The Rex didn't have a glorious ending, either.
Rule Brittania - UK building new supercarriers
- Thread starter Bigerik
- Start date
The Rex didn't have a glorious ending, either.
That lattice work on the stacks of those Italian ships reminds me of the cage masts of old American battleships.
Nor the Andrea Doria.
Lets not forget the strange fate of the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare. Ten years after the end of the war, she mysteriously blew up while docked in the port of Sevastopol. There has long been talk that she was destroyed by Italian special forces, either by explosives planted in her before she was handed over to the Soviets, or by Italian divers seeking revenge for their ship ending up in Soviet hands. Damage control was very poorly handled by an incompetent captain (who I bet paid with his life), and the ship capsized and sank with heavy loss of life.
Italian ships...much like Italian cars. Beautiful, if not exactly practical. On that note, I once heard an interesting quip comparing Italian cars to their German and Scandinavian counterparts: for the most part, if you break down in Italy, you can sleep in your car on the side of the road and take care of it in the morning, no worries. In Germany or Scandinavia, you might well freeze to death before you can find a tow truck.
Did any of the big "national" liners ever make money? It seems like they all operated with heavy government subsidies.
The Queens were immensely profitable. Absolute money making machines for Cunard.
Discussion in an old mariner's forum I frequent is that Cunard never allowed Queen Elizabeth to operate faster than Mary's best time. Myself, I've wondered if she even could have done it, if permitted. Not a lot of difference in their speeds really but I've wondered if she didn't actually have that little bit left in her to go one better than her older sister.
Edit to say: Checked to see what a man who captained both had to say: QE never bettered QM's speed, for two reasons, one mechanical, the other economic.
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But the mechanical had nothing to do with the ability to go fast. The QE was designed to be faster than the QM, and she was. Her machinery was more powerful, and her hull design was improved. There was just no reason for Cunard to spend the huge dollars in fuel to beat a record they already had. On top of which, there was no speed challenger anyway. The QE was designed to beat the Normandie, but the Normandie was gone.
As far as actual speed, it has been confirmed that the QE was faster. During the war, she actually hit a top speed of 36.25 knots.
I'd like to see a cite for this. This very question has come up many times over the years among mariner types in various forums. I myself often posed the question of why QE never exceeded QM, since I thought she ought be more than capable. The answer has always been, even from various captains and officers of both, that she never did (at any point). I'd just like to read the cite for my own satisfaction, as I'd always thought it *should* be possible.
Most of my liner books are in boxes right now. I'll dig it up and get your the source. It was a decent book.
The love of the Queen Mary overwhelms the poor Elizabeth. There is absolutely no reason to believe she (the QM) would be faster then the QE. Everything points to the opposite. But the QM fans just won't let it go.
All of Cunards arrogant BS aside, they loved the fact that they had the worlds fastest liner. Having that made HUGE amounts of money for them. Considering how close the battle was between the QM and Normandie, it would have been really bad planning on their part to not make the QE faster. Plus, they new they would get a few decades out of the QE, so they might have to see off a new rival. The French (by way of Russia) had already showed them what a new hull form could do. It took vastly more power for the QM to beat the Normandie. At the time the QE was being designed, there was every expectation that the French would build a sister to the Normandie. And there was no reason to expect that it would be slower.
That's always been my own thinking, point by point, and why I've asked that particular question about QE's speed capabilities anytime an experienced ear has been available.
My liner books get my prime shelving.
(Along with the lots of models. I've been collecting nicer large wooden ones of the major classics this past year.)That point about the "vastly more power" it took for QM to equal/beat Normandie is another sticky point in discussions usually, with QM afficianados insisting Normandie was not more efficient, while all my sources indicate otherwise.
I'd just like to have the cite for future discussions elsewhere and for my own benefit as I've never doubted QE *could* better QM's speed, but have yet never found any cite that she had, nor any officer that would agree.
Friends and family know not to get me started.