Shipbucket

Can anyone suggest a good base for a modern Q-ship/convoy raider?

Today ... there is no place for Q-ships in the world. But you can take some random cargo and try to arm it.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Can you suggest one?, I was thinking along the lines of gutting an a tanker and place VLS cells In the empty space where the cargo tanks were.

You will need good fire controls for them, good radar, a lots of stuff. Take some fishing trawler, mask some old russian ship wreck missile with primitve firing control and try to be a hero for one sec before some real warship track you and sink is moment.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Yeah, I'm not sure that's a really viable thing these days, since it'd be really hard to fight merchant ship against a modern navy. However, if I were going to make a modern merchant raider I'd use an older, smaller cruise ship that could do maybe 20 knots or a little faster. Put some light canons, maybe a few old 40mm bofors in the superstructure behind bulkheads that drop down. Maybe conceal a Oto-Melera 76mm/62 cannon or two in collapsible deckhouses either on top of the superstructure or somewhere on the bow or stern...wherever there's space for it. If you were going to use missiles you'd want to go with someting you could launch vertically so it'd be easier to conceal within the hull or superstructure and put a VLS somewhere where it would look inconspicuous, perhaps conceal it as a cargo hatch on the deck somewhere.

really, an 'hidden' Q-ship doesn't work anymore. there are 2 ways to make civilian ships fight:
- piracy
- armed civilians (think atlantic conveyor)

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Explorer_(2001)

That's about the only ship I can think of that would have the slightest chance of being a modern merchant raider. The MV Explorer, was a former Greek cruise ship of the now-defunct Royal Olympia Cruise Line. At one time, she and her sister ship were the fastest cruise ships in the world. She now serves as a school ship with the Semester at Sea program. I have no idea what happened to her sister ship. But at 28 knots, she could catch just about any merchant ship in the world, and have at least a slight chance of running from a surface warship. You could fit some weapons on her and probably even figure out how to put a helicopter on her stern. Again, I don't think the idea of a Q-ship has any place in modern naval warfare, but if I absolutely had to have one, that's what I'd use.

A chinese model

LOL, nice.

There are the russian Club-K cruise missiles.
They disguised in standard 40ft cargo contaier, which can be installed on railroad flatcars, ships or trucks.

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