And some more random pictures.

And three not-so-random ones.

>>7102 To build on this: is it possible to adapt a smoothbore tank cannon into a dual-purpose gun? Not that the effort would worth it for any established navy of a decent size, but the Germans already decided to replace most of their autocannons with a 27mm aircraft gun, and there was that one time when they put the turret of a Panzerhaubitze 2000 on a ship.

How long until we start seeing railguns in combat? also is the "only gay if you're at port" meme true

>>7142 Possible? Entirely. It likely won't be as effective as a purpose designed gun, and smoothbore to begin with has problems in smaller bores (far less boom), but at short ranges it could work. The important part is the mounting moreso than the gun, the mounting would have to be entirely original to the naval platform, otherwise you'll have to deal with leaks and other water-related issues the gun housing wasn't designed for. >>7146 They theoretically could be used now in their smaller, short ranged CIWS forms. The long range gun is possible in the next 3 to 5 years (plus however long it takes for combat to arrive) but that's been true for over 10 years — BAE has royally fucked up the USN's Rail Gun. The US Army's Rail Gun seems to work as they wanted it to, but they literally only built it to spite the Navy and have no intention of fielding it. >spoiler Depends on the era and nationality. In the era of sail, most Anglo sailors - including Americans - would tear you limb from limb for making moves at them anywhere, ship or shore. Spaniards and the Portuguese believed the Holy Ghost was watching them very closely to perform last rites if they died on the waters away from a priest, requiring them to act as virtual saints since the Holy Ghost knew not mercy. Since steam and iron, though, the natural pool of sailors dried up and the navies began drawing in persons of strange preferences, essentially turning a blond eye if they'd isolate themselves far and away from the general public. Like say in the middle of the ocean. And so sodomy and the lash fueled the Royal Navy.

>>7147 >The US Army's Rail Gun seems to work as they wanted it to, but they literally only built it to spite the Navy and have no intention of fielding it. That sounds like something straight out of the Japanese Empire. Is this a result of serious interservice rivalry, or is there a history to railguns that we don't know about?

>>7155 >Is this a result of serious interservice rivalry, or is there a history to railguns that we don't know about? There is a bit of interservice rivalry going on there, but a majority of it is the fact the Army had already designed working CIWS Railguns as far back as the '90s (see: Cannon-Caliber Electromagnetic Gun Launcher) and the Navy was forced to work with BAE. BAE completely ignored all of the prior American research and decided to reinvent the wheel, so they've been running into (and getting stumped by) the same problems that the US Army already overcame 20-25 years before. So, after watching BAE flail around like fish out of water for 10 years, the Army decided to design and build their own Medium Bore Railgun, since BAE was jeopardizing the perceived legitimacy of their prior work. Having something to gloat over the Navy with was icing on the cake, but everyone involved jokingly claimed that was the number one reason. The Blitzer Railgun worked exactly as intended, with Intermediate and Large versions not far behind. They even offered the systems to the Navy, and the Navy actually tried to abandon the BAE contract in favor of the Army's (General Atomics) design. But, according to Engineering scuttlebutt, BAE threw an international hissyfit and got the UK directly involved in the ordeal. The US Gov. values the special relationship a little too much, so the Navy's plea was immediately squashed. This is BAE's go-to behavior any time they cause any problems in US Mil design - they even did it with the F35, which should tell you where several of the problems in that clusterfuck came from. On the Army's part, they aren't really interested in deploying the Railgun because the system takes up almost the same logistical footprint as the Strategic Long Range Cannon.

>>7146 The cross-section of gay people on a ship is roughly equivalent to the cross-section of gay people in the US. People don't just start butt-fucking each other because there's no women around. Sex on the ship is generally uncommon and somewhat difficult to pull off, depending on the platform. You just remain straight and frustrated.

Were CCs never viable or was their lacklustre service record a result of misuse as wannabe BBs during WW2?

>>7376 Battlecrusiers in their original use as AC killers were fine but they didn't perform that well by WW1 never mind WW2: the problem is once everyone else had dumped armoured cruisers they had no target that wasn't wild overkill so all you had in a fleet engagement is a faster battleship who couldn't stand in the line of battle and couldn't use its superior speed without outrunning any support. The fast battleship concept the USN went for eventually which the UK also considered and dropped due to BC autism earlier on, while more expensive, worked out better. By even the 1910s Commerce raiding could be done better by super cheap light cruisers which BCs are overkill to hunt down, armed merchants/Q-Ships or eventually by submarines and then the only reason for a BC to exist over more LCs and BBs is hunting down other BCs which is just silly. > a result of misuse as wannabe BBs It's hard to see what other use there could be for them is the problem.

>>7376 The problem with Battlecruisers was their misuse as wannabe BB during WW1, not WW2. As heavy raid units against ports, enemy cruiser fleets, or whatnot, Battlecruisers performed admirably. A good example of successful Battlecruisers are the Kongou-class in WW2, ironically after the Japanese called them Battleships, the Japanese utilized them as the centers of aggressive pushes (the role of a Battlecruiser, not a Battleship). This of course failed in the end because the Americans countered with Battleships in one case and a few Destroyers that pulled off miracles in the other, but before that they ran wild and were actually the US' #1 Targets. Specifically because the USN knew that the Japanese could and would make extremely good use of them. What absolutely killed the entire Battlecruiser Concept (which the USN and the Soviets stealth tried to revive in and immediately after WW2 with the CBs) also killed the classical Cruiser: Carriers completely supplanted the Cruiser in the role of attack.

>>7380 The question is what of those roles a heavy cruiser or multiple light cruisers couldn't do better or more economically.

>>7383 Shelling an airfield that was 18 miles away from the coast or threatening enemy fast response fleets, usually centered around Heavy Cruisers, as they were designed to do. If you are committing equal forces to fight equal forces, you're either short on warpower or you are a complete and utter buffoon. Before the take over of the Carrier and the introduction of the Fast Battleships, the US and UK were ironically extremely vulnerable to CC action, since both fielded large numbers of CAs and generally relied on slower Massed Battle-line Defensive Fleets (slower by up to as much as 12 knots). Therefore, the Battleships wouldn't be there to fight them, since the Strike Fleet would outrun the defensive fleet and still manage to strike something (especially against England). In theory at least, it never happened because Germany thought that their Battlecruisers should be Defensive assets instead of Offensive assets... The Japanese managed to pull it off at Henderson, however, until the US committed the Fast Battleships - internationally considered a completely insane move at the time - and blunted the Japanese push through the slot.

>>7385 >Shelling an airfield that was 18 miles away from the coast By the time airfields were worth shelling and naval gunfire could achieve that reliably you could just strike it with planes instead unless you have such overwhelming naval superiority that a BB could do the job as effectively but more slowly. >or threatening enemy fast response fleets, usually centered around Heavy Cruisers, as they were designed to do. They were designed originally to deal with Armoured Cruisers, not Heavy Cruisers. Different things HC is a LC++ not a modern CA. Undoubtedly they could deal with Heavy Cruisers as well but that's really just overkill. >If you are committing equal forces to fight equal forces, you're either short on warpower or you are a complete and utter buffoon. If you want local superiority you could also just commit more Heavy Cruisers than the opponent since you could afford more if you weren't throwing cash into BCs. >Before the take over of the Carrier and the introduction of the Fast Battleships, the US and UK were ironically extremely vulnerable to CC action, since both fielded large numbers of CAs and generally relied on slower Massed Battle-line Defensive Fleets (slower by up to as much as 12 knots). It made some sense for the North Atlantic where seas were rougher and fleet battles likely to be far closer (the Mediterranean was calmer but also had close up action) but yes you can see that the RN got savaged any time it sailed capital ships into the pacific without air cover. However that fucked over unsupported BCs too. >Therefore, the Battleships wouldn't be there to fight them, since the Strike Fleet would outrun the defensive fleet and still manage to strike something (especially against England). The problem with that is you then have to resupply and eventually make it back to a friendly port and larger ships are harder to supply + have less available ports and you better believe the other side knows which it can use. Resupplying light cruisers is far easier, you can be in more places at once and it's far less of a loss if one gets caught. When you're blowing up merchant shipping it doesn't matter you've got less guns.

>>7414 >By the time airfields were worth shelling and naval gunfire could achieve that reliably you could just strike it with planes The Airfield comment was in reference to the historical bombardments of Henderson. I've been clear that CVs (and by implication WW2 era fixed wing aircraft) obsoleted CCs. However, you are ignoring the difficulty of pulling off an air strike mission against a well defended airbase that is basically made a laughing stock of by night raids by large bore guns before true Radar-based Aircraft Direction became a thing late war. Hell, the US actually pulled it off against the Japanese more than once too with their Fast BBs. >They were designed originally to deal with Armoured Cruisers, not Heavy Cruisers. They were designed to deal with anything smaller than themselves, the concept was flexible as Jackie Fisher wasn't an idiot. Stop being pedantic. >but that's really just overkill. The mere fact you invoke overkill as a negative shows how little you know about Naval Warfare in the 20th century. Overkill was the only way to be sure of anything, and even that isn't certain - a single small, obsolete US DD (almost) from WW1 took an entire Japanese Battle Fleet over 2 hours to sink. >If you want local superiority you could also just commit more Heavy Cruisers than the opponent since you could afford more if you weren't throwing cash into BCs. The HMS Hood cost the equivalency of $30.2 million USD of 1943, adjusted for inflation. But leaving it at that would be a little disingenuous, so instead of the Hood if you want to try to use the fiasco of the US' Alaska-class for a more contemporary example (since the Hood cost was 'as built', and not 'as would have been modernized'), the Alaska-class cost all of $58 million per unit, complete. The USS Baltimore cost roughly $45 million USD (of 1943), including the gunnery. The USS Des Moines (funded in 1943, so it counts) cost $62 million. Yes, more than the Alaska. You're not getting much more than 4 CAs for every 3 CCs/CBs you cancel. Obviously manpower becomes an issue, but neither the US nor England cared about that at the time, since they had reserves. >It made some sense for the North Atlantic where seas were rougher and fleet battles likely to be far closer (the Mediterranean was calmer but also had close up action) but yes you can see that the RN got savaged any time it sailed capital ships into the pacific without air cover. However that fucked over unsupported BCs too. Again, it's been a clear point that CVs hard-obsoleted CCs. >The problem with that is you then have to resupply and eventually make it back to a friendly port and larger ships are harder to supply + have less available ports Anything Panamax or smaller could harbor at every single medium sized port in the US and England, including holdings. You know, the things they had dotted almost every 100 miles along their shorelines, often closer to 50. Resupplying could be done from any 'small' port via auxiliary assist. Furthermore, both the US and UK already used Underway Replenishment by 1923, so their ships didn't even need to go to port to resupply at all, nor even to bring relief personnel - they could theoretically stay at sea until they needed to return to home port for maintenance. Even the Japanese had figured out how to do all of that by 1935. >When you're blowing up merchant shipping it doesn't matter you've got less guns. Merchant Raiding with Heavy Surface Assets was a near uniquely German thing, Strelok - the UK. US, and Japan all used (or intended to use) CC/CBs to attack military assets virtually exclusively outside of blockades, considering it a complete waste to send anything heavier than a Scout Cruiser after a Merchant. You're trying to force Tirpitzian or Raederian mentality on Fisherian/Mahanian navies. And just to nip off the obvious pro-CL argument, a single 1935 Brooklyn-class CL cost the US $35 million (adj for 1943), with the Clevelands costing even more. You were not magically getting 2 hulls out of 1 CC even with that.

>>7147 >smoothbore to begin with has problems in smaller bores (far less boom) Is it due to higher muzzle velocities in general, or something else? And to take a few steps back: is there a future for naval guns in the 3 inch to 8 inch category? With guided shells it seems like they could effectively replace a lot of AA systems (potentially even CIWS).

>>7562 >Is it due to higher muzzle velocities in general, or something else? Small to medium bore smoothbore cannon essentially requires Fin Stabilization, which basically means a sabot shell. Sabot shells mean that the effective bore size of the shell is actually quite a bit smaller than it would seem. There is a reason why HE shells are not carried by most tanks anymore despite the continued desire for infantry support guns - the cannon. The US Army actually experimented with an HE shell for the Rh-120 and determined that the result was less satisfactory than the old M4 Sherman's 75mm gun. That's the reason the US Army keeps reviving the 105mm gun in different platforms. Against aerial targets, primarily missiles and drones anymore, an HE burst effect is essentially a must, since otherwise you need to be able to spit out hundreds of shells in 10 or so seconds to have likely hits, which precludes most cannon above 30mm - even 40mm AA uses HE burst. >is there a future for naval guns in the 3 inch to 8 inch category? For 3in/76.2mm guns, they already have a role in AA. See DART; Leonardo insists that the shells have a comparable 'real' performance to the RAM. Technically, even the 5in guns have roles in AA. Studies exist which suggest that a ship armed with a heavy secondary battery of 5in guns using burst shells would effectively be able to shut down entire massed missile barrages FAR more reliable than anti-missile missiles. However, that's a manpower intensive, large ship method that no modern navy wants to do since it's entirely a wartime exercise - too much focus on humanitarian junk in modern navies, and they all forget their primary purpose is to kill the enemy. 6in/155mm is theoretically as 5in, but untapped. 8in you could theoretically fire guided missiles/rockets from as an AA platform; but personally, I'd rather seem them as shore bombardment platforms. So, short answer, yes... IF someone with the money and power is willing to challenge the standing missile-aircraft zeitgeist before lasers kill them.

>>7573 >Small to medium bore smoothbore cannon essentially requires Fin Stabilization, which basically means a sabot shell. One more point to the Russkies then, because they seem to solved this issue. >So, short answer, yes... IF someone with the money and power is willing to challenge the standing missile-aircraft zeitgeist before lasers kill them. So an all gun ship would work beautifully, although not as well as one that also has lasers. Still, between this and scramjet shells I have to wonder what's left for missiles. The obvious answer would be small missile boats that are supposed to punch above their weight, but it sounds like even a fleet of them couldn't carry enough missiles to hurt a modern battleship.

>>7590 >One more point to the Russkies then, because they seem to solved this issue. Valid. Their method still results in a massive decrease in payload in comparison to a full-body shell, even though it's better than a sabot shell (at the cost of muzzle velocity, but that's a negligible cost for HE). Additionally, it doesn't have the added danger of sabots flying everywhere, I'll give them that. >So an all gun ship would work beautifully, although not as well as one that also has lasers. Theoretically. Although at a certain point, your guns are basically firing missiles. >Still, between this and scramjet shells I have to wonder what's left for missiles. Modern equivalent to WW2 Torpedoes. Short range high-hypersonic missiles with massive payloads could destroy sensors, defensive weaponry, or other external equipment. Could. Additionally, Missiles would still be good for when you absolutely had to put the biggest warhead on target that you could barring nukes, or it you want to MIRV an area. >but it sounds like even a fleet of them couldn't carry enough missiles to hurt a modern battleship. It's an issue of cost, really. You could, with today's technology level (although R&D would be required to apply said technology), build an near invulnerable battleship that would shrug off anything short of a castle bomb , the cost of such a thing would bankrupt the navies of essentially every major nation except the US - and even they would take 20+ years to pay for it (assuming the maintenance of the rest of the navy). You reduce the protectiveness of the ship, and you reduce the cost. Etc, etc.

>>7377 >The fast battleship concept the USN went for eventually which the UK also considered and dropped due to BC autism earlier on But wasn't the G3 a fast battleship in all but name? It easily outclassed most battleships of the era in firepower and protection while still being faster than many battlecruisers? Yes, there was the N3, but they only started to design that ship as a battleship equivalent based on the G3. >>7592 >You reduce the protectiveness of the ship, and you reduce the cost. Etc, etc. Could that process lead to a modern battlecruiser? Basically a ship that is not entirely invulnerable, but still carries decent armour to stop smaller threats and enough AA weapons to shrug off a few waves of missiles.

>>7594 >But wasn't the G3 a fast battleship in all but name? Technically, no. Because there is A LOT more to Protection of a warship than just slapping an armor belt to the outside of the hull. The G3s were 'Heavy' Battlecruisers in the vein of the HMS Hood (as built). Armor and Firepower equivalent to the latest in Battleships, but severely lacking in the internal compartmentalization and structural reinforcements required to suitably withstand post-penetration damage. The extremely large boiler-turbines of the '20s required for such speeds did NOT allow for good central compartmentalization. To put it another way, it would have the same threshold to reject shellfire, but shellfire that did get through would do a lot more damage. This was rightfully considered entirely unacceptable to the Royal Navy for their main battle line. Completely acceptable for their aggressive cruiser line, however. >Could that process lead to a modern battlecruiser? 100% yes. I've been an advocate for modern Battlecruisers replacing the Ticos on a 1:4 basis as they age out for going on 30 years. You wouldn't even need super-armor like CNP nor synthetics such as Kevlar Belts, just 6in of common HY-80 steel for armor plating and you'd have near immunity to roughly 80% of all anti-ship missiles in the world beyond systems and topside damage. Furthermore, people - especially shipside personnel who should know better - vastly underestimate the ability of CIWS systems like the Phalanx when massed. I'm just going to say right now, General Dynamics never said that one Phalanx mount per coverage area was ideal. If they thought that, I really want to know why they immediately designed a heavy coverage system (called the Legion) which involved at minimum 3 CIWS units per quadrant. I digress, however. My point being that absolutely, yes, with present and well understood technology, you could have a Battlecruiser that does its actual job. Hell, the Russians were 8/10ths of the way there with the Kirovs as Missile Battlecruisers, just lacking armor.

To what degree could the current day EU sustain maritime trade via purpose-built merchant submarines in the event of a USN blockade?

>>7629 Depends on how far are you willing to take that lunatic train. But, alas, the answer is to no degree. Even if europeans decided they would build nuclear unmanned merchant submarines, the americans would just make the ports and port facilities disappear before hunting down the subs themselves.

I'll just leave this here

>>7638 I assume that's some kind of a proving-ground test a manufacturer performs before delivering a carrier?

>>7629 When not paying any attention to the eco-terrorist idiot organizations like PETA, the USN is actually surprisingly good at ASW That requires constant sonar blasting, though, which 'kills the fish' and gets the idiots up in arms, which in turn got Congress on the navy's asses about them 'killing the dolphins', who then forced them to do sonar drills in simulator only. Literally no other notable navy maintains such a dumb rule. The USN's unofficial policy on that issue however is 'well, dolphins are rapists', and they'll light actives anyway. >>7641 Standard Rudder Tests, the Navy does that with all of their ships once every few years. Somewhere out there is navy video of an Iowa drifting and doing doughnuts in Korean war set up, just to say how long they've been doing this.

>>7573 >For 3in/76.2mm guns, they already have a role in AA. See DART; Leonardo insists that the shells have a comparable 'real' performance to the RAM >6in/155mm is theoretically as 5in, but untapped. Would a ship with a nice mixture of 76.2mm and 155mm guns (and a good selection of all kinds of dumb and smart shells) have everything it needs to defend against most aerials and surface threats? Or are the smaller guns unnecessary and it would be better to put some autocannons on it? >>7607 >modern Battlecruisers replacing the Ticos on a 1:4 basis as they age out for going on 30 years What would be the ˝minimal armament˝ required for this job? Especially in terms of big guns. Although I guess the answer is something that can launch a scramjet projectile with a payload that is about equal to what a Tomahawk carries. But how many of them would it need? >6in of common HY-80 steel for armor plating Are the advancements in tank armour useful here, or is it still better to just slap a thick steel plate to the ship? >you could have a Battlecruiser that does its actual job What would be its job in this day and age? Hunting down enemy warships until it comes across something it can't kill? On that note, I assume a modern battleship would be a fast battleship by default. If that is so, then wouldn't the very first battleship division with CNT armour make all these battlecruisers obsolete (at least on paper)?

>>7648 >Would a ship with a nice mixture of 76.2mm and 155mm guns... have everything it needs to defend against most aerials and surface threats? Theoretically, yes. Assuming the 155mm has everything that the 127mm/5in guns have at minimum and the developments of land-based 155mm guns. >Or are the smaller guns unnecessary and it would be better to put some autocannons on it? The balance of fire rate and effect benefits the 76.2mm guns in this comparison, while the effect of range benefits the 155mm (assuming AA shells such as HVP or hypothetical large DART). You would want smaller cannon in the 20mm to 57mm range regardless. Of course, present laser weapons (that have at least reached operational testing stage) invalidate part of this. >What would be the ˝minimal armament˝ required for this job? Surprisingly little. A modern late-WW2 design CL would qualify for a Gun-based Battlecruiser anymore. Understanding that Guns themselves are not actually required for Battleship/Battlecruiser status (they are terms defined by roles, not weapons), a NATO aligned CC could simply carry VLS as its primary weapon and get by, so long as it was capable of performing its role of being the aggressor. As I suggested before, if the Kirovs had been designed with heavy armor, they would have been proper Missile Battlecruisers. As they are, they properly are Large Missile Cruisers, modern missile-equivalents to the Alaska-class. >Especially in terms of big guns. Limiting to big guns, you don't actually even need scramjets. Those are the upper bounds of what is nice to have, but they are not actually required. With modern metallurgy, it's possible to create big bore guns that can hold up to chamber pressures multiple times higher than what the old Battleship guns could bear, so you can use some rather 'hot' charges and, with guidance systems, get drastically increased ranges. That was the concept behind the EX-175 charge and, when mated with the HVP, gave demonstrated ranges exceeding 50nm (89km) out of a 5in gun. All of this being said, I would personally pursue naval versions of the US Army's SLRC. Which is, according to (unreliable) scuttlebutt, a roughly 12in cannon. Roughly 6-8 of them per ship, probably in two-gun mounts. It would give the ship a ~1000mi range, which far exceeds the strike range of CV based fighters-bombers. >with a payload that is about equal to what a Tomahawk carries Ironically, to have drastic effect on a battlefield would only require a shell to have as little as a 25lb bursting charge. Essentially deliver an 8in shell 200 miles inland within a usable time frame and the land-based elements would love you. At present, it takes CVs over 2 hours to deliver even that, by which time any worthwhile target would have gotten out of dodge. Obviously, we're talking minimums here. Although the 8in effect is the preferred result according to ground troops >Are the advancements in tank armour useful here, or is it still better to just slap a thick steel plate to the ship? It's far more economical to just slap thicker steel on the hull. You could use composite armor (and in fact, historical battleships such as the Iowa and even Yamato actually did this to some degree - the physics behind composite armor was already well understood, it's not something Chobham came up with), synthetics such as kevlar (the US CVNs do this), or all the way up to CNT-based composites, but if you're talking cost effectiveness, raw homogeneous steel thickness is hard to beat. >What would be its job in this day and age? Hunting down enemy warships until it comes across something it can't kill? Essentially, that and Naval Strike missions, it could (and probably would) end up serving as a glorified bodyguard for assets such as a CV/N these days, though. Literally the job of a Battleship, but details. >On that note, I assume a modern battleship would be a fast battleship by default. If that is so, then wouldn't the very first battleship division with CNT armour make all these battlecruisers obsolete (at least on paper)? On paper, absolutely. The super-tech BB would essentially delete any of these Economy CCs that it comes across. The difference paper and reality is, unlike historical BB to CC to CA/CL/whatever comparisons, there actually could be many of these Economy CCs for every singular super-tech BB, so while the BB is taking care of one (or 6) of the CCs, the rest of the CCs are threatening the BB's homeland. And for even more cold water, there'd be even more SSBNs that would be far harder for the super-tech BB to respond to. Obviously, lasers, but surely you get my point on the eggs and baskets issue.

>>7649 All-in-all, should we imagine these gun-armed battlecruisers as something like an upgunned Des Moines-class, but with all these 21st century toys? >so while the BB is taking care of one (or 6) of the CCs, the rest of the CCs are threatening the BB's homeland Sounds like the BBs would be perfect for a proper land empire with limited coastlines (or at least coastlines that actually matter), because they don't have to worry about their trade, only make sure that no pesky sea power tries to do something stupid like starting an invasion.

>>7650 >All-in-all, should we imagine these gun-armed battlecruisers as something like an upgunned Des Moines-class, but with all these 21st century toys? That or a modernized Alaska-concept, such as pic related. Probably a closer approximation of size. >Sounds like the BBs would be perfect for a proper land empire with limited coastlines Yes and no. If the idea is to prevent the enemy war assets from getting in range of your defensive interests, they would have a problem. Given 1000mi cannon, this suddenly opens up - for example - Germany to being bombarded from France's western coast or the Mediterranean, areas that Germany cannot directly defend or hold constant reconnaissance over without constantly having the risk of a major diplomatic incident. Now, on the other hand, theoretically (again, this is on paper) a major naval power - the US is the easiest example - could throw CVR (Recon Carriers) and Recon Satellites around to maintain near constant reconnaissance over the entire envelope of their own BB's fields of fire (at least, reconnaissance with regular enough sweeps to find an approaching CC and hound it to death or retreat. As few as 5 of these BBs could cover the entirety of the US coast. At least, that is the theory. Back in the real world, Murphy's Laws do not favor the BB, as even if they found the target they'd still have a lot of difficulty hitting the thing at such ranges. To be frank, in all honesty the defending power is effectively fucked here, at some point - barring an act of God - the raid will get through. I would guess this is why the US is only considering bringing the minuscule-payload SLRC into daylight and not something more phenomenal such as the 24-36in scramjet shells, they don't want to fuck themselves raw.

>>7649 >You would want smaller cannon in the 20mm to 57mm range regardless. As part of the AA suite, or more of a backup if some smaller target comes across? Because the South Africans used a 76.2mm cannon based on the Italian one in the Rooikat, and they developed canister shot for it. Something tells me a that a few 3" shotgun blasts would be excellent against smaller boats and whatnot. >That was the concept behind the EX-175 charge and, when mated with the HVP, gave demonstrated ranges exceeding 50nm (89km) out of a 5in gun. >Although the 8in effect is the preferred result according to ground troops Is it possible for a 155mm gun with longer shells and bigger charges to deliver the same performance as a old 8" one? Or would the shell have to be so long that it would require fin stabilization? On that note: is polygonal rifling used in artillery guns, and does it give a meaningful increase either in velocity or barrel life? And what about twist gain rifling? With electrochemical machining it should be quite easy and cheap (once the R&D is done, of course) to make barrels with twist gain polygonal rifling in any reasonable calibre, and it would be even more wonderful if that was an all around upgrade. >>7652 >modernized Alaska-concept What is the story behind that? Wasn't that class an overall waste of effort and resources? Or is it a fine enough design to be the basis of something actually useful? >Germany to being bombarded from France's western coast or the Mediterranean, areas that Germany cannot directly defend or hold constant reconnaissance over without constantly having the risk of a major diplomatic incident. True, but they could still effectively block any enemy force from entering Baltic and the North Sea without even leaving port. Of course it already worked in ww1 when the effective range was a wee bit smaller. But even if they get bombarded, with a similarly capable ship they should be able to fire back. Not to mention that they could use their own cannons to launch spy satellites if international tensions are rising. Lastly, I don't think you could effectively neutralize the whole of Germany with just one such attack (at least not without nuclear payloads), so you'd still have to fight a proper land war. Which is obviously easier with such fire support, but you get my point.

>>7677 >As part of the AA suite, or more of a backup if some smaller target comes across? For a pure gun-based AA system, you would want the smaller AA guns as CIWS type systems. So, the former. Their benefit against small craft such as suicide boats would essentially be an added bonus. >Is it possible for a 155mm gun with longer shells and bigger charges to deliver the same performance as a old 8" one? Or would the shell have to be so long that it would require fin stabilization? Without a guidance system, the shell would be unstable and highly inaccurate. So, essentially the latter. >On that note: is polygonal rifling used in artillery guns, Yes. >and does it give a meaningful increase either in velocity or barrel life? No. Polygonal rifling increases the accuracy of the gun when compared to standard groove rifling via superior shell stabilization, at least in theory. The 155mm AGS, for example, has polygonal rifling - and that's one of multiple stated reasons why it cannot use the US Army's 155mm shells. >And what about twist gain rifling? That also does not affect velocity or barrel life, but it does allow for increase powder charges without damaging the bullet/shell. Increase powder charges will reduce barrel life, however. Like polygonal rifling, gain-twist rifling is meant to better stabilize the shell and therefore increase accuracy. >What is the story behind that? To be clear, since I realize now that the way I worded that was poor, what I meant was a modernized form of one of the Alaska-class' preliminary design concepts. The one pictured, by the by, was for all points and purposes a full fledged Battlecruiser. The Navy Board thought it was overkill for its intended role and scaled back the protective scheme of the ship until it was just an upscaled Heavy Cruiser with massive guns, see pic related. >Or is it a fine enough design to be the basis of something actually useful? Easily yes. The Navy themselves considered the historical Alaska-class to be the prime candidates for missile conversions, more so than any other class. The internal volume of the ship was plentiful enough for even the largest of missiles (both then and now) without having the extreme armoring of a battleship which would have had to been worked around. They actually proposed no less than 3 (although I've seen figures as high as 12) such conversions for the Alaska-class hulls ranging from full conversions to 'aft only' conversions. In the end, however, Congress decided the price tag for these conversions was too great (despite the Navy insisting that alternative conversions were far less economical - and the Navy was right) and ordered the entire class scrapped. >True, but they could still effectively block any enemy force from entering Baltic and the North Sea without even leaving port. Of course it already worked in ww1 when the effective range was a wee bit smaller. But even if they get bombarded, with a similarly capable ship they should be able to fire back. Not to mention that they could use their own cannons to launch spy satellites if international tensions are rising. If these are your desires, why not just build Heavier Coastal Batteries which out-range the ships' gun? With proper shell types, large enough guns theoretically could theoretically have global coverage. Sure, it's a known target, but so is a BB sitting in port. >Lastly, I don't think you could effectively neutralize the whole of Germany with just one such attack Perhaps. With a gun such as the SLRC, which is intended to hit strategic military targets, certainly you are correct. But if you stepped over to the capabilities of massive bore cannon such as 24in or even 36in 'grand cannons', which would be the natural progression of things when such long range artillery is introduced (considering it's extant technology), things start looking a little grimmer for the defender. At that point you're talking gun fired 2000lb GP bombs (except armor penetrating) or easily worse, with gun-fired MOABs and Earthquake Bombs on the extreme end. With only a handful of these CCs (2 or 3) participating in this raid action, leveling all of the defender's major cities in one raid becomes not only a risk, but a distinct possibility (if everything went near perfectly for the attackers, which statistically wouldn't happen). At that point, they may not have neutralized them in one go, but they've made the war too costly to win, given the prospects of a 2nd or even such 3rd (etc) raid before you managed to hunt down all of them. This is where a nuclear-powered, laser-armed variant of this concept becomes such a theoretical terror, since it would turn into a protracted, excruciatingly painful form of Mutually Assured Destruction which could drag on for months. Even a nuclear power would have problems responding to that without SSBNs, mind you. As low altitude launch profiles, the shells would be detected too late to get ICBMs off in response - assuming the attacker had the good sense to go after those first.

>>7683 >Without a guidance system, the shell would be unstable and highly inaccurate. So, essentially the latter. So the best way to give the ground forces 8" fire support is to use a 8" gun (or a 21cm one). That, or the SLRC. But that reminds me: is the preference for this calibre comes from a specific war, or more like all the various conflicts from the previous century? >The 155mm AGS, for example, has polygonal rifling - and that's one of multiple stated reasons why it cannot use the US Army's 155mm shells. I'm actually quite interested in this subject. Is there a list or a report about it? >If these are your desires, why not just build Heavier Coastal Batteries which out-range the ships' gun? Well, a battleship is just cooler, but building a modern Vauban fortress with CNT armour and a battery of Babylon guns does sound cool. >At that point you're talking gun fired 2000lb GP bombs (except armor penetrating) or easily worse, with gun-fired MOABs and Earthquake Bombs on the extreme end. It looks like I've underestimated the capabilities of these guns. Maybe instead of Grand Union designs it would be more proper to refer to them as Apocalypse or Armageddon ships.

>>7683 >>7705 Can single large artillery pieces firing 2000lb guided munitions with 1000nmi+ range be fitted to specialized unmanned submarines for spooky pop up attacks?

>>7705 >So the best way to give the ground forces 8" fire support is to use a 8" gun (or a 21cm one). Theoretically you could use a lengthened 155mm shell, but it would have to be a guided, fin stabilized shell. >That, or the SLRC. Probably guided and fin stabilized at those ranges regardless of shell length. >I'm actually quite interested in this subject. Is there a list or a report about it? I don't have any such report or list on hand and don't know of one on the internet off the top of my head. Most of my information on the subject is scuttlebutt and engineering osmosis. I do remember that they attempted to adapt the regular 155mm shells to the AGS, but that was canceled in 2005-2006 due to program-wide cost overruns, but that doesn't really help. NavWeaps seems to confirm this. >It looks like I've underestimated the capabilities of these guns. An 11-caliber 24in bore scramjet shell weighing roughly 5000lbs would carry ~1,060lbs of bursting charge; higher than the ~945lbs of the 2000lb Mk84 GP bomb. Obviously a guided, fin stabilized projectile, but at 1000mi you need that to even hit the country you're aiming at. If you sacrifice range, a ~150-200nmi, 11,000lb 24in HVP carries 1480lb bursting charge (while also possessing the advantage of not carrying a jet engine) and a 30nmi, 17500lb 24" DEP carries 3000lbs of bursting charge. 36in bore guns can have naturally larger charges. All guided shells. >Maybe instead of Grand Union designs it would be more proper to refer to them as Apocalypse or Armageddon ships. I have actually seen a design for one of the 24in cannon affectionately labeled 'God's Finger', and another for a 36in cannon labeled 'God's Fist'. So, it seems the designers would basically agree with you. It's worth pointing out that the main reason why the Grand Union maximum design is called that is standing US law dictates that any Battleship of the US Navy be named after the States, and a certain dumbass decided to start naming submarines after the states instead. 'Grand Union' skirts around that issue by claiming it's a name that is ALL of the states... and allies, and friendly powers, and on and on because that's what Grand Union means, but they're trying to play with unfavorable (and highly stupid) rules. >>7717 >modern submarine cruiser with a single massive bore cannon Technically, I see no real reason why not. You can forget the turret, though, you're never getting that in a pressure hull. What you'd have is a bombard submarine that has to point its nose at the target, but given the ranges involved, this isn't actually any problem. Add VLS drones and you've basically made an actually realistic version of Ace Combat 7's Alicorn.

>>7738 >Theoretically you could use a lengthened 155mm shell, but it would have to be a guided, fin stabilized shell. It's one of those things that I can't help but overthink, and I'm approaching it from the perspective of ground forces. Something like this: >8" gunfire is apparently great >there is (was) a 210mm SPG that has Gerald Bull's name attached to it >the Long Range Strategic Cannon is not for tactical fire support, so giving such an SPG to the ground forces is better >if the SPG keeps up with the front line then it could be close enough to the action (most of the time) to use unguided shells and still hit the mark, because making a cannon that is stupidly accurate within a few dozen kilometres should be possible with modern technology >and for extended ranges it can still use guided shells It's not even a case of bigger bore is better bore, if it was up to me I'd find the longest shell that can be stabilized by rifling and holds the same payload as an old 8" shell, and start developing the cannon around that. I guess that would be in the 170-180mm range or so. >17500lb 24" DEP What does DEP stand for? >So, it seems the designers would basically agree with you. To be perfectly honest I'd take the edgy route and give them names like Antichrist, The Beast, The Whore of Babylon and so on. That obviously wouldn't charm the public anywhere (expect maybe in Scandinavia if they had more metal fans than moslems), but it would certainly put the fear of God into quite many people. Alternatively the names of various angels could work, but that's not as amusing for me. >standing US law dictates that any Battleship of the US Navy be named after the States Could they circumvent this by playing stupid and claiming that these are just very big monitors meant for shore bombardment? >a certain dumbass decided to start naming submarines after the states instead. Was it a president?

>>7798 > if it was up to me I'd find the longest shell that can be stabilized by rifling A shell of around 6-7 calibers length can be stabilized without guidance by polygonal and gain-twist rifling, compared to the typical 3 to 4.5 caliber shells. Beyond this and the shell will usually tumble. That doesn't leave you much wiggle room in terms of shell caliber for unguided shells. You may be able to get a 190mm gun to hold an 8in(203mm)-equivalent charge, but honestly at that point maybe you should just look into making a modern 8in SPG. For divisional artillery, a truck gun (similar to the SLRC) would probably suffice. >What does DEP stand for? Deep Earth Penetrator, essentially a Bunker Buster or Earthquake Bomb equivalent. >Could they circumvent this by playing stupid and claiming that these are just very big monitors meant for shore bombardment? They certainly could, but in effect they'd have an easier time just insisting they're Battlecruisers, since there is no US Law nor true custom on Battlecruiser names. They'd also have solid role arguments, since they could just insist they are designed to counter the Russian Kirovs and that new super-'destroyer' design of theirs. >Was it a president? It was Adm. Hyman Rickover. I call him a dumbass, but he was basically the father of the US Nuclear Navy. He essentially made a political deal with the devil to get the Los Angeles-class SSNs funded, by stroking the egos of select congressmen (by naming the boats after their districts) who were enough to tilt the congressional vote.

What would have happened if the Japs entered the Pacific War with 8 Kongou-class battlecruisers and 2 super-Kongous (basically a battlecruiser as fast as a Kongou, but with 2x4 16 inch guns), instead of the 4 Kongous and 6 battleships (not counting the Yamato) they had? I know it wouldn't win them the war, but it sounds like an interesting change to me.

>>7865 Wait, I completely forgot about the Amagi-class. Scratch the theoretical super-Kongou, they should have a pair of Amagis.

>>7872 Ok fine, be that way cafe. https://i.imgur.com/VtHST8y.png USCG https://i.imgur.com/awVKTLr.png USN

>>7875 Your links seem to be broken.

>>7877 That's could be imgur being the big fucking gay wanting to dick you with scripts. Fuck it here's the sources. https://twitter.com/Naval_Graphics/status/592773303535808514 https://twitter.com/Naval_Graphics/status/599335538324316160

>>7798 >>naming ship guns edgy shit Consider the following: you're in charge of naming the vessels of a moderate sized Navy. Assume a reasonably diverse fleet similar to what a European nation might have if they didn't have Big Daddy US to wipe their asses. How do you name them, Strelok?

>>7910 not that anon I'd draw inspiration from the nation's mythology, those give pretty good names that also show and demand respect, states and people are bland as fuck for names.

>>7911 Naming ships after the motherland and her heroes isn't bland as fuck.

>>7911 I name all of them The Real Slim Shady.

To what extent can one expect automation to reduce warship crew sizes in the next half century?

>>7924 Depends on if the world sees major naval combat again in that period. Technically speaking, we've already hit the floor of what even automation can allow a reduction of crew compliment to fall to, since some things cannot safely be automated at all - namely the engineers who have to maintain the automation. However, people are stupid, especially in peace. As long as the protracted peace continues, you'll continue to see rampant stupidity in peacetime designs. It's quite possible you'll see dumbasses pushing for unmanned destroyers within the next 15 years - unless the obvious happens and the US collapses into a civil war or balkanizes before then. This is ignoring the fact that we're seeing ships with crews far, far below the damage control thresholds on crew sizes. Almost all surface ships today are undermanned when it comes to damage control.

>>7865 Likely, 1942 would have been a fair bit harder for the US/UK/CMW in the island hopping campaign as the Japanese could have more freely pushed forward their capital ships due to fuel economy, but by mid-1943 there would have been no effective difference as the US had succeeded in a massive uptick of their oil production and could send forward their own Battleships and the deluge of Essex-class had begun.

>>7942 >This is ignoring the fact that we're seeing ships with crews far, far below the damage control thresholds on crew sizes. Almost all surface ships today are undermanned when it comes to damage control. M-modern USN crews have a qualitatively better damage control training regimen than late WW2 IJN crews, right?

>>8022 Yes, thankfully. The IJN couldn't even bother to ass themselves to type up Damage Control checklists and flowcharts. At least the USN still has those and every ship is supposed to have several dozen of these books at the Damage Control stations. Supposed to. Keep in mind, it's not just the US suffering from undermanned ships - literally every 'major' navy including Russia and China suffer from it.

>>8040 Would posting marines (not the crayeater type) trained in damage control solve this issue? Not that boarding actions are frequent nowadays, but having a lot of people who can both patch up the ship and guard it while in port sound like a reasonable ˝excuse˝ to increase the crew.

>>8040 I can understand why the Burgerland navy packed with niggers and even the Yellow Menace navy filled with lolyellowniggers, but why the Viking Navy of the Russian Motherland Anon? Surely they have plenty of capable men ready to drink vodka and man the stations?

>>8040 What do you suppose is the main reason for that? Less people joining navies out of fear of butt pirates?

>>8046 Not with marine downsizing, no. Marine forces are having harder times filling boots than Navies are crackerjacks. >>8048 Russia is a land empire, Strelok. Their navy is of tertiary concern after land and air forces; they simply don't have the budget nor the cultural willpower to support a major navy in the present day. >>8050 It's simply too much peace, not enough war, and too much peace, peace out of governments. Not saying they should get involved in every conflict they can find, but rather they forget why militaries even exist.

>>8052 While the Navy isn't posting additional Marines onboard Navy ships these days, they have added emphasis on Marines learning Basic and Advanced ship's DC.

>>8057 Because Marines are always aboard their own dedicated ships (LPH, LHA, etc). The contest to using marines to fill the gap was that there aren't enough Marines to do the job, not that they couldn't do Damage Control.

>>8060 My wording was a bit vague, but I didn't mean seconding USMC members to US Navy ships specifically, more like having old school anti-boarding parties who in this day and age could do double duty as damage control parties. Of course they'd inevitably turn into general purpose handymen, but calling them marines would be good for propaganda purposes. Of course in the case of the US specifically this wouldn't work, but then the whole issue of the duplication of services with two land armies and two air forces is a different issue.

In one of the previous threads there was some talk about those ships with 24 inch guns, and that the variant with 4x4 guns was only slightly wider than the 6x3 version, while being significantly shorter. But that leads to the question: what about a ship with 6 quadruple turrets?

>>8061 There would really be no point to general purpose "handymen" on a ship. DC parties are already comprised of anyone onboard the ship and members of the ship's DC department, who you can think of as DC specialist and maintainers of the ship's DC systems. It's already a shared task. Having people on board who are generally skilled would just be a drain on the multitude jobs that need specialist. And, as someone else already mentioned, that solution is really just adding more people, which every branch is struggling to do.

>>8060 I was just suggesting that Marines haven't been doing the job, not that they couldn't. Putting Marines into play will positively augment the number of people who are able to do DC, although I'm not sure it will be a suitable solution.

>>8063 Obviously larger and longer than the 6x3. But at that point, you're already talking about a ship that's permanently at sea, so I don't really see what difference increasing a ~2,600ft long ship to be a ~3500ft long ship would make

>>8106 >a ship that is about 1km long Fantastic.

There are some nice films about gun manufacturing out there. https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=sZXb5uqUolM https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=rZQzXJ85cdM

>>7911 >>7913 You have to remember that ships are girls, so naming them after heroic men is just wrong. Of course giving them only the family names can easily circumvent the problem, but mythological figures usually don't have those. And if you decide to give your ships those family names, then don't repeat the German's mistake of including titles like Prinz or Graf. And certainly don't be like the captain of the Bismarck who insisted that the ship is a he.

>>8124 I personally like the numbering system for smaller surface ships and subs. You won't have to name subs people may die on after some fucking "where?" town in bumfuck nowhere Ohio. Plus "SSN-756" sounds much nicer than "USS Scranton". The airforce naming system is great, Raptor, Starfighter and Lightning are all very recognizable names and concepts and sound cool at that. Whoever had the idea of naming tanks "She(r)man" and ships "Arleigh Burke" was a retard.

>>8128 >"She(r)man" We're going on another march boys, to strelok's house.

>>8128 In that case i like more the german naming after animals of their tanks and other armor or the rather poetic IJN carriers, wikipedia copy-paste: Aircraft carriers — special names[1] (Many of them are an inheritance from the warship name in the Bakumatsu and the Meiji period)[2]. In fact, names related to flying animals, actual or imaginary, were used. Fleet aircraft carrier; put the initial Ryū (龍, dragon), Tsuru (Kaku) (鶴, crane) or Ōtori (Hō) (鳳, phoenix) before/after her name Hōshō (鳳翔) Flying phoenix Ryūjō (龍驤) Dragon horse Hiryū (飛龍) Flying dragon Shōkaku (翔鶴) Flying crane Taihō (大鳳) Great phoenix Though: The English translations of the Japanese warships provide names; the literal translation of the characters does not necessarily represent how the name is perceived to the Japanese. For example, Akagi is probably perceived as "red castle" by Japanese about as often as Philadelphia is perceived as the "city of brotherly love" by Americans. But a simple numbering system is of course required to smaller and more numerous ships, otherwise names should be inspirational and prideful.

>>8129 They should have used his middle name "T(h)ec(l)umseh".

>>8130 Interestingly enough the Germans have deviated from their trusty naming scheme for military ground vehicles in the past. One especially annoying example is the Mowag Eagle, which is named "Eagle". Not "Adler", which would be the German translation of eagle. No. They took the name the company provided and ran with it. Eagle. This has lead to some hilarious misunderstandings, where German soldiers who had only heard the name of the vehicle pronounced so far, and never seen it written, were surprised to find out that it wasn't named "Igel" (Hedgehog) when they eventually did, because Igel and Eagle are pronounced very similarly. Those carrier names are quite nice, and I wonder if they could come up with a similar system for other ships or systems as well. The Kanji system in general really allows for some creative naming schemes. Also, why did Figureheads die?

>>8128 Numbers are soulless. Considering that 'ships have souls' was and is a common maritime belief, giving them numbered names is denigrating to the ship and - especially back in the day that people cared about their ships - that sort of thing would not fly. Even the Germans in WW2 were giving their DDs unofficial names because they considered 'Z-23' and whatnot to be soulless and dehumanizing to their crews. >>8133 >Those carrier names are quite nice, and I wonder if they could come up with a similar system for other ships or systems as well. The Kanji system in general really allows for some creative naming schemes. They did and do, most of their Aircraft had/have poetic names. Their tanks, though, just got numbers. >Also, why did Figureheads die? Cost of manufacture was the first blow, Air Drag Resistance was the second, Radar Cross Section was the last blow.

>>8136 >Radar Cross Section Didn't naveng strelok mention the Iowa having a RCS similar to a small island which could in theory lead some AShMs to misidentify the ship as ground clutter? If one is already out to build large multi-billion dorrah super-BBs/BCs that already have absymally poor chances of evading detection by satellite and ground-based apertures then surely a cool figurehead wouldn't hurt?

>>8138 Not that anon, but the question was why they disappeared, not if putting one of them on a theoretical battleship would be a problem. I guess you could go full Age of Sail with that and paint it in bright colours and put flags everywhere.

>>8136 >Cost of manufacture Considering that a single Zumwalt costs 4.24 billion US$ per ship, spending a couple hundred bucks to hire a sculptor to make a brass sculpture would not be an issue at all. >Air Drag Resistance You don't have to keep them on deck. Putting them in a room accessible to all crew (like a common area or a mess hall) would work as well. On top of that, looking at modern destroyer designs, you can't rell me that they are built with air drag in mind. >Radar Cross Section Now this is the only point that I am willing to concede. Yet, it can be avoided by putting the figurehead in an internal room, as mentioned before, or by painting a figurehead like design onto the outside of the ship with the same colours used for the external markings.

>>8181 >Considering that a single Zumwalt costs 4.24 billion US$ per ship, spending a couple hundred bucks to hire a sculptor to make a brass sculpture would not be an issue at all. The question was why they disappeared, not if they can be used today. >You don't have to keep them on deck. Putting them in a room accessible to all crew (like a common area or a mess hall) would work as well. Then it's not a figurehead, it'd just be a mascot. >a mess hall Heads up, it's a galley. Most sailors get rightly pissed when a landlubber calls a galley a mess hall. >On top of that, looking at modern destroyer designs, you can't rell me that they are built with air drag in mind. Yes, I can, because they are. Inefficient air drag can add as much as 10% to the power requirement for any given speed, and that's a no-go when you're talking fuel efficiency. Also, it's clear you have no idea how fluid dynamics work. None of those 'straight fucking walls' are straight fucking walls. You somehow missed the fact they are all angled at 15 degrees - yes that makes a huge difference - and are designed to push the air around the superstructure. You know, those angled edges. Furthermore, the figurehead at the bow of a ship causes bow drag, which is the worst type of air drag. Core drag is easily overcame because the bulk of the ship is already redirecting the airflow around that area; Bow Drag, however, is not so easy to overcome since it only takes a very small change to force the bow to move (or break) - and if the bow moves, the ship tries to move with it. >Yet, it can be avoided by putting the figurehead in an internal room, as mentioned before As mentioned before, that's not a figurehead. >or by painting a figurehead like design onto the outside of the ship with the same colours used for the external markings. There is no particular reason a bow crest could not be used other than crew laziness, and in fact the USN historically has made use of them during some parade actions. The IJN back in WW2 were probably the most prominent fan of bow crests with their chrysanthemum crest. It is still not a figurehead, however. If you really want a figurehead in today's time with today's technology, there are many ways in which to do it and not have it hinder the ship. But at the core of this issue, THAT WASN'T THE QUESTION TO START WITH, SO ALL OF THIS IS IRRELEVANT.

>>8183 >Inefficient air drag can add as much as 10% to the power requirement for any given speed, and that's a no-go when you're talking fuel efficiency. Dumb question but why aren't civilian bulk carriers and tankers built with sloped aft superstructures?

>>8191 Simple Answer: At lower speeds, say the 12-18kts that most Cargo vessels travel at, there's simply not enough wind effect to bother designing around for civilian grade, non-luxury ships. You'd be saving pennies at the cost of pounds.

>>8181 >Zumwalt . . . What an amazing pork-filled boondoggle. Far worse than the F-35 program. At least the planes actually ammo and usable weaponry. So, are these ships even capable of any mission beyond picking up a stranded fisherman Anon?

>>8209 As they are, no. I guess they could be a tomahawk barge. It's sad, really. They were actually designed well and - if the program had actually been completed as originally intended - would have been highly capable of what they were designed to do... even if what they were designed to do was of highly questionable utility to begin with, from an engineering stand point they were decent. But congress and general idiots kept messing with shit. Even the AGS had a (honestly superior) fallback if it didn't work out in the 8in MCLWG. But Congress got pissy at the 'unnecessary cost' and forbid it, while also stacking up hundreds of retarded nonsense requirements - including mandating the use of standard construction steel instead of HY100 steel on certain crucial joints and inferior (plumbing grade) seal rings on the bulkhead penetrating conduit. Guess what failed on the Zumwalt, springing leaks and almost sinking the damned ship during trials. You don't hear much about that out in the open. As much as I hate the navy procurement system, the Zumwalt is squarely the fault of Congress.

>>8213 >tomahawk barge If all else goes to shit how many unpowered 2x3 scramjet artillery badges could the Norfolk yards shit out per month?

>>8183 >There is no particular reason a bow crest could not be used other than crew laziness, and in fact the USN historically has made use of them during some parade actions. The IJN back in WW2 were probably the most prominent fan of bow crests with their chrysanthemum crest So a bow chest similar to what the Japs used back then would be perfectly fine, with none of the drawbacks of the figureheads (other than cost)? >>8236 You should tell us more about what you are thinking, because it's painfully vague.

>>8236 >You should tell us more about what you are thinking, because it's painfully vague. Put two Iowa-tier triple turrets equipped with the latest in long-range guided artillery tech on a cheap hull with no propulsion and mediocre amounts of armor and sensors with crew being optional to be towed by a Frigate in case the USN loses too many super carriers to land-based AShMs in a Pearl Harbor style bugman attack on Taiwan/Okinawa/Yokosuka, followed by the PRC invading Taiwan and their submarines interdicting cargo ships all over the place. ITL in order to relieve the surviving isolated allied units with more than SSNs carrying miniscule amounts of cargo the Admiralty decides to go as far even as to blow up the coastal missile, airfield and harbor infrastructure of the Bugman empire, but since the Pacific island garrisons would likely be starved out and conquered by the time a CNT-armored BBN as described by Strelok would enter service they instead opt for mass production of disposable naval artillery barges towed by equally mass-produced Frigates to fill the gap. The barges would be towed by tugs in escorted convoys to their combat theatre, then be handed over to Frigates and/or DDGs which would tow them in arty range of enemy airfields and infrastructure on occupied Taiwan, they'd shell their targets/support guerilla activities then GTFO. Is this idea severely retarded and would construction of single turret blue water monitors be a better option?

>>8255 All I know I've learned from Drachinifel, but according to him guns are one of the first thing that were ordered, often even before the detailed plan of a battleship was finished, because making them simply took that long. This is why e.g. the Japanese had a few 51cm guns in an arsenal even though they cancelled the ships that were meant to be armed with them. And now consider that the US Navy scrapped all the equipment required to make 16in cannons, so they would have to manufacture that first to even start manufacturing the guns. By the time the first gun is finished they could most likely build a proper ship.

>>8236 >>8255 What you're asking for is a gun-based, barge-type Arsenal Ship. These have been proposed before. Unfortunately, they're not really a good idea for various reasons since the complications of minimum manning, required safety measures for the handling areas, and operational hazards prevent a cheap hull being used for such a weapon system in the first place. However, to actually answer your question: >If all else goes to shit how many unpowered 2x3 scramjet artillery badges could the Norfolk yards shit out per month? Per month? Given a wind-up time of about 1 year to build the industry for these barges the first place, and for sake of argument we'll assume that the industry had a theoretically unlimited budget (which should give warning bells): 0.25. I expect Norfolk may be able to get one such barge out every 6 or so months. It would be one weird-ass barge with a lot of wasted space and ballast (given the requirements of keeping the two turrets' gun barrels out of the water and having the ship low enough in the water to maintain stability with such vertical constructs built into them), but it could theoretically be done. >would construction of single turret blue water monitors be a better option? Infinitely so. They actually gave some consideration to that back when they were thinking of removing one of the turrets from each of the Iowa class, but that obviously never went anywhere. >>8246 >So a bow chest similar to what the Japs used back then would be perfectly fine, with none of the drawbacks of the figureheads (other than cost)? Of course there would be *some* drawbacks, but generally negligible. You would ideally make it flat (so not the 3D molded crest that the Japs used) and part of the hull that already would have otherwise existed, but even the 3D molded crests would make such a marginal impact that you may as well just leave them that way.

>>8263 >markup bolding That's what I get for responding while writing a report. Habit uses the wrong formatting codes.

>>8263 >monitors Were there are plans for strange or interesting green or brown water monitors? I imagine they gave some thinking to them during the Vietnam war. >but even the 3D molded crests would make such a marginal impact that you may as well just leave them that way. If somebody wanted to go all out about this, then would encasing a 3D bow crest in acrylic glass (that then follows the curvature of the hull) get rid of even that marginal impact?

>>8284 >Were there are plans for strange or interesting green or brown water monitors? I imagine they gave some thinking to them during the Vietnam war. A little out of my field, but I believe the US Army controlled the Riverine Navy during that era. They may still control it, actually. I do recall seeing designs for large riverboats with 8in guns, though, if those qualify. >If somebody wanted to go all out about this, then would encasing a 3D bow crest in acrylic glass (that then follows the curvature of the hull) get rid of even that marginal impact? Acrylic Glass and Steel have slightly different return percentages, so to some degree there would be a difference, but for all points and purposes you are correct. That was in fact one of the ways to have a full on figurehead without too negatively affecting the RCS. It doesn't really help the bow-drag effect, though.

>>8298 >I do recall seeing designs for large riverboats with 8in guns, though, if those qualify. That sounds the kind of thing I'm interested in, mostly because I can't figure out what kind of boat would be good at carrying such guns.

>>8303 You have a wide variety of options, depending on the depth and width of the river/s in question. Hell, if it's a river like the Mississippi, you can get a South Dakota-class Battleship up most of it (barring cities), so it really does make a lot of difference. A 300ft long, 50ft wide, 5ft draft small ship (or large boat) would be a good start. It'd need a special purpose gun, and at larger calibers wouldn't be as effective as their blue water counterparts. For example, I believe the guns on the designs I saw was derived from the 8in MCLWG design, but only had something like a 3-4 rpm fire rate. Still better than the land 8in howitzers, though.

>>8191 >sloped superstructure >When you are trying to build a ship with maximum possible cargo space Are you fucking retarded? THINK before you post nigga. Angling decreases internal space. Cargo ships care about internal space. >inb4 "hurr just make them wider then" They need to be able to transverse tight channels you fucking retard god damn. Suez canel, Greenore Channel, Panama Canal, etc. Cargo ship sizes are based entirely on which canal they can fit. There's Panamax vessels, Suezmax vessels, etc. If your ship is so wide to make up for the space lost to sloped superstructure to the point it cant fit in Suez then you are the biggest retard ship owner that ever was.

>>8307 I was specifically thinking about the Danube. I can't find any national or international standard regarding the size of various vessels, but looking at the actual boats I'd say these would be the ˝Danubemax˝ specifications: >Length: 150-200m >Width: 10-12m (most likely due to the various locks) >Draft: 2-3m (maybe 4m with a lot of optimism) >Displacement: 2000-2500t Also, height is limited because they have to pass under the various bridges. Looking at corvettes and riverine ships, it looks like the never Russian designs might just be able to operate in the Danube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steregushchiy-class_corvette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buyan-class_corvette There is also this part: >The ships' small size and displacement enable them to operate within inland river systems, including traversing the Moscow Canal which allows them to deploy to various seas around European Russia. This is a particular advantage for the Buyan-M series, because while the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) prohibits long-range cruise missiles from operating on land they can operate from ships, so a river-based corvette can deploy missiles without being subject to restrictions. >at larger calibers wouldn't be as effective as their blue water counterparts Then with the limitations a 16-18" gun would be better off as a self-propelled gun or in an immobile emplacement? If that is so, then 24" and bigger would be an ever worse candidate for a ship gun. Of course, those should have more than enough range for it to not make a difference, and the main purpose of these ships would be to discourage the enemy from even approaching the river.

>>8350 With those limitations, you would be able to cram the aforementioned 8in guns into the hull - barely (due to beam), but they'd fit easily enough. However, anything larger would be an instant no-go unless you had it as some form of bombard ship arrangement (ergo, guns directed forward, mostly aiming with the ship). In that case, although it'd be extremely weird, you theoretically could get even the 24in gun onto such a hull - although I would not advise it for fairly obvious reasons, that is a lot of virtually exposed propellant and it's overkill for the conops. I would almost recommend a thinned-down dread 'battleship' type design with 4x1 8in gun mounts, 2 CIWS and 2 CRAM units (possibly centrally controlled instead of independent), and an assortment of autocannon, mortars, and grenade launchers. But that's just napkin design work. >Then with the limitations a 16-18" gun would be better off as a self-propelled gun or in an immobile emplacement? If that is so, then 24" and bigger would be an ever worse candidate for a ship gun. I'm not sure I follow. Are you asking between 16/18in SPG and Fixed Emplacements specifically, or large bore gunned ships in general?

>>8360 >I would almost recommend a thinned-down dread 'battleship' type design with 4x1 8in gun mounts, 2 CIWS and 2 CRAM units (possibly centrally controlled instead of independent), and an assortment of autocannon, mortars, and grenade launchers. But that's just napkin design work. That's about what I was thinking, but I'm not sure if it would be possible to also armour it up so that it can go head-on with a tank battalion and win. >Are you asking between 16/18in SPG and Fixed Emplacements specifically, or large bore gunned ships in general? I basically wanted to know if such a bombard ship a good idea or not, but you already answered that.

>>8361 >I'm not sure if it would be possible to also armour it up so that it can go head-on with a tank battalion and win. Without supermaterials, it would be extremely hard to do so on such a limited displacement. The upper end of tank cannon in WW2 could easily penetrate WW2 Battleship-grade armor, and today's base grade cannon can do a lot more than that. Obviously, that doesn't and didn't mean tanks would defeat battleships, what compartmentalization and all, but that's the very thing such a narrow boat would not be able to afford. WITH supermaterials, then yes, easily it could be done - you could even get the bombard ship to 'work' outside of being too much for the conops (too slow to reload, not fast enough in responding, etc).

>>8470 >you could even get the bombard ship to 'work' outside of being too much for the conops (too slow to reload, not fast enough in responding, etc) And what if we changed to conops to long-range bombardment against strategic targets? In that case, do you think that a 24" would be better in a fixed emplacement or on a ship? And speaking of bombardment ships, how crazy of an idea would be to consider building a circular ship? Of course, with such a gigantic cannon it would be basically a floating turret, and it would be way too wide for the various locks. But the latter is not a problem for its mission profile. But I think it simply couldn't carry as much ammunition.

>>8489 >in a fixed emplacement or on a ship? And now that I think about me: would this be a ship or a boat? Are there official definitions for this difference?

>>8490 https://www.maritimemanual.com/boat-vs-ship/

>>8489 >And what if we changed to conops to long-range bombardment against strategic targets? In that case, do you think that a 24" would be better in a fixed emplacement or on a ship? Fixed emplacement would likely be superior, assuming you have the materials to make it. Although it would be a static target and easier to attack, it would also be easier to defend since you would know exactly where the enemy would be trying to hit. >how crazy of an idea would be to consider building a circular ship? It's a meme for a reason, it doesn't really work. Conventionally, the forces working against the ship would essentially keep spinning the ship around and in general - highly counter-intuitively - make the ship highly unstable. You can get such a ship to work in today's time with computers and rotating azimuth thrusters, similar to reverse-swept wing aircraft, but honestly why bother?

It's a pity that 1930s British battleship designs never reached their true potential, especially from an aesthetic point. The KGV-class is just weird with the superfiring twins, and it would be outright beautiful if it had a superfiring quadruple turret. And the Vanguard is just goofy with those tiny turrets. Hitler should have waited a few years just so that we can see at least one Lion-class battleship. Of course the bongs would have scrapped that just the same.

>>7738 >VLS drones Are there existing designs, or is it one of those things that are theoretically possible and would be great if they worked, but nobody can be bothered to pay for R&D? Also, if I understand correctly, modern anti-submarine warfare is mostly about dropping sonars from aircraft until the enemy sub is found, and then launch a missile that carries a torpedo at it. With VLS drones would it be possible to solve all ASW needs with just the VLS cells?

>>8808 >With VLS drones would it be possible to solve all ASW needs with just the VLS cells? If you've got cells and drones big enough to carry a decent payload then yes, current designs like picrel are too small for anything more than reconnaissance.

>>8808 >Are there existing designs, or is it one of those things that are theoretically possible and would be great if they worked, but nobody can be bothered to pay for R&D? They exist, but it's not a large thing. The VLS Drones in the referred to circumstance was mainly only hyperbolic. Even large submarines would be able to launch and recover semi-conventional rotary-wing drone aircraft - a conceptual modernized I-400 class, for example. >With VLS drones would it be possible to solve all ASW needs with just the VLS cells? Possibly if using them as signals relays for contested environments, similar to the Russian/Soviet ship-launched non-orbiting satellites. But if improved VLS ASW is your desire, designs exist for Rocket Launched Sonar Buoys. The launching ship would then just throw ASROCs at anything the buoys detect. The problem with that is the same as any disposable buoys plot - replacing the buoys before they run out of power and eating the cost of using them, which is alleviated with helos picking up/replacing (or dropping in the first place) the buoys. Making VLS Drones to replace those helos would add so many complexities to the ship that you'd be better off just using conventionally launched drone helos. One of the largest reasons why I advocate the return of the CVS (ASW Carrier), but 'heavily armed' for ASW work with VLS cells for their own ASROC.

>>8878 >which is alleviated with helos picking up/replacing (or dropping in the first place) the buoys. So the best solution is to just keep helicopters, but potentially have some rocket launched ones just in case. And I would be surprised if helicopter drones for this work were not at least under development. > CVS (ASW Carrier), but 'heavily armed' for ASW work with VLS cells for their own ASROC. Something like those helicopter cruises that have lots of missiles in one end and a helicopter deck on the other end?

>>8954 >So the best solution is to just keep helicopters, but potentially have some rocket launched ones just in case. Yes, the latter for signals relay purposes. If the VLS 'Drones' are NOSats, then that just makes them even more invaluable, since for a few moments it invalidates the obvious first step of any WW3 scenario - shooting down all satellites. >And I would be surprised if helicopter drones for this work were not at least under development. Correct. >Something like those helicopter cruises that have lots of missiles in one end and a helicopter deck on the other end? While for a pure Helo-CVH (technically a CKH if you want be autistic with the designation code - Hunter-Killer Helicopter Cruiser), that would work, I was more thinking a modernized Essex-class CVS form, as fixed wing/rotary wing combination carriers. Pic related. This would allow ASW focused formations centered around these CVS', and the CVS would be able to keep recon in the air while also carrying a lot more ordnance for the Helos (or if your navy in question maintains ASW Fixed wings, those). Alternatively, you could add them to any formation or element which needed either ASW or Recon and not tax your AA escorts' VLS load for ASW. The biggest catch, of course, is somehow managing to get pencil pushers and general/admiral idiots who don't get the concept of role-oriented force structure from sticking F-35Bs on the damn thing and trying to get it to be a 'do everything' hull. If you try to get an ideal CVS to be a do-everything hull, well... you'd be better off bringing back WW2 aircraft so they could at least thin the enemy's A2A missile/SAM count.

>>8984 >Yes, the latter for signals relay purposes. I've actually meant keeping the missile launched sonar buoys, but then the whole point of the VLS cells is that you can load them with whatever you want. >somehow managing to get pencil pushers and general/admiral idiots who don't get the concept of role-oriented force structure from sticking F-35Bs on the damn thing and trying to get it to be a 'do everything' hull The former could be outmanoeuvred by selling them as multi-role platforms that can do everything and more, and then just using them only for their intended purpose. It's not like they have to know that all the aircraft are only used for scouting and ASW, and that the VLS cells are always loaded to assist in those duties. I take the problem is that an admiral would eventually take the nonsense about it being multi-role seriously and just turn it into a small carrier that has VLS cells on it for some reason. Speaking of carriers, how bad an idea was this Iowa conversion, especially in terms of the aircraft taking off and landing? I've heard that landing would have been needlessly risky with this arrangement.

>>9012 >I've actually meant keeping the missile launched sonar buoys My mistake, I thought you were referring to VLS launched drones. VLS Buoys, yes, that's a good idea to have on hand. But, as you said, the beauty of the VLS system is you can load them with whatever the mission demands. >(dealing with the pencil pushers and the admiral idiots) The problem is that the former appoint like-minded people to be the later, and the later are entirely political animals and not beasts of military efficiency. >Speaking of carriers, how bad an idea was this Iowa conversion... In a word, horrible. I'll spare you the virtually-PTSD-induced incoherent ranting. Don't get me wrong, a Battlecarrier CAN be done. But a conversion is a terrible way to do it since much of the work to make it work would need to be done before the keel was even laid in the first place. >...especially in terms of the aircraft taking off and landing? I've heard that landing would have been needlessly risky with this arrangement. What you heard was correct. Essentially, the only 'safe' way to do it (at the time) was Harriers, and numbers I've seen projected something close to a 50% catastrophic failure rate during attempted landings - vertically. Conventional landing was even worse, but somehow the proposers construed both of these as 'safe'. The concept of using F18s was braindead from the start, but they pushed that too for a while. The Marine counter-proposal of using Marine Attack Helos and Transport Helos off the back of them as some kind of Capital Assault Ship was much more reasonable, however, just entirely useless in terms of A2A. That didn't solve the hull-based problems, though.

>>9039 Aren't the 688i FLT VLS systems non-reloadable? The only "VLS" that could be reloaded for subs iirc was the K-335 Gepard (Project 971M or AKULA III) Technically its not a VLS tube, it's a modified 65cm tube iirc I'm somewhat surprised the OHP doesn't have VLS tubes quite honestly.

>>9189 If you mean at sea reloading, yes, the 688i's Mk36 VLS system isn't 'reloadable'. The Mk36s are reloaded at port. A submarine VLS which is designed to reload at sea (or even underwater is, in theory, possible, but you're using a lot of space for that machinery in a very, very small hull. If you're going to use the hull space anyway, you may as well just carry more tubes. What brought this up, if I may ask? >OHP VLS Too expensive, hulls were from the start rush jobs, they weren't worth it. Australia managed to do something like that with some of them, from what I recall, but they didn't seem too happy with them. Although to be frank, getting rid of the arm launchers was a mistake since we still had so many of them. Should have just let them grace out of service properly instead of neutering the frigates. This is assuming you're talking about the Oliver Hazard Perrys.

>>9195 I'm a rabid subsim fan. And as in subsim I mean modern CW subsmin and not a uboat faggot like video related because every sub game milks the uboat/ww2 subs like EA/Activsion milk FPS

>>9196 Good man.

>>9039 >beasts of military efficiency Was there ever a time when those were in charge? The only one who comes to mind is Fisher. >I'll spare you the virtually-PTSD-induced incoherent ranting. Please don't, those are some of the best things in life. >a Battlecarrier CAN be done Is there a point though? Those two roles seem to be different enough that I can't imagine how this thing is supposed to operate. >much of the work to make it work would need to be done before the keel was even laid in the first place. Is it because the compartmentalization of battleships and carriers are inherently different? >50% catastrophic failure rate during attempted landings - vertically I can understand that during a conventional landing the aircraft could hit the superstructure, but what the hell made even vertical landing so dangerous? >The concept of using F18s was braindead from the start, but they pushed that too for a while. Was this whole conversion idea a political project or an admiral's brainchild? Because the more I think about it the less sense it makes, and yet somebody clearly wanted it. Also, are those supposed to be VLS cells in the middle of the flight deck?

>Battle carrier Could it be done by putting small manned point defence interceptors in a hangar attached to a single large vertical cell w/ a maglev catapult close to the center of the ship's superstructure?

>>9199 >Was there ever a time when those were in charge? The fact we can't think of any is, while not quite damning, isn't exactly a good sign. >Please don't, those are some of the best things in life. To keep it short, that design is so poorly balanced that it would likely flip over backwards the moment it hit a bad storm. Furthermore, the added weight of the flight superstructure, while heavier than the turret they removed (not barbette, that is still there), is not equivalent to the general weight of the turret and would actually apply torsion to the main keel - in addition to causing it to bend. I'm actually pretty sure the ship would snap in half before it made 1000 miles! And, yes, the Japanese did something similar with their Hyuugas, the difference being that the Japanese paid a lot more attention to focusing the weight on the centerline and main support keeps of the ship - at the cost of internal hangar volume. This retarded design puts all of its weight on the sides to maximize hangar volume. The Iowa hulls' main load bearing keel is in the center and slightly off center on each side (roughly the sides of the barbettes). In other words, this design just wouldn't work. >Is there a point though? Those two roles seem to be different enough that I can't imagine how this thing is supposed to operate. Well, if you want to be technical about it, a 'Battlecarrier' wouldn't be a half-battleship, half-carrier. It'd be a heavily armored Carrier that is designed to defend itself from both concentrated surface and saturation attacks, able to operate deeply inside the enemy A2/AD zone; which is - in a world of infinite budgets - unarguably a good idea to have, even if you don't send them there. However, a 'battlecarrier' as most people imagine it (battleship-carrier hybrid, correctly an 'aviation battleship') was historically an attempt to provide battleships with native air cover for defense against fighters, bombers, and the like. The problem with this in the post-modern era is that missiles have basically invalidated short-range fighter/interceptors in this role, with manned aircraft taking the long range strike role instead. However, a conceptual BBV today would actually have a conceptual role for its aircraft: Native Reconnaissance. The problem with all shipborne long-range strike assets is that the ship is blind past the radar horizon, and OTHR sets just are not accurate enough to direct strike missions. Even the Soviets only planned to use it to point the missiles in the right direction and use mid-course guidance by submarine or satellite to seal the deal (all of which NATO fleets could do without OTHR). Therefore, giving the conceptual BBV the ability to 'see' beyond the radar horizon and direct its own strikes is a massive advantage that opens up a lot of potential missions for it where you otherwise would not want to send a full CVN anywhere near. That's the ConOps, anyway. Personally, I would have just suggested sending a hypothetical CVS with a secondary Reconnaissance role along with the BBBG ('Battleship Battle Group', not 'Guided Missile Super Battleship') to provide the Reconnaissance and shore up the BBBG's ASW weakness. But that's just me. >Is it because the compartmentalization of battleships and carriers are inherently different? It's mostly due to weight distribution, but compartmentalization does play a role - especially in things such as fuel storage and munitions storage. >I can understand that during a conventional landing the aircraft could hit the superstructure, but what the hell made even vertical landing so dangerous? A large part of it was just how dangerous a Harrier was to operate regardless. The 'extremely strange' (how it was described to me) wind effect of the superstructure just took that to unreasonable levels. >Was this whole conversion idea a political project or an admiral's brainchild? Because the more I think about it the less sense it makes, and yet somebody clearly wanted it. Neither. Third party with a bit of clout. At least, that's off the top of my head - it may have had a few of either involved, but by and large neither the politicians nor the navy actually wanted the conversion, but because of the clout were giving it the benefit of a once over. >Also, are those supposed to be VLS cells in the middle of the flight deck? Yes, although I have no idea why - the BBV proposal was from before VLS was a thing and the Barbette area was supposed to be the munitions vault and elevator system. I think that was just Tolzi's addition, personally. >>9206 Forgive my lack of sufficient autism and culture, but what ship are you talking about, now?

>>9218 >a conceptual BBV Would something with a layout similar to this proposed conversion of the Jean Bart work? It seems to solve the problem of having both turrets and a flight deck, and the only question is that where the VLS cells are supposed to be. Although I guess that using reloadable arm launchers instead would answer that question. >a hypothetical CVS with a secondary Reconnaissance role along with the BBBG So it would be similar to the 1920s-1930s when aircraft were not a serious threat, and carriers had an important supporting role instead?

>>9226 >Would something with a layout similar to this proposed conversion of the Jean Bart work? Actually a decently thought out conversion proposal. Incidentally, similar concepts were purposed for the two unfinished Iowas back in the late '40s, but the plans for those were lost in a fire back in the '60s - which is why they weren't revived for the '80s proposals. But, to answer your direct question, yes, that layout would work. There are other workable designs and layouts as well, obviously, depending on what type of aircraft you have developed (I remember that sometime back in the '90s, Japan had tossed around a large Seaplane design equipped with the E-2 Hawkeye radar set, which would make things much simpler). But that design in particular would pretty much allow a selection of current aircraft to be used - although if I was involved in the design team, I would be pushing for an angled flight deck. >the only question is that where the VLS cells are supposed to be. You could put them where the two flight deck DP mounts are. Although arm-launchers would make decent sense if you're wanting to fully 'armor' the ship (at least against shrapnel). >So it would be similar to the 1920s-1930s when aircraft were not a serious threat, and carriers had an important supporting role instead? While that's not what I intended to convey with that line, one could easily argue that with the advent of Solid State Lasers and the ever increasing potency of SAMs that your reading is correct.

>>9218 >a heavily armored Carrier that is designed to defend itself from both concentrated surface and saturation attacks, able to operate deeply inside the enemy A2/AD zone >CVS with a secondary Reconnaissance role along with the BBBG Now that I think about it, if somebody wanted to create some kind of an ˝ultimate battle group˝ whose only mission is to cruise into the middle of the enemy waters and shrug off everything that is thrown at it (including nukes), then could he use the BBV in the role of the CVS? It would be obviously overkill in anything but a world war fuelled by infinite budgets, but that never stopped the human imagination. >>9232 >the plans for those were lost in a fire back in the '60s - which is why they weren't revived for the '80s proposals. Were those '80s proposals just dusted off earlier proposals that were already in a fairly advanced design stage, and they didn't want to start making a completely new one? >Japan had tossed around a large Seaplane design equipped with the E-2 Hawkeye radar set, which would make things much simpler So seaplanes and flying boats are still perfectly viable in this day and age? Were there ever plans for something silly, e.g. a flying wing seaplane?

>>9218 >Forgive my lack of sufficient autism and culture, but what ship are you talking about, now? It's >>9012 but instead of using Harriers or dog forbid F-18s as an air complement the ship would instead use reconnaissance/ASW drones and tiny manned Boeing AAC-tier point defence interceptors, all launched from a single large vertical cell w/ a maglev catapult or RATOso the interceptors don't burn all their fuel while climbing in the center of the ship, so it's more of an aviation battleship than an actual carrier in that sense.

>>9233 >˝ultimate battle group˝ Firstly, BBVs are primarily Battleships, a Battlecarrier is primarily Carrier and doesn't carry battleship caliber guns unless you're getting into one of those fictional leviathan designs such as pic related (which, to be clear, would not work). A 'Battlecarrier' of today - like what I was describing in what you quoted - would look likely still strongly resemble a Nimitz or a Ford (maybe a late-life Midway), but 'heavily armored' and with an array of defensive weaponry. A Hullcode hasn't been assigned for the concept, but it'd likely be CVA (Attack Carrier). Secondly, if you're using a super-material Battlecarrier to back up a super-material Battleship, both of infinite budget standards, then to an extreme yes, the two ships would be able to go virtually anywhere in the world's oceans unopposed - their only limitation being if they fit. >Were those '80s proposals just dusted off earlier proposals that were already in a fairly advanced design stage, and they didn't want to start making a completely new one? No, the '80s BBV proposal was made in the '80s. If they had been dusted off earlier design proposals , they would have made sense. The Flt3 Plan (pic2 related) was also made in the '80s, but those actually did make sense because people who actually knew the ships they were working with and basic naval engineering principles made those designs. >So seaplanes and flying boats are still perfectly viable in this day and age? Many powers still use them, Japan and Russia still make them, they are very useful for firefighting among other things. But for wartime purposes, which is what I imagine you're interested in, yes. If you had something they could do, they'd still be viable. Fly around slowly to get a radar set in the air is something they still can do. >>9237 An interesting proposal. Actually makes a lot of sense and I would be tempted to say it'd work, but the only issue I see immediately is how do the parasite fighters land?

>>9273 >but the only issue I see immediately is how do the parasite fighters land? On the rear flight deck? The fighters would be a little bigger than those in the AAC proposal by virtue of having landing+arresting gear, and variable sweep wings should make them slow enough not to regularly crash on final approach.

>>9288 Even old WW2 Prop Aircraft would have trouble landing on that, that's the problem. You need around 300-350ft to stop a fixed wing, conventional aircraft - which is more than a catapult run to launch them in the first place. Simply, if you're using a flight deck to land the aircraft, then just launch them from the flight deck - there's no point in the complicated center launch.

>>9312 So in the end helipads are still the more sensible option. A shame WW2 Krautism never got as far even as decided to give the Tirpitz a small complement of Heinkel Lerche tailsitter interceptors.

>>9331 At least one tailsitter drone is actually being developed.

Was it possible for the Yamato-class to operate in the North Sea, or is it too much of a ˝Pacific design˝?

>>9361 Short answer: It's too much of a pacific design. Long Answer: It's complicated. Would it be possible? Technically, yes. The ships had enough roll correction to not just be bowled over by the rough waters of the North Sea, in this specific area they are better than the Iowas and those operated in the N.Sea just about as well as you could expect for a Pacific-Atlantic design. Would it be even remotely pleasant for the crews? Not even the tiniest bit. In fact, they would want to leave that operations area as fast as they physically could get their mission completed, and it would have nothing to do with any potential enemies in that region. Due to their unique 'wave-mirroring' freeboard, their fore sections would be more awash than even the Iowas' needle-bows, in fact it's likely that even their #2 Turrets would become inoperable during bad weather (the Iowas' #1 Turrets were only practically 'inoperable'). You'd think that their aggressive bow flare and forward bulbous bow would help them with this, but it ironically hurts them more due to the other characteristics of the ship. Sure, their bow itself would stay dryer than it would have otherwise, but this is at the cost of redirecting that wave force farther aft, where it will just whip around the flare and wash onto the deck anyway due to the Yamato's fore-heavy design. The Iowas got away with their wet-noses because they were (quite severely) aft-heavy, their needle-bows digging into the waves was not only expected, it was almost relied upon as their heavy afts tended to try to pitch their noses a little too far skywards. The short wave lengths of the North Sea just made these pitch corrections way more frequent and noticeable. The Yamato's fore-heaviness, however, would naturally try to pitch their noses into the water (which, I suspect, was a major contributor in their decision to use the forward bulbous bow and aggressive flaring in the first place), which is inherently terrible in the North Sea. They have enough pitch control to not put the ship in direct jeopardy, however, their crews would just generally be far too sick to try actually performing operations - except for the lucky ones back in Turret #3, they'd be comparatively fine.

>>9489 Are Atlantic designs equally bad in the Atlantic, or did the Brits prove that it's not the case?

>>9594 >Are Atlantic designs equally bad in the Atlantic I mean, Atlantic designs in the Pacific.

>>9594 >or did the Brits prove that it's not the case? It's important to point out that the British Ships were mostly North Sea designs, not Atlantic designs - entirely different things. Ironically, the German ships were Atlantic designs, not North Sea designs - a majority of the Atlantic is a lot calmer than the North Sea, even up near Iceland/Greenland. So, with that in mind, if anything, they proved that North Sea designs were equally bad in the Pacific as vice versa. It was only the classic British stoicism and all that which allowed them to operate at all in the Pacific with those North Sea designs - and even then they still called their Pacific-bound ships Puke Buckets. Their extreme roll correction over-corrected the many, small motions caused by the Pacific (which the Pacific IJN designs and Pacific-Atlantic USN designs were designed to ride out), essentially causing the entire ship to roll around 3 to 5 degrees every few seconds - or in bad weather, multiple times per second. Certainly, the British ships survived storms better in the Pacific than their American and Japanese counterparts, but their crews most certainly did not and it didn't take much in the way of inclement weather at all to drastically reduce the capability of British ships in the Pacific, if not outright disable them. Only tangentially related, but if you're curious what the difference between an Atlantic design and a Pacific design is, the answer is mostly weather. The Atlantic is slightly more choppy than the Pacific, has clear and exploitable wind 'lanes', and tends towards worse weather with harsh fog, and in general is an ambusher's dream before Radar was a thing; whereas the Pacific has many, many more but teeny-tiny waves, basically always has unfavorable winds regardless of where you're trying to go (which constantly are throwing your ship off course if you look away from the compass for as much as 15 seconds), and the star maps are usually unreliable because the sky apparently really just wants to fuck with sailors over there.

>>9597 It looks like you've made me reach one of those points where I suddenly know enough to realize I don't know much. I mean, I knew about how the problems mostly come from the ships not compensating properly for the rolling or taking on too much water, but I though the North Sea is just a ˝rougher part˝ of the Atlantic, but no to the degree that it requires a different design. Could you please walk me over the basics of what kind of design can operate where? E.g. Brits obviously operated quite a lot in the Mediterranean, and I know that the Mediterranean is a rather calm sea, but I never heard of their warships having any problem operating there. So I'm getting a bit confused.

>>9620 >Could you please walk me over the basics of what kind of design can operate where? That's a long and hard one, since the base descriptions all sound the same but the nuances are different — and for another thing just how long such a 'basic' explanation would be/how bad I am at explaining things. See, >I mean, I knew about how the problems mostly come from the ships not compensating properly for the rolling or taking on too much water is essentially correct, lacking wind effect (but that's a relatively minor thing). It's just that every different body of water (and even sections of those same bodies) behave differently, often drastically so, thanks to geological/meteorological differences. Unfortunately, I'm neither a geologist nor a meteorologist, so I can't begin to explain those — in fact, most naval architects and engineers can't, we get reports on the usual sea states and upper/lower bounds on the areas we're designing for and go from there — or some areas just garner notoriety (i.e: the North Sea). This is why you end up with regional specialists — usually for their national home waters (eg: as an American designer, my knowledge is primarily Pacific-Atlantic designs). As a general rule, bigger waves want stronger, more immediate roll counter-motions; smaller waves want softer, slower counter-motions. Longer waves require longer supported lengths and higher stress limits, shorter waves can get away with a lot less (and this is important because it allows you to cram more into your ship — very important in terms of displacement, size, or cost restrictions). Finally, 'chaotic' seas (much of the pacific, the bermuda triangle, parts of the indian ocean, etc) do better with longer, narrower hulls (helps keep your ship on course — also lends itself to speed), whereas more orderly or predictable waters can have stouter ships (which results in a more stable gun platform, among other benefits). This is why the USN and IJN tended to design 'pencil ships', even on ships where speed wasn't the bright idea. All that being said, I can explain one bit you referred to. >the Mediterranean The Mediterranean is a bit of a unique case in that any ship that fits is likely to do well there, and probably perform above specs (if designed for another area). It's one of the few large bodies of water that can have a surface like glass without the stars having to align. While 'Mediterranean designs' exist (most Italian designs), those are almost always 'local' navies' short range, high maintenance ships which are trying to take advantage of the small size of the Med and the ability to be back at port every third night or so. To put it another way, while both the Pacific and the Mediterranean have 'small' waves on a normal day, the Mediterranean's are 'gentle' while the Pacific's are quite forceful. I hope that was clear enough.

>>9669 >I hope that was clear enough. It was plenty helpful, thank you. Although I'm still left with one question (that might be still more complex than I realize): can modern US warships operate in most parts of the world relatively fine, expect for a few areas? I guess they are still Pacific-Atlantic designs, and they seem to patrol the Persian Gulf often enough that going through the Indian Ocean shouldn't be a serious problem either. But again, I strongly suspect that I'm missing quite a few things here.

What constraints do the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans place on warship design?

>>9723 Why would you spoiler those words?

>>9703 >can modern US warships operate in most parts of the world relatively fine, expect for a few areas? Depends on the ship. The CVNs are designed to operate anywhere, and get away with it on virtue of their sheer bulk. The Ticos are Pacific-Atlantic designs and really do not like operating in the North Sea, and their crews are never too pleased to be assigned there. The Burkes were attempts at 'general' designs that weren't supposed to be specialized for anywhere, but still ended up being Atlantic-Pacific designs (more focus on the Atlantic than the Pacific). The Indian Ocean acts like a less crazy Pacific with slightly larger and longer waves, for the most part, so the Pacific designs can operate there with little trouble - mainly that they have to pay extra attention to their rolling. Back in WW2, the IJN had to drill their western assault fleet for the Indian Ocean as they had purely Pacific designs. The US on the other hand never had any trouble with it since their Pacific-Atlantic designs already required extensive drilling on roll control regardless of what ocean they were in, which is why they were able to take their horribly-optimized-for-it ships into the North Sea during both world wars. However, to directly answer your question, yes - as long as their crews are properly trained. >>9723 They're like a very slightly more tame North Sea but without the constant storms (instead you get blizzards - which is somehow slightly better) but with one more, extremely important factor: How many ice breakers do you have?

Are pump-jets or azimuth thrusters powered by electricity the future, or just a pair of bad ideas that are getting increasingly popular?

>>9872 They're actually not bad ideas, they're just highly situational. Azimuth thrusters, for example, are excellent for small, very-low speed course corrections and self-docking (means larger ships don't technically need tugs), but they make a lot of noise and cause a lot of parasitic drag, Pump-jets in bucket configuration are similar, in that they give greater control to the ship but generate a lot of noise. Pump-jets in thruster configuration are very dense propulsion units for their applied power, very efficient in terms of energy to volume, but again are fairly loud (but not as loud as bucket config.) Pump-jets in 'reverse' configuration are rather quiet, but are less dense than conventional propulsion, requiring larger powerplants to achieve the same speed - these would actually probably do well on ASW craft (and in fact, many Attack Submarines actually use them); but, as said, they require more volume.

>>9873 >they require more volume Can electric transmission save enough volume to mostly equal out the difference between reverse configuration pump-jets and traditional propulsion, or is it such a case-by-case basis that there is no point in making such generalizations? Also, if we have a ship propelled by e.g. 4 pump-jets and we want a bigger ships that just happens to need twice the power, would sticking 8 of those pump-jets on it work just fine, or is it better to install 4 pump-jets that are individually twice as powerful? Or is also one of those case-by-case cases?

>>10029 >Can electric transmission save enough volume to mostly equal out the difference between reverse configuration pump-jets and traditional propulsion, I am assuming you are referring to electric drive systems such as Turbo-Electric, IEP, or even CODLAG. If so, this is a no. Turbo-Electric or IEP CAN make for better compartmentalized layouts for the ship, however. The issue with the volume of reversed pump-jets is where the bulk of their volume is located in the hull of the ship. Their sterns, obviously, but there's only a limited amount of space there, especially on smaller hulls. It is, however, entirely doable to use them on surface hulls, you just have to be aware of what you're sacrificing. >if we have a ship propelled by e.g. 4 pump-jets and we want a bigger ships that just happens to need twice the power, would sticking 8 of those pump-jets on it work just fine Yes, under those exact circumstances simply doubling the number of pump-jets actually would work. >or is it better to install 4 pump-jets that are individually twice as powerful? Depends on the size of the hull and the space you had to work with. On this particular thing, it is a case-by-case thing.

>>10036 >I am assuming you are referring to electric drive systems such as Turbo-Electric, IEP, or even CODLAG. Indeed, I just don't know what's the generic name that also excludes all the systems where electric and mechanical transmission are both possible. >It is, however, entirely doable to use them on surface hulls, you just have to be aware of what you're sacrificing. Are those thruster or reverse-thruster configurations capable of manoeuvring the ship the same way as the bucket configuration? It's a bit hard to find info on them, because all the search engines only seem to spit out advertisements for pump-jets used on yachts and jet-skis.

>>10036 >I am assuming you are referring to electric drive systems such as Turbo-Electric, IEP, or even CODLAG. Indeed, I just don't know what's the generic name that also excludes all the systems where electric and mechanical transmission are both possible. >It is, however, entirely doable to use them on surface hulls, you just have to be aware of what you're sacrificing. Are those thruster or reverse-thruster configurations capable of manoeuvring the ship the same way as the bucket configuration? It's a bit hard to find info on them, because all the search engines only seem to spit out advertisements for pump-jets used on yachts and jet-skis.

http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNSpain_2cm-120_Meroka.php >This is a CIWS developed by the Spanish manufacturer Bazán (now Fabrica de Artilleria Bazán - FABA) using twelve Oerlikon 20 mm/120 guns organized in two rows of six guns each. The barrels are slightly skewed in order to expand the lethal area. >The Spanish Navy estimates that there is an 87% probability of destroying an incoming missile with a single 12-round burst. >This weapon fires two bursts per second. Each burst consists of 4 groups of 3 rounds each. This pattern was selected in order to minimize the recoil forces. A burst takes 0.080 seconds to complete. At a glance I thought those crazy Spaniards bolted together some leftover Oerlikons and called it a CIWS, but there is clearly method to this madness.

>>10271 >I just don't know what's the generic name that also excludes all the systems where electric and mechanical transmission are both possible. Integrated Full Electrical Propulsion, if I'm understanding you correctly. > Are those thruster or reverse-thruster configurations capable of manoeuvring the ship the same way as the bucket configuration? No, a majority of thruster/reverse-thruster systems require rudders. It is theoretically possible to integrate a thrust vectoring system into them to provide one axis steering, but they are effectively just fancy rudders. >>10288 Furthering that idea of order in chaos, A reminder that the 20mm Phalanx and the 30mm AO-18/AK-230, which armchair weapons experts often criticize as being 'too inaccurate' are 'inaccurate' on purpose. As it turns out, the 'shotgun effect' is very, very useful against any airborne target, especially when the system can just metaphorically hold down on the trigger to keep it going. It means that 'good enough' targeting accuracy actually is 'good enough' more often than not. Obviously, that does result in lower successes per mount, but that's where and why you use more than one mount. I cannot yell that at modern navies enough, albeit nobody listens to the old designers anymore.

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ubD8L42gdEM Tomorrow there will be a minute by minute series about Pearl Harbor and all the other Japanese attacks on that day.

https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=ubD8L42gdEM Tomorrow there will be a minute by minute series about Pearl Harbor and all the other Japanese attacks on that day.

>>10399 Time Ghost are a bunch of faggots though Indy is cool

>>10406 That might be so, but there really is no other alternative for this very specific kind of content. And at least they keep the holohoax nonsense as its own separate miniseries, so you can even ignore that.

>>10426 It's what i do, though that will eventually seep into the normal episodes in the coming years i also really dislike spartacus for some reason, just in general

>>10359 >the 'shotgun effect' is very, very useful against any airborne target It makes me wonder if such a ˝volley autocannon˝ would be better than a rotary gun. The Goalkeeper has 1190 rounds, and the GAU-8 has a RoF of 70 rounds/s (4200 rounds/min), that's enough for exactly 17 seconds of continuous fire (in theory). If you took a 30mm autocannon with a RoF of 10 rounds/s (600 rounds/min) with a 200 round belt (or an beltless feed system, or a built-in endless belt, or something equally fancy) and arranged 8 of them in a single mount, then in theory it could fire for 20 seconds at a RoF of 80 rounds/s. And you could arrange them in a way that inherently increases the hit change, and you could also play around with how many shots they fire and in what pattern, and so on. The downside seems to be that it would be quite a lot more complicated than a single rotary cannon, with significantly more potential points of failure. And 8 of them would be also more expensive than a single GAU-8. Although if those autocannons were also used by all services, then economics of scale could in theory bring down the price significantly. And if they were also meant for land service, then they'd be most likely capable of dual-feed, so the CIWS could switch between discarding sabot and explosive projectiles (but then the dual-feed system could be yet one more point of failure). Besides, you could go the Russian way and just use more rotary cannons on a single mount.

To get back where we were: >putting 8 30mm autocannons as suggested in >>10642 is retarded, because the average autocannon already weights 2/3s of a GAU-8 >putting 2 rotary cannons like the Russians do is therefore better >putting 4 rotary cannons on the same mount might or might not work >the forest of barrels that is the octuple 2pdr mount is cool >Russians put guns and missiles on the same mount because it requires less space Last post I remember basically asked if projectiles and sabots can start impacting each other if you have too many autocannons lined up next to each other.

>>10702 >if projectiles and sabots can start impacting each other if you have too many autocannons lined up next to each other. In theory, yes, it can happen; but I have no idea at what point that would be, sadly. I wasn't in the ordnance section. In a CIWS role, I'm not too sure that such an effect would be detrimental, however. Close to the gun it'd all still have enough momentum to go down range, where it becomes the enemy aircraft/missile's problem.

>>10702 >Russians put guns and missiles on the same mount because it requires less space I take mounting a single large-calibre cannon and a pair of rotary cannons wouldn't work out the same way. Although that too would look pretty cool, but the different ballistics and the overall heaviness of the mount would kill the idea on the drawing board.

Speaking of autocannons: http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNUS_1-1-75_mk1.php >The second version, designated as the 1.1"/75 (28 mm) Mark 2, was based upon a design by Robert F. Hudson. This was a unique belt-fed (later converted to clip-fed), gas-operated, long-recoil weapon with the gas cylinder located beneath the gun barrel. Unlike most gas-operated weapons, this one did not use gas to cycle the bolt. Instead, gas tapped from the barrel was used to blow a weight forward to arrive at the front end of the cylinder and hit a spring buffer just as the projectile was leaving the muzzle, thus providing a counter-recoil effect. As an additional recoil reduction, the weight returning from the front of the gas cylinder compensated for the weight of the bolt moving forwards. This design achieved a very smooth recoil cycle, at the cost of considerable complexity and a modest rate of fire. A prototype was built and tested but its complex design was found to be unsatisfactory and further work was discontinued at sometime around 1931. Forgotten Weapons actually had a video on the .30 version a few years ago: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=jw4jUQA3w2Y It's quite interesting to see such an overly complicated counter-recoil system on an autocannon of all things. Not that I belong to the crowd who think long-recoil operation is somehow inherently complicated, but he could have simply connected the bolt and the forward-moving gas tube with an arm and get rid of the whole long-recoil operation.

>>10708 It'd actually not be that hard to fix an independent elevation co-axial rotary cannon (or two) to a 'larger bore' gun if you're talking something like a 3in/76mm. Fixing a fire control system to work with both would be possible and the weight of the rotary cannon/s would hardly affect the larger mount, if properly designed. The primary issue with the concept is that a rotary cannon is best suited on a mount with the highest accurate rate of train possible (in other words CIWS mounts), whereas the 76mm mounts (as the a proper hoist mount) are 'stuck' with train rates only a fourth of what CIWS mounts achieve. Note: 'stuck' mainly because nobody has wanted to make anything faster, probably due to lack of a reason for it. I'm not sure.

https://archive.fo/mNqBg France’s Next-Generation Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier: PANG (Infographics) >On December 8th, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France’s next-generation aircraft carrier will be nuclear-powered and replace the national fleet’s flagship warship in 2038. >The 11th carrier-vessel in the French Navy’s history will be built by French defence contractor Naval Group and equipped with the new electromagnetic aircraft launch system developed by U.S. company General Atomics, according to French officials. >On Twitter, Florence Parly, France’s Minister for the Armed Forces, provided some detail about the planned specifications and capabilities of the PANG. The future aircraft carrier will be just over 984 feet long and displace approximately 75,000 metric tons. >The Charles de Gaulle is around 858 feet long and displaces just 42,500 metric tons. >It will be able to carry up to 30 Rafale fighter jets or the successor of the Dassault warplane currently being developed by France, Germany and Spain. >“Charles de Gaulle, as you know, will come to the end of its life in 2038. This is why I have decided that the future aircraft carrier that will equip our country and our navy will be nuclear-powered like the Charles de Gaulle,” Macron said. “Your plant in Le Creusot, which has been producing parts essential to our navy for a long time, will produce, among others, several major parts of the nuclear boiler [reactor] of the future aircraft carrier by forging and machining them right here. … By these choices, we confirm France’s desire to preserve its strategic autonomy.” >The French military had initially lent towards a ship with conventional propulsion, but later decided to go for a nuclear-powered vessel, despite heavier construction costs, for technical and strategic reasons. >“Out strategic future, our status as a great power, lies with the nuclear industry,” Macron said. >The French state will invest one billion euros during the first development phase that will end in 2025, the Ministry of Armed Forces said. Ministry officials declined to comment on media reports that the vessel could cost more than 5 billion euros. >“Naval Group is very proud to build the largest warship ever built in France”, the company CEO, Pierre Eric Pommelet, said in a statement.

>>10791 >2038 >aircraft carrier >manned aircraft Imagine if a country that nobody thinks of as a naval power suddenly obsoleted the rest of the world's navies by building a pair of futuristic battleships. Imagine if it was a country like Finland, or Brazil, or Switzerland.

>>10795 Finno-Viking colonial empire soon.

>>10778 >an independent elevation co-axial rotary cannon (or two) to a 'larger bore' gun if you're talking something like a 3in/76mm. That's about what I have in mind. A non-penetrating version with those fancy anti-air/anti-missile projectiles the Italians have could be analogous to the missiles, but it would also work as a simple canon. And it already has a non-penetrating version, so you just need to add rotary cannons to that, beef up the rotating motors, and bolt as many to smaller watercraft as you think they need. And then the ˝normal˝ version could have an additional system that lets the crew reload the rotary cannons from below the deck. Although if I'm not mistaken the Russian CIWS are reloaded that way. Or just go all out with fantasies and add two pairs of AK-630s to an AK-130 turret for a total of 26 barrels.

Are sailing ships really good at training people, or is it just an excuse to keep some of them around? Also, why were hammocks completely abandoned? One would think that giving everybody their own hammocks and telling them to set it up when it's their turn to sleep and them take it down after waking up is still better than hot bunking.

>>10791 nice ship but why does it have a jew hat

Finally there is an animation of the 40mm Bofors: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=UnDwlqbAEmQ https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=Supmhc4sizw And it made me read a bit more about this and related guns, and now I know that the Imperial Japanese Navy not only made some incredibly retarded decisions, but didn't even correct them when they had a chance. They adopted that shitty 25mm Hotchkiss design in 1936, even though the 40mm Bofors was ready by 1932, and there was also a 25mm version adopted by the Swedish navy in that same year. Even assuming that they adopt the Type 96, if they realize after a few years of service that it's a piece of shit they could have bought the license for the 25mm gun, rework it to work with their 25mm ammunition, and end up with a serviceable AA autocannon. The soviets also bought the 25mm version, and first enlarged the design to fire the ammo of their 45mmanti- tank gun, then scaled it down to 37mm. The Japs could have easily done the same thing, especially because they also had a 37mm AT gun in service and just before their entry into ww2 they adopted a 47mm gun. It really makes me wonder what the hell was going on there, because it looks like they were the only country who had the industrial capacity to manufacture autocannons but didn't end up with some derivative of the Bofors design.

>>11009 They're probably very good at teaching discipline, team work and those kind of skills, i really doubt sailors nowadays need to make many knots, but they sure need to get used to life at sea and the military environment. >>11018 Why was Japanese AA so bad?

>>11018 >>11020 The Hotchkiss was chosen because the IJN needed a light (<600 lbs), reasonably modern AA gun to replace their old 2-pounders, but also needed something that the ass-backwards Japanese arms industry was actually capable of producing. They did try to copy of the Bofors 40mm immediately after they first encountered them, but they ran headfirst into all of the manufacturing limitations that made them reject it in the first place. That being said, the Type 96 actually turned out to have pretty good reliability and ballistics for its caliber. What ruined it was the small magazine, the lack of a decent FCS, and the slow or outright absent power control. The last two are kind of understandable given the state of the Japanese electronics industry at the time, but how hard could it possibly be to just make a bigger magazine?

>>11116 >They did try to copy of the Bofors 40mm immediately after they first encountered them, but they ran headfirst into all of the manufacturing limitations that made them reject it in the first place. That really makes them sound ass-backwards, considering that Hungary had no problem mass-producing this gun, and even Norway had a factory that the Germans used during the war. Of course they actually bought the license so they didn't have to reverse engineer it. >how hard could it possibly be to just make a bigger magazine? It's even worse once you realize the single mount had higher RoF than the triple, because the loaders were in each other's way. The best solution would have been to make a version that works with feed strips, because then the loader can just join a new strip to the one already in the gun while it fires, and so a pair of loaders can keep it constantly fed. Adapting that even to a twin mount would be a problem, but using single mounts only would have been still better than what they actually had.

>>11172 What's worse, Strelok, is that a young Japanese Naval Ordnance Engineer (Kure Arsenal, iirc) actually did develop a heavy(-er) barreled, twin mount version which fit in the same slot as a triple and did use feed strips, with a layout optimized so that the loaders would not get in each others' ways and essentially allowed continuous fire. This set up supposedly allowed this one mount to surpass the effective fire rate of an entire 'concentration unit', which was three of the triple mounts. The engineer was executed for insubordination and all of his work thrown out. No, this was not the first nor the last time that the Japanese Navy would execute a promising young engineer for having a bright idea, and it really, really highlighted the difference between the USN and the IJN of WW2. To illustrate this point, I'll bring up another such instance. As you're probably aware, the USS Lexington (Lexington-class), IJN Kaga, and IJN Taihou all have something in common - the primary cause of their sinking was fuel-air that remained in their AV Gas lines during damage control lighting off due to hangar fires. The day after the USS Lexington sunk, a young machinist's mate aboard one of the other USN Carriers figured out what the problem was and devised a system to purge the AV Gas lines with non-flammable CO2 in the event of damage control needing it. He took it to his superior, the section engineer, and talked it over with him. He thought it was a great idea (with a few changes) and took it to the Chief Engineer, who also thought it was a great idea (with a few changes) and he took it to the captain. The captain looked at it, told them to make and install the device on the ship, but after they give him a copy of the designs. Which they did. The Captain then went and saw the Admiral of the Fleet, who thought it was such a good idea that he had every aircraft-equipped ship in the fleet use said device - and then flew to Annapolis to make it USN Policy. Within a month, every US aircraft equipped ship had this device installed. A few days after the Kaga sunk, a young machinist's mate aboard the Zuikaku figured out what the problem was and devised a system to purge the AV Gas lines with non-flammable CO2 in the event of damage control needing it. He took it to his superior. He was beaten to death for his impudence. So, yes, Strelok, the Japanese of the 1930s/WW2 really, really were ass-backwards.

>11173 >The engineer was executed for insubordination and all of his work thrown out. >He took it to his superior. He was beaten to death for his impudence. yeah, Japanese punishments were harsh but honestly, that sounds like war propaganda mirroring existing western sentiment. Some reputable source to back the up?

>>11175 >Some reputable source to back the up? That depends, do you read Jap and how close are you to Fleet Activities Yokosuka? The Japanese - and indeed most Asians - consider that type of thing to be correct military procedure, and weren't ashamed to take record of it. By that I mean to say I read it in the surviving Archives of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Not sure if that's still at Yokosuka or if they moved it to one of the museums now, come to think of it. It's been over 20 years. At the time it was still in the possession of the US Navy, but I've been hearing they've been turning a lot of that over to the Japs for historical purposes these days. Incidentally, that's the main reason I know for a fact the Yamato didn't make the world's longest BB shot on a moving target - the Iowa or New Jersey did, the archives included a photo of the IJN Nowaki with a hole torn clean through the superstructure by a dud 16in HC shell.

>>11176 >consider *Considered. Although I'd be willing to wager that deep down in their blood most of them still do.

>>11176 >source is non-digital archive written in japanese hieroglyphs okay >consider that type of thing to be correct military procedure sure I can see Japanese commanders being annoyed but I still have trouble to believe the reason for execution was only disrespecting the chain of command. IIRC young japanese officers doing something their own way wasn't that rare and I think it was before Midway that a war game was held by some younger flag officers as to how the attack would unfold. They predicted correctly that they would lose badly and some of the higher ups were somewhat pissed because the younger officers had changed some of the rules of the game despite what they had been told to do but the acting Admiral just told them to move on and restart the game. so FWIW and no offense but I believe there's something missing in your stories. Maybe the officers in question were known troublemakers

>>11178 >but I believe there's something missing in your stories Honestly, you're correct. The Japanese archives are nowhere near as detailed and thorough as the Germans' were, for instance, and this is on top of the fact that what remains of the archive is just what the Japs failed to destroy immediately pre-surrender, so the archive records themselves do not contain the full story. All I can state for certain is that the two engineers were executed and the official claimed reasons were as previously stated plus claims of dishonor and the usual Japanese Bushido lip-service of the period. There realistically had to have been a lot of other reasons for the capital punishment but the world probably will never know unless the personnel files on those individuals ever surface. The point stands that the designs for these 'solutions' were available to the Japanese with a reasonable measure of time to take advantage of them, but the Japanese refused to use them.

>>11173 So that would have more than tripled the weight of fire while also cutting the number of guns with a third. That still wouldn't be a gamechanger, but I imagine it would at least increase the density of shells to the point that they transform from some fireworks welcoming the enemy planes to a minor threat. Especially if they equipped every ship built or refitted after 1938 with these mounts and those fabled 100mm AA guns. Do you remember how they were mounted? My guess would be that there was a left-feeding and a right-feeding gun on top of each other, with the lower one placed closer to the front of the mount, so that empty strips from the upper gun are not in the way. >>11179 But how did those descriptions look like? Did they seriously outline how these inventions worked and then an addendum said inventing new things is berry dishononuraburu and so the inventor was killed?

>>11179 ah thanks, that makes more sense then, I was trying to wrap my head around some officer inventor being executed because he invented something and just forgot to follow protocol (though we know these nerds can be obnoxious fucks). Bad luck for the Japanese anyways, I guess

>>11180 >Do you remember how they were mounted? My guess would be that there was a left-feeding and a right-feeding gun on top of each other, with the lower one placed closer to the front of the mount, so that empty strips from the upper gun are not in the way. If my memory serves, you're correct. >But how did those descriptions look like? Did they seriously outline how these inventions worked and then an addendum said inventing new things is berry dishononuraburu and so the inventor was killed? I can't recall the details of the Zuikaku's case, but in the case of the Kure Engineer, it was a technical document on the development project for that twin-mount which essentially ended with 'Project Lead (name) executed for (reason), see incident report (number). Project unlikely to continue.' And of course after a week of searching for said report, I came to the conclusion that it was either lost or didn't exist anymore.

>>11182 not the same anon I find it quite odd, because the army seems to have been the opposite, seems low officers there had a lot of sway, didn't the whole Manchuria thing started due to some low rank officers deciding to attack? i know for a fact it wasn't uncommon for low ranking officers to assassinate their higher ups if they felt they were doing a disservice to Japan and all that. Maybe that was part of their rivalry.

>>11184 >they even have "helicopter" Carriers. It's a damn shame that they can only carry the F-35. Although they might develop and deploy their own plane(s), or be the first ones to equip their carriers primarily with drones. I'm replying here because this is more of a technical matter than something to do with international tension.

>>11173 >What's worse, Strelok, is that a young Japanese Naval Ordnance Engineer (Kure Arsenal, iirc) actually did develop a heavy(-er) barreled, twin mount version which fit in the same slot as a triple and did use feed strips, with a layout optimized so that the loaders would not get in each others' ways and essentially allowed continuous fire. This set up supposedly allowed this one mount to surpass the effective fire rate of an entire 'concentration unit', which was three of the triple mounts. The engineer was executed for insubordination and all of his work thrown out. How did the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina compare in that regard?

>>11186 >How did the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina compare in that regard? The German Naval AA systems were behind the American/British curve by a fair bit, in large part due to their early major defeats at sea putting a damper on their willingness to further commit to that field. Despite this, technologically, they were only 1-2 years behind, which was remarkable considering where they started. The Italians started out with relatively decent AA on paper, but theirs was a story of perfect being the enemy of good enough. Ironically, they foresaw Airpower being an extremely dangerous threat early enough to have put serious commitment into AA early on. Unfortunately, they overreached and ended up developing an advanced mount that was far too advanced for the time and barely worked, leaving them with their only reliable heavy AA being a gun design they literally took from prize ships they obtained in WW1. This on top of their general very poor quality shells (as a result of their own Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex screwing them over and cutting as many corners as they could get away with), combined with the fact that they never employed RPC for their AA mounts (again, perfect and good enough, they did develop them, but they wanted better until it was too late to begin production), meant that in reality they lagged behind even the Japanese in AA quality. All this assuming you're asking about ass-backwardsness of AA, not if they executed engineers for insubordination. The answer to that is hell no, they had European honor for their own peoples.

From beneath the strange waves frenzied up by an eldritch storm, an odd vessel surfaces, thrown off-course by the eddies of time. Their voyage to Tahiti interrupted, her crew now finds itself in a dark future, where the screeching Austrian imbecile they were fighting against was right all along, and the lost art of naval gunnery is only appreciated by autists on Chinese cartoon imageboards. Is the ship autistic on the very conceptual level, or can she be redeemed by modern gun technology?

>>11197 Not really unless its a one off gimmick. It would have to surface to fire those guns, thereby exposing itself to return fire. Torpedoes are much more effective since the enemy has a visibly harder time seeing you. I wonder if the speed of the ship would also be an issue.... Teardrop hulls are not... great for armor tbh imho. But ze krauts are working on a retractable gun platform on the Type 212s (its just a 30mm retractable from the mast... So not really a "naval gun" more of an auto cannon). What I WOULD be afraid of would be some sort of sub mixed in with torpedoes/misses and a shit ton of drones. That would be extremely scarry if you could manage to get within striking distance of say, a coastal nuclear plant.

>>11197 It wouldn't be good for much of anything unless a railgun was installed. Even then it would be a one trick pony and would likely get fucked by loitering ammunition that was either flying or swimming. Traditional vertical missile battery would do everything more efficiently what such submersible gun platform could do, and if you need a gun platform then just use a surface vessel.

>>11197 The ConOps is unfortunately deceased and will remain so until near-perfect Stealth technology is developed. However, the concept of a gun-armed submarine actually isn't a completely baseless idea if given a new lead on life. An example would be a Special Operations Support Submarine, designed to sneak into places they shouldn't be, drop off a SpecOps unit for some Tom Clancy shit, and then provide supporting fire for that unit. It wouldn't even have to have 203mm guns, a single, simple 76.2mm gun would be far more fire support than most SpecOps units would be used to having if things went south and got loud in a hurry and would probably be a Godsend to them. It's an extremely niche concept, but I see potential value in it if you already had everything else covered.

>>11197 Cruiser guns on a sub are a terrible idea for many reasons, but I could see smaller (3-4") deck guns making a comeback as a means of picking off defenseless merchants without wasting a torpedo. The main reason why we got rid of the deck guns in the first place was because using the gun meant staying exposed on the surface for several minutes at a time, but with today's tech it probably wouldn't be hard to make a retractable, unmanned 76mm gun that can deploy, fire a round or two and be ready to dive again in under 30 seconds. >>11186 The German design bureau was almost as bad as the Japanese, but the navy itself was a lot less retarded and would occasionally just fix things without telling anybody. NavWeaps has a good article on how it got so bad so quickly: http://navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-044.php

>>11230 >>11235 >not wanting a bombard submarine carrying a single Mark 7 naval gun on a retractable enclosed mount with no horizontal range of motion, loaded with a small number of satellite guided shells containing nuclear warheads for surprise deletions of enemy infrastructure

>>11239 Want and believe to be reasonable are two different things. I want fleets full of Grand Unions sailing the ocean, I don't think such a thing is reasonable.

>>11235 >After 1933 the number of the (now) MA staff grew rapid and constant. But as we discussed earlier, front-line officers in command. Most of the new, fresh, young and inexperienced designers never saw a warship from the inside. All they had to have is a Master's Degree in engineering. The design work was more and more fragmented, with two or more groups working on the same problem. So they had "design parties" led by technically inexperienced front-line officers, young ambitious designers without onboard-experience and finally design-questions ripped from the overall context. >The Fleet wanted the a Fire Control System that would be the best, the utmost, the totally superior Fire Control System. So, the MA spent a great deal of time and resources into developing such a system. The end result was an overly complex, very heavy Firing director and very sensitive machinery. This development process continued until the point of chaos was reached. For example, the new battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were found to be incapable of shooting their main guns in the autumn 1939. This could only be corrected after 22,000 yards (!) of useless electrical wires were removed and major modifications were made to the Fire Control circuits and mechanisms. >A second example would be the anti-aircraft FCS on the Bismarck. The company that built the computers for this proudly announced that only a dozen of their 20,000 employees were capable of assembling this machine. When you think about this, there is really no better way to express the fact that this inherently means that the computer won't work properly in actual service. All in all, they (the fleet branch) wanted every thing perrrrfecccct. But if you do it, you often are 10 years too late. The DP-gun wasn't produced because the fleet branch wanted them stabilized in three dimensions - why not start with a 2-d stabilized version and see how it works? The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were outfitted with every gun and FC gimmick (useful or not) that was available. Result: An overloaded design. A few tons more and the main armor belt would loose its function as it would wind up below the waterline. Likewise, the upperworks of the superstructures were the favorite playground of every ambitious technical naval officer who was in command in the MA - I'm sure you noticed the different deck layout for each of these two ships. This is the reason for it. Remember - not technical qualification, but rank is required for all decisions. Things like are why it's so important to study the Axis powers in-depth: you learn a lot about how not to wage a world war. It really is disheartening to realize that they were their own greatest enemies. >The invention of the torpedo and its cost-to-effect-ratio lead to the (I believe) best torpedo defense system of that time. Night is the friend of the small vessels, especially the Torpedo Boat. Fear of such vessels was the only reason that the IM trained for battleship combat at night. And that's one of the reasons the Germans never dropped the concept of three different calibers on their capital ships. That actually reminds me: would going backwards with design concepts and putting the 150mm guns of the Scharnhorst-class and Bismarck-class into casemates, and then covering all available deck space with 88mm guns in pedestal mounts and 37mm autocannons have been an improvement? Yes, that's some 1910s level of design work, but for the most part they were stuck in the 1910s anyway.

>>11265 It would help a little, but you'd have to put the casemates on the freeboard deck anyway (the Scharnhorsts didn't have enough freeboard to put them any lower) so you're only freeing up enough room for a handful of new guns. The real solution would be to develop a simple DP mount for one of the 128mm guns, then replace all the 105mm and 150mm guns with one huge DP battery of probably 20-24 128mm guns. It would also help immensely if Rheinmetall had introduced their navalized 37mm guns in time for the start of the war, instead of waiting until the Kriegsmarine no longer had any surface ships left to put them on.

>>11310 >The real solution would be to develop a simple DP mount for one of the 128mm guns, then replace all the 105mm and 150mm guns with one huge DP battery of probably 20-24 128mm guns. Knowing the Germans, they'd most likely make it overly complicated and unreliable, and then somebody would demand a 150mm version, because they need to have the bestest DP gun. And just after the first prototypes were manufactured (and proved themselves to be utterly unreliable) they'd make sketches for a DP mount that can handle both 170mm and 210mm guns, and has more moving parts than a quadruple 380mm turret.

Since we're already talking about the Kriegsmuhrine, how would Strelok unfug this marvel of germanic naval engineering?

>>11320 Would've been a nice toy but was there ever a situation during the war where the Germans could've used of a carrier? Seems just like a total liability to me, even in a more favorable course of events.

>>11320 I'd redesignate it as a monitor, mount a 80cm gun on it with a magazine so big the barrel has to be replaced by the time it's empty, and then mount as many AA weapons on it as humanly possible. Then use it to bombard Leningrad, and if that's enough to make the city fall, then I'd issue some fake orders to prepare it for a raid on Britain, then park it in Kiel or a similar place, and just use it as a floating battery that the RAF might prioritize over much more valuable targets.

>>11322 Although, looking at the size of the ship, it might be possible to mount both 80cm guns on it, one forward and one aft. If the structure can deal with the stress, then it could fire both of them in a broadside, and that just sounds like a lot of fun. Of course it wouldn't carry a single aircraft in either case.

>>11320 I wouldn't. Aside from the Germans not knowing how to build CVs, they were heading in a valid direction with the concept and, had they ever actually developed actual naval aircraft the ship would have been completely viable in its designed role. Obviously, they lacked an actual strategic need for a Carrier, so building one in the first place is essentially retarded, but as to unfugging the Graf Zeppelin, there really isn't much to unfug beyond horrible shipbuilding practices - even the casemate battery makes sense in context. >>11322 While I'm not 100% positive on the the Graf Zeppelin herself, there's an extremely sizable chance that she couldn't withstand the recoil of even one of the Gustavs. Carriers tended to be built with 'wider' spaced frames to even out loads (due to their massive superstructure weight), where Battleships and other heavy gunships (CAs) tended to concentrate their frame work to withstand the intense localized forces from recoil. In short, a Gustav Monitor would have to be built from the start as such - MAYBE a Yamato or Iowa could take one in place of their front two turrets, but that's a big maybe. And to be clear, this isn't a question of the size of the ship, this is a question of the stress forces that the frames those guns are resting on is designed to take.

>>11363 >the ship would have been completely viable in its designed role. A 42 aircraft complement is quite mediocre for a full sized carrier of the late 1930s, even with Royal Navy CVs at the time fielding slow two-seat fighter-reconnaissance planes.

>>11366 That doesn't change anything. The Graf Zeppelin was not a Fleet Carrier, she was a heavily armed Scout Carrier, or arguably a 'Raid Carrier', in line with the Tirpitzian/Raederian doctrine of the Kriegsmarine. She didn't need any more aircraft to do her job as conceptualized. Yes, she ended up lacking on plane count if you compare her to full fleet carriers, but that doesn't change the fact that she didn't need them since her air arm was conceptually primarily defensive in nature and most of them would be concentrated in CAP.

>>11370 She was too large to be really viable as a raider. It would make more sense to build several CVLs of about half the displacement, since any one ship would run a much higher risk of getting Bismarcked on its first sortie.

>>11371 This, and remember some genius wanted her to engage convoys with her own onboard 15cm SK C/28 guns because that makes perfect sense for a carrier. >>11370 Her displacement at 33,000t full was comparable to contemporary CVs which carried 70+ planes, so even with the 42 aircraft she would've carried at some point being enough for her role as an epic convoy raider it's still a terribly inefficient design compared to the CVs and CVLs field by competing Navies.

>>11371 The theory wasn't the Graf Zeppelin cruising around solo to raid merchant ships, you're thinking platforms instead of systems. The ship was meant to work in conjunction with other ships, specifically including the Bismarcks, to provide scouting and projected air defense while at the same time keeping the fleet small-ish by remaining with the fleet instead of being a detached unit (or dragging the other ships around with her instead) and was expected to carry as much weight as a CL in direct surface actions. In other words, the Graf Zeppelin was a support element, not a primary element, she wouldn't be doing the raiding, she'd be enabling the other raiders to raid. >It would make more sense to build several CVLs of about half the displacement Americans or Japanese, yes, they both had excellent CVLs for raiding. Germany, however, didn't have the shipbuilding industry for it — everything they made was oversize and of excessive displacement for what they carried. Anything smaller than Graf Zeppelin wouldn't have been able to carry enough aircraft to have an effect. >>11375 >and remember some genius wanted her to engage convoys with her own onboard 15cm SK C/28 guns because that makes perfect sense for a carrier. That's because it does. If operating as part of a raider fleet and you're moving with the fleet anyway, there is no reason to not open fire. Splitting off the CV elements from the Surface elements was tantamount to dooming one or the other for smaller navies that couldn't afford US style 'drown them in hulls' strategies — as even the US and IJN found out the hard way. The Americans, Japanese, and British decided to slave their surface elements to their carrier elements. The Graf Zeppelin, as a scout carrier, was designed from the keel up to be slaved to the surface element and therefore would be in range to, in the German mentality, require strong self-defense ability against the cruisers they were likely to encounter — and as mentioned if you're in range anyway there's no reason to not open fire on other more vulnerable targets. >it's still a terribly inefficient design compared to... competing Navies. Strelok, literally every WW2 era ship the Germans built with the exception of their CLs and a handful of DDs were terribly inefficient, massively under performing, and way too large for their capabilities. Prinz Eugen, for example, was ~2500 tons heavier than her contemporarily-designed (but late to the party as all things US were) USS Baltimore, but carried fewer/less effective guns in bad layouts; had roughly half as much armor; and had the typical German horrible three-prop propulsion layout supposedly as a weight saving measure (it actually cost weight). This is one of the damning elements of the German shipbuilding practices I referred to earlier, they did not have the industrial knowledge to produce better designs, they couldn't have designed a smaller Graf Zeppelin since their industry couldn't build it. If the Japanese had designed Graf Zeppelin, for instance, she'd probably have weighed in at only 28k tons — role and design criteria remaining the same (although if they took the raiding role seriously, she may have ended up with torpedo launchers). The Americans would likely have still spat out a 33k ton design, but nicked the SP guns in favor of having as many dual purpose guns as Midway (or more) and ended up with 70 aircraft. But the Americans were insane and expected crews to put aircraft together from dismantled components within 15 minutes on top of counting deck spotted aircraft, leading to inflated numbers only they could pull off (example: Lexington [Essex]'s world record 128 aircraft airborne at the same time).

>>11363 >isn't a question of the size of the ship, this is a question of the stress forces that the frames those guns are resting on is designed to take. That's a pity, my other idea would have been turning a pair of pre-dreadnoughts into floating 80cm batteries. I take those would end up in pieces after a few shots. >>11382 >they did not have the industrial knowledge to produce better designs Did it affect what they can produce? E.g. if they somehow laid off their 'tism and brought Italian designs, would have it been possible to build those? Of course they'd have to be adapted to the Atlantic, and that's where either the Germans or the Italians can fuck it up.

Would it have been sensible to outfit the Bismarck class with a diesel propulsion setup instead of steam turbines?

>>11382 The US, Japan and Britain all did a ton of experiments with armed carriers and concluded that anything short of a Lexington was totally fucked in a gunfight, even against a small CL or a few destroyers. The only way to protect the carrier is to never get shot at in the first place, which means you need to either avoid detection (difficult with a huge capital ship, especially when it's your only one) or hide behind tons of escorts. The Royal Navy would notice immediately if half the Kriegsmarine sortied all at once, and they could easily intercept that fleet with three times as many ships, which is exactly what happened to Bismarck and Scharnhorst in real life. (Also, the Kriegsmarine IRL hardly ever sent out more than 2-3 ships at a time on raiding missions so I don't know where you're getting this whole "commerce-raiding task force" concept from.) >Anything smaller than Graf Zeppelin wouldn't have been able to carry enough aircraft to have an effect. The Graf Zeppelin actually had a pretty reasonable hangar space for her displacement. I suspect the "13 fighters" number was either because they assumed she'd carry fixed-wing Bf-109s and weren't willing to deck park, or because Messerschmitt had a production shortage and the Luftwaffe got first priority. In either case, Graf Zeppelin would have entered service alongside the folding-wing BV-155, allowing for an air group of probably ~70 planes with deck parking (or ~30 per ship for my hypothetical CVLs). >>11401 They tried that with the Scharnhorsts, but they couldn't find a way to fit the whole powerplant within the citadel. With the Bismarcks all their autism was redirected towards the wonders of turboelectric, except they couldn't get that to work because some manager insisted that all proper battleships must have three screws and nobody could make a 50,000hp motor.

>>11386 >I take those would end up in pieces after a few shots. Correct. >Did it affect what they can produce? Yes, the industrial knowledge of the building nation was important in regards to what they could produce, Take for example the Japanese and the 40mm Bofors. They had the designs early on, but they found it impossible to produce in quantity with the Japanese industry. A little known fact is that the Germans actually had the designs for the US' 5in/38cal DP Gun (and related mounts), the best general purpose DP gun of the war, from day one. At the time (1934-early1936) the US and the Germans were virtually allied and were sharing research. However, the German industry was incapable of producing the complex electronics required to make the US' system work, so the US' gun was useless to them. >>11457 >The US, Japan and Britain all did a ton of experiments with armed carriers and concluded that anything short of a Lexington was totally fucked in a gunfight, even against a small CL or a few destroyers. I'd disagree, given the reports I have read from the time (the US, for example, was critical of Fleet Carriers' direct defensiveness, but the same report suggested that Hybrid Cruisers were the way to go for Scout CVs, which indicates they didn't think all Armed Carriers were totally fucked in a gunfight - just the unarmored ones), but even if it was correct, my response would be 'Yes, and?' What does this have to do with the GERMANS' conclusions? The Germans who did not have access to this testing data and had to come up with their own conclusions via the time honored method of scientific-wild-ass-guesswork. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight one can say that the direction they took the Graf Zeppelin was incorrect for the tactical/strategic circumstances of the time. But if you're arguing from a position of hindsight, then any surface development for the Kriegsmarine was retarded and they should have focused entirely on submarines; furthermore, any armor on USN Battleships not named USS North Carolina, USS South Dakota, or USS Iowa was pointless. >The Royal Navy would notice immediately if half the Kriegsmarine sortied all at once By late 1941 the Royal Navy would notice immediately if so much as a single DKM surface ship left harbor, so I'm not sure what your point is. > so I don't know where you're getting this whole "commerce-raiding task force" concept from. The ConOps of the Graf Zeppelin envisioned a BBCV Division of 1 CV, 1 BB, 1 Cruiser (CL or CA), 2-3 DDs, and 1-3 SS' acting in fleet support role. Far less a 'task force' and far more a raiding party, because that's an extremely small division as far as ships go (far too few escorts to pass muster in USN/RN OoBs). Ships are not designed with future sight of what will happen, they are designed with forward projection. Which is nothing more than wishful thinking with a dose of pessimism. How the Graf Zeppelin was intended to operate has absolutely no bearing on how she would have been operated, just like the Bismarck was designed to operate in proper divisions instead of the historical 2-ships-and-a-boat band she died with. > In either case, Graf Zeppelin would have entered service alongside the folding-wing BV-155, allowing for an air group of probably ~70 planes with deck parking You're overestimating a fair bit. By the time the Me-155 (the BV-155 was never to be navalized) was a thing (late 1942), the Graf Zeppelin's prospected aircraft compliment had been reverted back to mostly fighters and a handful of dive bombers, and the fighters were not exactly tiny even with folded wings. Between that and the ship's limited handling systems, I'd reckon the Graf Zeppelin could have managed a maximum of 52-55 aircraft and no more even with deck parking. Incidentally, however, deck parking was not something the Germans ever even figured out. Contrary to public perception it was neither obvious nor simple. You had to have designed the carrier to allow it in the first place (due to wind effect throwing the aircraft around when the CV is maneuvering, the lines and placement of the tower and any deck-level batteries have to be taken into consideration). They were making scientific wild ass guesses about it after observing US and RN CVs doing it, but - from all indications given the design of the Graf Zeppelin's superstructure when the Russians sunk her - they got the math wrong.

>>11467 >They had the designs early on, but they found it impossible to produce in quantity with the Japanese industry. I've actually found a great period piece about that gun, and it might even explain the problems: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=yVeLsJtId_g It was still designed for handfitting, so that it could be produced even by countries that were one or two decides behind the cutting edge of industrialization (that is, the US of A). I imagine that the varying tolerances combined with the overall complexity already made it a nightmare to reverse-engineer, and then they had to figure out how to produce it, and then teach the workers how to do their job. Not to defend the Japanese industry, but that's a tall order, to the point one might be better off designing a gun that functions the same way, but otherwise none of the parts are interchangeable with the gun it was copied from. But then that's the same as developing an idea from zero. >However, the German industry was incapable of producing the complex electronics required to make the US' system work, so the US' gun was useless to them. Is it because US fire control systems were so integrated that copying just the mount with different electronics would have been the equivalent of making a new mount? Although this is where I have to realize that I don't even know what makes a naval DP mount so special compared to the bog standard static AA gun. And for a more concrete example: could the Germans produce the guns and turrets of the Littorio-class if they had the blueprints? Or was it so different in small but significant ways from German industrial standards that it wouldn't have been anything more than inspiration to develop their own 15in triple turrets?

>>11468 >but that's a tall order, to the point one might be better off designing a gun that functions the same way, but otherwise none of the parts are interchangeable with the gun it was copied from. But then that's the same as developing an idea from zero. Ironically, that's essentially what the US did with the Bofors to produce so many of them, although not quite to the extent of no interchangeability. IIRC, roughly only 9% of the US-redesigned Bofors were interchangeable with the original Bofors. I'm not sure exactly which video you've linked to, I haven't had time to sit down and watch it, but if it's the one I'm thinking of they probably mentioned as much in it. As you suggest, the Japanese were extremely unlikely to have been able to pull off such an industrial feat in the middle of a war in the first place. >Is it because US fire control systems were so integrated that copying just the mount with different electronics would have been the equivalent of making a new mount? I'm actually not entirely positive what the issue was exactly, although I've been told it had something to do with the rammer. > could the Germans produce the guns and turrets of the Littorio-class if they had the blueprints? Could they, yes. The Italian and German industrial bases were close enough that they could pull off each others' engineering, exception granted to the Italians somehow messing up every aircraft they tried to make except one (entire type) which even the Germans loved (of course I would forget its name).

>>11482 >the Italians somehow messing up every aircraft they tried to make except one (entire type) which even the Germans loved (of course I would forget its name). The C.202?

>>11485 The Fiat G. 55 Centauro. They liked it so much that they initially decided to replace their own Bf-109s with it before the war deteriorated to the point they couldn't afford the switch over. In fairness, the Germans also liked the Re.2005, but considered it too complex to produce.

>>11482 >that's essentially what the US did with the Bofors to produce so many of them, although not quite to the extent of no interchangeability Indeed, but if I understand correctly they ˝demetricated˝ it mostly to make the production easier with non-metric tooling, although it's questionable if simply tightening the tolerances on the original design would have been enough to make it ready for mass production on assembly lines. I'd think yes, but life is often not that easy. Still, at least they made sure that the barrels can be freely changed between the metric and non-metric models. Also, I have a rather tangentially related question: it might be outside of your field, but have you ever heard about anybody other than Germany using (or experimenting with) sintered iron driving bands for artillery shells? Nearly every description of the ww2 88mm guns mentions how switching to those doubled barrel life (apparently without any downsides), so it's rather strange that they are not the standard today.

>>7107 are Nuclear submarines still useful?

Here are some 25 minutes of testimonies from pom-pom gunners: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=utrkd4SDRdw

>>11521 That is outside of my field, sadly. I actually wasn't even aware of iron driving bands being used for the 88mm shells. However, I will note that the most common type of artillery shells today are Bull-type 'Full Coats', which if I remember correctly don't even have driving bands. The US and Russia both (as far as I recall) still use conventional shells, though, because they don't like the Full Coats' susceptibility to manhandling-related damage. Furthermore, when it comes to naval cannon, with the addition of things such as powder sleeves and swedish additive, barrel life has gone from being a measurement of 'the life of the liner/rifling' to 'the fatigue limit of the metal of the barrel'. Improving the driving band wouldn't really help with improving barrel life anymore, since these days the rifling practically outlasts the actual barrel. >>11557 Depends on what you mean by useful. They essentially are the queens of blue water raiding, and top-tier non-nuclear SSKs actually have comparable costs - on the order of around 2:1. While that may seem to be far too much for reason, if you have to deploy said submarines half the world away regularly, the fuel economy and readiness generally makes up for it. That is, of course, not mentioning the SSBNs, which are a far cry superior to SSBs due to their ability to hide for months on end if required.

I remember back during some naval discussion on 8/k/ Streloks were postulating that Russian military GEVs weren't suited for Operations outside the Caspian/Black/Mediterranean sea. Is that true? If they could operate in the Atlantic or Pacific, would small-ish GEVs be a suitable replacement for conventional FACs?

>>11653 GEVs have problems with rough waters in general. The Black sea is one of the calmest seas, which is why the Russkies picked it to be their GEV playground. I can't speak to Russian military ekranoplans in particular, but all GEVs have similar limitations with regard to operating conditions. They also consume remarkable amounts of fuel, and thus would be ill-suited to tasks outside a 4-500nmi area. >replacing FACs While that would be totally cool, isn't the main advantage of fast attack craft that they're generally cheap? There is nothing about aircraft (or pseudo-aircraft) that's going to be cheaper than a regular old boat.

>>11653 Man, I remember drawing that shit, fun times. Wanted to make a thread on old 8k we could trow ideas and design funs/cammo patters for shits and giggles, but then all of that bullshit happened

>>11637 >powder sleeves and swedish additive What are those things exactly? Searching for either of them brings up everything from reloading equipment to snus.

>>11884 'Swedish Additive' is titanium dioxide and wax added to the propellant charge in quantities I'm not certain of. With the Iowa's guns, it was inserted in it's own packet between two of the powder charges. It was estimated that this alone cut barrel wear down to 0.26 ESR normal with AP shells and as little as 0.11 ESR with HC shells, both with full charge. With the Iowas, the powder sleeves were simply polyurethane jackets which were placed over the powder charges like bags and tied off. The purpose of the swedish additive was to cause the powder to burn smoother, the purpose of the powder sleeve was to create a thin layer of gas between the propellant gas and the barrel to reduce wear. Combined, with the Iowas, the Service Life of the barrels went from 290 Estimated Service Rounds to 1500 'Fatigue Equivalent Rounds'. In other types of cannon, these type of things have just been directly included with the standard charges, resulting in the modern limit being the fatigue limit of the barrel itself instead of the rifling.

>>11899 Damn, that sounds beautiful. And neither of them seems to be unobtainable high tech, just some simple materials.

How would a blockade look like in this day and age? Let's say we want to blockade China: what would we need and what is the best method to actually stop shipping? Send there subs and just sink everything without warning? Have lots of destroyers patrol the area and board any ship that goes too close to the coast? Give out a warning to let civilians evacuate and then destroy port facilities with missile strikes so that container ships can't be easily unloaded? And how would you make sure that you don't accidentally cut off Taiwan and South Korea? Have some designated sea lanes for all shipping headed there, and clearly tell everyone that any ship not using one of those is assumed to want to go to China? And what should be done with seized Chinese ships? Sell them off to whoever wants to buy them for a friendly price?

>>12020 You could just try to destroy coastal infrastructure with artificial tsunamis, which might be more cost efficient. That or enforcing marine no-go-zones with nuclear powered loitering torpedoes.

>>12034 >You could just try to destroy coastal infrastructure with artificial tsunamis How would you even make an artificial tsunami? Does any military even have any weapons that could do that? I'm not sure if even a Tsar Bomba in it's 100Mt configuration would make a decent sized tsunami.

>>12035 Well, kinda: https://twitter.com/systemergent/status/1302672706618273792

>>12036 Now a hard time not to start going on about the electric universe theory.

>>12020 >How would a blockade look like in this day and age? Likely a combination of mines, submarines, extensive air coverage, and destroyer nets. Basically, what you'd imagine a total naval war would look like but without the nukes and land strikes, and it'd only last a few minutes before it got to the nukes and land strikes. >And how would you make sure that you don't accidentally cut off Taiwan and South Korea? Dedicated Convoys being escorted by allied military assets, like they were in WW2.

>>12020 The cruiser rules method: Surface ships and aircraft patrol a large radius around each port (i.e. just outside of missile range), turning away any merchants who approach. If someone tries to run the blockade, they can be freely captured or sunk. You're allowed to seize war materiel from captured ships, but this probably wouldn't be done often unless it's an oil tanker or something. Attack subs could patrol inside the blockade and sink any blockade runners or enemy warships they find. For the case of a nearby neutral port, you'd probably have to have a friendly warship follow them in. Restricting shipping lanes usually doesn't work here because you aren't allowed to intercept ships in foreign territorial waters. In this example Taiwan and SK are both US-aligned, so they'd cooperate by tracking all merchants in their waters and shooting at any obvious blockade runners. The total war method: Same as above, except you mine the approaches to every port and shoot all enemy-flagged vessels on sight. Destroying their port infrastructure is a good longer-term strategy, but unless you have air supremacy this is going to take many months of whittling away with (expensive, unreliable) cruise missiles.

Can anyone explain mine warfare to me? Apparently it's far more advanced now then I understood and not limited to defensive operations.

>>12050 I think we must achnowledge that the 'laws' of naval warfare are frequently flouted, the US has been seizing oil tankers in international waters for along time on the basis of might=right. Like cluster mines, naval drift mines are banned but mayor powers continue to produce and stockpile them. China has been carrying out acts of aggression with unflaged civilian lestles as have a number of south east Asian counties. Blockages can be enforced by targeting the global interests of 'neutral' countries shipping interests, and sabotaging merchant vessles with grey forces as we saw repeatedly in the gulf.

>>12035 You just blow up nuclear weapons underwater, near the coast, and you will thus have created an artificial tsunami. Or that's what is supposed to happen according to Soviet Navy.

>>12065 Pretty sure it doesn't work like that, because an explosion causes compression immediately and only then is water actually displaced. The compression travels through miles of water in less than 20 seconds, and when water is actually displaced it's displaced through 360 degrees. Fluid mechanics are weird, but while it's easy to make a wave with a solid object it's quiet hard to do so with energy.

>>7738 >An 11-caliber 24in bore scramjet shell weighing roughly 5000lbs would carry ~1,060lbs of bursting charge; higher than the ~945lbs of the 2000lb Mk84 GP bomb. What bore is needed to launch a scramjet shell comparable to the Mk82's ~200lbs filling? And a somehow related question: is there a reason to mount 8in guns on battleships for shore bombardment only, especially if they have a secondary battery of 6in guns?

>>12083 >What bore is needed to launch a scramjet shell comparable to the Mk82's ~200lbs filling? Not entirely positive. A lot depends on the material used in the shell and the caliber (length) of the shell. You could probably do it with an 18in shell, however, or with super-materials you could theoretically do it with a (long) 16in. >And a somehow related question: is there a reason to mount 8in guns on battleships for shore bombardment only, especially if they have a secondary battery of 6in guns? Having a mixed battery of (take your choice of large gun), 8in and 6in/155mm guns would essentially make the ship a floating artillery battery of take-your-choice for whatever fire support is needed at the moment. The 8in guns would probably be the most used, however.

Is there a reason why US battleships didn't have AA mounts on their main turrets during ww2?

>>12368 But they did. Off the top of my head, all of the USN Fast Battleships had AA positions on Turret #2 by the end of the war. I know for a fact this is at least true for the Iowas, the latter 3 had a 40mm Quad on Turret #2 while Iowa herself had four to eight 20mms. The older battleships, such as the standards, usually had much smaller turret roofs and couldn't have fit anything more than a couple of 20mm mountings, which wasn't worth the effort of making battle positions up there.

>>12373 It looks like I should read a book then, because I somehow managed to miss it. In my defence I could bring up that most photos and drawings I can find show them either not that long after launch, or they are photos of the Iowas well after the Bofors guns were removed. But upon closer inspection, I can see them on the closest ship in pic related.

If not for ww1 and the following treaty system, we would have seen some gigantic battleships, that much is true. But what often gets ignored is that how cruisers and destroyers would have evolved. Considering that the US already built what is essentially a miniature battlecruiser in the 1940s to counter a supposed Japanese grand cruiser, and then the Japanese apparently wanted to counter that with pic related, and all of it after cruiser armament was capped at 8 inches for decades; I can't even begin to imagine what would be a cruiser in a world where HMS Incomparable was built.

>>8489 >tfw no round navy

>>12537 Based on IRL non-treaty designs, we can make some pretty safe predictions as to how the heavy cruiser would develop: >heavy cruisers would normally have a nominal displacement 10000 to 15000 tons (actual displacements would grow by around 20% during WW2 due to added AA guns, radar etc,) >guns on these cruisers would probably range from 8" to 11" (armor penetration isn't a major concern here, so I can see the 8" winning out where low weight and high ROF are more important) >Alaska-style cruiser-killers would be fairly uncommon among the major powers, but would be popular with smaller nations trying to punch above their weight Light cruisers would look pretty much the same as they did historically (I can think of exactly two classes that actually stayed within treaty limits), the only difference being that a few have 8" guns.

>>12584 That's a bit disappointing, I was fantasizing about a world where something like an Iowa is a mere grand cruiser. What limits the displacement and armament of heavy cruisers to these figures? I guess it's a combination of doctrinal needs and the limitations of technology and economy, but I don't know nearly enough to figure out the exact relationship between them.

>>11180 >>11182 The setup of those guns would make it possible to link the two bolts together, like in the Gast machine gun, although you'd have to account for the two bolts not being right on top of each other. And the feed system could be designed to work both with feed strips and linked ammunition, making the mount quite a lot more versatile. Scale the system up to work with 37mm (or maybe even 47mm) ammunition, and you'd turn one of the worst autocannons into one of the best.

>>12537 >>12584 >>12588 Would a Pearl Harbor/Midway-tier strategic shift towards CVs still happen with N3s, Colorados, A-150s and their assortment of hueg CCs being the pride of their respective fleets?

>>12594 Don't quote me on any of this, I'm just an interested amateur, but as far as I understand, aeroplanes right before the late 1930s and early 1940s were simply too slow and too ˝weak˝ to reliably take out battleships. In theory the enemy had plenty of time to react as it took quite a long time for them to arrive there, and the bombs and torpedoes they carried were simply not destructive enough for the task. This changed right at the outbreak of ww2, and at that point the fuses and fire control systems of AA guns were only good enough to break up attacking formations with the heavy guns and then make the final approach extremely risky with the autocannons. And that was simply not enough. Bigger ships can take more damage and carry more AA guns, and that obviously makes them more survivable. Maybe that would have been enough for them to survive the concentrated attack of a few hundred 1940s era aircraft, and then they could be the decisive weapons once both sides' carriers run out of planes. Doubly so once radar guidance and proximity fuses are developed. I can see battleships being seen as the decisive force much longer into the Cold War, and maybe a few of them would be still in service. Whom am I kidding? I'm sure nearly everything would be scrapped in the 90s. But all of this assumes that history goes on the way it did, except that battleships get bigger. If not for the treaty system, there is a good chance that the Anglo-Japanese alliance goes to war against America, and without ww1 there would be no treaty system, therefore we'd live in a very different world. In addition, consider what happened with the Yamato and Musashi: they were big ships, by tonnage and size bigger than any of the cancelled designs, and yet they were still destroyed by air attacks due to Japanese AA being behind the times. Also, I must point out that your list is wrong, because the American cherry tree was the original South Dakota-class, and the A-150 is from a completely different era. The Japs were already building the Tosa-class and Kii-class battleships, and they were working on what is only known as the Number-13 class. The A-150 was either an upgunned Yamato-class, or an upgunned Yamato-class with an additional turret for a grand total of 8 51cm guns.

>>12373 >the latter 3 had a 40mm Quad on Turret #2 Were those mounts powered, or was impossible and/or impractical to put powered mounts on top of a turret?

Not strictly related but thought you naval lads be interested >At least two crew members have died and six remain unaccounted for after a Ukrainian-owned cargo ship sank in bad weather in the Black Sea off Turkey. Five people have been rescued and two bodies have been recovered from the wreck of the general cargo ship Arvin, which is registered under the flag of the country of Palau. >The ship was heading for Bulgaria from Georgia when it sank. Black Sea region has been hit by heavy rains, snow, and strong winds in recent days. >The moment when the cargo ship Arvin broke off was captured on the camera. Here is a video clearly showing the 113 metres long and 13 metres wide ship splitting in two pieces: https://themaritimepost.com/2021/01/30/video-ukrainian-cargo-ship-breaks-and-sinks-in-black-sea/ https://archive.is/rXtpP >video related

>>12872 those guys waited way too long to call mayday. You can see in the very beginning of this image the ship has already catastrophically failed and the deck is segmented, but the crew just stands around recording it like it's some kind of entertainment

>>12878 Ukrainian sailors have a knack for getting themselves into trouble. We've had several incidents with them almost sailing into our bridges or going aground in the Kattegat. Vodka was usually involved.

>>12813 From what I recall the #2 and #3 turret AA mounts did have full remote power control available to them. As a matter of fact, I think I remember hearing that they initially considered placing two of the CIWS mounts on those turrets during the 1980s, before they realized that the rotating platform would interfere with the targeting system. This was before they rediscovered the issue of the 16in guns' blast concussion, of course.

>The vessel ARVIN (IMO: 8874316, MMSI 511315000) is a General Cargo Ship built in 1975 (46 years old) >built in slovakia/soviet union I bet some shekel minded individual was behind keeping the ship at sea despite someone giving a warning involving words metal-fatigue, micro-fractures and cascade-failure. So, now we just wait that US Navy informs us that it has lost a submarine because it collided with a cargo ship underwater.

>>12879 Come on, anon. It could happen to anyone.

>>12912 Good for a laugh.

Is it possible to use a mathematical formula to calculate the total cost of an WWI or WWII warship provided you have enough data? I was watching "The Great War for Archimedes" and while I think most of the scenes in the movie are dramatized or plain wrong, it seems plausible that you could devise a formula to get somewhere close to the total cost. Video is of the scene in question.

>>12925 That appealed to my inner weaboo nerd Strelok, thanks. Great encoding btw.

>>12932 Thank you. I have been playing around with different video editors and similar software and I enjoy learning how to make clips from videos.

>>12942 That's a fantastic scene, although the explosion is a bit underwhelming. Apparently her AA guns managed to down 3 American planes, meanwhile this explosion destroyed 7 of them.

>>12942 That's a fantastic scene, although the explosion is a bit underwhelming. Apparently her AA guns managed to down 3 American planes, meanwhile this explosion destroyed 7 of them.

And of course the fucking site has to send the post a bunch of times, but without any of the attached pictures.

>>12945 At least now it uploaded one picture out of three.

>>12943 I was defiantly expecting something a lot more powerful when I first watch the movie considering what actually happened.

Were ironclad rams a mistake?

>>12925 Just watched this. Thanks for the suggestion. It was a fun little film, but yes, very much dramatized.

>>12988 You are welcome. The effects used in Archimedes were better than the last film about Yamato that I watched. I do wish that someone would make a film that would keep the dramatizations to a minimum.

>>12925 It's absolutely possible. There is an entire field of study dedicated to this and other problems called "Engineering Management". Calculating the cost of a ship based on iron required alone seems counter intuitive nowadays, since you can get a thirty million dollar yacht made from fiber glas with maybe 500 kg worth of iron and the rest made from compound materials, and a two thousand buck half tonne iron hulled tub for fishing, but the overall idea seems good enough for a rough estimate in a time where all you could use was iron in the first place.

>>12997 It's strange that they just took Yamato as it is and modified the secondary armament to the same as a very early proposal had, even though a film like this would have been perfect to showcase how much work went into developing this ship. https://warshipprojects.com/2018/04/24/the-yamato-class-genesis/ >I do wish that someone would make a film that would keep the dramatizations to a minimum. The best way would be to make a documentary where some of the more dramatic meetings are played out, and sometimes the narrator goes dramatic, but it's only to help the viewer get into the head of the designers and decision makers. After all, stuff like this is quite dramatic as it is: >What Fujimoto had in mind however was a masterfully worked out, however extremely ambitious building plan from 1936 running up til 1950. Unhappy with the outcome of the Washington and London treaties and being aware of the numerical and industrial advantage that the United States enjoyed over Japan it was an obvious choice to focus on quality instead of quantity – that is, going big…very big! In a typical Japanese fashion it was based on the expected ‘movements’ or ‘behavior’ of the likely enemy, the United States Navy. Since it was well know that the US Navy had an artificial limit on it’s battleships size, namely the locks of the Panama Canal – it imposed a 33m beam limit and a length limit of approx. 300m – so the IJN made 5 design studies to estimate maximum possible USN battleship size. These were pretty accurate, to the point that one design was a few percent off only compared to the historical Iowa class. Based on these designs the Japanese engineers had a good idea how large to go to beat the US ships on a one-on-one basis. Gun caliber was estimated at 16″ for all the pseudo-US proposals so the Japanese automatically opted for 18″ weapons. And this was not all! What is not well known is that Fujimoto expected the US to raise their BB’s gun caliber to 18″ as well by 1941 as a response to the Japanese ships so he aimed from the get go to design the triple 18″ barbettes to a diameter that can easily handle a twin 20″ turret – and rearm the BBs during 1941-46 with the bigger guns! In addition 4 enlarged, “Super Yamato” class ships with 8 X 20″ guns were planned to be built during the same period, giving 11 BBs with 20″ guns for Japan by 1951, and giving the Japanese a supremacy in gun caliber for 10 years. This is evidenced by the fact that the Mogami and Tone classes designed by Fujimoto as well were built with the same concept, built or designed with 6″ guns and rearmed to 8″ on completion or before the war. Also there is evidence of a 20″ Japanese gun, though not much of it is known.

>>13018 A documentary film following the development of Yamato or other similarly famous ship or ship class (Bismark, Hood, Iowa class, etc.) from start to finish would be a great film to see. For example, American draftsmen working on the Iowa class and having to design them to be able to fit through the Panama Canal and still have the firepower and speed to be carrier escorts or a film documenting the career of the Nagato from launch to flagship of the Japanese fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor to finally her end as a test target at Operation Crossroads. However, I can begin to imagine how distorted and twisted such a film would be in current year Hollywood so most likely we will not see such a film for a while. .

>>13018 Thanks for the link Strelok. Several metric-shittonnes displacement went into researching that. Great stuff.

How badly were Atlantic and Pacific coasts affected by oil spills from sunken warships during WW2? Given how much oil was released into the Oceans on a regular basis back then and how expensive the cleanup for the 2010 BP spill has been it seems odd they're never mentioned, Portugal and Spain certainly must've experienced some degree of coastal contamination.

>>13041 Ehh, hardly relevant after 3 or 4 year's time. The ocean's carbon-entrapment capacity is quite enormous. Much, much higher than all the land plant life for example. A brief episodic event like short-duration world war is just a minor bump in the road for the oceans. Even a full out nuclear holocaust's smoke, dust, and other pollutants would be rectified in under a decade's time. (Ofc, that wouldn't help much with the radioactivity issues).

>>11176 >Incidentally, that's the main reason I know for a fact the Yamato didn't make the world's longest BB shot on a moving target - the Iowa or New Jersey did, the archives included a photo of the IJN Nowaki with a hole torn clean through the superstructure by a dud 16in HC shell. Are those archives classified? You'd think this information would be widely discussed, even if only by word-of-mouth, and yet this is the first time I've heard this.

>>13092 Less classified and more intentionally memory-holed. The Americans surprisingly went through quite ridiculous lengths to make the Japanese feel good about themselves during the early cold war to try to shore up a potential ally in the war against communism, which is where the Zero being a 'superior aircraft' meme comes from - anybody that actually knows aeronautical engineering and looked over the Zero's blueprints could tell you it was a piece of crap held together by bird droppings far worse than even the American Wildcat, yet the average joe thinks the Zero was superior. But once the internet came about where this sort of information could freely change hands, the world was already in the age where the zeitgeist was anything American was obviously inferior to non-Americans and Americans in general were too much of lazy asses to do any research themselves and present pushback. It's only now of all times that the M4 Sherman being a firetrap is finally getting disproved, and a lot of that is the dedicated work of several Germans, Brits, and an Irishman. As to the archives themselves, specifically, they weren't classified at the time I looked at them - otherwise I wouldn't have been talking about them. They're just in Japanese, and the Americans have no interest in translating them and the post-80s Japanese have their heads so far up their collective asses that they would immediately disregard anything which didn't claim Nippon Ichi Banzai.

>>12925 >>13002 Most construction endevors, especially ones that reapeat similar sub-systems and construction techniques have indicators that can be used to determine costs. In building construction, it's the price of testing and balancing the hvac systems that has a pretty good indicator of overall costs. Some judgement is nessessary, but this can be aggragated into simple, normal, and complex bins. It's regularly used as a sanity check by (good) estimators. Using the mass of iron wouldn't work all the time like the clip showed, but it'd be more of a localized indicator that's built from several sources.

>>13128 ...No, the Zero really was that good in the early war. I know the Zero is a big meme and all, but the wildcat pilots literally had to come up with special maneuvers to trap it between two U.S. planes because there was no other certain way to take it down. You're exaggerating a lot of things here dude. The wildcat was slower, shorter range, climbed worse, it's only advantage was firepower, which helped a good bit, and armor which, in reality, was not all that meaningful in air combat. Performance wise the Wildcat was objectively inferior, and I'm not even talking about maneuverability yet which, despite being less useful on it's own, pushed the Zeros substantial edge into overdrive, as far as early war shit was concerned. Obviously the hellcat and corsair changed the balance, but then as far as designs go the ki-84 and n1k1 were just about on par, if not present in great numbers.

>>13130 >You're exaggerating a lot of things here dude. Spoken as someone who seems to know nothing about propeller aircraft combat. But you push the Thatch-weave being the only effective Zero counter myth, despite it being only one of seven approved tactics, so I should have known. The Wildcats were three-trick ponies, and they did those tricks damned well. When the Americans finally adapted to taking advantage of those tricks and stopped trying to be flying hotshots, the Wildcat started not only batting par against the Zeroes in all circumstances, but actually taking the cake and eating it too. Are you aware that the Japanese had to create specialized doctrinal tactics to defeat the Wildcats once the Americans got their shit together? That they actually mandated that no aircraft ever engage any Wildcat without a 3 to 1 advantage. This was before the Japanese brain bleed set in and the Americans started introducing the later aircraft, mind you, and the Wildcats were still batting over 1.4:1 once you remove the exaggerated claims from both sides. By your logic, this indicates that the Japanese aircraft was far inferior to the American, because the Americans were only looking for a 2 to 1 advantage. It's called being tactical. Everyone did it. If you had a chance to push probability in your favor, you did it. Full stop. By the way, for your 'wildcat is objectively inferior' bullcrap, there are more than one JAPANESE account of Zeroes trying to follow Wildcats into a rolling dive only to have their wings sheer off while the Wildcat flew away undamaged; by the time they doctrinally corrected that flaw the Americans actually were introducing Hellcats, only to have the Japs decide to try the same bullshit on Hellcats and have it end in the same exact way. Incidentally, once the Americans accepted the three-trick pony aircraft status, not only did they come into their own with it they ran with it post-war to the point that even the F-22 Raptor still follows that same core concept. >and armor which, in reality, was not all that meaningful in air combat. You have no idea at all what you are talking about here. The American Aircraft's durability, thick skins, and (comparatively) heavy armor were credited with giving the US a pilot attrition rate roughly 1/80th that of the Japanese. Despite the Americans taking more air combat losses early on. The Japanese had a complete advantage verses the Americans during the early stages of the war when it came to pilot skill, but that very thing you're saying was near meaningless kept the Americans coming back and, more importantly, able to be returned to the rear to train the next group of pilots to not make the same mistakes. Pappy Boyington put it best when he noted that (and I'm referring to memory here, so this isn't an exact quote) the Zero was a flying sack of dogshit, but the men they put in those sacks were the best damned pilots that God put on this Earth to fly; and that the gross attribution to the success of the Japanese Navy's air arm to the 'shit sack' was not only factually incorrect, but an insult to pilots everywhere and was nothing but institutional fingerpointing while trying to avoid admitting the actual problem. Which was, of course, the initial American lackadaisical, careless approach to pilot training - something the Americans quickly fixed.

>>13137 Sounds like a typical 20th century American war story where propaganda downplays the enemy, overhypes their own capabilities, and when something doesn't go as expected they blame the equipment. Was the Zero the very best the Japanese industry could produce, or was it simply a flawed plane and it's all the designers' fault?

>>13139 The Zero was unquestionably one of the top three dogfighters ever built, possibly even the best, and frankly a masterwork of a design. A supermajority of the time that the Zeros got the Americans to dogfight, they won. Unfortunately, Dogfighting is the sword duels of the sky, and the best swordsmanship in the universe doesn't help you much at all when the enemy just sends Armored, Lance-toting Cavalry Charges after you. Ironically, that reference holds more weight than just my lame attempt at being poetic, the American Fighter/Interceptor (they were the same thing to the Americans) Doctrine of the war ended up being named 'Air Jousting' for a reason, taking advantage of the bizarre American love of diving headfirst into the dumbest shit possible. I admit I was being vitriolic with my initial statement, and the Zero wasn't by any means 'far worse' than the Wildcat, I personally consider them equals but of different design doctrines - although the Americans don't really have an excuse here, considering the Wildcat is the younger of the two. Although I will insist that the Zero's frame was barely held together, but the pilots and designers were well aware of that - it was a known sacrifice in order to lighten the aircraft, and the skilled pilots had trained around it to great effect. The rookie pilots, however, did not have that luxury of good training and often tried to get the aircraft to do things it absolutely was not designed to do, which led to wings sheering off, tail rudders breaking, ailerons flying off, and a long list of other mistakes that they really have no excuse for. This is more or less where my, and Boyington's, criticism of the Zero comes from. The Zero was an aircraft with a high skill ceiling but an equally high skill floor, a man who could become an ace in a Zero already was an ace by the time he got his first kill; meanwhile the American preference was to make an aircraft so lenient and durable that any 17 year old fucktard from bumfuck, nowhere could with a month's instruction take off and fight.

>>13130 The Zero's success early in the Pacific war can be equally attributed to both its supreme turning/climbing performance, P/W ratio, cannon armament, range and cream of the crop samurai pilots disciplined over 1000 times going up against third-rate retards in a mix of first, second, third and fourth-rate aircraft with horrendously inadequate training. Sadly the ineptitude of the European colonial chair forces at the time largely a result of western intelligence staunchly believing that inferior Asiatics were incapable of producing original content without recoloring existing western designs fed into the Nip master race meme so by the time the Allies figured out how to take advantage of the Zero's vulnerabilities lack of armor, piss poor structural integrity at high speeds, horrendous roll rate, no self-sealing fuel tanks and general paper construction with their mediocre carrier fighters relative to the land-based fighters flown by European combatants during that time the IJN was too stubborn to accept that their superior doctrine and developmental outlook might need to be adjusted to the realities of war, and by the time they got around to it they'd already taken too many losses not only in terms of skilled frontline soldiers but also general manpower and internal organisation.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210210135516/https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Indo-Pacific/Japanese-submarine-s-radio-knocked-out-in-crash-with-commercial-ship >Japanese submarine's radio knocked out in crash with commercial ship >TOKYO -- A submarine from Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force collided with a civilian commercial ship, slightly injuring three on the sub, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said Monday. >The accident occurred at around 10:58 a.m. that day in the Pacific Ocean roughly 50 km from Cape Ashizuri in southwestern Japan. >The Soryu, the lead ship of the Soryu-class diesel-electric attack submarines, saw the other vessel through its scope while attempting to surface during an exercise. The submarine attempted to avoid the ship but was unsuccessful, according to Japan's Defense Ministry. >The collision damaged the sub's communication equipment. >The commercial vessel reported feeling no impact from the collision and did not expect any damage to its hull when later contacted by the Japan Coast Guard, Kato said. >All three injured were aboard the Soryu, which carries a crew of about 65. None suffered serious injuries nor required emergency care, according to the MSDF. >The submarine also sustained damage to its scope, but is said to be capable of sailing on its own. >In a news conference, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi called the incident "extremely regrettable" and said an investigation into the cause would be conducted. >The Soryu's crew reported the collision to the MSDF base in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, its home port, at 2:20 p.m., Kishi said. The call was made using a mobile phone because the sub's communications equipment had been damaged. Kishi was attending a lower-house budget committee meeting in the parliament at the time, and was notified at 2:50 p.m. >Shortly afterward, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga instructed authorities to confirm whether the commercial ship was safe, provide a rescue if necessary and promptly inform the public. >"We will take every possible step" in response to the situation, Suga told seniors members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in a meeting later Monday.

Why was the Fleet Air Arm so retarded during the war? Sure the Japs sudoku'd themselves by failing to properly upgrade and replace the Zero during the course of the war, but the A6M2 was a legitimately good naval fighter when it first entered service as was the less impressive but still acceptable Wildcat. Meanwhile the eternal Anglo used a mixture of strange purpose-built single engine multiseat naval fighter-reconnaissance craft with anemic speed, navalized fighters with neither range nor speed or navalized fighters with speed but no range and landing gear prone to breaking.

>>13169 >upgrade and replace the Zero during the course of the war They did try to be fair, i know their intended replacement was pretty decent, they just couldn't produce them in numbers.

>>13137 >>13144 Once again you're over-hyping the wildcats qualities and heavily, heavily downplaying the Zero. You do admit to this later on, and I do agree with you that they were (almost) equal, but the speed advantage alone to the zero, if it isn't trying to snap-roll out of a dive, puts it ahead by the sheer fact that speed is always king in air combat. Well, until you can lob missiles beyond the horizon, at which point I stopped caring about air combat. Also keep in mind, the light-weight and dog-fighting capacity was a bit of an added bonus, not the main strength. The Zero was better strategically and tactically just based on top speed and, the main reason for its weight and construction, the ridiculous (for that early war period) range for a fighter. Durability, armament, construction strength, and even maneuverability to an extent, are all the kind of qualities that don't matter enough to overtake speed, range, and pilot skill. Again I'll maintain that the reason for allied pilot survival was mainly the tactics used, contrary to a main claim of yours, the U.S. air combat training was pretty cautious and stressed heavily on always outnumbering your enemy and taking intermittent passing shots from above in a 4-man loose deuce. If you couldn't outnumber them, you got the fuck out of there and prayed your altitude would save you. That probably mattered more than aircraft quality in the end.

>>13192 The Zero's diving performance was quite bad though which negated many of its speed advantages, as did it is poor roll rate in regards to maneuverability.

>>13192 Several things: One: The F4F-4 Wildcat and the A6M2 Type Zero Model 21 had the same effective maximum speed of 276kts. The Model 21 on a good day could get to 286kts, but it was considered unreliable and it was a bit of a wild card if any given Zero could hit that (on good days F4F-4s could reach roughly 284kts, further mooting this point). This in fact is one of the reasons why the IJN eventually accepted the A6M3 Model 22, because they were looking to correct that flaw (and several others). Furthermore, the F4F-4 could actually maintain said speed for longer periods than the Model 21 could, maximum speeds are NOT cruise speeds - the two aircraft had identical cruise speeds of roughly 180kts. Where the Model 21 had an advantage was in acceleration and climb rate, neither of which are your much lauded maximum speed, but this was largely neutralized by the F4F-4's superior high-energy maintenance and maneuverability whenever the Americans got their asses in gear. Two: >the sheer fact that speed is always king in air combat. Funny, almost every successful fighter pilot from the war would have said Energy Maintenance was king. Which was incidentally one thing the Model 21 was terrible at when anywhere above cruise speed, a fact the Japanese were painfully aware of (and was another thing the Model 22 was meant to improve). Three: Range is a valid criticism of the F4F-4, although it was a design doctrinal difference between the Japanese and the Americans. However, the American doctrine focused on medium range operations, favoring operational flexibility and firepower over reach. Different purposes, different design. For American needs, the F4F-4 was superior. Four: Pilot Skill has nothing to do with the actual aircraft. Five: >Again I'll maintain that the reason for allied pilot survival was mainly the tactics used It's you against the American, British and Commonwealth, and Japanese records, all largely written by people who were actually there. To be clear, Pilot Attrition Rate in this context is considering the ratio of pilots shot down who made it back to their base, something which the Americans far exceeded the Japanese in, even during the early war when the Americans were losing more aircraft. It's virtually impossible to protect a bailed out pilot on his way back down to earth, the Americans tried it often but it was strongly considered to be pointless and many pilots considered it offensive all around, so combat tactics is extremely unlikely to produce a superior pilot attrition rate. Neither side's pilots were often likely to go after bailed out pilots, either - at least not THAT likely, not enough to produce a degree of difference that huge. Six: >the U.S. air combat training was pretty cautious and stressed heavily on always outnumbering your enemy and taking intermittent passing shots from above in a 4-man loose deuce. That unfortunately doesn't make a difference if you don't beat the hot-headedness out of your pilots during training so they don't decide to try to be hotshots and willingly engage the enemy in dogfights as was so common of the USN Pilots in early to mid 1942. After which pilots who had been there were and were now instructors were much more willing to beat practical air combat doctrine into their charges' heads instead of encouraging the type of idiocy that got so many killed.

>>13169 The RAF/FAA rivalry really fucked them over. They had some decent designs, but procurement was run by RAF officers who didn't want to spend a single penny on carrier planes. >>13137 >>13144 >>13203 Early on in the war, A6M pilots were specifically trained not to get in protracted turning engagements, and instead preferred to use their superior climb rate to do repeated boom-and-zoom attacks. This only seems to have changed late in the war, either because they ran out of good pilots or as a response to the F6F. As for pilot survivability, this probably has less to do with the design of the planes and more to do with the fact that, as a general rule, the IJN was almost never in a position to rescue their downed pilots in the first place.

>>13203 >Funny, almost every successful fighter pilot from the war would have said Energy Maintenance was king. The zero had good acceleration and a great climb rate compared to the f4f, so it still holds the edge in that regard. It's no secret that the wildcat would do better in a dive, but horizontal acceleration and climb rate would exceed the f4f, which contributes a lot more to maintaining a short-term energy advantage. Diving is useful, if your top speed is high enough to exceed the other guy in a long drag and bag fight, but I don't think the wildcat would have been able to use that well against a zero pilot that followed above and behind at a decent altitude. >superior high-energy maintenance and maneuverability I know the zeros roll rate stiffened up above 450kph, but I don't think I've ever heard of the f4f being SUPERIOR in maneuverability above that speed. That sounds like one of those things where you extrapolate a disadvantage of one aircraft into a massive advantage for the other. I'm pretty sure the wildcat was still less maneuverable than the zero at high speeds. It was the P-40 that could perform better in high-speed maneuvering. Actually in terms of which was the better aircraft, the P-40 was better than both all around.

>>13145 >cannon armament How would fighters armed with nothing but 20mm cannons fare in ww2? Of course air combat has lots of variables, and it constantly evolves during the conflict, but it seems like that an Oerlikon on a plane would be devastating in the beginning and still useful in the end. In other words, was there a point in smaller calibre machine guns?

>>13443 >In other words, was there a point in smaller calibre machine guns? Early WW2 plane-mounted autocannons were large, heavy and had small magazines that more or less necessitated a lighter MG backup armament, the Oerlikons used in early war 109 models and the A6M series for example had only 60 RPG while their MGs carried 500. As for fighters armed solely with 20mms, look at the Typhoon Mk.IB and Tempest series. As for the Zero its cannons were effective against the Wildcat's wings and could also kill bombers whereas the Army's then-current Ki-43, Ki-44 and Ki-61 models were only armed with 12.7mm "cannons" inferior to the American 50cal and thus struggled to kill even B-25s. The secondary not-lewis guns couldn't do shit aside from strafing ground troops though, and even that was hazardous given the lack of pilot armor. >it seems like that an Oerlikon on a plane would be devastating in the beginning and still useful in the end. It could certainly destroy late war planes but by 1945 you'd rather want something with better ballistics like the HS.404 or moar HEI for efficient bomber removal like the Mk108.

>>13444 >12.7mm "cannons" inferior to the American 50cal >secondary not-lewis guns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_89_machine_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho-103_machine_gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_.50_machine_gun If wikipedia is to be believed, the machine guns were actually Vickers design, and the heavy MGs were based on the M2's direct ancestor, but rechambered for the .50 Vickers cartridge. And why? Because they brought Italian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda-SAFAT_machine_gun But even then, they could have used the 7.7mm version of that machine gun rechambered for their rifle cartridge, instead of mixing two completely different designs in a single aeroplane. And now also remember that otherwise they used 13.2mm heavy machine guns, so they could have also reworked this design to work with a cartridge they already had in service. At this point I really can't decide if Japanese or German procurement was worse.

>>13463 >At this point I really can't decide if Japanese or German procurement was worse. The Germans were sane enough to freely share weaponry and parts that could be used across military branches, the Japanese were not.

>>13479 Why it started all that autistic battle between the IJA and the IJN? I don´t know of any fighting between branches of the same military that visceral as that was, so it intrigues me how they started that stupid fight.

>>13495 >why so much infighting Doctrinal difference alongside a prestige issue with Asian (read: Chinese derrived) culture issues. I'm not saying that factional struggles are a unique asian phenomenon (see: German SS vs Wehrmacht, Russian navy/army/NKVD three way shitshow). Sometimes it is deliberately encourage since effectiveness means danger to the ruler(s). Allow me to explain. Factionalism is an issue in most governments, it just seems in the west it is not as heavily punished (for better or for worse) than Asia. For example, factional leaders are generally not executed/imprisoned and simply sidelined into retirement/useless posts in the west versus forced suicide/execution/exile. The phrase "To cut once with one knife" from a Chinese idiom succinctly summarizes what happens to a factional struggle looser, the entirety of people who served under them are all purged and executed/exiled. That and the fact that ironically, while factionalism is discouraged (I quote some old text: "(To) form coalitions and entice officials to form factions, of which is the death of the state, ought to the greatest threat from within the state itself and ruinous to nations"), it is also basically necessary to survive in any sort of medium-high ranking position. The IJN was mainly influenced by the Anglo-French missions while the Army was influenced by the Prussians (and some french) thought. Add on the doctrinal split between if the navy or the army was more important (Is the navy a glorified taxi service or actually useful) and the major question of to go north or south (USSR vs USA) it becomes a shitfest. Finally, add in the typical method of punishing factional struggle loosers in Han/Tang China (which influenced Japan) and you get this result.

>>13495 >>13504 You also have to factor in that Japan didn't have a ministry of war, instead they had a ministry of the army and a ministry of the navy, so there were simply no higher ups to stop them from being overly retarded. Especially because if either of these two ministers resigned then the whole government had to resign, therefore neither the prime minister nor the parliament had any control over them. In theory the emperor himself could have 'tard wrangled them, but in practice Hirohito was way too much of a Milquetoast for any of that. This video is a rather good overview of the general situation: https://invidious.kavin.rocks/watch?v=GMoSwbfTfO8

>>13504 >>13505 Don't forget the lack of resources too, branches always compete for resources especially if there are few to give.

>>13504 Do some of these old rivalries still linger in the current JSDF?

>>13522 From my understanding and limited dealings with them, nothing beyond the usual inter-service ribbing and budget fights you could expect from any multi-branch military system.

>>9597 >the star maps are usually unreliable because the sky apparently really just wants to fuck with sailors over there. That sounds scary.

Is constructing a ship in sections the future? It seems to enable proper assembly line production, and you could use a few smaller drydocks instead of a single bigger one. Or use a single small drydock to construct a ship that is otherwise too big to fit inside. Add all of these together and the whole thing suddenly seems to be suited to scale up or down production as needed. Especially if the yards can be used for both civilian and military ships.

>>13951 I thought that was the standard nowadays. Isn't it standard practice for shipyards to do that?

>>13951 >Is constructing a ship in sections the future? No, Strelok, it's the present. Most of what you described has been industry standard since the late 1950s and the Americans were experimenting with that in the late 1930s. It's called Modular Construction. However, it's not practical in the scale you are talking about. The individual yards that make the blocks have to be relatively close together and working together from start to finish to coordinate systems and standards. Otherwise, it all falls apart and ends up like the USS Gerald Ford.

>>13956 >USS Gerald R. Ford Imagine the guns you could fit on a hull with 100k tons of displacement.

>>13959 Still needs more guns.

>>13952 >>13956 I recall somebody many moons ago saying that it was somehow unusual for warships to be built this way, and one of the reasons Russians wanted to buy Mistrals was to learn it quickly.

>>13962 >super yamato My boner can only get so hard

https://invidious.kavin.rocks/watch?v=n1N2jRx7qkc What is this sound supposed to represent? I remember a similar one being used in Sink the Bismarck from 1960.

>>13962 Note: That design would only work if the main battery were Yamato's guns, and not the 20.1in guns they had been intending for the 'Super Yamato'/A-150 class. A 100,000 ton design could only hold 8 of the larger guns at most, and you'd still likely end up pushing 120k tons or have paper thin armor. The Americans tried designing an approx 120k ton 'Ultra-Battleship' and ended up with this 12x18in design that has been posted around here several times. >>13968 That is a Klaxon, it's a warning alarm on ships which serves various purposes depending on length, tone, and whatnot. Usually, it basically calls all sailors to action stations or general quarters.

>>13966 Well the russian naval industry is bit of a clusterfuck as there never was strong commercial interest in it, and the 20 years of negligence between 1985 and 2005 essentially caused Russian naval industry huge loss in the know-how and infrastructure. So it's no wonder the Russian navy and russian shipyards wanted to get their hands on a Mistral.

>>13990 Were the Tillman-designs unrealistically optimistic, or am I missing something? I know that higher speeds need exponentially more power, but there was also a rather big jump in propulsion technologies in the 1930s. So it looks like Tillman I with an upgraded power plant would be quite comparable to a Montana or a Yamato, and then Tillman II just casually doubles the number of guns. Let alone the Tillman IV-2 that was supposed to have one more turrets that even that 120.000t design.

>>14027 >Were the Tillman-designs unrealistically optimistic, or am I missing something? Armor. Specifically, deck armor, the heaviest part of the armor on the ship. The Tillman I had 5in to 6.5in of deck armor (a phenomenal thickness for its time and roughly equivalent to WW2 era ships). The Tillman II and III had only 3in to 4in - and also sacrificed Belt Armor. The Tillman IV, IV-1, and IV-2 had roughly 4in to 5in deck systems (having shifted to a multi-deck scheme that all later US BB designs would adhere to as well) and peer-comparable belt armor. That 120k ton late-WW2 design (actually ended up around 132k and change, iirc) had a deck armor system over a foot thick at the thickest part (14.5in, total) - even its extremities had as much deck armor as the Tillman II/IIIs did in their citadels. At the end of the day, the design called for around 50k tons of Armor alone, compared to the Tillmans' 13.3k to 21.7k tons. Obviously, not all of that was Deck Armor, but you get my point. This was the price of trying to armor a ship against the American 18in SHS shells and AP Bombs, anything weaker was considered to be basically unacceptable since they were already in a 'go big or go home' mindset. Obviously, they went home in the end. The Japanese also ended up coming to the same issues when designing the A-150s, since they were finding it nearly impossible to armor their design against their own 18.1in guns, let alone the 20.1in, without ballooning the displacement into the stratosphere. In the end, they settled on a compromise design that was basically a Yamato with fewer, bigger guns and a tertiary battery of 10cm DP guns. That last part was the defining difference between this A-150 and the Yamato-class, since the way the turrets and shell handling systems were designed allowed switching the turrets between 2-gun 20.1in and 3-gun 18.1in. That too ended up being sent home with them.

you guys have any images/information on how damage control is done? Its something i cant really wrap my head around. how is it possible to plug holes in meal with wooden wedges for example.

>>14032 >you guys have any images/information on how damage control is done? This do you well enough? https://maritime.org/doc/dc/index.htm >Handbook of Damage Control, NAVPERS 16191, 1945, was created near the end of World War II and represents best practices in WW II damage control. >how is it possible to plug holes in meal with wooden wedges for example. That's easy enough: Dry Wood swells when exposed to water. It may not be much, but it's enough to cause it to plug a hole. Obviously doesn't work for large holes, but for medium to small holes it works wonders.

>>14031 Did they ever do any serious design work with those 6 gun turrets? I imagine they could have tried the French method of sticking two turrets together in the same ring, but with triple turrets.

>>14033 i will read this dubsman

one thing ive heard about big guns is that they have a shorter life the bigger they are. How does this affect naval guns? did the guns of a battleship have to be replaced midwar?

Do you guys have anything on age of sail ship design principles/philosophy? I dont know how to describe what im looking for besides "how did they end up looking like that?" building age of sail ships seems pretty comfy which is why I ask. Also something else I need help with. I remember a Drach video that made a comment on age of sail ships during the ironclad age but i cant seem to find the video or more information on the topic. He said that the first so called ironclads were just wooden ships but used a mix of two woods, one of which was mainly found in the southeast US (ash and the US wood? cant remember}. the strength of one wood supported by the flexibility of the other enabled the hulls of these ships to bounce cannon shot. trying to look this up just brings me to traditional ironclads.

>>14054 Using USS Constitution (ya know, "Old Ironsides") as a reference, they used pine and southern live oak in its construction, and similar combinations were used in other ships of that era, which helped deflect some cannon fire. Not sure if that's what you're looking for, given its construction preceded the ironclad era, but it's what I recall offhand.

>>14034 Plans were drawn up for the Sextuple Mounts, but they weren't considered realistic. They pretty much did just squeeze two of their three-gun turrets together, though, but the end result was still a six-gun turret - meaning all six guns were independent of each other, unlike the french two-twin system. >>14036 >one thing ive heard about big guns is that they have a shorter life the bigger they are. That is correct, in regards to the barrel at least. The Guns themselves tended to have extremely long lives as long as the parts were properly maintained and replaced as needed - as with any firearm. >How does this affect naval guns? did the guns of a battleship have to be replaced midwar? In regards to the barrel, which was the biggest part to change, the American practice (and I believe the British practice as well) was to design the carried ammunition around the expected barrel life of the gun in question. So, the guns could on average fire one full load of shells before they had to return to a yard and have the barrels replaced. Or, in the case of the Americans, have the yard come to them, see pic related. So, if you were asking about the Gun Barrels of the Battleships, yes they were replaced during the way. The guns themselves, however, no. I'm not aware of any Battleship guns that were replaced during the war, even though all of the ships were designed with replacing them in mind if needed. The Americans, for example, took this to an extreme and designed all of their naval gun turrets/gun-houses of the time to just slide the gun out the front of the turrets/gun-houses without disassembling the turret. This actually did come in use several times during the war with cruiser and destroyer guns, but wasn't used with the Battleships as far as I know.

>>14070 any fun facts on these sectional drydocks? what a cheeky and american idea. whats the extent of repairs one could do in one?

>>14090 Japs often figured they were Aircraft carriers and left them alone. iirc they're called Auxiliary floating drydocks.

>>14090 >whats the extent of repairs one could do in one? According to one captain, if they could get enough parts shipped in they could flat out build entirely new ships right there on station. The only repairs they could not perform were those they could not get the parts for, as they obviously did not have the full logistical train that land-based yards did. In fact, post-war, it was not uncommon for the US to anchor one of these at stateside ports and use them as impromptu repair docks, since there they actually could just ship in whatever replacement part was needed. Sadly, the last of them outlived its pieces' hull life several years back and had to be disposed of. >>14101 First off, Auxiliary Floating Drydocks are entirely different, lesser things. These are Advanced Base Sectional Drydocks, as the image name suggests. AFDs essentially just got the hull out of the water (and were not large enough to carry an Iowa or Midway), ABSDs could do anything that actual yards could do shy of requiring a gantry or mega-hammerhead crane - and at the time most yards didn't even have those. Secondly, the Japs were very painfully aware of what the ABSDs were after several months of confusion and panic on their part (they initially thought the Americans flat out built shipyards at their forward bases within a matter of weeks), and made several concentrated attacks on the ABSD 'floating bases', but the Americans always left them very heavily guarded and the attacks went so badly for the Japs that they ultimately just decided to entirely avoid a ~150nmi radius around them.

What should we think of the Russian nuclear destroyer that is seem to stuck in development hell?

>>14122 >we Well, I'd say learning2code would be good insurance. You know, just in case we didn't think the right things and whatnot.

not exactly naval related, but i recently watched master and commander and it was a pretty nice movie. do you guys know of any other sea based/naval films?

>>14165 Here are some naval films that I have recently watched. Yamato (2005) Battle for Archimedes (2019) Midway (1976 and 2019 remake) Greyhound (2019)

>>14070 How hard would it be to put multiple modern self-loading guns into the same turret? Let's say, we want to make a dual 5inch gun this way. At a glance the main problem would be designing a system to transfer shells to a turret ring, and then transfer them from the turret ring to the autoloaders. But that seems to be quite trivial compared to what kind of loading systems the average triple turret had.

>>14235 >How hard would it be to put multiple modern self-loading guns into the same turret? Very simple, the Russians actually do it. I'd post a pic related but the system isn't letting me, so instead have the NavWeaps article on the gun. http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNRussian_51-70_ak130.php The fastest shooting 5in (actually 130mm) bored gun, the AK-130, is also a dual gun for added insult to injury. The 'problem' for western navies is simply in justifying the weight and footprint, the Americans actually designed multiple dual gun 5in systems back in the '50s and '60s but decided against them because of those reasons.

>>14122 Where does the wave motion gun go?

>>14270 Then I guess making triple and quadruple turrets wouldn't be much more complicated, even if somebody were to dig out the plans for the 8"/55 Mark 71 for this purpose. It would be actually nice to see the Eyetalians doing this with their 3" gun, preferably with a turret that can fit into the place of the average 5" single turret. >The 'problem' for western navies is simply in justifying the weight and footprint Is it because gunfire is simply not important for them, so it would be seen as a waste of space and displacement? If yes, then why is that?

>>14312 >Then I guess making triple and quadruple turrets wouldn't be much more complicated In today's time, it's purely a question of how much volume inside the ship and deckspace are you willing to give up for the gun system. Almost all of the other issues, such as feeding the ammunition from the magazine to the guns, has been solved decades ago. >Is it because gunfire is simply not important for them, so it would be seen as a waste of space and displacement? Yes. >If yes, then why is that? Frankly, they're retarded. You're talking about navies that literally retired Battleships because they're 'too intimidating' and 'run contrast to the mission of peace', and I'm not just talking about the USN doing that. That was also one of the stated reasons that the UK got rid of the Vanguard and the French the Jean Bart.

>>14235 >>14270 There's no reason why a modern twin turret needs to be a 100 ton monster. The Bofors 120mm twin turret was comparable in weight and footprint to a single 5"/54.

>>14361 You're aware that the modern 5in/54cal Mk45 single weighs less than half of what the Bofors 12cm/50 M1950 did, right? And that's after you remove basically all of the backup systems from the M1950. You seem to be comparing it to the contemporary USN 5"/54 Mk42. You have to realize something on that gun system - leaving aside that the thing basically was two guns fused to one barrel, its weight included the ready reserve ammo and related drum magazines. The M1950 didn't since none of that was physically part of the gun. Incidentally, the modern gun system does include the ready-reserve, but doesn't carry nearly as many shells.

>>14384 You're missing the point, I think. If arms designers in 1950 could build a 57-ton twin turret with a decent ROF, then we should be able to build an even lighter and faster twin with today's technology.

>>14443 I'm missing the point by directly pointing out the flaw to the central claim of the post? >with today's technology. Today's large gun technology hasn't changed that much from the 1950, most of what has happened are tolerances got tighter as manufacturing methods allowed greater precision. The weight of metal is still the weight of metal. And if you're going to argue for the M1950, it should be pointed out that the British examined multiple of the gun system, observed Swedish test firings, and had Bofors demonstrate it themselves just to ensure it wasn't operator error. They then proceeded to label nearly everything Bofors claimed about the gun system to be utter horseradish and indicated that the gun system had difficulty reaching 16 shots/minute in anything worse than glass smooth seas. It was a valiant attempt, but just like all of the other 'light' automatics naval guns of that era it went horribly wrong.

Do modern warship have machine shops?

>>14619 Ofc. Several in fact.

>>14620 Should we think of fancy CNC machines, or just the basic combo of a lathe and a milling machine in the average shop? And are they constantly used, or just there just to be safe? And why do they need several workshops to begin with?

>>14625 Fancy CNC machines most likely. There is no point in having shit equipment in machine shops as it's not like budget is going to be a limiting factor. Several machine shops are neede in case first becomes inoperational, probably. And because of space restrictions for all the equipment that might be needed to for fabrication and repair of parts.

>>14031 Was deck armour still fairly thin in the axed Washington designs? And did they make it thicker in the 1930s because they expected more plunging fire or because aircraft were already deemed to be a serious enough threat to warrant more protection?