Panay's Ghost

I'm going to take U-29's answer to the depth-capabilities question as teasing Belfast. After all, Belfast asked the submarine equivalent of what's your three sizes, yet didn't mention any warning of repercussions ('I could tell you, but I'll have to kill you afterwards'). Therefore, I take the answer she received with a grain of salt.

The flibblety bilbblety Link

Probably the third option: if land masses- no matter how tiny- can get a Belle that simply, there'd be no stopping the race to ship-ify every dinky island in every ocean, sea and lake. ...And then there's the continents (spoiler: The Good Ship Europa would be a basket case)... From my understanding of Shinto, any thing suitably sublime enough may become a home for a kami. My suspicion is that if that thing can't be sunk, the kami residing in it isn't a ship's spirit.

Elementary, my dear Käpt'n. A rear admiral's flagship and Lt. General Omar Bradley's ride on D-Day alone, plus her extensive prewar history outshined any US battleship save Nevada...and we've already been bankrupted by met her. I believe the gear under Augusta's umbrella is one of her 5"/25 caliber Mk 10 AA guns. ...Just the thing to defend and retaliate against poop-laden seagulls. She'll be a part of my fleet. I am indebted to her Christmas kindness.

(proper introduction pending...)

All I ask from her is regular updates on Thetis.

*Sighs* Well, looks like it's time to rewrite the Rules of War... 😉

Yes, that's a terrible, horrible situation. I volunteer to personally track them down for you and learn the secret of their techniques. 😜

Such a misleading video. This is Ragyō's theme. ...Here we go.

Two separate gripes, TH. In her letter, she was referring to the writer of the seventh letter, who can only be Giulio Cesare. In the interview, she referred to Casare as and then went on to note that It is possible Cavour didn't mean anything causality-wise (that because Leo's head was "in the clouds" she therefore experienced a magazine explosion and was lost). However, given Cavour's attitude--especially with regard to her surviving sister-- I'm not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I seem to recall a certain letter delivered by Rawalpindi: I wasn't particularly impressed with her letter and I'm even less impressed with her in interview. The cultured don't speak ill of the sunk, much less a scrapped sister (to keep karma from coming back to bite you if nothing else). But that's fine. I'll give her your regards at the launching ceremony and look out for her in '40. 😉

The Guépard-class destroyer we've met specifically stated that her namesake is the Battle of Verdun (that I'm thinking of): an event. If she were named for Verdun itself, I would suspect (as I suspect with all location-named Belles) that unless and until the place is blown off the face of the Earth it has no last day and would then be counted among ships named after generic wildlife, weather conditions, adjectives and/or just given numbers (who don't worry about such things). As far as historically busy or not, the common tradition is that a person gets a ship named after them posthumously. Not all die as spectacularly as say, Hans Lüdemann or Sergey Kirov, but the common denominator here is that they have a date of expiration.

It's well known by now that a Belle is effected by her Death Day. What about the Death Day of a Belle's namesake? Or, if the ship is named after an event, the date of that? If the event happens to be over a span of days (such as the Battle of Verdun) would the first or last day of said event be of significant importance to her? In Update #98, it was evident that a certain Belle is skittish where the Ides of March is concerned. Is that a real danger, or simply a touch of paranoia?

But isn't the battleship HMS Lion under construction at Newcastle upon Tyne when the war begins? Even assuming that anything of the battlecruiser HMS Lion was left to reassemble (she was sold for scrap in 1924!), why would one settle for resuscitating that hull, when she could be provided a bigger, brand-spanking new ship? Unless that is what you mean by rebuilding warships that were scrapped. If so, then the only thing standing in the way of Vickers Amstrongs turning out a new receptacle for her would be labour and materials. The very same things that stood in the way historically. If things had turned out differently and there had been consistent available resources to finish her? Who's to say? I do think that the Captains of Belles have a war to fight though and while it may be Neutral, the INPF isn't a country. Shipbuilding from scratch should probably remain in the hands of the various countries, if for no other reason than even with a freshly commissioned ship and crew (and a handful of souvenirs from her battlecruiser days) , there is no certainty the Belle of HMS Lion would awaken. (And the Royal Navy is gonna need every ship it can beg, borrow or build).