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Artistic License Ships: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Battleship (film)|Battleship]]'' seems to think that it only takes a handful of men to prep and arm a decommissioned battleship in under an hour. It also thinks that a 50,000 ton warship can perform handbrake turns.
** Actually not so much. The USS John Paul Jones has a crew of about 280, and the Myoko has about 300. When the JPJ finally went down, we can assume that atleast half of the ships crew got off, and then there's the survivors from the Myoko. Knowing this, we can assume that the surviving crew we don't see numbered in the area of about 100 to 150, MAYBE 200. On top of this, the survivors were well aware of what would happen if they failed to knock out that communications array, so with that kind of pressure, getting a ship ready to sail can get done even faster. Remember, The USS Nevada managed to get under way DURING the attack on Pearl with most of her crew either fighting fires, or shooting at Japanese planes, leaving only a handful to get the engines going. One final point is that the retired Mighty Mo crew was assisting the JPJ/Myoko crew in getting the ship going.
*** However, the standard crew complement on an ''Iowa''-class BB is 1800 men -- and that's for one of the modern refitted ones, an unrefitted museum piece would still be using the original manning needs of about 3000. Even assuming a 100% survival rate for the crews of the destroyers, they didn't have enough men to staff so much as one duty section. In addition to the fact that it takes approximately six months, a
*** There's also that while many skills would carry over between the differing ship types (deck department, fire control, etc.), the engineering departments ''wouldn't''. Iowa-class BBs used diesel-fired steam boilers while modern destroyers use gas-turbine engines, which are completely different. The one nod to realism in the movie is them acknowledging that they'd have to go find outside experts who were familiar with the equipment and call them in to supervise the engineering refit.
*** Of course, the ''entire premise'' of that scene is absurd to begin with. Even if we handwave aside every single one of the logistical and maintenance concerns above, the scene as presented still contradicts itself. The USS ''Missouri'' is a museum ship docked at Pearl Harbor naval base. If you can reach Oahu from there (which they obviously could, because that's where the retired sailors they called in to supervise the engineering refit were living) then geographically the entirety of Pearl Harbor is under the dome with you and freely available. Which admittedly takes care of the 'crew' problem above (as the entire personnel complement of one of the US Navy's largest bases is potentially available)... but also means the idea of the protagonist remaining in command of the situation as acting senior officer present is ludicrous because he's a lieutenant, and there's enough people on that island who outrank him to damn near crew the entire battleship by themselves.
**** Not least among them being CINCPAC himself -- Pacific Command's headquarters is located on Oahu, which was also under the dome.<ref>For the unitiated CINCPAC refers to Commander-in-Chief US Pacific Command, the four-star admiral or general (traditionally an admiral) in operational command of all US military forces in the entire Pacific theater and only two steps down from the President himself in the chain of command, directly underneath the Secretary of Defense.</ref>
** One area the film-makers did screw up in however, is the portrayal of John Paul Jones herself. She is the third ship in the Arliegh Burke Class of Destroyers, which means she is a Flight 1. Flight 1s have a helipad, but lack a hanger. The USS Sampson (which was destroyed) is a Flight 2A. These models HAVE a hanger. However, someone in the film studio seemed to think that all Burkes have hangers, which would be excusable if the ship and hull number was fictional, but the USS John Paul Jones is one of the better known of the Destroyer fleet, and there are hundreds of photos to reference from.
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* There are a fair number of older ''[[Harpoon (game)|Harpoon]]'' scenarios that pit a Soviet carrier group against an American one. The actual Soviet use of the "''Kiev''" and "''Moskva''" classes were to defend areas for missile submarines, not engage in a suicidal tangle against a ''Nimitz'' group, unless the latter got close to the Soviet mainland. If the Soviets were going to take on a U.S. CBG (Carrier Battle Group), they'd use submarines and/or aircraft.
** ''Harpoon'' predates the current ubiquitousness of AEGIS ships in the USN, meaning there was a greatly increased risk of the heartstopping "[[Mnogo Nukes Other Naval Nukes|SS-N-12 SANDBOX]] detected. METHOD: Visual" happening. This did not stay true for long after the game's release though.
** Or as William S. Lind [http://archive.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind113.html expressed
{{quote|...contrary to the U.S. Navy's fervent belief, the aircraft carrier is no longer the capital ship. It ceded that role long ago to the submarine. [...]
About thirty years ago, my first boss [...] asked Admiral Hyman Rickover how long he thought the U.S. aircraft carriers would last in the war with the Soviet navy, which was largely a submarine navy. Rickover's answer, on the record in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was, "About two days." The Committee, needless to say, went on to [[When All You Have Is a Hammer|approve buying more carriers]]. }}
*** To be fair, the main purpose of the US Navy is sea ''control'', which requires surface combatant units. Submarines are only useful for sea ''denial''. The main purpose of the Soviet navy was sea denial, hence their primary striking power being attack submarines.<ref>Sea control = friendly ships can sail safely. Sea denial = nobody's units can sail safely.</ref>
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* Often, store bought ship models are simply a generic ship of the hull type with different numbers put on the decal strip.
** Though this is rarely true of capital ship models, since these are sufficiently high-profile that people will be interested in buying specific ones. It is, however, often the case that the kit will reflect an odd mish-mash of equipment fits from throughout the ship's service life rather than the ship at a particular set point in time. Which is why aftermarket parts exist.
* Any documentary about WWI and WWII combat suffers from the absolute dearth of interesting stock footage (photographs are in better supply). Reasonably savvy history buffs can generally tell you exactly what ship you are seeing (and often enough, when the footage was shot). General rule, if the battleship has triple turrets and is rolling over slowly that's ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWO-AUI8HDE Szent Istvan]'' an Austro-Hungarian ship from WWI (sunk by Italian torpedo boats). If the ship finishes turning over and then explodes, that's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HSY94QVIss HMS
* The museum ship HMS ''Belfast'', moored in the River Thames, has its 1950s weapons layout, but its D-Day paint scheme. This was deliberate, but still annoys some people.
* John Winton's novel ''Aircraft Carrier'' combines this trope with [[Just Plane Wrong]]: the fictitious HMS ''Furious'' (probably based on the real HMS ''Hermes'') defends itself against enemy missile attacks with 60s-vintage Seacat missiles (good in their day, but by no means an adequate anti-missile defense even in the 1980s) and 40mm Bofors guns (only an adequate anti-missile defense if Lady Luck is at the controls) while the Sea Harriers of its air group carry AMRAAM missiles. By the time AMRAAM was available to the Fleet Air Arm, 20mm Phalanx anti-missile guns and the much superior Seawolf point defense missile would have been available to a fictitious aircraft carrier.
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**** And even she's now been retired and a museum ship in California, though they are required to keep her in a state such that she can be reinstated if necessary
* Ironically, nearly every movie that uses models to portray real ships also fails to pay shipping charges, if only because it's [[Special Effects Failure|impossible to scale water]].
* One of the most aggravating conventions in some circles is to have a sailing ship referred to as a pirate ship, even if it is a coal-hauler no doubt. Attention, piracy is not a generic term for [[Wooden Ships and Iron Men]]. Piracy is armed robbery that happens to take place at sea.
*Another even more common one is to refer to a ship as a boat. Ships are ships. Boats are little watercraft that are small enough to be contained in ships. Of course there are ambiguities which are hard to get right. For instance submarines were always called boats because they were once thought of as another kind of torpedo boat, or something like that, and they remain "boats" even when some of them are now capable of blowing up the world. Nevertheless know the difference. Using the word boat for a ship will mark you at once as a member of the [[Acceptable Targets|never-sufficiently-despised]] breed known as ''landlubbers''.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]
▲[[Category:Artistic License Indexes]]
▲[[Category:Tropes At Sea]]
[[Category:Seaborne and Submersible Vehicles]]
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