The Glade 4.0

Hey I was playing Civ IV and watching History International and it occured to me that I have no idea what the rules are for designating a naval vessel a destroyer, cruiser, battleship, etc. Can anyone (Diamondeye) fill me in?

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That depends greatly on the era. Are you talking about WWI, WWII, post-WWII, early in the missile age, late Cold War, or post Cold-war? Also, what nation are you interested in; different nations had somewhat different requirements?

I'm assuming WWI or WWII since you mentioned battleships, but left aircraft carriers out, but if you could narrow the field a bit I can give a better answer. I have a few sources on the topic.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Destroyer < Cruiser < Battleship < Dreadnaught < Carrier

Quick and dirty.

TL;DR:

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Holy shitsnacks!

a great deal of it is historical. During the age of Sail, the designations were based on things like number of guns, number of decks, tonnage, etc.

In the 20th century and perhaps a bit before, the designations are more often about capabilities and job function than actual size.
During WW1 & WW2 destroyers were smaller vessels typically assigned to sub-hunting and fleet screening though were often selected for escort duty. (in large part because they were effective against submarines & uboats) They were fast, with light armament.
Frigates were also lighter vessel though sometimes the line between cruiser and frigate was pretty blurry.

Cruisers were something of a middleground. Typically sporting relativly heavy guns but lighter armor, they were faster, but didn't pack the punch of battleships. They were more often used in ship-to-ship engagements as their weaponry was capable of even damaging battleships. (Whereas a destroyer would have little chance of inflicting major damage on a battleship)

Battlecruisers were the halfway point between battleship and cruiser.

Battleships are generally considered the largest ships in the fleet, slower, but heavily armored.

During WW2 both battleships and cruisers could also function in shore bombardment capacity, but this isn't a role some of the lighter vessels would be assigned.

I'm sure Diamondeye can offer better insight than I can, particularly on the modern navy.
There are other vessels we've not talked about too; litoral combat vessels, escort frigates; the various species of carriers.

In the modern navy however, a single destroyer or aircraft can fire missles capable of taking out any other ship in the fleet, whereas in previous eras ships often required massed firepower to take down. (read up on some of the battles of WWI and WW2, particularly the efforts required to sink the Bismark or other large vessels)

Oh, whoops. I read "designating" as "designing".


Ok, I don't know anything about CIV IV, but in real life, again, it varies somewhat based on era. However, that makes it easier to answer since it makes more sense when explained chronologically.

First of all, there is no such thing in Real Life as a "dreadnought" unless you mean HMS Dreadnought which was the first all-big-gun battleship, or unless you're talking about WWI battleships, where "dreadnought" means the earlier battleships, and superdreadnought means those produced later, with larger guns in their main batteries. For British ships, generally the change from 12-inch to 13.5-inch main batteries is the start of "superdreadnoughts", but the differentiation is really not that important.

A "carrier" is basically any ship whose primary purpose is to carry aircraft. That will be important later. For right now, remember that many warships support 1 or 2, or even 4 helicopters, but they aren't "carriers" because that's not their main job.

Incoming lengthy post with a discussion of the terms.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Civ IV was just the catalyst for my question, no bearing on the discussion

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Ok, TheRiov has hit on the very basic differentiation between types, in theory. In practice, designation of types is often at least partly political. Certain designations do not exist in some navies. Finally, designations don't always keep up with the times, and some ships simply blur the lines. Finally, different nations have different basic design assumptions, so a ship of one type in one navy may not be the same type in another.

As ironclad ships became the norm, guns also became larger and longer-rasged, but fewer in number per ship. This eventually resulted in the pre-dreadnought battleships such as USS Maine and numerous contemporaries that went out of fashion as they were replaced with drednoughts. The Dreadnought was the brainchild of JAckie Fisher of the Royal Navy, and was based on the discovery during the Russo-Japanese war that only the bigger guns on a ship really mattered. A pre-dreadnoguht might have for example, 4x 12 inch guns and 12 6 inch guns such as in the Canopus-class Britsh ships like HMS Goliath.

Not only did only the big guns really count against other ships, but other problems appeared, such as the fact that different guns had different ballistics, but a splash from one shell looked the same as another. Thus, it was very hard to adjust both batteries simultaneously. Note that later battleships still had small secondary batterie but these were intended to fire at smaller ships anyhow, so the splashes could be differentiated by what target they were aimed at.

Torpedoes also appeared, and this allowed a small "torpedo boat" to threaten a battleship, especially since armor schemes didn't yet include much anti-torpedo protection which needed to be designed.

Thus appeared the modern types -destroyers, shortened from torpedo-boat destroyer and designed to protect larger ships from such boats (and later subs); cruisers designed for long-range patrol, scouting, commerce raiding, and such, and battleships designed to destroy the enemy's navy. "Battlecruisers" were another Fisher brainchild; they were large ships with battleship weapons, but only a bit more armor than a cruiser, and very fast. Fisher believed that speed was armor; they would evade enemy fire, but this turned out not to work very well in practice, although if they had been used only as intended (to chase down cruisers, such as at the Battle of the Falkland Islands) it wouldn't matter since their armor was enough against cruiser weapons.

Tirpitz, the German counterpart of Fisher also called for battlecruisers, but his maxim was that a warships' first duty is to remain afloat. German ships, therefore, generally mounted smaller guns in their main batteries than British ships but had heavier armor. In modern times, there is a tendency to want to call only ships that have heavier armament with light armor "battlecruisers" and invent all sorts of other designations for ships that are similar in size and purpose but aren't designed with the heavy-gun-light-armor scheme. This contributes to confusion by creating excessive numbers of narrow designations and is really just a result of excessive focus on the Royal Navy.

Cruisers were further subdivided into light cruisers which tended to be basically larger, longer-ranged destroyers with more guns, and armored cruisers, the predecessor of the Heavy Cruiser (the same designation, CA, is used by the U.S. Navy). The armored cruiser, however, was no match for the battlecruiser and armored cruiser of both sides suffered great losses in the war. Of course, many were also in poor repair or crewed by reservists.

The Battlecruiser got a poor reputation during the war because of the British losses in the type at Jutland. There is some controversy over why but poor safety procedures and/or light armor are likely culprits. In any case, this made the type ripe for elimination after the war.

Moving on to WWII in the next post.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In the interwar years, there was a great deal of attempt made to put naval arms limitations in place, which ultimately were failures. For one thing, Germany wasn't included since it was limited by the Versailles treaty, and for another different nations had different needs. For example, the limit for cruisers was 10,000 tons, but there was much wrangling over whether fuel and other load was part of the limit. For Britain, with far-flung posessions, and needing more fuel for its ships, that would penalize them in combat power against their opponents, and the same was to a degree true for U.S. ships, while Italian and Japanese ships would have an advantage. In any case, Japan and Germany eventually just violated and then repudiated their treaties.

However, the Battlecruiser, because of the tonnage limitations of these treaties became unpopular. The U.S. finished none (officially) it's WWI battlecruiser became aircraft carriers or were scrapped unfinished. Britain reduced its fleet to only 3 (Repulse, Renown, and Hood) and Japan reconstruced its Kongo-class battlecruisers as battleships. In some sources they are still called battlecruisers, however.

This is where the blurring of designations starts to appear: A destroyer or a purpose-built battleship is easy to identify. But what is a cruiser? A light cruiser, with typically guns about 155mm (6 inches) is, in many respects an enlarged destroyer. It has a different purpose however; a destroyer will have more antisubmarine equipment in this era while a cruiser while focus more on surface targets. Displacement, however, tells us nothing since a light cruiser in WWII such as the Cleveland-class might displace over 11000 tons, almost as much as a pre-dreadnought battleship!

Gun size is a better rule; typically light cruisers had 155mm or smaller guns and heavy cruisers larger; 8-inch being most common (this was an argument against heavy cruisers since very few ships could resist 6 inch but not 8-inch hits.

However, there are a few ships that confuse the issue. In addition to the redesigned Kongos, there are the German Sharnhorst-class ships and the Deutschlands, and the U.S. Alaska-class.

The Scharnhorsts had 9x 11-inch guns, comparable to WWI German battlecruisers, but battleship-like armor. In fact, they were designed for 6x15-inch guns but since the turrets were not available yet they were mounted with the 11-inch in the interim. 6x 15 would have been the same armament as Repulse and Renown. By WWII standards they were very small battleships, but much too large and heavily armed to be cruisers. British sources therefore refer to them as Battlecruisers, while German sources refer to them as battleships, and a convincing argument can be made either way; this highlights the blurry line between types. My personal choice is battlescruier, based on the fact that Scharnhorst was no match for Duke of York and was sent to the bottom relatively easily by the British ship.

The Desutschland-class; the most famous being Admiral Graf Spee and Admiral Scheer were referred to by the Germans as Panzerschiffe or armored ships, and actually complied with the Versailles treaty with a little creative math. They had 6x 11 inch guns in two triple turrets rather than three twin. They were the only class I know of that could resist 6-inch but not 8-inch fire, and they were used as commerce raiders.

For all intents and purposes they were heavy cruisers with a very large but impractical main battery, and heavy armor. In practice, the design was really not very good because one turret being disabled meant a 50% loss of firepower (and ALL firepower to either fore or aft) and because you really do not need 11-inch guns to sink merchant ships. The reason these ships are blurry is the 11-inch guns which confuse people who think "all heavy cruisers must necessarily have 8-inch" (which is a rule of thumb) and because they have received the appellation "pocket battleship", which is more an appelation to what can be crammed into a ship of that size; they are not battleships in any sense. It further has occasionally caused the Scharnhorsts and Bismarks to be cvalled pocket battleships, which is also not accurate unless possibly comparing Scharnhorst to Yamato.

The Alaska-class, with 9x 12-inch guns, high speed, and reasonable armor, blurs the designation ebcause of the political baggage of the word "battlecruiser". Officially, they were designated "large cruisers" and given hull numbers with the CB designation rather than the CC that the uncompleted WWI-era battlecruisers were given. In reality, however, they are battlecruisers in every sense of the word. The designation "large cruiser" really performs no useful function or highlights any meaningful difference from a battlecruiser. Some people have gone so far in defending this differentiation as to highlight the placement of Alaska's 5-inch secondary armament; a rather silly argument since placement of secondary argument is a nitpick in broad typing of warships. "Large Cruiser" is really an unnecessary designation that serves no purpose (unless you're Russian, in which case you use a different typing system anyhow).

These links contain an excellent comparison of the various post-treaty battleships of WWII

http://www.chuckhawks.com/post_treaty_battleships.htm
http://www.chuckhawks.com/post_treaty_battleships2.htm

treaty battleships

http://www.chuckhawks.com/treaty_battleships.htm

battlecruisers and the aforementined line-blurrers

http://www.chuckhawks.com/battlecruisers.htm

heavy cruisers; parts 2 and 3 can be acccessed at the bottom of the page

http://www.chuckhawks.com/heavy_cruisers.htm

Generally, however, WWII makes it easy: A destroyer is a small ship with 5-inch or smaller guns that protects from subs and aricraft primarily, A cruiser is s middle-sized warship with 6-to-11 inch guns that provides fire support and antisurface warfare as well as antiaircraft protection, a battlecruiers is larger than a cruiser, with guns of at least 11 inches but which cannot stand up to a battleship, and a battleship is a large warship with guns bigger than 12 inches and which can be expected to fight any other ship in direct fire with at least some chance of survical depending on the circumstances.

Moving on to the postwar era up to the 80s in the next post.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Very interesting post DE, but in looking up the Scharnhorst on Wiki (link goes to there), I wouldn't say it was "sent to the bottom relatively easily"... after all, it was the Scharnhorst against 1 cruisers, 4 destroyers and a battleship (not including the battle with 3 British cruisers the day before that took out the Scharnhorst's radar). 11 inch or 15 inch guns wouldn't have mattered I don't think against those odds.

From the article, a total of 55 torpedoes and 2,195 shells had been fired at Scharnhorst.

Actually going to go all the way to the present with this.

In the postwar-to-80s era, battleships mostly disappeared. The last British battleship, Vanguard (actually completed after WWII) went to the breakers in 1960. U.S. Battleships were steadily deactivated and disposed of, except for the 4 Iowa-class ships, some of which served in Korea and Viet Nam, and all of which reappeared in the 1980s and were deactivated permenantly after Desert Storm. Battlecruisers disappeared completly until the 1970s.

The guided missile became the primary weapon system in a steady evolution over this time, both against aircraft and ships.

Designations became rather confused during this period, mainly because they referred to roles that only remained peripherally. Commerce raiding was a thing of the past, and scouting was performed by aircraft or satellite. Essentially, a destroyer became a small escort, a cruiser a large escort, and both protected carriers, amphibious forces, and noncombatant ships. Some gun-armed ships were retained by the U.S., primarily for fire support of the Marines, but the range of the missile and the evolution of shaped-charge warheads which are vastly superior to the steel shells of the World Wars at piercing armor changed the basic nature of ship design. Armor has been replaced by surface-to-air missiles and guns, decoys, jammers, and other defensive systems.

In particular, while aircraft carriers kept getting bigger to carry more airplanes (and of course to be able to carry jets) and therefore tougher and more armored simply by virtue of needing more structural strength, destroyers and cruisers stablized in mass; the largest postwar U.S. cruiser was USS Long Beach at a bit over 15000 tons. Most destroyers and cruisers have staed between 5000 and 10,000 tons; ironically within the post WWI treaty limits.

In the postwar world, the Navy retained the designation of Destroyer (DD/DDG; the "G" refers to "guided missile") while CA (heavy cruiser) and CL (light cruiser) became CAG and CLG, primarily for converted WWII cruisers and CG eventually became the designation for all cruisers (Long Beach being one such redesignated ship). A new designation appeared; DL/DLG which meant "destroyer leader" although these ships were called "Frigates" to evoke memories of the powerful sailing frigates of old. DE/DEG were destroyer escorts and intended to protect convoys.

In practice, this designation system fell victim to both its confusing nature and politics. Cruisers were supposed to be one to a carrier, and be the main surface combatants, carring the long-range area-defense (for the time) Talos SAM, and strategic (nuclear) weapons such as Regulus or Polaris. Frigates were a mix of antisubmarine, antiaircraft, and antisurface designs with a mix of guns and missiles, but did not carry offensive strategic nuclear weapons. They were intended to carry the somewhat smaller Terrier SAM. Only the U.S. used this desingation, Frigates in other navies were called cruisers or destroyers.

Destroyers carried the smallest SAM, Tartar (if any) and were DD (antisubmarine, using the traditional destroyer designation) or antiair escorts (DDG). DE/DEGs were intended for rapid production and mobilization in wartime, and had their roles divided in the same way as destroyers.

By 1975, there were only 6 "cruisers" in the Navy. Thus entered the political problem, the Soviets, defining cruiser differently (a frigate to us was a cruiser to them) had 19 with 7 under construction.

This problem was "solved" by eliminating the DL/DLG/DLGN ("N" on any designation signifies nuclear power; it does not change the combat role of the ship) designation and rolling the larger ones under CG and the smaller under DD/DDG. The term "Frigate" was changed to mean a small escort like a DE/DEG which were changed to the designation FF/FFG. The designation CA theoretically still exists for gun cruisers as several remained in reserve but has not been used for an active ship since Viet Nam.

Carriers were also reclassified, instead of having antisubmarine carriers and attack carriers (CVS and CVA/CVAN) all carriers were simply returned to CV/CVN.

While this really just "eliminated" a "gap" that didn't exist, it did at least streamline and clarify what ship did what, especially since cruisers as a platform for strategic weapons were passe by that time.

It does, however, highlight the disappearance of clear deliniation between cruisers and destroyers. The Ticonderoga-class cruisers started out as DDGs and were redesignated CGs. While in line with their capabilities, it should be noted that they used the same hull as the Spruance-class destroyer!

Moving into the 1980s, it became more clear that the exact type of an escort was less and less important. For most surface combatants, the ideal size has seemed to be in the 5000-to-12,000 ton range. LArger ships are excessivley expensive and have an "eggs-in-one-basket" problem; smaller "missile boats" lack endurance and missile capacity and cannot carry adequate defenses; they have proven to be easy prey for aircraft because they carry only point defenses. Aircraft can often attack from farther away than small boats can reply.

Many navies have produced various missile boat designs, esepcially the Soviet Osa, and of course they have a role in coast-guard type roles such as anti-piracy and some value in littoral antisubmarine operations, but in the even of major warfare, they become throwaway ships. An LCS is expected to cost about 460 million apiece compared to a Burke at 1.1 billion (for the first ship). Even if the later Burkes rise to 2 billion apiece, their capabilities are greater in later flights, and they certainly have far more than 4 times the power of an LCS, probably more like 20 to 30 times. An LCS is supposed to be faster and have a shallower draft, but the Burke can reach over 30 knots while LCS has a goal of only about 40, and a proposal to keep costs under control has proposed reducing it to 30 anyhow. In any case, the Burke can also carry a helicopter, which is faster than either and has no concerns over draft.

In any case, designations have become less important in the missile age; primarily relating to "larger versus smaller". There are exceptions

The Battleship made a reappearance from 1982 until just after Desert Storm, in its old designation. It had three purposes: 1) Provide gunfire support for marines; a resource lacking at the time and lacking again with their deactivation 2) Rapidly get Tomahawk missiles to sea; at the time the VLS system was not available and no ship carried more than 8; in a pair of 4-shot Armored Box Launchers. The Battleships had room for 32 missiles, plus 16 Harpoons. 3) Counter the Soviet Kirov-class

Kirov is, for all intents and purposes, a nuclea powered battlecruiser, displacing 28,000 tons fully loaded. Russia/the Soviet Union has always referred to them as Heavy Nuclear Powered Missile Cruisers (TARKR is the Russian acronym). However, since Russia has only one full sized carrier, and had none when they were built, it has always been the escorted ship rather than the ecort and, in my mind, therefore more of a battlecruiser.

It should finally be noted that carriers have their own confusion. The Soviet Union had Kiev class carriers that carried VTOL jets and helicopters, and the UK had the Invincible-class that did the same. They were called "aviation cruisers" and "through-deck cruisers" respectively. In the UK, this was mainly to avert the political horror of the Left at building carriers, although Britain will have a full-size carrier again in the near future. The U.S. also has amphibious ships which carry Harriers and helicopters and look like carriers, but are really not; they are primarily intended to carry ground troops and the aircraft support that.

In any case, I hope all this helps. IF you have specific questions or want more detail on any of it, let me know.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I thought this thread was going to be a question about where the lint comes from.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That is true. However, it should be noted that by the time the cruisers and destroyers fired, Duke of York had already destroyed A and B turrets and a boiler room, reducing speed to 22 knots. This shows the ease with which the 14-inch armament of Duke of York penetrated the armor of Scharnhorst. Had it been merely a 1-on-1 fight, or had Scharnhorst had comparable escort, I think the result would simply have taken longer to attain.

Note that against Bismark, a much bigger and tougher ship, it took 2 British battleships, one with 16-inch guns, plus cruisers, considerably longer to sink the ship and it is often contended that it wouldn't actually have sunk at all without the Germans scuttling her, although that hardly matters since she was immobile and all her guns were silent.

15-inch guns, as you say, would not have helped much although her single hit on Duke of York might have inflicted greater demage. By the time the battle occured, Scharnhorst had lost her radar set and could not accurately return fire in the low visibility.

Even if she had however, doing truely serious damage or sinking the British ship would have been challanging at least. By the time WWII came around, Allied Battleships had changed to all-or-nothing armor, while the Germans still used an incremental protection scheme of WWI; this was a result of losing 20+ years of experience in design. Battleships in general were designed to be armored against their own main battery; in this case 14 inches. Scharnhorst would have had a hard time hitting the armored vitals of the ship with 11-inch guns, even given their unusually high muzzle velocity.

You did, however, do a good job of highlighting why I hate 1-on-1 comparisons of battleships, and most other systems as well. As a practical matter they don't fight mano a mano, with no interference so the "which one would win?" arguments tend to miss the point.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Battle of North Cape for those more interested in the battle between Scharnhorst and 1 battleship, 1 heavy cruiser, 3 light cruisers and 9 destroyers (my original count was wrong).


I don't think I understand this comment. To me, incremental would mean armor of various thicknesses depending on the location/vulnerability, but if that is the way in which you mean it, the Scharnhorst had "all or nothing" armour (~14" armour at the belt and 95mm at the deck only) and the Duke of York had incremental.

Yes, that is what incremental armor means; "incrementing" the armor based on how important each section of the ship is. "All or nothing" means a full thickness over important sections and none over unimportant ones. How it's actually laid out is much more complex; for example whether the belt is internal or external and how deep it goes in the ship. Note that the article states in the introduction that the first Royal Navy class to use this was the Nelson class, preceeding the King George V class, which Duke of York belonged to.

In any case, it seems you're looking at the Wiki for each ship's armor. It appears incremental because the listing for Scharnhorst only discusses belt and deck, while Duke of York also lists turret armor and specifies lower belt versus main belt.

Obviously Scharnhorst did have turret armor, one would not leave the ship's firepower nor the explosive stores unprotected. Moreover, the different thicknesses on the turret are partly dictated by the need of the turret to move.

As to the different belts in DoY, a ship with incremental armor would actually have more than just 2 thicknesses. The different thicknesses are a reflection of both weight and hull design considerations. It is strictly speaking, a form of incrementing because in practice no battleship really completely achieved "all or nothing" to the ideal, but compared to the older form with far greater incrementation it comes much closer to the ideal. There are ancillary problems with taking the principle to it's logical conclusion such as the effect it has on crewmembers outside the armored area, such as those in secondary batteries, and the fact that the ship's hull form may not allow fully uniform thickness.

Bismark (I used to have a picture depicting its incrementated armor, can't find it now unfortunately) was tough to sink due to it's excellent compartmentalization. It's actual armor, however, was built to an older banded design. Scharnhorst preceeded it, and it's therefore safe to assume it used a similar armor pattern.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Good read, thanks for the clarification.

Oh yes, almost forgot

The designation "Frigate" changed in 1975 from a large destroyer/small cruiser to mean an escort smaller than a destroyer. Typically they are focused on either antisubmarine or antiair warfare. At present, many navies use the term to refer to such ships.

In the current U.S. Navy the designation may become obsolete, like CA, as Littoral Combat Ships, to whatever degree they are built, take over the.. well, littoral roles of the Frigate.

The last guided missile frigate class built, the Oliver Hazard Perry class is becoming worn out, and in a way is reflective of the problems with small escorts. Built between 1977 and 1989 the ships are already wearing out.

More importantly, they were always very limited ships. Their fire-support value was essentially nonexistant with ony one 76mm gun. They lacked an ASROC launcher which meant they had no standoff torpedo launch system, although the helicopter could do that; the ship itself ejected torpedoes straight into the water. Against air targets they carried an impressive-sounding magazine of 40 missiles, until one realizes that A) the single-arm launcher fires one missile at a time B) that magazine also holds the Harpoon antiship missile so load must be balanced between the types and C) the Mk 92 fire control system has only 2 air engagement channels for the missiles, meaning highly limited ability to deal with missile attack

Finally, the ship carried the SM-1 missile, the oldest Standard SAM. It had limited ability against sea-skimming targets, and is past its service life. Moreover, allied countries use it, and the decision has been made to reserve remaining SM-1s for their use. The Mk-13 launcher has been removed from the remaining Perry ships. Although this guts their firepower, they also don't need it for the littoral operations they've been used for in the last 8-10 years and with such limited antiair capability it wasn't terribly useful anyhow.

The weakness of this class has probably meant the death of the "Frigate" designation in the U.S. Navy. No frigate is in the works and none have been built for the U.S. since 1989 although this class has been built for export. It is a perfect example of how a poor ship can poison the entire type.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh yes, one more thing I forgot.

Russia has its own designation system for ship types, and while this does include Cruiser, Destroyer, Frigate, and Corvette, the subtypes of cruisers are more involved. It also typically refers to aircraft carriers as "aviation cruisers", including its one full-sized carrier. It also has other designations such as "antisubmarine ship" and "large antisubmarine ship". For example, the Kara-class cruisers, of which only one is still active (one supposedly in refit; the others have been or are being scrapped) are referred to as "large "anti-submarine ships", but would be cruisers under western typology.

Whether this is due to idiosyncracies of translating Russian to English, or due to some different thught process the Russians use in their typology I do not know.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Where does Naval lint come from? Seriously.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Your shirt.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Is my shirt in danger of disappearing?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

your belly button is gonna eat it!

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

If you wash it too frequently, or on too strong a cycle, yes. I understand you Air Force types have all your laundry done for you though, so you should be ok.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

By lavender scented concubines.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Damn I chose the wrong career path. Are they available for private sector use?

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You'll have to settle for cinnamon scented.

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