Wikipedia: Battleship/Talk

Can one say that anything pre-Dreadnought is not a BB?
What is a BB, what is a battlecruiser? 12-inch definition? Armor?
Was the German/English? pre-WWI arms race a BB race?
What is KM, IJN? (Should be explained on the Bismarck/Scharnhorst?/Yamato? pages probably.)
Six months later, it was the carriers that were to turn the tide of the Pacific War at the Battle of Midway. -- Inconclusive: Midway had more Japanese than US carriers.

Yes, but if the U.S. had lost their carriers at Pearl, they wouldn't have done very well at Midway, would they? --Belltower

: This is about battleships, so the statement implies somehow that Midway shows the superiority of carriers. If however the second-best fields more carriers this requires more explanation. The USA had won /with/ carriers, but not necessarily /through/ them.--Yooden

AFAIK at least one US BB is still on 'active' duty, if never ever used.
Is the Kirov a BB?

-- Yooden

The US Navy counts its first battleships as launched in 1895 -the Maine, Texas and Indiana.
How can Japanese battleships have been sunk in kamikaze attacks? Only the Japanese used kamikazes.
Didn't a German ship survive the WWII in Uruguay? Maybe it was only a cruiser, though.
Why mention the Scharnhorst/Glorious? and not the Hood versus Bismarck?

[Kamikaze] They used the ships to atack overwhelming enemy forces.
The heavy cruiser 'Admiral Graf Spee' was forced by british forces to call at Montevideo but not allowed to stay more than 72 hours. It was sunk by its crew.
See [Power at Sea] if you can.

--Yooden

The US navy website says that the Arizona was stricken from the Naval Register Dec 1942. I guess this means it is not "active".

Graf Spee was often labelled a "pocket battleship" due its large caliber (11") armament. The cruisers Ajax, Achilles, and Exeter took a beating damaging Graf Spee.
KM is short for Kriegsmarine, IJN for Imperial Japanese Navy. Those could be links.
I mentioned Scharnhorst as the last (lone?) success of a battleship (although some sites label it a battlecruiser) against a carrier. The U.S. Gambier Bay was sunk by cruisers.
Yamato loaded up with enough fuel for only a one way mission; she was a Kamikaze *ship*. I don't believe Kamikaze is defined as only being aircraft.
Battlecruisers have lighter armor, and are generally faster. Hood was a battlecruiser, and her armor proved a fatal weakness.

--Belltower

Certainly there were also suicidal submarine mission that are sometimes refered to as Kamikaze. The problem was I couldn't tell who was doing the "kamikaze-ing" when I read the sentnce. I always thought the Hood was a battleship. -rmhermen

Why 'KM Bismarck' but not 'USN Missouri'? I've never heard this before.
The Scharnhorst was not alone and heavily damaged. The Bismarck's story are IMHO better parting words to the battleship era: First it blew away one of the largest battlewhatever in the region, then it was sunk essentially by carrier based torpedos.
Could you write down what makes a battleship, a battlecruiser etc.? Not here, but it's related.

--Yooden

Back to Midway: The Japanese bombing of [Pearl Harbor]? sank or damaged most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's battleships, but the aircraft carriers were not in port and so escaped damage. Six months later, it was those carriers that were to turn the tide of the Pacific War at the [Battle of Midway]?. -- So a surprise attack by six first-line aircraft carriers could not even damage the crafts use to strike back half a year later.

Again: Midway is in no way related to battleships. Peral may be, since it would have been impossible to do witth battleships --Yooden

The various "official" sites for US vessels label them as USS, so I *did* use USS Missouri to refer to the Missouri. I didn't use the titles in front of battleship class names, however.
the battleship/battlecruiser line is a bit fuzzy, so I used whatever labelling that nationality used for its vessels. hmshood.com refers to the Hood as a battlecruiser, and says it was the last battlecruiser the Royal Navy ever built.
I figured out to put Bismarck/Hood? into the "flow" of the write-up, so now there's a link to battlecruiser too.
I'll see if I can figure out how to rewrite the Midway bit. It's not technically accurate, anyway, the Lexington escaped Pearl but was sunk in the Coral Sea before Midway. I think Midway is worth mentioning as such a pivotal battle where battleships were irrelevant, and was a sign of their rapidly diminishing utility.

--[Belltower]]

Can someone create a high level page to include the classification of seafaring vehicles, both military and civilian.

There is already one called Sea Transport. Only more links are missing there ( i think)

Name of ships: USS means 'United States Steamer/Ship?', HMS means 'Her/His? Majesty's Ship'. 'Kriegsmarine' is totally different and the precise equivalent of 'United States Navy' or 'Royal Navy'. I never saw it before as a designation of a ship and it is certainly not used in Germany as part of a ship's name. There is simply no equivalent of USS/HMS in German. The ships just bear their name, maybe their designation ('Panzerkreuzer Graf Spee').
Battleship/battlecruiser: I wouldn't know, I just think it's important, with all ambiguities it carries.
Midway might be important, it's just not clear why.
Again, is the Kirov a battleship? --Yooden

I would call the Kirov a heavy missile cruiser, although I've seen it labelled battle cruiser. Its armament is so different from the "traditional" battle cruiser (or battleship) that I don't think it should be considered part of the same class.
I've seem KM used as a prefix in multiple places, but I've found one website that says that the Germans never used it. (SMS was used for their WWI ships.) So I concur with the KM removal, and will simply mention them as being German if such clarification seems needed. --Belltower

SMS was used for their WWI ships. -- That's 'Seiner Majestät Schiff', 'His Majesty's Ship'.