According to the memoirs of a survivor of the sinking of the IJN Yamato in WWII, the USN dive bombers strafed the BB as they pulled out (he said they were so close that he could see the faces of the rear gunners screaming at them) & that the strafing had a significant impact. Mainly casualties, of course & not affecting the structural integrity of the ship.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 10/9/14, Ian Whitchurch <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML] Why do those big ships carry so many fighters?
 To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
 Date: Thursday, October 9, 2014, 1:52 AM

 You're
 mistaking the machinegun on the Gladiator with the
 torpedo.
 On Thu,
 Oct 9, 2014 at 7:49 PM, David Shaw <xxxxxx@btconnect.com>
 wrote:
 It's
 still a rules problem.  So the nuke damper means nuclear
 missiles are useless and you're reduced to using
 lasers?  So what?  Sure, one laser won't hurt a
 battleship.  Two won't be any better, nor will three,
 four or five.

 But 300?  I don't care what armour your ship has,
 that's gonna hurt. Except that the rules don't allow
 it.

 (Checking the rules, the RTT flight/barrage rules do allow a
 flight of light fighters to hurt a Tigress - just - but
 they'd have to be flown by truly exceptional pilots who
 were also very lucky.)

 Still, the 3I has large amounts of fighters tooling around
 because, IRL, a tiny, little, insignificant fighter,
 weighing several orders of magnitude less than a battleship,
 *can* pose a very real threat to, well, pretty much anything
 if deployed in large enough numbers.

 As the Italians discovered at Taranto, the Americans at
 Pearl and the British off Malaya.

 But not according to Traveller rules.

 David Shaw

 On 08/10/14 22:42, Ian Whitchurch wrote:

 David,

 The thing is though, the weapon system on a Kate can really
 hurt a

 battleship if it hits it. Many point defense weapons make
 this unlikely,

 but you can counter this with many small craft, leading to
 an ecosystem of

 torpedo boat kills battleship kills cruiser kills torpedo
 boat destroyer

 kills torpedo boat.

 But the TL12 nuke damper pulled the teeth of the only weapon
 in Trav that

 could hurt a proper, armored, military ship.

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