Hey Don!
Glad to get your feedback. I put World War instead of specifying 1 or 2 is because there were battleships in world war 1 too.
But I guess you are right with sticking to one world war instead. commemoration of WWII and pearl harbour incident.
We've had "battleships" of some kind or another since the origins of the US Navy. But as far as ships being known as "Floating Fortresses," that's a more recent development, mid-20th century. In fact, a 1959 documentary movie called "Floating Fortress" uses the term to refer to the UK's most modern aircraft carrier of the time, while an American documentary production from 1952 of the same name follows a day in the life of a battleship off the coast of Korea. In more modern terms, the phrase is being used to describe VLFSs (Very Large Floating Structures) that China plans to build - a floating military base stationed in the water far from shore, much longer than an aircraft carrier and capable of housing troops and other military facilities while functioning as a stationary floating airport. The Chinese plan to use them as "deep sea comprehensive security bases" and one is presently being tested near Beijing.
References from World War II use the term to refer to the largest classes of battleships constructed specifically for that war. Despite their exceptional firepower, alone they were extremely vulnerable to attacks from aircraft. The Japanese used the term for their two "Yamato-class" battleships, the largest they ever built - the Yamato and the Musashi, each of which had a displacement of about 64,000 tons. Neither was deployed in open seas until late in the war and both were sunk by US forces. The Japanese incorrectly assumed when designing the two vessels that airplanes weren't capable of delivering enough of a payload to sink them. It's ironic, since in the opening salvos of the Pacific Theater of WWII, only two days after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese used air power to sink the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battle cruiser HMS Repulse off Malaysia. That incident is considered by historians to be the end of the era of large battleships and the beginning of the era of naval air power based on land and at sea as well as the aircraft carrier and the carrier group.
Interesting fact: a more commonly used term is that coined for the Army Air Corps' B-17 bomber - the "Flying Fortress." They were thought to be powerful crafts when designed as well, having a relatively large crew, numerous gunports and a huge bomb payload capacity, but because they were fairly slow and ungainly due to their size and engine power (prop engines, not jets), they were very vulnerable to fighter aircraft and anti-air cannons on the ground. They attempted to counter this using high-altitude bombing runs and fighter wing escorts, with limited success. In many ways, they suffered similar vulnerabilities to those of large battleships.
It doesn't seem proper to use the deck as a commemorative of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese didn't deploy any battleships to the actual attack, only aircraft. The only US battleships present were unfortunately little more than floating targets rather than floating fortresses, caught in port and unable to respond adequately to the threat.
(Read 2439 times)
