Just thought you might be interested. I am going to introduce a proposal down here in Treaty that all class 4 and above carriers will be allowed to have 1 barrel per side as part of their normal unit allotment.A 4 unit ship could have 50rd each side and 50rd out the back or front with 1 unit pump.Or a75 unit somewhare and a half unit pump. I hope this will make a carrier less of an easy target.The US has two class 4 carriers and japan 5.All other carriers are 5,6,8.Could make things more interesting.Can you imagine a Shinano with 2 forward,3 rear and 1 each side. Even at 28 kts it would not be a pushover.Just food for thought,since you are in your early club stage you have many options
Frog, Mikey and I talked about your proposal last night. From my years in the IRCWCC I know there was a fair bit of objection to using carriers other than as convoy ships, because you'd never want to see a carrier in a real life gunfight (ie Glorious vs Scharnhorst and Gneisenau). On the other hand carriers make interesting models (ie Don Fisher's with the Doolittle raid B25s on deck) and had major firepower via their air squadrons. It's a game after all so why not allow carriers to be more powerful in a gunfight considering that 1/144 aircraft attacks are an impossibility! One concern about sidemounts in carriers is safety. We wondered how much further a Class 4+ carrier might heel than a Class 4+ battleship due to the larger, higher superstructure. Perhaps there should be a minimum beam and/or stability testing before a carrier is allowed sidemounts. From observations of our local Shinano its stability isn't an issue - it could safely carry sidemouts. Mike came up with an interesting suggestion: keep carrier's BB cannons in the bow and stern arcs but enlarge the arcs from 15 to as much as 45 degrees to port and starboard. This restricts their side-firing capability compared to a battleship, leaves their amidships areas undefended but gives them greater tactical flexibility in targetting. (This would be very helpful to long, slow turning carriers like Courageous and Furious which can rarely bring their stern mounted guns on target.) Opinions? Bob
