admin7126 Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) (1942) US Navy Infantry Landing Ships (1936-46): 923 built, operated 1943-1965 D-Day Special ! The Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) was the Allies main specialized Infantry landing Craft, capable of offshore travel but to land troops directly onto beaches, developed like the LST in response to a British request for a better … Read more
Benham class Destroyers (1938) US Navy Fleet Destroyers (1936-46): USS Benham, Ellet, Lang, Mayrant, Trippe, Rhind, Rowan, Stack, Sterett, Wilson DD-397 to DD-408 The Benham-class destroyers were essentiall a repeat of the previous Gridley-Bagley classes, sporting the same impressive sixteen torpedo battery and four main guns, single funnel. They shared the same hull and the … Read more
Project 1134B Berkut ASW Cruisers 7 ASW cruisers: Nikolayev, Ochakov, Kerch, Azov, Petropavlovsk, Tachkent, Vladivostok The Kara class missile cruisers were seven rather versatile ships (1969-76), destined to succeed the Kresta I and Kresta II. They had a tactical anti-ship capability with SSN-14 conventional or nuclear missiles, good short range anti-aircraft capability with their two … Read more
USN Fleet Destroyers (1917-1947): 111 destroyers (DD-75 to DD-185) The Wickes-class were 111 destroyers built for the US Navy between 1917 and 1921. First of the two wartime mass-produced classes of “flush deck” hull destroyers (“four-pipers”), and improved version of the Caldwell design but faster. Seeing little from WWI for most, they served in the … Read more
26-knotters class destroyers (A Class) United Kingdom (1892-1912) Destroyers HMS Havock, Hornet, Daring, Decoy, ferret, Lynx. The lineage of British Destroyers started with the experimental “26-knotters” in 1892 when Yarrow, Thornycroft and Laird were ordered ships tailored to hunt down torpedo boats. First envisioned by the Admiralty in 1891, they were ordered on the 1892–1893 … Read more
Cold War USN Aicraft Carriers Circa 85 ships 1945-today The bulwark of the “free world” For 43 years, NATO’s safety and strength rested on the shoulders of US Navy task forces, centered around its mighty aircraft carriers. By their numbers and size, they dictated the composition, procurements, doctrine, strategy of the surface fleet alongside the … Read more
Marine Nationale, French seaplane carrier (1927-1942) The French Marine Nationale interwar seaplane carrier The Commandant Teste was France’s only dedicated fleet seaplane carrier in 1939. She was a large ship based in the Mediterranean where weather conditions favored the use of seaplanes to screen for the fleet, equipped with four catapults, cranes, hangar and workshops … Read more
Blackburn B-25 Roc (1938) RNAS/FAA 1938-41: 136 built. The Royal navy Turret Fighter The use of turret fighters was proper to Britain. No other nation trusted this concept rather than the more classical approach of a gun-armed (fixed) wing and fuselage armament, aimed by the pilot for a fighter. It’s the trust in Boulton-Paul’s turret … Read more
Libertad class battleships (1892) Argentina: ARA Libertad, Independencia (1889-1968) The Libertad class were two coastal battleships ordered by the Argentinian Navy in a context of extreme tension with Chile. Both were ordered from a British yard and launched in 1887, and differed in some ways. Libertad and Independencia provoked however a real sismic wave in … Read more
Sverige class coastal battleships (1915) Swedish Navy 1912-70 HSwMS Sverige, Drottning Victoria, Gustav V Sweden’s last Pansarkepp Sweden’s very last coastal battleships is a saga out of itself. Largest ships ever built in Sweden before even the Great War broke out, completed after many delays in 1917, 21 and 22, they became the flagships of … Read more
