Originally posted by SadisticSid
Which warship?
I wasn't aware of your second point but it made a lot of sense to use main weapons against smaller targets if there were no larger ones around. If an 18" shell explodes in mid-air the shockwave is going to be enormous... and given how flimsy aircraft were (and still are) they'd be torn apart by a lucky hit.
Now now....B-17's, IL-2's, and P-47's were noteable for their heavy armor and incredible resilance to damage (there are stories of P-47's cliping telephone poles with their wings and flying back to England from occupied France making clean landings and the pilot landing without injury).
I'd say most modern day aircraft could not take the beating that some of the old WWII aircraft could. They were designed to take damage. What new aircraft tend to do is minimize non-lethal damage...but if you get hit with a missile or blasted with a proximity warhead it doesn't matter how much armor you've got...your plane is going to have a serious hole in it. Even the A-10's with titanium bathtubs for the pilot and reinforced armor virtually everywhere is going to get smoked by a missile.
WWII aircraft I think are much more sturdy than present day

Same with the ships...if a WWII battleship ever got into firing range of a Triconderoga missile cruiser, it'd get a pasting of a lifetime...on the other hand, the Triconderoga could probably smoke a battleship at 200 miles out

Sorry I'm rambling. What I think you actually want is a priority system? SO that heavy pulse weapons would put a priority on a cruiser instead of a small fighter while small guns would put a priority on small fighters instead of cruisers?