Recommissioned US Navy ships

[Legbreaker]

Hang on a tick; isn't there a Carrier Battle Group still alive and well in the Gulf per the RDF The Carl Vinson and a few others at least.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a full blown carrier group, nor that they're well. My understanding is the assault carrier at the heart of it all is immobilised from battle damage, and most of the other ships aren't much better off. Nothing 12 months in a decent shipyard can't fix, if only one was available....

[Raellus]

With both sides having heavy losses in the number of ships, either side could have used nukes on ships (which I doubt due to strategic importance) or used aircraft launched Air to Ship missiles (much more likely). Both sides had very effective missiles.

There are several countermeasures for conventional anti-ship missiles. Some believe (I'm not among them) that just a couple of Tico class guided missile cruisers could defeat almost any ASM threat to a supercarrier. As for nukes, there are several Soviet ASMs designed to carrier low-yield nuclear payloads expressly for the purpose of taking out a US carrier group. As Mo pointed out, there were literally thousands of warheads out there on both sides so there'd really be no reason to skimp should the need arise.

Once again, I'm not arguing that the Soviets needed to resort to nukes to cause heavy NATO naval casualties, but it is a viable alternative explanation for the de facto destruction of NATO naval power in the N. Atlantic.

[boogiedowndonovan]

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a full blown carrier group, nor that they're well. My understanding is the assault carrier at the heart of it all is immobilised from battle damage, and most of the other ships aren't much better off. Nothing 12 months in a decent shipyard can't fix, if only one was available....

You guys are confusing canon with some of the Great Matt W's posts.

Canon RDF sourcebook has the assault carrier Belleau Wood LHA 3 functional as part of TF 76.

The Great Matt W posted an RDF orbat previously, I couldn't find it, but I found this in the archives.

http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.phpt=2090

"The carrier immobilized at Muscat, Oman is USS Independence (CV-62) with both torpedo damage and ASM damage. If a shipyard with supertanker size dry-dock was available, it would take 18 months of repairs to get her seaworthy. A caretaker crew is aboard, but most have been reassigned to other 5th FLT ships in the Gulf. "

[Matt Wiser]

And CVW-10 was her air wing; they're now based at Sheikh Isa AB, Bahrain.

I'll see if I can't dig out some of my old Naval stuff: Jason and his team found it mighty useful-they didn't use all of it, but they found much of it to be of value. They did have some surviving carriers-they may be moored 90% of the time, but there were four surviving carriers. (a fifth was docked in Bremerton with damage too serious to repair with resources at hand)

Personally, there would've been a lot more surviving ships, and not just anchored someplace. Remaining SSNs and Boomers would still be sailing on occasion, for example.

[Legbreaker]

You guys are confusing canon with some of the Great Matt W's posts.

Huh So we are!
The Belleau Wood however isn't a full blown carrier, but instead only operates helicopters and Harriers. I cannot find any reference to the Tarawa class being equipped with a catapult which puts almost all fixed wing aircraft out of consideration (the OV-10 Bronco, which was transferred from the Navy to the Marines and then retired in 1995 being the only listed exception).
Even so, it's unlikely the ships would see much use since there's a decided lack of resupply of important items such as missiles, parts, and conventional ammunition.

[Olefin]

Ok lets go with Canon

USN ships still active and part of MilGov

RDF - a missile cruiser, a gun cruiser, several frigates

Kenya - a missile cruiser, several destroyers and frigates - per Frank Frey from his notes for the unpublished Lions in Twilight module

Troubled Waters - John Hancock and three Forest Sherman DD's plus a bunch of smaller vessels

Last Submarine - SSN

Naval and Aviation book - USS Tarawa

and since Korea was never discussed in a canon module but its assume those guys didnt swim there you can bet there is a task force there too

And the ships that brought the men to the RDF didnt transit the Med without escort - thats how you throw away 6000 men's lives - so that means more ships brought them there past the French and any Italian or Greek ships

oh and why wasnt Tarawa the command ship in Going Home - how about as simple as the skipper of the John Hancock was superior to him as to time in rank and thus would be the Task Force Commander

[Targan]

oh and why wasnt Tarawa the command ship in Going Home - how about as simple as the skipper of the John Hancock was superior to him as to time in rank and thus would be the Task Force Commander

I thought that even when a fleet or task force commander is aboard a given vessel, that vessel will still have it's own captain. And the Tarawa is far, far better suited to the role of command ship, surely In any case, at least some of the surface combatants escorting the Omega fleet back to the US must have crossed the Atlantic to Bremerhaven prior to the Omega fleet being assembled. I'd be amazed if MilGov didn't have at least one admiral or rear admiral available either already in Germany or at Norfolk and available to cross the Atlantic prior to the Omega fleet's assembly, ready and very much willing to command the Omega fleet.

Following ideas previously put forward by others on this forum, I've been tending towards the Tarawa being grounded and semi or non-functional somewhere along the Polish or Baltic coast. However I don't think it would be out of the question for the Tarawa to have been capable of being refloated and towed back to friendly waters but not being in a suitable condition for an Atlantic crossing with the Omega fleet. IIRC many of the remaining US forces in the UK made their own return to the CONUS post-Omega. Perhaps by then the Tarawa could have undergone sufficient repair and refit in a UK harbour to be the flagship for that second, mini-Omega

[Olefin]

Or you could have Tarawa not sunken but have taken significant damage to where she wouldnt be useful for the command ship - i.e. her radios, sensors, etc.. could be out and she is basically unable to exercise command functions outside of using signal flags.

That happened during WWII when ships took damage to where they were still operable but where they couldnt exercise command anymore - for instance San Francisco after she got pounded at Guadalcanal - still afloat but she was in no shape to be the command ship anymore

There are no details on who commanded the effort - and if there wasnt a seperate task force commander present then the senior naval officer present would take over as Task Force Commander - so if its the Captain of the Hancock then he is it. (all it takes is for him to be one day senior to everyone else and he would have command fall to him)

Plus having Tarawa present allows the US to evac helicopters and other equipment that divisions have been hauling around per canon and does it without any disruption of the canon (no one, no matter how partisan one way or another is going to say that Tarawa is even a tenth as capable as a Nimitz class nuclear carrier and that her still being in the USN means the US is now ruling the waves)

And it would go to also saying why the Marines got stranded - i.e. Tarawa was needed elsewhere

and you would think if Tarawa had been lost or grounded, given how the handbooks were written, it would have mentioned her loss so soon after the picture was taken

thus no matter how much Legbreaker wants her sunk, she most likely was part of Omega

[Rainbow Six]

With regards to canon, wasn't at least one US Coast Guard ship mentioned in Rifle River (Yes, I know technically that wouldn't be part of the US Navy )

Also it's been years since I read Satellite Down so I can't remember if the USS Virginia was on its own or was part of a small group of ships Didn't they get into a fight with some Soviet warships Is the Virginia listed as the only survivor

An escort for the ships going to the Middle East makes sense.

I'm not convinced about Korea...there would certainly have been a task force there at some point in time, but how much of it would be left by 2000 is probably debatable.

Targan, I could be mistaken here (I'm at work at the moment so all of the above is from memory) but I think the US personnel in the UK were uplifted at the same time as the main Omega evacuation - I think there is reference in the Survivor's Guide to the UK to one or more of the Omega ships making a stop off in the UK to pick up US personnel.

[Olefin]

Yes you are right about the stop in the UK - its also mentioned in Troubled Waters about the Omega UK evacuation

There is a good chance that whatever ships are in Korea are still there - short of fuel so they cant make the haul home but with enough fuel so that they can still operate around the Korean peninsula and the Sea of Japan.

So they are still effective but only locally. Now get some fuel there from the RDF or Kenya and that would change.

(i.e. Japan in late WWII didnt have the fuel to send ships to Singapore anymore but they had enough for ops to Pusan and back - so similar situation here.)

Virginia had several ships with her but they were all lost in the firefight with the Russian task group that led to her being beached.

From how its described they were the last USN ships active off the West Coast - and its a long way from the West Coast to Korea.

If you are interested Rainbow I can put up the relevant passage from Satellite Down showing that.

[Targan]

Or you could have Tarawa not sunken but have taken significant damage to where she wouldnt be useful for the command ship - i.e. her radios, sensors, etc.. could be out and she is basically unable to exercise command functions outside of using signal flags.

Fair point.

There are no details on who commanded the effort - and if there wasnt a seperate task force commander present then the senior naval officer present would take over as Task Force Commander - so if its the Captain of the Hancock then he is it. (all it takes is for him to be one day senior to everyone else and he would have command fall to him)

All true but seriously, given the enormous importance of the operation, MilGov couldn't come up with a single admiral or rear admiral to command the fleet It just beggars belief.

Plus having Tarawa present allows the US to evac helicopters and other equipment that divisions have been hauling around per canon and does it without any disruption of the canon.

Again, all true but not having the Tarawa present doesn't mean the US can't evac helicopters and other equipment with the Omega fleet. There would definitely be one or more (almost certainly more) ro-ro vessels in the fleet, and many cargo vessels are fully capable of having helicopters landed on them (many have one or more of their cargo hold hatches specially reinforced for exactly that purpose). And you'll note from other posts I've made that I'm not opposed to the Tarawa being once again in operation with the USN post-Omega. I just regard it has highly unlikely that the Tarawa was with the Omega fleet and didn't rate a single mention in Going Home.

and you would think if Tarawa had been lost or grounded, given how the handbooks were written, it would have mentioned her loss so soon after the picture was taken

You would think that if the Tarawa was among the ships sailing with the Omega fleet it would have been mentioned in Going Home. Seriously, specifically naming the John Hancock as being present and casually omitting any mention of the Tarawa being in the same fleet I don't buy it.

thus no matter how much Legbreaker wants her sunk, she most likely was part of Omega

I'm happy to admit that Leg and I have quite similar views in many areas of T2K. I'm also happy that you've joined the forum, Olefin, you have already stimulated much interesting discussion since joining. But I'd advise against buying into some of the old disputes that caused a great deal of pain around here (and led to the departure from active participation of the creator, founder and administrator of this forum). I don't think it's a fair characterisation of Leg's views to suggest that he vehemently advocates the sinking of the Tarawa. As I recall, the idea that the Tarawa was beached or grounded somewhere along the Polish coast during 2000 was widely accepted as a reasonable possibility by many members of this forum. As it happens, Leg and I subscribed to that view. Long story short, I disagree that the Tarawa being part of the Omega fleet was "most likely". I agree that it's possible though.

With regards to canon, wasn't at least one US Coast Guard ship mentioned in Rifle River (Yes, I know technically that wouldn't be part of the US Navy )

That would be the Chilula, WMEC-153, a Cherokee class medium endurance cutter. And for all intents and purposes, during the Twilight War most USCG ships were USN ships. Those USCG assets listed in Rifle River as being under the direct command of Rear Admiral Nils Holsgirder are examples of USCG vessels that basically aren't USN vessels by 2000.

Also it's been years since I read Satellite Down so I can't remember if the USS Virginia was on its own or was part of a small group of ships Didn't they get into a fight with some Soviet warships Is the Virginia listed as the only survivor

All of the other vessels in the USS Virginia's battle group were sunk in combat.

I'm not convinced about Korea...there would certainly have been a task force there at some point in time, but how much of it would be left by 2000 is probably debatable.

I agree.

Targan, I could be mistaken here (I'm at work at the moment so all of the above is from memory) but I think the US personnel in the UK were uplifted at the same time as the main Omega evacuation - I think there is reference in the Survivor's Guide to the UK to one or more of the Omega ships making a stop off in the UK to pick up US personnel.

Now that you mention it I think I recall that too. I don't think the whole Omega fleet made a stopover though. Perhaps the Omega Fleet split at that point, with the main TF crossing directly and several sub-fleets sailing separately, one to pick up US troops in the UK, another sailing for the Med and on to the RDF and another heading to Africa to reinforce US forces there.

[Targan]

There is a good chance that whatever ships are in Korea are still there - short of fuel so they cant make the haul home but with enough fuel so that they can still operate around the Korean peninsula and the Sea of Japan.

So they are still effective but only locally. Now get some fuel there from the RDF or Kenya and that would change.

That's a possibility. I could be convinced either way. The Korean AO is one area that we've had few discussions about on this forum and I'd enjoy hearings everyone's ideas on it. Definitely a theater that deserved more attention than GDW gave it.

[Olefin]

I agree with you there - same with Yugoslavia - besides a few mentions in a couple of modules and the US Army Guide its an empty page as to the original version of the game

I have been thinking that some fan modules may be what is needed there for sure.

[Legbreaker]

If the Tarawa was still floating, and able to move under it's own power, it absolutely would have been the flagship, even if it's radios, radar, etc was destroyed. It doesn't take much to move a few radios aboard and position some radar vehicles on deck. The ship itself has way too much flexibility, even damaged, to ignore.
So it's far more likely it was out of commission in the latter half of 2000 than passed over in favour of an old destroyer.
If it was floating and useful, the US XI Corps wouldn't be cut off and could have been withdrawn - provided there were still landing craft left over from the earlier offensive to take the troops and their equipment off the beaches (there's no suitable ports between Germany and Gdansk).

[Rainbow Six]

A thought occurs to me re: the Tarawa. I don't think it's been mentioned before - apologies if it has and / or I'm stating the obvious.

Going Home is part of the T2K V1 chronology

The Nautical / Aviation Guide is part of the T2K V2x chronology

They are essentially two different timelines (albeit from the summer of 1997 onwards the differences are limited).

Its possible that in the v1 timeline the USS Tarawa may have been sunk long before the summer of 2000.

We know that GDW reissued at least one module to support V2x (Rendevous in Krakow) in a revised format with some different material. Perhaps if things hadn't gone the way they did we might have seen a revised Going Home at some point in time, which may have had the Tarawa as the TF34 flagship.

Just a thought...