TML nightly: Msgs 5278-5286 V52#18 (fwd)

Just to confuse the issue over Battle this and Dread that, (bear with
me, my history is a tad rusty, but here goes). Back after WWI (or
maybe it was the Russo-Japan War...anyway), the World Powers decided
to limit their navies, and bascially said that the various countries
could only have so many of this ship and that ship. Of course, in
order to classify the ships, they had a list of rules which would tell
them what category a ship would fall.

One of the more important considerations was gun size and gun count.
So, one thing the Japanese did soon after these rules were published,
was design what I'm guessing is the Battlecruiser. But what they
effectively did was build a Battleship. It had the size and armor of a
front line battleship, but rather than mounting three gun turrets
carrying 12 or 14 inch guns, they mounted twin guns of (I think) 8
inches.

According to the list, this was a Cruiser...and they could have
several of them. The trick, of course, is that the turrets were all
fitted out and designed to mount the larger guns. The whole ship was
designed to mount the larger guns. When wartime came around and
everybody stopped playing by the rules, it was comparatively easy to
refit by yanking of the dual gun turrets and replacing them with the
large gun turrets -- which, of course, were already built. Nobody said
anything about not being able to build the guns, they just could put
them on the ships.

Of course, on the other side of the coin we have our modern Aegis
Cruisers. Which is really an escort ship for the carrier group, but
then it's pretty big...so maybe it's an Escort Cruiser.

I mean, what do you call a little, 30 foot ship armed with  4 SSMs
designed to knock out just about anything that floats? "Small enough
to be a patrol boat with enough firepower to level Manhattan!"

Design it for the role, name it after the role, perform the role.

Will
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