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Belated Battleships (KanColle) [REHOST]

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Just because Gale's doesn't have the same kind of stunning features that some of the other ship girls have doesn't mean she's not attractive. You can be pretty without being Six-foot-four, having Watermelons under your shirt, etc. Gale's pretty in the sweet, approachable, 'everyday' sort of way.

It doesn't help that we've almost never seen her out of her uniform.
 
theJMPer said:
Just because Gale's doesn't have the same kind of stunning features that some of the other ship girls have doesn't mean she's not attractive. You can be pretty without being Six-foot-four, having Watermelons under your shirt, etc. Gale's pretty in the sweet, approachable, 'everyday' sort of way.

It doesn't help that we've almost never seen her out of her uniform.
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Outside of Omakes for non-uniform Gale, pretty much, yeah.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
Similarly, Courageous was a case of bungling basic carrier operation so badly that you had over two hours in which you had no CAP up whatsoever while you're on ASW patrol. This is not a difficult thing--you simply launch another CAP before your first one comes in to land. If that had been the only mistake, it might be excusable, but sending half of your screen off to help a merchant ship whilst knowing that your only CAP was coming into land and you didn't have another one even close to ready is just pure carelessness.
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This assumes that you have another group of fighters for CAP. :V

Now, now, before you get on my case about 'of course they have another potential CAP' or 'what sort of moron doesn't bring enough fighters to trade off' hear me out. Both wikipedia and this site claim Courageous's only air group at the time was the 811 and 822 torpedo bomber squadrons for a total of 24 Swordfish.

It seems plausible that they didn't want to reserve their biplanes for CAP, given that would remove their strike capability.

:confused:

Now of course I'm staring at that above statement with incredulity. Why do you only bring 24 torpedo biplanes on a carrier which supposedly has room for 48 planes? Why are you still using biplanes?
 
sebsmith said:
Now of course I'm staring at that above statement with incredulity. Why do you only bring 24 torpedo biplanes on a carrier which supposedly has room for 48 planes? Why are you still using biplanes?
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You mean the Swordfish? The Swordfish is a legitimately good airplane though. It can carry just about everything you might care to hang off it (the reason for it's nickname of "the stringbag"), and it could happily take off even when the carrier was at a dead stop.

It was slow as shit, but that didn't matter as much in the Atlantic where nobody else had carrier planes.
 
sebsmith said:
This assumes that you have another group of fighters for CAP. :V

Now, now, before you get on my case about 'of course they have another potential CAP' or 'what sort of moron doesn't bring enough fighters to trade off' hear me out. Both wikipedia and this site claim Courageous's only air group at the time was the 811 and 822 torpedo bomber squadrons for a total of 24 Swordfish.

It seems plausible that they didn't want to reserve their biplanes for CAP, given that would remove their strike capability.

:confused:

Now of course I'm staring at that above statement with incredulity. Why do you only bring 24 torpedo biplanes on a carrier which supposedly has room for 48 planes? Why are you still using biplanes?
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They were on ASW patrol. There was literally nothing else they were supposed to use their planes for, aside from intercepting potential enemy air attack (which Swordfish would be helpless against anyway).

And if your fleet carrier has nothing more than 24 planes on it, what the fuck are you even doing? A fleet carrier's entire purpose is to carry a large number of planes (and have 28+ knot speed). If you're carrying fewer planes than a goddamn jeep carrier or light carrier, you're doing little more than risking a capital ship for minimal gain. Sending out a fleet carrier into hostile waters (or contested waters) without any fighters at all is just plain dumb.

Also, reserving anti-ship strike capability in exchange for having no CAP up when you're on goddamn ASW patrol is just plain dumb.

Now, even biplanes are still useful in ASW--the key is the ability to spot submarines via aircraft, which are in a better position to spot submarines than anyone else, and they can cover far more ground than ships can for searching. But again, sending half of your small screen away to help a single merchant ship--when you don't have any aircraft to keep track of the supposed submarine in the first place--is just leaving yourself wide open for minimal gain.

theJMPer said:
You mean the Swordfish? The Swordfish is a legitimately good airplane though. It can carry just about everything you might care to hang off it (the reason for it's nickname of "the stringbag"), and it could happily take off even when the carrier was at a dead stop.

It was slow as shit, but that didn't matter as much in the Atlantic where nobody else had carrier planes.
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It did matter, though, because Swordfish still had to contend with enemy aircraft and enemy AA. Swordfish were not exactly rugged, being outdated biplanes. Being slow as shit was bad for a torpedo bomber, since it made a vulnerable strike profile even more vulnerable to AA fire and enemy planes.

Being able to take off from a carrier at a dead stop isn't all that good of an advantage, considering that if your carrier is at a dead stop, it's quite possible that it's sustained critical damage that would render flight operations impossible anyway. It'd mean you wouldn't have to turn into the wind at all, sure, but seeing as the RN still managed to do so anyway and get a fleet carrier sunk in the process, it really didn't amount to anything.

I will give it credit, though: it did a spectacular job of making the Bismarck look really bad when it couldn't stop a squadron of slow biplanes from making a successful (non-hammer-and-anvil, even) torpedo run--in other words, flying low, straight, slow, and level. And they pulled off the Taranto Raid well enough.
 
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Derp.

Well, there was an incident of Swordfish making a torpedo run on a RN vessel--the same day they made a successful run on the Bismarck, in fact.

No cases of torpedoing Canada, though.
 
SaltyWaffles said:
It did matter, though, because Swordfish still had to contend with enemy aircraft and enemy AA. Swordfish were not exactly rugged, being outdated biplanes. Being slow as shit was bad for a torpedo bomber, since it made a vulnerable strike profile even more vulnerable to AA fire and enemy planes.

Being able to take off from a carrier at a dead stop isn't all that good of an advantage, considering that if your carrier is at a dead stop, it's quite possible that it's sustained critical damage that would render flight operations impossible anyway. It'd mean you wouldn't have to turn into the wind at all, sure, but seeing as the RN still managed to do so anyway and get a fleet carrier sunk in the process, it really didn't amount to anything.

I will give it credit, though: it did a spectacular job of making the Bismarck look really bad when it couldn't stop a squadron of slow biplanes from making a successful (non-hammer-and-anvil, even) torpedo run--in other words, flying low, straight, slow, and level. And they pulled off the Taranto Raid well enough.
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Fair enough. I just like the old stringbags. They're plucky as all get out.
 
Exterminatus said:
The former received the ire of the Pearl Harbor Battleships plus Mississippi (although Pennsylvania did not fire a shot). The latter was the one that sunk to torpedo damage.
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It helped that three of Kinkaid's battleships (California, Tennessee, and West Virginia) had been almost completely rebuilt from the main deck up. Their command and control systems were probably on par with the SoDaks.
 
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