I am reading some naval warfare history, and all these talks of cruisers, destroyers, battleships, confuse me, just what is the difference, is it size of the ship, or how many guns, I do know what an aircraft carrier is however?

lanfranco

Pjotr, the site below may be of some help to you. Battleships, before the surviving examples were all decommissioned owing to the primacy of aircraft carriers, were the largest, most heavily-armored, and heavily-armed of warships. Cruisers were an intermediate class, between the battleship and destroyer: fast and moderately-armed. Today's cruisers are different and are now a class of destroyer. The destroyer, however, was and is a small, fast, but heavily-armed boat -- the arms now being guided missiles. Some cruisers have been converted to guided-missile capacity. My husband The Maven just loves this stuff, so I can make a recommendation: if you're interesting in naval history, then you can't do better than take a look at the Jane's historical publications, both for ships and aircraft. "Jane's Fighting Ships," which keeps track of current vessels, is published annually. However, it's quite expensive and is best examined at a library. http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/U.S._Navy_ships Jul 18 05, 4:17 PM

barker111

What about Swift Boats? Jul 19 05, 1:36 AM