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Dirigible **guided** bombing

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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by phillies   » Thu May 14, 2020 2:16 pm

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What is the problem with Christianity here? At the start of World War II for the United States, many Americans were delighted to hear about the (mythical) American pilot who flew his aircraft down the smokestack of a Japanese battleship into the ammunition compartment, detonating the ammunition and sinking the battleship Haruna.

The event, as it happens, did not occur. The BB Haruna lasted more or less until the end of the war. Readers should not try this with real aircraft that they are piloting. Battleships are not built that way.

Dilandu wrote:
SilverbladeTE wrote:

edit

after a quick search through the series, looks like I'm wrong, nothing mentioned against suicide by the Church in Safehold that I can find!
~


Yep. So the Safeholdians probably did not have European aversion to the idea of deliberate sacrifice for noble purpose. Which means, that if things went really bad, Charisians would not have much problem asking for volunteers, capable of guiding bomb to the end.

P.S. Actually, it may be quite... interesting plot element. Especially for Merlin, who is Christian. It would be really interesting to see, say, Cayleb & Merlin beliefs really clashes, because Cayleb would not see anything particularly outrageous with the idea of voluntary kamikaze (if the situation is dire enough, of course), but for Merlin it actually WOULD be outrageous.
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by doug941   » Thu May 14, 2020 7:36 pm

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[quote="phillies"]What is the problem with Christianity here? At the start of World War II for the United States, many Americans were delighted to hear about the (mythical) American pilot who flew his aircraft down the smokestack of a Japanese battleship into the ammunition compartment, detonating the ammunition and sinking the battleship Haruna.

The event, as it happens, did not occur. The BB Haruna lasted more or less until the end of the war. Readers should not try this with real aircraft that they are piloting. Battleships are not built that way.

That's saying it mildly. There is a famous photo taken less than 1 second before a Japanese pilot flew his Zero into the side of the Missouri. The plane's 250kg bomb did not go off but it's fuel started a small fire which was soon put out. The plane itself put a small dent into the side of the hull, which is still there today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0pGhHq6OqE
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Fri May 15, 2020 10:13 pm

Loren Pechtel
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phillies wrote:What is the problem with Christianity here? At the start of World War II for the United States, many Americans were delighted to hear about the (mythical) American pilot who flew his aircraft down the smokestack of a Japanese battleship into the ammunition compartment, detonating the ammunition and sinking the battleship Haruna.

The event, as it happens, did not occur. The BB Haruna lasted more or less until the end of the war. Readers should not try this with real aircraft that they are piloting. Battleships are not built that way.


There was one US kamikaze in WWII that I'm aware of--but it wasn't some great hero. Rather, his plane was damaged and he wasn't going to make it home. If he lumped the only possible rescue would be the Japanese and it would be unlikely they would stop for him. Since the best option was POW camp and the most likely was death anyway, he went for the clean death and hope to take the enemy with him.

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if it got amplified in the retelling.
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Oct 02, 2020 9:53 pm

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Loren Pechtel wrote:The thread considering dirigible gunships dismissed the idea of guided weapons because seeker heads are electric.

Or are they?

Consider the pigeon-guided bomb. You take a pigeon and train it to peck an image of your target. The bomb has optics that project an image on a screen in front of the pigeon, it pecks the ship, if the ship is off center the control surfaces of the bomb are adjusted.

Who cares?

You might be able to use a dirigible to bomb enemy surface warships.

But given that both dirigible and targets are moving, and likely in more than one dimension at a time, you get a variant of the issues involved in surface ship to ship gunnery. How close do you have to be to have a hope of actually hitting the enemy? How accurate can you be once you are, given that everything is moving?

The bit in AtSoT where Admiral Abhaht is conducting an exercise where a Charisian airship will attempt to bomb surface units, I thought he was thinking too small. Given the size of the bombs discussed as being developed, you don't use airships as bombers trying to bomb the enemy fleet. You use them to bomb perfectly stationary targets, like Imperial palaces, preferably when the Emperor is home to get the message personally. :P
______
Dennis
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by Dilandu   » Sat Oct 03, 2020 2:04 am

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DMcCunney wrote:Who cares?

You might be able to use a dirigible to bomb enemy surface warships.

But given that both dirigible and targets are moving, and likely in more than one dimension at a time, you get a variant of the issues involved in surface ship to ship gunnery. How close do you have to be to have a hope of actually hitting the enemy? How accurate can you be once you are, given that everything is moving?



Well, if you use glide bomb, than the distance could be more than 10-15 km. And since the pigeon-guided bomb is self-homing, the movement of the target are of no importance).
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by Keith_w   » Sat Oct 03, 2020 8:30 am

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Dilandu wrote:
Well, if you use glide bomb, than the distance could be more than 10-15 km. And since the pigeon-guided bomb is self-homing, the movement of the target are of no importance).


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

There are many times that I wish this site had a facebook-like "like" button. This is one of them.
--
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by Dilandu   » Sat Oct 03, 2020 2:21 pm

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Keith_w wrote:
There are many times that I wish this site had a facebook-like "like" button. This is one of them.


Interesting thing, is that after seriously considering the "Pigeon" project, I now think that non-electric pigeon-guided bomb is definitely possible. The whole guidance system for "Pigeon" bomb was non-electric: the image of target was projected on the screen in front of the pigeon using camera obscura system (narrow hole behind the focusing lens & dark chamber), and the pigeon pecks were transformed into commands using pneumatic relays on the sides on the screen. When pigeon pecked the center of the screen, the pressure in all pneumatic channels were the same. When pigeon pecked aside, the vanes on one side opened wider, and on the other side closed, so the balance was disrupted. The imbalance of pressure moved the membrane, connected through the lever with the gyro.

So, the main component - the pigeon-based seeker device - is, in fact, non-electric, and could be made on Safehold technological base rather handily. And while the actual "Project Pigeon" bomb used electric relays to relay the gyro position to servomotors, it isn't impossible to replace them with pneumatic, too.

In short - it is possible to build fully-pneumatic glide bomb, homed by the trained pigeon, which would be able to glide 10-15 km (maybe more, depend on aerodynamic) and hit moving maritime target. Or (the other possibility, explored during the "Project Pigeon") to seek and destroy specific building, which pigeon was trained to seek using a aerial photo of said building.
------------------------------

Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by werner2k   » Mon Oct 12, 2020 2:06 pm

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I may be late to this thread - but here my two cents concerning glide-bombs.
There are two no-goes - transfering steering-information with electricity as a carrier and using electrical servo-systems to adjust rudder, elevator and ailerons.
That prohibits fiber-optics, too, as you would need electronics within the bomb to convert light into usefull motion.
You could use pressure. Pressure does not propagate as fast as electricity, as it happens on molecular-level, but the guided bomb would target a ship (or bunker) and not a fighter.
instead of reeling off a fiber, a very thin hose could be used filled with oil (or a fiber of piezzo-crystals) to carry pressure-impulses to a logic-switch.
The actual actuators could powered by pressurised air from a tank. It would be slow and the number of manuvers would be limited - but we are talking about something like the hagelkorn not the hellfire-missile.
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Mon Oct 12, 2020 3:57 pm

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werner2k wrote:I may be late to this thread - but here my two cents concerning glide-bombs.
There are two no-goes - transfering steering-information with electricity as a carrier and using electrical servo-systems to adjust rudder, elevator and ailerons.
That prohibits fiber-optics, too, as you would need electronics within the bomb to convert light into usefull motion.
You could use pressure. Pressure does not propagate as fast as electricity, as it happens on molecular-level, but the guided bomb would target a ship (or bunker) and not a fighter.
instead of reeling off a fiber, a very thin hose could be used filled with oil (or a fiber of piezzo-crystals) to carry pressure-impulses to a logic-switch.
The actual actuators could powered by pressurised air from a tank. It would be slow and the number of manuvers would be limited - but we are talking about something like the hagelkorn not the hellfire-missile.


I don't believe you can use pressure to transmit a command through a lead that long and get a useful response time out of it. There's also the problem that you aren't on the bomb to actually see where it's heading.
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Re: Dirigible **guided** bombing
Post by phillies   » Mon Oct 12, 2020 9:20 pm

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To play the abominable no-man, SF fans are inordinately fond of ultra tech gadgets in this sort of situation, when near-tech would be far more useful. For example, practical barbed-wire appeared by 1873 (Glidden patent); having it appear 15 years earlier so it was in mass production by 1861 would drastically have changed the Civil War.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
werner2k wrote:I may be late to this thread - but here my two cents concerning glide-bombs.
There are two no-goes - transfering steering-information with electricity as a carrier and using electrical servo-systems to adjust rudder, elevator and ailerons.
That prohibits fiber-optics, too, as you would need electronics within the bomb to convert light into usefull motion.
You could use pressure. Pressure does not propagate as fast as electricity, as it happens on molecular-level, but the guided bomb would target a ship (or bunker) and not a fighter.
instead of reeling off a fiber, a very thin hose could be used filled with oil (or a fiber of piezzo-crystals) to carry pressure-impulses to a logic-switch.
The actual actuators could powered by pressurised air from a tank. It would be slow and the number of manuvers would be limited - but we are talking about something like the hagelkorn not the hellfire-missile.


I don't believe you can use pressure to transmit a command through a lead that long and get a useful response time out of it. There's also the problem that you aren't on the bomb to actually see where it's heading.
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