Where torpedoes could fit on an armed merchant cruiser
Internal cabin conversions are impractical, but deck launchers could occupy former embarkation spaces.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Complete directory
Browse all time notes.
Explore every watch point in reverse video-date order, then in timestamp order within each video.
Naval warfare without sonar
Without sonar, submarines and torpedoes gain enormous power, although underwater navigation and attack become harder too.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why a 24-knot Dreadnought does not erase battlecruisers
Battlecruisers would jump toward 28 knots, while boiler technology still governs when battleships can match them.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A Python-class successor to the Oberons
The proposed successor would remain an improved Oberon with more size and internal space.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
The Soviet trigger for 1950s battleship construction
A Soviet battleship program is the most plausible event that would force Western navies to resume capital-ship construction in the 1950s.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Keeping a pre-dreadnought useful
A slow ship with strong 16-inch guns remains useful if modernization emphasizes fire control, radar, and anti-destroyer weapons.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Fleet tactics with hydrophones but no active sonar
Ships would spend more time drifting and listening, while towed passive arrays would likely mature earlier.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why Vikramaditya was not the right starting point for Kiev
Vikramaditya could be a capable ship while remaining a poor match for the Soviet doctrine behind the Kiev class.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A 16-inch Jean Bart and Iowa reactivation
A fast Jean Bart armed with 16-inch guns would revive American arguments for returning the Iowa class to service.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
MQ-28 Ghost Bat as a useful first generation
The aircraft is likely useful even if sales claims exceed what the first operational generation can deliver.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
The fastest American response to a submarine raid on New York
An Italian submarine attack on New York would force the US Navy to buy British escorts before domestic production could expand.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
When to cancel a rainbow-code weapons project
Development should continue until testing shows that the technology is unworkable, then the project should be cancelled.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
How autoloaders could reshape treaty cruisers
A deployable American cruiser autoloader would improve gun output and crew efficiency while pushing Britain toward more and larger cruisers.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
HMS Renown as a cruiser hunter
Without the Alaska class, Renown or a very large heavy cruiser would provide the speed and firepower to hunt cruisers.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
An Argentine King George V in the Falklands War
A modernized battleship would still become a submarine target and its loss would intensify the political aftermath.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A common successor to Blue Slug and Green Cheese
One replacement missile could save money, provided a common platform met the operational need behind both projects.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Argentina's procurement was better than its command system
Argentina's prewar equipment choices were broadly reasonable, but command failures and too few operational submarines limited the force.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why a nuclear chokepoint weapon signals a failed strategy
Using an enhanced-radiation Tomahawk would mean easier conventional ways to disrupt the chokepoint had already been neglected.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
The displacement cost of a seven-turret large cruiser
Seven twin 9.2-inch turrets, a nine-inch belt, and 35 knots push a 1925 design toward 22,000 tons.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Argentina's missed chances in the Falklands War
Better Argentine command, supply, and troop care could have exploited Britain's extremely long logistics line.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Green Cheese and Britain's color-coded missile names
The joke name belonged to a serious radar-guided anti-ship missile intended for the Fairey Gannet.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why a dedicated anti-drone battleship is the wrong model
Drone defence must be distributed across the fleet because one heavily armed ship cannot cover a dispersed task force.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
The battle needed to preserve super-battleships
A Yamato victory over a carrier group could recast battleships as essential carrier escorts and revive 70,000-ton programs.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Designing an Argentine force to win the Falklands War
A serious Argentine plan would combine amphibious lift, island sustainment, submarines, carriers, and attacks on British logistics.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
How a Falklands defeat could reverse British carrier policy
A British defeat would likely be blamed on the earlier cancellation of large carriers and trigger a major fleet-carrier rebuilding program.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Warships After London on torpedo protection
A comparative design passage explains liquid-layer, dry, crush-tube, and Pugliese underwater-protection systems.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Protecting a ship from an under-keel torpedo
Defence against an under-keel explosion requires structural depth beneath the main keel to absorb and isolate the blast.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Corbett reconstructs Tsushima's confused second phase
A Corbett passage demonstrates the difficulty of reconstructing Tsushima amid smoke, broken formations, and missing Russian testimony.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
French neutrality and Russian refit in 1905
A three-month Russian refit in French Indochina would turn neutral harbour access into belligerent support and widen the war.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why the French Navy was vulnerable in 1905
Chronic underinvestment and erratic design choices left France poorly placed to risk a naval war in 1905.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
What Sea Harrier II would change in the Falklands
An early Sea Harrier II would give the British carrier force radar and beyond-visual-range combat capabilities far beyond the aircraft used historically.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
How much old battleship design mattered at Pearl Harbor
Japanese success owed something to pre-air-attack design assumptions, though they did not decide the outcome by themselves.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
The force needed to patrol Greenland waters
Persistent Greenland coverage needs several patrol ships, an Arctic frigate-sized presence, submarines, and supporting aircraft.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A 1942 transistor leap for Royal Navy electronics
Early transistors would sharply improve small-ship fire control and radar, giving Britain electronics decades ahead of schedule.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why Britain would try to copy an early F-35
The reverse-engineering effort would be difficult, but export revenue could justify and repay the investment.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Plunging shellfire and aerial attack stress the same protection problem
Both deliver energy from above, but US, Japanese, and British doctrine approached long-range battle differently.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Early transistors and proximity-fuzed pom-poms
Earlier transistors could make variable-time fuzes small enough for 40-mm ammunition if wartime metallurgy also supported mass production.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why two carrier deployments require five or six hulls
Refit and maintenance mean a navy needs roughly three carriers to guarantee one station and at least five to guarantee two available decks.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
How Room 40 intelligence reached wartime commands
Wartime reform did not make British naval intelligence simple, but it integrated distribution into commands and moved information faster.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
WG.1 versus Chinook as an industrial choice
WG.1 would support British industry, although that advantage would not make it the better aircraft than Chinook.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why Taranto and Pearl Harbor needed different fighter plans
A night strike against an opponent without night fighters made British air-cover needs unlike Japan's daylight attack on defended Pearl Harbor.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Carrier helicopter decks would favor medium aircraft earlier
Retaining aviation-capable F3 conversions would bring Sea King- and Merlin-sized helicopters into prominence sooner.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Typhon as a step toward Aegis
Deploying Typhon would give the US Navy an early capable phased-array combat system, but not the maturity later achieved by Aegis.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A third British capital ship at Denmark Strait
Adding King George V and Victorious would alter command, formation, air support, and likely overwhelm Bismarck and Prinz Eugen.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
American ambivalence toward Britain's nuclear deterrent
US policy pulls between controlling dependent allies and demanding that those allies fund and manage their own defence.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Why Britain would still choose TSR-2 over F-111K
The F-111K-like option is preferred here, but Britain would probably select the aircraft designed around its own specification.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
Four names that should remain in the Royal Navy
Ark Royal, Warspite, Dreadnought, and Eskimo are selected as names that carry exceptional institutional memory.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·
A simulated British answer to Dante Alighieri
A design-game battlecruiser gained hull length and space but entered a battleship fight with only 10 inches of armor.
From Bruships 131: Battleships... ·