Here’s a sight I bet you weren’t expecting. The image above shows U.S. Marine Corps AV-8 Harriers operating off a big deck aircraft carrier. The pic was taken in the 1970s when the Marines were testing out the jump jets aboard the Midway class aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, a ship that was commissioned just after World War II ended in late 1945.
The A-model Harriers were embarked aboard the decaying Roosevelt in late 1976 and early 1977 to demonstrate that jump jets could indeed operate from ships.
As you know, the Marines’ current fleet of AV-8B Harriers only operates from land installations and the Tarawa and Wasp class amphibious assault ships, which aren’t too much smaller than the Roosevelt was when she was commissioned.
{ 96 comments… read them below or add one }
Just curious but what is the approximate size difference between one of the old Midway carriers and a modern amphib?
looking at a Wasp class, the length is about the same. (970ft) The width is a bit less, but not by much (the midway flightseck was 300ft at its widest, while the wasp is 120ish)
Thanks I was trying to get an idea of the scale of the image. The fact that the flight deck is covered in Phantoms & Corsairs didn’t help
I miss the Cold War.
…why?
Things were much more simple and much more clear cut. There was an obvious enemy that always wore a uniform. The weapons industry that we had was also much more strict since we couldn't afford to be stupid with our defense spending or our weapon system designs (especially after the lessons learned in Vietnam).
Although the Soviets were cold-blooded monsters in many instances they also had some character traits that were admirable in a weird kind of way and they also possessed their own twisted sense of honor. None of those things I can say about the Chinese, who have no real defining character traits and are simply not creative enough to produce anything original since all they know how to do is steal and copy everybody's ideas and equipment.
The Soviets were also just as paranoid about Islamic extremists as we were and I think we would have been better off if we didn't help the Afghanis defeat the Soviet military. They would have been a great help in fighting against the terrorist organizations that we have in the present.
Aside from that, having another super power on the planet that was simply pure evil also better defined our good character traits to the rest of the world much easier. Western Europe loved us then simply because they saw that we were the good guy on the block standing up to the bully that would have otherwise pummeled them when they went on their way to school in the morning. Now that we are the only true super power around all that Western Europe does is complain to us about every little thing that happens around the world while they sit on their butts and don't do anything (the exception to this is of course the British who have always been great allies).
Also the effect that the Soviets had on Western Europe were good in that they forced the Europeans to keep a high end and professional military. Now Europe simply relies on us to be at there defense while their armed forces decay due to lack of funding and professionalism, or more accurately due to the lack of a need for it. They are happy to let us police the world, but they rarely ever assist us. I wish they would at least pay us for what we do. I think we should pull our bases out of Europe and only keep the ones we are using for Afghanstan and the ones the British let us keep. We have no need of the rest and if we left them we could save a ton of money.
hmm did we invent tanks, aircraft carriers, dreadnaughts, rockets, armor plate, guided missiles, jet turbines wow we really were just a bunch of copy cats. We did invent the practical submarine though, that should count for something.
"We did invent the practical submarine though"
Wouldn't that be Germany, which deployed its electricboot too late for the war?
For a "maritime" nation, I think the greatest contributions of the United States to the art of war are actually heavier-than-air aircraft (thanks to the bicycle mechanics the Wright Brothers) and bringing the combat UAV to the fore.
America had the turtle. Revolutionary war submarine. And the Confederate navy had the Hunley. Which clearly would be the first practical submarine. The US didn’t invent the tank, but we invented the first armor platted vehicles, the iron clad warships of the civil war. Also the armor platted rotatable turret, which allowed for dreadnaughts and tanks.
We also perfected many of those original ideas, not just cheap knock off copies like the chinese
I don't know.
Morally, we got in bed with some truly evil people who were able to play us off of the Soviets, and vice versa. We had such hilarious episodes such as the Iranians fighting the Iraqis after we supported Iran against Iraq, then turned around to support Iraq against Iran while having Israel and China support Iran and the US and the USSR in Iran's camp.
Then there was Ethiopia Somalia. Ethiopia was an American proxy and Somalia the Soviet one. Then the Ogaden War, where the Ethiopians turn Soviet on us, then both combatants are Soviet until they commit their chips to the Soviets which cause us to back the Somalis to the hilt.
The Soviets may have been uniformed, but to us in the states the Cold War "wasn't so bad" because it never hit us on our shores. Same with the Russians. Israel suffered because the Soviets propped up Arab regimes with weapons. Without it, the nations would've had to live in peace or fight it out with post-WW2 weapons.
Afghanistan might not have been as developed. Both the US and the USSR spent money on aid development, outcompeting each other in philantrophy.
India/Pakistan might've been ignored like Burma by the US and the USSR, but Russia's geographical proximity and anti-UK/US leanings of India gave America a stake in it.
I can see the angle you're working, and they're not bad angles. The presence of a superpower also discourages the use of overt nation-state warfare and instead uses proxies. Would we have invaded Iraq if the Soviets could've dropped in some VDV airborne into Baghdad?
I guess the analogy you were thinking of is straight of the Dune universe of Frank Herbert. Overt total warfare is minimized by treaty, and restricted to a "War of Assassins", where houses give each other advanced notice before using covert wars to eliminate House rulers instead of breaking out nuclear weapons and killing entire planets worth of people.
Also:
"Although the Soviets were cold-blooded monsters in many instances they also had some character traits that were admirable in a weird kind of way and they also possessed their own twisted sense of honor. None of those things I can say about the Chinese, who have no real defining character traits and are simply not creative enough to produce anything original[...]"
That said, didn't they say the Red commie Soviets couldn't build or do anything properly as well? Give the Chinese time.
Me too. The good old days. Spy vs Spy. Still had a wall in Berlin & you knew who was RED or Blue.
Was Saddam red or blue? Idi Admin? Mengistu? The Kuomintang (whose ideology actually is closer to communism, but took aid from the Soviets, the Germans and the Americans in succession)? In regards to uniting the Middle East, there was the UAR, but was it really oriented towards the proletariat? Or was it lip service to get their hands on piles of old T-54s to attack the Israelis?
To quote a rather famous statesman, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend!" And in the tempermental world of Cold War dictators and despots, enemies as well as friends change with distressing regularity.
Wow, There is the aircraft the USAF, USN and USMC really could have used in Afghanistan and Iraq for CAS. I think they were called A-7 Corsairs(sarcasim). Great load, excellent loiter time, hell they were even pretty quiet. I guess they went away because they worked well and weren't too expensive.
A-7, A-6 would be useful and thier loiter time was greater than that of the A-10. I am a huge A-10 fan, but station time for a CAS mission and COIN would be considered important if it were up to me..
A zeppelin's loiter time trumps them all and just think of all the ordinance one of those suckers could haul.
Not a big zepp man.
The volume required to lift a given mass is pretty high, and the more payload you want to bring, the more ginormous the canopy gets. They really cannot haul that much if you want to keep the canopy size down. I won't deny the loiter time.
AND when you drop anything off of a Zepp, you end up having to vent some of the gas. . .. with the current price of Helium, and the demonstrated flamability of Hydrogen . . . .. . . .
Aside from that, guys in wood and cloth airplanes with .30 Lewis guns and tracer rounds pretty much had their way with Zepps back in the Great War!
I'm assuming that was humor, so it got a thumbs up. But the joke went down like a lead zeppelin.
Ever taken a ride in a SLUFF (aka A-7) on a hot day from a high altitude runway? Once airborne, they did OK until you had to maneuver a bit, but just operating from Buckley ANGB on a hot August afternoon could get to be very interesting even with only practice bombs! The aircraft was made to go flying with a great big steam-driven kick in the pants, not off of a concrete runway under its own power! LOL!
Yes I read alot about the poor hot air performance of Corsairs. I'm a ground pounder and a aviation fan(not a expert like everyone else on comment boards-more sarcasim). But even basic turbofan performance has improved greatly in the last few decades. Thailand still operates 24-28 Corsairs with upgraded engines, radars and fire control. Greece too I think. High and hot is important I guess Rafale seems to have India wrapped up and High altitude takeoff weights and turn around time is where is distanced itself from the competition.
Cool wish we could keep a small number or Midway class carriers for air support for smaller amphibious groups. It would also eliminate problems with Tarawa class ships and the F-35B since the Midways could handle the extra weight.
Or the Kitties. They're expensive to redeploy over long distances, so parking some CV's (not CVNs) locally might make sense, but would be economically painful to bring back to CONUS. Got any shipyards in the ME you trust for rehab work?
Then again, I think all the Kitties are under the waves..
Midway class carriers have all been scrapped, excepting museum ships.
They were also pretty worn out from what I read. The Midway and Corral Sea were both around fifty years old when taken our of service. The only reason they even stayed in service that long was the Regan era defense build up kept them around past their prime to keep hull numbers up, or so I have been lead to understand. I would like to see a lot of old ships continue in service, but there is a point when its just not worth it anymore.
Though the Navy retiring and scrapping good Spruance class destroyers early because they were so so sure of the LCS program was incredibly stupid.
Don't know if the sprucans had to do with LCS. Disposal started in the late '90s, after all.
I kind of think the disposal should extend to the Ticos at some point, especially if we are going to extend the Arleighs. We'll consolidate our surface warfare firepower into one well-proven class, then the next seafighter we can arbitrarily deem a CG or CGN.
I think getting rid of the /Perrys/ might be what you were thinking of. However, the Perrys are weak in surface warfare without that missile launcher and are kind of old.
So, what you're saying is the Navy should never retire any ship, the USN would be 1,000 ships + then! All the Spruance, Kidd, Ticonderoga, and Perry class ships are still perfectly capable, we should have kept them all in service too.
As for carriers, don't forget the Forestalls, they should have kept those around too. Of course they would have had to keep all the A-7, A-6, S-3, and F-14's around to have something to fly off of them … maybe even the A-4 … oh, and they definitely should
All those ships and aircraft were already bought and paid for, surely it couldn't cost much to keep them in operation, right?
Ship hoarding.
Instead of dead cats in the closet, there is a Regulus missile…
ha ha ha. :-0
Yeah and blowing Billions on just a few Nuke Carriers and inferior F-18s isn't a waste either come on Tom.
F-18's inferior to what? Old F-14's? The F-16 it competed against?
The nuke carriers are probably one of the better points of Navy spending. Yeah they're expensive, but that's fifty years of *relevant* service, instead of downgrading them every generation from CV to CVS/CVA, etc etc.
No, Tom, there are limits; we keep the Connstitution commissioned for sentimental purposes only! LOL!
Seriously, some of the ships and planes just plain were worn out. Structural members eventually fatigue, you cant get replacement parts, and the technology becomes dated, but. . . . .Were some of those ship classes perhaps prematurely retired? Surely! And if the reason was that we simply could not afford to keep them afloat, so be it! But if the reason was to open up capability gaps for expensive new development programs, and of course, to keep the old BUSHIPS busy, perhaps a nice retirement berth in Bremmerton would have been preferable to becoming a fishing reef or a fresh load of beer cans.
Now with the 20/20 of hindsight, would not a couple of Sprucans, Knox's, or even venerable Forrest Shermans, look really good right now prowling along the coast of Somalia looking for shady characters with RPGs in fishing boats . . . . . .
We have Perrys. Not that they no longer have that arm-type missile launcher it's just a popgun boat. Like LCS, but with a bigger gun.
True. And a 75mm gun would be more than adequate to awe any of the Somali pirates into virtuous remission and denial, but. . . . would you really put a small warship with a single power train off of an openly hostile coastline patrolling all alone and unafraid? (without at least a 5min alert AIRCAP nearby?)
Whoever wouda thot that an Harrier could operate off any carrier? Do you thunk? I bet an A-10 could even have worked.
Yep. If a U2 and a C130 can I'm sure a A-10 could…
I hadn't thought of those; but thanks for the reminder.
You guys forget there is a finite amount of space on a ship. You want a lot of aircraft that have alot of roles, or a handful of really big specialist aircraft?
Take off yes. Land, hmm…
No, I hadn't. But, Harriers would be space savers. Sure, you need a/c for CAP; but then what is the main mission of a carrier? Isn't it to provide a base for over land operations that are not otherwise accessible? &, Yes, for over the horizon fights with an enemy task force. But we haven't had one of those since WW2. No. We wouldn't station C-130s, U-2s or A-10s on a carrier. % couldn't the Navy use a couple of jeep carriers in a task force for needed a/c?
An A-10 might be able to take off from a carrier but it would have one hell of a time landing on one considering that it doesn't have an arrestor and its tail is kind of high up to make one very practical unless you made it extra long.
Test fights & daily ops with guys fresh out of flight school are 2 different things. Just because a test jock can do it, does not make it a good Naval aircraft. Remember the SEAFIRE? The Spitfire was a hell of a fighter. But on a boat….. They lost more in accidents than they did to combat. There are others you could add to that list.
"invincible", "Illustrious" & "Ark Royal" were known as 'Harrier Carriers' back in the Seventies. Also, remember The Falklands, 30 years ago ? You couldn't operate an A-10, C-130, whatever, off a mercantile container ship.
Question for those navy buffs. I see the tails hanging off the sides. Are they really that big and steady? Or is that only done on very calm seas?
chains!
the tie down chains are removed only after the jet is capable to power ahead. the chains are in place moments after the aircraft comes to a stop. NAd yes before we practiced this we did lose a couple "over the side ".
Aren't tugs used to hold them until they are chained?
That picture was done under clear skies and a VERY easy sea. Even so, those birds (and I think I spotted some of the aforementioned A7's on the flight deck) are always chained down, unless they're being moved or launched…very embarassing for the Captain loses a bird without good cause…
interesting I figured they had some zip ties and duct tape under the wheels. The engineering aspect of moving ships on, off and below the flight deck has always been crazy to me. Some of the most interesting and underrated part of the military.
Morel like the CAG since the Captain isn't in charge of the air wing onboard his carrier.
BTW, the FDR was forward deployed to Yokosuka, Japan in the 70's IIRC. Tho' Subic would be better…(sigh)
Subic 2012.
Ohhhhhh,Yeahhhhh….Meet ya in the Zanzibar…first one to smile buys the drinks.
As I am looking at the picture, the Harriers are not hooked up to the Cats, and are on line to takeoff it appears to me. Was the Harrier incapable of being launched by the Catapult?
AV8 Doesnt need a cat…I don't think it was equiped for cat shots either…
Seriously, why negative points for asking a question that I didn't know the answer to?
STVOL my man. no push needed.
Harriers were never intended to be catapulted (kinda redundant) so no, they did not feature catapult attachment points on their landing gear.
In the end, I suspect it'll take a war to make them start from scratch. Why build new things when you have the industrial infrastructure to crank out BMP clones? In peacetime, warfighting production is dictated by economic realities. It takes wartime to change that…
"One Chinese general made a statement that if the US interfered with a Chinese takeover of Taiwan the PRC would resort to using nuclear weapons. If a Soviet General ever made that statement during the Cold War his superiors would have hammered him."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/international/a… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Chenghu
He was shuffled, but not sacked. He presumably has allies who agree that since the United States overmatches the PRC, nukes might be required to even the odds.
Anyways, the last NPR was in 2010, right?
Let's bring back the moth-balled USS Yorktown with necessary modifications to make her sea-worthy and battle ready…Our Fighting Lady could be re-fitted and returned to duty for air and amphibious support…
Sure, and instead of buying a new car, why not go down to the scrap yard and pick up a '69 Chevy Nova? Ships wear out just like anything else.
What do you expect to fly off of old tiny carriers? Helicopters?
The cold war is over. There is no point to hoarding ancient ships anymore (though the newest Kitties that aren't destroyed yet might still be worth something).
Next you guys will want to turn the Yamato into a Space battleship……
Ah, childhood tv viewing. Right up there with Speed Racer's Mach 5 & Marine boy's oxygen gum.
that's all well and good, but I'd prefer the Andromeda over the Yamato/Argo because of the two wave motion guns.
Also, what would win in a head to head, the various marques of Cosmo fighters, or the Valkyrie Veritech of robotech fame?
Veritech fighters. Though I always wanted to know if Veritechs would win against Gundam.
Rumors persist of FDR's supposed deterioration. Don't know how they got started or where they came from. Contemporary crew accounts say the opposite and sing the praises of her mechanical integrity. On her last trip back to the States, they put the pedal to the metal to prove it. Ship performed flawlessly. She, however, did not a big upgrade here sisters CORAL SEA and MIDWAY received, making her disposable…
Just a random thought:
Its an interesting pardigm we have with a reliance on technology. We can barely afford the, what, 11 CBG's we have today. How many did we have sailing around the seas in the 1950-80s? Yes, we have increased capability, but we now ride a very thin margin should one go out of service for any reason.
Alot of air wings shelved as a result, too.
Here's the chart you're looking for: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm
Really neat to see ship type numbers over time. CVs were in the13-15 range from the end of Vietnam to the end of cold war, so not much change in capability today given that today they're all Nimitz class. Prior to Vietnam numbers were in the low 20s, but a lot of these were Essex class of varying modifications, not nearly as capable as even the Midways.
One wonders if we could have afforded 11 nuclear supercarriers in the 1950s, given that even one nearly broke the bank back then.
Then again, aircraft got bigger and bigger. Look at how the Essexes and older WW2 carriers got priced out of the jet age. Our investment in CV's became less valuable once they could no longer carry the navy's best fighters.
First the AB8 also operated off the LPH hulls which were shorter than the Wasp class, 760 I believe. they used a short take off on them, on the other hand I had the opportunity to watch a Marine OV-10 bronco lift off the deck of the Saipan LHA hull, without assisted take off, we were in the neighborhood of 50 knot head winds plus forwrd motion, and they were airborn by the Island structure. this was 77-81 time frame Harriers would also land on the LPH hulls too. We should have a great ship in the Gerald Ford class of CVN lower mannpower requirements, new style cats and still as big a target as the older models. I love the CV, but a maller faster hull than can carry multiple drones might be the way to go in the long run, not to say we would scrap all the CVN.s but hold them back a bit and let the smaller hulls swam the opponet before sending in the big rig….
"smaller faster hull" <— That is not how ships work. (and also not how vehicles work in general.)
Power/weight ratio affects acceleration, but top speed is determined by power vs drag.
Drag is determined by cross sectional AREA, while both power and mass are determined by powerplant VOLUME.
Thus the square-cube law works in favor of the larger ship for top speed, while a smaller ship is able to turn in a more reasonable distance.
On the small end, the tiniest boats are fast but have pathetic endurance and poor seakeeping. On the large end, you get more gains by better hydrodynamic shaping and throwing more power at the problem. For example, the Nimmy CVN's are allegedly quite zippy because they have stupendous power available and massive powerplants, versus a DDG which has finite bunkerage and a smaller size for machine spaces.
Interesting that you would say we snickered at the Russians when they were building the best military weapon systems of the 60's and 70's, AND that the Chinese are where the Soviets were in the 60's and 70's, and THEN deride the chinese aircraft, tanks and space systems. Old habits die hard perhaps?
Seriously, the Chinese may just not feel the need to reinvent every wheel.
If the T-72 tank chassis is a good tank chassis and the chinese can put a better turret, or gunsight, or communications system, or ???? onboard, but choose not to reinvent their own tank chassis, does that deserve the snicker or should that hard, pragmatic rationality be admired?
You dont get ahead by reinventing the wheel. You do get ahead by taking that fiscal and mental capital and applying it to the other parts of the system that CAN be improved! :-)
Just dont assume that the Chinese are anything short of top shelf engineers. They have the capabilities; they just dont waste time redesigning wheels from scratch!
Indeed. Though you'd think they would start by working on designing new turrets that would drop into their BMP knockoffs. However, they'll likely stick to using weapons compatible with old school stuff because they would rather continue to produce legacy hardware than to switch production in the middle of a war.
But they are not in the middle of a war. . . . .
Although, now that you mention it, their production lines for military equipment, and the associated design bureaus for the new equipment, seem to be humming in a very wartime like mode right now! :-(
I WAS ON CVA 42 DECK CREW – WE WORKED WITH THE HARRIERS FOR ABOUT TWO WEEKS AND THEN WERE INTERVIEWED BY DOD PERSONEL- THE RESULTS; ROSIES DECK CREW DID NOT LIKE THOSE AC. THEY WERE DEEMED TO DANGEROUS FOR LONG TERM OPERATIONS ON CARRIERS-ESPESIALY NITE OPS:
I think that perhaps you are a bit overly critical, Blight. I think what the man was trying to say was that the Soviets were honest, up front and "dependable" enemies. We knew that they were NOT on our side or terribly interested in anything but the "welfare of the proletariat", but we also knew that they were rational. So many of the enemies we face today, are not rational. (Even though I have no illusions about them being our allies, I do not include the Chinese in this irrational category!)
I would much rather prefer the War of Assassins (or what we and the Russians call "advisers") rather than the wars that we have now. Yes, the Chinese are rational to a degree, but they aren't even close to the level of rationality that the Soviets had. One Chinese general made a statement that if the US interfered with a Chinese takeover of Taiwan the PRC would resort to using nuclear weapons. If a Soviet General ever made that statement during the Cold War his superiors would have hammered him. The PRC scare me in that they not dependable and not nearly as rational as the Soviets. I'm worried that they might do something rash as their military strength grows.
Here's my thing on the Chinese ability to make weapons. The Soviets were building their own designs and making high end weapons when their economy was booming and on the rise. At the same time we were being arrogant and deriding them they were still producing the best tanks and the best warplanes on the planet in the 60's-70's. Right now the Chinese are at the same place the Soviets were at in the 60's-70's. Their economy is booming and yet they are still trapped in the mindset of copying other people's stuff with only making minor modifications to it. The only two seemingly original weapons that have come out of China in the past decade that they have experienced an economic boost are the J-20 (which I am convinced is a copy of the MiG-1.44 with raised engines and new skin) and their ZT-99 MBT (the only original part of which is the turret since the body of the tank is still a T-72 even if the Chinese won't admit it). I don't count that new APC in the previous article since we could easily see that it is a BMP that's been raised and better armored. Even their whole space program is made from copies of old Russian designs. They are on the rise right now and they haven't made any truly original weapon designs. All of their space equipment is also cheap copies of Soviet originals. As if to add insult to injury none of the Chinese copies are as good as their Russian originals.
It's been 20 years since the Soviet collapse and the weapons that the Russians have now are still better than their Chinese copies. Not only are they better, but the Russians are still able to make new and original submarines, tanks, and fighter aircraft that can easily compete on any level with our best weapons. Their only problem is that they don't have the money to make enough of them to be threat. The Chinese just aren't that creative. One thing they do know is that the numbers is always valuable and effective and unlike the Russians they have money to make many units. The fact that they can afford to make several cheap copied weapons is the only thing that makes them a threat.
The C-130 takeoff was ONLY after a C-130 landing; both were sort of sporty with respect to the right wingtip and the left main gear! :-)
The U-2s were a bit easier since they just sort of flew in formation with the island and maneuvered in the vertical until someone grabbed a wingtip . . . . :-)
Let's bring in zeppelin UAV carriers. Can you say stupendous loiter time?
"guys in wood and cloth airplanes with .30 Lewis guns and tracer rounds pretty much had their way with Zepps back in the Great War"
In the end, yes, but when they were initially fielded, the airships could climb faster and to greater altitude than the heavier-than-air machines.
Regards & all,
Thomas L. Nielsen
Luxembourg
Lenin and Khrushchev were the only rational ones. Or maybe I'm giving too much credit to Lenin. Trotsky would've been more rational, but Stalin got him first. The men after Khruschchev were hard-liners, and increasingly older and older…
Until Gorbachev. If I had to pick my "favorite" Soviet premiers, Khrushchev and Gorbachev would be my top two. I don't know who the third would be. Either man would have been happy to stop building missiles like sausages if the Soviet Union was assured protection of the worker's paradise. Only the latter got around to it. Khrushchev was amenable until Gary Powers came falling out of the sky, mysteriously un-sheepdipped and who failed to commit suicide. He had to act.
Or perhaps stick with a cheaper alternative to either hydrogen or helium to keep it airborne! There seems to always be surplus hot air around these digs! LOL!
Actually, a very high altitude Zeppelin, perhaps equipped with "releaseable and recoverable" small to mid sized UAVs might make a great deal of sense for persistent surveillance in a permissive environment. Sit up there and observe, then drop off one of the "little guys" to take a close look or to designate a target. . . . . Hmmmm. . . . ..
Isnt Lockheed already looking at something like that? Bring back the Curtiss F9C-2 "Sparrowhawk" and we would be in business!
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_gene…
:-)
OK , SKY Captain. You and your P-40 submarine….
Psst: ironclads were experimented on by the UK and France, commissioning the Gloire and the Warrior respectively. The USS New Ironsides was an ironclad built to similar specs.
Actually, I will do Mr Blight one better.
The ironclad armored warship actually reaches a bit further back. The Geobukseon or Kobukson "Turtle Ships" reach back to the early 15th century and were designed and built in Korea! :-) Against the wooden galleys of the Japanese invasion fleet, these fire breathing gunboats were pretty fearsome opponents, at least as much of a technical advancement of the state of the art as the CSS Virginia on that first day in Newport News, but with a decidely oriental origin!
Soviet premieres did NOT generally happen to be nice people that you would invite over for sunday dinner to meet Aunt Hattie, but. . . . . you could understand their motivations and intents, and they could understand ours, even if that understanding required thousands of nuke-tipped reminders. To the extent that you could trust enemies, they were good enemies.
I agree with your assessment of Lenin, and I think that you are overly sympathetic to Trotsky; remember he led the Red Army during the Russian Revolution, not exactly a posting as the magistrate of Eden. Khrushchev was as ruthless as the rest, again commissar-in-hiding of Nazi-occupied Ukraine and the future executioner of Beria did not make him exactly tea and crumpets material.
Khrushchev (and Trotsky) were not, but wartime exigencies change people. Gorbachev was one of the first premieres young enough to have not been actively on the front line during the Great Patriotic War. Khruschchev was definitely not a nice guy, but would not have been allowed to talk to the west without some serious street cred.
As for Trotsky; he would've been preferable to Stalin, but likely would've still had to carry out his own purge in the '30s.
As far as I can tell, the records on turtle ships were a little sketchy. Then again, it may be a bias in western historical standards.
As for the armored rotatable turret, Id refer you to the Roman war galleys of the later periods where ballistae were typically mounted on trainable mounts onboard, apparently with what we would now call a "splinter shield" to protect the gunners from enemy arrows and javelins.
Perhaps, but at least the Koreans (and, notably the Japanese as well!) believe in them! LOL!
The best I could find, not speaking Korean or Japanese, are some academic theses and such that seem to confirm the iron plating and the effectiveness of these ships against the Japanese invasion armada. The Japanese propaganda of the era of course suggests a total destruction of the Korean fleet, but. . .. I think history perhaps suggests a different outcome! :-)
An FF (why bother calling it a FFG anymore) will still overmatch the Somalis. It frees up ships for duty elsewhere.
Maybe we should turn an FFG into a module testbed and test this whole module business. I'm wary of the fact that we're focusing on the hulls but still have no idea if these modules are going to work well for us.
If the original concept for the LCS "modules" had been carried thorugh, it would have been a deck socket with all of the ship services, electrical, HVAC, etc all fed across a standardized interface. Put the socket on any given ship, LCS or otherwise, and wire it from the bottom, sit down the module and away you go!
That little bit of interface engineering was deemed "too expensive". LOL!