Re:Why the Navy Misses the Old F-14 Tomcat, Despite All of t...
by dmoy on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @11:54AM
(#17909907)
> The last time the US Navy built a battleship was in 1941. It was decommissioned in 1958 - the last of its kind. If you take World War II as the proof that carriers had eclipsed battleships, that doesn't seem like long at all.
WW2 was definitely un-ignorable proof that battleships were done. Imo though, given the essentially complete lack of actual success wrought by battleships in ww1, someone should have seen the light in the interwar period.
I guess I shouldn't be too harsh, at least we aren't building much else new that's bigger than a destroyer (except carriers).
Re:Why the Navy Misses the Old F-14 Tomcat, Despite All of t...
by jabl on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @02:44PM
(#17911680)
There's been inflation. A modern destroyer is, in terms of tonnage, more like a cruiser.
Re:Why the Navy Misses the Old F-14 Tomcat, Despite All of t...
by twic on Wednesday September 05, 2018 @05:00PM
(#17921866)
Reminds me of how the Soviets had ships called "aircraft carrying cruisers" that were actually aircraft carriers, so that they could sail them between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_...
And the Royal Navy had "through-deck cruisers" that were actually (tiny) aircraft carriers, so that they could get them built under a government which wanted to keep defence spending under control:
http://www.godfreydykes.info/THE%20PROMISED%20TWO%20NEW%20AI...
The last time the US Navy built a battleship was in 1941. It was decommissioned in 1958 - the last of its kind. If you take World War II as the proof that carriers had eclipsed battleships, that doesn't seem like long at all.
The battleships were recomissioned in the '80s by Reagan as a bizarre act of cold war willy-waving. And once you've paid the money to get them working and put some missiles on them, you might as well keep using them until they fall apart.