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   Charlie Stross (cstross@wandering.shop)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:02 JST Charlie Stross

   in reply to

   • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
   • Robert Brandt (dragoner)

   @Robert_Brandt @nyrath … Possibly because Germany's ports are all on the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, both of which were home waters controlled by the Royal Navy (with RAF air cover from land bases in England). The KM found that simply getting its capital ships into the ocean was almost impossible without taking heavy damage, hence the U-boat campaign.

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     Robert Brandt (dragoner) (robert_brandt@spacey.space)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:03 JST Robert Brandt (dragoner)

     in reply to

     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     @nyrath They didn't have a good mission, and likely benefits us that the Germans wasted time building them at all. Later all their ships caught the "sit in port and get hit by allied aircraft" disease.

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     Robert Brandt (dragoner) (robert_brandt@spacey.space)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:04 JST Robert Brandt (dragoner)

     in reply to

     • Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     @nyrath With the kaiserliche marine at the bottom of scapa flow they rebuilt from nothing, many of their designs don't exactly fit with our way of doing things, with having types such panzerschiffe (armored ship) like a cruiser; just imagine having to report the Deutschland had been sunk. These were treaty cruisers in accordance with rules impossed by versailles.

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     Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:05 JST Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     in reply to

     "The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them"

     But would not that always be the case? If a naval ship design based on a cruiser was modified to have more guns so it outgunned a cruiser, wouldn't the added mass automatically make the new design slower than a cruiser?

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     Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:06 JST Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     in reply to

     Interesting points were

     * The Graf Spee and her sisters were designed to outgun any cruiser fast enough to catch them
     * The Graf Spee sustains some damage and takes refuge in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay, for repairs. According to international law, the ship may remain in a neutral harbour only long enough to repair for seaworthiness, not to refit for battle; any overstay will lead to the ship and its crew being interned for the duration of the war.

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     Winchell Chung ⚛🚀 (nyrath@spacey.space)'s status on Sunday, 26-Jan-2025 19:02:07 JST Winchell Chung ⚛🚀

     I am watching a 1956 movie called The Battle of the River Plate (a.k.a. Pursuit of the Graf Spee in the United States).

     Because i am the Atomic Rockets guy, my first thought was this would make a great space opera movie. Just replace the naval cruisers and pocket battleship with star cruisers and space pocket battleships.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_River_Plate_%28film%29