Warship
Cold War Aircraft Carriers
Aircraft carriers were first utilized in combat in World War I. During that conflict, the Royal Navy converted a merchant ship, the Argus, into the first carrier with an unobstructed flight deck, but the war ended before it could be put into action. The U. S. and Japanese navies soon followed the British example. The first U. S. aircraft carrier…
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German Schnellboot (S-boat)
Schnellboot S-80 torpedo boat Camo Operations with the Kriegsmarine S-boats were often used to patrol the Baltic Sea and the English Channel in order to intercept shipping heading for the English ports in the south and east. As such, they were up against Royal Navy and Commonwealth (particularly Royal Canadian…
Borodino class
In 1904 Moscow dispatched the 2nd Pacific Squadron, commanded by Admiral Zinovi Petrovich Rohdzsvenski, from the Baltic to the Pacific, halfway around the world, to salvage the desperate situation in the Pacific. Rohdzsvenski’s main units numbered eight battleships, three armored cruisers, and three hopelessly obsolete armored coast-defense warships. The core…
Deutschland class
As long as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck remained in power, the German Navy was distinctly subordinate to the German army in the counsels of government, and the navy was relegated basically to a coast-defense mission. (Until 1888, the year of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s accession, the navy had actually been run…
Graf Zeppelin I
Plans for a shipped-based air force started soon after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. The first plans were limited to supplying the existing battleships and cruisers with reconnaissance seaplanes. On March 12th 1934 the first requirements the future aircraft carrier was given. Within a year the design study had been…
Graf Zeppelin II
Last photograph of Graf Zeppelin towed from Swinocijscie Poland to Leningrad. April 17. 1947. In April 1945, Soviet troops found the carrier’s artillery had been dismantled, the installation of fire control equipment had not been finished and the electrical installations partially installed as well as the flight equipment. There was…
The Battleship Race Won and the Strategy Lost
USS Arizona Built in 1913 and was the second and last of the Pennsylvania Class “super-dreadnought” battleships and primarily served stateside during WWI. She was part of the escort of the USS George Washington that carried President Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference on December 13, 1918. 31,400 tons and…