I believe that during parts of the Guadalcanal campaign the aircraft carriers were withdrawn from the area to keep them "safe", well safer. They certainly saw action but toe to toe fleet engagements were being avoided. We were a little short on fleet carriers in 1942.
Did you miss the part about aircraft being ineffective at night? The strategic problem of the campaign, for both sides, was that the United States could dominate the skies during the day but had to rely on surface ships at night. If it wasn't for the surface fleet, including battleships, the marines ashore would have been in a bad way to put it mildly.
In one of those nighttime surface engagements a US destroyer put 3 torpedoes into a Japanese battleship, greatly reducing her speed.
That was the Hiei and she was taken under fire by multiple US destroyers. The exact hits are disputed (American torpedoes weren't terribly reliable at this point in the war) but they did damage her enough for aircraft to get her in the daylight. Had the surface fleet not be there the Japanese would have destroyed Henderson Field with a shore bombardment, thus rendering American air superiority a moot point.
Guadalcanal was a true combined arms campaign, and the people who dismiss the contribution of the surface fleet are woefully ignorant. Aircraft can not single-handily dominate the battle space, not in 1942, and not in 2015.
I really doubt at that time at night radar helped a lot, sure, it helped to aim at the target, but it did not help you in telling you where exactly the shell went.
Read Neptune's Inferno, specifically the chapter about USS Washington's engagement with Kirishima. They could detect the shell splashes on their radar screens and adjust the accordingly. Washington obtained a straddle with her first salvo, perhaps even a hit (underwater hits were recorded as misses in night engagements), and ultimately obtained 20 main battery hits out of 114 shells fired, some of which were aimed at different targets.
That's a ~20% hit rate, using radar directed gunnery, with the technology available at the beginning (1942) of the war. They only got more accurate as the war progressed and technology and tactics continued to improve.
"Firing solutions" on battleships are a "science fiction term"
You don't know what you're talking about. I've made the study of the Pacific Campaign the work of my adult life; I suggest you do some reading on the subject. Start with the book I linked above, it's a hell of a read, pay attention to the parts about Admiral Lee and USS Washington.
Because these days they are most certainly not. this is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-N-22
With all due respect you have no idea what you're talking about. The P-270 has a quoted range of 75 miles. That's probably understated, it's not exactly in Russia and China's interest to publish exact figures, but even if you triple that range what good does it do you? You've got three platforms that can deliver it:
Aircraft, which are faced with the prospect of surviving the carrier's fighters long enough to get within launch range.
Surface ships, which are faced with the prospect of surviving the carrier's strike aircraft long enough to get within launch range.
Submarines, which face their own problem (a comparatively limited sensor range, can't easily coordinate with other platforms without sacaficing stealth) when trying to employ long range weapons against moving targets.
You've also glossed over the biggest problem of naval warfare from time immaterial: locating your enemy before he finds you. Are you willing to risk your life on locating a carrier task force before being discovered? You think it's an easy matter to keep your ships and aircraft alive long enough to close to within missile launch range, even if you manage to find the carrier?
And thats if they dont just ICBM your carrier group, for which there is no defense.
Great idea, kill tens of thousands of American service members with a nuclear weapon, what could possibly go wrong? Of course, even this idea isn't as sure of a thing as you think it is, since you still have to find the bloody carrier before you can nuke it; any nuclear weapon capable of being aimed at ships is able to be shot down by her escorts. You'd need to go for a saturation attack, so now you're launching dozens of nuclear weapons, against a nation-state that has thousands of them. Excellent idea!
You know, when I rewatched Darmok, I realized that it was a really stupid premise for an episode and that ruined it for me completely.
What's wrong with the premise? If you're asking yourself "How can you build a civilization that communicates in metaphor?" you're asking the wrong question. The premise may be silly (though who can say exactly how an alien mind will work?) but at its core that episode is about two people from different cultures trying to come to an understanding across a language barrier.
It's also an argument for the diplomatic approach, Picard sits on the surface patiently trying to find common ground in a tense situation. Riker eventually goes for the phasers, the Enterprise gets her ass kicked, and is only saved from destruction through Picard's efforts.
And while we're bitching, the effects were really awful, too.
I would disagree with this but even if I agreed with you I wouldn't care. Which are the better movies: Nemesis or Khan? Empire or Sith? On one side you've got tons of CGI battle porn, on the other side you've got the cutting edge of 1980s special effects.
long before it was obvious battleships were obsolete.
They weren't obsolete; they were still a force to take seriously even at the end of the war, capable of a wide variety of missions. They went the way of the dodo because they weren't as cost effective as the other platforms that could perform their missions.
So they decided to build ships that could destroy multiple enemy battleships.
Which they would have failed at completely, given their pathetic fire control technology. I would take my chances in any modern American battleship against those monsters, doesn't even need to be an Iowa, the North Carolina or South Dakota would have beaten them just as readily. Heck, one could almost make a case for the Pearl Harbor survivors after they were modernized with the same fire control systems as their big brothers. If the American battleline had ever met the Japanese battleline (all it takes is Halsey leaving Lee in place when he chases after the carriers at Leyte Gulf) it would have been a curb stomping of the IJN.
Japan was doomed by the decision to go to war against the United States. They thought it would go the same way as their last war against a continental power, overlooking the fact that the United States of 1941 was nowhere near as hapless as 1904 Tsarist Russia. We had them beat in every meaningful measure, technological, economic, population, resources, and most importantly we had the political will to fight the war to the bitter end. They compounded these disparities with a series of incredibly stupid tactical decisions, fretting away their strength with needlessly complicated plans (Midway was a classic Rube Goldberg plan), failing to seize opportunities to inflict lasting defeats on their foes (Savo Island), leaving their most experienced people in combat until attrition claimed them, and so on.
They only lasted as long as they did because of the Germany-first policy. We essentially beat them with the scraps of our war effort. To this day I can't fathom what their policymakers were smoking when they decided going to war with the United States was the best course of action. Had they sought an accommodation with FDR it's probable that Imperial Japan would still exist today; in fact the documents of the day (Plan Dog Memo) say that destroying them is not in the national interest of the United States, since they were a useful counterweight to the USSR in the Far East. Alas, they forced the issue, and in so doing shared the fate of Nazi Germany.
As soon as you fire anything you give your position away and the hunter becomes the hunted. Even surface ships can have a rocket delivered ASW torpedo your position less than a minute after firing (VL ASROC or similar, many exist).
Have you ever played one of the many naval warfare simulators that let you take a stab at target motion analysis? Hint: It's a royal pain in the ass, it takes forever to develop a usable fire control solution, even with computer assistance. You can't pinpoint a submarine based solely on the noise of a launch transient, even assuming you hear it, which you probably won't.
A modern naval task force is a tough nut to crack but the submarine is the best nutcracker there is. They're also historically the greatest threat there is to aircraft carriers. The United States lost four fleet carriers in WW2; two of them were claimed by submarines. One (USS Wasp) was claimed outright by a submarine, the other (USS Yorktown) received the coup de grâce from a sub.
At the outset of the war IJN doctrine was to use torpedoes against capital ships.
A flawed doctrine at that. They certainly had impressive torpedoes and we paid a price for underestimating them at Guadalcanal but their disappointing performance off Samar suggests they wouldn't have been a decisive factor had the Japanese actually gotten the decisive battle they sought.
Not that it mattered, really, since by the start of the war battleships were really only useful for providing shore bombardment and as AA platforms.
This is dead wrong. Read the history of the Guadalcanal campaign; it was surface ships that carried the day. Aircraft were ineffective at night and are best used in an offensive role, they can't effectively protect ships bringing in troops and supplies. Battleships were used there, by both sides, and the actions of USS Washington saved the day for the USN at the most critical juncture. Their biggest drawback was their logistical footprint, the main reason the US didn't deploy the Pearl Harbor survivors was a lack of tankers to keep them fueled. Fuel concerns influenced the IJN to an even greater degree and kept Yamoto in port during that campaign.
The battleship passed from the scene because it wasn't cost effective, there are cheaper platforms that can perform the same missions. They were never as useless or as vulnerable as people would have you believe. The USN didn't lose a single one after Pearl Harbor. Prince of Wales was the only Allied battleship lost at sea to aircraft, a combination of command stupidity, poor damage control, and plain rotten luck. I would have sailed that same mission with an American task force equipped with radar directed AA systems without thinking it was suicide; the Japanese tended to fare poorly when taking on our ships with aircraft, earning pyrrhic victories at best.
Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%.
That may have been true in WW1, or even for WW2 battleships with outdated fire control systems, but it was most definitely not the case with the radar driven computerized fire control systems used by the USN and Royal Navy. USS Washington landed 20 main battery hits on Kirishima, out of 117 16" shells fired, not all of which were aimed at Kirishima. That was in 1942; the technology only got better as the war advanced. Duke of York achieved similar hit rates against Scharnhorst, in rough seas, during the arctic night and a blinding snowstorm.
In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km.
Which is largely irrelevant in a ship-to-ship action, because those weren't fought at such ranges even in war-games, never mind reality. That said, there's a story somewhere about Iowa obtaining a first salvo straddle on a maneuvering Japanese destroyer at >30 kilometers off Truk. This is another testament to American fire control; the Japanese couldn't manage to do the same off Samar at considerably closer ranges. Flip that battle around, placing a USN fleet of cruisers and battleships against Japanese destroyers in the daylight and it would likely have been a massacre.
I don't dispute the point that battleships are irrelevant now but you should correct some of your facts about them, lest you repeat misinformation.:)
By the time you detect that harpoon missile you might get the first one but the second one will get you.
Kind of depends on what you're shooting it at, doesn't it? I think you'd need a gaggle of them to take down any modern anti-air-warfare surface combatant, more than can be launched by a submarine. Picture trying to take down an Aegis equipped ship or Type 45 with harpoons, not terribly likely to happen if they're on a war footing. I'm not sure how effective the AAW systems of our likely enemies are, but I wouldn't be willing to risk my life on them being considerably inferior to ours, particularly if we're talking about systems designed by the Russians. Of course, there's always the Mark 48 for such targets, which is the better bet anyway since it's not going to give away the sub's position.
As an aside, thank you for your service. I always wanted to be a bubblehead, alas, epilepsy reared its ugly head in my childhood. Now I live vicariously through museum ships and posts like yours. One day I'd like to have the opportunity to board a commissioned boat but that doesn't likely to ever happen. More's the pity.:(
I'll just point out the Tomahawk submarine launched missiles do have a tactical nuclear package option.
Taken out of service some time ago. Of course there's nothing stopping it from coming back, either on the Tomahawk or its planned successor.:)
You can also mount nuclear warheads to torpedoes though to the best of my knowledge the USN hasn't done that in decades. Nothing stopping them from doing it again should the need arise though.
If Halsey had been less of an idiot and left Admiral Lee behind with Task Force 34 during Leyte Gulf you would have seen modern battleships clashing with each other off Samar, an engagement that almost certainly would have been an ass raping of the Imperial Japanese Navy, barring alien intervention or extremely bad luck on the part of the USN.
As it was it only happened only three times in the entire war under what might be considered an equal footing, once in the Pacific (Washington vs. Kirishima off Guadalcanal) and twice in the Atlantic (Bismarck vs. Hood and Scharnhorst vs. Duke of York). There were other battles where battleships were involved (Surigao Strait and Bismarck's final battle) but they can't even charitably be described as fair engagements. Surigao involved a depleted Japanese force against an entire American battleline that outclassed them in every department while Bismarck was crippled before her last fight, unable to steam at speed or maneuver.
The battleship wasn't as useless as people would have you believe, nor was it Pearl Harbor that sealed its doom. The oft-repeated mantra is that the United States Navy was invested in the battleship and Pearl Harbor was a rude awakening; this doesn't survive even a casual examination of the historical record. The Two-Ocean Navy Act passed Congress in 1940, nearly 18 months before Pearl Harbor and it very deliberately recognized the supremacy of the aircraft carrier, both in number of ships ordered and the statements of the legislators who wrote it. The Japanese were more invested in the battleship than the USN, wasting their limited resources on two mega battleships that ultimately accomplished nothing, while deluding themselves into thinking that a single decisive battle like Tsushima would be enough to convince the United States to throw in the towel, a country that had seventeen times Japan's GDP and twice her population!
Incidentally, the turning point of the war didn't happen at Midway, as is often repeated, but rather it happened at Guadalcanal. Midway was a battle, Guadalcanal was a campaign, one which proved the Japanese were not equipped materially or psychologically to fight a long war. Guess which ship saved the day for the USN during the last decisive engagement? A battleship, USS Washington.:)
At least the USN got a return on investment for our expensive toys. I can't think of a single Japanese battleship that accomplished anything of note during the entire war. The few that they were willing to commit early in the war were destroyed off Guadalcanal with little to show for it; the rest they hoarded for a decisive battle that never came, ultimately being forced to commit them at Leyte Gulf, where they were so hopelessly outmatched that even Halsey's stupidity didn't give them enough breathing room to carry the day.
i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.
Incredibly accurate, even with the cutting edge of 1940s technology. This was always the advantage that the United States Navy had which the Japanese couldn't even dream of duplicating. Read about the USS Washington savaging of Kirishima off Guadalcanal, in the dark, with 5" and 16" fire directed solely by radar. The USN credits Washington with eight or nine 16" inch hits but modern research suggests she scored over 20 main battery hits and as many or more hits with the secondary 5" battery. If the USN had had more officers in the early days who understood the proper usage of radar (Admiral Lee is one of the most underrated WW2 leaders, in my humble opinion, a man who was way ahead of his time) Iron Bottom Sound would be littered with Japanese wrecks instead of American ships.
For another example, read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, the story of Taffy 3 off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Our destroyers and destroyer escorts could land first salvo hits at maximum range, while maneuvering at flank speed, simply by pointing their computerized fire control directors at the Japanese ships. Even at this late stage in the war the Japanese could not duplicate radar directed fire control, they relied on optical rangefinders for their fire control, the consequence of which is they could not actually land hits on maneuvering targets until they were nearly at point blank range. Nor could they really maneuver themselves without losing their fire control solutions and starting from scratch.
Want an personal anecdote to add to all of the above? One of my best friends was aboard the USS Antietam, where he served in the 5"/38 battery. During target practice he tells me that they didn't actually aim at the target sleeves being towed by airplanes, rather they would aim at the cable connecting the sleeve to the airplane and more often than not they could hit it. There's a reason why the Japanese paid a very heavy price whenever they tried to attack our ships with aircraft, look at what happened to them during the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands.
This is the single biggest reason why people who select Yamoto in the "Iowa vs. Yamoto" debate are deluding themselves. Iowa, or even the so-called treaty battleships (North Carolina and South Dakota classes) would have raped Yamoto, as evidenced by her poor fire control off Samar. Having the biggest guns in the world means nothing if you can't land hits with them. Hell, I would almost take the old battleships that survived Pearl Harbor up against Yamato; they all had modernized radar driven fire control suites after their rebuilds.
It's not like we have debtors prison: you're clear of bankruptcy after a few years, and maybe learn a thing or two about living within your means in the widow when you can't borrow money.
I've never understood the opposition to bankruptcy, as seen in our political debates on topics ranging from health care to the mortgage crisis. Perhaps I'm somewhat jaded because I've gone through Chapter 7 twice (once for medical bills, the second time for divorce); there was literally nothing to the experience, 20 minutes in an assembly line legal hearing, a few months of waiting, and presto! New start. Chapter 13 is a bit more drawn out, 3 to 5 years depending on your repayment plan, but even that isn't a terribly burdensome ordeal if your lawyer has half a brain.
Corporations engage in stratgeic bankruptciesall the time but it's somehow the end of the world if a consumer has to file Chapter 7 or 13? I've grown cynical enough watching our rigged financial system that I'm tempted to engage in a repeating cycle of strategic chapter 7 bankruptcies until the day I die. Why the hell not? You can park limitless amounts of money in retirement accounts that can't be touched, buy tangible goods on credit that can't be or aren't worth being repossessed, and milk those fucking "too big to fail" banks for every last penny you can get out of them. All you need is a little bit of estate planning, knowledge of the credit system and bankruptcy code, and the willingness to see your name in the paper every eight years.
I doubt I'll actually do this but boy there are days when it's incredibly tempting. Spend a few years rebuilding your credit, get insanely huge credit lines, live off them for a few years while parking as much real money into exempt retirement accounts as you can, bankruptcy, rinse and repeat. I had nearly ten times as much money as I owed to my creditors in my 403(b) and IRAs during my last bankruptcy and that fact was completely irrelevant. All that mattered was I couldn't pay them with my income. At least our financial system does something right for the little guy.
The money for quantitative easing was created, not taxpayer-funded.
How'd that work out for the Wiemar Republic?
Do note that I'm a knee-jerk anti-Fed zealot, I think most of those people are hopelessly naive at best. It just remains to be seen whether or not QE is a long term success or simply masked fundamental structural problems that will re-emerge at a later date. It's worth noting that our cheap money policy has virtually destroyed every form of investing other than stocks; I can't find any "safe" investments that can keep pace with inflation right now, can you? Wall Street sure is profiting from QE, I'm not so certain about Main Street. This is a very disturbing trend that few people are talking about, one that we're not likely to reverse so long as there's no incentive (near 0% interest rates) to save money and every policymakers response to a recession is "consume, consume, consume!"
Mark your calendar and we'll come back to this discussion in 10 or 15 years to find out what happened.
Seasons 1 and 2 had a lot of hokey moments but they also have hidden gems. Seasons 3 and 4 contain the crown jewels of TNG, after that it was kind of a gradual decline as the writers ran out of ideas, albeit with some really amazing episodes (Chain of Command was Season 6 and is among the best of TNG) along the way. Even most of the mediocre episodes aren't unwatchable, of course there are exceptions to the rule (Sub Rosa, Genesis, and Masks come to mind).
And speaking of flat, ST:TNG doesn't hold up. I remember back in 1987 when it first came on and how excited I was to have a new Star Trek. Watching on Netflix now, I can't help thinking what a piece of shit it was
WTF are you talking about? ST:TNG is the only Sci-Fi show from my childhood that stands the test of time. There were some hokey episodes to be sure but the underlying theme of humanity exploring the cosmos, under a semi-abundance economy where we've moved past the need for greed and work instead towards self-improvement and discovery? How can you not like that?
Some of those episodes were better than others but I dare say that they're as good as anything that's on television today and were light-years ahead of their peers in the 1980s and 1990s. TNG was at its best when approached as a character and issues driven drama; in that respect I think it set a standard that is never going to be equaled in television Sci-Fi. It had more than its share of gimmicks (engineering failures used as plot devices, apparently the concepts of fail safe and even the lowly circuit breaker don't exist in the 24th Century) but on balance it stands the test of time.
It was also uplifting escapism entertainment that could still do serious drama, something I think we've lost with the current emphasis on dark violent dramas. Even the genuinely scary episodes of TNG (The Best of Both Worlds can still send shivers down my spine) never left you feeling depressed and melancholy. The only other show from the 1980s that I can still re-watch is Magnum PI, for a lot of the same reasons when I thi
Second best way is to impersonate the person that owns one. Sounds like what these guys did. However, according to TFA they were very patient and methodical, leading up to the assertion that they were 'cybercriminals' rather than state actors. Of course, the last time this weird dichotomy came up, the attackers were state actors because they were so patient and thus weren't plain ol criminals.
I'm not usually given to CTs but I am just cynical enough about the banking industry to wonder if some of this isn't an inside job. Certainly not all the way to the top, those asshats have golden parachutes and legally steal^Wearn their inflated salaries, but at the mid-level? It's not that much of a leap to wonder.
Data connections should be a public utility. period.
That is a political non-starter in the United States. You may wish that wasn't the case but for better or worse it is, so there's no point in crying about it.
One can make a compelling case that Government has in fact make the situation worse, through franchising agreements and other artificial barriers to entry that keep upstarts out of the market. That's the Republican argument and it has some merit, though I think it kind of glosses over the bigger picture that broadband is no longer a growth market. Growth markets can maintain multiple providers of service; stable markets tend to gravitate towards mergers to take advantage of the real and imagined benefits of synergy.
Incidentally, more than anything I think the mature market consideration is the reason why Verizon and AT&T have halted upgrades of their wireline plant and equipment to focus on wireless, which remains a growth market. In wireline they're forced to compete against established cable companies that have the advantage of cheaper technology (HFC vs. ripping out an ancient twisted pair copper plant and rebuilding it with fiber from the ground up), the ability to cannibalize voice customers without meeting the same reliability metrics POTS has to live up to, a less restrictive regulatory framework, and no hassles offering video (Verizon had to kiss a lot of asses to get video franchises for FIOS in many markets)
At the end of the day we have to make a public policy decision regarding whether or not broadband internet is a natural monopoly. If it is then we should decide if we want to bring Ma Bell back or not. Is a regulated monopoly better for the internet than what we currently have? I can't answer that question. I do know that Ma Bell largely lived up to her obligation to maintain the network and believe that if she was still around she'd have brought the network into the 21st Century. Verizon and AT&T seem content to milk it for all it's worth before abandoning it. Conversely, there were plenty of people around who hated Ma Bell, for various reasons, so is that really a door we wish to reopen?
the US is about the only country in the world where the recipient pays for incoming calls when not roaming. I leave it as an exercise to the read to think why this is plain ridiculous.
Why is this "ridiculous?" The alternative is caller-pays, which is indeed how it works in the EU; it's one price to call a landline and another higher price to call a cell phone. That's kind of absurd in my eyes, why should someone have to pay extra to call me?
the prices are plain crazy. In Europe you pay max 30-50 Euros per month for unlimited plan, with 1GB or data.
It was actually less than that in Finland but this point I'll largely concede. Of course if I'm nitpicking I'll point out that virtually all American plans including texting and all of my Finnish friends have to pay extra for that. Consequently they all use WhatsApp or FB Messenger, which took some getting used to for me when I was there, but at the end of the day works the same.
in the US, if you exceed your limit
Depends on your plan. I have unlimited.
the US has many many dead areas. I know, it is a big country. But the fact remains.
"Many many" dead areas? Depends on your carrier. I'm on Verizon. There aren't too many dead zones for me; I have to go hiking into the wilderness to find one.
incredibly intrusive branding, crapware, etc
Depends on your phone.
carriers are involved in certifying which phones are supported in their networks
they use non-compatible networks.
You're behind the times, this is a moot point with LTE, they all support SIM cards now.
Their customer service is such crap that I don't know where to start.
That's in the eye of the beholder and subjective. Verizon and T-Mobile have stellar customer service in my eyes. I can't speak to AT&T or Sprint since I've never done business with them.
True. Although I haven't found any pre-paid services in Finland that offer LTE. Not sure if that's the situation in most of Europe or just my favorite country; for me at least it makes the lack of EU LTE Bands in my device kind of a moot point.:)
Besides, WCDMA goes up to 21mbit/s in ideal circumstances. Plenty fast enough for a phone. Last time I was in Turku I got faster speeds on WCDMA than my typical LTE speeds back home. Can you hear me now Verizon? You need more LTE capacity in my hometown.:D
You base American phone won't work on most overseas networks due to frequency lock downs.
That's not really the case these days. Even in yesteryear it was only the case some of the time; every dumb flip phone I owned whilst on T-Mobile was a quad-band global phone. 850/900/1800/1900 GSM.
Today it's SOP for American smartphones to include support for 900/1800 GSM and WCDMA, which makes them operable in most countries. Even the IS-95/IS-2000 (aka: CDMA) carriers have gotten on this bandwagon. My Moto X supports CDMA 850/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100, and LTE Bands 4 and 13. The latter is only useful in the US and Canada, so no LTE roaming if I go overseas, but I've got full access to the local GSM and WCDMA networks.
LTE roaming would be nice though probably moot at this juncture since there aren't too many international LTE roaming agreements just yet. I anticipate having that ability with my next phone though.:)
It's a world phone with both cdma and a sim card for gsm--would be a great travel phone if I could unlock it.
That's any Verizon 4G LTE smartphone. If you're looking for something like that I'd personally recommend the Moto X Developer Edition (discontinued but available on eBay) or the Nexus 6. Those are totally unlocked, both SIM unlocked (use them with any network) and bootloader unlocked (use whatever software you want) If those are too expensive you could use almost any Verizon 4G smartphone, although you'll forgo the unlocked bootloader in many instances.
I plan on investing in a local SIM to use with my xt1060 the next time I go to Finland. €16/mo for unlimited data vs. $25 per 100MB whilst roaming with the Verizon SIM. Hard to argue with that disparity.:D
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that during parts of the Guadalcanal campaign the aircraft carriers were withdrawn from the area to keep them "safe", well safer. They certainly saw action but toe to toe fleet engagements were being avoided. We were a little short on fleet carriers in 1942.
Did you miss the part about aircraft being ineffective at night? The strategic problem of the campaign, for both sides, was that the United States could dominate the skies during the day but had to rely on surface ships at night. If it wasn't for the surface fleet, including battleships, the marines ashore would have been in a bad way to put it mildly.
In one of those nighttime surface engagements a US destroyer put 3 torpedoes into a Japanese battleship, greatly reducing her speed.
That was the Hiei and she was taken under fire by multiple US destroyers. The exact hits are disputed (American torpedoes weren't terribly reliable at this point in the war) but they did damage her enough for aircraft to get her in the daylight. Had the surface fleet not be there the Japanese would have destroyed Henderson Field with a shore bombardment, thus rendering American air superiority a moot point.
Guadalcanal was a true combined arms campaign, and the people who dismiss the contribution of the surface fleet are woefully ignorant. Aircraft can not single-handily dominate the battle space, not in 1942, and not in 2015.
I really doubt at that time at night radar helped a lot, sure, it helped to aim at the target, but it did not help you in telling you where exactly the shell went.
Read Neptune's Inferno, specifically the chapter about USS Washington's engagement with Kirishima. They could detect the shell splashes on their radar screens and adjust the accordingly. Washington obtained a straddle with her first salvo, perhaps even a hit (underwater hits were recorded as misses in night engagements), and ultimately obtained 20 main battery hits out of 114 shells fired, some of which were aimed at different targets.
That's a ~20% hit rate, using radar directed gunnery, with the technology available at the beginning (1942) of the war. They only got more accurate as the war progressed and technology and tactics continued to improve.
"Firing solutions" on battleships are a "science fiction term"
You don't know what you're talking about. I've made the study of the Pacific Campaign the work of my adult life; I suggest you do some reading on the subject. Start with the book I linked above, it's a hell of a read, pay attention to the parts about Admiral Lee and USS Washington.
Because these days they are most certainly not. this is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS-N-22
With all due respect you have no idea what you're talking about. The P-270 has a quoted range of 75 miles. That's probably understated, it's not exactly in Russia and China's interest to publish exact figures, but even if you triple that range what good does it do you? You've got three platforms that can deliver it:
Aircraft, which are faced with the prospect of surviving the carrier's fighters long enough to get within launch range.
Surface ships, which are faced with the prospect of surviving the carrier's strike aircraft long enough to get within launch range.
Submarines, which face their own problem (a comparatively limited sensor range, can't easily coordinate with other platforms without sacaficing stealth) when trying to employ long range weapons against moving targets.
You've also glossed over the biggest problem of naval warfare from time immaterial: locating your enemy before he finds you. Are you willing to risk your life on locating a carrier task force before being discovered? You think it's an easy matter to keep your ships and aircraft alive long enough to close to within missile launch range, even if you manage to find the carrier?
And thats if they dont just ICBM your carrier group, for which there is no defense.
Great idea, kill tens of thousands of American service members with a nuclear weapon, what could possibly go wrong? Of course, even this idea isn't as sure of a thing as you think it is, since you still have to find the bloody carrier before you can nuke it; any nuclear weapon capable of being aimed at ships is able to be shot down by her escorts. You'd need to go for a saturation attack, so now you're launching dozens of nuclear weapons, against a nation-state that has thousands of them. Excellent idea!
You know, when I rewatched Darmok, I realized that it was a really stupid premise for an episode and that ruined it for me completely.
What's wrong with the premise? If you're asking yourself "How can you build a civilization that communicates in metaphor?" you're asking the wrong question. The premise may be silly (though who can say exactly how an alien mind will work?) but at its core that episode is about two people from different cultures trying to come to an understanding across a language barrier.
It's also an argument for the diplomatic approach, Picard sits on the surface patiently trying to find common ground in a tense situation. Riker eventually goes for the phasers, the Enterprise gets her ass kicked, and is only saved from destruction through Picard's efforts.
And while we're bitching, the effects were really awful, too.
I would disagree with this but even if I agreed with you I wouldn't care. Which are the better movies: Nemesis or Khan? Empire or Sith? On one side you've got tons of CGI battle porn, on the other side you've got the cutting edge of 1980s special effects.
long before it was obvious battleships were obsolete.
They weren't obsolete; they were still a force to take seriously even at the end of the war, capable of a wide variety of missions. They went the way of the dodo because they weren't as cost effective as the other platforms that could perform their missions.
So they decided to build ships that could destroy multiple enemy battleships.
Which they would have failed at completely, given their pathetic fire control technology. I would take my chances in any modern American battleship against those monsters, doesn't even need to be an Iowa, the North Carolina or South Dakota would have beaten them just as readily. Heck, one could almost make a case for the Pearl Harbor survivors after they were modernized with the same fire control systems as their big brothers. If the American battleline had ever met the Japanese battleline (all it takes is Halsey leaving Lee in place when he chases after the carriers at Leyte Gulf) it would have been a curb stomping of the IJN.
Japan was doomed by the decision to go to war against the United States. They thought it would go the same way as their last war against a continental power, overlooking the fact that the United States of 1941 was nowhere near as hapless as 1904 Tsarist Russia. We had them beat in every meaningful measure, technological, economic, population, resources, and most importantly we had the political will to fight the war to the bitter end. They compounded these disparities with a series of incredibly stupid tactical decisions, fretting away their strength with needlessly complicated plans (Midway was a classic Rube Goldberg plan), failing to seize opportunities to inflict lasting defeats on their foes (Savo Island), leaving their most experienced people in combat until attrition claimed them, and so on.
They only lasted as long as they did because of the Germany-first policy. We essentially beat them with the scraps of our war effort. To this day I can't fathom what their policymakers were smoking when they decided going to war with the United States was the best course of action. Had they sought an accommodation with FDR it's probable that Imperial Japan would still exist today; in fact the documents of the day (Plan Dog Memo) say that destroying them is not in the national interest of the United States, since they were a useful counterweight to the USSR in the Far East. Alas, they forced the issue, and in so doing shared the fate of Nazi Germany.
Blind Man's Bluff is the best one I've ever read. If you haven't already read it go get yourself a copy. :)
As soon as you fire anything you give your position away and the hunter becomes the hunted. Even surface ships can have a rocket delivered ASW torpedo your position less than a minute after firing (VL ASROC or similar, many exist).
Have you ever played one of the many naval warfare simulators that let you take a stab at target motion analysis? Hint: It's a royal pain in the ass, it takes forever to develop a usable fire control solution, even with computer assistance. You can't pinpoint a submarine based solely on the noise of a launch transient, even assuming you hear it, which you probably won't.
A modern naval task force is a tough nut to crack but the submarine is the best nutcracker there is. They're also historically the greatest threat there is to aircraft carriers. The United States lost four fleet carriers in WW2; two of them were claimed by submarines. One (USS Wasp) was claimed outright by a submarine, the other (USS Yorktown) received the coup de grâce from a sub.
At the outset of the war IJN doctrine was to use torpedoes against capital ships.
A flawed doctrine at that. They certainly had impressive torpedoes and we paid a price for underestimating them at Guadalcanal but their disappointing performance off Samar suggests they wouldn't have been a decisive factor had the Japanese actually gotten the decisive battle they sought.
Not that it mattered, really, since by the start of the war battleships were really only useful for providing shore bombardment and as AA platforms.
This is dead wrong. Read the history of the Guadalcanal campaign; it was surface ships that carried the day. Aircraft were ineffective at night and are best used in an offensive role, they can't effectively protect ships bringing in troops and supplies. Battleships were used there, by both sides, and the actions of USS Washington saved the day for the USN at the most critical juncture. Their biggest drawback was their logistical footprint, the main reason the US didn't deploy the Pearl Harbor survivors was a lack of tankers to keep them fueled. Fuel concerns influenced the IJN to an even greater degree and kept Yamoto in port during that campaign.
The battleship passed from the scene because it wasn't cost effective, there are cheaper platforms that can perform the same missions. They were never as useless or as vulnerable as people would have you believe. The USN didn't lose a single one after Pearl Harbor. Prince of Wales was the only Allied battleship lost at sea to aircraft, a combination of command stupidity, poor damage control, and plain rotten luck. I would have sailed that same mission with an American task force equipped with radar directed AA systems without thinking it was suicide; the Japanese tended to fare poorly when taking on our ships with aircraft, earning pyrrhic victories at best.
Horse shit. Accuracy was a big lie. Battleships themselves were the size of very large buildings, and they couldn't hit each other for shit. Hit rates at full battle range were typically 1-5%.
That may have been true in WW1, or even for WW2 battleships with outdated fire control systems, but it was most definitely not the case with the radar driven computerized fire control systems used by the USN and Royal Navy. USS Washington landed 20 main battery hits on Kirishima, out of 117 16" shells fired, not all of which were aimed at Kirishima. That was in 1942; the technology only got better as the war advanced. Duke of York achieved similar hit rates against Scharnhorst, in rough seas, during the arctic night and a blinding snowstorm.
In WW2, at the peak of battleship technology, the round-to-round uncertainty in muzzle velocity for Iowa class was speced to +-10 fps out of 2500 fps. That suggests a range repeatability/accuracy of 320 m at a full range of 40 km.
Which is largely irrelevant in a ship-to-ship action, because those weren't fought at such ranges even in war-games, never mind reality. That said, there's a story somewhere about Iowa obtaining a first salvo straddle on a maneuvering Japanese destroyer at >30 kilometers off Truk. This is another testament to American fire control; the Japanese couldn't manage to do the same off Samar at considerably closer ranges. Flip that battle around, placing a USN fleet of cruisers and battleships against Japanese destroyers in the daylight and it would likely have been a massacre.
I don't dispute the point that battleships are irrelevant now but you should correct some of your facts about them, lest you repeat misinformation. :)
By the time you detect that harpoon missile you might get the first one but the second one will get you.
Kind of depends on what you're shooting it at, doesn't it? I think you'd need a gaggle of them to take down any modern anti-air-warfare surface combatant, more than can be launched by a submarine. Picture trying to take down an Aegis equipped ship or Type 45 with harpoons, not terribly likely to happen if they're on a war footing. I'm not sure how effective the AAW systems of our likely enemies are, but I wouldn't be willing to risk my life on them being considerably inferior to ours, particularly if we're talking about systems designed by the Russians. Of course, there's always the Mark 48 for such targets, which is the better bet anyway since it's not going to give away the sub's position.
As an aside, thank you for your service. I always wanted to be a bubblehead, alas, epilepsy reared its ugly head in my childhood. Now I live vicariously through museum ships and posts like yours. One day I'd like to have the opportunity to board a commissioned boat but that doesn't likely to ever happen. More's the pity. :(
I'll just point out the Tomahawk submarine launched missiles do have a tactical nuclear package option.
Taken out of service some time ago. Of course there's nothing stopping it from coming back, either on the Tomahawk or its planned successor. :)
You can also mount nuclear warheads to torpedoes though to the best of my knowledge the USN hasn't done that in decades. Nothing stopping them from doing it again should the need arise though.
If Halsey had been less of an idiot and left Admiral Lee behind with Task Force 34 during Leyte Gulf you would have seen modern battleships clashing with each other off Samar, an engagement that almost certainly would have been an ass raping of the Imperial Japanese Navy, barring alien intervention or extremely bad luck on the part of the USN.
As it was it only happened only three times in the entire war under what might be considered an equal footing, once in the Pacific (Washington vs. Kirishima off Guadalcanal) and twice in the Atlantic (Bismarck vs. Hood and Scharnhorst vs. Duke of York). There were other battles where battleships were involved (Surigao Strait and Bismarck's final battle) but they can't even charitably be described as fair engagements. Surigao involved a depleted Japanese force against an entire American battleline that outclassed them in every department while Bismarck was crippled before her last fight, unable to steam at speed or maneuver.
The battleship wasn't as useless as people would have you believe, nor was it Pearl Harbor that sealed its doom. The oft-repeated mantra is that the United States Navy was invested in the battleship and Pearl Harbor was a rude awakening; this doesn't survive even a casual examination of the historical record. The Two-Ocean Navy Act passed Congress in 1940, nearly 18 months before Pearl Harbor and it very deliberately recognized the supremacy of the aircraft carrier, both in number of ships ordered and the statements of the legislators who wrote it. The Japanese were more invested in the battleship than the USN, wasting their limited resources on two mega battleships that ultimately accomplished nothing, while deluding themselves into thinking that a single decisive battle like Tsushima would be enough to convince the United States to throw in the towel, a country that had seventeen times Japan's GDP and twice her population!
Incidentally, the turning point of the war didn't happen at Midway, as is often repeated, but rather it happened at Guadalcanal. Midway was a battle, Guadalcanal was a campaign, one which proved the Japanese were not equipped materially or psychologically to fight a long war. Guess which ship saved the day for the USN during the last decisive engagement? A battleship, USS Washington. :)
At least the USN got a return on investment for our expensive toys. I can't think of a single Japanese battleship that accomplished anything of note during the entire war. The few that they were willing to commit early in the war were destroyed off Guadalcanal with little to show for it; the rest they hoarded for a decisive battle that never came, ultimately being forced to commit them at Leyte Gulf, where they were so hopelessly outmatched that even Halsey's stupidity didn't give them enough breathing room to carry the day.
i wonder how accurate you can be with shelling. can you target a particular building.
Incredibly accurate, even with the cutting edge of 1940s technology. This was always the advantage that the United States Navy had which the Japanese couldn't even dream of duplicating. Read about the USS Washington savaging of Kirishima off Guadalcanal, in the dark, with 5" and 16" fire directed solely by radar. The USN credits Washington with eight or nine 16" inch hits but modern research suggests she scored over 20 main battery hits and as many or more hits with the secondary 5" battery. If the USN had had more officers in the early days who understood the proper usage of radar (Admiral Lee is one of the most underrated WW2 leaders, in my humble opinion, a man who was way ahead of his time) Iron Bottom Sound would be littered with Japanese wrecks instead of American ships.
For another example, read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, the story of Taffy 3 off Samar during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Our destroyers and destroyer escorts could land first salvo hits at maximum range, while maneuvering at flank speed, simply by pointing their computerized fire control directors at the Japanese ships. Even at this late stage in the war the Japanese could not duplicate radar directed fire control, they relied on optical rangefinders for their fire control, the consequence of which is they could not actually land hits on maneuvering targets until they were nearly at point blank range. Nor could they really maneuver themselves without losing their fire control solutions and starting from scratch.
Want an personal anecdote to add to all of the above? One of my best friends was aboard the USS Antietam, where he served in the 5"/38 battery. During target practice he tells me that they didn't actually aim at the target sleeves being towed by airplanes, rather they would aim at the cable connecting the sleeve to the airplane and more often than not they could hit it. There's a reason why the Japanese paid a very heavy price whenever they tried to attack our ships with aircraft, look at what happened to them during the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz Islands.
This is the single biggest reason why people who select Yamoto in the "Iowa vs. Yamoto" debate are deluding themselves. Iowa, or even the so-called treaty battleships (North Carolina and South Dakota classes) would have raped Yamoto, as evidenced by her poor fire control off Samar. Having the biggest guns in the world means nothing if you can't land hits with them. Hell, I would almost take the old battleships that survived Pearl Harbor up against Yamato; they all had modernized radar driven fire control suites after their rebuilds.
It's not like we have debtors prison: you're clear of bankruptcy after a few years, and maybe learn a thing or two about living within your means in the widow when you can't borrow money.
I've never understood the opposition to bankruptcy, as seen in our political debates on topics ranging from health care to the mortgage crisis. Perhaps I'm somewhat jaded because I've gone through Chapter 7 twice (once for medical bills, the second time for divorce); there was literally nothing to the experience, 20 minutes in an assembly line legal hearing, a few months of waiting, and presto! New start. Chapter 13 is a bit more drawn out, 3 to 5 years depending on your repayment plan, but even that isn't a terribly burdensome ordeal if your lawyer has half a brain.
Corporations engage in stratgeic bankruptcies all the time but it's somehow the end of the world if a consumer has to file Chapter 7 or 13? I've grown cynical enough watching our rigged financial system that I'm tempted to engage in a repeating cycle of strategic chapter 7 bankruptcies until the day I die. Why the hell not? You can park limitless amounts of money in retirement accounts that can't be touched, buy tangible goods on credit that can't be or aren't worth being repossessed, and milk those fucking "too big to fail" banks for every last penny you can get out of them. All you need is a little bit of estate planning, knowledge of the credit system and bankruptcy code, and the willingness to see your name in the paper every eight years.
I doubt I'll actually do this but boy there are days when it's incredibly tempting. Spend a few years rebuilding your credit, get insanely huge credit lines, live off them for a few years while parking as much real money into exempt retirement accounts as you can, bankruptcy, rinse and repeat. I had nearly ten times as much money as I owed to my creditors in my 403(b) and IRAs during my last bankruptcy and that fact was completely irrelevant. All that mattered was I couldn't pay them with my income. At least our financial system does something right for the little guy.
The money for quantitative easing was created, not taxpayer-funded.
How'd that work out for the Wiemar Republic?
Do note that I'm a knee-jerk anti-Fed zealot, I think most of those people are hopelessly naive at best. It just remains to be seen whether or not QE is a long term success or simply masked fundamental structural problems that will re-emerge at a later date. It's worth noting that our cheap money policy has virtually destroyed every form of investing other than stocks; I can't find any "safe" investments that can keep pace with inflation right now, can you? Wall Street sure is profiting from QE, I'm not so certain about Main Street. This is a very disturbing trend that few people are talking about, one that we're not likely to reverse so long as there's no incentive (near 0% interest rates) to save money and every policymakers response to a recession is "consume, consume, consume!"
Mark your calendar and we'll come back to this discussion in 10 or 15 years to find out what happened.
Don't skip The Emissary, Elementary, Dear Data, The Measure of a Man, Q Who, Contagion, or A Matter of Honor.
Even the much maligned first season had "don't miss" episodes. Some you have to watch for continuity (Encounter at Farpoint, The Neutral Zone, Datalore, and Skin of Evil), but a handful were actually decent standalone episodes (The Battle and 11001001).
Seasons 1 and 2 had a lot of hokey moments but they also have hidden gems. Seasons 3 and 4 contain the crown jewels of TNG, after that it was kind of a gradual decline as the writers ran out of ideas, albeit with some really amazing episodes (Chain of Command was Season 6 and is among the best of TNG) along the way. Even most of the mediocre episodes aren't unwatchable, of course there are exceptions to the rule (Sub Rosa, Genesis, and Masks come to mind).
And speaking of flat, ST:TNG doesn't hold up. I remember back in 1987 when it first came on and how excited I was to have a new Star Trek. Watching on Netflix now, I can't help thinking what a piece of shit it was
WTF are you talking about? ST:TNG is the only Sci-Fi show from my childhood that stands the test of time. There were some hokey episodes to be sure but the underlying theme of humanity exploring the cosmos, under a semi-abundance economy where we've moved past the need for greed and work instead towards self-improvement and discovery? How can you not like that?
TNG explored themes as diverse as brinkmanship (The Defector and The Enemy), individual liberties (The Measure of a Man), paranoia driven by external fears (The Pegasus and The Drumhead, a massively underrated episode that seems downright prescient when one contemplates current events in the post 9/11 world), terrorism (The High Ground), eugenics (The Masterpiece Society), the morality of deadly force (The Most Toys), veterans/PTSD (The Wounded, Family, and The Hunted), old age (Half a Life and Sarek), torture (Chain of Command), revenge (Reunion), and betrayal (Preemptive Strike).
Those are just the issue episodes that come to mind. TNG could also do action (several of the aforementioned, plus Power Play, Conundrum and Starship Mine), first contact (First Contact, Darmok), and even comedy (Deja Q).
Some of those episodes were better than others but I dare say that they're as good as anything that's on television today and were light-years ahead of their peers in the 1980s and 1990s. TNG was at its best when approached as a character and issues driven drama; in that respect I think it set a standard that is never going to be equaled in television Sci-Fi. It had more than its share of gimmicks (engineering failures used as plot devices, apparently the concepts of fail safe and even the lowly circuit breaker don't exist in the 24th Century) but on balance it stands the test of time.
It was also uplifting escapism entertainment that could still do serious drama, something I think we've lost with the current emphasis on dark violent dramas. Even the genuinely scary episodes of TNG (The Best of Both Worlds can still send shivers down my spine) never left you feeling depressed and melancholy. The only other show from the 1980s that I can still re-watch is Magnum PI, for a lot of the same reasons when I thi
Second best way is to impersonate the person that owns one. Sounds like what these guys did. However, according to TFA they were very patient and methodical, leading up to the assertion that they were 'cybercriminals' rather than state actors. Of course, the last time this weird dichotomy came up, the attackers were state actors because they were so patient and thus weren't plain ol criminals.
I'm not usually given to CTs but I am just cynical enough about the banking industry to wonder if some of this isn't an inside job. Certainly not all the way to the top, those asshats have golden parachutes and legally steal^Wearn their inflated salaries, but at the mid-level? It's not that much of a leap to wonder.
William K. Black
Data connections should be a public utility. period.
That is a political non-starter in the United States. You may wish that wasn't the case but for better or worse it is, so there's no point in crying about it.
One can make a compelling case that Government has in fact make the situation worse, through franchising agreements and other artificial barriers to entry that keep upstarts out of the market. That's the Republican argument and it has some merit, though I think it kind of glosses over the bigger picture that broadband is no longer a growth market. Growth markets can maintain multiple providers of service; stable markets tend to gravitate towards mergers to take advantage of the real and imagined benefits of synergy.
Incidentally, more than anything I think the mature market consideration is the reason why Verizon and AT&T have halted upgrades of their wireline plant and equipment to focus on wireless, which remains a growth market. In wireline they're forced to compete against established cable companies that have the advantage of cheaper technology (HFC vs. ripping out an ancient twisted pair copper plant and rebuilding it with fiber from the ground up), the ability to cannibalize voice customers without meeting the same reliability metrics POTS has to live up to, a less restrictive regulatory framework, and no hassles offering video (Verizon had to kiss a lot of asses to get video franchises for FIOS in many markets)
At the end of the day we have to make a public policy decision regarding whether or not broadband internet is a natural monopoly. If it is then we should decide if we want to bring Ma Bell back or not. Is a regulated monopoly better for the internet than what we currently have? I can't answer that question. I do know that Ma Bell largely lived up to her obligation to maintain the network and believe that if she was still around she'd have brought the network into the 21st Century. Verizon and AT&T seem content to milk it for all it's worth before abandoning it. Conversely, there were plenty of people around who hated Ma Bell, for various reasons, so is that really a door we wish to reopen?
"It must be annual smokers are shit week." <--- From 'fortune -o', one of my favorite "offensive" fortunes, even though I've never smoked.
News for nerds indeed.....
the US is about the only country in the world where the recipient pays for incoming calls when not roaming. I leave it as an exercise to the read to think why this is plain ridiculous.
Why is this "ridiculous?" The alternative is caller-pays, which is indeed how it works in the EU; it's one price to call a landline and another higher price to call a cell phone. That's kind of absurd in my eyes, why should someone have to pay extra to call me?
the prices are plain crazy. In Europe you pay max 30-50 Euros per month for unlimited plan, with 1GB or data.
It was actually less than that in Finland but this point I'll largely concede. Of course if I'm nitpicking I'll point out that virtually all American plans including texting and all of my Finnish friends have to pay extra for that. Consequently they all use WhatsApp or FB Messenger, which took some getting used to for me when I was there, but at the end of the day works the same.
in the US, if you exceed your limit
Depends on your plan. I have unlimited.
the US has many many dead areas. I know, it is a big country. But the fact remains.
"Many many" dead areas? Depends on your carrier. I'm on Verizon. There aren't too many dead zones for me; I have to go hiking into the wilderness to find one.
incredibly intrusive branding, crapware, etc
Depends on your phone.
carriers are involved in certifying which phones are supported in their networks
they use non-compatible networks.
You're behind the times, this is a moot point with LTE, they all support SIM cards now.
Their customer service is such crap that I don't know where to start.
That's in the eye of the beholder and subjective. Verizon and T-Mobile have stellar customer service in my eyes. I can't speak to AT&T or Sprint since I've never done business with them.
True. Although I haven't found any pre-paid services in Finland that offer LTE. Not sure if that's the situation in most of Europe or just my favorite country; for me at least it makes the lack of EU LTE Bands in my device kind of a moot point. :)
Besides, WCDMA goes up to 21mbit/s in ideal circumstances. Plenty fast enough for a phone. Last time I was in Turku I got faster speeds on WCDMA than my typical LTE speeds back home. Can you hear me now Verizon? You need more LTE capacity in my hometown. :D
You base American phone won't work on most overseas networks due to frequency lock downs.
That's not really the case these days. Even in yesteryear it was only the case some of the time; every dumb flip phone I owned whilst on T-Mobile was a quad-band global phone. 850/900/1800/1900 GSM.
Today it's SOP for American smartphones to include support for 900/1800 GSM and WCDMA, which makes them operable in most countries. Even the IS-95/IS-2000 (aka: CDMA) carriers have gotten on this bandwagon. My Moto X supports CDMA 850/1900, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/900/1900/2100, and LTE Bands 4 and 13. The latter is only useful in the US and Canada, so no LTE roaming if I go overseas, but I've got full access to the local GSM and WCDMA networks.
LTE roaming would be nice though probably moot at this juncture since there aren't too many international LTE roaming agreements just yet. I anticipate having that ability with my next phone though. :)
It's a world phone with both cdma and a sim card for gsm--would be a great travel phone if I could unlock it.
That's any Verizon 4G LTE smartphone. If you're looking for something like that I'd personally recommend the Moto X Developer Edition (discontinued but available on eBay) or the Nexus 6. Those are totally unlocked, both SIM unlocked (use them with any network) and bootloader unlocked (use whatever software you want) If those are too expensive you could use almost any Verizon 4G smartphone, although you'll forgo the unlocked bootloader in many instances.
I plan on investing in a local SIM to use with my xt1060 the next time I go to Finland. €16/mo for unlimited data vs. $25 per 100MB whilst roaming with the Verizon SIM. Hard to argue with that disparity. :D