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shortspecialbus posted:I mentioned Castles of Steel and Tin Can Sailors earlier. Any other book recommendations for naval surface warfare (I already have several good submarine warfare books)? Ideally in a similar style to either of those rather than overly dry? Neptune's Inferno is fantastic
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Feb 7, 2022 21:13
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shortspecialbus posted:I mentioned Castles of Steel and Tin Can Sailors earlier. Any other book recommendations for naval surface warfare (I already have several good submarine warfare books)? Ideally in a similar style to either of those rather than overly dry? Besides the already recommended Fleet At Flood Tide (although since it's a 1944-45 book it often leans more carrier aviation than surface action) and Neptune's Inferno, I'd highly recommend Japanese Destroyer Captain, the memoir of Tameichi Hara. It's a fascinating read from one of the more clear-eyed Japanese naval officers (as the title suggests, he was captain of a Japanese destroyer) about what it was like to go from winning to losing the war, with a heavy focus on night actions around Guadalcanal and the impact of American radar and fire control. Not a battleship book, but very good. gohuskies fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Feb 7, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2022 21:19
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bewbies posted:Neptune's Inferno is fantastic Agreed, especially if you liked tin can.
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Feb 7, 2022 21:19
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Thanks for the quick responses! I picked up Flood Tide and Neptune's Inferno and wishlisted the other one as it was pricier on kindle.
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Feb 7, 2022 21:25
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If you liked Castles of Steel then Dreadnought by the same author is also worth a look, though it focuses pretty heavily on pre-war European politics before it gets into Royal Navy ship design and Fisher's antics in office.
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Feb 7, 2022 22:07
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shortspecialbus posted:I mentioned Castles of Steel and Tin Can Sailors earlier. Any other book recommendations for naval surface warfare (I already have several good submarine warfare books)? Ideally in a similar style to either of those rather than overly dry? Going back a bit, but Barry Strauss's book on the battle of Salamis is just wonderful.
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Feb 7, 2022 22:44
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We've reached the Final Four. Only Heavy Hitters from here on out. On the US side of the bracket, we've got number one seed USS Iowa taking on her baby sister, USS South Dakota. Iowas are, of course, probably the most famous and revered ships in US history, but in all honesty, the SoDaks were even more impressive in some ways. They bring about 95% of the capability in a package tens of thousands of tons lighter and tens of millions of dollars cheaper.  Still, this isn't a contest of "who was more efficient." And we don't have weight classes. So, SoDak has to fight her big sister. Iowa has a couple of advantages, albeit very small ones. Her guns throw a touch harder (though their shells are the same incredibly nasty heavyweight 16-inchers), and she's 5.5 kts faster. The increased muzzle velocity probably won't be a gamechanger, but the speed might make a difference -- a faster ship is harder to hit. SoDak, on the other hand, is a much smaller target. This might be irrelevant against a ship as lethally accurate as Iowa, but it is something. Otherwise, the two ships are almost mirrors of one another. Same protection scheme, same high-quality armor, same elite fire control. It isn't quite a coinflip, but I'd call it 55/45 for Iowa. Neither ship has really been seriously tested to this point, so it kind of makes sense their first real test is against a near-twin. Note: SoDak's features were such that it was impossible to replicate them accurately at her listed displacement. I think that's both a testament to how incredibly well-engineered she was, and also how well the game has integrated the costs of weight and space decisions. In the end I had to make her slightly bigger than her historical counterpart. Note 2: Fights from now on will start at 40km, as everyone remaining in the field can shoot accurately past 30km and I want to give them some time to maneuver. Note 3: The Royal Navy will man SoDak for this one, as consolation for their having lost mighty Vanguard in such a close-fought affair with Richelieu.  Iowa is like the heavyweight champ that hasn't ever been in a real back alley battle.  SoDak might be an underdog for the first time, but she's confident.  Iowa wastes zero time. She scores hits on her first two salvoes, both around 30km. This got through SoDak's main deck, but didn't do serious damage.  Iowa's long-range shooting hasn't been great to this point, but holy hell if she isn't on it today.  SoDak responds with a hit at 28km, right off Iowa's belt. It has no hope of penetrating at that range, but it is a good warning shot nonetheless.  Iowa does something we haven't seen yet: she waggles back and forth, making C-cuts in the water. I don't know if this is a new feature or if we just haven't had conditions to trigger it yet, but it is impressive to see...a maneuvering target at 33 kts, firing accurately. SoDak does not do the same thing for some reason.  SoDak takes the first shot off her belt. Like Iowa, it ain't getting through.  Iowa scores the first serious hit of the match at a range of about 16km. She punches through SoDak's belt, damages an engine, and floods a compartment. She also hit SoDak's secondary tower, hurting her shooting a bit. I love the image of the shell in mid-impact.  It seems as though every time Iowa does something, SoDak does it right back to her a few minutes later. She punches Iowa's belt and damages an engine, though it doesn't reduce Iowa's speed by much at all.  SoDak gets in her sweet spot, and scores several big hits all in close succession. These are damaging to Iowa, but don't take out anything critical. This is by far the hardest Iowa has been hit in her career so far, and she's taken it like an absolute hero.  I'm going to name this "Iowa Cheese." The way the midsection of a ship looks after a while fighting Iowa. Once again, she's unbelievably accurate at medium range, putting tight groups right into the center of her target. SoDak's engines are seriously damaged and her speed reduced to only 16 kts, and several compartments amidships are flooded.  Tit-for-tat, SoDak rips open Iowa's middle. This looks bad, but Iowa's fighting core is still almost entirely intact.  SoDak's midsection is completely flooded out. Ironically enough, Iowa's precision shooting is working against her somewhat here: SoDak's compartmentalization is excellent, so the flooding is more or less confined to individual compartments. Since Iowa hasn't hit many compartments outside of those right in the middle, SoDak's bow and stern are largely untouched and still floating just fine.  Iowa takes more fire to her engineering spaces and suffers some significant engine damage. Her speed is cut to...25 kts. We're getting near Standard territory.  SoDak's flooding is giving her a list, but she's in otherwise decent fighting trim. The big problem now is her instability is starting to affect her gunnery...she was once neck-and-neck with Iowa, but is now shooting only about half as well. Unless she scores a major hit, she's going to lose this one on attrition.  She does score a big one...not as big as a turret or con, but taking out Iowa's last engine compartment is a decent consolation. Both ships are now crawling around at around 12 kts, and at a range of around 14km. We're just going to punch this one out; there is no finesse or subtlety left for either ship in this one.  Iowa seems less affected by her damage than SoDak. This was the result of hitting SoDak with SIX 16" shells, all amidships, simultaneously. Someone should figure out how much kinetic energy that blast unleashed.  One of the interesting things about this fight is the range stayed out a ways. We've seen a few fights recently where ships lay alongside at pistol shot, but these two never got within 14km of one another. That their fire was still this murderously accurate at extended range is probably a factor...neither needed to get much closer.  SoDak is in bad shape. Her deck's awash and her rear turret is almost underwater. She fights on though, and even scores hits in this condition. It is incredible that even after the pounding both ships have taken that their guns, fire control, and magazines are all still functioning more or less as intended despite the horrendous damage everywhere else.  Iowa keeps her butt-wiggle going. It is a lot less impressive at 12 kts. Her starboard side is an absolute mess.  After a hit to the con, SoDak finally rolls over. She put a massive hurting on Iowa, but even after that many hits, Iowa was still shooting with lethal accuracy. SoDak just couldn't keep up in the end. SoDak really needed to score a big hit early to even this one up, and she didn't get it despite her generally excellent shooting. After having watched the heavyweight 16s do their damage on a variety of other ships, the toughness these two showed was remarkable. They weren't proof against their guns, but they took a long time to seriously damage. Richelieu now awaits Yamato, and the winner of that one gets Iowa.
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Feb 7, 2022 22:48
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I'm honestly starting to wonder, should the AI in the game be reconfigured so that if it's accurate enough to create Iowa Cheese, it'll try and target different parts of the enemy boat to maximize impact? Like, I'm imagining those shell groupings if applied repeatedly to, say, enemy turrets or their con. Or at the very least spreading out flooding damage to cause faster listing.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:02
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bewbies posted:
Sounds like Wisconsin needs to sub in for her sister in the finals.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:05
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I have a sneaking suspicion that that kind of clustered damage would have more effect in real life.1
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Feb 7, 2022 23:07
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Tree Bucket posted:Owing to my specific branch of nerdery I keep reading RTW as Rome: Total War and thinking, geez, I don’t remember that expansion pack Must have been the one that added Pontus.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:09
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Iowa continues to crush through anything in her way. If her ai stays smart she might just gut Yamato like a fish before Yamato can hurt her back.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:11
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Tomn posted:I'm honestly starting to wonder, should the AI in the game be reconfigured so that if it's accurate enough to create Iowa Cheese, it'll try and target different parts of the enemy boat to maximize impact? I had the same thought, the game definitely does not target specific parts of the ship. That said I'd imagine shooting through the same holes in that part of the ship over and over would be arguably even worse.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:11
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bewbies posted:I had the same thought, the game definitely does not target specific parts of the ship. Realistically if you breached in one place in the vitals, you want to keep hitting there because the armor is gone and eventually you should break the ship apart.
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Feb 7, 2022 23:26
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bewbies posted:I had the same thought, the game definitely does not target specific parts of the ship. Oh sure. But imagine if the same part of the ship in question was the magazine...
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Feb 7, 2022 23:46
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Dang that's a proper brawl
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Feb 8, 2022 00:28
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What a fight! Although I think the Richelieu/Vanguard one was arguably a more interesting fight for reasons I can't pinpoint. This has been so cool. I picked up this game but haven't gotten to loading it yet as I've been busy with other stuff, but looking forward to it for sure.
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Feb 8, 2022 01:39
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Woo go Iowa. Now let see what your were supposed to do against the Yamato if Halsey hadn't been such an idiot. Drachinifel did a what if video that posed the question if TF 34 and Ching Lee was able to fight at the battle of Samar. https://youtu.be/35yLWdYEbZQ Also I was very saddened by James Hornfischer passing away last year. I also recommend Ship of Ghost about the USS Houston. All of his books are great reads especially Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. Tiger Crazy fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 01:57
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Tiger Crazy posted:Also I very saddened by James Hornfischer passing away last year. I also recommend Ship of Ghost about the USS Houston. All of his books are great reads especially Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. I hadn't realized Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors was Hornfischer, but yeah - absolutely great read for anyone. Out of the two I recommended earlier, it's easily the more accessible one and such a great story. I really enjoyed Castles of Steel but it's a fundamentally different style of book. I'm really looking forward to reading the recommendations from this thread.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:00
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An excellent fight. Iowa won that on impressive shooting, and hammered through roughly near-best-in-class armor while displaying fantastic damage control. If the Rich somehow upsets Yamato, I can't see Iowa losing.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:40
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drat those are both impressive botes. Good on SD for really letting Iowa have it. Good on Iowa for living up to the hype
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Feb 8, 2022 03:05
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An idea for a sequel tournament might be to have like a persistence system where getting damaged results in points which results in needing to pick certain modules/components of the ship to be either out of action or degraded; which may let upsets happen with more frequency.
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Feb 8, 2022 03:37
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shortspecialbus posted:What a fight! I agree, and I think it's because Richelieu / Vanguard was a fight between two fundamentally different ships with very different approaches to the "how do I build a battleship" problem. Iowa / SoDak is just a mirror fight. Iowa is a stretch SoDak with 50% more installed power. Raenir Salazar posted:An idea for a sequel tournament might be to have like a persistence system where getting damaged results in points which results in needing to pick certain modules/components of the ship to be either out of action or degraded; which may let upsets happen with more frequency. this sounds insanely dull and administrative. the point isn't to get weird upsets it's to see which battleship is the loving baddest.
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Feb 8, 2022 03:50
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shortspecialbus posted:I hadn't realized Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors was Hornfischer, but yeah - absolutely great read for anyone. Out of the two I recommended earlier, it's easily the more accessible one and such a great story. I really enjoyed Castles of Steel but it's a fundamentally different style of book. I'm really looking forward to reading the recommendations from this thread. I'll also mention Fighting the Great War at Sea by Friedman. It'd make a good companion to Castles of Steel, since it's more focused on the technologies in use and how they developed. CoS will mention fire control as a thing, but FtGWaS has a chapter on fire control. Then Friedman has a whole book on fire control, and then you're into his design histories by class and nodding sagely along with an account of how DNC and the Third Sea Lord went back and forth over the last 100 unallocated tons on a new battleship design. That sort of discussion does make Rule the Waves an even more fun game, since you're the DNC and all the Sea Lords, and write your own staff requirements. https://www.usni.org/press/books/fighting-great-war-sea
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Feb 8, 2022 03:56
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:which battleship is the loving baddest. Well now I'm curious. Boat nerds, what would you say is the WORST dreadnought battleship ever made? Better yet, what are the worst TWO dreadnought battleships ever made, and would bewbies be willing to make them fight?
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Feb 8, 2022 04:03
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Tomn posted:Boat nerds, what would you say is the WORST dreadnought battleship ever made? I'd nominate the original British battlecruisers with 6 inches of belt armor (Inflexible/Indefatigable). Not because they were bad at what they were intended to do, they killed cruisers very well. But needing a fast cruiser killer was unnecessary and it's absurd that these things cost as much as a proper battleship while being a total liability in a fleet action.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:13
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I agree, and I think it's because Richelieu / Vanguard was a fight between two fundamentally different ships with very different approaches to the "how do I build a battleship" problem. I think the problem is we're very well on track for the results of the entire tournament being predicted basically in advance like 20 years ago by Jonathan Parshall. So for sequel tournaments I assume we would want to mix it up.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:39
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Tomn posted:Well now I'm curious. Honorable mention to Dreadnought itself, and in particular to putting the spotting tower in the exhaust smoke from its boilers.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:41
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This is excluding Fisher monstrosities like Furious and Courageous, I presume. In the late 1800s you have stuff like Japanese light cruisers with a single 13" gun that has a rate of fire of 1.3 rounds per hour. that is the good and wacky era of shipbuilding. By the time things advanced to all-big-gun most of the weird and dumb poo poo had been worked out but: the Nassaushad a really odd, dumb, and bad hexagonal turret arrangement that involved putting 12 guns on a ship that could never fire more than eight guns on any particular target, they carried little guns, and they had triple expansion engines rather than turbines, but they were first-gen dreadnoughts. Agincourt was pretty bad. For quite a bit more tonnage than a contemporaneous King George V you got four more guns of 1.5" smaller caliber, a 3-4" reduction in armored belt, and about a knot of speed. That's a lousy set of tradeoffs. On the other hand, she'd probably clobber any first-gen dreadnought with ease. (It would be interesting to pit her against Dreadnought to see if this theory is accurate) the Ganguts were underarmored and would have issues with end-on fire but all else equal I think you'd rather have one than either of the above.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:48
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I just went on the journey of discovering that Iowa (and other WWII battleships) still had a wooden deck, then assuming that they must have used powered equipment to maintain it, followed by imaging a traditionalist captain demanding it be holystoned, and finally discovering that they did still manually holystone them instead of using equipment. Though I suppose it's not so surprising when you've got a couple thousand sailors to keep busy.
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Feb 8, 2022 05:19
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TerminalSaint posted:I just went on the journey of discovering that Iowa (and other WWII battleships) still had a wooden deck, then assuming that they must have used powered equipment to maintain it, followed by imaging a traditionalist captain demanding it be holystoned, and finally discovering that they did still manually holystone them instead of using equipment. Though I suppose it's not so surprising when you've got a couple thousand sailors to keep busy. Wooden decks were common fixtures until post war ships for traditional (wood is a connection to naval tradition) and practical (metal is slippery and oil based paint is just as or more flammable than wood) reasons. Also yeah when you've got a towns population it isn't that hard to keep it up.
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Feb 8, 2022 05:36
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TerminalSaint posted:I just went on the journey of discovering that Iowa (and other WWII battleships) still had a wooden deck, then assuming that they must have used powered equipment to maintain it, followed by imaging a traditionalist captain demanding it be holystoned, and finally discovering that they did still manually holystone them instead of using equipment. Though I suppose it's not so surprising when you've got a couple thousand sailors to keep busy. I know Battleship New Jersey just got mentioned in this thread, but funnily enough they just did a video on this a week ago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH6_RIHAoA4 tl;dr: wood is a great insulator and stabilizes the temperature of the below compartments
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Feb 8, 2022 05:47
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think the problem is we're very well on track for the results of the entire tournament being predicted basically in advance like 20 years ago by Jonathan Parshall. Yeah but there's a slight change now that Yamato's fire control is more highly regarded. Well, I'm sure Richelieu is going to do perfectly fine. PS: Do we get a loser's bracket? Winner goes against Iowa, loser goes against Diet Iowa.
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Feb 8, 2022 06:42
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SIGSEGV posted:Yeah but there's a slight change now that Yamato's fire control is more highly regarded. Well, I'm sure Richelieu is going to do perfectly fine. A loser's bracket was indeed promised, although I'm not sure the seeding method had been sorted out.
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Feb 8, 2022 13:45
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Our other semifinal match pits the Japanese Juggernaut Yamato against the very underrated French battleship Richelieu. Yamato has simply smashed all her opposition thus far, though she's taken fair beatings in doing so. Richelieu had to fight a pair of tough Tubaships before her epic nailbiter with Vanguard to get here. For me, she's been the best pound-for-pound ship in the tournament thus far. As discussed in the Iowa/SoDak match, though, this ain't pound-for-pound. Rich is going to have to slug it out this time with a ship nearly twice her size. She'll have a chance in this one -- if she can decisively outshoot Yamato and score some significant damage points, Yamato will have a hard time hitting her. But, if Yamato does score a big hit or two early on and cuts Rich's speed down...things could go downhill quickly.  The beautiful French ship sails out to face her second top-5 opponent in a row.  Yamato is ready to mix it up again. One thing is for sure: she isn't afraid to get hit, hard.  And Rich hits her, hard. In the best first salvo of the tournament so far, Rich hits with THREE shells at a range of 30.1 km. They hit Yamato near the stern, damaging her #3 turret. The damage is significant, but the turret remains operational and no major secondary effects are felt.  Rich's long range shooting is the best that we've seen in any fight so far. She scores 13 hits outside of 25km, and does some harm to Yamato. The thing though, as always, none of Yamato's vital systems are seriously degraded. She's built to take this kind of beating and keep right on fighting.  Yamato's long-range shooting isn't bad, but it is unlucky. She scores no hits. Rich, meanwhile, plugs Yamato 21 times before she's hit in return.  But when Yamato's first round hits, holy hell is it ugly. Those 18" shells do NOT mess around. It goes through Rich's deck and causes major damage amidships. It doesn't degrade anything, but Rich just cannot withstand gunfire like that for very long.  Rich keeps pouring it on Yamato. By the time they've closed to 15km, she's hit Yamato 40 times.  And Yamato has only hit Rich 6 times at the same range. But those 6 hits have done significantly more damage than the 40 strikes on Yamato.  Soon after, Rich takes the hit she really couldn't take: through her belt, amidships, into her engineering spaces. She begins to lose power and speed.  Yamato's now taken 61 heavy caliber hits and is really none the worse for wear, aside from the light damage to her rear turret.  Rich just cannot deal with the power of the 18" guns. She's hit multiple times amidships and loses nearly all her engine power. Flooding cuts off several compartments. At a range of about 13km, her belt cannot stop Yamato's gunfire. Still, her fire control is untouched, and she's hitting Yamato now with virtually every salvo.  Though she's badly wounded, Rich connects with Yamato's well-protected con and kills her captain. Though this likely isn't enough to change the outcome of this one, had Rich still had the engine power and steering to extend the range some, she might've been able to pull this one out. Or at least make it somewhat closer.  Alas, Rich's power and steering are both shot. She's just slowly gliding through the water at around 12 kts, eating shellfire. Her guns cannot get through Yamato's belt, even at this close range.  Rich is gradually consumed by flames, and starts to list.  Yamato took a ton of damage and lost her captain, but yet again, despite the beating she took, she is really more or less good to go. She can just soak up damage and avoid being critically hit like no other ship.  Soon enough, it is over for Rich. She took a long time to finally go down; it took the most damaging single salvo (6 simultaneous impacts of 18" shells at a range of 5k) of the tournament so far to finally finish her off. She fought a great match and even gave Yamato a pretty good scare, but in the end she couldn't find a way to reduce Yamato enough to give her the time she needed to break her down. And so, the finals are set. Iowa and Yamato being in the championship is no great surprise, but I honestly have no idea which way this one will go.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:31
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Updated bracket:
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Feb 8, 2022 20:33
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Get the popcorn ready, my money's on the corn-fed country boy.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:39
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Gah, I was really hoping for some kind of a big upset to break up this semi-predictable final. Sodak vs Rich might have been real cool. Hell: Can we get Sodak versus Rich for the runner-up award?
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Feb 8, 2022 20:39
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 o7
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Feb 8, 2022 20:41
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Ice Fist posted:Gah, I was really hoping for some kind of a big upset to break up this semi-predictable final. Sodak vs Rich might have been real cool. Hell: Can we get Sodak versus Rich for the runner-up award? Yeah definitely, we'll do the bronze medal match first as is tradition. And they both have to pretend to care, unlike hockey or soccer teams that lose in the semis of major tournaments.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:44
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