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Changing Destiny (Kancolle)

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Now I really want to see a dinner party featuring Vasa, Victory, Mary Rose and Constitution.
The first three will probably be in period dress Constitution on the other hand will be in dress uniform as she is still on active duty.
The conversation will probably be very interesting for historians.
 
I am curious if the story does go to Constitution.
Red october20k said:
Now I really want to see a dinner party featuring Vasa, Victory, Mary Rose and Constitution.
The first three will probably be in period dress Constitution on the other hand will be in dress uniform as she is still on active duty.
The conversation will probably be very interesting for historians.
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I believe Victory is still in commission.
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
Let's recall that, even by the most generous possible interpretation, Victory is close to 180 years old at this point. Toss in the bombing raids, the 'left to rot' and then the 'tossed into dry dock for a couple decades'...

She's a bit grumpy about basically everything :V
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Repair Fluid figured out yet?
Open a few vials on her hull somewhere.
(And try to avoid hearing the blissed out moan, for decorum's sake)
 
WrandmWaffles said:
Technically, I believe BB represents Dreadnoughts successors, while B was for earlier batleships.
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Actually, it's just a case of shifting from one system to another. USS South Carolina, the first dreadnought in the USN, was BB-26. The pre-dreadnought USS Indiana is BB-1. The initial hull code system was B/D/C/S/etc. When they shifted to double letters, the types with no subtypes (unlike cruisers), simply had the letter repeated. Hence BB, DD, SS (and eventually FF).

As for why CC for battlecruiser instead of something like BC, I dunno. Maybe it was an indicator of how they intended to employ the ship type (as a cruiser rather than part of a battle line)?
 
And then you get the Alaskas being designated CB (for "Cruiser, Large" and no, I have no idea how "B" stood for "Large" unless it was via "Big," but that was used for carriers, too--the Midways were CVB Large Aircraft Carriers when commissioned) to go and thoroughly confuse the matter...

Plus the various subclasses in aircraft carrier that got tacked onto the end of the CV designation that's still technically a cruiser subtype ("Cruiser, Voler", from the French word "to fly") and made it a potential three-letter system, like E for Escort, L for Light (both of which came from existing destroyer/cruiser subtypes), and (N) for "Night Operations Equipped" (used only on Enterprise in the late war as CV(N)-6)...

Not to mention such late/postwar additions to the system as A for Attack (aircraft carriers with nuclear-armed aircraft), B (again!) for Ballistic Missile, E for Escort (on destroyers converted to ASW platforms, different from DE Destroyer Escorts, DDE Escort Destroyers), G for Guided Missile, K for Hunter-Killer (diesel subs designed for ASW), N (yes, again) for Nuclear Powered, R for Radar Picket (before airborne early warning radar was a thing), S for Antisubmarine (used only on aircraft carriers because "CVE" was already a thing), and T for Training (two baby subs intended as targets for non-live-fire ASW training exercises) that were to be tacked onto the end of the type designation in however many were required, resulting in four-letter designations like SSBN, CLGN (only assigned once to CLGN-160 Long Beach, changed to simply CGN before she commissioned), and CVAN (as Enterprise-65 and Nimitz were originally designated).

Yes, the system was fairly simple in early 1942, with only the four subtypes in the Cruiser tree and one in the Destroyer tree having been set (the Alaskas and the first DEs hadn't been delivered yet, but they'd gotten their hull numbers assigned already), but it was going to get worse in fairly short order as early carrier losses resulted in conversion of light cruiser hulls under construction into baby carriers, and then it was going to get out of control after the war.

By comparison, the Royal Navy's pennant number system (one letter to indicate the type of ship, followed by a two-digit number that can be reused when a ship is no longer in service, and if you happen to run out of numbers for a given letter, you just add a new pennant letter to the system as needed) is simplicity itself... even if the assignment of numbers for each pennant letter was seemingly completely random instead of serial.
 
rdfox said:
And then you get the Alaskas being designated CB (for "Cruiser, Large" and no, I have no idea how "B" stood for "Large" unless it was via "Big," but that was used for carriers, too--the Midways were CVB Large Aircraft Carriers when commissioned) to go and thoroughly confuse the matter...
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Well, they had to come up with something since L already stood for "Light." Maybe they looked up a thesaurus for synonyms of "large," saw "big," and went "Right! B for Large it is!" Also, E for "Escort" might've already been done, so "enormous" wouldn't be usable either. And C for "Capital" or "colossal" would just give them CC again, and CVC just looks odd.

I kinda wish they had split up their battleships like cruisers in a way. Dreadnoughts and Super dreads get BA while pre-dreadnoughts get BL. Once all pre-dreads are gone, they could technically reclass non-Standards as BL, so BA indicates interoperability with each other.... At this point, the post-building holiday battleships would potentially be BBs for large battleships, since they'd be ~10-20k tons larger than previous classes. ;) This would also allow for BC for battlecruiser (or rather, say, "cruiser battleship" perhaps) if the designs took a German battlecruiser approach of heavy armor and possibly lighter guns or, well, Iowas.

But eh, we work with what we're given.
 
Phht said:
This would also allow for BC for battlecruiser (or rather, say, "cruiser battleship" perhaps) if the designs took a German battlecruiser approach of heavy armor and possibly lighter guns or, well, Iowas.
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BC might have been used if the USN had chosen to persue a Hood-style battleship cruiser design instead of the OTL South Dakota Super Standard. This didn't happen because SecNav Daniels, who was responsible for the Standard series, didn't want to obsolete said battleships. Dispite the fact that Britain had already done so twice with both the Queen Elizabeth-class and Hood.
 
Darth Herobrine said:
BC might have been used if the USN had chosen to persue a Hood-style battleship cruiser design instead of the OTL South Dakota Super Standard. This didn't happen because SecNav Daniels, who was responsible for the Standard series, didn't want to obsolete said battleships. Dispite the fact that Britain had already done so twice with both the Queen Elizabeth-class and Hood.
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Sort of how like with the Great White Fleet that the British had made the entire Navy obsolete with HMS Dreadnaught
 
Darth Herobrine said:
BC might have been used if the USN had chosen to persue a Hood-style battleship cruiser design instead of the OTL South Dakota Super Standard. This didn't happen because SecNav Daniels, who was responsible for the Standard series, didn't want to obsolete said battleships. Dispite the fact that Britain had already done so twice with both the Queen Elizabeth-class and Hood.
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Thorthemighty said:
Sort of how like with the Great White Fleet that the British had made the entire Navy obsolete with HMS Dreadnaught
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Leaving aside the blatant myth that the standards were obsolete because they were slow (and by no means even if that was the case would the OG QE's be able to say that given in some aspects they were behind the standards.) The reason the Navy bulked at Battle cruisers was because they didn't fit US Doctorine and unless your entire fleet is et to the new speed standard the only thing it ends up doing is making fleet movements an unorganized nightmare (best shown at Jutland).
 
Spectre said:
Leaving aside the blatant myth that the standards were obsolete because they were slow (and by no means even if that was the case would the OG QE's be able to say that given in some aspects they were behind the standards.) The reason the Navy bulked at Battle cruisers was because they didn't fit US Doctorine and unless your entire fleet is et to the new speed standard the only thing it ends up doing is making fleet movements an unorganized nightmare (best shown at Jutland).
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Uh, the Standards weren't obsoleted just by being slower, but because of how much slower they were in comparison to what they would be facing. Britain had the 32 knot Hood and were planning the equally fast G3 'battlecruisers', while Japan was building the 26 knot Nagatos. Yes, the next generation British battleships were only going to be 23 knots, but the 1920 SoDaks couldn't exactly fight N3s any more than they could anything else of their generation.

Furthermore, the USN didn't build battlecruisers before the Lexingtons because of budgetary, not doctrinal, issues. Heck, the US came up with a proto-battlecruiser design in 1903, because they felt that armored cruisers just couldn't handle their intended role anymore.
 
A great deal of Congress's parsimony was not just budgetary concerns. There was a philosophical battle going on as well, between the Manifest Destiny Imperialists and those who rejected Imperialism beyond the Americas. The Non-interventionists believed that keeping the Navy limited in size prevented foreign adventurism. Also, the British Empire was spending ungodly amounts of money on the Royal Navy, and in the United States there was still a great deal of anti-British feeling. Thus a good chunk of Congress was very hesitant to blatantly opposed to emulating the British in naval matters.
 
Spectre said:
Leaving aside the blatant myth that the standards were obsolete because they were slow (and by no means even if that was the case would the OG QE's be able to say that given in some aspects they were behind the standards.) The reason the Navy bulked at Battle cruisers was because they didn't fit US Doctorine and unless your entire fleet is et to the new speed standard the only thing it ends up doing is making fleet movements an unorganized nightmare (best shown at Jutland).
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The problem with that statement is that you can never upgrade your speed because the new ship speed would be different from the rest of the existing fleet you intend to phase out.
Capital ships take a long time to build and a lot of resources, hence why they are called "capital" ships.
You have to start somewhere and phase the newer, faster ships in while phasing out the older, slower ships out of service. You can't just build all the faster battleships at once, they take time. Even destroyers took a month to build, battleships over a year.
 
SlickRCBD said:
The problem with that statement is that you can never upgrade your speed because the new ship speed would be different from the rest of the existing fleet you intend to phase out.
Capital ships take a long time to build and a lot of resources, hence why they are called "capital" ships.
You have to start somewhere and phase the newer, faster ships in while phasing out the older, slower ships out of service. You can't just build all the faster battleships at once, they take time. Even destroyers took a month to build, battleships over a year.
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except that's exactly what the US was in the process of doing with the 1923 expansion (12 capital ships five years) and later pulled off during the five year span between 1939 and 1944. the issue was always what congress could pay for, not manufacturing or dock space like with the UK. That being said a lot of that goes out the window when it comes to something like the G3 proposal. Sure an american G3 copy (or as close C&R would get given there is no way in hell the USN would never go for anything less than a twelve gun main battery) would have been nearly unstoppable on paper. In practice this 900 plus foot behemoth would have been an albatross hanging around the navies neck since building it would have been unable to fit into anywhere other than one drydock slip (Newport News) and wouldn't pass Panmax muster due to its draft. Also the minute congress looks at the cost the Navy's budget goes from 12 ships by 1927 to 4 and nothing bigger than cruisers until the mid 30's.
 
Spectre said:
In practice this 900 plus foot behemoth would have been an albatross hanging around the navies neck since building it would have been unable to fit into anywhere other than one drydock slip (Newport News) and wouldn't pass Panmax muster due to its draft.
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Kinda like the Ford class carriers of today?
 
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We probably should move this line of conversation over to War and Peace before it can become a major derail. We're kinda getting too far away from the plot.
 
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