Warship Appreciation Thread

[Vargas Fan]

The Russian Battleship Gangut, refitted as the Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya must take the biscuit as one of the most.....distinctive looking vessels around. The refits changed many vessels, like the Queen Elizabeths lost a funnel, many of the US Battleships lost lattice masts and the Japanese ships got huge pagoda towers, but this just looks odd.

 

[Sailor.X]

Just posting a pick of the old girl. The USS Forrestal aka the beloved Zippo

 

[Aldarion]

Tegetthoff class battleship. These are my personal favourites among battleships, alongside British Nelson and Vanguard and French Richillieu classes. Four ships of this class were the first and last dreadnoughts of the Austria-Hungarian navy, and were also first battleships to mount triple turrets (with Italian Dante Alighieri being first to be designed with such - Tefetthoff class was a counter to them, but actually came into service first). They also hold distinction of being last ships designed by famed naval architect Siegfried Popper; Popper was going blind at the time, which may also be responsible for some design flaws in the class such as weak torpedo protection.

SMS Viribus Unitis was turned over to the SHS Navy, but was sunk by Italian frogmen as it was considered a danger to Italian plans of annexing Croatian coast.

 

[gral]

Tegetthoff class battleship. These are my personal favourites among battleships, alongside British Nelson and Vanguard and French Richillieu classes. Four ships of this class were the first and last dreadnoughts of the Austria-Hungarian navy, and were also first battleships to mount triple turrets (with Italian Dante Alighieri being first to be designed with such - Tefetthoff class was a counter to them, but actually came into service first). They also hold distinction of being last ships designed by famed naval architect Siegfried Popper; Popper was going blind at the time, which may also be responsible for some design flaws in the class such as weak torpedo protection.

The Tegethoffs were pretty flawed ships, mainly because they were too small for what they carried. Not only protection(in general) was bad(both desgn and building flaws), they also had poorly-designed ventilation systems for their main gun turrets; IIRC, if the ships spent more than 15 minutes firing their main armament, the fumes would kill the turret crews.

Still, I rather like them, warts and all.

 

[Husky_Khan]

The HMS Belfast is looking quite appealing, almost better then it did when I saw it in London. The magic of computer generated deepfakes. Can't trust anything nowadays.

 

[Vargas Fan]

One of the uglier vessels around. The Italian Monitor Faa di Bruno. Lets take a barge, stick a couple of battleship guns on board, a tripod mast and an umbrella over the top of the turret.

While it's probably not meant to leave the Adriatic or the Mediterranean I don't know if I would feel comfortable even leaving port in that thing.

 

[Husky_Khan]

One of the uglier vessels around. The Italian Monitor Faa di Bruno. Lets take a barge, stick a couple of battleship guns on board, a tripod mast and an umbrella over the top of the turret.

While it's probably not meant to leave the Adriatic or the Mediterranean I don't know if I would feel comfortable even leaving port in that thing.

I actually love monitor style vessels. I love seeing little ships trawling about with giant naval cannons and wish they had a more colorful Naval combat history (at least in the latter 19th/early 20th century). They remind me of the precursors of those big ol' space cannon ships, like the Strike Cannons from Colony Wars.

 

[Captain X]

Am I the only one to actually like how the Arleigh Burke class ships look?

I also rather like how the Freedom and Independence look.

 

[paulobrito]

NRP Adamastor - Unprotected Cruiser of the Portuguese navy, 1898 (service 1897-1933).

 

[Spartan303]

@Sailor.X I know this has to make you sad to see.



A little about the Ticonderoga class.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

May this not be the last ship to bare the name in USN service. Still the fact that Congress was too cheap to give the first five Ticondergas a refit to make them have VLS in place of their MK22 launchers and magazines galls me since it deprived those ships of fifteen years of useful service life.

 

[Spartan303]

May this not be the last ship to bare the name in USN service. Still the fact that Congress was too cheap to give the first five Ticondergas a refit to make them have VLS in place of their MK22 launchers and magazines galls me since it deprived those ships of fifteen years of useful service life.

Wait, those ships had close to 20 years of service life left?

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Wait, those ships had close to 20 years of service life left?

They were designed for 35 years of service life and were decommissioned when they had between 21 and 18 years in service. Something similar happened with the 7 Spruances not given VLS and the remaining 24 got axed between 6 and 11 years ahead of what was strictly neccessary based off their projected service life of again 35 years. And unlike a decent chunk of the Perrys retired early they weren't sold to foreign nations or at the very least stripped for parts to support foreign Perrys the overwhelming majority of the Spruance class got used as target practice. As related to the 5 non VLS Ticondergas the USN offered to lease them to the RN as temporary replacements for retiring Type 42 until the Type 45(which at the point the offer was made still had 12 units planed) entered service in numbers

 

[Knowledgeispower]

And I shall note that the USN wanted to add VLS to all five Ticondergas that didn't have it and on all 7 Spruances that didn't as well during the mid 90s but that was a victim of the Clinton Defense cuts

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Another Victim of the various Clinton defense cuts was the refueling of a fair few LA class subs and at the very least the Virginia and possibly the California class crusiers which would have been modernized a fair bit as well. Oh and restarting B-2 production to increase the fleet to around 50 aircraft and since R@D was paid for they would have only cost around 40% per bird as compared to the previous production run. And of course the planned F-22 production run got cut back putting us on the path to eventually having less than 200 made

 

[Bacle]

Nice color gun camera footage of the raid on Truk.

Title is wrong though, it's not a DD in the footage of the second video, it's IJN Naka, last of the Sendai class cruisers.

Edit: Second video is more accurately titled.

 

[Sailor.X]

@Sailor.X I know this has to make you sad to see.



A little about the Ticonderoga class.

Yes it does give me the sads. Pretty soon there will be no classes of ships left from my time save for the Later Nimtz, Wasp, Los Angeles, Seawolf, Burkes and Ohios.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Oh and another thing Clinton is responsible for is the renaming of CVN-75 to Harry Truman after she had already been named down as the United States which is....ironic to say the very least

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Yes it does give me the sads. Pretty soon there will be no classes of ships left from my time save for the Later Nimtz, Wasp, Los Angeles, Seawolf, Burkes and Ohios.

Well there's still a Spruance kicking around as test ship and she's planned to stay in that role for at least another couple decades

 

[Sailor.X]

Well there's still a Spruance kicking around as test ship and she's planned to stay in that role for at least another couple decades

They better make her a Museum Ship after final decommissioning.