Ship Classifications

I suspect most posters have forgotten a few key points.

RFC is a naval historian as much as he is anything.
The original concept for the novels was Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE.


Starting from those two basic points it then follows that the early Honorverse ship clasifications have more to do with wooden hull ships with some adaptation to allow for the concept of FTL travel.

From there the size drift reflects actual real world size drift for navies that keep/kept up with the SOTA, and, no doubt, the use of sub catagories to try and cope with such changes

From there we add outright new concepts in weapon tech, and associated changes in ship design.
At this point we have blown through the old catagory system even though they keep the designations.

The RMN could just about simplify back to LAC, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battle Cruiser, SD, and LAC carrier. (And of course the specialised ships like marine troop ships and such)

Well, that's my view at least.

I'm of the opinion they could simplify even further, but it's a case of path dependence... a lot of effort that's confusing, and has no good reason.

WLBjork wrote:
It's worth considering that the RN distinguished Cruisers by main armament calibre (i.e. 6" or 8") rather than by "Light" or "Heavy", especially due to the mess-up with tonnage limits from the Washington Naval Treaty.

And then there were Courageous and her sisters, Furious and Glorious. 15 inch guns on a light cruiser hull. Jackie Fisher was certifiable. But Winnie liked him for some reason.

Put all this in the perspective that almost all things evolve or at least over time.

Thinking about ship classes you end up having to put them into a time-frame. Same with aircraft. Same with automobiles. Same with fashion- stuff changes.
Naming conventions for what you call someting may not change so much, certainly not as fast as the intended role or mission for a given class.

ONE example.
Destoyers as a type came about after the development of the "torpedo boat". Initialy a "torpedo" was what we now call a mine (typicaly anti-shipping explosive device that float underwater and teathered to the bottom). Some cleaver person figured out that you could put an explosive charge in a container with a motor (don't ask what kind) and launch that "torpedo" at other ships. The damage possible was vastly greater than the size of the weapon and these little boats could litteraly kill a capital ship that would otherwise could take hours of pounding by ships their own size.
Torpedo boats were SMALL . This development was a major tactical change in naval warfare because blowing a hole in a large ship below the waterline can sink it or at least cripple it and make it very vulnerable. These small boats were typicaly very fast (and much faster than the big ships, also highly manuverable and very difficult to hit with large ship gunfire. So navies came up with a type of ship larger than a torpedo boat, highly maneuverable, several smallish guns that were optimized to kill torpedo boats or at least keep them out of torpedo range of the "real" warships.
By WW I and the WW II, the Torpedo Boat Destroyers had gown in size were still fast and maneuverable but had multiple larger guns and had lots of other jobs. Scouting for other ships, screening other ships, courier duties and escort/convoy work. By WW I the mission was anti-submarine work was added (and their own torpedoes to attack larger ships. Shore bombardment was also in there- they are "gunboats" and they were better for rescuing sailors in the water. In WW II anti-aircraft defense was added plus things like picking up flyers.
Armament and size kept growing. Now the main weaponry (offence and defence) is missles of varioius sorts and the ships are much larger- as mentioned earlier- than some WW Crusiers.
Pick your time frame. Mostly open deck 60' steampowered boat with a couple of 1" guns chasing smaller boats armed with torpedoes? 360' diesel powered ship with multiple twin 5'-38cal gun turrets (with or without torpedoes) and depth charges. 505' long $1.8billion dollar gas-turbind guided missle destoryer with 90 verticle launch missle cells plus modern 5'-rapid fire gun plus others of variouis calibers, torpedos. And a much larger crew.

Time frame. Size/amement/initial defined mission and whatever is added as stuff changes.
You don't learn all this stuff in a day.

Just keep reading, it will sort itself out:).

( If you get interested there is a couple of thousand years of naval warfare history and fiction you can dive into--much bigger smile)

Walks Alone wrote:I'm of the opinion they could simplify even further, but it's a case of path dependence... a lot of effort that's confusing, and has no good reason.

David Weber did say that the minimum viable frontline combatant was heading towards 300,000 tons; which will probably make Honorverse destroyers and light cruisers merge into a common type.

Battlecruisers are 1.75+ million tons, so there's probably still room for a cruiser type between the minimum 300 kton and the 1750 kton BC. You can't afford to buy and man enough BCs to cover everything, yet some tasks require something heavier than a minimum combatant. (So maybe something in the 600-800 kton range; 50+% bigger than a Sag-C)

Dreadnoughts seem to be obsolete in the podnaught era; the cost savings aren't worth the loss of combat power.

So we do seem to be moving (slowly) towards a simplification; narrowing down to.
LAC (various specializations)
Destroyer
Cruiser
Battlecruiser
Superdreadnaugh (podlaying)
CLAC

But even at that it'll take a while for all the legacy units to be fully retired as they're still plenty for swatting pirates and other duties that don't take them up against first line combatants or pod based system defenses.

Well, the RMN is likely to call the new minimum viable mass type a light cruiser. The rest of the galaxy, of course, might call them hypocrites after the Roland, or agree that the Roland was a bloody strange place to save 20kt of marines, and revert to not using grasers in broadside.

HungryKing wrote:Well, the RMN is likely to call the new minimum viable mass type a light cruiser. The rest of the galaxy, of course, might call them hypocrites after the Roland, or agree that the Roland was a bloody strange place to save 20kt of marines, and revert to not using grasers in broadside.

If they win, they will be geniuses. And what does hypocrisy have to do with anything? You can call ships whatever you want but class names tend to refer to history.

Japanese cruisers during World War II, particularly the four big ones, were pretty close to the size of US battleships.

The RMN moved to larger sizes as missiles became far more accurate particularly over longer ranges. The grasers were less important because ships generally did not get all that close. And, yes, there were exceptions.

But when you're carrying a lot of missiles, you need to get larger to have more room for them. That was just one reason behind automation.

Thanks everybody. This is great. I'm gonna bookmark this thread for rereading and future reference.

Don

-

It still seems like shifting sands to me... or two opponents moving around as they react to each other... the evolution of the destroyer seems to have been just that... reacting to new threats as they came up.

You have to know, that there is nothing like the size that is used for classification of real world warships.

The German Frigates for example should be classified as destroyers if you use the NATO standards, but the german navy classified them still as Frigates.

Look like manticore does the same with their oversized ships