Historical Ship Types
While working on one of my space wargames, I became interested in historical ships, especially their classification and relative characteristics. (Were most classes small while only a few were large? Or was there some other distribution?) Trauling the Web I assembled some data.
18th century American ship types
| Type | guns |
|---|---|
| Schooner | 8 |
| Sloop | 10 |
| Cutter | 14 |
| Ship | 20 |
| Frigate | 32 |
| Ship of the Line | 74 |
WWII Types
| Type | wgt. (kt) | guns | caliber (in) | armor (in) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrol Boat | 0.2 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Sloop | 0.9 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Corvette | 1 | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| Frigate | 1.5 | 2 | 4 | 0 |
| Escort Destroyer | 1.5 | 2 | 5 | 0 |
| Destroyer | 2 | 6 | 5 | 0 |
| Light cruiser | 6 | 10 | 6 | 2 |
| Cruiser | 9 | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| Heavy cruiser | 12 | 10 | 8 | 8 |
| Battlecruiser | 20 | 6 | 11 | 8 |
| Carrier | 25 | 75* | ||
| Battleship | 50 | 10 | 11 | 14? |
Guns and caliber are from the largest artillery on the ship. Armor thickness is from belt plating (not the deck, reinforced magazines, etc.).
* Number of planes.
Useful sites
- Naval Encyclopedia of World War 2
- Nathan Okun is well known for having developed an equation modeling gun-armor interactions, which he presents here.
- Absolute astronomy surprisingly has a lot of good entries on ship classes and other matters.