Talk:List of United States Navy ships

Talk
The link to the list of Japanese ships seems kind of irrelevant (Japan was not the only adversary of the US navy). It would make more sense to link it from the non-yet-existent article on the Japanese navy. Stan Shebs 13:54 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

It is irrelevant but it is convinient only for those interested in other navy's ship list. Remember see also exists only for convinience. -- Taku 15:52 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Some sort of marker should be given to ships that are currently in active service. Kingturtle 05:48 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes. Bolding the hull number would be easy, though a common symbol shared by all the different lists would be better I think. Stan 06:12 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

Some possibilities (probably ought to be double-checked that they are real):
 * USS Estes
 * USS LST-325 (late WWII)
 * USS Glacier
 * USS Eldorado (late 50s)
 * USS LST 173 (late WWII)

Mare Island links
There are now actual, separate articles for Mare Island, California and Mare Island Naval Shipyard. I put a note on Cleanup about someone needing to go through all those links and making sure they point to the correct place (many just link to "Mare Island", which is now a redirect to Mare Island, CA). Thanks! Have a grand old time. :-)  ...  Elf | Talk 21:30, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

When multiple ships exist, and there are no hull numbers to distinquish the ships, recommend using the year the ship was first commissioned into Naval service rather than the type of ship. For example, USS Neversail (1807) where 1807 is the year in which the ship was first commissioned. Recommend commissioning year since many early ships were built or launched years before acceptance into the Navy.


 * In general, I've been using launch dates rather than commissioning dates for ships built specifically for the Navy, because there is little doubt about when a ship has been physically launched, while commissioning dates are uncertain for the earliest, and there may not have been an actual commissioning. Year of acquisition for purchased ships seems good - look at WikiProject Ships and sneak it in there somewhere. Stan 19:15, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

List of completed letters in DANFS
This is a list of letters of the alphabet that have been completed in the list from the source book series Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. It is an aide memoire to keep track of what needs to be done to the rest of the page. The following letters have been completed:


 * A - B
 * D - H (DANFS & NVR)
 * Q
 * X
 * Z

David Newton 14:47, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No " - " in ship name
In official government documents there is no " - " in the ship classification name, (LPD 17, not LPD-17), though it seems to be common everywhere else. I think that the name should be changed to reflect the Navy's naming convention


 * Wikipedia is not the Navy. We're not even the United States. Why should we follow a convention that even the USN isn't consistent on? More justification for this will be needed before I'm convinced such a large scale and meaningless change is undertaken. Jinian 23:36, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)


 * It seems to be a recent change, 1990s perhaps, so the generic "most common" rule will favor hyphens for another couple decades. :-) I've always wondered about the rationale for the change, seems unusually pointless. Stan the cynical ex-defense-contractor suspects that somebody made a mistake in database software programming, and it was cheaper to declare a change of convention than to fix the software... Stan 23:43, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Revert edit by 143.250.2.102
I removed your edit where you inserted the USS Wyoming (1859) link on the main page. This front page of this list consists of all current ships arranged by letter. When there is no current ships by a particular letter we have show historical ones. Please see List_of_all_ships_of_the_United_States_Navy%2C_W for Wyoming and all other ships of the USN. Malo 16:54, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

rv edits by 143.250.2.101 On 9/28/2005
I reverted your recent page edits because the USS Zephyr no longer belongs to the US Navy. Instead, as of October 2004, it was transferred unto the USCG. Hence the reason it is not active in the Navy. Check out it's Navsource page if you need references. Malo 17:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Coast Guard ships
Malo brings up a point in his previous comment. Do we want to include Coast Guard ships in the list of US Navy ships? During wartime, including WW II, administrative control of the Coast Guard was transferred to the Navy. So, in essence, Coast Guard ships were Navy ships at this time, even though they maintained their prefix USCGC rather than having USS. In the alphabetical listings, there are several Coast Guard ships listed that are not Navy ships. There are also ships with Navy hull numbers that were manned by the Coast Guard during the war, including frigates and transports, that are listed.

Should we have another page listing Coast Guard ships? In the column on the right (with the Don't Tread On Me flag at the top), do we want to have another entry for Coast Guard ships? If not, where can we list the Coast Guard ships? 147.240.236.9 21:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The belated answer to this in case others are wondering is that List of United States Coast Guard cutters is covering Coast Guard ships. The issue at hand in what list a ship belongs to is in what service owned the ship. The Coast Guard still owned their ships during WWII despite being under control of the US Navy. Likewise, a US Navy ship operated by a Coast Guard crew was still owned by the US Navy. Further to this issue is Military Sealift Command which operates ships owned by the US Navy therefore are also listed as US Navy ships. One project I've been working on since December 2007 is to go through all of the lists of US Navy ships and fix the list integrity. As of now, I've completed through G. --Brad (talk) 02:55, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

US Navy ships only / list integrity.
In the cases were a US Navy ship was later renamed, sold to another country, lend-lease, canceled, or what have you, please use the redirect option rather than changing the names on this list or by piping the links to another ship. I've made about 35 changes to the A list alone, and while most of them were updates to reflect new DANFS information, about 10 - 15 were to correct links to HMS xxx and others. --Brad (talk) 05:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Naming Standards
I heard this long ago and I'm not sure if it is true or not: The navy names their ships according to a standard. According to this standard, Battleships are named after States, Aircraft Carriers after Presidents, etc. The rest I forget, it was something like minesweepers=volcanos, rivers=something else, big cities = something else, etc.

Does anyone know if this is true? if so what is the logic for naming ships???

205.160.23.2 (talk) 21:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
 * United States ship naming conventions might help. --Brad (talk) 05:29, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Can someone explain why the individual lists are constructed the way they are constructed?
Recently, while I was in Seattle, I took a picture of a tugboat from the Seattle-Bremerton Ferry. Today I looked up that tug on Wikipedia which search took me to List of United States Navy ships: D–F §De. There I found the entry for the tugboat:


 * USS Defiant (USS Defiant (YT-804))

Since YT-804 is a red link I clicked on the USS Defiant blue link and much to my surprise, ended up on a page about the fictional starship USS Defiant (NX-74205) from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine et al.

That caused me to look at the List's underlying construction. Under the hood, the USS Defiant (YT-804) entry looks like this:



It looks like the intent was to have a link to a shiplist, disambiguation, or redirect page followed by links to individual ship pages identified by their hull number or launch-year disambiguators. That works as long as there is a shiplist page, disambiguation page, or a redirect page. Doesn't work in this case.

The quick and dirty fix (remembering that the quick is now, the dirty is forever) for this entry is:



or



Frankly, I like the latter since I can think of no reason why this list (or any of the other list should be linking to redirect pages. And the look would be similar:

As it is now:
 * USS Defiance (USS Defiance (SP-1015), USS Defiance (ID-3327), USS Defiance (AMc-73), USS Defiance (PGM-95)/USS Defiance (PG-95))
 * USS Defiant (USS Defiant (YT-804))
 * USS Deft (USS Deft (AM-216)/USS Deft (MSF-216))

As it might be:
 * USS Defiance (USS Defiance (SP-1015), USS Defiance (ID-3327), USS Defiance (AMc-73), USS Defiance (PGM-95)/USS Defiance (PG-95))
 * USS Defiant (YT-804)
 * USS Deft (USS Deft (AM-216)/USS Deft (MSF-216))

For consistency, this implies that all names in the list that refer to only one ship, must be changed—delete link to redirect, delete extraneous parentheses, edit the template.

Not forgetting the main question: Can someone explain why the individual lists are constructed the way they are constructed?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:12, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * These lists are approaching 10 years in age so whatever the original purpose of the layout might have been is unknown. But it still works well so I don't see any reasons to make any major changes. In the case of USS Defiant the page was hijacked by star trek fans and should be reclaimed by the ships project. The star trek ship article should be renamed appropriately to something like USS Defiant (starship) or similar. Then all will be ok for making USS Defiant a dab page showing the real ship and the fictional ship. Brad (talk) 21:09, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

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