Ships

Ahh ships Im more of a fan of the age of sail. So much so that I have a small ship in a bottle collection.

Easy just to get lost in imagination and fantasy looking at these








Plus I can get away with using the pirate smilie I never use!

Oh and for those that may remember me from the old boards I was one of those who collected all the Mass Effect art and lithographs. But my favourite one is still HMS Gryphon from Alice: Madness Returns



Still up on my wall

Some people are fascinated by the notion of flying cars, but floating cars are the real deal.

Amphicar




Gibbs Quadski



Gibbs Aquada



Or one could operate a submarine car, the Rinspeed sQuba.

Here we have one of the many smaller pleasure craft from the above ship..................

Repost from the history thread:

Repost from the Aircraft thread, the F2Y Sea Dart, the world's only supersonic seaplane/flying boat.

took my kids to see that several years back during the Victorian day celebration along with the mary rose in the museam and hms warrior, we also got to troop round a few other bits of junk like the type 42 and then back across the solent on an lcvp.... god I hated those things worse than mexe floats XD

ruggly you gotta love mafia shipping company /mafia cruise lines sense of humour most of their boats do funky shit like that with their horns when I worked at marchwood we had a couple of their smaller units dropping cargo on our docks and they always played themselves in /out of harbour with some tune or other and rarely the same one twice /


and I always rather liked this beast 

Love that ship. When I first made this topic I was looking around for good images of this ship. Its not just a ship of war, its a beautiful work of art and craftsmanship that you don't see today. 

For some reason no one has posted anything on the big american frigates of the Napoleon era. I was thinking about it, but I haven't had much time for bsn lately. Still haven't, but since it's only hours since the worlds oldest sailing, active, commissioned warship returned to the waters, from some extensive maintenance in dry dock, it's a good time to post on this subject.

(I'd love to do a bunch of pictures, but with PB the way they are and no suitable replacement, you have to settle for old Youtube videos.)







Anyway, USA didn't have much of a 'real' navy back in the old days. Some good men had some clever ideas of what to do about it. The idea was the same as the much later 'Battlecruiser' -idea. Make it strong enough to defeat everything that can sail with her. Make it faster than anything that she can't defeat.

The Battlecruiser became a failure. But here's the reason why: If you are going to meet up with an enemy battle fleet, you must bring all 'battle'-caliber ships to the fight, because of the numerical quality. It's just common sense. If you have Battlecruisers, you have to bring them. And then: Sorry. But they don't stand up so well to the heat...
That's why they failed.

The big US Frigates, otoh, was a great success. Why? Simple, USA didn't have any ships of the line. They didn't do battle fleets. At all. At this time.
So the frigates sailed true to their intended purpose.

Six Frigates were constructed.

Unfortunately, not all six were built to original plans. One of them, Chesapeake, became smaller due to not entirely clear circumstances. Noted is that Chesapeake was built by a builder which the main ship designer, Joshua Humphreys, did not get along with. Whether the builder stole material or not is a dead end since the revised plans where authorized by the Secretary of the Navy.
Of course USS Chesapeake was a spectacular failure. She was promptly captured by the British Royal Navy and that was the end of it.

The other five though were overall great successes. And two of them, USS Constitution (aka "Old Ironsides") and USS Constellation (aka "Yankee Racer"), managed quite a few remarkable feats.

Three of the five remaining large Frigates, were 'rated' as "44 gun" frigates. Constitution, United States, and President.
I'm not sure why, since they were 52/54-gun frigates. And not only that, but they also carried very heavy guns, 24-pounder and 32-pounders (USS United States aka "Old Wagon", even carried 36-pound carronades instead of 32-pounders and may also have carried more than 54 guns, which is part of the reason for her nickname, the other being overgrowth of barnacles on her bottom.) . Frigates typically carried 12-pounders and sometimes a few 18-pounders during this period.

The two "small" frigates, Constellation and Congress, were 'rated' as "38 gun" frigates, but were 48-gun frigates. They too carried 24 and 32-pounders. But some captains preferred long 18-pounders instead of the 24-pounders on battery deck, and sometimes also 24-pound Carronades instead of the 32-pound Carronades. This to make the ship sail faster. Lower weight of guns allowed more ballast and a stiffer, faster ship, and vise versa. The armament was still extreme by Frigate yardsticks.

Lengths p/p: (p/p = typically slightly less than waterline length)
Constitution, United States, President: 53m displacement 2,200 tonnes.
Constellation, Congress: 50m displacement(estimated) ~1,770 tonnes.
Chesapeake: 46.6m

As comparison, HMS Victory: 57m 3,500 tonnes.  104-gun,   long 32-pounders on main deck.

Another thing to note is that these american large frigates were almost of similar dimensions as the typical British third-rate, 74-gun ship of the line, and somewhat similar thickness of sides, but lighter, less draught and lower. The Royal Navy entertained the idea to 'cut-down' a 74-gunner to obtain a similar ship. Eventually they converted ten '74-gun ships' to American style 50-gun frigates.

History?... Umm, this is long enough now... OK, just a bit then: These ships saw action against the muslim slavers of the Barbary Coast, punitive operations against France and the somewhat similar punitive 1812 war against Britain. All three to protect american shipping, and all, ultimately successful. Constitution defeated a whole bunch of British ships, and Constellation sailed down and defeated France's fastest frigate, L'Insurgente. United States did good. Congress did good. And while President was eventually lost to the brits, due to bad circumstances, it too did well enough for awhile.


P.S.
USS Constellation also still lives - of sort. It was long a rumour that the 1854  Sloop-of-War USS Constellation (in Baltimore) was a rebuild of the the 1797 Frigate USS Constellation. There was a lot of research on the subject, and from what I gather, it is now accepted as a fact that Constellation is indeed built from Constellation. Lot's of history there. In layers.





What is the the difference between a Sloop-of-War and a Frigate, you might ask?
Well, not much. Both are three-masted, 'Ship'-rigged sailing vessels (Sloop-of-War is not  'Sloop'-rigged). The american difference is that the S-o-W has its armament on one deck, and that the armament is typically also extremely heavy calibers, but fewer guns.
The British S-o-W is just a smaller Frigate, i.e. exactly the same as a Corvette. While the american S-o-W is hardly small at all. On the contrary. Constellation is just as big as Constitution, which in turn is ridiculously big as a Frigate.

That's not true (but it's not those heavy frigates fault). Given the circumstances, the overwhelming strength of Royal Navy, there was no hope to protect American shipping. And indeed, the Brits had successfully blockaded almost the whole American coast and no US frigate could've hoped to prevent that.

The purpose wasn't to protect American shipping (an impossible task), the purpose was to disrupt British shipping--and that, yes, was relatively successful.

I want one of these: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/DUKW.image2.army.jpg

Casablanca class aircraft carrier.



Assault carriers, These ships were designated CVE, as escort aircraft carriers, and this was their origin.

The escort carrier was born from the idea of converting a cargo ship to carry aircraft. This, in order to fill the air cover gap in the middle of the Atlantic, for allied convoys facing attacks from German U-boats and long distance aircraft, i.e. Fw 200 Condor.
The first ship of this kind was HMS Audacity. Pretty much a smashing success, a number of classes soon followed, progressively improved.

Eventually, April '43, the Casablanca class emerged.

It's special in two ways:
They were the first "escort carriers" to be designed as carriers from the ground up - while still using Liberty ship rapid construction techniques and mass produced components -, and not a conversion of an existing cargo vessel.

And the Navy was so happy with them that none of them were dispatched to Britain or used as escort carriers. Instead, the Navy kept them all as combat carriers - in particular assault carriers, supporting the amphibious operations in the Pacific.

No less than 50 were built. CVE 55 to CVE 104. They greatly freed up the big carriers CV and fast carriers CVL for operations against the Japanese fleets.
Regardless of that, Casablanca carriers in task force 3 and task force 2 came to be heavily embroiled in some of the most dramatic and bloody naval battles, like the Battle of Samar. 5 were lost. Liscom Bay, Gambier Bay, St Lo, Ommaney Bay and Bismarck Sea.

They carried 28 aircraft, typically FM2 Wildcats and TBF Avengers.
Speed 20 knots. Which was fine, because that was also the speed of those battleships which were assigned to the assault fleets, not to mention the amphibious and transport ships.

Short (I promise) videos.

The crown jewel of the Mongolian Navy, a destroyer without equal.