I am considering a Destroyer Escort for Battlestations, specifically the Butler class DE Samuel Roberts. Main armament 2x5" and 3x21" torpedoes. To be able to arm the torpedoes I must arm one of the 5" mounts, correct? Also do we limit her to 24knots or the emergency speed of 28? I'm happy with the slower speed but will take all I can get.
Yes, the Butlers are rated at 24 knots with the rest of the DE's. The WGT series was generally faster. Research could be done but I won't argue the point. As I said 24 knots I'm willing to live with.
Very cool choice. I highly recommend "The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" if you have never read it. I've run into the speed issue before. It seems that Conway's uses the design speed rather than the trial speeds for the American ships. For instance, it lists the Gridley I'm building for Treaty as 38 knots, while I've found it made more than 42 knots on trial. Since trial speeds are allowed, I would think that if you could substantiate the higher speed that it would be allowed. It would have to be from an impeccable source however.
That book, which I read about once a year, got me thinking along these lines. I also like the sleek lines of the low bridge variants of the DE's.
One of my favorite books. An excellent choice of ships, too, one I would love to see built! And yes, you must arm half the main guns in order to have torps according to the current rules. I don't remember if the emergency speed was in the book (it is in the wiki article on the Samuel B Roberts), and my book is in storage, so I can't look it up right now. If so, that would be enough documentation, I think, to support using the higher speed.
Sea trials are special circumstances, too, but they count if documented. In sea trials, you try to go as fast as you can to test out the engines, and the ship is lightly loaded...
I have read several accounts of the defense of Taffy 3, and the Samuel B did make 27.5-28 knots on the attack run. HOWEVER... That was not done in a manner that the ship could be sustainably operated. Basically, the captain has just announced what was happening over the 1MC, and that he didn't expect that they'd come back from this trip. So the boys in engineering did what all good engineers would do in these circumstances... 'Hey Eng, how much can this thing do if we don't need the engines to last past the next hour?' Think of it like a dragster. You make one run, maybe 2, on an engine, then the engine has to be torn down to the bare block and overhauled, because so much is being asked of it. As a big fan of the Samuel B. Roberts and her crew, I'd love to say 'give her the 28 knots', but that's not realistically her trial speed, documented or not.
