I had thought there would be more discussion on this matter on Reddit, but it's crickets out there. The U.S. appears to be using Arleigh Burke-class destroyers in a quasi-escort role in the Persian Gulf and that is just not what they were optimally designed for. We see the consequences of the mission mismatch in today's headlines. Burkes are high-end fleet escorts designed to protect carrier battle groups, not commercial shipping in tight littoral waters. America also retired their last Avenger minesweepers last year and so America doesn't have organic mine countermeasure (MCM) assets either. The Littoral Combat Ship has a MCM "module" but bolting on a mine countermeasure part to a ship doesn't answer things like crew training or readiness either. Honestly? I think it's a mess.

The entire U.S. Naval approach to building their own version of the European FREMM hull (the Constellation-class) looks terrible. At first it was suppose to be an American FREMM, but then mission creep reared its ugly head and the decision was made to make it a mini-Burke instead. So, you had 60% of the capability of the Burke for 80% of the cost. Why not just buy more Burkes? The Americans have this odd desire to make everything into a smaller Ticonderoga-class AEGIS missile boat, kinda like how evolution turns everything into a crab. It made sense for the Arleigh Burke as it is 80% of a Ticonderoga for about 70% of the price. That math didn't make sense for the Constellation though, so now we have no dedicated purpose built escort for commercial shipping in our inventory. Back in 1987's Operation Earnest Will we had the Oliver Hazard Perry-class doing most of the commercial escort heavy lifting. Unfortunately, we have no mission-level equivalent of the OHP class today.

Ditto for mine countermeasures. Fortunately, right now we have two French minesweepers in the area, but America has none of their own mine countermeasure vessels in the region. What an odd dynamic to start a war with someone who can use asymmetric warfare to close a strategic chokepoint when you don't have the actual hulls to effectively counter the asymmetric tactics? I think these gaps in capabilities needs to be discussed more!

If we want frigates and minesweepers in the Persian Gulf, we are gonna need more allied participation. That's something I discuss here, if anyone is interested in taking a look.

As the title suggests, what would you change on the HMS Captain (1869) to improve her seaworthiness and design in general without straying too far from Coles design?

imagine the conversation went something like "Sorry can we borrow your ship to move some people we borrowed? Then can we borrow your country?"

6 April 1941 Germany, Italy and Hungary among others invade the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and kicks of the most vicious insurgency and self-liberation campaign of the war.

Title.

I'm looking for a game, website, whatever, that lets me design and build (relatively) realistic warships. I know about Ultimate Admiral, though I am not sure if there is just a free build mode that just gives me access to everything so I can kind of go crazy. For a lot of games I am concerned that a lot of tech and equipment is locked behind gameplay, a paywall, etc.

Basically, what game allows me to just go nuts with ship design while staying relatively realistic in terms of displacement, design constraints, technology?

Hope this is accepted, as i thought you guys might appreciate this. It's a poem / song, by Rudyard Kipling, written in 1893. I think it's rather moving, as is the rendition of it by folk musician Peter Bellamy.

"We have fed our sea for a thousand years

And she calls us, still unfed,

Though there’s never a wave of all her waves

But marks our English dead:

We have strawed our best to the weed’s unrest

To the shark and the sheering gull.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha’ paid in full!

There’s never a flood goes shoreward now

But lifts a keel we manned;

There’s never an ebb goes seaward now

But drops our dead on the sand—

But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,

From the Ducies to the Swin.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha’ paid it in!

We must feed our sea for a thousand years

,

For that is our doom and pride,

As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind,

Or the wreck that struck last tide—

Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef

Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,

If blood be the price of admiralty,

Lord God, we ha’ bought it fair!"

https://youtu.be/T7mFGcfpuSQ?is=e0nK1YtTbyobIt9Q

Life aboard the Royal Navy's sixth County-class destroyer, and an in-depth look at her Seaslug system.

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Seen on frigates and destroyers... always wondered what it is?

What was the lethal radius of WW2 DP guns? IE, how close it has to hit before it can knock down a plane. Are there any sources that list this for the 3"/50, 5"/38, etc?

Is this yamato?

Hello, I thrifted an old oil painting yesterday and I'm trying to identify the ships that are in it. someone recommended this subreddit is a good place to start. could y'all help me identify era, flags, and that sort of thing?

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.

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