Shipbucket Ranting thread

[Zephyr]

It would certainly be interesting. Though I think it's going to be hard in your case since the post-war* ships we've seen so far have all been designed with USN designations in mind.

*I don't know if there was a WWII equivalent in your universe, but you know what I mean.

Kinda-sorta. It would take too long to explain it here, but I will be going into that in my AU thread as part of my "History of the Grays Harbor Royal Navy" I've been writing and tweaking and re-writing and adjusting for the past several years. Short version, it lasted from April 1940 to August 1944 and was more of a colonial and trade war than an ideological war of total destruction, and was preceeded by the 1936 "6-weeks war", and the Daemontiatian War of 1913-17.

[Thiel]

Have you looked at the USN designations list recently? Especially the one from before WWII where each class got its own?
Seriously, there's an entire wiki page about it.
Turns out there's more than 60 different designations for service craft alone.

[Demon Lord Razgriz]

USN Designations at least has a core designation: CV, BB, C, D, etc. Russians do not, it's gibberish. Only one that seems to be a core designation is PLA(Atomnaya Podvodnaya Lodka(Nuclear-powered Submarine)).

[Thiel]

I don't know, without going too far into the system here's some of the basic categories.
These describes missions, not size.
PL: Submarine
AK: Aircraft Carrier
RK: Missile Ship
PK: ASW ship
SK: Patrol ship

It really isn't that hard to understand once you break it down.

[Demon Lord Razgriz]

Then Golly needs to add the translations to the site, cause it's still gibberish to anyone not Russian or clinically insane.

[Gollevainen]

USN system is standard in In US and NATO countries, but its not worldwide standard, not used in Russia, not in China and not in many other individual languages.

Im gonna make a comprehensive list of each abbrevation, where it comes from, how its translated and what the designation means

[Hood]

I see nothing wrong with that Global Security list, most of those Russian designations have a NATO equal. The entire NATO list and USN designation lists go far beyond pure BB, CCG, CVA etc etc.
Often Western classifications don't match what the Soviet ship actually is, personally I think the Sov/Russian system is more logical while the NATO system is a bit basic and lazy. DDG-FFG-FFL all have blurred boundaries IMO. Yes we are used to them but to give the wrong label to a ship is no more useful.

[TimothyC]

USN system is standard in In US and NATO countries, but its not worldwide standard, not used in Russia, not in China and not in many other individual languages.

Im gonna make a comprehensive list of each abbrevation, where it comes from, how its translated and what the designation means

The USN system is not the NATO system.

The USN system is used by the USN, the JMSDF, the RAN, the RoCN, and I think the RoKN. The NATO/Commonwealth system is totally different and maintains unique pennant numbers for every ship in all of the navies that use it.

[Gollevainen]

Yeah I stand corrected Timothy.

[Novice]

Even the NATO system during the cold war was dependent on the country using it. The RN using its own designation system while the Marine Nationale had its own (when France was part of NATO). Also what the RN called frigate the USN called an ocean escort, while a frigate for the USN was larger than a RN destroyer. In 1975 the USN Frigates were re-termed as cruisers, which was most probably a political move more than actual re-think of the ships' role.
Soviet designations were usually descriptive of size and role - Malnyy Raketny Kutter means just that "small missile boat" the designation of what in the west were known as Komar and Osa missile boats.