When light cruisers made sense as destroyer leaders
Dedicated light-cruiser flotilla leaders were viable in the First World War, but larger destroyers could absorb the role by the Second.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
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How America might answer five British capital-ship carrier conversions
More permitted British conversions would likely produce a uniform five-ship Lexington-class carrier force in the United States Navy.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
The unsettled order of Britain's late-1930s capital-ship refits
Hood was probably the next major rebuild, but surviving schedules and yard evidence leave room for Nelson, Rodney and Queen Elizabeth-class alternatives.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why infantry drove the scale of US wartime mobilisation
The jump from a small US force in 1940 to wartime mass mobilisation was driven especially by the personnel appetite of ground forces.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why Admiral-class carrier conversions could avoid Lexington's problems
British conversion experience and the Admirals' incomplete hulls would make them easier to reshape as carriers than more advanced battlecruisers.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
How illumination flares shaped night air attacks
Flares could remain aloft for minutes and silhouette ships, while the contrast between bright and dark areas disrupted defenders' night vision.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Twin-engine aircraft and the Taranto problem
A faster twin-engine strike aircraft would need a different Taranto method, but could bring greater range and firepower.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why two cruisers could be worth more than HMS Vanguard
The manpower released by scrapping Vanguard could keep two cruisers available in different places, trading concentrated power for wider presence.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Fleet Air Arm Corsairs and Lend-Lease disposal
Some British Corsairs were reportedly pushed overboard so they would count as wartime losses rather than surviving Lend-Lease equipment.
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What USS North Carolina could change at Denmark Strait
Adding a modern American battleship greatly worsens Bismarck's odds while leaving open the possibility of Hood still suffering a fatal hit.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What HMS Vanguard changes in a fight with Bismarck
Vanguard offers a broadly similar gunnery fight to Rodney but removes Bismarck's ability to escape through superior speed.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why seawater is so damaging in a steam plant
Saltwater in a turbine steam loop can rapidly damage boilers, nozzles and turbine machinery.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Could railguns create another Dreadnought moment?
The first navy to field a genuinely working railgun could make contemporary surface combatants look suddenly outdated and trigger a new arms race.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
How naval treaties might have increased the risk of war
Treaty parity may have made Japan believe the American fleet was within reach, whereas unrestricted Anglo-American building could have restored an unbridgeable gap.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
A retained HMS Anson in the Falklands War
Even one surviving quadruple 14-inch turret would make Anson a powerful command ship and island-wide naval gunfire platform.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Reading Jellicoe, Beatty and Percy Scott critically
The three autobiographies are useful together, but their different voices and agendas demand comparison rather than uncritical acceptance.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What archives add to naval history
Archival research gains value from combining records that earlier readers approached with different questions, even when the documents were already open.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why a carrier fleet needs more replenishment ships
A proposed carrier fleet is tested against the less glamorous requirement for enough fast oilers and replenishment ships.
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How HMS Incomparable could rewrite the naval treaties
A completed 20-inch-gun Incomparable could raise treaty gun limits, provoke American and Japanese answers, and make 16-inch weapons the new entry level.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Turning Incomparable into a workable fast battleship
The Admiralty would probably add armor and perhaps more guns, while expanding major yards rather than assembling the ship from separately built sections.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why Italian frogman raids were different from ordinary sabotage
Suspicious crews helped frustrate covert sabotage, while Italy's trained frogmen succeeded through planned naval special operations at Alexandria.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What could propel a 500,000-ton battleship to 42 knots
A fantastical giant battleship exposes the power-density problem behind extreme speed in a very large hull.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What a 14-inch gun limit without a tonnage limit encourages
Restricting gun caliber but not displacement encourages very large ships carrying twenty or more 14-inch guns.
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How Britain might use a rediscovered set of 18-inch guns
Wartime discovery of six usable 18-inch guns would prompt the Royal Navy to redesign whichever available battleship could accept them soonest.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why a 1918 navy cannot answer super-battleships with carrier spam
Carrier-centered procurement makes sense in 1940, but aircraft in 1918 cannot yet replace a battleship answer to a battleship threat.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why a warship cannot accelerate like a dragster
Power can improve acceleration, but rapidly rising water resistance sets the practical limit for a large ship.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why oil displaced mechanical stokers in capital ships
Mechanical coal handling became viable just as oil offered a simpler and more attractive route to better naval propulsion.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
How Jellicoe tightened ammunition handling after Jutland
Jellicoe corrected unsafe ammunition practices through direct enforcement of new rules and operating discipline.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Which modern ships can absorb an anti-ship missile hit
Most modern warships are vulnerable to a mission kill from one missile, while carriers have the mass to absorb more damage depending on impact location.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Could a 20-inch-gun ship exhaust its main battery?
Low hit rates make ammunition endurance a real concern, but a giant fast warship can carry deep magazines and defend itself with more than its main battery.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Where HMS Incomparable might serve in the Second World War
Modernisation could keep Incomparable with the Home Fleet, while an unmodernised long-range ship might be sent east where her endurance and speed had room to matter.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why pressurized-air drag reduction remains difficult for warships
Injecting air beneath a hull has been attempted, but the concept has not yet become a practical answer to operational warship requirements.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why armies did not simply adopt naval gun calibres
Common ammunition could look attractive, but the weight of naval guns made them poor substitutes for mobile field artillery.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why warships moved away from tripod masts
Tripod masts improved on lattice structures, but their weight and protection problems encouraged designers to seek better arrangements.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Which two extra capital ships Britain would retain at Washington
Britain would probably keep two Lion-class battlecruisers, creating a six-ship fast force that could be divided between home waters and the Indian Ocean.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What a modernized HMS Tiger might carry
A serious Tiger modernization would combine new 14-inch guns with improved machinery, more protection and dual-purpose secondaries.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why warships rarely fire merely to announce their presence
Unlike tanks in some ground situations, warships usually avoid blind firing because gun flashes reveal position and naval engagement ranges are immense.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why a battleship might carry a launchable car
A davit-launched car could support landed Royal Marines and give officers reliable transport when visiting ports without local vehicles.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Could early fire control use 20-inch guns?
Very large guns would create loading challenges, but post-Jutland improvements could make them operationally useful.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Warship design lessons from the Falklands War
Post-Falklands British designs emphasized close defence, emergency response and hull subdivision while moving away from aluminium in ship structures.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
How a recommissioned Tiger-class cruiser might serve in the Falklands
Task-group assignment would shape the modernised cruiser's work, with Tiger likely protecting the carriers and joining the shore gun line at night.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Could the Burma Road become a railway into China?
A narrow-gauge railway offers a plausible way to improve supply into China in a scenario where Malaya holds and the Fourteenth Army advances east.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
What might happen to Malta-class carriers after forty years
A Malta-class carrier reaching the 1990s could be scrapped or sold to India depending on remaining hull life and the value of continued service.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Renown and Repulse against four modernized Italian battleships
The Italian force has more guns, but British battlecruiser speed lets Renown and Repulse control the range and avoid a decisive defeat.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Large versus numerous anti-ship missile hits
Russian missiles emphasize damage per hit, while Western systems tend to trade warhead size for better hit probability and multiple impacts.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Could Titanic's iceberg sink a Second World War battleship?
A battleship's more extensive subdivision makes an iceberg collision less likely to sink her, though speed and impact location still matter.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Bismarck and the air component of sea control
The hunt for Bismarck shows air power as a component of sea control, not a simple replacement for naval forces.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·
Why John Roberts's older British warship reference remains useful
An older edition of British Warships of the Second World War combines strong text with detailed plans and shows why researchers should record the edition they used.
From Bruships 67: Cruising on through with Questions & Bru ·