4 ms·

A Type 45 destroyer is almost 10000 tons though, a WWII destroyer would have been 2 to 3000. It’s probably difficult to come up with an accurate cost comparison

A Type 45 destroyer is almost 10000 tons though, a WWII destroyer would have been 2 to 3000. It’s probably difficult to come up with an accurate cost comparison, but I suspect the difference is even greater than for tonnage.

arethuza 7y ago
I wonder if there is a wargaming app where I could find out whether the Royal Navy of 1918 would win against the Royal Navy of a century later? ;-) Edit: Of course it would lose, I had forgotten about submarines!
- learc83 7y ago
  In a straight up battle the 1918 Navy would definitely lose just because of radar directed fire and anti-ship missiles. For the big battleships standard sea skimming anti-ship missiles might not be super effective because of the amount of armor, but I'm guessing the entire Royal Navy has at least some modern missiles that are designed to pop up and plunge through the deck.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    How many Harpoons does a Type 45 have though? I could see details online of how many launchers they have but not how many missiles are actually carried.
    - rjsw 7y ago
      I would guess that they are too big to reload while at sea, so 8 on each ship.
    - learc83 7y ago
      All 13 type 23 frigates also come equipped with Harpoons. And the modern navy is so much faster than the 1918 Navy that firing their entire complement of missiles, retreating, and reloading is an option.
- sharpneli 7y ago
  So badly it's not even funny. Even pre-missile refit Iowa (yeah, non RN) would absolutely trash the 1918 Royal Navy. Automated radar controlled fire control is ridiculously good compared to the fire control solutions they had in 1918. The only saving grace for Royal Navy would be that a single Iowa would not have enough ammunition.
- adimitrov 7y ago
  Today's Royal Navy would blow yesteryear's RN out of the water before the latter crossed the horizon. Modern naval combat generally isn't conducted by sight. Never mind that modern naval warfare is about air superiority as much as anything. Or really, who knows what real modern combat between naval powers would look like. Let's hope we never find out.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Hmm. Each destroyer and frigate has 8 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, for a total of 152 ships down. The 4.5" gun (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_45-55_mk8.php http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_45-55_mk8.php) probably doesn't have the heft to penetrate the armor, although you probably wouldn't want to be in the superstructure of a 1918 era ship. According to https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/royal-navy-1914 https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/royal-navy-1914, in 1914 the RN had 82 battleships (pre-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, and battlecruisers (dammit, those are cruisers, not battleships)), 136 cruisers of various flavors, 142 destroyers, and 80 torpedo boats. (The WW1 RN has a significant advantage in torpedo numbers, anyway.) During the war, they built 21 battleships, 32 cruisers, and 232 destroyers. (And I am too lazy to add up the losses.) So on the theory that 1918 battleships and cruisers are immune to 4.5" guns and that if you throw enough shells at something, you'll eventually kill it, in the surface warfare front, I'm going out on a limb and give 1918 the nod. The modern Royal Navy doesn't really look like it's set up to take on a large surface fleet. On the other hand 2019 has the Queen Elizabeth with 24-36 F-35Bs and 14 helicopters. Each can carry, say, 6 AGM-158 air-to-surface cruise missiles, for another 216 hits assuming that 1000lb warhead can penetrate armor. I'm sure they'll figure something out. (Worst case, they use the helicopters to ferry marines over and take the ships the olde-fashionede way.) We won't talk about WW1-era aircraft carriers (or planes for that matter). Submarine-wise, 1918 had 80 + 156 submarines, including the M class "sub-cruisers". (If you mounted that 12" gun on something modern, we could talk armor penetration.) Unfortunately, most of the 2019 RN helicopters and surface ships are built around submarine-killing and 1918 submarines aren't going to make too difficult targets. 2019 has 4 ballistic missile submarines, each with 4 torpedo tubes (but no indication of how many torpedoes, thank you Wikipedia) and 16 missile tubes, and 6 fleet submarines, with 6 tubes and up to 30-38 torpedoes. Approximately 300 torpedoes would be a problem for the 1918 fleet. (But it would likely take more than one torpedo to sink a battleship.) However, consider that fleet command and control is a big problem in 1918; they're passing orders with signal flags and lights and attacking in battle lines with a thousand yards or so between ships. With them bunched up like that, those ballistic nuclear missiles begin to get appealing, and 2019 has plenty of 100-500 kiloton warheads to throw around. Overall, yeah, 2019 has an extreme edge.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
learc83 7y ago
I bring that up every time I hear people talking about how the US needs a 300 ship navy because we had more ships than that in WWI.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  The issue is power projection. What the US Navy needs more of are cheaper, less powerful ships. Sending Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to protect ships from Somali pirates is a waste of resources, both in terms of what is committed to the effort and the need to build more Burkes to fill the inevitable gaps elsewhere. Unfortunately, we seem to be incapable of actually producing such vessels, as too many of the people advocating for naval expansion are advocating for more of the big, over-capable ships (often for selfish reasons).
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - smacktoward 7y ago
    They tried with the Littoral Combat Ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship), but even when explicitly trying to design a ship that's cheap, easy to build and relatively disposable, they couldn't restrain themselves from larding it down with features until it was fat and expensive. And of course most of those features ended up not really working right anyway. Sigh.
    - learc83 7y ago
      For Anti pirate work near the coast we have patrol boats that would work fine for coastal anti-pirate roles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_VI_patrol_boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_VI_patrol_boat
  - learc83 7y ago
    If we're talking anti pirate roles, we're talking jobs suitable for patrol boats. If we're including those, then we have way more than 300 ships already.
jcranmer 7y ago
A Zumwalt-class destroyer would have violated the treaty-era [1] restrictions for heavy cruiser, and is larger than many pre-deadnought battleships [2]. Size inflation is very real in naval terms; the size of modern naval craft is often much, much larger than their historical counterparts. [1] 1920s and early 1930s, for those who don't know their naval history. [2] HMS Dreadnought being launched in 1906 and essentially making all existing battleships obsolete on launch.

arethuza 7y ago

I wonder if there is a wargaming app where I could find out whether the Royal Navy of 1918 would win against the Royal Navy of a century later? ;-) Edit: Of course it would lose, I had forgotten about submarines!

learc83 7y ago
In a straight up battle the 1918 Navy would definitely lose just because of radar directed fire and anti-ship missiles. For the big battleships standard sea skimming anti-ship missiles might not be super effective because of the amount of armor, but I'm guessing the entire Royal Navy has at least some modern missiles that are designed to pop up and plunge through the deck.
- arethuza 7y ago
  How many Harpoons does a Type 45 have though? I could see details online of how many launchers they have but not how many missiles are actually carried.
  - rjsw 7y ago
    I would guess that they are too big to reload while at sea, so 8 on each ship.
  - learc83 7y ago
    All 13 type 23 frigates also come equipped with Harpoons. And the modern navy is so much faster than the 1918 Navy that firing their entire complement of missiles, retreating, and reloading is an option.
sharpneli 7y ago
So badly it's not even funny. Even pre-missile refit Iowa (yeah, non RN) would absolutely trash the 1918 Royal Navy. Automated radar controlled fire control is ridiculously good compared to the fire control solutions they had in 1918. The only saving grace for Royal Navy would be that a single Iowa would not have enough ammunition.
adimitrov 7y ago
Today's Royal Navy would blow yesteryear's RN out of the water before the latter crossed the horizon. Modern naval combat generally isn't conducted by sight. Never mind that modern naval warfare is about air superiority as much as anything. Or really, who knows what real modern combat between naval powers would look like. Let's hope we never find out.
mcguire 7y ago
Hmm. Each destroyer and frigate has 8 Harpoon anti-ship missiles, for a total of 152 ships down. The 4.5" gun (http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_45-55_mk8.php http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNBR_45-55_mk8.php) probably doesn't have the heft to penetrate the armor, although you probably wouldn't want to be in the superstructure of a 1918 era ship. According to https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/royal-navy-1914 https://www.naval-encyclopedia.com/ww1/royal-navy-1914, in 1914 the RN had 82 battleships (pre-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, and battlecruisers (dammit, those are cruisers, not battleships)), 136 cruisers of various flavors, 142 destroyers, and 80 torpedo boats. (The WW1 RN has a significant advantage in torpedo numbers, anyway.) During the war, they built 21 battleships, 32 cruisers, and 232 destroyers. (And I am too lazy to add up the losses.) So on the theory that 1918 battleships and cruisers are immune to 4.5" guns and that if you throw enough shells at something, you'll eventually kill it, in the surface warfare front, I'm going out on a limb and give 1918 the nod. The modern Royal Navy doesn't really look like it's set up to take on a large surface fleet. On the other hand 2019 has the Queen Elizabeth with 24-36 F-35Bs and 14 helicopters. Each can carry, say, 6 AGM-158 air-to-surface cruise missiles, for another 216 hits assuming that 1000lb warhead can penetrate armor. I'm sure they'll figure something out. (Worst case, they use the helicopters to ferry marines over and take the ships the olde-fashionede way.) We won't talk about WW1-era aircraft carriers (or planes for that matter). Submarine-wise, 1918 had 80 + 156 submarines, including the M class "sub-cruisers". (If you mounted that 12" gun on something modern, we could talk armor penetration.) Unfortunately, most of the 2019 RN helicopters and surface ships are built around submarine-killing and 1918 submarines aren't going to make too difficult targets. 2019 has 4 ballistic missile submarines, each with 4 torpedo tubes (but no indication of how many torpedoes, thank you Wikipedia) and 16 missile tubes, and 6 fleet submarines, with 6 tubes and up to 30-38 torpedoes. Approximately 300 torpedoes would be a problem for the 1918 fleet. (But it would likely take more than one torpedo to sink a battleship.) However, consider that fleet command and control is a big problem in 1918; they're passing orders with signal flags and lights and attacking in battle lines with a thousand yards or so between ships. With them bunched up like that, those ballistic nuclear missiles begin to get appealing, and 2019 has plenty of 100-500 kiloton warheads to throw around. Overall, yeah, 2019 has an extreme edge.
- ceejayoz 7y ago

learc83 7y ago

I bring that up every time I hear people talking about how the US needs a 300 ship navy because we had more ships than that in WWI.

vonmoltke 7y ago
The issue is power projection. What the US Navy needs more of are cheaper, less powerful ships. Sending Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to protect ships from Somali pirates is a waste of resources, both in terms of what is committed to the effort and the need to build more Burkes to fill the inevitable gaps elsewhere. Unfortunately, we seem to be incapable of actually producing such vessels, as too many of the people advocating for naval expansion are advocating for more of the big, over-capable ships (often for selfish reasons).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- smacktoward 7y ago
  They tried with the Littoral Combat Ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littoral_combat_ship), but even when explicitly trying to design a ship that's cheap, easy to build and relatively disposable, they couldn't restrain themselves from larding it down with features until it was fat and expensive. And of course most of those features ended up not really working right anyway. Sigh.
  - learc83 7y ago
    For Anti pirate work near the coast we have patrol boats that would work fine for coastal anti-pirate roles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_VI_patrol_boat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_VI_patrol_boat
- learc83 7y ago
  If we're talking anti pirate roles, we're talking jobs suitable for patrol boats. If we're including those, then we have way more than 300 ships already.

jcranmer 7y ago

A Zumwalt-class destroyer would have violated the treaty-era [1] restrictions for heavy cruiser, and is larger than many pre-deadnought battleships [2]. Size inflation is very real in naval terms; the size of modern naval craft is often much, much larger than their historical counterparts. [1] 1920s and early 1930s, for those who don't know their naval history. [2] HMS Dreadnought being launched in 1906 and essentially making all existing battleships obsolete on launch.