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Zorak of Michigan posted:So just how wet was Akagi in that original three deck configuration? Not as wet as you might think - Akagi and Jags both had "dry" decks because of the extra height due to being built on battlecruiser/battleship hulls. Hiryu and Soryu, being purpose built carriers, had flight decks lower to the water and thus worse to fly off in bad weather. I'm guessing the original three deck design was no fun to fly off if the weather was bad though.
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Feb 27, 2019 13:59
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So what's up with the British in WWII sending ships to be refit to Jamaica or the US? Lack of capacity at the home islands? Better tools/repair people there? Available technology? Safety from German bombers?
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Feb 27, 2019 14:10
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British aircraft carriers were such wasted potential lol.
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Feb 27, 2019 15:04
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Stairmaster posted:British aircraft carriers were such wasted potential lol. Why build aircraft carriers when you have colonial airbases all over the world  OH GOD MY ISLANDS
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Feb 27, 2019 15:11
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MikeCrotch posted:I'm guessing the original three deck design was no fun to fly off if the weather was bad though. I'd be awfully nervous sitting in a fully fueled plane on the lower deck watching planes take off above me. One mistake and they're going to end up trying to share deck space with me, which would be bad.
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Feb 27, 2019 15:37
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Urcinius posted:When I found out Churchill offered Illustrious in addition to Vicky for the Pacific on 2 Dec. 1942, I wondered if anything noticeably different would have happened in the Pacific. I wasn't able to come up with much of anything. Maybe a night carrier raid on Rabaul. What can y'all come up with? I don't think you would have seen much different in the Pacific; the RN carriers had little experience operating alongside the USN, and so most of the time Victorious spent in the Pacific was spent exercising with Saratoga. Adding Illustrious wouldn't have changed much. Having the extra carrier might have allowed the Allies to be a bit more aggressive, but I think a raid on Rabaul would be a step too far. Sicily would not have been affected, but Salerno might. If Indomitable is still torpedoed off Sicily, then there would not be an easily available spare carrier to fill in for her. This would likely have delayed the operation until either Illustrious could be recalled from the Pacific - the other option would be sending Furious south, which the RN is unlikely to do if Scharnhorst or Tirpitz are still about threatening the Norwegian convoy routes. Raenir Salazar posted:So what's up with the British in WWII sending ships to be refit to Jamaica or the US? Lack of capacity at the home islands? Better tools/repair people there? Available technology? Safety from German bombers? Ships were not refitted/repaired in Jamaica - a few ships were sent to do shakedown cruises in the safer waters there. The RN's use of American shipyards for repairs and refits was mostly caused by your first and last reasons. Much of Britain's shipyard capacity was taken up with producing merchant shipping and ASW escorts, especially in the critical period of the Battle of the Atlantic from 1940-42. This single-minded focus allowed the RN to construct 82 destroyer escorts and 152 corvettes, sloops and frigates (plus another 88 in Canadian yards) between 1939 and 1942, as well as millions of tons of merchant shipping. However, it also meant that major warships under construction were often delayed, to allow workers to focus on the more vital areas. Similarly, many refits were delayed or overran as a result. German bombing raids were not the biggest threat to British shipyards, as they more commonly targeted the merchant ports rather than the naval shipyards. Even so, there were several raids that struck naval yards, with Thorneycroft's yard at Woolston and various yards on the Clyde taking the biggest hits. During one of these raids, the cruiser Sussex, refitting at Clydeside, was struck by a bomb which started a major fire in her engine rooms. Had she been at sea and the fire been allowed to reach the state it did, it is likely she would have sunk; as it was, she required 21 months of repairs. Repairing and refitting major units in the US removed this risk.
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Feb 27, 2019 15:42
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Raenir Salazar posted:So what's up with the British in WWII sending ships to be refit to Jamaica or the US? Lack of capacity at the home islands? Better tools/repair people there? Available technology? Safety from German bombers? Simply lack of capacity in the home shipyards and naval dockyards. The British Isles had 14 slipways capable of building capital ships of KGV/Lion battleship or Implacable/Illustrious carrier size. And the yards didn't have anything like one dry dock per slipway - often each yard would only have one, maybe two, graving docks of the largest size, and it was those which were most useful for refits and repairs. So in the home islands there was probably capacity to refit no more than 10 large warships at any one time. By 1945 the RN had five battleships and 58 carriers in commission. Add onto this the 196 Flower-class and 44 Castle-class corvettes, 151 River-class frigates and 37 Black Swan-class sloops, and everything else. British shipyards build 634 warships of all sorts (including submarines but excluding true 'boats' like HDMLs, MTBs, MGBs and landing craft plus minor warships such as naval trawlers and armed tugs) plus 4.2 million tons of merchant shipping. On top of this was round-the-clock repair, overhaul and refit work, interupted by bombing and shortages of materials and labour. And the corvettes and frigates were deliberately designed to be built by small civilian yards more used to building things like ferries, trawlers and tugboats. These yards were often just a slipway at the side of a river or the head of a muddy harbour. If they were building a ship they had no capacity to repair another, and those yards were busy building sorely-needed convoy escorts as quickly as possible. Meanwhile the USA built 38 million tons of merchant shipping just in Liberty Ships. By 1943 there was more 'Class 1' shipbuilding capacity on the shores of New York Harbour than there was in the British Isles, and that was just a fraction of the US's industrial shipbuilding/repairing capacity. Obviously much of that was going into building ships (including some for the British to British designs) but a useful amount of it was available for repair work to take the pressure of the British yards. And with a large portion of the RN's ships engaged on ploughing back and forth across the Atlantic on convoy duty, it made as good sense to refit them on one side of the ocean as the other. As for the Royal Dockyards in places like Bermuda, Trincomalee, Bombay, Simonstown etc. they were just overseas Admiralty-owned yards that were part of the existing infrastructure to service the fleet around the world - many of them had been built in the 18th century. Again, it made sense to service ships in the various global Fleets at the nearest dockyard if it had the ability and capacity. Edit: Beaten by Randomcheese3, but it's nice to see the numbers tally! BalloonFish fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Feb 27, 2019 |
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Feb 27, 2019 15:51
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Tias posted:Oooh, let's talk poorly thought out material chemistry in warfare! I had a discussion with people at the Phénix reactor (sodium-cooled utility reactor) about this. If the part of primary circuit of a light water reactor -- that is, those parts where sodium otherwise would have been located, process-wise or physically -- bursts, the actual damage isn't necessarily going to be that much different, and the post accident cooling would be worse. However, there's gonna be a whole lot of sodium hydroxide to vacuum up...
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Feb 27, 2019 16:30
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Cyrano4747 posted:Now if you want to talk about a small ship charging a big ship in a way that is Jesus christ... never heard of this one before. That Commander had some BIG balls.
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Feb 27, 2019 17:42
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as gently caress and had real results check out USS Laffey (DD-459). During the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal she got into a point blank night time duel with the Japanese BB Hiei. Her guns couldn’t do gently caress all to Hiei’s armor but she lit the super structure on fire, which drew the gunfire of the whole American fleet. Hiei ended up crippled as a result and was sunk by airplanes the next day.
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HEY GUNS posted:as soon as the modern university is invented people start bitching about how there are too many students and no good jobs Thanks to the Aubrey-Martin novels, my go to is the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era. Crews are so hard to come by press gangs are at work and prison hulks are emptied of prisoners - meanwhile every officer is trying to climb this ziggurat of rank which is insanely top heavy because seniority is almost everything, and there are all these dudes stuck ashore at half pay, trying to weedle themselves onto a ship where they might have good fortune/get promoted. The RN even had 'sessional lecturers' - officers who worked all the time but would never be promoted, because they were sailing transports or something. In 'Desolation Island', the gang gets saddled with an officer based on a real life one, who was a brilliant sailor but also a belligerent rear end who managed to get himself sent to the bottom of the lieutenant's list, so he's as old as Aubrey but still a Lt, and he's always crabbing about how lucky 'Lucky' Aubrey is. With the discussion of sodium reactors, I thought initially someone was going to bring up the AIP Quebec class submarines, running their diesel engines via large tanks of Oxygen
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Feb 27, 2019 17:55
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Marxist-Jezzinist posted:there are no good jobs, anywhere, ever This is a pro user/post combo, and a pro av/post combo, good job
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Feb 27, 2019 17:55
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Does anyone know just how far, technologically and operationally, the US 9th Infantry Division got with their ground-launched Hellfire project?
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Feb 27, 2019 18:27
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Nebakenezzer posted:Thanks to the Aubrey-Martin novels, my go to is the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era. Crews are so hard to come by press gangs are at work and prison hulks are emptied of prisoners - meanwhile every officer is trying to climb this ziggurat of rank which is insanely top heavy because seniority is almost everything, and there are all these dudes stuck ashore at half pay, trying to weedle themselves onto a ship where they might have good fortune/get promoted. The RN even had 'sessional lecturers' - officers who worked all the time but would never be promoted, because they were sailing transports or something. In 'Desolation Island', the gang gets saddled with an officer based on a real life one, who was a brilliant sailor but also a belligerent rear end who managed to get himself sent to the bottom of the lieutenant's list, so he's as old as Aubrey but still a Lt, and he's always crabbing about how lucky 'Lucky' Aubrey is. Lots of people and events in those books are based on real life. Aubrey himself is heavily based on Thomas Chocrane IIRC
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Feb 27, 2019 19:16
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FuturePastNow posted:This is fun. A 100-year old fort armed with a few 50-year old guns and a torpedo launcher armed with 1909 Whitehead torpedoes. I was only briefly familiar with the Battle of Drøbak Sound, but after reading this I checked on Amazon Prime Video and the movie that this youtube clip is from is available there. I just watched it with my wife. It's an excellent movie, and very faithful to the original in all the events surrounding the King's escape from Norway, and includes a well made scene of the Midstkogen Forest, too. Both the Battle of Drøbak Sound, and the Battle of Midtskogen were two extremely decisive battles that had far reaching historical repercussions, and both were commanded by bunch of old rear end gray hair officers, with a handful of seasoned NCOs, and a boatload of fresh recruits with basically no training. Good movie, worth watching, and most likely would hit the right nerve for most readers of this thread. The film is called "The King's Choice".
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Feb 27, 2019 20:21
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Stairmaster posted:British aircraft carriers were such wasted potential lol. The armoured flight deck meant that they could tank kamikaze strikes, which gave them an unexpected niche in suppressing the airfields that kamikaze pilots flew out of. Well, they tanked them to an extent, the stress of those big explosions wasn't very good for the carrier's structural integrity and they got worn out in short order. Oh well, not like the Brits could afford to operate the RN after the war anyways.
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Feb 27, 2019 20:58
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Vahakyla posted:It's an excellent movie, and very faithful to the original in all the events surrounding the King's escape from Norway, and includes a well made scene of the Midstkogen Forest, too. Both the Battle of Drøbak Sound, and the Battle of Midtskogen were two extremely decisive battles that had far reaching historical repercussions, and both were commanded by bunch of old rear end gray hair officers, with a handful of seasoned NCOs, and a boatload of fresh recruits with basically no training. A significant portion of the Norwegian troops at Midtskogen were volunteers from the local rifle club. One thing I find interesting about Midtskogen is that it's set up to be a perfect L-shaped ambush, and pretty much everything goes wrong for the Norwegian forces - the Germans dismount outside the ambush zone and the Norwegian machine guns are frozen inoperable for large parts of the battle - yet the Germans end up losing anyway.
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Feb 27, 2019 21:45
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:The armoured flight deck meant that they could tank kamikaze strikes, which gave them an unexpected niche in suppressing the airfields that kamikaze pilots flew out of. Well, they tanked them to an extent, the stress of those big explosions wasn't very good for the carrier's structural integrity and they got worn out in short order. Oh well, not like the Brits could afford to operate the RN after the war anyways. Not like it matters as much as winning the war, either, tbf.
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Feb 27, 2019 22:14
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I still thinking having a boat with 70 planes on it would have been more useful
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Feb 27, 2019 23:29
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By the stage of the war when the British carriers got involved, getting a few more aircraft wasn't really as important anyway.
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Feb 27, 2019 23:45
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Based off my joke earlier about the KM asking the Japanese to help them invade Britain. How would the Japanese Navy fair, (if they got warped to the Atlantic by Alien Space Bats) against the Royal Navy?
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Feb 28, 2019 00:31
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IJN of which year are you talking about? Pre-WW2?
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Feb 28, 2019 00:52
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in a gay black Hitler world I've wondered if Japan could've attacked the Persian gulf while the Nazis took the Suez canal, or just both of them going for suez, securing both of them a shitload of oil and enabling the two to send convoys and troop transports of considerable size lots of impossible prerequisites there, but the kido butai clearing the Eastern Mediterranean might've been interesting
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Feb 28, 2019 00:56
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oystertoadfish posted:in a gay black Hitler world I've wondered if Japan could've attacked the Persian gulf while the Nazis took the Suez canal, or just both of them going for suez, securing both of them a shitload of oil and enabling the two to send convoys and troop transports of considerable size Have to take India first, which, uh, might take a while.
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Feb 28, 2019 01:08
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Stairmaster posted:I still thinking having a boat with 70 planes on it would have been more useful It's worth pointing out that due to procurement shenanigans in the pre-war period and then the Battle of Britain the RN couldn't actually fill the carriers it had with aircraft. Adding another thirty empty parking spaces doesn't help.
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Feb 28, 2019 01:23
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Also the Suez Canal
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Feb 28, 2019 01:32
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wdarkk posted:Have to take India first, which, uh, might take a while. it's possible sri lanka could be enough. and socotra! ever since i was a kid i've looked at socotra and thought it was one of the most strategic points on the globe, but i guess it hasn't been sure has a cool biome tho  this is something i might try in World In Flames sometime, a board game that basically makes the axis stronger so it's more fun. i recognize that it's not real history, though if we extend the ridiculousness to make japan an actual trustworthy ally of independence movements in colonial asia then maybe they could've done something, but i think that's just entirely antithetical to the IJA/IJN mindset. there's gay black hitler, and then there's Imperial Japanese Army Decolonizing Asia
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Feb 28, 2019 02:08
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FrangibleCover posted:It's worth pointing out that due to procurement shenanigans in the pre-war period and then the Battle of Britain the RN couldn't actually fill the carriers it had with aircraft. Adding another thirty empty parking spaces doesn't help. Well do better next time
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Feb 28, 2019 02:09
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Arban posted:Lots of people and events in those books are based on real life. Aubrey himself is heavily based on Thomas Chocrane IIRC I haven't read past the first two books, but does Aubrey also eventually end up serving with the Chilean Navy, the Brazilian Navy and the Greek Navy? Because that entire bizarre part of his life is my favorite to read about, like he shows up in Chile late 1818, builds them institutions for a navy and immediately helps to liberate Peru along with Augustin de San Martín, and follows this up by hopping over to Brazil's Navy and eventually Greece, before going back to the Royal Navy.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:19
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Trying to conquer Sri Lanka would have been more difficult than conquering Hawaii.
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Feb 28, 2019 02:41
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Dance Officer posted:IJN of which year are you talking about? Pre-WW2? Lets say 1941 before Barbarossa? Since this weird thought was kinda tied to would the IJN at that time be able to beat the Royal Navy to pave the way for Hitlers dumb invasion. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 02:57
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I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. January, 1945. Japan gets one (1) Virginia class submarine, fully loaded with torpedoes, but no missiles. They can replenish it once. How badly does this go for the USN? edit - assume for the sake of this hypothetical that the Japanese are able to effectively operate this incredibly complicated vessel after a brief nuclear submarine operations introductory course bewbies fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 03:53
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. Not as badly as it goes for the IJA
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Feb 28, 2019 03:59
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. This is like The Final Countdown but less sensical.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:01
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. Does this happen before or after I have a threesome with Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Kendrick? Is the moon made of barbecue spare ribs in this universe? This is such a stupid counterfactual it doesn't deserve a serious answer.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:05
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It actually has a lot of very interesting operational and problem solving elements to it and I loved hearing the navy nerds argue about it. But anyway, let's hit up WWII tank reliability issues one more time, maybe there's a stone yet unturned.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:22
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Under the Qing Eight Banner system were the Han and Mongol Eight Banners part of the “Eight Banners” or were they their own units making 24 total Banners?
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Feb 28, 2019 04:23
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:Under the Qing Eight Banner system were the Han and Mongol Eight Banners part of the “Eight Banners” or were they their own units making 24 total Banners? The latter, eight banners per ethnic group. This is early Qing by the way, for the three major ethic groups in the army. I'm a bit more familiar with the late Qing but it gets super weird, super fast once you start trying to add up forces in the First Sino Japanese War. One of these days I'll get around to translating that presentation I made about that war, I just have had no free time for the past month Edit: where did the rest of my post go? Don Gato fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 04:43
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. So basically there is an invisible sea monster that can eat up to 75 vessels or so. The order of Battle for the invasion of Okinawa suggests that the US had 39 carriers (11 fleet), 8 modern battleships, and 31 cruisers present. That’s part of Fifth Fleet, which is just unimaginably gigantic. So you wreck that, the US still has more than enough ships to strangle Japan, and Harry Turtledove is hanged as a war criminal after the surrender. Honestly, I think the better play with such a sea monster would be to just disappear a few troop convoys, but the IJN seems unlikely to abandon the chance to shoot things that can shoot back in favor of glorified commerce raiding. Timmy Age 6 fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 04:48
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Ultimately it doesn't change anything, since by this point B-29s are already laying waste to vast swaths of Japanese cities. Yeah, it might put a major dent into the ability for the US to threaten the home islands with invasion directly, but it's not going to do anything to stop the firebombings, the atomic bombs, or August Storm.
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Feb 28, 2019 04:56
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N00ba the Hutt posted:So basically there is an invisible sea monster that can eat up to 75 vessels or so. The order of Battle for the invasion of Okinawa suggests that the US had 39 carriers (11 fleet), 8 modern battleships, and 31 cruisers present. That’s part of Fifth Fleet, which is just unimaginably gigantic. So you wreck that, the US still has more than enough ships to strangle Japan, and Harry Turtledove is hanged as a war criminal after the surrender. The only question is if the US decides to make a peace after losing however many capital ships to an invisible menace. Because if they don't, it's not like the sub can intercept heavy bombers. Kyoto would get nuked, half of Japan would starve to death, by then the novelty of having a future sub would probably have worn off and the Japanese would need to surrender.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:07
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