Re: [semi-OT] Aircraft Vs Dreadnoughts

"Robertson, Brendan" wrote:

> Interesting, I wonder if the USN is trying to get the funding for
this.
> As a layman, I would guess they could easily reduce crew requirements
by
> half as well as designing the defences for the greatest protection in
modern
> air combat.
>
> Neath Southern Skies -http://home.pacific.net.au/~southernskies/
> [MKW2] Admiral Peter Rollins - Task Force Zulu-Beta
> [Firestorm] Battletech PBeM GM
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Alan and Carmel Brain [SMTP:aebrain@dynamite.com.au]
> > Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 2:02 PM
> >
> > Personally, I'd like to see the manufacture of new BBs. It'd only
cost
> > as much as 5 Nimitz's to get the infrastructure in place,  then less
> > than a Nimitz each.
> >
> > For 4 BBs this would still be cheaper after 5 years than keeping the
> > current ones in service. The huge crew size required, the training
in
> > 1930s
> > and 1940s technology needed, the upkeep of "we haven't made those
parts
> > for over 50 years" equipment etc are all very very costly items.
> >
> > All of the above are my own back-of-the-envelope estimates, based on
> > various
> > reports to the US Congress and articles in the USNI Proceedings. So
take
> > em with a grain of salt. It might be 4 Nimitz's, or 6. It might be 3
> > years,
> > or 10.
> > The "5 Nimitz" figure assumes construction techniques borrowed from
the
> > Nimitz class BTW, more of a monocoque construction than the 5-keel-
> > stringers in the Iowas.

The insurmountable problem of trying to get Congress to give the Navy
enough
money to build a new class of battleships is that the Navy must explain
what
these ships will do and why nothing currently available will accomplish
the
task.  There is nothing for a modern, big gunned battleship to do and no
reason
to have the capabilities to even sink one, let alone build it.

A working definition for a cruiser is a vessel capable of independent
operations
(powerful enough to destroy small vessels and durable enough to flee in
the face
of overwhelming numbers).  There is no analogy to ASW in Full Thrust,
and no
ship is impervious to the smaller weapons, so FT only has roles for
fighters
(which need to gang up to destroy anything), scouts, torpedo boats,
torpedo boat
destroyers, anti-fighter escorts, cruisers and carriers.  BC's, BB's,
BDN's, and
SDN's all fall into the category of "super cruisers".  They are all
larger than
cruisers, and they have more and/or larger guns, but tonne for tonne
they are no
more capable than cruisers.

A "true" battleship has an absolute immunity to the guns carried
destroyers or
lesser vessels, is only vulnerable to a cruisers weapons at very short
ranges,
and there exists (for wet navy BB's that had to float) a range band
where the
heavy guns of an opposing BB can neither pierce the armored belt nor the
armored
deck.  An off-the-cuff way for FT'ers to appreciate BB's is if you allow
ships
to up to one row of armor for every 50 pts of mass (at the same armor
cost,
rounding fractions DOWN), K-guns have the same cost as beams, the range
bands
for K-guns are 4+2xclass, you introduce a penalty for firing big guns at
little
targets, and p-torps and fighters ignore all but the last row of armor. 
This
should give a good feel for WWII (WWI disallows fighters).