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Old 04-26-2012, 11:04 AM
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raketenjagdpanzer raketenjagdpanzer is offline
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A couple of addenda if I may?

There are at present IRL five carriers as museums : Two in California, one in Corpus Christi and one in North Carolina.

Of these, I see three as still present or viable for any sort of use in a post-Twilight 2000 fashion (like, in 2010 or later, if the reconstructed US is interested in a deep blue water navy/power projection), namely the Intrepid, the Yorktown and the Lexington. Intrepid is in NYC, which wasn't hit by nukes.

Yorktown is in Corpus Christi which, again, I don't think was hit, and of course Lexington is in Charleston which I think (THINK) was spared.

Of the two remaining, the Hornet is in Alameda Bay, very dangerously close to a primary site - probably too damaged. Midway is in San Diego IRL, but wasn't retired there until 1991 - an event that may not have happened in the T2k universe.

Putting those ships back in service is probably not feasible, however, a USN desperate for sea assets as the US reconstructs might try anything. A few possible uses are: leave them where they are, use them as bases. Leave them where they are, strip them for parts to get other, smaller and more easily maintained ship seaworthy. Strip two for parts to get the least...stale?...seaworthy. Get them all afloat, but only use prop a/c (Hawkeyes, OV-10 Broncos, etc.), helos and Harriers. Or, finally, get them entirely rebuilt as ships of the line. This last one, in a strict by-the-book T2k 1e framework would require decades upon decades of work, as 90% of the potential workforce, infrastructure and crew to draw upon are dead. If you play fast and loose with your timeline it might be possible to get one ready to sail in perhaps a decade, the others a bit more quickly by applying lessons learned in the first instance.

Along those same lines there's a lot of ships of all classes distributed as museums (all well prior to the T2k timeline) - the Alabama, the Wisconsin etc. It would be worth looking in to to find out what museum moorings weren't hit to find out what might constitute a rebuilding US Navy. I realize a great many of those vessels are WWII, but like constituting an Air Force wing out of Broncos or a "tank" "division" out of scavenged Soviet armor, M998 ITVs and other things, it might be worth doing on a large scale. The inland infrastructure required to produce large ships (steel foundries, iron mines, etc.) are gone. Additionally, as modern ships of the line were atritted during the war, spare parts held for repair/refurbishing/rearming those ships could be diverted to modernize these reconditioned vessels.

It's fanciful, yes, but hey my hobby has giant robots, guys in robes who can say "alakazam" and fill 33,000 square feet with a roaring fire, and so on
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