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Solaris 2.0 posted:The capabilities of the US and British navies during WWII astonish me. Something important to note about that is that in 1944 the US and UK had pretty much uncontested control of the channel and the north sea etc. Yes, you have stuff like the S-Boats and U-Boats, but realistically you're not going to have a battle fleet sortie to gently caress with an invasion fleet. This was due to a lot of poo poo, but the importance of gaining aerial superiority with land-based aircraft really can't be under-estimated. The UK was, in short, the world's biggest and most well equipped aircraft carrier and one that, conveniently, could not be sunk. What this means is that the ships that the US doesn't have to put its best ships into Overlord. A lot of the BBs, for example, were WW1 vintage ships that would haven't done well in actual surface combat but were still very capable for shore bombardment. [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nevada_(BB-36)]USS Nevada, for example, was laid down only a year after SMS Seydlitz, which saw action at Jutland. Even the smaller ships like destroyers tended to be the early and pre-war two stack ships, not the latest and hottest that were getting loaded up with AAA to run picket duty in the pacific. Not that it's not impressive as gently caress that they were able to run both of those at the same time, but the naval requirements of Europe and the Pacific were very different.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:16
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PittTheElder posted:And then they did it all again in the Med a month later. While also having just done it in the Med earlier - Churchill wanted more landings in Italy a la Anzio in order to outflank the Germans, but the shipping got pulled away for Overlord/Neptune.
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Feb 9, 2022 01:20
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Solaris 2.0 posted:The capabilities of the US and British navies during WWII astonish me. There’s a reason Hornfischer named his book about the late-war USN ”The Fleet at Flood Tide.”
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Feb 9, 2022 02:03
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Vahakyla posted:The American capability to manufacture ships and tanks and airplanes, and simultaneously support it all with the behemoth of a logistics system seems like it was completely on a different order of magnitude from its peers during WW2. Not even they would trust nazi intelligence
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Feb 9, 2022 03:01
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Also isn't some of that "7000 ships" Higgins boats? Looking at Wikipedia the total naval production of the US during ww2 was something like 1132 ships including convoy escorts and submarines. E: never mind, that's just warships and doesn't include oilers, transports, supply ships, tenders, etc which would naturally greatly outnumber the frontline combatants Uncle Enzo fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 03:29
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Uncle Enzo posted:Also isn't some of that "7000 ships" Higgins boats? Looking at Wikipedia the total naval production of the US during ww2 was something like 1132 ships including convoy escorts and submarines. considering US shipyards turned out like 2500+ liberty ships i think you need to check your data there
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Feb 9, 2022 03:31
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Uncle Enzo posted:Also isn't some of that "7000 ships" Higgins boats? Looking at Wikipedia the total naval production of the US during ww2 was something like 1132 ships including convoy escorts and submarines. Between 1941 and 1945, the docks in the US cranked out 175 Fletcher-class destroyers alone. That's one class. Similarly, another singular class, Buckley, had 102 of them cranked out in two loving years. Your math is off. The scale here is wildly off. I found several references to "1132 Major Combatant Vessels" being manufactured in the US between 1941-1945. I'm not sure what it includes. EDIT: According to the big daddy navy itself it's Frigates and up. I presume Destroyer Escorts with into the "frigate" umbrella. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 03:58
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Vahakyla posted:I presume Destroyer Escorts with into the "frigate" umbrella. Correct ! The USN DE did the job the RN would give to a frigate.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:21
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Does that escort destroyers or destroy escorts or is it a destroyer that escorts?
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Feb 9, 2022 04:33
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The Lone Badger posted:Does that escort destroyers or destroy escorts or is it a destroyer that escorts? Don't forget that "destroyer" is short for "torpedo boat destroyer," just to really jam more into the concept.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:40
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The Lone Badger posted:Does that escort destroyers or destroy escorts or is it a destroyer that escorts? The latter. DEs are smaller and slower than DDs.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:40
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Zorak of Michigan posted:The latter. DEs are smaller and slower than DDs. Fast enough for merchant convoy duty, fast enough to hunt subs, too slow to keep up with big fleet assets like CVs and BBs. edit: ballpark ~25 knots for a DE, ~35 knots for a DD.
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Feb 9, 2022 04:41
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How meaningful are ship designations in and between navies? Why did it ever matter if a ship was precisely a battleship or a battlecruiser or a cruiser - just treaty stuff?
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Feb 9, 2022 04:49
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Were there any plans to use US carriers in the European theatre aside from convoy/submarine hunting? Or were they not needed because of the proximity of UK bases to the continent?
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Feb 9, 2022 05:14
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Were there any plans to use US carriers in the European theatre aside from convoy/submarine hunting? Or were they not needed because of the proximity of UK bases to the continent? Ranger provided air cover during operation Torch and did a bunch of transatlantic aircraft ferrying. It also did some raiding off of Norway later in the war.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:24
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zoux posted:How meaningful are ship designations in and between navies? Why did it ever matter if a ship was precisely a battleship or a battlecruiser or a cruiser - just treaty stuff? It's mostly denoting what the ship's role is and what it was designed to do, I think. I.E. Battlecruisers are designed to be fast to serve as heavy screens and anti-convoy-raiders, but they're also designed to be light on armor so that they didn't cost half the naval budget trying to make a heavily armored elephant super fast. The result is that they're good at what they do, but bad at doing what a battleship was designed to do, i.e. slug it out with other, heavily armored battleships. The distinction does get a bit fuzzy with changing technology and fleet doctrines, though. Speaking of which, what IS the modern difference between frigates, destroyers, and corvettes?
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Feb 9, 2022 05:48
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zoux posted:How meaningful are ship designations in and between navies? Why did it ever matter if a ship was precisely a battleship or a battlecruiser or a cruiser - just treaty stuff? What a navy designates a boat as tells you whst they intend to use it for. The fact that (enemy navy) calls it a battlecruiser means it'll be mostly performing battlecruiser missions, even if your own navy would have called it a battleship.
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Feb 9, 2022 05:51
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The Lone Badger posted:Does that escort destroyers or destroy escorts or is it a destroyer that escorts? IJN Vice Admiral Kurita posted:¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Feb 9, 2022 05:52
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zoux posted:How meaningful are ship designations in and between navies? Why did it ever matter if a ship was precisely a battleship or a battlecruiser or a cruiser - just treaty stuff? Extremely broadly speaking a Battleship is intended to fight fleet battles, a Battlecruiser is intended to hunt cruisers, and Cruisers are intended to do everything else - scouting, raiding, convoys, blockades. The designations are important to anyone who might need to know at a glance the capabilities of ship/fleet/task force/squadron, in addition to being a common point of reference for arms limitation treaties. The designations vary between navies but not as much as they used to. Tomn posted:The distinction does get a bit fuzzy with changing technology and fleet doctrines, though. Speaking of which, what IS the modern difference between frigates, destroyers, and corvettes? size, mostly. in ascending order it's corvettes, frigates, destroyers. thatbastardken fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 05:53
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At this point it's just how much endurance, how many missile tubes, and how nice of a radar they have.
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Feb 9, 2022 06:28
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wiegieman posted:At this point it's just how much endurance, how many missile tubes, and how nice of a radar they have. What does "endurance" refer to in the context of a ship?
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Feb 9, 2022 07:01
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How long it can drive around.
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Feb 9, 2022 07:10
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wiegieman posted:At this point it's just how much endurance, how many missile tubes, and how nice of a radar they have. also number size and type of aviation assets
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Feb 9, 2022 15:06
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Fuschia tude posted:What does "endurance" refer to in the context of a ship? At its most basic, the range of the ship. So and so many thousands of kilometers between refuels, so and so many fewer kilometers at flank GTFO speed. With some vessels it can also come down to food. Nuclear powered vessels have a mechanical endurance that is functionally infinite (measured in years between refueling rather than km) but the crew has to eat. Depending on the era, fresh water might also be a concern. This is a major limiting factor for age of sail ships, but it also comes up with older coal-powered vessels before everyone started shoving a desalination plant in. IIRC that happened pretty quick, though, because you need fresh water for your boilers. Then you've got combat endurance, which is more or less how long the ammo holds out.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:09
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Cyrano4747 posted:IIRC that happened pretty quick, though, because you need fresh water for your boilers. Honestly never thought about this but you have to get makeup water from somewhere or else you're going to get your boilers' efficiency killed with scaling and oxygen pitting. Now I have to look up what water treatment was like in the late 19th century.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:23
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:Honestly never thought about this but you have to get makeup water from somewhere or else you're going to get your boilers' efficiency killed with scaling and oxygen pitting. Now I have to look up what water treatment was like in the late 19th century. IIRC it was steam turbines that really made shipboard desalination necessary.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:29
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NC Wyeth Death Cult posted:Honestly never thought about this but you have to get makeup water from somewhere or else you're going to get your boilers' efficiency killed with scaling and oxygen pitting. Now I have to look up what water treatment was like in the late 19th century. From the 1840s virtually all sea-going steamers used condensers, which converted exhaust steam from the engines back into (fresh) water for re-use in the boilers. This was the only way to gain the efficiency in water and fuel necessary to cross oceans. Condensers (and compound engines) improved throughout the 19th century and by the 1900s the steam circuit of a ship was as close to being 'closed' as was practically possible - virtually all steam used in machinery was sent to the condensers to be turned back into water. There was still inevitable loss from leaks, thermal inefficiencies and steam being used in some applications that mean it can't be recaptured, so ships still carried a supply of fresh feedwater but this was only for 'topping up' those losses - often the amount carried in tanks was only half the amount needed to completely fill all the boilers. Once you have a condensing steam plant on board it's trivially easy to install distilling equipment to create more fresh water, and large ships could distill tens of thousands of gallons per day if required. As well as supplying drinking water this also served as a backup if the condensing system broke down - the ship could go 'open circuit' and create its own feedwater which was then lost as exhaust steam. But this would cost an absolute fortune in fuel and severely impact the endurance if kept up for a long period of time. Salt water would only be used in the boilers in a dire emergency because not only does it cause all sorts of nasty scales and mineral deposits inside the boilers and machinery but it can quickly damage the structure of boilers not designed for it. The advantage of turbines was that they can generate large amounts of power on very small pressure differentials. Condensing steam into water causes a pressure loss in the exhaust part of your steam circuit and if you condense thoroughly enough this can become a partial vacuum. Properly-designed turbines will happily run on less-than-atmospheric pressure and exhaust into even-less-than-atmospheric pressure since it's the pressure differential that makes the power. That means you can use very effective condensers that turn every bit of H2O back into water so it can be turned back I to steam and reused.
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Feb 9, 2022 15:57
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How plentiful is fresh water on modern nuclear ships? One would think they'd have near inexhaustible amounts given their power plant.
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Feb 9, 2022 16:02
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Scratch Monkey posted:How plentiful is fresh water on modern nuclear ships? One would think they'd have near inexhaustible amounts given their power plant. I don't know about nuclear ships, but I can tell you that there is nothing like the smell of an LPD in the Pacific in August when the water plant breaks down and no one gets a shower or laundry for two weeks.
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Feb 9, 2022 16:04
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Scratch Monkey posted:How plentiful is fresh water on modern nuclear ships? One would think they'd have near inexhaustible amounts given their power plant. Very much depends on the ship - on a submarine at least fresh water is required for various parts of the electronic & machinery, then for cooking, then for cleaning the boat, then for cleaning the folks on the boat. It's not strictly rationed like diesel boats (especially old ones) but it's not infinite either. I think for nuclear aircraft carriers it's a lot less limited, but I don't really know about the limitations there to be honest.
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Feb 9, 2022 18:19
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This talk got me wondering how is the, uh, not so fresh water handled on a submarine? Search resulted in finding this delightful nitbit.quote:I thought all of the other answers were very good. They did, however, leave out one of the little niceties of the subject. When you pressurize the Sanitary tanks with quite a bit of compressed air to blow the sewage overboard, then close the hull valve to secure the blow. What’s next?
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Feb 9, 2022 18:36
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Scratch Monkey posted:How plentiful is fresh water on modern nuclear ships? One would think they'd have near inexhaustible amounts given their power plant. The current Queen Elizabeth class carriers have double the plant capacity than they need for the sailors and systems. This is to cover breakdowns, battle damage and also any humanitarian needs as a natural disaster can often destroy drinking water infrastructure. So in a modern carrier outside of wartime? Plenty. /though the sailors would prefer beer //Only allowed to drink outside of war zones.
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Feb 10, 2022 00:00
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All this talk of unwashed bodies and perfect water reclamation... anyone else read Dune lately?Cyrano4747 posted:With some vessels it can also come down to food. Nuclear powered vessels have a mechanical endurance that is functionally infinite (measured in years between refueling rather than km) but the crew has to eat. I can just picture some dour Cold War admiral or other tapping thoughtfully at a chalkboard with "crew has to eat(.....??)" written on it, and feeling certain there's a silver bullet there somewhere if he can just figure it out.
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Feb 10, 2022 00:35
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Aircraft carriers have a lot of flat space, and as discussed there's plenty of fresh water...
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Feb 10, 2022 00:44
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Hyrax Attack! posted:Were there any plans to use US carriers in the European theatre aside from convoy/submarine hunting? Or were they not needed because of the proximity of UK bases to the continent? Absolutely there were. The US Navy started World War 2 with half its carrier fleet in the Atlantic and regardless of the Pacific situation kept one fleet carrier in the Atlantic until 1944. Not just carriers too. The US Navy kept 2+ battleships in the Atlantic until 1944 for many of the same reasons. The reasons for are a litany of unrealized potentials: 1. First and foremost is to hunt German fleet units. This really was a concern right up until 1944 2. Invasion of the Azores islands 3. Operation Jupiter: Invasion of Norway 4. Operation Sledgehammer: Invasion of the Brest peninsula 5. Invasion of Vichy French Caribbean islands And the realized potentials: 1. Replace Royal Navy Home Fleet units to allow Britain to reinforce the Mediterranean or Indian Ocean (instead of USN units) 2. Deploy land-based air power across the Atlantic to crisis points faster than shipping planes by freighter 3. Operation Torch: Invasion of French North Africa
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Feb 10, 2022 00:50
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The recent chat (and the excellent Battleships thread in Games) got me wondering; how do modern states think about the strategic use of navies? And what does a “good” (fit for intended purpose) one look like? My assumptions, any or all of which may be wrong: - Most trade remains sea trade; most (all?) countries rely on sea trade and would suffer massive harm from an actual blockade - Aircraft carriers are still the only way to project air power outside of range of any land-based bases a belligerent has - The position and heading of any surface fleet (or blockade-runner) will be known to the enemy at all times - It is cheap enough to build land-sea attack missiles, compared with ships, that any major military could be expected to shoot enough of them to sink any surface fleet within operational range with change left over - Surface fleets would not be able to survive attack by massed land based aircraft - On the high seas away from land, whoever brought more air power wins Which lead to the following conclusions: - You only need two types of ship; carriers and anti-missile ships. Any killing can be done by these or from land - Navies can’t operate safely inside the air cover (is this called a bubble? I kind of feel like it is) provided by a hostile force’s land-based air and missile bases - Navies are a tool for big countries to bully little ones but would probably have to stay out at sea in an actual peer conflict But this is very much curiosity speaking; I don’t really know what naval doctrine is right now for the US, China or Russia, which I assume to be the only meaningful belligerents.
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Feb 10, 2022 01:02
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Beefeater1980 posted:The recent chat (and the excellent Battleships thread in Games) got me wondering; how do modern states think about the strategic use of navies? The real question here is if you're talking no bullshit, cocks out, smoke 'em if you got 'em, total loving war or the peacetime and/or "peacetime" use of a navy for power projection and diplomatic dick wagging. For the latter just having some blue water asset that you can use to stick your dick in someone else's business is a big loving deal. Like, imagine if some country pissed off the US enough that military intervention might be in the cards but China decided to say "nah bro" and dropped one CV in the region to fly CAP? It might be completely overmatched by a US Navy CVBG and zero loving contest if shots actually got fired, but it completely changes the diplomatic calculus. No longer are you just the US bombing and/or invading Grenada or wherever, now you actually have to deal with the fact that you will be shooting at a major third party. It basically gives you tripwire capabilities wherever you want if you decide to lay that card down in a big way. For the former? That's all into war college theory crafting territory where I'm just going to go  . Frankly my amateur opinion is that the value of a large navy is being able to do the peacetime dick waving poo poo in multiple places at once and having a credible SHTF threat to the point that people don't want to gently caress around and find out.
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Feb 10, 2022 01:29
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A small question, but where was the petrol/diesel used in Normandy and the invasion of France refined? Did Britain have enough capability to handle the process on the island itself? Was it shipped refined overseas and then just sent forward?
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Feb 10, 2022 01:37
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I've been watching some Command Lets Plays and some of the scenarios get very complicated very fast with all the different kinds of equipment and capabilities and it leads me to think there's probably a lot of interest in a capability-driven approach with credible deterrence as the main metric. Lets consider missiles, older Chinese missiles don't have the range to meaningfully engage F/A-18's; but the newer ones outrange the US's current inventory of otherwise more advanced missiles (and they're crazily more advanced in how they track targets and share data); now the game is afoot. Now Chinese planners gotta consider how many airframes they need and figure out an appropriate ratio of friendly to oppositional airframes that their forces won't just be a routine nuisance. And once they deploy that many now the ball is in the US's court, how do US Commanders respond to that credibility? And if the answer is "We need 3 more Destroyers" and there's actually -1 destroyers available this is where I think the relevant parties are sitting down and planning things out based off of simulations, war games, etc. For a possible conflict in the SCS's a Navy is very important to have on hand; for one the distances are quite large. Without a carrier its very difficult for the US operating from say, Guam, to meaningfully project power there for freedom of navigation exercizes. And very quickly this is also true for the PLAN where having their carrier helps make 2-3 squadron's of J-Whats more readily available on hand if something were to happen to one of their artificial islets. A time difference of an hour versus 10 minutes is a huge difference in a modern conflict. No one knows what the actual capabilities of any of these systems are but again pointing to Command, something like 90% of ASM's got intercepted by the SM-3's and SM-6's and it takes a while for land based aircraft and missiles to reach their targets 600 to 1,000 miles away in which time the surface combatants are able to continue their mission. You need forces on hand able to flexible respond and not rely on fixed or faraway assets; especially assets that might get misinterpreted. I don't think its necessarily true a fleet can't operate outside of air cover; it would be risky but military operations should be decided upon based off of the appropriate management of risk in relation to the reward/gain/strategic situation; sometimes you just gotta risk it for the biscuit. Just like in surface actions in WW2 you're going to take some hits, but also are going to not be hit by somethings if everything is working as it should. Also "its cheaper to make missiles" is also something that needs to be qualified. You only have so many launchers available and they take such-and-such amount of time to reload and the spares might be in various states of storage however many echelons behind the front-line unit. A ship out at sea might be waiting days if not months for a re-supply once it expends its stores; a mobile missile launcher might be waiting on hours to days. That's even if they can reload and it doesn't just expend the launcher thingy. Ultimately a ship out at sea is like having boots on the ground. Missiles are like planes; they help a lot, but they aren't going to win the war alone. You actually need something out there to actually occupy the space.
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Feb 10, 2022 01:40
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Cessna posted:I don't know about nuclear ships, but I can tell you that there is nothing like the smell of an LPD in the Pacific in August when the water plant breaks down and no one gets a shower or laundry for two weeks. That makes me wonder how bad things got in the age of sail.
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Feb 10, 2022 01:50
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