Warship
San MartĂn (c1579)
San MartĂn was a fine example of Portuguese shipbuilding skills. Note the bonaventure mast, set well in-board and not requiring the precarious stern-boom fitted on Henry Grace Ă Dieu. This painting by Charles Dixon (1872–1934) of the action between San MartĂn and Ark Royal in the Channel is indicative of how the English ships were smaller and handier than the…
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The Cold War and the German Type XXI Submarine Technology
U-boot Wilhelm Bauer The war ended before the Germans could deploy their own next wave of technology embodied by the Type XXI ”Electric” boat, with much larger battery capacity that gave it a fast underwater speed. Until late 1944 Allied bombing had a disruptive rather than disastrous impact on the…
IJN Heavy Cruiser Takao
The Japanese had probably the best cruisers of the early Pacific War era. Their crews were superbly trained and the boats themselves superbly handled, and used very imaginatively as well. The Takao class was a class of four heavy cruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy launched between May 1930 and…
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…
Japanese Submarines: No.71 & Type ST
Type ST Sentaka type submarine General arrangements and sections of the type I 201 class submarine. I 201 Japanese submarine class. These Type ST submarines were designed after exhaustive tests and trials with the high underwater speed experimental submarine No 71. The hull was fully welded and very carefully streamlined;…
China’s First Nuclear Missile Submarine
by Kyle Mizokami While China’s first ballistic-missile submarine was meant to be a real, operational submarine and part of China’s nuclear deterrent, the obstacles encountered during construction forced lower expectations. The boat was more of a test bed, allowing China to test new underwater technologies as it gradually placed more…
THE GALLEASS
The galleass, which was also known affectionately by the playful nickname “The Bastard.” Combining characteristics from both sailing ships and galleys, these ships, a type yet to be seen in other countries, were the latest weapons dreamt up by the late-sixteenth-century Venetian navy. At forty meters long, they seemed small…