The Great War of 1878

Greetings, I'm anther newby.

I'll lay my cards firmly on the table right at the start, I'm a wargamer, so the What Ifs? I'm really interested in are the ones that lead to interesting battles.

Having a armies for the Second Afghan War and the Zulu War currently unemployed I'm intersted in what would have happened if Disraelis diplomacy at the 1878 Congress of Berlin had been less than dazzling and a war had broken out between The British and Russian Empires.

What seems fairly clear is that a Particular Service Squadron of ironclads would have had a crack at the Kronstadt forts, Admiral Hornby's squadron would have had to have tried to keep the Russians out of Constantinople and Sam Brown's force invading Afghanistan would have had to deal with Russian Cossacks at some point, possibly at Maiwand.

Sir Garnet Wolseley and his division on Indians would have had to have been lnded somewhere and, seeing as how Hornby wouldn't want to get stuck in the Sea of Marmara, it might have been Gallipoli. No Mel Gibson, but I guess the result could have been similar.

I also specualte whether the Zulu War would have broken out anyway and if it had how Chelmsford would have got on without any reinforcements if it all went wrong?

What do other people think?
 
Greetings, I'm anther newby.

I'll lay my cards firmly on the table right at the start, I'm a wargamer, so the What Ifs? I'm really interested in are the ones that lead to interesting battles.

Having a armies for the Second Afghan War and the Zulu War currently unemployed I'm intersted in what would have happened if Disraelis diplomacy at the 1878 Congress of Berlin had been less than dazzling and a war had broken out between The British and Russian Empires.

What seems fairly clear is that a Particular Service Squadron of ironclads would have had a crack at the Kronstadt forts, Admiral Hornby's squadron would have had to have tried to keep the Russians out of Constantinople and Sam Brown's force invading Afghanistan would have had to deal with Russian Cossacks at some point, possibly at Maiwand.

Sir Garnet Wolseley and his division on Indians would have had to have been lnded somewhere and, seeing as how Hornby wouldn't want to get stuck in the Sea of Marmara, it might have been Gallipoli. No Mel Gibson, but I guess the result could have been similar.

I also specualte whether the Zulu War would have broken out anyway and if it had how Chelmsford would have got on without any reinforcements if it all went wrong?

What do other people think?


I am quite sure the Zulu war would have broken out under all circumstances. The British saw this was as a minor colonial war, and very much underestimated their enemy. The troops used where mostly locally stationed troops, and eventhough they IOTL suffered a heavy defeat at Islandwana (pardon my spelling), British firepower in the end drained the Zulu Army (impi). This would proberly also be the case ITTL eventhough some regular soldiers where dispatched elsewhere.
 
Yay! HMS Warrior gets to fire it's guns in anger!

I am fairly sure that the naval war would be short and sweet, with the British Navy wiping any Russian force away, after all the Japanese Navy was trained in the UK and they did it to Russia 30 years later.

With the range of ships guns being what it is in the 1870's this would mean that very few of the Russian cities are safe, until the Baltic freezes.

The land war is a totally different matter, only an idiot gets caught in a war in Afganastan! (cough) It could go either way, but will be messy and costly no matter the outcome (does the word phirric mean anything?)
 
The Naval War

The Russian Blue Water Navy was never going to be much of a threat, but Kronstadt had been modernised in the 1870s and featured 9" and 11" Krupp guns in modern bastions. It would be a far tougher nut than the Egyptian forts attacked a few years later - and they weren't exactly comprehensively destroyed.

Like the Warrior, the rest of the Particuar Service Squadron could basically be described as 'expendable', so maybe the Navy wasn't too confident either.

Russia had its bizarre circular battleships, the Popovs, which probably wouldn't worry Hornby much, but rather more of a threat were the fast steamers in American ports fitting out to commerce raiders. Apart form a handful of fast corvettes the Royal Navy had nothing that could catch them, and convoys were off the menu for a variety of reasons.

The Navy may be on top form, but the Russkies would probably give them a few headaches.
 
The nature of an 1878 naval war is significant, as I need to decide what wargame rules to use.

If it's to be floating fortresses firing futilely at each other then I'll use ACW, but if its something more dramatic with ships exploding and catching fire I'll use Pre-Dreadnought rules.

I suspect it would have been somewhere in between. The major units would be chucking pretty big shells at each other, but they'd be of questionable design, fired at relatively low velocity and directed by almost non-existant fire control.
 
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