Re: [FT]-escort ships

Bif Smith wrote:

> 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
> battleships that were intended (or proposed) to be built, in answer to
the 2
> japanise monster BB`s (yamato, musashi) were going to be built with 4
> tripple turrets with 18" guns (ouch). These ships were going to be
proper
> BB`s in the american sence, with a speed of only 27 knotts. The high
speed
> of the missuri and her sisters (32+ knotts) gives a clue to the fact
they
> probably were designed primarally as carrier escorts.

Not quite... the Montana class, which is most likely what you're talking
about,
was to be built with 16" guns, not 18".  We wouldn't have built anything
with
18" guns in response to the Japanese ships, because we weren't aware
that
they were armed with such weaponry until after the war.  We'd thought
they
just had 16" guns as well until we dug into Japanese documents detailing
their
design when it was all over.

> Anyway, the FT question I have is what is the biggest escort designed
ship
> that people out there have used? I know there are designs for BC sized
> escorts, and I have used CH sized escort ships, but has anybody
designed
> BBE, or even SDE ships?

I've designed a few fast battlecruisers armed with needle beams as
escorts for
carrier-based forces, which usually had the mission of flying ahead of
the
fighter assault at high speeds and needling out ADFCs.	I've also built
a few
multi-role dreadnought ships that were designed as carrier help as well,
which
carried a few fighters themselves to bolster fighter superiority but
which also
had
somewhere between modest to heavy armaments of their own.  Sometimes
I won't bother with escorts and all of the ships will be multi-role
dreadnoughts

of some form, bearing both the fighter elements and a strong plasma
armament
all in the same vessels in the desired balance.  Plasma and fighters are
a
wicked
combination.