Bruships 175: Pre- Christmas Party 2024

Six recent books cover personal wartime memoirs, convoy history, shipbuilding, cruiser design, and Royal Navy aviation.

Tirpitz tied down substantial British forces as a fleet-in-being, but Hitler's restrictions prevented a combat test and made her an inefficient way to deliver that effect.

The panel moves beyond the battleship-versus-battlecruiser label to ask whether Scharnhorst's design suited the war Germany actually fought.

Britain could field more long-range maritime patrol aircraft without eliminating its heavy-bomber force, improving early U-boat attrition, reconnaissance, navigation, and warning during campaigns such as Norway.

Her radar-directed equipment was at least comparable to Bismarck's, but long intervals between full-range exercises would leave the crew less practiced in using it.

Upkeep was used against the dams, while the anti-ship Highball weapon was developed but did not reach its intended operational use; ordinary bombs could also be skipped across water without being purpose-built bouncing weapons.

Scharnhorst could keep the cruisers at range and escape more readily, but Britain would bring a heavier carrier-and-capital-ship hunting force against her.

A date slip opens a concise explanation of how slave trading and access to Spanish American silver sat behind the War of Jenkins' Ear.

Occasionally ships were cut down, but the result lacked the dramatic structural and sailing advantages gained by converting a ship of the line into a frigate, so a purpose-built third-rate was usually better.

Vasa illustrates why upper gun decks normally carried lighter weapons than lower decks.

The panel cannot identify a successful R-class ram, but notes that battleships routinely tried to ram submarines caught near the surface and that HMS Dreadnought famously sank one that way.

In an invasion emergency, an old battleship could be deliberately grounded to place heavy guns and Royal Marines directly inside a threatened landing area.

Convoy-like protection is ancient rather than the invention of one modern navy: Chinese, Greek, and Roman forces all grouped merchant ships under warship escort.

Britain's carrier gap could be bridged in permissive operations, but a contested theater restores the need for organic air power and early warning at sea.

An enemy can learn where forces are and how they are organized from radio activity even without reading the encrypted messages.

Governments can requisition merchant ships or compel convoy cooperation, but trained crews and compatible operating practices are harder to create quickly.

They were aerial recognition markings intended to reduce friendly fire; other navies painted flags, names, or symbols on decks and turrets for the same purpose.

Yes, especially the Lions, while a larger modern force would gradually displace the unmodernized R class and preserve only selected older ships after reconstruction.

A global Soviet raiding fleet would force a different Western naval policy and could preserve a British program for new aircraft carriers in the late 1950s.

Only technology that removes their underlying roles: portable air power, ambush raiding, protection, and hunting. New platforms are more likely to inherit those roles than abolish them.

Production would become much more efficient, but the essential reform was freezing designs long enough to build interchangeable equipment instead of introducing small changes throughout a nominal production run.

No. The Royal Navy expected two shafts to carry the required power, with cruising and high-speed turbine arrangements serving each shaft rather than a dedicated center shaft.

A deterrent has to be visible to influence an opponent, so revealing the ships once launched could have disrupted Allied planning even though it would also trigger faster British and American construction.

Contemporary estimates gave Britain about ninety days of food, while the practical margin may have been roughly one hundred to 110 days.

Radar fire control and renewed machinery would improve Hood's performance, but the fatal shell trajectory could still occur and the exact result depends on the modernization package.

Modern British, French, and American carrier forces can pool availability in ways treaty-era fleets could not.

It was indispensable, because mass-produced cargo capacity sustained global operations; a larger, faster interwar merchant fleet would also have made German interception substantially harder.

Unification improved coordination, but Britain lost dedicated political advocates responsible for explaining each service's needs in Cabinet and Parliament.

It made sustained victory possible by allowing the Allies to mass adequate equipment, expand production, and fund research until an enemy's initial technical advantage was overtaken or overwhelmed.

It sharply affected public and political opinion, but its practical influence depended on how leaders and the press used an event that reinforced trends already moving against Germany.

The war effort is delayed by roughly the same interval because the act funded not only ships but also the yards and industrial capacity needed to build and sustain the fleet.

The Royal Navy's steam-powered K-class submarines are the panel's clearest First World War choice, while the Second World War offers several contenders rather than one uncontested failure.

A roughly twelve-nautical-mile torpedo delivery range offers too little advantage over helicopters and other weapons to justify a scarce launch cell, though a much longer-ranged successor could change that calculation.

The B-29 could reach Japan through China, but the fuel, transport, airfield, and weapon-security chain made that route a poor substitute for secure island bases.

It can be built, but catapults, arresting gear, aviation support, and the well deck compete for the same limited volume and interfere with the helicopter operations that define an LHD.

About 10,000 may be possible without an air wing and with severe crowding, but sanitation, food, water, and voyage length become the real limits.

No. A ski-jump is a heavily loaded structural part of the flight deck, while a folding mechanism adds failure and alignment risks for little recovered space.

The Allies would face a serious transport shortfall because British orders, credit arrangements, and early yards helped create the industrial base that later produced Liberty ships.

The panel recommends Dr. Clarke's Tribal, Battle and Daring Class Destroyers as a readable history of the ships, their crews, and their service.

Germany could delay Bismarck's sortie until Tirpitz was ready and send a larger raiding group, but Britain would assemble multiple battleships and carriers to destroy it.

Fix Army artillery and logistics, expand RAF tanking, patrol, and F-35 capacity, and restore Royal Navy support shipping while buying more of proven escort designs.

Probably not: ice narrowed the passage to well under one hundred nautical miles, two radar-equipped cruisers patrolled it, and the Royal Navy knew it was Germany's favored route.

Yes. Ten Royal Navy ships have carried the name, most recently an Acon-class destroyer completed in 1910, though Ruby would likely appear within an R-name or gemstone naming scheme.

The carrier group wins and protects theater access, while the amphibious group uses that sea control to place and sustain forces ashore.

The long blockade remained the core strategy, and entering the Baltic was the only direct way to close Germany's remaining maritime outlet, but it first required neutralizing the High Seas Fleet and controlling submarine threats.

Probably more would survive because the convoy would be nearer its destination and past part of the air and submarine threat, but summer daylight and the location of the dispersal still leave the merchants exposed.

More equipment does not create a larger usable force unless Britain can supply it, recruit people, keep them, and support families through disruptive postings.

Snorkels could save some boats forced to operate submerged, but adding them to existing designs would complicate exhaust, machinery, conning-tower arrangements, and construction schedules.

It was fundamental: monitors were not rough-water ships, and Monitor's loss in the Atlantic demonstrated the danger of taking such a low hull into an ocean sea.

The nine 11-inch guns better suit a surface raider, while six 15-inch guns become preferable if the ships are expected to fight in a battle line against capital ships.

No, but a sensible assault avoids the defender's main concentration, lands where limited resistance can be overwhelmed, and builds combat power ashore before striking the primary objective.

She served actively as a flagship in the Channel, but the German fleet avoided the theater she guarded, so she performed an important deterrent role without receiving a Jutland-style battle.

Fisher hated war and sought to deter it through overwhelming strength, but once fighting began he favored rapid, decisive action rather than McClellan-style delay.

Dr. Clarke chooses USS Long Beach because she was the last American cruiser hull designed from the outset as a guided-missile ship, despite her boxy superstructure.

The machinery arrangement made that hull position more valuable for boilers, turbines, gearboxes, and shorter propeller shafts.

They were high-speed, low-level maritime strike aircraft intended to attack the Soviet Baltic Fleet, not carrier aircraft duplicating the air force.

It could reinforce from the Eastern Fleet, but Allied basing and competing threats made it sensible for Britain to lead in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean while America led in the Pacific.

Its flexibility is attractive, but a light raiding concept may not carry the equipment or mass that Royal Marines need when they must fight as an infantry brigade in a peer war.

Its carrier, battleship, amphibious, and Marine forces would overwhelm every contemporary power, allowing the United States to destroy the Barbary states' military capacity and dictate wider terms.

Their raiding mission requires practiced withdrawal from superior forces, so survival, disengagement, and adaptation are trained skills rather than improvised reactions.

Their chief advantage was personal space; preserved food and drink were often much the same as the crew's, and purchased extras did not last long.

Not necessarily. Type 83 will take years in any case, so fitting Type 45 for current threats is required even if the successor remains on its expected development path.

No. Tirpitz was struck in two operations, Admiral Scheer was also hit, Lutzow was attacked and damaged by a near miss, and Tallboys used against U-boat pens may have caught submarines inside.

The Battle of Midway, edited by Thomas C. Hone, is recommended here when an adult can read its short self-contained chapters with the child and discuss them.

Weapons could be changed relatively quickly; the real reconstruction required years to replace turbines and machinery, and Britain could not spare Hood from operational commitments for that long.

One successful raid would hurt a few convoys, but the greater problem would be a repaired Bismarck in France acting with Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Tirpitz and forcing Britain to disperse heavy covering forces.

Probably not. Land-based bombers can reach fixed infrastructure more easily, while attacking the icebreakers could close a route that is already seasonal and difficult.

When raiders recognized a battleship escort such as an R-class ship, they normally broke off rather than risk crippling damage for the chance to reach the merchants.

Not by itself. The persistent problem is finding a mission that values their speed enough to accept small size, rough-weather limits, and a narrow operating envelope.

Tiger could add a third British capital ship, improve the maturity of 14-inch gunnery, and force the Germans to fight both Bismarck and Prinz Eugen under pressure from the opening salvos.

Six task groups imply roughly fourteen or fifteen Type 42 destroyers and eighteen to twenty-four frigates, plus a larger amphibious fleet and successor program.

Age-of-Sail ships carried practical surgeons rather than university physicians; later cruisers and larger ships generally had doctors, while destroyer flotillas concentrated a surgeon in the leader and used medics aboard individual ships.

Helicopter carriers add amphibious capacity, while modern escorts distribute helicopters across the fleet and reduce the need for a dedicated helicopter cruiser.

The hull needed to be lengthened, widened, and raised for stability and freeboard, which amounted to a major redesign that Captain's political champions would have had to accept.

Not directly, because Trieste is an LHD and Britain would build that type in different yards from the frigate line; the larger constraint is preserving specialized industrial capacity and a workable deployment-refit cycle.

Type 45 inherited the European Sylver air-defense system from the Horizon program, while Mark 41 offers newer frigates broader weapon compatibility and attractive quad-packing options.

The answer depends on which class is meant: the interwar heavy cruisers should avoid the battle line, while the older German pre-dreadnoughts could stand at its rear to add gunfire.

The last ships would likely leave around the replacement of HMS Ocean and the arrival of three Queen Elizabeth-class carriers, but a larger Harrier force could delay the exact date.

India adopted a Russian-supplied system that suited its fleet, while Russia valued rapid launches and recovery of heavier fighters for fleet air defense.

The result depends on whether Japan still falsifies treaty displacement: honest designs lose some desired capabilities, while continued deception permits more ambitious but risky ships.

Yes, but it required sustained money and political commitment; early infrastructure investment compounds over time, while the notorious main-caliber dispersion problem involved more than simple factory inspection.

Yes. Regular personnel may carry the opening weeks, but a long war needs trained reservists to expand the fleet and replace exhausted, wounded, or killed crew members.

The panel chooses the Lion class, while also noting the opportunity to arm the King George V class with a developed 15-inch weapon.

A faster, more powerful Tiger would be more attractive to retain, though her survival would still depend on treaty limits and the alternatives the Royal Navy chose to discard.

Official language would probably favor cruiser or large surface combatant, with the final label shaped as much by budgets and rivalry as by the ship's weapons.

The technical minimum is less important than how much damage control, maintenance, casualty tolerance, and system integration a navy is willing to surrender.

They considered related ideas, but range, launch and recovery, refueling, maintenance, and the need for sufficiently calm water made routine convoy-side operation impractical.