Humane of Lincoln, though I assume as the man who lost half the country he is the lamest of lame ducks and doesn't really have to pander to public opinion that much. Speaking of have there been any moves to impeach him as the man who lost the war or has the fact that he now has a solidly Republican congress protected him?
If they will not meet us on the open sea (a Trent TL)
- Thread starter Saphroneth
- Start date
-
- Tags
- trent
Humane of Lincoln, though I assume as the man who lost half the country he is the lamest of lame ducks and doesn't really have to pander to public opinion that much. Speaking of have there been any moves to impeach him as the man who lost the war or has the fact that he now has a solidly Republican congress protected him?
Saphroneth
Banned
The Republican establishment (i.e. the cabinet, in large part) kind of share in the blame, so none of them are especially inclined to attribute this to a matter of blame at all. (If they do, then the Democrats will have even more ammunition than they currently do.)
It's possible there could be an insurgency, or what passes for one in the 1860s.
Saphroneth
Banned
Okay, so I'm giving some thought to the Dannevirke and subsequent actions.
My current thoughts are as follows:
1) The Dannevirke has some serious flaws in winter, especially one this cold, with the flanks vulnerable to an army moving over frozen lakes.
2) The German Confederation force that's advancing on it consists of a solid Prussian corps of infantry with artillery/cavalry support, and also has roughly an extra division or so of North Germans in support (in the form of individual battalions or batteries) which are not practiced together but which are functionally under Prussian OpCon.
3) Continuing with the trend of using very modern terms, the Prussians are going to be using a fixing force of half their artillery and about 2-3 brigades on some less strong position on the Dannevirke (probably somewhere there's a small ridge inside rifled artillery range but outside smoothbore range) and a moving force, this consisting of the majority of the army pushing through on the outer edge of the Dannevirke with the support of the other half of their artillery.
4) The Danish counter to this is to fall back to Dybbøl if things look bad, and to plan on using the Rolf Krake and her 8" guns in support of the fortifications there. (They can't stay in the Dannevirke if it's flanked, so they have to do something and Dybbøl is at least a position without flanks.)
My current thoughts are as follows:
1) The Dannevirke has some serious flaws in winter, especially one this cold, with the flanks vulnerable to an army moving over frozen lakes.
2) The German Confederation force that's advancing on it consists of a solid Prussian corps of infantry with artillery/cavalry support, and also has roughly an extra division or so of North Germans in support (in the form of individual battalions or batteries) which are not practiced together but which are functionally under Prussian OpCon.
3) Continuing with the trend of using very modern terms, the Prussians are going to be using a fixing force of half their artillery and about 2-3 brigades on some less strong position on the Dannevirke (probably somewhere there's a small ridge inside rifled artillery range but outside smoothbore range) and a moving force, this consisting of the majority of the army pushing through on the outer edge of the Dannevirke with the support of the other half of their artillery.
4) The Danish counter to this is to fall back to Dybbøl if things look bad, and to plan on using the Rolf Krake and her 8" guns in support of the fortifications there. (They can't stay in the Dannevirke if it's flanked, so they have to do something and Dybbøl is at least a position without flanks.)
Royal Navy circular on fortifications
Saphroneth
Banned
Digest form of a Royal Navy circular on fortifications.
In a fortified position on shore, which is intended to direct its fire against ships at sea or against landings, there are at least four different modes of defensive position.
The first is the most simple in concept - the fort is made competent to resist the most modern guns of the day, so that the gunners may work their pieces until the occasion of a direct hit; this means that the fort must be armoured as heavily at least as the most powerful modern ironclads, and is likely to prove prohibitive in cost for all but the most vital batteries.
The second is that the fort is instead a simple earthwork thing, with bomb-proofs to protect against mortars, but which gains the primary protection from being high above the sea - for even the turret ships of the future may not carry their guns more than perhaps thirty feet above the waves without considerable problems with stability, while the same gun atop a modest hill of one hundred and fifty feet may command out to a greater distance and will have fire which plunges down towards the deck of an enemy ship.
The third is the question of land defence - a fort must not be vulnerable to the landing of troops, especially if there is the possibility of an enemy artillery position being established onshore, though it may be lighter to landward than to seaward. For this a fort must be considered as a fort rather than as a series of batteries.
And the fourth is that of placing so many batteries with modest protection that any enemy may not be able to take them all under effective fire. If the Warrior of 20 guns on the broadside were faced with 20 batteries each of which has one gun, then the Warrior may only direct her fire at one or perhaps two batteries at a time while all twenty may direct their fire upon her; even a hit scored only disables one gun, whereas the Warrior hazards all her guns to fortune.
This is not to say that a fort should expect to be able to beat off a full attack. Rather, the purpose of a fortification is to make an area harder to attack; to compel the attacker to expend time and resources on overcoming it; to reduce the number of attacks that the enemy may make as he increases the quality of each one in isolation. Consider the Russian War, where the Russian fortifications in the Baltic Sea protected much of the coastline, not because they were insuperable but because they imposed delays; compare with the American War, where the fortifications present were insufficient to readily fend off ships built to fight off Bomarsund and Kinburn but which did prevent Milne's squadrons from simply sailing upriver. Consider also the attack on Charleston, and how the fortifications there turned what could have been a single frigate demanding satisfaction into a mighty expedition involving two monitors, three ships of the line, four frigates, the Superb and Great Eastern, three mortar gunboats and sundry smaller ships.
The purpose of a fort is not to stop the enemy; it is to make him work harder, much as the cuirass of a heavy cavalryman or the thick wooden sides of a ship of the line are not to stop all attacks but to turn aside weaker ones and to reduce the effect of smaller ones. To this end, forts should aim to be cheap, numerous, strong and able to damage all enemy ships; this combination is of course usually impossible.
The use of the underwater torpedo is of particular interest not because it may stop a determined attack but because of the very great potential for uncertainty. A squadron which knows underwater torpedoes are in use must either move slowly and methodically or risk much damage.
When attacking fortifications, the ideal is to place ships as close as possible to their effective ideal range of fire while also avoiding any gunnery which may damage them. This should influence the designs of forts, which might place water batteries where they may fire upon an enemy that gets too close for the upper tiers to bear or which might even place torpedoes - or the threat of torpedoes - in those places where the guns may not bear.
Fully protecting a fort against Mallet's Mortar is not a necessary level of protection - the performance of the Superb has shown that the big mortar is valuable but inaccurate. It may allow the first breach which dismantles a fort system, but as forts are meant to delay rather than stop an attack this would not cause major problems - the time taken for a Mallet's Mortar to score a hit even upon a comparatively large fort is considerable. It should however be the case that a fort may operate with undiminished coverage with the loss of any one battery and that powder stores be kept in at least two separate places to reduce the risk.
In a fortified position on shore, which is intended to direct its fire against ships at sea or against landings, there are at least four different modes of defensive position.
The first is the most simple in concept - the fort is made competent to resist the most modern guns of the day, so that the gunners may work their pieces until the occasion of a direct hit; this means that the fort must be armoured as heavily at least as the most powerful modern ironclads, and is likely to prove prohibitive in cost for all but the most vital batteries.
The second is that the fort is instead a simple earthwork thing, with bomb-proofs to protect against mortars, but which gains the primary protection from being high above the sea - for even the turret ships of the future may not carry their guns more than perhaps thirty feet above the waves without considerable problems with stability, while the same gun atop a modest hill of one hundred and fifty feet may command out to a greater distance and will have fire which plunges down towards the deck of an enemy ship.
The third is the question of land defence - a fort must not be vulnerable to the landing of troops, especially if there is the possibility of an enemy artillery position being established onshore, though it may be lighter to landward than to seaward. For this a fort must be considered as a fort rather than as a series of batteries.
And the fourth is that of placing so many batteries with modest protection that any enemy may not be able to take them all under effective fire. If the Warrior of 20 guns on the broadside were faced with 20 batteries each of which has one gun, then the Warrior may only direct her fire at one or perhaps two batteries at a time while all twenty may direct their fire upon her; even a hit scored only disables one gun, whereas the Warrior hazards all her guns to fortune.
This is not to say that a fort should expect to be able to beat off a full attack. Rather, the purpose of a fortification is to make an area harder to attack; to compel the attacker to expend time and resources on overcoming it; to reduce the number of attacks that the enemy may make as he increases the quality of each one in isolation. Consider the Russian War, where the Russian fortifications in the Baltic Sea protected much of the coastline, not because they were insuperable but because they imposed delays; compare with the American War, where the fortifications present were insufficient to readily fend off ships built to fight off Bomarsund and Kinburn but which did prevent Milne's squadrons from simply sailing upriver. Consider also the attack on Charleston, and how the fortifications there turned what could have been a single frigate demanding satisfaction into a mighty expedition involving two monitors, three ships of the line, four frigates, the Superb and Great Eastern, three mortar gunboats and sundry smaller ships.
The purpose of a fort is not to stop the enemy; it is to make him work harder, much as the cuirass of a heavy cavalryman or the thick wooden sides of a ship of the line are not to stop all attacks but to turn aside weaker ones and to reduce the effect of smaller ones. To this end, forts should aim to be cheap, numerous, strong and able to damage all enemy ships; this combination is of course usually impossible.
The use of the underwater torpedo is of particular interest not because it may stop a determined attack but because of the very great potential for uncertainty. A squadron which knows underwater torpedoes are in use must either move slowly and methodically or risk much damage.
When attacking fortifications, the ideal is to place ships as close as possible to their effective ideal range of fire while also avoiding any gunnery which may damage them. This should influence the designs of forts, which might place water batteries where they may fire upon an enemy that gets too close for the upper tiers to bear or which might even place torpedoes - or the threat of torpedoes - in those places where the guns may not bear.
Fully protecting a fort against Mallet's Mortar is not a necessary level of protection - the performance of the Superb has shown that the big mortar is valuable but inaccurate. It may allow the first breach which dismantles a fort system, but as forts are meant to delay rather than stop an attack this would not cause major problems - the time taken for a Mallet's Mortar to score a hit even upon a comparatively large fort is considerable. It should however be the case that a fort may operate with undiminished coverage with the loss of any one battery and that powder stores be kept in at least two separate places to reduce the risk.
Last edited:
I need more 
Wow this is one fascinating look at a British intervention into the Civil War.
I'm curious though, how close is your various articles on the evolution of ship design to the dreadnought Style to OTL
Wow this is one fascinating look at a British intervention into the Civil War.
I'm curious though, how close is your various articles on the evolution of ship design to the dreadnought Style to OTL
Saphroneth
Banned
The dreadnought is a very, very long way off. OTL it wasn't really viable until the invention of all-aspect loading, Scott-style firing, steam turbines, Krupp armour and half a dozen other things (i.e. about 1904 or so, we're in 1864)I need more
Wow this is one fascinating look at a British intervention into the Civil War.
I'm curious though, how close is your various articles on the evolution of ship design to the dreadnought Style to OTL
But this is one of the periods OTL when ship design was very much in flux. The articles are heading in the same rough direction as OTL, in that they're leading up to ships like Bellerophon and Monarch.
Last edited:
Oh I do understand there's a way to go in that sense but I've never actually knwon how the technologies evolved to that level till this story. So I wanted to know how accurate you're having it
Saphroneth
Banned
I think the best source for that is Warrior to Dreadnought - a book by DK Brown, a post-WW2 designer for the Royal Navy. Warrior to Dreadnought covers the whole period of evolution from the very first iron battleship right through to the Dreadnought herself.
Interestingly, the process of evolution of the pre dreadnought starts in a different ship OTL to TTL - the breastwork monitor was invented earlier TTL, and that's the ultimate ancestor.
Now the only question is if I buy three copies or one for my houses to have
Saphroneth
Banned
Rather wonderfully, it's now on Kindle (as are Before the Ironclad, The Grand Fleet, and Nelson to Vanguard).Now the only question is if I buy three copies or one for my houses to have
Unfortunately I'm old school, I dislike the Kindle and other ebook systems
They are good enough for novels but for reference books you want to be able to flick through them.
I agree completely, moreover for reference books I prefer hardcover to soft though that is tempered by availability (and price, they are asking ridiculous prices for some older hardcover references). I really like my Kindle but would never use it for anything other than novels or similar "throwaway" books.
Saphroneth
Banned
Sorry about the delay before more update, I've been rather busy with Other Things.
I hope to have a piece fairly soon.
I hope to have a piece fairly soon.
[continuing off-topic]
Sometimes the Kindle is good for books which are otherwise out-of-print (usually very old ones) or for books which you just want to dip into occasionally (or even just once/twice) so the price differential makes a big difference (£8.49 Kindle vs £14.88 paperback vs £40.48 hardback) for the one Saph mentioned above.
Notwithstanding that, I do generally prefer to have reference books as 'proper' books - checking footnotes is almost impossible on a Kindle, for example.
[/off-topic]
Sometimes the Kindle is good for books which are otherwise out-of-print (usually very old ones) or for books which you just want to dip into occasionally (or even just once/twice) so the price differential makes a big difference (£8.49 Kindle vs £14.88 paperback vs £40.48 hardback) for the one Saph mentioned above.
Notwithstanding that, I do generally prefer to have reference books as 'proper' books - checking footnotes is almost impossible on a Kindle, for example.
[/off-topic]
Yeah, I've been reading the other thread too...
Saphroneth
Banned
Not that, not really. It's easier to dig up facts for OTL than to construct a complete ATL military campaign, especially one which as far as posterity is concerned was basically "splat" but where you've completely rebuilt one of the armies involved!Yeah, I've been reading the other thread too...
I really have to disagree with most of the posters. NO, Lincoln did not "back down". Prince Albert gave his Government time to rethink their ultimatum and both sides found a resolution to the issue. The British leadership, like Wolsey, were convinced that they could not defend Canada and trading national pride and a war Britain could not afford with Russia pushing the boundaries of the treaty and France being an unreliable "ally" and the Austrians and Prussians moving towards war. Not to mention the heavy work of transferring India from the East Indies Company to Her Majesties Government while rebuilding the garrison after the Indian Mutiny. While the US returned the Confederate envoys and disavowed Wilkes, NO formal apology was offered and the blockade was never discussed. To oppose the American's right to blockade their own coast against an insurrection would be to place the British in opposition of the very strategy they had used against France for a hundred years and would later use against Germany in 1914.
Admiral Milne reported to the Admiralty on 27 June 1862, that the two bases, Halifax and Kingston were unprepared to operate as forward bases. Their fortifications were decayed and the guns and ammunition were unreliable. There was insufficient coal to support a larger force than he already had available. His existing forces (as of 27 June!) were inadequate to the task of protecting British commerce and possessions in the region. The idea that the RN, currently (Jan 62) in peacetime readiness after years of parsimony which ended with the French threat in 1859, could put an effective force off the North Atlantic coast of the US is delusional. LOGISTICS. Steam ships need coal. Hard coal. And warships need ammunition and replacements for their crews and a safe harbor for repairs and relief. None of which existed on 27 June 1862, almost six months AFTER the crisis was resolved.
The RN's tests were not conclusive (or realistic, being done on land against simulated arrangements of British ironclads and not using the correct ammunition) having been conducted after the war. The 15" gun was a Rodman, not a Dahlgren. US tests showed an XI" Dahgren with wrought iron shot would penetrate at 100 yards a 4" wrought iron plate backed by 24" of seasoned white oak. During the Civil War, the tactic of "wracking" actually performed as expected by breaking the bolts and rivets attaching the armor to its backing on the CSS Tennesee which had three two inch wrought iron plates bolted together and to 18-24" of oak. The guns involved were XI" Dahlgrens. As far as the XV" Dahlgren, at Trent's Reach, the gun punched a hole through a similar armor arrangement.
The penetration of armor plate is subject to several factors of which velocity, shape, weight (Mass) and density of the projectile comes into play.
VL = (K)(C)TtDd/[Ww COSa(Ob)]
where "K" was a constant and "C", if used, was a plate quality factor. Many formulae were for normal impact only or used a separate table/graph to handle oblique impact and had no COSa(Ob) term or sometimes C was combined with the COSa(Ob) term to give a C that varied with obliquity, also dropping the COSa(Ob) term. However, this format does not lend itself to separating the various terms for W, T, D, V, and Ob in an understandable way that explained why the exponents w, t, d, and a had the values that they had.
To fix this, the penetration formulae are usually given here in the re-arranged form of dimensionless, size-independent penetration in projectile diameters or "calibers" (T/D) on the left-hand side of the equal sign versus a function of all other factors (W, D, V, K, C, and Ob) on the right-hand side, since this makes the effects of each factor more obvious. Also, the units used here are English units of feet/second for V, inches for T and D, and pounds for W. By merely changing the Numerical Constant (= K-(1/t)) found at the beginning of the right-hand side of each formula to the proper value, these formulae can be used in their existing form for any units desired (usually using metric units of meters/second, centimeters, and kilograms).
Impact obliquity Ob is measured here in degrees such that a right-angles impact on the plate (along the "normal" line to the plate surface at that point) has a value of zero and a tangential impact that just skims the plate before glancing off has an obliquity near 90o. The angle is that of the projectile's direction of motion vector to the plate's normal line, not the direction that the projectile's nose itself is pointing, since the projectile will usually have some yaw (tilt in some sideways direction), though not much if the projectile and gun are designed properly. A yaw can be in any direction and can actually be corkscrewing around the direction of motion vector after a plate impact that wobbles a spinning projectile (most projectiles used spin stabilization, except for cannon balls (round shot) fired by early smooth-bore cannon or modern fin-stabilized super-high-velocity sabotted armor-piercing projectiles (APFSDS) used in post-WWII tank cannon). A small yaw (up to circa 10o) can be merged with the impact obliquity by assuming that it is a shift of the obliquity in the yaw direction by half of the magnitude of the yaw angle from the direction of motion vector. No matter how fixed the other factors are, firing ship motion, target motion, and target design will always make the obliquity of impact very unreliable in any scenario.
As long as the penetration process is slow compared to the speed of sound in the iron/steel armor and projectile (which is on the order of 16,000 feet/second), the entire kinetic energy of the projectile gets involved with the penetration from beginning to end. Kinetic energy has the formula
K.E. = (0.5)(W/g)V2
where "g" is the acceleration of gravity (32.2 feet/second/second) when using English pounds, but which is set to 1.00 (ignored) when using metric kilograms, since kilograms already have had this division done ("newtons," not kilograms, are the metric equivalent of English pounds). An alternative form of energy called "Work" is defined as
Work = FL = (W/g)AL
where "F" is the current force of resistance due to the plate's mass and metallurgical properties over a small thickness slice of length "L" and "A" is the deceleration (in feet/second/second in English units) that the projectile undergoes due to that force. Summing the values of Work for each individual slice L until the total plate thickness T is reached gives the total Work needed to punch through the plate, which will just equal the projectile's available kinetic energy when the projectile is striking the plate at its Navy Ballistic Limit at near normal obliquity (at high obliquity, the projectile is being deflected as well a decelerated and can switch from high-speed ricochet to high-speed penetration without ever slowing to a stop in the middle).
As mentioned above, if the factors of the penetration are changing rapidly, such as the fracture of the projectile and/or plate as the impact shock moves through them, then the value of W being used to calculate Work in a given length L may not be the total projectile weight and thus the predicted penetration as V, W, D, and Ob vary may not follow a "total-kinetic-energy" rule. In the penetration formulae this results in a smaller exponent for the W/D3 term than the value of one-half of the exponent for the velocity term, which is true for cases where total kinetic energy determines penetration (see below). For example, when dealing with shock-induced failure of the hard face of a face-hardened armor plate (Gruson, Compound, Harvey, and Krupp KC plates introduced in the 1860's to 1890's) the exponent of the weight term in my penetration formula is only 0.2, even though the exponent for the velocity term is 1.21 (6.05 times as large). The reason is that only the metal volume of the front end of the projectile is "informed" by the impact shock wave that the projectile has hit the plate before the plate's face layer caves in and thus only this front volume gets involved in the face penetration, where most of the energy is absorbed, with the rest of the projectile only involved in pushing through the soft back layer afterwards (without the soft back layer, the weight exponent would probably be near zero, once the projectile reached a minimum weight--always less than the weight of all real projectiles).
The projectiles assumed in these tests are usually between 1 and 3.5 calibers long (ignoring the projectile's windscreen, if any), made out of iron or steel, weigh from 0.148 (cannon balls) to 0.67 (most U.S. WWII naval APC projectiles) times the cube of their diameters (D in inches and W in pounds), have tapered noses that were usually, though not always, either pointed or elliptical in shape, and were consistent for the most part from round to round in their resistance to impact damage under a given set of conditions.
"W/D3" stays the same for a fixed projectile design of any D.
The above formula is designed for wrought iron plate and cast steel. It is from Nathan Okrun's website on armor and naval guns. The 68pdr with the 19lb charge and 72lb wrought iron shot is superior to the XIII" Dahlgren with a 65lb shot and 7lb charge, the IX" with the 90lb shot and 13lb charge and equal to the X" "Light" gun firing a 124lb shot with a 12.5lbs charge. The XI" with 166lb shot and 20lb charge has superior penetration, as did the X" "Heavy" gun with a 124lb shot and 18lb charge. These are all standard service charges. All the guns could be safely fired with larger gunpowder charges for a limited period of time. The 68pdr could use a 25lb charge, which made it better than all the Dahlgrens except the XIII" with the 276lb shot and 40lb charge. When the Dahlgrens are fired at maximum safe charge, which for the XI" Dahlgren was 30lbs, the 68pdr remained superior to the Dahlgrens smaller than XI" or the heavy X". The formula does not account for wood backing, but does apply to any cast iron or wrought iron backing for armor. Still, the formula does provide some comparable data points, and that is that the XI" Dahlgren using the 30lb charge will crack and penetrate the 4" wrought iron plate a 90 degrees to the horizontal. The 68pdr with "far" charge can penetrate 3.6". The X" "heavy" can penetrate 3.5", the XV" can penetrate 6.1" and the XIII" can penetrate 6.5". Again this is a vertical plate with out including any backing material. What these projectiles would do against wrought iron plate attached by wrought and cast iron rivets and bolts can only be speculated upon, though there are some historical examples both for and against. The main impact of "wracking", however, would be at the waterline. The way to sink a ship is to introduce water into her. Cracking the armor plate and mangling or separating the plates from their cast or wrought iron supports would do that. And since all calculations were at "point blank" range, 100 yards. Most USN projectiles will be hitting on or near the waterline. Now the 7" and 8" rifled muzzle loaders introduced to the RN from late 1864 were excellent performers, the 7" penetrating 7.1" and the 8" penetrating 9.1" based on the formula. It is possible that in a war with the US these guns would be introduced sooner given the failures of the Armstrong breech-loaders, yet the RN moved very quickly once the decision was made to replace the Armstrong rifles, so how much sooner is debatable. The 6.4"(100pdr) Parrot and the 8"(150pdr) were not in that class, penetrating 5.5" and 7.3" respectively, basically because of smaller powder charges. Even then, the USN and the Army eventually banned the use of shot from the Parrots because of explosive failures just beyond the reinforcing band. A slightly thicker and longer band would have been better like the Brooke rifles which performed quite well when their ammunition worked. Again, given a war with Britain, the USN could have adopted Brooke's rifles and Dahgren rifles as replacement for the Parrots. The 80lbs Dahlhgren gave trouble after some time in service, but the 150lb and 12" rifles were tested to destruction with supercharges without failure. The 12" rifle fired a 618lbs shot with a 35-55lb charge. Notice I only talk about point blank range. There was no fire control system beyond Eyeball Mk.I and years of experience using a particular gun from a particular ship. Certainly there were fixed and removable sights and pendulums and such, but engagement ranges did not open up much beyond 100 yards until the 1880s. The thought of any moving, rolling armored warship standing off at 800 yards and engaging a moving target with any possibility of a hit, especially a monitor's turret is very, very low. Against a larger opponent such as a steam frigate or ship of the line, longer ranges are possible, but really effective shell fire was probably limited to 500 yards, based on the example of the Battle of Lissa. I also didn't mention ramming. Certainly ships in close battle at this time would attempt to ram each other, even armored ships, hoping the momentum of the ship's speed and mass would collapse the hull even with armor plating. Both USS Monitor and CSS Virginia tried to ram each other, but the Monitor was not a "ram" and CSS Virginia was too unwieldy to get in a good hit. Certainly ramming had become the rage after CSS Virginia rammed USS Cumberland and left her ram in her. I also haven't discussed the US Army's coastal ordnance which in 1862 consisted primarily of 32pdr and 42pdr smoothbores, converted 64pdr and 84pdr rifles and 8" and 10" "Columbiads" firing shot and shell. By 1864, the older guns were replaced or augmented by shore batteries with Rodman guns, 10", 13" and 15", with much the same performance as the Dahlgrens of similar size. The interesting part of the US coastal defenses was the use of 10" and 13" mortars to drop shells onto ships transiting a closed waterway, like a harbor entrance. It would be difficult without some sort of tests to reference to determine the accuracy and impacts of such mortars, but the US Army remained confident in their capability into the 1920s.
As far as armor, Nathan Okrun once believed that laminated or multiple layers of armor were seriously less effective than a single plate which was the general belief of the time of armored warships. Recent research has caused him to reflect on that conclusion and consider how each plate of armor/metal resists impact and penetration. Each thickness slows and deforms the penetrating projectile such that impacts on the next plate are much reduced. Certainly the use of laminates in various modern (Cobham) type armor arrays depends on this metallurgical factor. The multiple 1" plates surrounding a monitor's turret were not equal to a single plate, but certainly not less effective than a plate 50% of the thickness. So 8" of laminate equals at least a 4" plate, more probably 5-6". The Confederate ironclad CSS Tennessee used three layers of two inch wrought iron, which are certainly better than a 3" plate, and given her resistance to the repeated hits by XI" Dahlgrens which damaged but did not penetrate her armor, it was certainly better than 4". Again the backing had an effect. The deeper the backing the more resistance to attack the plates demonstrated. Another factor was the size of the plates. The CSS Tennessee used 2" thick plates and 10" wide, which would be more vulnerable to damage than the HMS Warrior's plates especially with their tongue and grove construction. Another consideration is that most ironclad battery ships like HMS Warrior and USS New Ironsides used belts that covered only part of the hull, leaving the bows and sterns unarmored. While HMS Warrior had a 4.5" transverse bulkhead, the effect on her trim (already down by the bow) and her speed of severe disruption of the hull around the bow would be a major factor in a battle.
That's it for now. BTW, any intervention by the British would turn the Confederacy into a British dependency like Egypt or the Indian monarchies, where the British emissary really ruled. So much for independence.
Admiral Milne reported to the Admiralty on 27 June 1862, that the two bases, Halifax and Kingston were unprepared to operate as forward bases. Their fortifications were decayed and the guns and ammunition were unreliable. There was insufficient coal to support a larger force than he already had available. His existing forces (as of 27 June!) were inadequate to the task of protecting British commerce and possessions in the region. The idea that the RN, currently (Jan 62) in peacetime readiness after years of parsimony which ended with the French threat in 1859, could put an effective force off the North Atlantic coast of the US is delusional. LOGISTICS. Steam ships need coal. Hard coal. And warships need ammunition and replacements for their crews and a safe harbor for repairs and relief. None of which existed on 27 June 1862, almost six months AFTER the crisis was resolved.
The RN's tests were not conclusive (or realistic, being done on land against simulated arrangements of British ironclads and not using the correct ammunition) having been conducted after the war. The 15" gun was a Rodman, not a Dahlgren. US tests showed an XI" Dahgren with wrought iron shot would penetrate at 100 yards a 4" wrought iron plate backed by 24" of seasoned white oak. During the Civil War, the tactic of "wracking" actually performed as expected by breaking the bolts and rivets attaching the armor to its backing on the CSS Tennesee which had three two inch wrought iron plates bolted together and to 18-24" of oak. The guns involved were XI" Dahlgrens. As far as the XV" Dahlgren, at Trent's Reach, the gun punched a hole through a similar armor arrangement.
The penetration of armor plate is subject to several factors of which velocity, shape, weight (Mass) and density of the projectile comes into play.
VL = (K)(C)TtDd/[Ww COSa(Ob)]
where "K" was a constant and "C", if used, was a plate quality factor. Many formulae were for normal impact only or used a separate table/graph to handle oblique impact and had no COSa(Ob) term or sometimes C was combined with the COSa(Ob) term to give a C that varied with obliquity, also dropping the COSa(Ob) term. However, this format does not lend itself to separating the various terms for W, T, D, V, and Ob in an understandable way that explained why the exponents w, t, d, and a had the values that they had.
To fix this, the penetration formulae are usually given here in the re-arranged form of dimensionless, size-independent penetration in projectile diameters or "calibers" (T/D) on the left-hand side of the equal sign versus a function of all other factors (W, D, V, K, C, and Ob) on the right-hand side, since this makes the effects of each factor more obvious. Also, the units used here are English units of feet/second for V, inches for T and D, and pounds for W. By merely changing the Numerical Constant (= K-(1/t)) found at the beginning of the right-hand side of each formula to the proper value, these formulae can be used in their existing form for any units desired (usually using metric units of meters/second, centimeters, and kilograms).
Impact obliquity Ob is measured here in degrees such that a right-angles impact on the plate (along the "normal" line to the plate surface at that point) has a value of zero and a tangential impact that just skims the plate before glancing off has an obliquity near 90o. The angle is that of the projectile's direction of motion vector to the plate's normal line, not the direction that the projectile's nose itself is pointing, since the projectile will usually have some yaw (tilt in some sideways direction), though not much if the projectile and gun are designed properly. A yaw can be in any direction and can actually be corkscrewing around the direction of motion vector after a plate impact that wobbles a spinning projectile (most projectiles used spin stabilization, except for cannon balls (round shot) fired by early smooth-bore cannon or modern fin-stabilized super-high-velocity sabotted armor-piercing projectiles (APFSDS) used in post-WWII tank cannon). A small yaw (up to circa 10o) can be merged with the impact obliquity by assuming that it is a shift of the obliquity in the yaw direction by half of the magnitude of the yaw angle from the direction of motion vector. No matter how fixed the other factors are, firing ship motion, target motion, and target design will always make the obliquity of impact very unreliable in any scenario.
As long as the penetration process is slow compared to the speed of sound in the iron/steel armor and projectile (which is on the order of 16,000 feet/second), the entire kinetic energy of the projectile gets involved with the penetration from beginning to end. Kinetic energy has the formula
K.E. = (0.5)(W/g)V2
where "g" is the acceleration of gravity (32.2 feet/second/second) when using English pounds, but which is set to 1.00 (ignored) when using metric kilograms, since kilograms already have had this division done ("newtons," not kilograms, are the metric equivalent of English pounds). An alternative form of energy called "Work" is defined as
Work = FL = (W/g)AL
where "F" is the current force of resistance due to the plate's mass and metallurgical properties over a small thickness slice of length "L" and "A" is the deceleration (in feet/second/second in English units) that the projectile undergoes due to that force. Summing the values of Work for each individual slice L until the total plate thickness T is reached gives the total Work needed to punch through the plate, which will just equal the projectile's available kinetic energy when the projectile is striking the plate at its Navy Ballistic Limit at near normal obliquity (at high obliquity, the projectile is being deflected as well a decelerated and can switch from high-speed ricochet to high-speed penetration without ever slowing to a stop in the middle).
As mentioned above, if the factors of the penetration are changing rapidly, such as the fracture of the projectile and/or plate as the impact shock moves through them, then the value of W being used to calculate Work in a given length L may not be the total projectile weight and thus the predicted penetration as V, W, D, and Ob vary may not follow a "total-kinetic-energy" rule. In the penetration formulae this results in a smaller exponent for the W/D3 term than the value of one-half of the exponent for the velocity term, which is true for cases where total kinetic energy determines penetration (see below). For example, when dealing with shock-induced failure of the hard face of a face-hardened armor plate (Gruson, Compound, Harvey, and Krupp KC plates introduced in the 1860's to 1890's) the exponent of the weight term in my penetration formula is only 0.2, even though the exponent for the velocity term is 1.21 (6.05 times as large). The reason is that only the metal volume of the front end of the projectile is "informed" by the impact shock wave that the projectile has hit the plate before the plate's face layer caves in and thus only this front volume gets involved in the face penetration, where most of the energy is absorbed, with the rest of the projectile only involved in pushing through the soft back layer afterwards (without the soft back layer, the weight exponent would probably be near zero, once the projectile reached a minimum weight--always less than the weight of all real projectiles).
The projectiles assumed in these tests are usually between 1 and 3.5 calibers long (ignoring the projectile's windscreen, if any), made out of iron or steel, weigh from 0.148 (cannon balls) to 0.67 (most U.S. WWII naval APC projectiles) times the cube of their diameters (D in inches and W in pounds), have tapered noses that were usually, though not always, either pointed or elliptical in shape, and were consistent for the most part from round to round in their resistance to impact damage under a given set of conditions.
"W/D3" stays the same for a fixed projectile design of any D.
The above formula is designed for wrought iron plate and cast steel. It is from Nathan Okrun's website on armor and naval guns. The 68pdr with the 19lb charge and 72lb wrought iron shot is superior to the XIII" Dahlgren with a 65lb shot and 7lb charge, the IX" with the 90lb shot and 13lb charge and equal to the X" "Light" gun firing a 124lb shot with a 12.5lbs charge. The XI" with 166lb shot and 20lb charge has superior penetration, as did the X" "Heavy" gun with a 124lb shot and 18lb charge. These are all standard service charges. All the guns could be safely fired with larger gunpowder charges for a limited period of time. The 68pdr could use a 25lb charge, which made it better than all the Dahlgrens except the XIII" with the 276lb shot and 40lb charge. When the Dahlgrens are fired at maximum safe charge, which for the XI" Dahlgren was 30lbs, the 68pdr remained superior to the Dahlgrens smaller than XI" or the heavy X". The formula does not account for wood backing, but does apply to any cast iron or wrought iron backing for armor. Still, the formula does provide some comparable data points, and that is that the XI" Dahlgren using the 30lb charge will crack and penetrate the 4" wrought iron plate a 90 degrees to the horizontal. The 68pdr with "far" charge can penetrate 3.6". The X" "heavy" can penetrate 3.5", the XV" can penetrate 6.1" and the XIII" can penetrate 6.5". Again this is a vertical plate with out including any backing material. What these projectiles would do against wrought iron plate attached by wrought and cast iron rivets and bolts can only be speculated upon, though there are some historical examples both for and against. The main impact of "wracking", however, would be at the waterline. The way to sink a ship is to introduce water into her. Cracking the armor plate and mangling or separating the plates from their cast or wrought iron supports would do that. And since all calculations were at "point blank" range, 100 yards. Most USN projectiles will be hitting on or near the waterline. Now the 7" and 8" rifled muzzle loaders introduced to the RN from late 1864 were excellent performers, the 7" penetrating 7.1" and the 8" penetrating 9.1" based on the formula. It is possible that in a war with the US these guns would be introduced sooner given the failures of the Armstrong breech-loaders, yet the RN moved very quickly once the decision was made to replace the Armstrong rifles, so how much sooner is debatable. The 6.4"(100pdr) Parrot and the 8"(150pdr) were not in that class, penetrating 5.5" and 7.3" respectively, basically because of smaller powder charges. Even then, the USN and the Army eventually banned the use of shot from the Parrots because of explosive failures just beyond the reinforcing band. A slightly thicker and longer band would have been better like the Brooke rifles which performed quite well when their ammunition worked. Again, given a war with Britain, the USN could have adopted Brooke's rifles and Dahgren rifles as replacement for the Parrots. The 80lbs Dahlhgren gave trouble after some time in service, but the 150lb and 12" rifles were tested to destruction with supercharges without failure. The 12" rifle fired a 618lbs shot with a 35-55lb charge. Notice I only talk about point blank range. There was no fire control system beyond Eyeball Mk.I and years of experience using a particular gun from a particular ship. Certainly there were fixed and removable sights and pendulums and such, but engagement ranges did not open up much beyond 100 yards until the 1880s. The thought of any moving, rolling armored warship standing off at 800 yards and engaging a moving target with any possibility of a hit, especially a monitor's turret is very, very low. Against a larger opponent such as a steam frigate or ship of the line, longer ranges are possible, but really effective shell fire was probably limited to 500 yards, based on the example of the Battle of Lissa. I also didn't mention ramming. Certainly ships in close battle at this time would attempt to ram each other, even armored ships, hoping the momentum of the ship's speed and mass would collapse the hull even with armor plating. Both USS Monitor and CSS Virginia tried to ram each other, but the Monitor was not a "ram" and CSS Virginia was too unwieldy to get in a good hit. Certainly ramming had become the rage after CSS Virginia rammed USS Cumberland and left her ram in her. I also haven't discussed the US Army's coastal ordnance which in 1862 consisted primarily of 32pdr and 42pdr smoothbores, converted 64pdr and 84pdr rifles and 8" and 10" "Columbiads" firing shot and shell. By 1864, the older guns were replaced or augmented by shore batteries with Rodman guns, 10", 13" and 15", with much the same performance as the Dahlgrens of similar size. The interesting part of the US coastal defenses was the use of 10" and 13" mortars to drop shells onto ships transiting a closed waterway, like a harbor entrance. It would be difficult without some sort of tests to reference to determine the accuracy and impacts of such mortars, but the US Army remained confident in their capability into the 1920s.
As far as armor, Nathan Okrun once believed that laminated or multiple layers of armor were seriously less effective than a single plate which was the general belief of the time of armored warships. Recent research has caused him to reflect on that conclusion and consider how each plate of armor/metal resists impact and penetration. Each thickness slows and deforms the penetrating projectile such that impacts on the next plate are much reduced. Certainly the use of laminates in various modern (Cobham) type armor arrays depends on this metallurgical factor. The multiple 1" plates surrounding a monitor's turret were not equal to a single plate, but certainly not less effective than a plate 50% of the thickness. So 8" of laminate equals at least a 4" plate, more probably 5-6". The Confederate ironclad CSS Tennessee used three layers of two inch wrought iron, which are certainly better than a 3" plate, and given her resistance to the repeated hits by XI" Dahlgrens which damaged but did not penetrate her armor, it was certainly better than 4". Again the backing had an effect. The deeper the backing the more resistance to attack the plates demonstrated. Another factor was the size of the plates. The CSS Tennessee used 2" thick plates and 10" wide, which would be more vulnerable to damage than the HMS Warrior's plates especially with their tongue and grove construction. Another consideration is that most ironclad battery ships like HMS Warrior and USS New Ironsides used belts that covered only part of the hull, leaving the bows and sterns unarmored. While HMS Warrior had a 4.5" transverse bulkhead, the effect on her trim (already down by the bow) and her speed of severe disruption of the hull around the bow would be a major factor in a battle.
That's it for now. BTW, any intervention by the British would turn the Confederacy into a British dependency like Egypt or the Indian monarchies, where the British emissary really ruled. So much for independence.
Saphroneth
Banned
The British sent a memorandum stating that
And the US disavowed the actions of Wilkes and released the prisoners; this is an ultimatum and a climbdown. If one wishes to confirm that it is an ultimatum, one need look no further than the conditional war orders, the large scale troop movements, the significant naval reinforcements and the covering letter to Lyons:
To accuse the RN's tests of unrealism based on their tests being on land is frankly comical. They did their tests on land because tests at sea are nigh impossible.
In what way was the 15" Rodman different from the 15" Dahlgren that significantly impacted performance?
As for ammunition, what ammunition did the RN use which was inferior to that of the US? If they used superior ammunition this seems to be a case of being overly generous!
False. The US tests showed that an 11" Dahlgren with 30lbs of powder (double charge) would not penetrate a 4.5" forged wrought iron plate backed by oak; they showed that an 11" Dahlgren would penetrate 4.5" laminate. I actually quote these tests on page one.
Yes, 8" of laminate roughly equals a 5-6" unbacked plate. The backing doubles the effectiveness of the plate, however, so 8" of laminate is inferior to Warrior even before allowing for how Warrior's iron was much better than average and Monitor's considerably worse.
That would surprise the men of the North America and West Indies squadron, who had been sailing up and down the North Atlantic coast a force superior to the entire USN.
This is an ahistorical charge as it was never considered for use on ships. 20lbs was not introduced until after the Trent.
Why would the blockade be discussed? The Trent was about the Trent.
False. The Moorsoom director allowed for standardized laying of gun positions.
At Pacocha the British gunners (using no more advanced fire control than was available at the time of the Trent and often at ranges of around a mile) scored ~25% hits on the Huascar, a monitor.
You seem to be just basically blurting out a huge list of points, many of them demonstrably false, without really giving them any structure or formatting. I can only assume you're trying to blind readers with pure volume of text.
So - let's see what you think your best points are, well laid out so they're easy to address one at a time. (Incidentally, what values are you using for muzzle velocity? You're basically posting a large and poorly formatted formula and then telling us it agrees with you, without providing any worked examples)
Last edited:
Oh look spaceman science. Lemme get out of here with my low end maths skill.
Yah know... I dont see why anyone who argues with incomprehensible equations expects anything but apathy.
Yah know... I dont see why anyone who argues with incomprehensible equations expects anything but apathy.
Slightly off topic, but hopefully of interest. When googling to find out just what a breastwork monitor actually is I came across this rather nice article about how the hulk of HMVS Cerberus, probably the first of the breed, not only still survives but is in the process of being fully restored by the Australian government.