The Navy of God against Charis naval superiority

Dilandu wrote:

There's a lot of evidence that in his own initial design Jackie Fisher was looking less at long-range gunnery than at overwhelming weight of fire at short to moderate range.

Hm. Itn't it was Cuniberiti? Yes, Fisher liked big guns, but as i recall, initially (in XIX century) he thought that the "Renown" with her 10" guns were the perfect type. And frankly, the overwhelming weight of fire on short distances wasn't a "Dreadnought" strong side: the "Danton", or "Andrey Pervizvanny" or "Satsuma" were much more suitable.

Note that I said short [to moderate ranges, and, yes, Cuniberti wrote the initial article for [oi]Janes[/I]. He didn't devlop the concept in a vacuum, however, nor did Fisher endorse the Dreadnought design solely for the reasons Cuniberti set forth. With improvements in armor, the 9.2"-10" guns were losing effect even at the fairly moderate ranges expected in 1905, and there's very little evidence that Fisher was directly concerned with the similarities in shell splashes which would make spotting at longer ranges evident. It's also worth noting that he wasn't anywhere near as advanced in gunnery concepts --- initially, at least --- as Percy Scott was. The Americans were actually a bit ahead of him in that respect in 1905, although they lost ground on the Brits between about 1908 and 1916 (by which time WW I had intervened on the British side). What Fisher obviously did realize very early on was that uniform armament allowed a very heavy weight of fire and hugely simplified ammunition supply, and he effectively deleted the entire traditional secondary battery in favor of 12-pounders for anti-torpedo defense. He was focused on putting out the heaviest volume of fire from the heaviest guns he could put to sea and used the weight savings of the 12-pounders (in place of 6" and 9.2" guns) to add additional 12" guns. In the event, gunnery ranges ended up extending to ranges far beyond anything he (or anyone else, really) had visualized in 1905.

runsforcelery wrote:(It's worth noting that for all of his accomplishments, Fisher wasn't prescient across the board. For example, he thought 15" canister would be more effective at dealing with torpedo boats than a battery of 6" secondary guns.)

Dilandu wrote:Doesn't knew that at all. Thank you, RFC, for the valuable information!

Fisher insisted that the 12-pounder was adequate for stopping torpedo boats and was unwilling to sacrifice main armament to return to a heavier secondary armament. The Bellerophonns went back to a 4", but he held the line there, and it wasn't until the Iron Dukes that the decision to revert to a 6" secondary armament in response to the increasing size and toughness of DDs was sanctions. IIRC (and I'm not sure I do), Fisher was no longer First Lord when that decision was rammed through. He'd opposed it because he thought the 4" was adequate and that 13.5" and 15" shrapnel shells would be more effective than a 6" secondary (and because he refused to sanction the diversion of the extra displacement to carry the heavier secondaries from his golden trinity: speed, armor, and main battery.

In some ways, the various navies' approaches to their pre-dreadnoughts' and dreadnought's secondary armament is almost more fascinating than the debates over main armament. And, of course, there's the incredible attention paid to submerged broadside torpedo tubes, which ultimately proved about as useful as a carronade and compromised the ships' underwater protection dangerously. And then there was the unpleasant discover that you simply can't make a bulkhead watertight if it's pierced by scuttles for passing coal that can be sprung or warped by shock effect once the ship takes a hit. This minor problem sort of undermined the arguments in favor of retaining coal over oil because of the way the coal bunkers could be used to provide additional "armor" protection. Oh, the stories Dialandu and I could tell you guys!

Believe me, I've still got lots of tactical blind alleys I can send various unnamed Safeholdian realms down!

runsforcelery wrote:]My point in this instance, though, is that Dilandu knows his stuff, and as long as he's willing to accept that the naval developments on Safehold are going to follow the path of my choosing, my skin is thick enough to tolerate an occasional "Mary Sue" reference.

Dilandu wrote:Thanks! I'll try to not go off the borders.

Thank you for a lot of information! Looks like the "Dreadnought" way to life was even more complicated that i thought!

In some ways, the various navies' approaches to their pre-dreadnoughts' and dreadnought's secondary armament is almost more fascinating than the debates over main armament.

Oh, in this i agree completely. Especially in 1890-1900th, when the intermediate calibre appeared, and the problem "how to place three idfferent types of guns on one ship in the way, that they all would have at least SOME fire arc" stand...

as I suggested, I think some "lateral thinking" and proverbial "asymmetric warfare" may end up being a real pain in the arse for Charis, rather than "Big Ship battles"

if the I can well imagine an unholy combo of Siddarmark Junta and Desnair coming up with something like small, fast, speedboats, as there's no reason they cannot innovate!
then sell them to Harchong

load 'em up with dynamite
someone's bound to work out nitration with all the examples now available to be investigated, or, Charis should sell the formula because it's absolutely essential to industrialisation, as road, canal, quarry, mining etc is such a vital corner stone for advancement and the amount of explosives needed is VAST, well beyond Charis ability to supply!

and then the rather obsessed Emperor of South Harchong would get "volunteers" to do suicide attacks, coastal raids and commerce raiding using them and "Mother ships"
amongst OTHER possibilities
like stealthily mining important waterways

While Zhyou-Zhwo's advisors want to build a "risko flotte", to basically give the Emperor something to shut him the hell up before he does something dangerous!
The problem is, he may well do something "dangerous" eventually, especially when backed by the rather troublesome South Harchong counter to the "old" bureaucrats (sorry I forget the name of noble in question, but he's a bit of a stalking horse and a major fly in the ointment for everyone)

The Emperor is slowly running out of time and thus, patience.

If you KNOW your fleet isn't up to a conventional battle, you have to come up with a new outlook entirely.
and that means, from the ground up.

Why not design ships understanding their longevity in battle will be short?
make their engines on that basis and you can trade robustness for power
I'm no steam or naval engineer, but there's plenty of bright sparks in Safehold.
Imagine engines who's longevity is measured in days or even hours of operation, trading off for speed or less weight or whatever
normally, you'd never do that a it's nuts, but if you did...?
And Charis's enemies aren't exactly sane, nor do they have all the facts of history the Inner Circle do, ergo, they would make choices we most assuredly wouldn't in normal circumstances, but this isn't normal, is it?

Risking major ships vs Charis is a very bad idea at present, but a lot of gun boats and destroyers and maybe someone invents torpedoes, or uses minefields, heck, creating their own fields of free floating mines during a battle to "corral" enemies?
If you can't pierce Charisian armour, blow out their vulnerable bottoms, using lots of small "mine boats" deployed just before battle!

there could even be peculiar possibilities based on Charis being an alien world!
Apart from the use of draught dragons and the ability of Wyverns to carry messages and even the wyvern's homing is the result of Human bio-engineering, the potentials of this aren't really explored alas, and that is I think, a serious shame and oversight.

Imagine if a Safeholdian plant extract could...reduce aluminium out of ore without the need of electricity?
Imagine Charis's enemies firing naval shells loaded with a rubber and thermite mix...rather nastily effective and very destructive incendiary shells.
Kind of hard to shoot accurately when your ship's wreathed in smoke and heat warps gun barrels!
or building their own Zeppelins with aluminium.
Of course, that's on the more "Very Unlikely" side of things , but hey alien biospheres may produce odd things?

Much more likely however, could be Safeholdian glues and woods allowing gun boats and dirigibles to approach 20th century versions.
or, not germane to this this topic but to over all military balance of power...poison gasses.

The Inner Circle are moral and avoid such horrors, but no reason to stop folk of such unbridled hate as Mahrys and Zhyou-Zhwo.
Fire vine oil is toxic (it's smoke too, iirc?), maybe too volatile to be used in the confines/friction etc of a normal naval shell, but it would make one hell of a nasty incendiary/poison shell for a mortar or dirigible!
other Safeholdian materials maybe worse.

Hm, what about a very large mortar, as a multi purpose ship or army weapon, hurling thin walled canisters of fire vine oil with low velocity and so large capacity, that could be damn nasty.
or if they can develop the tech, high explosives
or other materials?
it might not be the best compared to a well designed Charisian cruiser, but if they can actually build them and make them cheap and effective enough, and in numbers....

Think about the spigot mortars used as antisubmarine weapons?
very short range but able ot throw many weapons at once

Would Zhyou-Zhwo give a damn if such ships/tactics would have very casualty rates? Pfft, no!
Long as they can finally sink Charisians, he'd be happy.

Dilandu posted elsewhere that large rockets aren't likely as occurred in TFT, I have no idea on such things
but would it be impossible to have large, short ranged rockets like that armed with explosives, fire vine oil, or whatever as a special ship-mounted weapon?
Bombardment ships deluged Normandy beaches with literally a thousand rocket salvos (and yes I know they had air and sea superiority)
yes, suicidal if your ship gets hit with THAT load on deck, but if you have a bunch of rocket-armed small, cheap ships...

If you have a very angry Emperor breathing down YOUR neck, you may coem up with some rather crazy things ot appease him

SilverbladeTE wrote:as I suggested, I think some "lateral thinking" and proverbial "asymmetric warfare" may end up being a real pain in the arse for Charis, rather than "Big Ship battles"

if the I can well imagine an unholy combo of Siddarmark Junta and Desnair coming up with something like small, fast, speedboats, as there's no reason they cannot innovate!
then sell them to Harchong

load 'em up with dynamite
someone's bound to work out nitration with all the examples now available to be investigated, or, Charis should sell the formula because it's absolutely essential to industrialisation, as road, canal, quarry, mining etc is such a vital corner stone for advancement and the amount of explosives needed is VAST, well beyond Charis ability to supply!

and then the rather obsessed Emperor of South Harchong would get "volunteers" to do suicide attacks, coastal raids and commerce raiding using them and "Mother ships"
amongst OTHER possibilities
like stealthily mining important waterways

Motorboats required internal combustion engines. They do not work exactly well with steam. Torpedo boats were NOT motorboats - they were small, fast, but still quite "complete" ships, with decks, superstructure, ect.

P.S. Considering "suicide" attacks - the most effective explosive motorboats, Italian ones (please do NOT underestimate Italian navy...), were not suicide crafts. The pilot was situated on the rear, and just before attack run ditched into water. Boats themselves were designed to immediately sunk upon contact with enemy ship, so their explosive charge (usually some depth charges) would detonate underwater, causing "water hammer" damage.

SilverbladeTE wrote:
If you KNOW your fleet isn't up to a conventional battle, you have to come up with a new outlook entirely.
and that means, from the ground up.

Well, this was basically the Jeune Ecole thinking... and you know what? Those guys were right) Not in all details, but their main assumption - that the conventional "sea battle" would be replaced with "continuous influence" across the wast battlespace, and that the naval war would essentially be about wrecking the opponent communications, not merely destroying his battlefleet - in that they were completely right.

I'm no steam or naval engineer, but there's plenty of bright sparks in Safehold.

Please, RFC would never allow to any of them appear outside the Good Guys circles!

Risking major combatants vs Chris is a bad idea at present, but a lot of gun boats and destroyers and maybe someone invents torpedoes, or uses minefields, heck, creating their own fields of free floating mines during a battle to "corral" enemies?

Usually the light forces worked best in combination with major combatants. For example, the battleship could relatively easy ward off the attack of unsupported destroyers, by simply turning away from them and forcing them into stern chase (i.e. the long chase), while using all her guns against them. But if destroyers are supported by their own side battleships - the situation changes, because enemy battleship now forced to dealt with her heavy opponent. She could neither concentrate solely on destroyers, nor maneuver freely. She is forced to divide her firepower & capabilities between dueling the enemy battleships, and warding off the destroyers.

Imagine if a Safeholdian plant extract could...reduce aluminium out of ore without the need of electricity?

I really doubt this would work. Why anybody need such a plant? Langhorne certainly would not greenlight it, and it doesn't make any sense for Shain-Wei to do it either. Aluminium is generally useless for pre-electric society.

Imagine Charis's enemies firing naval shells loaded with a rubber and thermite mix...rather nastily effective and very destructive incendiary shells.

...Just use simple ballistic gelatine. It would work well.

or building their own Zeppelins with aluminium.

Nah, RFC would never allow Bad Guys to have better tech than Good Guys.

Of course, that's on the more "Unlikely" side of things, but hey alien biospheres may produce very odd things?

For what reason? The Safeholdian plant biology doesn't seems to be so completely different from Earth one. Let's not forget: aluminum is a powerful contaminant in soil. Plants that would absorb aluminum would contaminate soil rather heavily around.

or, not germane to this this topic but to over all military balance of power...poison gasses.

The Inner Circle are moral and avoid such horrors

Oh please! There is nothing exactly "horrific" about combat gasses, as long as they are used on battlefield. Napalm is pretty bad also - but does this prohibit US from using it?

Fire vine oil is toxic (it's smoke too, iirc?), maybe too volatile to be used in the confines/friction etc of a naval shell, but it would make one hell of a nasty incendiary/poison shell for a mortar or dirigible!
other Safeholdian materials maybe worse.

Doubt that it would work...

Hm, what about a very large mortar, say 14" or more calibre, as a ship or shore based weapon, hurling thin walled canisters of fire vine oil with low velocity and so large capacity, that could be damn nasty.

Something like that?

https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2016-09 ... vius-4.jpg

IMHO, of course, but if I have a free run in inventing unpleasant surprises for Charisians , I would probably go with dynamite cannons. The ballistic gelatin is not exactly the best of high explosives available, but it could be delivered in quantities... enough, to cause significant damage just by heavy shock. And while the dynamite guns are not exactly compact, they are almost recoil-less, noise-less and flash-less, and so they could be put on relatively compact units.

Yes, they aren't exactly long-range weapon. But still, Zalinski 15-inch pneumatic gun was able to send a 50-pound shell on 4500 yards. For pre-electric fire control of Charisian warships (no Dreyer tables, no effective communications - no centralized fire control... mechanical Dumaresq as possibly the best thing they really have), 5000 yards is a "long" distance. And, of course, there are such good things as night attacks... where having flash-less and noise-less weapon, capable of quietly lobbing enormous explosives on enemy decks is VERY advantageous...

So, I would suggest for Dohlar Gulf fleets (South Harchong, ect.) a combination of torpedo boats (with spar or towed torpedoes), dynamite gun cruisers, and probably "Elswick"-type, heavy-gun protected cruisers.

Dilandu wrote:

SilverbladeTE wrote:as I suggested, I think some "lateral thinking" and proverbial "asymmetric warfare" may end up being a real pain in the arse for Charis, rather than "Big Ship battles"

if the I can well imagine an unholy combo of Siddarmark Junta and Desnair coming up with something like small, fast, speedboats, as there's no reason they cannot innovate!
then sell them to Harchong

load 'em up with dynamite
someone's bound to work out nitration with all the examples now available to be investigated, or, Charis should sell the formula because it's absolutely essential to industrialisation, as road, canal, quarry, mining etc is such a vital corner stone for advancement and the amount of explosives needed is VAST, well beyond Charis ability to supply!

and then the rather obsessed Emperor of South Harchong would get "volunteers" to do suicide attacks, coastal raids and commerce raiding using them and "Mother ships"
amongst OTHER possibilities
like stealthily mining important waterways

Motorboats required internal combustion engines. They do not work exactly well with steam. Torpedo boats were NOT motorboats - they were small, fast, but still quite "complete" ships, with decks, superstructure, ect.

P.S. Considering "suicide" attacks - the most effective explosive motorboats, Italian ones (please do NOT underestimate Italian navy...), were not suicide crafts. The pilot was situated on the rear, and just before attack run ditched into water. Boats themselves were designed to immediately sunk upon contact with enemy ship, so their explosive charge (usually some depth charges) would detonate underwater, causing "water hammer" damage.

I know the Italian's did a very good job of NON suicidal attacks on British & Allied shipping, but hey, radar at Malta stuffed that one gutsy escapade up for the Italians

Zhyou-Zhwo and others however, in our fictional universe, don't have such scruples, however
Though, making such attacks less suicidal and more "well if you survive we'll give you riches!" may make it more palatable to the crew who gets "volunteered"

and yeah "Turbinia" wasn't exactly a "little boat"
start of the "destroyers" as it were.

However, Safehold now has small, very good steam engines that are effectively much akin to diesel engines, ok, low RPM but very high torque
"Praigyr engines" (based on real life "Doble" engines), so, that will give some clever folk ideas.
Charis is exporting steam trucks etc
Sure as heck someone will improve, come up with their own designs and make gear boxes and...high RPMs for speed boats will follow

if all you have is steam, and you have a WORLD of talent that's suddenly allowed to make things, because the Emperors and Junta want to win...well, we saw what happened with innovation the last war, didn't we?
It's certain someone would come up with better steam engines.
The move away from steam drained talent and investment so steam engine tech stalled for best part of a century, but that won't happen on Safehold as you can't make electric spark plugs etc without getting a Kinetic Bombrdment enema

Non-electric Diesel engines may come though and can be used for boats, but that's a "maybe". Steam is for sure on Safehold.


and as I allude to, the rulers do not think rationally, that itself gives rise to scary outcomes, ick!
The Japanese drive into Asia and the Philippines in WW2 was complete insane, they didn't have the numbers and crucially the logistics to support that barmy murder and invasion spree
But they still DID it and got away with so much partially because the Allies leadership was so horrendously inept and no one thought anyone could be that damned insane...but they were.
Betting an enemy won't pull some insane or dumb thing off, isn't wise.
"If it's stupid and it works, it isn't stupid"
and the Emperors etc aren't really brilliant long-term planners, are they?

SilverbladeTE wrote:
However, Safehold now has small, very good steam engines that are effectively much akin to diesel engines, ok, low RPM but very high torque
"Praigyr engines" (based on real life "Doble" engines), so, that will give some clever folk ideas.
Charis is exporting steam trucks etc
Sure as heck someone will improve, come up with their own designs and make gear boxes and...high RPMs for speed boats will follow

The compact steam engines existed since mid-XIX century, and by the 1880s they were of very advanced & effective type. Still, they weren't exactly suitable for motorboats, due to inherited low efficienty. Also, the hydrodynamic questions arise.

The Japanese drive into Asia and the Philippines in WW2 was complete insane, they didn't have the numbers and crucially the logistics to support that barmy murder and invasion spree

Well, their initial idea was basically to grab as much as they could, and then hold their ground until USA would feel exhausted by crunching through Japanese defenses, and would be willing to negotiate. They never actually prepared for too big campaign; their ideas always rotated about "what we could grab quickly, and then bargain for?"

But they still DID it and got away with so much partially because the Allies leadership was so horrendously inept and no one thought anyone could be that damned insane...but they were.

Not exactly. The loss of Philippines and Singapore was anticipated long before the war. USN quietly (because it was not the idea that public would like...) decided that it is impossible to support Philippines in case of war with Japan, so there would not be any reason to even try. Royal Navy also generally agreed that they haven't got resources for Singapore-based strategy to work, and considered it more as deterrence, than as real war-fighting plan. Anyway, by 1941 it was obvious that Britain simply could not spare enough ships to even deter the Japanese.

Dilandu wrote:IMHO, of course, but if I have a free run in inventing unpleasant surprises for Charisians , I would probably go with dynamite cannons. The ballistic gelatin is not exactly the best of high explosives available, but it could be delivered in quantities... enough, to cause significant damage just by heavy shock. And while the dynamite guns are not exactly compact, they are almost recoil-less, noise-less and flash-less, and so they could be put on relatively compact units.

Yes, they aren't exactly long-range weapon. But still, Zalinski 15-inch pneumatic gun was able to send a 50-pound shell on 4500 yards. For pre-electric fire control of Charisian warships (no Dreyer tables, no effective communications - no centralized fire control... mechanical Dumaresq as possibly the best thing they really have), 5000 yards is a "long" distance. And, of course, there are such good things as night attacks... where having flash-less and noise-less weapon, capable of quietly lobbing enormous explosives on enemy decks is VERY advantageous...

So, I would suggest for Dohlar Gulf fleets (South Harchong, ect.) a combination of torpedo boats (with spar or towed torpedoes), dynamite gun cruisers, and probably "Elswick"-type, heavy-gun protected cruisers.

"Ballistic gelatin"
do you mean the explosive, "gelignite"? (which is its 'more common British name)
think translation issues there
ballistic gelatin is for testing projectiles as it resembles flesh
BLASTING GELATIN is something else, nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine etc mix


ok, that sounds like a great mix of ships/systems!
well, a fun read, not so fun for Charis, lol
yeah I'm not in favour of the "big slugging matches" some folk like for big warships or tanks against each other
war is about survival, you do what it takes to win and thus be smart about it


there are issues with poison gasses, but long topic and unpleasant, a primary point is they contaminate where they are made, stored and used which makes them bloody stupid things to use, really.
another is they are likely causes of epidemics to break out because they weaken the immune system of so many men, reasonable bet the Spanish 1918 Flu got so bad because of the poor healthof so many men in the trenches, mustard gas is very bad for victim's immune systems

I would say incendiaries are legitimate weapons on the battlefield, yes
but white phosphorous should be banned
napalm kills most of it's poor victims somewhat quickly, ick! *shudders*
White phosphorous on the other hand takes many hours, days...or weeks...that is seriously sadistic.


PS
yes I know, Churchill, in one of his asshole moves, did promote the use of poison gas in the Russian Civil War and in Iraq...sigh.