Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Now he's hoping to distract from the files with a big boat.

Boaty McCuntface?

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 4:39 pm Now he's hoping to distract from the files with a big boat.

Not just *a* boat, but a fleet of up to twenty-five of them; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2084nq2npjo

They will of course be "Golden" and naturally, "Big and beautiful"...

Battleships are crap. They're massive targets with none of the actual practical use that carriers can offer. Bismarck, Yamato, Belgrano, any of these names ring a bell?

One journalist quite rightly asked the Tangerine Tyrant if America actually had the workforce capable of actually building such ships. Trump treated the question with contempt but in reality the US has not built any Battleships for years so there is definitely a lack of skilled workers to do the job and also building such large ships will presumably require an extremely large shipyard.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 7:03 pm Battleships are crap. They're massive targets with none of the actual practical use that carriers can offer. Bismarck, Yamato, Belgrano, any of these names ring a bell?

Despite being an armchair historian of WW2, Naval matters are definitely an area of ignorance of mine. As it happens I've recently been trying to address this by listening to sea-war episodes of the excellent "We have ways of making you talk" podcast. For what it's worth, my conclusion is that battleships became obsolete the moment effective torpedo bombers became available.
We can argue about the definition of "effective" and the precise date this occurred, but it was certainly more than 80 years ago.

Oboogie wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 7:46 pm

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 7:03 pm Battleships are crap. They're massive targets with none of the actual practical use that carriers can offer. Bismarck, Yamato, Belgrano, any of these names ring a bell?

Despite being an armchair historian of WW2, Naval matters are definitely an area of ignorance of mine. As it happens I've recently been trying to address this by listening to sea-war episodes of the excellent "We have ways of making you talk" podcast. For what it's worth, my conclusion is that battleships became obsolete the moment effective torpedo bombers became available.
We can argue about the definition of "effective" and the precise date this occurred, but it was certainly more than 80 years ago.

People will pitch the date between 1940 (Bismarck) and 1942 (Midway).

Bismarck was a beautiful ship: Bigger and faster than anything comparable in the Royal Navy.
Limited by Germany being embargoed, and losing the skills and habits of building battleships.
One evening a slow biplane dropped a torpedo that spelled her doom.
After that the Jolly Jack Tars closed in and sent her to the bottom.

The battle of Midway took place between two fleets of aircraft carriers without a battleship involved.
Neither fleet's ships got within even radar spotting range of each other.
All the attacks and all the damage were done by aircraft.
3 American fleet carriers fought four Japanese fleet carriers (That's aircraft carriers that can do about 30 knots and carry 60+ aircraft).
A blend of luck, better construction and balls-out fearless firefighting by the Americans won the day.
All the Japanese flat tops were sunk for One American.
I think the other American ships required a lot of repair.


Since Midway, battleships have done three jobs.
Sail about intimidating tiny navies while transferring STIs between friendly ports.
Provide anti-aircraft cover for aircraft carrier battle groups.
Occasionally shoot their fuck-off massive guns at enemy armies on land.

The HMS Nelson and USS Texas claim to have neutralised a whole SS armoured regiment in the days following D-Day.
There's some dispute about how much they actually fucked up.
But French scrap merchants did locate bits of a tiger tank that took a direct hit from one of the Nelson's 16" 930Kg shells.

Tiger tanks are frightening, the allied armies tended to pause a bit when they encountered one.
HMS Nelson didn't care.


BUT - battleships are impractical, expensive and very obvious targets.
You can only really consider using them when you are a massive navy with loads of spare capacity.
In 1942 this was the US and Royal Navies.
The Italians, Germans and Japanese also had battleships - which spent most of their time hiding up obscure river creeks.

Now the modern US navy is the only big navy remaining.
If there's any intention of building these ships, they'll keep the good ole military industrial complex ticking.
BUT they'll be a quarter the size of the biggest US fleet carriers.
And all that "Railguns and frikken lasers" bullshit sounds like bluster for the "Fuck Yeah red-hatters".

Donnie needs a distraction as more Epstein material is coming out.
That, gentle reader, is what this is all about.
Bring on the big beautiful day.

Agree with all of that. I've been listening to what the "Stringbags"* did to the Italian navy in the Med at Taranto (November 1940) and elsewhere. Italian battleships were just hard to miss targets with "kick-me" post-it notes on their backs.

* Stringbag aka the Fairey Swordfish an open cockpited, slow biplane, made from wood, canvas and wire doing a fair impression of a WWI veteran.
See for yourself.

A fine aircraft, the Swordfish - and yet so little time separates the Swordfish from the DH Sea Vampire...

The Swordfish was the allied aircraft (including all those fancy yank monoplanes with enclose cockpits and big engines) which sunk greatest tonnage of enemy shipping.

I'd never quite considered this, but Al Murray suggested its low speed made it closer to a modern helicopter than strike aircraft.

Anyhow, there's this YouTube ranter called LazerPig who knows about modern weapons and recorded this.

Best comment:

It's basically the equivalent of the Cybertruck if Tesla was a boat company.

Boiler wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 11:23 pm A fine aircraft, the Swordfish - and yet so little time separates the Swordfish from the DH Sea Vampire...

If we're going to talk aviation time compression.

Sydney Camm: Designed the Hawker Hurricane.
* First job involved sorting out stability on the Spwith Camel (Biggles and all that in 1917).
* Chief designer at Hawker, producing the Hurricane.
* Wondered why there's no Hurricane III - because Syd was off designing the high performance Typhoon and Tempest.
* Fast forward to the 1960s, he's still there delivering the Hawker Sidley Harrier (of Falklands War fame).

Someone who knows far more about battleships than I do, explains why a) they're not battleships b) they're not going to be built.

Seeing Camm's name reminded me that he was the brother of F. J. Camm, author of many of the "Practical" series of magazines such as Practical Wireless, Practical Television and Practical Mechanics - much-derided in some quarters as "Camm's Comics".

There's another naval concept - the Q-ship.
A cunning deception designed to confuse the enemy.

These are the "don't pay attention to the Epstein files" fleet.

Delivery is as likely as as Trump's "Space Force" or Musks "Mars by 2025".
7 days Elon, 7 days remaining.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Wed Dec 24, 2025 10:16 am There's another naval concept - the Q-ship.

Before someone renamed them "sleepers", we also used to have "Q-cars": I believe Charlie Boy used to have one - a Cortina Savage. At the time, a Mk. 2 (or Mk.3) Cortina with the 3-litre V6 engine from a Zodiac/Capri and modified suspension.

Oboogie wrote: ↑Wed Dec 24, 2025 2:18 am Someone who knows far more about battleships than I do, explains why a) they're not battleships b) they're not going to be built.

Belle seems to have taken over from Beau?

Someone has a good idea of Trump's sense of taste and style

He has the best aesthetics, people have said so...

Malcolm Armsteen wrote: ↑Wed Dec 24, 2025 10:51 am He has the best aesthetics, people have said so...

... very smart people. With very high IQ scores. Not as high as mine though. My doctor couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe how smart I was, it was the highest score he'd ever seen. So he checked it and he said it was the highest on record, higher than Albert Epstein who everybody thinks was the smartest guy who ever lived, but I beat him. So I'm officially smarter than Albert Epstein, the guy who invented the...who invented... who invented all those great things.
You know got the lowest? Joe HUSSAIN Obiden! Lowest score in the history of the test!