Re: Civilian Shipping

the British used a few liners as auxiliary warships in WWI and WWII, 
the Germans used a few as raiders. The HM(M)S Carmania fought a duel 
with the Cap Trafalgar, both were originally liners (both ships 
sank). I've heard of very few troopship losses in WWI or WWII, I've 
seen a reference to a troopship loss in "Infamy" and a documentary 
that covered a small coastal troop convoy attacked off the coast of 
England and lost 3 ships and about 1000 men. Even with those, the 
Allied navies did a fine job protecting troopships.

At 10:11 PM -0400 8/26/99, Fred and Evelyn Wolke wrote:
>At 06:48 PM 8/26/99 -0700, you wrote:
>>At 3:43 PM -0400 8/26/99, Ryan M Gill wrote:
>>>On Thu, 26 Aug 1999, Thomas Barclay wrote:
>>>
>>>> An interesting one might be a Falklands-in-space type scenario
where a
>>>> major power has impressed a cruise ship as a troop carrier (quite
>>>> likely as big ass troop carriers probably are too expensive to keep
>>>
>>>Passenger Liners were frequently build with government money on a
>>>contingency that if the nation went to war, the vessels would be
pressed
>>>into serverice by the military for Troop Ship duities. Most Liners
were
>>>done so during WWI and WWII.
>>
>>And proved to be almost worse than useless in actual combat.
>
>[snip]
>
>Passenger liners were very rarely pressed into service as warships. 
(Truk
>lagoon is an exception)  Instead, they were used as troopships; if your
>troopship gets fired on, you're doing something wrong...
>
>*****
>
>thewolkes@earthlink.net
>http://home.earthlink.net/~thewolkes
>
>
>*****

Michael Carter Llaneza
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1991-1950
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