Ship Classifications

Daryl wrote:Political considerations influence naming of units as well.
The F18 Super Hornet was pitched as an upgrade of the existing F18 in order to get Congress support. Yet it is a larger and more capable plane than its predecessor and has little in common.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yep. And a bit of a mixed bag as different Countries used the term differently.

During WWII the Commonwealth countries called their small anti-submarine escorts, built to military standards, frigates (differentiating those even smaller, and slower, designs build to civilian standards; corvettes). For example the River class frigates were a 20 knot design, massing just 1,350 tons, and carried a couple 4" guns, hedghog anti-submarine mortar, and depth charges. (No proper fire control directors)

Then post war the Royal Navy (UK) continued to use the Frigate designation for their anti-sub focused designs, culminating in the Type 23 Duke class, 4,900 ton ships capable of 28+ knots and carrying a helicopter.

Australia called their 1980's primary air defense ships Adelaide-class frigate, but also used Frigate for their later, smaller, slower, and not AAW focused Anzac class ships.

The USN had their Oliver Hazard Perry Frigates from the mid 70s designed as an inexpensive general purpose ship.

Heck this wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... by_country) has dozens of 20th century Frigate classes and it only covers from 1940 onward.

Welcome to navy terminology where different navies don't use ships designations the same way, and even a given navy doesn't necessarily use it consistently from class to class and certainly not from decade to decade

Brigade XO wrote:I went rummaging around on the internet to comfirm my memory what Corvettes were in WW II and was correct. The design of the RN "Flower" class corvette was based on a commercial whale-catcher design of the current time. In this case it was a 160' ship type bulit to run down and harpoon whales, later towing them back to the mothership for processing. Not in the Wikipedia article is the reason that was design was used.
These were small, with good speed and excelent sea handling in open & stormy weather such as the southern oceans near Antartica and the Artic and particularly the North Atlantic- The North Atlantic which was where most of the convoys were crossing (both ways, people tend to forget the ships that survived any given run typicaly went back and then kept cycling through runs). They were stable, they surived as working boats under often misrable sea conditions and could work in bad weather.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I went rummaging around on the internet to comfirm my memory what Corvettes were in WW II and was correct. The design of the RN "Flower" class corvette was based on a commercial whale-catcher design of the current time. In this case it was a 160' ship type bulit to run down and harpoon whales, later towing them back to the mothership for processing. Not in the Wikipedia article is the reason that was design was used.
These were small, with good speed and excelent sea handling in open & stormy weather such as the southern oceans near Antartica and the Artic and particularly the North Atlantic- The North Atlantic which was where most of the convoys were crossing (both ways, people tend to forget the ships that survived any given run typicaly went back and then kept cycling through runs). They were stable, they surived as working boats under often misrable sea conditions and could work in bad weather.

I'm not sure "stable" is exactly the term. They were very buoyant, and able to survive the rough North Atlantic weather. But they reportedly rolled like barrels. They wouldn't actually capsize or sink, but they could throw sailors around and make it quite hard to work - reportedly rolls of up to 40 degrees from vertical were commonly reported in heavy seas. A stable ship has smaller, slower rolls - though in extremes that can actually make them less seaworthy.

Walks Alone wrote:This question applies as much to our world as it does to the Honorverse...

I'm wondering, how are ships classified? Is it purely arbitrary due to tonnage, or is to do with their function?

Some of them would obviously be due to their function (CLACs, LACs, Dispatch Boats and Freighters), while others (DDs right through SDs) seem to have somewhat arbitrary differences between them. IIRC, weren't the Roland DDs often mistaken for CLs?

Now, in the real world, the Royal Navy is largely made up by the following (I think):-

Frigates
Destroyers
Missile Submarines
Attack Submarines
Carriers
Patrol Boats
Minesweepers
Survey Ships

I notice that most of those ships are very small, barring the carriers. If you exclude patrol boats and minesweepers (which I suspect might be analogous to LACs) frigates seem to make up the backbone of the Royal Navy. Which is interesting, given I understand there is somewhat of a moratorium on the use of frigates in the Honorverse

It seems to me that Royal Navy doctrine is to do things with swarms of frigates, rather than capital ships, in the same way that the Honorverse uses swarms of LACs. I'm guessing the mathematics comes out better somehow than with using capital ships?

Which of course raises the question of how the Honorverse mathematics are different?

But I'm going down a different topic. Back to classification.

Now, as I understood it, the purpose of destroyers was originally to take out patrol boats, and later, submarines. I'm guessing the Honorverse correlation would be LACs and Spider Drive Ships. I think they're also used to prevent things from getting near capital ships? Not exactly sure why though... And perhaps used as scouts?

Again, IIRC, which I may not, was not the original function of a cruiser to operate by itself and to go after merchant ships?

And a ship of the line was to fight other warships?

So, assuming that to be the case... how did we get split up into having DE, DD, CL, CA, BC, BB, DN, SD...? Why were these splits made?

Okay, perhaps that's not as clear as it might be, but I hope I've at least given you the general idea of what I'm trying to ask lol!

Daryl wrote:Political considerations influence naming of units as well.
The F18 Super Hornet was pitched as an upgrade of the existing F18 in order to get Congress support. Yet it is a larger and more capable plane than its predecessor and has little in common.