"But what I was proposing was to build "tankers" which were actually not-yet-armed warships."
 
 
The requirements of a civilian merchantman like a tanker are simply incompatible with the requirements of a surface gunnery combatant to allow you to build a ship that can handle both.  For example, you would have to design the 'tanker' with barbettes already in place and the structural supports to handle the weight of both the barbettes and the yet-to-be-installed turrets, as well as the magazines and powder handling rooms and at the least the structure of the ammo feed.  Already you are looking at hundreds to thousands of tons of deadweight for a tanker.  Then that means you need to design the tanker to go with two shafts and the machineries for each - which are not cheap and generally not something that civilian operators would willingly choose during the WW2 era.
 
 
What will be the British explanation on why the tankers are being built with armor plate or with barbettes?
 
 
Such designs would remind of the Director of Navy Gunnery's opinions on the proposed BBV version of the Lion-class.
 
 
"This is - of course - a transparent stratagem, but it has at least fictional precedent . . ."
 
 
Yet the IJN - the closest real world navy that would have done such a thing if it was even marginally practical - did not.  Even efforts at turning civilian vessels into carriers, which did not require armor plate or barbettes, were not always successful.
 
 
Now back to determining how powerful a nuclear weapon has to be so that the detonation on the Moon (And any after effects.) can be seen from Earth...
 
 
C.T.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: "Richard Aiken" <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
To: tml <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Date: 05/18/18 22:33
Subject: [Spam] Re: [TML] HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier

 
On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 7:52 AM, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
There is a world of difference between a tanker and a warship of the
same displacement. Warships are *much* more heavily built, and
*ridiculously* more compartmentalised.


Of *course* those are the differences. For one thing, a tanker is a commercial vessel and thus is built as cheaply as possible to accomplish the mission.

But what I was proposing was to build "tankers" which were actually not-yet-armed warships.

This is - of course - a transparent stratagem, but it has at least fictional precedent . . .

In "City of Baraboo" (the first novel in his Circus World series), Barry B. Longyear has the last travelling circus of mid-22nd Earth contract with a shipyard to construct a starship capable of carrying the entire circus, with the aim of touring alien worlds curious about Earth pastimes. However, as the ship nears completion, the circus owner discovers that the shipyard was actually in the pay of an alien government. The shipyard is planning to allow the aliens to steal the circus ship just prior to it's launch, so that it can be used by them as the modular assault landing carrier that it actually is (in all but name). The circus triplecrosses the doublecross, by stealing the ship first.

-- 
 
 
Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein
"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville
"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester (fictional monster hunter portrayed by Jensen Ackles)
 
 
"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.
 
 

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