Alternate warships of nations

McPherson

McPherson

Banned
Vanguard45 said:
I always feel bad for the Spanish when playing as them. There battleships are 9 inch gunned (my Northampton class AC (10,000 tons) are 9 inch gunned and have 6 inch gun secondary in double turrets. So I have good raiders by the turbine era (I got one B to 23 knots during a 1905 rebuild) but a terrible battleship
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RTL the Spaniards have a terrible problem. Their Hontoria guns are a poor second copy of Schneider Canet designs. On paper the French artillery has ballistic characteristics that are fantastic, but the problem is the manufacture is finicky, the fit is sloppy and their de Bang breech plugs are hideous three hinge affairs inferior to the Armstrong Whitworth or Fletcher interrupted screw systems. The poudre blanc (Smokeless Powder #1) the French invent and which the Spanish adopt is terribly corrosive, The French do not chrome their combustion chambers and this leads to pitting, corrosion buildup and all sorts of maintenance nightmares in the gun breeches especially around the interrupted screw threads. The Spanish inherit all of these problems, plus only get access to a full generation behind hoop barrel gun technology. The Americans may be stuck in brown powder chemistry but their mono-block barrel construction and tube liner technology is better and at least as good as the British wire wrapped or German fretted barrel gun making methods. American guns will not blow up or breech plug jam. OTOH Spanish guns of the Hontoria, Carraca and Ordunuz lines do.

Schneider Canet guns in Japanese service will fail them in the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese will opt for "inferior" British artillery and be well pleased when they go up against the French armed Russians, because while British guns have lower muzzle velocities, shorter effective ranges and less SMASH at impact than the Russian guns, the British guns are ballistically stable, won't blow up, and are reliable for 1906.

It won't be until WW I when British artillery shows problems (Not the guns' faults, it was the training!) I think I can cautiously say it is the same with French artillery. The French were quite effective with it. Not so much the Russians or the Spanish. The French knew their problems and addressed the same with training and maintenance.

As for my ITTL Americans, going Krupp has consequences. High powered sliding wedge breech block guns mean faster firing, smaller bored artillery with rather long and skinny rch shells. It will change the way the Americans fight from the OTL.

I also did a few things to the armor, too. Mister Augustus Harvey figures out how to carbonize before he cold rolls and face-hardens his plate. This occurs RTL about 1908 (Krupp) but for our process I move it up to 1888. OOPs. It will really hurt in the clinches as shattergap rears it ugly head.

By contrast the Spaniards and the French are stuck with Cruesot steel, which is a fine product and certainly better than the compound armors in use at the time, but it lacks elastic resistance and is kind of brittle when hit by steel shells. It cracks. Too much sulfur. OOPs again.

That's the naval side of things.
 

Md139115

Banned
Well, finished my Italian campaign. Honestly, it was boring. Nothing happened between the last update and game end in 1925 except Italy somehow getting Java. Not really seeing the point in writing any more updates for it.

I’m going to try Spain next for the laughs. No weird characters this time, but hopefully a good story or two.
 

Md139115

Banned
Md139115 said:
Well, finished my Italian campaign. Honestly, it was boring. Nothing happened between the last update and game end in 1925 except Italy somehow getting Java. Not really seeing the point in writing any more updates for it.

I’m going to try Spain next for the laughs. No weird characters this time, but hopefully a good story or two.
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Speaking of which, I have just begun... and Austria is building this abomination.

austria.png

Just... what?!
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Vanguard45 said:
Is it a wonder Italy was only building 9 inch battleships in a lake with England and France
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It shouldn't be, OTL A-H laid down its last ship with a 24cm/9.44" Main Battery in 1904. They even historically used that 1x2, 1x1 main battery arrangement

What makes this look like an abomination is the seeming lack of armor besides a belt, and that merely 6"
Jim Smitty said:
At that point build an ACR
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ACRs can cost more than an el cheapo Battleship like this, big engines for higher speeds cost money
 
Vanguard45

Vanguard45

Again, my 10 inch gun cruisers (the Northampton class) are more powerful than those ships. Although they probably are one and a half times more expensive.
 
McPherson

McPherson

Banned
Logic about tweaking alternate warship technology for an ITTL.

As I kind of remind people, I like to take a couple of subtle ideas and see what kind of changes happen to real history as the actors try to move in the environment/scenario I borrow from real history. In the timeline to which I contribute, the original premise is what happens to the Pacific War if US torpedoes work from the start? This actually was the original author's premise. I knew from USN statistical data that although US torpedoes probability of hit (PH) was an appalling <10% at the start of the war and improved to about 40%, the TKN (numbers of torpedoes to sink a freighter or other ship) hovered around 10-11 fish fired per confirmed sinking according to Joint Army Navy Committee (JANAC) reports. That number did not change and does not change throughout the war. For every improvement the Americans make, the Japanese counter and neither side changes that TKN number/ratio much during the war.

Germans do better and so do the British in the TKN (about 8 fish apiece), but still achieve nothing except a lot of needless deaths via submarine warfare. They do not throttle trade or strangle sea lines of communication. So submarine warfare was about how to conduct the guerre de course, what to hit, where and when, not just average numbers of hulls sent to the bottom. FLOW verses tonnage strategy. This I tested in the Southwest Pacific Ocean Area (SWPOA) to see what happens if I start killing tankers, troop transports, air and cruisers right away to shape the naval war differently. BOY, did that impact. I masqueraded (hid) what I did by writing in snort boats (MACKERELS as an American version of the TYPE VII G snort boat.) and let them more or less follow the OTL patrol patterns with the new target priorities. I let the logistics the geography and the mindsets and the persons of the ITTL function as RTL and war-gamed the results. It did surprise me that the Japanese proved more inept than I previously believed, but their achievements were not all luck. The allies did not help their own cause with initial setups and scripted action sets.

I came to the conclusion that the Pacific War tends to fall out the way it does because (barring ASBs) the initial setup conditions are not going to be affected by technology that much. It still takes two years of infrastructure and force building to create the conditions what the allies lose in the first six months. Nothing and I mean NOTHING changes the outcome.
 
Not James Stockdale

Not James Stockdale

McPherson said:
I came to the conclusion that the Pacific War tends to fall out the way it does because (barring ASBs) the initial setup conditions are not going to be affected by technology that much. It still takes two years of infrastructure and force building to create the conditions what the allies lose in the first six months. Nothing and I mean NOTHING changes the outcome.
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I certainly agree. The critical campaign in the war was always the Central Pacific (Gilberts - Marshalls - Marianas - Volcanoes - Ryukyus), because that was the only way Allied firepower was getting to the Japanese Home Islands. The war in the SWPA was more about defending Australia and the SLOCs, creating attrition, and giving MacArthur, the Congressional Republicans, and the Army something to do than trying to bring the war to a more immediate conclusion. Halsey's and Third Fleet's Palau and Philippines campaigns were also unnecessary in the context of the Central Pacific Campaign, so Fifth Fleet did all the important, meaningful fighting, and I'm definitely not saying that because Spruance was my favorite four-star of the Pacific War.
 
McPherson

McPherson

Banned
McPherson said:
I came to the conclusion that the Pacific War tends to fall out the way it does because (barring ASBs) the initial setup conditions are not going to be affected by technology that much. It still takes two years of infrastructure and force building to create the conditions what the allies lose in the first six months. Nothing and I mean NOTHING changes the outcome.
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Not James Stockdale said:
I certainly agree. The critical campaign in the war was always the Central Pacific (Gilberts - Marshalls - Marianas - Volcanoes - Ryukyus), because that was the only way Allied firepower was getting to the Japanese Home Islands. The war in the SWPA was more about defending Australia and the SLOCs, creating attrition, and giving MacArthur, the Congressional Republicans, and the Army something to do than trying to bring the war to a more immediate conclusion. Halsey's and Third Fleet's Palau and Philippines campaigns were also unnecessary in the context of the Central Pacific Campaign, so Fifth Fleet did all the important, meaningful fighting, and I'm definitely not saying that because Spruance was my favorite four-star of the Pacific War.
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I'm not sure that I can just sideline Australia at all or discount the SWPOA that quickly. A lot of the Japanese navy and its airpower was wiped out in the SWPOA and set up the conditions that allow the Central Pacific Campaign's first three assaults that are not fleet opposed because the Japanese carrier forces and tanker fleet are depleted and need reconstitution. Spruance did not have to fight fleet on fleet until June 1944. A lot of that year of unopposed operations is thanks to that "attrition warfare" carried out in the SWPOA and New Guinea in late 1942 and early 1943. I credit SOPAC and the ANZACs with a lot of that needed effort.
 
Not James Stockdale

Not James Stockdale

McPherson said:
I'm not sure that I can just sideline Australia at all or discount the SWPOA that quickly. A lot of the Japanese navy and its airpower was wiped out in the SWPOA and set up the conditions that allow the Central Pacific Campaign's first three assaults that are not fleet opposed because the Japanese carrier forces and tanker fleet are depleted and need reconstitution. Spruance did not have to fight fleet on fleet until June 1944. A lot of that year of unopposed operations is thanks to that "attrition warfare" carried out in the SWPOA and New Guinea in late 1942 and early 1943. I credit SOPAC and the ANZACs with a lot of that needed effort.
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I must admit that my feelings about the SWPA are colored by my distaste for MacArthur. Naval losses in the Solomons were probably responsible for the Japanese delaying the Kantai Kessen to the Marianas rather than the Gilberts and Marshalls, and the fighting over Rabaul in late 1943 essentially destroyed the second cohort of Japanese carrier aviation that had been rebuilt after Midway. The third cohort of Japanese naval aviation was destroyed at Philippine Sea by Spruance, which was the end of the Japanese carrier aviation, even if the carriers themselves could still be good enough bait for Halsey.
 
McPherson

McPherson

Banned
Spanaw_11.png


Interesting set of Spanish Armada outfit for 1895 is it not?

Spanaw-9.png


Planform for Spanish ship templates with wargame data sets.

Spanaw2.png


The American outfit for 1895-1897.

Spanaw1.png


Planform for American ship templates with wargame data sets.

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What one does not see is the logic for what is presented so I will explain how the First Sino Japanese War, the Spanish American War and the Russo Japanese War at sea are transitional and actually satep evolutions in a rather remarkable period when battleships went from what were essentially broadside batteries of quick firing guns which did most of the hitting and damage with just a few large guns to make things interesting in the off chance that a 24-34 bore cm shell hit.

Navies with professional gunnery officers had experimented with turreted all big gum ships and come to the rather obvious in hindsight conclusion that the chances of a hit from a four shot broadside at the medium battle to long ranges of those days (3,500-5000 meters) were akin to rolling 3 sixes in a row. Seriously the odds were that poor. The solution was to up the amount of shells thrown per minute (these large guns could take 2 minutes or more to load and lay). The British were second out the gate with a 6 in (15.2 cm.) quick fire gun which could throw 6 shells per minute. A broadside battery of 6 such guns could guaranteed at least 2 hits out of 36 per minute at medium battle ranges of slightly less than 1 mile or 1,500 meters.; This sounds close to us, but the navies in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s thought 500 meters was long range. The Kearsarge and Alabama fought at pistol shot range and still most of their shots were overs or wides right or left.

At the Yalu River, Philo Norton McGiffin's Krupp-built battleship was able to only hit twice at a Japanese cruiser. The Japanese cruisers by contrast with 12 cm and 14 cm French built Schneider Canet QFBL guns were able to riddle the 1880s built Zhenyuan (Chinese: 鎮遠; Wade-Giles: Chen Yuen), and wreck her. This verified the gunnery thinking that the most modern up to date 1890 navies had and they built their latest ships accordingly.

Hence, the Spanish and American ships will rely on their medium caliber guns to cause the most gunfire damage since these statistically hit the most. I stick with this RTL logic, only changing some subtle factors such as allowing the Spanish to have their own annealing gear for their 14 cm shells and by allowing the Americans to duplicate the Krupp technology complete with the wool as opposed to silk bags that France and Britain use. The Americans had some smokless powder of their own by 1895, but since it was scarce and not used in the RTL older USN warships of the first generation (Olympia and Texas in the ITTL), I simply banned it from the USN to reflect the RTL problems the USN will have with their own gun-smoke.

The Spanish will have a mix of powders. The modern Garibaldi cruisers, the rebuilt Pelayos, and the IMT cruisers, will have smokeless powder #1. The other older cruisers will have a kind of European brown powder propellant similar to the kind that Parrott invented in 1864 for the United States. The chief difference is the amount of shove and burn times the competing brown and white powders generate. This is seen in muzzle velocities with American guns struggling to get 650-700 m/s out of their shells while the Spanish guns with smokeless powder #1 can achieve about 700-800 m/s easily.

The Spanish guns just jam or blow up due to overpressure barrel burst because of it. 5% chance vs. 1/4 % chance wuith the American opposite equivalents. OOPs.

Also since these ITTL Americans prefer to fight at night, the flame from Spanish guns announces "AIM AT ME!":openedeyewink:
 
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Vanguard45

Vanguard45

Reparation.JPG

USS Constellation (formerly SMS Derfflingger)
Built: 1909 in Hamburg

The US-German war of 1908-1910 is primarily remembered for its brutal nature and innovations. The German High Command, far from being the short sighted aristocrats presented in media, were in fact quite intelligent. The US unveiling of the Battle class battlecruisers of 1907 had been a nasty blow to their pride though. Hence the focus on the Bayern battleships. The Derfflingger battlecruisers were given far less priority despite being simpler and a match for their US counterparts. The belief was thay the superior German fleet would wipe the US in one major battle.

By 1909, the results of this focus on a grand battle had led to a depleted merchant marine (mainly caused by US submarines despite Q-Ship), the loss of Truk, the humiliation when the US revealed that the post French war lessons on gunnery and night warfare had been remembered, US ships being somewhat superior quality wise, and German revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg raising a red state after being escorted into Germany by a US Sub.

In the lead up to the Treaty of Reykjavik (chosen for neutrality), the Kaisers family, deposed and friendless, fearing the fate of the French Monarchs of the Revolution fled to the battlecruiser and began a trek to the English isles. However two 'Red' battlecruisers of the Von Der Tann class chased the vessel, which was unprepared to fight to the point workmen were aboard installing systems.

However the battlecruiser made it past them and fled to Canada hoping to lose the opponents. The captain of the first Red battlecruiser pursued guessing their intentions. On the 13th of January, 1910 the Von Der Tann caught up to the vessel as its engine broke down when an unexpected source of help arrived.

The USS Yorktown, Enterprise, and Bunker Hill were in company with several cruisers escorting the SS Washington to the peace conference when they found the bizarre sight. Captain Helmut Von Junkers saw a chance to keep his Kaiser alive and declared the Derfflingger a reparation for the destroyed US Heavy Cruiser Pueblo (sunk by torpedo August 7th during a battle in a hurricane).

The US ships rushed to greet their prize when the first Red Battlecruiser, whose captain despised the Kaiser for his brothers death (killed in action on another Der Tann Battlecruiser which had been blown apart by the USS Ranger due to a turret flash fire (not kidding)) opened fire on the US Battlecruisers.

The task group of battlecruisers quickly went forth and repeated history by instigating another flash fire while the other was smothered by torpedoes. Afterwards the Derfflingger was taken to Norfolk and was found to be fit for US Service while the Kaiser was publicly sent to Canada with the new democractic government of Germany exiling him.

Now called the Constellation , the former German battlecruiser has a bright future ahead of it as the command ship of Task Force Charlie (2 BC, 4 CA, 6 CL, 15 DD, 22 SS, 8 MS) in its designed stomping grounds of the Pacific.

(I made up the part with the Red Battlecruiser but goddam it was to cool not to use, yes I won the war that badly)

Murica.JPG

The first fight between a US and German battlecruiser task force, 1909 even though we both had them. I call this the harrowing of Truk.

Capture_2.JPG

Territories I got afterwards.

Murica1910.JPG

US territories post 1910.
And chances are I'll be giving them back to their inhabitants in two decades.

And I'm good with that.
 
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