New America Navy.

[wolffhound79]

Question for everyone.
While doing some research on old us navy ships for Twilight I have come across
a few times were ships were sold to companies for scrapping or for other use.
What if a company owned by a shell corporation or an associate of Carl Hughes purchased a couple of old navy ships for use.
I wondered as I was reading gateway to the Spanish main module and it references the pirates having a letter of marquise from Carl Hughes.
What do you think?

[Legbreaker]

Military ships are expensive things to maintain and operate. NA might have some commercial shipping, but given at their heart they're basically survivalists (admittedly on a large scale with designs on taking ultimate power), vessels that suck resources aren't going to be all that attractive to them.
Also worth noting retired naval vessels almost invariably have their weapons and electronics stripped before disposal, even if disposal is selling to another nation (although in that case only the more critical and sensitive equipment will be removed first). Any ships NA may be able to get their hands on pre-nuke would be barely a shell, and probably little more than a rust bucket anyway.

[wolffhound79]

I had imagined an old Lst or a cargo vessel. Building on the piracy aspect, a ship being used a base while smaller vessels go forth. Kinda like the brown water navy in Vietnam. It my own world there still is navy assets operating in a very reduced scale along the coast of the us, with sailing ships patrolling from Porto Rico to other us territories once a month to trade and help the locals when they can (however recently these players are starting to become more like pirates themselves lol).

[Gunner]

Besides diverting a ship that was headed for "recycling", another source of NA maritime assets would be museum ships. I don't recall off the top of my head where NA strongholds are, but there are small- to medium-sized maritime / naval museums in lots of places, and some of the ships are in amazingly good shape...

The WWII-era Liberty Ship JOHN BROWN in Baltimore is kept in good enough shape to pass its USCG inspection and carry passengers every year. Other museum ships have running engines, working radars, etc. Of course, none of the weapons on ANY museum ship work, but, if you can put a tank turret on the back of a medium-sized truck, you can put one ANYWHERE...


A museum ship could have been in drydock in a small city when the Twilight War started, and an NA cell could be strong there, for example...

[rcaf_777]

what about small armed patrol boats? or perhaps something stolen from the USCG?

they have plenty of small boats that could stolen

Keeper class Coastal Buoy Tenders
Marine Protector class Patrol Boat
USCG 65' Small Harbor Tug
41-foot Large Utility Boat
44-foot Motor Lifeboat
47-foot Motor Lifeboat
52-foot Motor Lifeboat
32 ft Transportable Port Security Boat
Short Range Prosecutor

Also the United States Coast Guard maintains roughly 145 Aids to Navigation Boats. These boats were designed primarily to serve within the inland waters of the United States.

[Olefin]

I think the question would be more appropriate if any naval vessels joined up with New America eventually. Its strongly implied that the Florida cell was in the process of getting at least part of a CivGov Army unit to join up with them and that they were close to getting the Sea Lord's men to join up with them - which would give them a navy depending on what he had left.

And you can rearm ships - not with high tech weapons of course - but definitely with things like AA weapons and light cannon. A couple of tugs fitted with 20mm cannon and 50 caliber machine guns with some improvised armor would make an effective "navy" depending on what they were armed with.

As for what might be possible - look no further than the Last Submarine where a warlord came close to having an operational nuclear attack submarine.

[Olefin]

One question would be if the replica Constitution showed up eventually in St. Petersburg - she would make a pretty good addition to their forces if they managed to capture it

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Olefin

I think the question would be more appropriate if any naval vessels joined up with New America eventually.

That's a good point. Actual warships require actual trained crew and officers to operate it. Sure NA may have a few retired/discharged ex-naval personnel, but there's no way they'd have enough of the right skill sets in the one place to even form a skeleton crew for a smallish destroyer. No chance for a cruiser or larger. Even if they did get sufficient numbers to cast off, there's a very high chance many of those people would have outdated skills, issues with authority (there's a reason they're discharged/not recalled in the middle of WWIII after all), medical and psychological problems, etc and on top of all that still need to learn/remember how to work together as a crew.

Even the US navy had trouble scraping together even the bare minimum for the sub, and they still had access to (relatively) decent communications and records.

[Olefin]

It sounds like the Sea Lord (the one in Florida) had at least some trained crews and I am betting possible Coast Guard vessels - and if the weapons we are talking about are things like machine guns and mortars then training for the weapons crews are not a big thing - but if they got their hands on an operational destroyer or frigate thats another - even if you can operate the engines or the bridge that doesnt mean you are a trained gunner - and I doubt anyone has a ton of ammo hanging around to use to train people up in naval gunfire

given the time frame and depending on the type of weapon there might actually be enough retired naval crew and officers around to man a couple of ships - remember its one thing to man a nuclear submarine - its another to man a frigate or destroyer ( for one the whole submerging and coming back up thing doesnt factor in) with a conventional engine

WWII vets and Korean War vets would still be around in sufficient numbers for showing how older ships work - and Vietnam vets would only be from mid 40s to mid 50's - and Florida for instance would be a prime place for them to retire to

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by Gunner

Besides diverting a ship that was headed for "recycling", another source of NA maritime assets would be museum ships. I don't recall off the top of my head where NA strongholds are, but there are small- to medium-sized maritime / naval museums in lots of places, and some of the ships are in amazingly good shape...

The WWII-era Liberty Ship JOHN BROWN in Baltimore is kept in good enough shape to pass its USCG inspection and carry passengers every year. Other museum ships have running engines, working radars, etc. Of course, none of the weapons on ANY museum ship work, but, if you can put a tank turret on the back of a medium-sized truck, you can put one ANYWHERE...


A museum ship could have been in drydock in a small city when the Twilight War started, and an NA cell could be strong there, for example...

Tampa now has the Liberty ship USS American Victory, but it only arrived there in 1999. That's their only real coastal enclave in the contiguous US (north woods of Maine, Adirondack mountains, West Virginia, northern GA and AL, eastern KY/TN and western NC/SC, the Ozarks, Snake River Basin in ID, OR woods, and Seward in Alaska). Their best option might be to capture a cruise ship in Alaska (that's mostly a joke, but NA really doesn't have any good shots at museum ships).

[pmulcahy11b]

It's kind of interesting that right after this thread is one about Pirates of the Vistula -- because that's what imagine any NA Navy would be like. A motley assortment of powerboats, barges, pleasure craft, tugboats -- maybe, just maybe, the occasional captured USCG vessel. Things like that -- nothing fancy, and hastily armed.

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by Gunner

Besides diverting a ship that was headed for "recycling", another source of NA maritime assets would be museum ships. I don't recall off the top of my head where NA strongholds are, but there are small- to medium-sized maritime / naval museums in lots of places, and some of the ships are in amazingly good shape...

The WWII-era Liberty Ship JOHN BROWN in Baltimore is kept in good enough shape to pass its USCG inspection and carry passengers every year. Other museum ships have running engines, working radars, etc. Of course, none of the weapons on ANY museum ship work, but, if you can put a tank turret on the back of a medium-sized truck, you can put one ANYWHERE...


A museum ship could have been in drydock in a small city when the Twilight War started, and an NA cell could be strong there, for example...

Actually at least one museum ship has one working weapon - there is a museum sub in California that has a working torpedo tube and at least one functional disarmed torpedo. And it’s pretty easy to add things like machine guns and even light AA guns to a ship.