feed for most of its history. This will mean that only a proportion of the programme is complete.

You would need a very paranoid US to actually complete it all as the US had no need for it and realised that.

d) Some of the people on a naval board that are very knowledgeable argue that the SD's were built very near their limit, with little capacity for reconstruction. The RN had the same problem with the R class BBs. If so any of those ships being completed will face problems over time as the navy will want to add a lot of equipment. [AA defences, radar and other electronics, probably more electrical equipment for the crew etc, along with needing space and tonnage for the extra crew to operate such equipments. As such upgrades may be difficult and limited in scope.

Steve
If I'm not mistaken, Steve, and I'm not, HMS Revenge, was sunk in Scapa
Flow by Gunther Prien. I don't know how many were killed, but Churchill
praised him if you can believe it. Don't believe me on this.
 
Blair152, since the HMS Revenge was certainly not sunk by Gunther Prien in Scapa Flow but was sold for scrap in 1948 it is doubtful anyone will believe you.

And your 'response' to stevep also completely failed to address any of the questions he raised.
 

Blair152

Banned
Short-term, Larrikin, they'd be a stopgap measure. Given the fact that the
Asiatic Fleet by 1941-42 was obsolete, they'd fit right in. So would 12" dreadnoughts like Delaware. As for aircover, what did USAFFE have that
was good against the Zero? Nothing. It had the Boeing P-26 Peashooter and
the Seversky P-35 Guardsman. Both would have been a good match for the
Japanese Ki-27 and Mitsubishi A5M, both of which had fixed undercarriages.
But against the Mitsubishi A6M Risen? The only thing they'd be good for is
to die quickly.
 
If I'm not mistaken, Steve, and I'm not, HMS Revenge, was sunk in Scapa
Flow by Gunther Prien. I don't know how many were killed, but Churchill
praised him if you can believe it. Don't believe me on this.

Blair152

It was actually the Royal Oak that Prien sunk. Its the same class as the Revenge and you might have heard the class called by that name and mis-read it.

Steve
 

Blair152

Banned
You left out the predreadnaught Mikasa which is actually land locked in Yokosuka, Japan. It was restored after WWII to a museum ship status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Mikasa

And the Battleship Texas is down by San Jacinto. It is a museum ship which shows a WWI class rebuilt in WWII.

http://www.battleshiptexas.org/
Mikasa wasn't a Great War-era pre-dreadnought. She's from the Russo-
Japanese War. There's a reason I left her off the list.
 

Blair152

Banned
Blair152

It was actually the Royal Oak that Prien sunk. Its the same class as the Revenge and you might have heard the class called by that name and mis-read it.

Steve
Thank you hits forehead with palm of left hand saying STUPID thrice. :D
The German pre-dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein took part in the invasion of
Poland by shelling a Polish fort. (Unfortunately, the name of the fort escapes
me.)
 
Blair152, you think the US Navy would waste valuable resources and skilled manpower over a quarter century on woefully obsolete ships and perhaps also on several of the oldest and most outdated American dreadnaughts as well and you can't even offer a remotely plausible explanation for either how the US government is willing to provide for these ships(especially during the Depression) let alone any plausible role for them.:rolleyes:

Cannon fodder slaughtered with the ABDA forces in 1942 does not qualify as a plausible role.
 
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