Japanese ship names are as boring as US ship names except they're in Japanese. Yamato is a "state" and a hero and is roughly similar to naming a ship "Washington" Kongo is indestructible so at least that's a tough name. Then you look at Haruna, Kirishima and Hiei and they're mountains. Japanese aircraft carriers were often named for flowers. But being in Japanese they're cool names as opposed to Forrestal (a Sec of Defence), Bon Homme Richard (Poor Richard's almanac and John Paul Jones) and Bunker Hill.
By the way Bunker Hill was the name of a US captitol ship the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill CV-17 before she was an AEgis heavy cruiser. For all intents and purposes a modern cruiser is the capitol ship of the modern navy. You just don't need ships of the line anymore. A heavy cruiser is more akin to a lower rate ship of the line as opposed to anything else.
I was a carrier-kid. Loved them big flat-tops and naval aviation. Everything I picked up about battleships was by wargaming my brother in Jutland and Bismarck! (and Star Fleet Battles) and then perusing the books on ships he had and then turning around and getting the bug to build those badboys in scale starting about 15 years ago after getting burned out on tanks.
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bravo1102 wrote:I visited Bunker Hill when she came here years and years ago and I recall she was some sort of assault vessel. Yeah, a helicopter carrier, that sort of thing. Not a capital ship in the traditional sense at all. Her role would be more one of support.
By the way Bunker Hill was the name of a US captitol ship the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill CV-17 before she was an AEgis heavy cruiser. For all intents and purposes a modern cruiser is the capitol ship of the modern navy. You just don't need ships of the line anymore. A heavy cruiser is more akin to a lower rate ship of the line as opposed to anything else.
But classes were never really hard and fast definitions. Ships always melted back and forth through them like anything else- from light cruiser to battleship to heavy cruiser to battle cruiser to cruiser, frigate, destroyer, minelayer, corvette, escort… At nay time ships that could have been in one class could also be in another. I think in practise classes like those were just an easy shorthand to know how best to distribute a fleet for some action or in comparison to the strength of similar enemy vessels at a given time.
Ageing vessels could change in class because their capabilities didn't fit with their contemporaries any longer, you might even do it to disguise or even exaggerate the capabilities of a vessel.
-Kogo is a good enough name for me, but I never like that ship much aesthetically. Something like the Senkan Fuso is Waaaaaay more interesting in appearance :)
In WWII CV-17 USS Bunker Hill was a fleet carrier. After WWII she became an assualt carrier but though her flight group differed form a fleet carrier by carrying helicopters in an assault role she was still a carrier and to people who worship carrier avaition she's a capitol ship as much as Iowa or any other of her Essex sisters. Just ask the poor guys on Musashi who suffered under Bunker Hill's bombers and torpedo planes. If I remember correctly USS Bunker Hill was among the last US ships to be active off of Vietnam in 1975. Then there were the poor CVB's like Hornet who were Anti-submarine warfare carriers.
"You're not true carriers cause you ain't got fighters, so there." Bullshit.
As far as I always knew, it was just because whatever name they felt like/ thought seemed somehow related to the particular ship. I'nm sure Bravo will appear to prove me wrong though.
In other news, I think it's officially time for me to hand in my "young person" card and buy a walker. I just called a group of 18 year-olds "you damn kids" the other day without any hyperbole. Plus, I just can't fathom how a human being could be so immature at the age of 19 years old as to call their boss an asshole to his face for calling them out on a mistake before his boss caught it. I know that even a few years ago when I was that age, I'd have been on my ass in terror being screamed at. Now they just get a "don't do that again" and it's dropped. I'm starting to develop the same attitude as my dad that kids these days are kids a lot longer than they used to be. I still remember when my older sister graduated high school back in the 90's, you were officially a full adult and had to act like it. Now that status doesn't happen till you're 22 and out of college. Makes me feel like I should be drinking prune juice from a sippy straw being surrounded by it all the time.
No, ship naming is extremely traditional, codified and regulated. Plus, they have comitees, not just within the navy, but it can be a wider political thing very often too.
Some of the oldest, most traditional names like Warspite, or Revenge in the British Royal Navy were based on names that were given in a more reckless manner originally, but that was hundreds of years ago…
I think the Warspite was a caputured Spanish ship that hade her spannish name mutated or something? I remember reading somewhere it came from "fire spitter" I think, but the May have been something about "cock sucker" too…
The US navy had a thing where capital ships could only be states. That was back before carriers were captital ships. Even now, certain classes can only be named after states, presidents, military hero's, battles, older ships…
British ships are mainly named after older ships. They pass the names down in a DNA of tradition. But there are exceptions. And classes used to have all names in a theme, like all the same first letter, all named after royalty, al named after big cats, Greek gods… -still being named after older ships.
In most places It's the same- named after older ships, places, battles, heroes, or political figures. Because the British navy has many of the oldest and richest traditions is the reason it has the best names. It's just had more time to collect them.
In the US Navy the tradition was Destroyers were people, Cruisers were cities, Battleships were states and Carriers were battles or the old traditional names like Wasp, Enterprise etc. Go back to the American Civil War it was by class of ship. One class was named after rivers, another after cities and even a few larger ships named for states. When the classes became defined by purpose in the late 19th century the Congress set up the naming tradition when debating the appropriations for the big fleet program based on the writings of Alfred Thayer Mahan.
Now it is carriers are named for people, nuclear missile submarines were named for states, cruisers are battles or cities depending on class. Destoryers are named for not as famous people like Forrest Sherman or Farragut whereas Admiral Nimitz gets a carrier. Why didn't Halsey get a carrier? Politics. It took a lot of politicking for Reagan to get a carrier and now George H.W. Bush just got his but then he was a heroic naval aviator. Jimmy Carter got a nuclear submarine so don't think Democrats get slighted. But it's doubtful if Clinton will get anything and now there's an upsurge for Cheney to get a destroyer.
Now it is increasingly by class. "Y" class of assault ships were named for battles, then "A" class of cruisers were named for battles, Trident subs were named for states now a class of assault carriers are named for states. Considering the size and types of aircraft carried by an assault carrier these days they are equal to a fleet carrier in any other navy.
Royal navy names were also often allocated by class of ship. "Town" class cruisers, "H" class destroyers. For battleships look no further than King George V class. Prince of Wales, Duke of York, KG V and two for Admirals; Anson and Howe to match Rodney and Nelson. Meanwhile the Illustrious carriers got "Illustrious" names like Victorious and Glorious.
Yep, and my fave British ships were the WW1 Queen Elizibeth class. They had no theme that I know off… Partly politically chosen names, partly tradition, partly comitee. All very famous ships who served amazingly. Heroic crews:
Queen Elizibeth.
Valiant.
Warspite.
Barham.
Malaya.
And then there was my husband's ship, a dock landing ship. It was named after a president's home. Impressive, ay? And not just any president but one Mr Rutherford B. Hayes.
Rutherford. If I ever have a dog, I think that name would be perfect.
And hey (or hayes *shrug*) - If you ever want to make a room of naval men go nuts, just call one of their ships (that's named after a minor president's private estate) a "boat"
It willy willy works XD
Wow… we went from how I name my ships in Star Trek Online to discussing old ship names in general… to naming our dogs after people for whatever reason… O_O
Oh… and I thought Ozone might be interested in seeing this huge Avenger Class ship that I encountered earlier…
I'd have taken more, but he warped away… :(
Oh… my ship, the Faran Enjeru, is right next to him (just say my ship's name aloud, rolling the letter R and you might see where I went with that name)…
Australia was in one of the later episodes of DS.9 and Voyager as one of the dreadnoughts that took down them Jem'Hadar. Funny, how obvious the origin of that alien name is. Without the apostrophe it's a rank in the Indian army.
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It flowed so simply from Star Fleet naming to terrestrial navy names because Star Fleet names are knowingly borrowed from US Navy names. Roddenberry was US Navy. The Enterprise was originally named Yorktown but it was decided to change it to a serving ship especially since CVN-65 USS Enterprise was grabbing so many headlines as the first nuclear carrier while the classic show was being created. NCC-1701 was a Constitution class heavy cruiser and her sisters included Saratoga, Intrepid and Yorktown? It's a list of US serving carriers when the classic series was produced. Couldn't have been more obvious than if they'd included America, Forrestal and John F. Kennedy, Ranger and Kitty Hawk.
Why would a 23rd Century Federation of Planets chose to name their main ships after American Revolutionary War battles?
The guys who write the series know their naval history and about classic ship names. Look at the fleet lists and you'll see Barham, Malaya and Warspite. In your screen capture you're right next to Bismarck which does appear on the ship lists in the show literature.
@Ayes- yes… "boats" >_<
I bet he had a fantastic uniform! :)
@Lonne- Hah! That's great! Our biggest and only capital ship ever was the Australia… Except she was HMAS Australia not USS. Or maybe just "HMS" in those days since our defence forces were still getting that sorted…
I have many pics of her in a book somewhere, of an arctic cruise she and her crew undertook in the 1910s. The poor ship coated in ice.
And a pic of her final days, after WW1 when she had to be scuttled because the Australian naval force was still considered part of the British navy, purely for purposes of calculation total tonnage of ships.
Basically the Brits were betraying us in this instance and it was pretty underhand from an Aussie and scandalous perspective even if it was coldly pragmatic from theirs:
As part of the infamous naval treaty to restrict construction of capital ships each country was only allowed a certain amount of "tonnage" (total weight, or some silly equation).
Because Australia was included in the British total they decided to force us to just totally get rid of our only capital ship, thus freeing them to have more for themselves.
It was considered an outdated vessel, but it wasn't that old, it was still our flagship, paid for by us, and in an age where having a capital ship was a point of international pride, especially on that carried the name of the country, that was a enormous blow.
Our only Battlecruiser…
Australia and Britain continued to drift further and further apart on the back of incidents like that.
In one of the pics of here visiting the Hobart regatta there's an amusing view of an early 1910's amphibious car cursing along in the bay with to rather proper gents in high stand collars, one in a boater and one in a tophat and their lady friends all dressed very nicely. ^_^
@Bravo- The carrier connection is amusing when you realise that there is no carrier warfare in Star Trek. It's all a combination of submarine/battleship/ManO'War tactics. Which is logical considering the physics and the assumptions they've made for that future scenario.
That U.S.S. Australia that the Faran Enjeru was alongside (their saucer sections were close to touching) is a player owned vessel. I DO NOT want to find myself on the business end of its guns…
Now I'd like to see the pics of that ship you mentioned, Ozone. She must've been impressive…
There was also the HMAS Australia which was a County class cruiser which had a hugely distinguished record and was sister ship to another cruiser with an extremely distiguished career HMS Suffolk.
Somehow I'd rather remember a great cruiser than a poorly designed battlecruiser. Australia with New Zealand were Indefatigable class battlecruisers which I cannot blame the RN for scrapping in 1922. They were poorly designed ships. Without super firing turrets they were undeniably obsolete in 1918. The 1922 Washington treaty was a godsend to navies across the world to scrap obsolete ships and abandon white elephants.
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Now I have to access the market for my mother's collector plate collection. Anyone want a OOAK Princess Cruise lines logo plate handpainted by me? She is moving in with my sister and as she does when ever she moves she is getting rid of anything she figures she doesn't need. Lke the collection of plates she's been accumulting for thirty years. She has the 25th Aniversary commemerative plate for Queen Elizabeth II my brother got for her in England back in the day and the 50th Anniversary plate my wife and I got her at the Royal Porcelin works in Worchester on our trip.
Now if I could just convince my wife to do some of the same things. You know what I found the other day? A receipt for a movie I bought in 2003 and another for a model kit I got in 1998. She was keeping them for insurance purposes. Right keep receipts for things not worth $20 for insurance purposes. The model kit is built now so it is basically irreplaceable.
bravo1102 wrote:For a person with interest in history, that betrays quite a bit of ignorance. You're totally isolating the facts from the context of their time and place in society and applying a filter of idealised military rationalism to give you a pretty false picture.
Somehow I'd rather remember a great cruiser than a poorly designed battlecruiser. Australia with New Zealand were Indefatigable class battlecruisers which I cannot blame the RN for scrapping in 1922. They were poorly designed ships. Without super firing turrets they were undeniably obsolete in 1918. The 1922 Washington treaty was a godsend to navies across the world to scrap obsolete ships and abandon white elephants.
These sorts of ships were national symbols of pride, relative technical advantages and disadvantages were irrelevant. The value in moral and political popularity was far more significant.
The RN didn't scrap the vessel and didn't have a right to anyway. That decision was made higher up in British political circles. The RAN were the ones who had to implement it, which they did by scuttling her.
If things had gone differently she'd probably be a floating ship museum now, much like the USS Texas. Think of it in those terms; people want to retain such things as symbols, relics…
ozoneocean wrote:That's what I get for reading design and service histories rather than social histories. With such an indifferent service record there would be no reason to retain the battlecruiser. She was nothing but puffed up pride with no other substance. A complete and total illusion all style with no substance like much of Jackie Fisher's battlecruiser idea. They were flashy and pretty but couldn't do the job like discovered at Jutland.
For a person with interest in history, that betrays quite a bit of ignorance. You're totally isolating the facts from the context of their time and place in society and applying a filter of idealised military rationalism to give you a pretty false picture.
If things had gone differently she'd probably be a floating ship museum now, much like the USS Texas. Think of it in those terms; people want to retain such things as symbols, relics…
It took a major poet getting involved with a national program to save Constitution and that mostly happened because of the huge burgeoning interest in US Naval construction and tradition that grew out of the the American Civil War and Alfred Thayer Mahan. There's my ignorance of time and social interest in saving a national symbol. Austrailia didn't have that after WWI. Australia had every right to be proud of the ANZACs but an indifferent and badly designed battlecruiser that did mostly nothing? An Indefagitable class battlecruiser would hardly be worth the effort. It was a hugely expensive boondoggle. It was too easy to list the reasons NOT to preserve her.
The County class cruiser would have been a much better choice and justly parts of her are deservedly a memorial though it would have been nice to have the whole ship. However, that has been a problem across the world with a few notable exceptions like Mikasa and Potemkin. Preserving naval heritage by saving whole ships has been an exception and takes an awful lot of organization and money. That wasn't there in 1922 to save that batlecruiser unlike it was in Texas in 1945 or New Jersey in the 1980's and again in the 1990's. New Jersey served in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Beirut, Grenada and Desert Storm the only US battleship to do so. Pretty amazing service history. Because of that there were lots of veterans who formed the nucleous of the effort to save her. In fact the commander of one of the turrets in the 1980's worked at my local hobby shop and passed recently. HMAS Australia the battlecruiser wasn't in sercie long enough to gather that kind of momentum or popularity or history. The cruiser was which is why bits of her were preserved. It took nearly 12 years to get everything together to preserve USS New Jersey. Did Australia have that kind of time in 1922? The battle to beat the clock to preserve a ship was also what lost CV-6 Enterprise to the breaker's torch in the 1950's which is probably the biggest disaster as far as preserving a ship goes. Talk about a ship with a great service history.
You've missed hings again ^_^
-The local feeling was of course to keep the ship that was owned and paid for by the Australian people. If it had been kept it would have kept serving in an active role, although not front-line, only THEN, after more years of service she would have been naturally retired (instead of dying before her time), either being scrapped or becoming a floating museum. ;)
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Still haven't finished musicalising the DD soap. It's a fricken SLOG turning straight written stuff into verse, rhyme, lyrics etc. My eyes have gone funny from staring at the screen, I'm gonna quit for the night and play Mass Effect 3 again instead.
Ugh, I am thinking in rhyming fricken couplets! Dammit! >_<
How in the world are we going to make a tune for this thing? I have no idea… Banes will have to exercise all his musicianship skills!
Have you Australians thought of creating a replica? Then again, it's not really the same thing…
Plunked down some money into this game AGAIN! I guess this is how the "free to play" model works… the game entices you to spend money even though you really don't have to…
I'd name this new character's ship the "OzoneOcean" as it sounds like a great ship name…. but I won't. Better if Ozone gets that name if he decides to go play Star Trek Online. :)
As for ship names, There have been 3 ships named after Guam (my home). One was a gunboat in China, but it got renamed to "Wake" and was captured by the Japanese during WWII. The second was a cruiser that did its service, then got sold for scrap. The third was an amphibious assault craft, and it was sunk when the navy was done with her. OR SO WIKIPEDIA SAYS. T_T
The HMS New Zealand had a similar fate to the Australia, also being scrapped in 1922 to our disgust. The most annoying thing for New Zealanders is that we were still paying the British for the cost of building the damn thing when WWII broke out. It was a very sore point. (A friend of mine did his M.A. on the social and political history of the HMS New Zealand, which I had to proof read for him).
I've been reliving a part of my childhood for the past few days, more specifically inbetween my studying sessions (the breaks). Playing old NES games like Battle City, Mario Bros., Contra etc. It's funny to think that 20-30 something year old games are much more fullfilling than some of the newer ones.
I also got to try "Legend of Grimrock", a fatasy kind of game that remided me how fun dungeon-crawling can be. I played it for 5 mins before encountering few giant Snails where I decided I was not going to fight them, but rather making the fall into a pit trap… thinking outside of the box but I didn't get xp from them. I also raged a little bit when I couldn't pick up bones to use as throwing weapons(but I kinda needed them more for many of the physics-puzzles that require plate pushing etc. )
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