Sventex

Reading the damage reports on USN Battleships, apparently Pennsylvania was the last major US ship damaged in the war. She was torpedoed at night at Okinawa by a torpedo bomber. As far as I know, Japanese air torpedoes only had warheads of 713 lb, corresponding to the test, although Pennsylvania was an old Super-Dreadnought. "Pennsylvania was severely damaged by a torpedo on 12 August 1945, two days before the cessation of hostilities" -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania-class_battleship

Given they were up against Long Lance (1080 lb) warheads, that's worrisome.

If I had to guess, they found it on a napkin at their local bar.

I lean heavily towards archeology. If we respected the Egyptian graves, we would know extremely little about them beyond being the despised villains of the bible and we would still have this notion that the Jews built their pyramids for them. I almost view it as morally good to acquire that knowledge and preserve. But of course I look down upon the desecration of the dead, where the Victorian British unwrapped mummies for their own amusement at parties and used the bodies to make medicine and charms. Ugh...

I see, so it's more of the moral equivalent to the "Golden Rule". These looters would perhaps not want their military's wreaks looted if the situation were reversed such as with that Indonesian Submarine that just went down.

But then we get to the air bomber situation where North Vietnam would need permission from the United States to move a crashed B-52 bomber that was bombing their city. I understand legally there is a difference, but morally why would a crashed plane be treated with less reverence than a shipwreak? Is the moral difference here that if the bodies can be removed, even without permission, it is no longer considered a war grave?

Conversely what are we trying to preserve by acting shocked and appalled that people are visiting undefended wreaks on the other side of the world and taking things back with them? Honor? What's protecting these shipwrecks from being investigated beyond morality? The dead aren't being defiled, they were already devoured by the sea. What dignity is being lost here?

I don't mean to imply the North Vietnamese are unique or anything. Russia and China has shot down U2 planes on display in museums as trophies. I just don't consider it odd that they would display it in a museum. It's history and it's being preserved. I just wonder why ships are afforded such a different standard. The ocean is corrosive, it's dissolving history every day and it's not like the dead are interned within the ship, at a certain point the ocean devours the dead and leaves nothing behind. A grave or memorial is about preservation and the ocean does not preserve the dead or history. It eats it.

But the North Vietnamese didn't let the Americans remove their own crashed B-52 bombers from Hanoi. Why would they? And is that morally wrong?

But the ocean floor is literally not a cemetery and a ship hull is literally not a tombstone. I'm not trying to be provocative here, I'm just trying to find out why sunken ship hulls are considered sacred. Like I said, we wouldn't afford the same reverence to a crashed bomber plane that was bombing you. Sure ships on the ocean floor aren't bothering anyone but they could be helping people and restoring lost history. Instead it's considered better to let the ships dissolve away into nothing? The thing about marble tombstones is that we don't leave them in acid to melt away, we make efforts to maintain them in graveyards.

Sure. But we're talking about a ship hull, not a tombstone. Just as a bomber plane crashing into a city, you say it's necessary to remove it to rebuild, but would you say the same thing about scrapping tombstones from a graveyard to rebuild a city? So would a crashed bomber plane really be comparable to a tombstone?

Apparently the Navy has canceled the railgun. "The U.S. Navy’s push to create a $500 million electromagnetic railgun weapon—capable of slinging projectiles at hypersonic speeds—appears to have come to an end. The service is ending funding for the railgun without having sent a single weapon to sea, while pushing technology derived from the program into existing weapons. The weapon is a victim of a change in the Navy’s direction toward faster, longer-range weapons that are capable of striking ships and land targets in a major war. The Navy’s budget request includes no funding for the railgun in 2022, The Drive reports. Electromagnetic railguns are decidedly different from conventional guns, cannons, and howitzers. Regular guns use the pressure from an ignited gunpowder charge to expel a projectile from the barrel, sending it flying on a ballistic trajectory. Railguns, meanwhile, using electricity and magnetism instead of gunpowder and chemical energy to accelerate a projectile down a pair of rails. How the Navy's Railgun Was Supposed to Work Railguns are theoretically safer than conventional guns, since they reduce the amount of volatile powder a ship stores deep within its bowels in the ammunition magazine. The projectiles are also faster. But despite those advantages, there are reasons why the Navy is canning the railgun, which has been in development since 2005. For one, there are currently only three ships the Navy could conceivably fit the railgun to: the three Zumwalt-class destroyers. The next opportunity for fitting warships with railguns won’t happen until the late 2020s, when the Navy begins construction on its next-generation DDG(X) destroyers. The railgun concept itself is also out of step with the Navy’s reorientation toward great power conflict, particularly a possible war with China or Russia. As an offensive weapon, the railgun’s range of 50 to 100 miles is relatively short, placing a railgun-equipped ship within range of longer-range weapons, including China’s DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. And while the railgun also has defensive potential since it can shoot down incoming aircraft, missiles, and drones, the Navy already has plenty of existing missiles and guns to deal with those threats. Railguns appear to have fallen victim to the new trend: hypersonic weapons. The Navy’s new Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB), developed in conjunction with the U.S. Army, has a top speed of Mach 17 and a range of more than 1,700 miles. That’s fast enough to engage time-sensitive targets from a safe distance. The Navy announced in May it plans to add its C-HGB to its Zumwalt-class destroyers. The service has repeatedly floated replacing the two 155-millimeter Advanced Gun Systems (AGS) on the Zumwalts with railguns, since the cost of the precision-guided round developed for the guns has become unaffordable. Now, hypersonics will fill the void left by the AGS guns. The Navy seems to have decided, quite logically, that it’s better to outfit the ships with a weapon with a 1,700-mile range instead of a 100-mile range (at best). While the American railgun system appears shuttered, the fate of China’s railgun program is still unknown. Observers first spotted China’s railgun fitted to a landing ship on the Yangtze River in 2018. It remains to be seen if Beijing follows Washington’s lead in canning electromagnetic-based projectile guns, or if the People’s Liberation Army decides the weapon still has some value." - https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a36633707/us-navy-railgun-is-finally-dead/

I bring it up because I recently heard that Titanic isn't long for this world, in a few decades it will rust away until there's nothing left but a red spot on the ocean floor. Is that even morally preferable to salvaging artifacts, history and valuable materials from a sunken ship? From what I've seen of Bismarck, the bodies completely disappear after awhile, all that's left of them are their boots on the ground. Why does the ship hull itself become sacred as a grave?

These were carriers that even fought for the French during the Suez Crisis and Vietnam War such as the important Battle of Dien Bien Phu, I don't see it as a disservice, they are very much integral in French naval history.

The ship is still not entirely a Japanese design. Much of the ship was designed with British shipbuilding knowledge that was beyond Japan's capabilities for the time. Even the Fuso and Ise class had significant British designs incorperated. And again, I do not see this as a disservice to the Japanese tech tree. Just being a purely domestic design is not that impressive against real ships that made it beyond the slipway.