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Would it be possible to weaponize or otherwise militarize cruise ships of today, just like back in the day with ocean liners?
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>>64830769
No. They didn't weaponize ocean liners either, they pressed them into service as troop transports and hospital ships. If you're too stupid to tell the difference you're too stupid to understand why it would be a bad idea even if they could.
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>>64830769
Nah, steel is cheap, it's the systems that are as expensive as fuck. It might actually be cheaper to design and build a fresh warship than retrofit merchant shipping into something worth fighting with.
>>64830965
This. They'll be used as transports. Look at what happened in the Falklands. Container ship used for moving supplies down there (and as an unwitting carrier decoy), cruise ships used to transport troops.
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>>64830965
>They didn't weaponize ocean liners either
Cunard ships prior to WWI were built with reinforced mounting locations for gun so that the ships could be used as "auxiliary cruisers". Carmania was so outfitted for WWI and used in patrols in the Atlantic where she met the German Cap Trafalgar which was also armed but far more haphazardly while out on patrol. the Trafalgar had oddly enough be disguised to look as much as possible like the Carmania as the Carmania was the closest physical match. They beat the shit out of each other and basically proved why liners were useless in an armed role. picrel
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High-speed ships like those that competed for the Blue Riband could reach cruising speeds that made them almost impossible for U-boats to catch, making them highly valued as troop transports that could even sail independently.
Their ample passageways and air conditioning made them vulnerable to fire, so they probably shouldn't have been deployed in combat.
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>>64830769
>>64830965
>>64831142
You could absolutely bolt a shitload of basic standalone Harpoon Missile launchers onto it if you absolutely had to turn a cruise ship into a weapon cheaply and quickly. Sure it's hard to concoct a scenario where that's something you need to do, but as a hypothetical that would definitely be possible.
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>>64830769
only for perfidious purposes.
>>64833134
RMS Lusitania
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>>64833376
That was civilian liner that may or may not transported war contraband.
You have to look on something like SMS Cap Trafalgar or RMS Carmania for "ocean liner that was weaponized" you dumb fuck
>When war was declared the Admiralty issued orders for nine liners, including Mauretania and Lusitania to be taken up as armed merchant cruisers. However, the large Cunard liners were soon released, due to their large fuel costs relative to their usefulness and a shortage of guns. They were thus never armed or commissioned.
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>>64831107
>500cm cannon
how exactly are you going to mount a gun twelve times the size of a 16 incher on an ocean liner?
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>>64830769
Pack it full of explosives, sail it into (soon to be enemy) port that also has a naval base, and assplode the ship as near as you can to the docked ships/dockyard facilities/fuel dumps. This strategy is quite old. See: fireships.
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>>64831152
> flags-of-convenience can be removed by passing a law
>Legal fictions only exist so long as you let them
congrats annon you've debunked your own argument
you can't force a ship to take up your flag because it can sail anywhere and take up anyone's flag. passing a law won't change that, the legal fiction you are talking about is your own proposed law
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>>64831107
>500cm cannon
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>>64831107
>500cm cannon
>when the largest naval gun ever used was a 46cm gun used on the musashi and yamato
Kek. I can see the converted ship rip itself apart firing a 500cm gun. Assuming it can even float and load that thing in the first place.
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>>64833503
And all the corporations or individuals who actually own those ships will sail there too, and take all their money out of US banks when they go? Oh man, if only we had some legal mechanism to freeze assets that we routinely use all the time against people who are overseas, often against assets that aren't even kept in the US
>haha secondary sanctions go brrrrrrrrrrr
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>>64830769
The only thing you could have done is turn them into secret q-ship.
Back in time it was easy because submarine could hardly hit you and anti-submarine warfare consisted in hearing, dropping bomb, killing what come up.
Nowadays, all those ship would be good for is carrying stuff and there's better ship to do that.
And hiding missiles in ship containers would only work during a first strike and make every civilian ship into legit target.
You are better looking into hybrid warfare.
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>>64834268
>ll the corporations or individuals who actually own those ships will sail there too
the US owns 0.2% of global shipping, most of it already flagged in the US due to the Johnes Act.
what you are proposing is asset seizure of foreign citizens in the US. that's gonna go over great, no long legal battles, no retaliatory actions by foreign governments, no other foreigners taking all their capital out of the US in fear that they will be targeted next.
also for those ship owners their fleet is their main, productive asset. why would they reflag those when they know the goal is to draft them into the USN.
that's just stupid, here let me give you my business so you can nationalize it and drive it into the ground for free. when I can just sail it over the anywhere else in the world and keep it.
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>>64834395
Anon, the 42,000 inhabitants of the Marshall Islands don't actually own 223 megatons of merchant ships, and the 24% share of the world's GDP we sometimes call the United States of America owns more than the 0.2% of global shipping that's registered as part of the US Merchant Marine in order to be legally able to carry goods from one American port to another under the Jones Act.
Legal fictions are fictions, and flags of convenience are just that.
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>>64831154
>liners were useless in an armed role
HMAS Sydney would beg to differ.
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>>64834440
>krauts machine gun survivors in the water
>don't charge them with war crimes (even though it would be perfectly acceptable to execute all of them for perfidy)
What did the bongs mean by this?
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>>64830769
Not really but you can use them as troop transport or floating hospitals.
Cargo container ships on the other hands are very easy to militarize. Just design any missile launch system that fit into shipping containers and you get a missile arsenal ship. Improve the radars and maybe attach 4 C-rams. They work with a small crew and can go quite fast if loaded with a couple of hundred missiles as normally they carry much heavier cargo and sail slow to maximize fuel efficiency. But giving it full power with low weight should work well.
Also they are very cheap and very available.
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>>64834433
half the shipping (expressed in dollars) the US entities own are cruise ships.
Maersk owns more than every non cruise ship the US owns combined. So do the Greeks, the Japs, Brits, worst gooks, the Singaporeans and the Swiss and lets not even get started on the Chinese.
as it turns out having laws that gimps your competitiveness in order to protect US commercial shipbuilding. has indeed killed US shipbuilding and ownership.
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>>64831107
>500cm cannon
Do it casemate style. The entire ship has to turn to fire the monster, but boy will that boom be enough to make every /k/ommando within a 50 mile radius cream their pants. (and shatter eardrums)
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>>64834595
Here, your (very rough) 500mm Arleigh Burke
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>>64834741
Is pic related the reloading mechanism?
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>>64834767
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>>64834772
call it the U.S.S Lobster.
it's motto will be WOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOPWOOP
https://youtu.be/NJCKuZkRvaI
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The fate of Britannic makes me sad. Olympic was able to thrive, Titanic went down, Britannic was supposed to learn from all those lessons and be the best of her sisters. Both in safety and in comfort. Then she meets her fate and is barely a newspaper blurb because of all the other horrors occurring in the world.
At least her wreck remains in good condition and divers have been capturing some incredible views.
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>>64834741
>>64834788
Perfect.
Christen it the USS Seventh Trump-et and the Navy will have concept art for it within the week.
>be PO3 Anon aboard this floating fuck you to seakeeping and common sense
>off-watch, on your bunk trying to jack it to the same doujin for the fifth time this month
>suddenly a shrill alarm sounds throughout the ship, seven short bells in quick succession, then a terrified voice over the 1MC
>ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO FIRE
>sheer reflex is what saves your ears as you drop your cock and don the earpro that is mandated to be on your person at all times, closing your eyes in a futile effort to brace yourself
>Oh shi-
>the world is swallowed whole by the sound of the cannon rending open the fabric of space and time, and tearing a few more years from your life
>for an eternal moment you hang in the air, weightless, as the entire ship abaft the beam sinks below the water before recovering just as quickly
>then the crash back onto your bunk, the jolt bringing back every ache you've ever accrued from being part of the chain-gangs for the 50-ton shells.
>suddenly, you feel wet
>you open your eyes, fearing the worst
>the pancit noodles your Filipino bunkmate was in the middle of making are all over you now
>phew
>continue masturbating
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>>64834855
i would have had a lot more respect for trump if he actually displayed >>64834788
on a powerpoint, this new class of "battleships" he wants to field are pathetic by comparison.
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>>64834741
>>64834788
>>64834798
>>64834855
quality thread, put me in the screencap.
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>>64834788
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>>64834855
Don't suppose anyone has done the maths on how much what essentially would be a 197inch naval shell would weigh and how much force it would land with on impact?
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>>64830965
>they didn't weaponize ocean liners either
You are dumb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_merchantman#Armed_merchant_cruiser s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Cap_Trafalgar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Carmania_(1905)
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>>64834979
following the scaling formula of existing naval gun shells, a 197 inch AP shell would be about 2,300 tons and contain about 50 tons of HE
For reference, the 1939 Yukikaze class destroyer of 120m x 11m was about 2,500 tons
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>>64833498
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>>64835032
Christ you could not only kill a god with that but tear a whole into the fabric of reality.
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>>64835018
>>64830965
The famous Lusitania was carrying millions of rounds of ammo and they lied for over a century claiming it was just a passenger ship.
Cruise ships are legitimate military targets, especially Carnival Cruises.
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>>64834461
Not sure are you lying kike or just retard. Machine gunning lifeboats and survivors in water is mostly jewish habit, see USS Liberty. Survivors weren't machine gunned. Kormorran was pretty far away from Sydney when it finally sank, it was burning in the horizon at that point. At least one survivor made it to life rafts, he washed ashore pretty rotten few months later in Christmas Island while wearing Australian navy uniform, buried there, exhumed in 2005 and was identified from DNA in 2021.
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>>64830769
maybe for signals interception or oceanography. lots of room for equipment and plenty of spare power generation.
but you'd not want to broadcast much or do any active scanning least your ruse wear thin.
however roll stability and station keeping are a bit weak on cruse ships, you'd have to remove a lot of weight from the upper decks to make the ship more useful.
>give the ship an extra funnel and hide a Vertical launching system underneath
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>>64836283
>It happened.
You are the one making extraordinary claims. Do you have any extraordinary evidence to back it up? I suspect you don't have anything other than 'muh feels.
I'm pretty sure Bismark stopped to rape to death hundreds of survivors from HMS Hood. Or alternatively just half dozen disgusting beady eyed anglos made it water and half of them froze stiff, a downside of being cold blooded killer. That cold blood can occasionally get too damn cold in North Atlantic.
There is plenty of warships lost with all hands.