I don't feel like doing anything when it's cold.
I Tomeko here, feeling like staying inside for 2month ish hibernating, Hi everyone.
Gee, when is summer coming??
Oh yeah, there are quite a lot of rumor about the Air Defense's main force candidate, F-35. Currently the main force is the F-4, which is getting old... enough for one to be worried of the future.
Regardless of the rant, today's topic will be a something from the ocean.
USS Wasp LHD-1 Amphibious Assault Ship
The exterior kinda looks like an ocean fortress. Looks kinda like an aircraft carrier too, but its roll is slightly different.
To begin with, allow me to explain the three types of ships, the Landing Ship, the Tank Landing Ship, and the Amphibious assault ship.
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What's a [Landing Ship]?
Most large ships will require an artificially equipped port when dealing moving people and luggage etc. out in the ocean, but the landing ship doesn't need this. Its loaded with a small boat to access land (these days they can also have hover crafts and transport helicopters too), allowing access to land for loading supplies and people, with minimal regard of the terrain. Some landing ships can actually land at a port itself... I think... may be... if I remember right.
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What's a [Tank Landing Ship]?
In the period of WWII, the alliance (mainly the british) side lost access to land when the Germans surrendered to the French. So they needed a way to smoothly get people and tanks onto land, and came up with the Tank Landing ship.
The tank landing ship itself has a flat ship base, allowing it to run onto shore if required. I think there was something like that in the film 'Saving Private Ryan'. (from the Normandie landing strategy. The part where a whole lot of soldiers were shot at immediately after landing left a deep impression...)
The main idea behind the ship is to get soldiers and tanks, supplies etc. to land and suppressing base. The amphibious assault ships are different in scale, but they would be placed as their descendants.
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What's a [Amphibious Assault Ship]?
At present, the most famous and world largest class amongst those classified as an amphibious assault ship is the Wasp class. A monster war ship with maximum displacement capacity of over 40000t, it has a transport helicopter for landing, and has a V/STOL (direct/short distance landing machine) as backup support, and a fully open deck to allow their use.
This is why it looks like an aircraft carrier.
Of course, its equipped with a well dock, it can be loaded with huge amounts of LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushion hover craft), variety of tanks and other arms due to its great storage capacity.
You might ask what a well dock is... think of it as a small port inside a huge ship... yeah, I think that's right... something like that...
Plus, it can also carry about 2000 people on top of all the tanks and stuff! 2000 men could be equivalent to a large army... as expected from America... it's not just the junk food that's large. And of course, it's also only America that can actually use such large-scale war ship at present.
Gosh, when it comes to this level, it's a 'Floating Fortress'of a sort...
Oh and for your information, the second ship in this class is the Essex, currently in Sasebo? I believe... something like that...
Oh! There are many things I don't remember too well, a military newbie shouldn't try so hard I guess...
Here is a trivial matter, but the class above a Wasp class called America class is currently under development, apparently, and it's said to have military power equivalent to that of an aircraft carrier.
I say they should spend money on the development of the F-35 instead of using it on stuff like tha...... *cough cough*
So that was me going on about the ocean fortress like Wasp.
Sorry for the lack of images, but we intend to upload pics as soon as we get more!
That will be it for today, see you in the next post.
By Tomeko, who wants to become a bear n hibernate.