Re: [FT]-escort ships

> I was reading through some web sights about battleships, and was
reading
> about american battleship designs and intended battleships in WW2. The
> interesting thing was the fact the missui (I cannot spell) and her
sisters
> were designed not as pure battleships (which they were anyway), but as
> escort battleships for the carriers. A 50 THOUSAND TON ESCORT!! The

Funny thing, there was a show about Battleships on the History Channel
today
convering that exact topic.  Turns out that even though the American
BB's
were designed as an escort role, they were still primarily designed as
ships
of the line, and their high speed, and state of the art targeting
computers,
and other systems made them the best BB's of their time!  Of course they
were on the drawing boards for 10 years!  If fact, their armor is so
effective, that even ion modern naval warfare it would take several
direct
missile hits to take out one of the BB's.  When they were brought out of
mothball, gosh its been a while now, the WWII era gunnery computers were
not
replaced, because they were still as accurate as any modern computer
that
they could have replaced it with!

Great stuff!

George