Auxillary Cruisers

"Or how about the Merchat Auxilliary Carriers which had a Hurricane or
two
mounted on a catapult with NO retrieval access at all. The guy hit the
silk
and waited in a rubber raft for a boat to pick him up. There's
dedication for
you!"

Think those were called CAM ships. The MAC ships, the Merchant Auxillary
Carriers were regular merchantmen (mostly bulk ore and grain carriers if
I'm not mistaken) decked over with a flight deck and carrying 4-6
Swordfish
biplanes (gotta love the "stringbags" -- open cockpit biplanes in WWII?
kinda like bringin' a knife to a gunfight?  Yet surprsingly they
worked).
No hangers as I recall, carried 'em lashed down on deck 24/7.  I've
tinkered with the concept a little - freighters that trade out a little
hold space for a hanger bay or two or strap on a little extra armor and
guns and pretend to be a cruiser - an idea that was given serious
thought
during both world wars.  The RN, short on escorts, commissioned quite a
few
Armed Merchant Cruisers which occassionally got in way over their heads.
One was present at the battle of Coronel in WWI and escaped from the
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau mainly by being hardly worth sinking, another,
the Rawalipindi, was sunk by S&G's WWII namesakes, while another, the
Jervis Bay, fought a hopelessly one-sided action (four 6-inch guns vs
six
11-inch and numerous 5.9's) against the Admiral Scheer (but saved most
of a
convoy in the process).  I've played a few commerce raiding scenarios of
that sort: auxilary cruisers guarding a convoy versus a small raiding
force.

Amazingly, despite its obvious drawbacks, the auxilary cruiser was
regarded
as a real threat going into WWI, particularlly since the Germans armed
several fast liners, including a few that had won the Blu Ribband for
the
Atlantic crossing (as fast, if not faster than most cruisers -- by
comparison the thrust-2 liner in the FB seems a rather pokey old tub). 
The
RN even armed a few liners as a response (plans at one point called for
arming the Lusitania and Mauritania, a factor in the Lusitania's sinking
-
ie German insistance that she was armed).  Once two of these "eggshells
armed with hammers" even fought - the RN AMC Carmania sank the German
Cap
Trafalgar off Trindad in 1914.

That's one intersting wrinkle between FT and 20th century wet navy
models:
commerce raiding.  While carriers may function more or less like WWII,
there's nothing comparable to a u-boat, so commerce raiding is taken
back
to more traditional days - fast cruisers along the lines of the CSS
Alabama, the Emden or even the Graf Spee, quietly lurking near the "safe
jump limit".  Reading about the KRS Kohl in the Rot Hafen saga (great
stuff
by the way) has had me toying with the idea of small "stealth boats" or
some such as a sort of u-boat stand in.  Thoughts?

			-M