raptor1992

LOL

TopHatter

What shocks me is that dumbass is obviously a military/aviation ethusiast.
I can't believe even someone like that would make such a stupid typo, much less a real Eagle driver.
Almost like he wanted to get caught and watch us scream at him....
He also titled every post (and eventually an entire thread) "Hey just the opinion of a USAF man" or something like that. Weird...

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hey_you

quit laughing at others you dumbass

TopHatter

Man this is like being back in grade school!!

hey you, in this case, raven is an obvious object of justified ridicule and contempt for attempting to pose as a USAF pilot.

smilingassassin

Any of you Gentlemen have any of M.J Whitley's series of books? Decent books to get info on BB's, cruisers and DD's. Its a shame he never made it to carriers.

I've yet to find a decent book on aircraft carriers done in Whitleys format...

TopHatter

Never heard of the gentleman...
Looks like my bank account is about to be raided again

Dreadnought

I've yet to find a decent book on aircraft carriers done in Whitleys format...


Smiling I take it you have already been to Ebay looking for a book on this. You can try another place i get some great military detail books from its www.half.com its an ebay branch and if you do find something suitable you will only pay half price for it

raptor1992

instead of finding books about carriers it would be easier if you just google it or look on all of those online ecyclopedia (i'm not a good speller for give me).

lurker

Is it? I've always thought that the thing was a disaster. It should never even be considered "best".

TopHatter

Hardly a "disaster" though definitely a "white elephant" as Dreadnought said.
They were certainly fast, handsome ships and always one of my favorites as a kid.

Bearing in mind the old and slow battleships were pretty much out of the picture after the Operation Magic Carpet, the Alaska's status postwar was:

Outclassed by airpower (like all gunships of the day), their primary mission disappeared when their Japanese counterparts turned out to be intelligence phantoms and even worse, they were without a good secondary mission to fall back on, unlike the battleships.

The fast battleships were armed with, and armored against, some of the biggest guns ever to put to sea and so could either go toe to toe with anything afloat, or secondarily, they could get in close and provide gunfire support ashore.

The Alaskas were too weakly armed and armored to tackle battleships but were costly overkill against anything else. They could do gunfire support of course, but why bother sending a ship with 12-inch guns when you've got 10 fast battleships, all of them with 16-inchers? The Alaska's could escort the fast carriers and they did a fine job of this during WWII. But once again, the fast battleships could that too and had a much larger AA capacity, especially for growth.

To the Navy planners, battleships had a firm place in the post-war fleet. (A parsimonious government would decide otherwise and slice the armed forces to bleeding ribbons until Korea reared it's head). However, the Alaska's just were not needed.

lurker

Just a little citing from Garzke & Dulin: "too big and expensive as cruisers yet too weak and vulnerable to operate with battleships, were the last useful of all the capital ships built for the United States Navy during the World War II Era".

I think that pretty much says it. And those thing are in the "best" list?

smilingassassin

I recomend them....lots of info on all nations BB's, CA/CL's and DD's of WW2.

Conways books are good too, I have both allied coastal forces books. Lots of infor on MTB's, subchasers, fairmiles and motor launches.

I have many interesting books and I'm always looking to increase my Library!!

sparten

Tell me since when are politicians the best to decide what a country's defence needs are. And how best to meet them. Since we had the earthquake disaster most of the Northern Areas have been unrreachable well the army cannot get there in force until roads are rebuilt. So one pol gets a bright idea (must have seen band of brothers) and suggests we use paratrooper. In the highest mountains of the world.

As for the Alaska Class CB, wll her 12"/50 packed a punch greater than the 14 on the WWI Dreadnoughts. SO she would have been pretty formidable against say Kongo class BB's.

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TopHatter

Yeah, wasnt that what I said...just condensed into a more managable single sentence?
I just wouldnt call them disasters. They were started on bad intelligence reports and continued to be built only because there was little point in stopping once they were too far along. USS Hawaii should have been stopped dead in her tracks, but COMINCH Earnest King wanted that ship (not FDR as it popularly thought). As it was, she was never completed. Alaska and Guam gave good service during their limited time in commision and ironically enough, probably would have good candidates for reactivation in the 80s (Don't scoff, USS Des Moines(CA-134) and USS Salem(CA-139) were briefly considered for reactivation to supplement the Iowas)

Some good examples of disasters IMHO:

Foisted onto the Navy by a bean-counting penny-pinching Congress:
USS Mississippi (BB-23)
USS Idaho (BB-24)

Formidable on the attack definitely, but the CBs were not armored against the Kongo's 14-inch guns. They would have been much better than throwing Atlanta-class CLAA's against them though.

Also my pretentious dissertation was based on an immediately-postwar scenario

sparten

By the time they actually entered service the Japanese Navy did not exist anymore as a surface threat.

But imagine Samar with these two. Taffy 3 would not have been as naked as it historically was. Of course they may have faced Yamato, in which case they were screwed (something any capital ship in the world would have been to be fair.) But than at Leyte Gulf, a battle it had to win, or die trying the IJN was still too chicken to properly attack a force of tiny carrier. THe two Battlecruisers may well have convinced them not to attack at all.