Warship Appreciation Thread
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Nah, take Conny out, rig her up for an extended voyage, and take her on a 'good will tour around the world' with a few escorts.
Then when they reach the SCS, sail her inside 12 miles of every sand-castle, while blast the US anthem and such.
Humiliate China without firing a shot, and show how little we think of them by pulling out or most treasured, and least armed, ship to sail up to their little sandbars and thumb our nose at them.
That would be hilarious
bintananth
behind a desk
Conny needs 23ft of water just to go anywhere without running aground. She is larger than a Fletcher-class destroyer.
I'm joking
Yes, and?
That just means the need to stay out of particularly shallow water.
I meant taking Conny out on a FONOP as mostly a joke, but if they did it...we have modern charts; running her aground would damn near take an act of intentional malice on the part of some portion of the crew.
bintananth
behind a desk
I'm not certain the US Navy can assemble a crew capable of showing you what she's was actually capable of way back when she got her "don't fuck with the US" reputation.
Not that hard. Plenty of people who still sail ships like her, newer ones. As well as those who load and maintain cannons.
She is capable if combat
She's still a commissioned ship with a crew, even is mostly as a barracks vessel.
It wouldn't be a snap of the fingers to do it, but getting her ready for an extended voyage isn't impossible.
Wouldn't try to arm her though; that'd be pointless and defeat some of the purpose of sailing her as a 'good will tour'.
Let's not oversell the old girl; about the most useful thing she could do in modern combat is carry a temporary sonar array or two to look for subs, since she doesn't have to use engines to move.
Oh come on. A canon barrage would be badass
bintananth
behind a desk
A full broadside from her would require roughly 450 people who know what they're doing all working together. A Burke-class destroyer has a crew of about 300
Badass yes, but I want her back in one piece.
The object of this idea was to avoid combat, and just use non-violent humiliation to screw with China.
If we want a threat of a 'badass barrage' to go with Conny, one that could actually be effective if combat happened, we ought to send New Jersey with her as an escort. Except Jersey would be fully armed, including her Tomahawks, Harpoons, and 16's.
I mean actually, the more I think about it, the more pulling out and possibly a bunch of old museum/'old' ships to use in FONOPs to humiliate China by saying 'this is how little we think of you as a threat' get more attractive.
Admittedly with Jersey it's more of a 'museum ship that can actually hurt them', but I do not think any 16 inch shells or powder bags still are in the military inventory.
They are getting rid of if not gotten rid of them
Reactivating any of the museum BBs would be atrociously expensive. At the point when they were finally decommissioned, it was costing the Navy ~$250,000 a year to maintain them in mothballed status, and it was estimated that it would take *at least* $500 million each for minimal reactivation with no modernization upgrades. Inflation from 1995 to 2021 alone pushes that up to almost $450 million per, and you're going to get an even bigger increase from the fact that they have now been museum ships for twenty-five years getting *more* wear and tear and *less* maintenance than they did when they were mothballed.
Yes, which is why I specifically said New Jersey for Conny's escort, not any of the SoDaks or other Iowa's.
IIRC New Jersey would be the easiest of the Iowa's or any BBs, to get back into service, as I do not think North Carolina can get out of her museum birth anymore do to being partly in the mud, and she's the other BB that still has the most of her original gear intact.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
It would be more effective to build a brand new design that incorporates modern technologies (like engines) than it wold be to go through all the trouble of getting these old ships into modicum of functionality.
Intact does not necessarily mean functional
Easiest would still be damn hard.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
[QUOTE="Bacle, post: 197302, member:
Admittedly with Jersey it's more of a 'museum ship that can actually hurt them', but I do not think any 16 inch shells or powder bags still are in the military inventory.
[/QUOTE]
Believe it or not it took till last year to get rid of the last of those since Congress was being stubborn. Kinda like how Iowa and Wisconsin being on the naval register till 2006 happened
Admittedly with Jersey it's more of a 'museum ship that can actually hurt them', but I do not think any 16 inch shells or powder bags still are in the military inventory.
[/QUOTE]
Believe it or not it took till last year to get rid of the last of those since Congress was being stubborn. Kinda like how Iowa and Wisconsin being on the naval register till 2006 happened
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Weren't the powder charges considered damn dangerous to use?
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Only if handled poorly, if I remember right. Then again, we did have a post-mothball explosion because of the powder bags if I remember right.
On the third hand, we've been using a modified version of Kriegsmarine WW2 propellants since we've started using Oto-designed guns (which, from what I've read, don't turn into a blazing conflagration at a drop of a hat like most propellants, they still shift turrets when they go off but not go KABOOM! and thus split the ship in half).