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From: plains!umn-cs!LOCAL!thornley@uunet.UU.NET (David H. Thornley)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Battleships
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.003530.28861@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 14 Dec 90 00:35:30 GMT
References: <1990Dec8.222030.27569@cbnews.att.com> <1990Dec12.032833.12370@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Followup-To: soc.history
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis - CSCI Dept.
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Approved: military@att.att.com



From: plains!umn-cs!LOCAL!thornley@uunet.UU.NET (David H. Thornley)
[mod.note: Followups to soc.history, please.  I think this clarifies the
situation enough for sci.military.  - Bill ]

In article <1990Dec12.032833.12370@cbnews.att.com> phil@hpsmdca.corp.hp.com (Philip Walden) writes:
>
>
>From: phil@hpsmdca.corp.hp.com (Philip Walden)
>
>>From: "Thomas A. McGowan" <tm1y+@andrew.cmu.edu>
>>
>>	But the "T" is not perfect. In the battle of Trafalgar (sp), admiral
>>Nelson of the Royal Navy blasted the spanish by charging into the "T"
>
>Spanish? Trafalgar? Perhaps you have the wrong battle or Country.
>
>Nelson fought the French fleet at Trafalgar. 
>
You're both right :-), it was a mixed French-Spanish force.  Nelson split
his fleet into two columns, essentially giving the allies the crossing to
two British Ts simultaneously.  Had the French and Spanish been prepared
(in various senses of the word) to use this opportunity, Nelson's force
as well as Nelson would have been toast.  The moral of this engagement
is not "Be aggressive," but rather "Know your enemy."

What Nelson succeeded in doing was to split the allied force into 
separate parts, and overwhelm the upwind parts before the downwind
parts could get back into action, a plan of battle not suited for
later wars (he also relied on the short effective range of gunnery
of his day - much has been said about ship's armor, but the ships
of Nelson's day were much better armored against their own guns
than ships of almost any later period).

DHT