[OA5599]

I wasn’t advocating tanker conversions, but this exchange just reminded me of that book I read. Being a navy vet, I found it amusing that our ships were ducking for cover behind the tankers they were supposed to be protecting.

[Rockingham]

In truth, I have but a thin personal basis for my views. Intuitively, I rely on my father's stories and comments based on his experience as a graduate of Kings Point, years as a merchant marine officer, and time in the USN when his reserve commission was activated. And as a boy, I read my father's old marine engineering texts and his copy of Bodwitch's American Practical Navigator.

Notably, it has been proposed that if the necessary engineering and prototyping was done in advance, in an emergency, US flagged and allied merchant vessels could be quickly equipped with enhanced radar and surveillance capabilities and drop in batteries of antiaircraft and antiship missiles. Such vessels could have considerable value as naval auxiliaries even though they would not be suitable as front line naval combatants.