>>11197 Not really unless its a one off gimmick. It would have to surface to fire those guns, thereby exposing itself to return fire. Torpedoes are much more effective since the enemy has a visibly harder time seeing you. I wonder if the speed of the ship would also be an issue.... Teardrop hulls are not... great for armor tbh imho. But ze krauts are working on a retractable gun platform on the Type 212s (its just a 30mm retractable from the mast... So not really a "naval gun" more of an auto cannon). What I WOULD be afraid of would be some sort of sub mixed in with torpedoes/misses and a shit ton of drones. That would be extremely scarry if you could manage to get within striking distance of say, a coastal nuclear plant.

>>11197 It wouldn't be good for much of anything unless a railgun was installed. Even then it would be a one trick pony and would likely get fucked by loitering ammunition that was either flying or swimming. Traditional vertical missile battery would do everything more efficiently what such submersible gun platform could do, and if you need a gun platform then just use a surface vessel.

>>11197 The ConOps is unfortunately deceased and will remain so until near-perfect Stealth technology is developed. However, the concept of a gun-armed submarine actually isn't a completely baseless idea if given a new lead on life. An example would be a Special Operations Support Submarine, designed to sneak into places they shouldn't be, drop off a SpecOps unit for some Tom Clancy shit, and then provide supporting fire for that unit. It wouldn't even have to have 203mm guns, a single, simple 76.2mm gun would be far more fire support than most SpecOps units would be used to having if things went south and got loud in a hurry and would probably be a Godsend to them. It's an extremely niche concept, but I see potential value in it if you already had everything else covered.

>>11197 Cruiser guns on a sub are a terrible idea for many reasons, but I could see smaller (3-4") deck guns making a comeback as a means of picking off defenseless merchants without wasting a torpedo. The main reason why we got rid of the deck guns in the first place was because using the gun meant staying exposed on the surface for several minutes at a time, but with today's tech it probably wouldn't be hard to make a retractable, unmanned 76mm gun that can deploy, fire a round or two and be ready to dive again in under 30 seconds. >>11186 The German design bureau was almost as bad as the Japanese, but the navy itself was a lot less retarded and would occasionally just fix things without telling anybody. NavWeaps has a good article on how it got so bad so quickly: http://navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-044.php

>>11230 >>11235 >not wanting a bombard submarine carrying a single Mark 7 naval gun on a retractable enclosed mount with no horizontal range of motion, loaded with a small number of satellite guided shells containing nuclear warheads for surprise deletions of enemy infrastructure

>>11239 Want and believe to be reasonable are two different things. I want fleets full of Grand Unions sailing the ocean, I don't think such a thing is reasonable.

>>11235 >After 1933 the number of the (now) MA staff grew rapid and constant. But as we discussed earlier, front-line officers in command. Most of the new, fresh, young and inexperienced designers never saw a warship from the inside. All they had to have is a Master's Degree in engineering. The design work was more and more fragmented, with two or more groups working on the same problem. So they had "design parties" led by technically inexperienced front-line officers, young ambitious designers without onboard-experience and finally design-questions ripped from the overall context. >The Fleet wanted the a Fire Control System that would be the best, the utmost, the totally superior Fire Control System. So, the MA spent a great deal of time and resources into developing such a system. The end result was an overly complex, very heavy Firing director and very sensitive machinery. This development process continued until the point of chaos was reached. For example, the new battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were found to be incapable of shooting their main guns in the autumn 1939. This could only be corrected after 22,000 yards (!) of useless electrical wires were removed and major modifications were made to the Fire Control circuits and mechanisms. >A second example would be the anti-aircraft FCS on the Bismarck. The company that built the computers for this proudly announced that only a dozen of their 20,000 employees were capable of assembling this machine. When you think about this, there is really no better way to express the fact that this inherently means that the computer won't work properly in actual service. All in all, they (the fleet branch) wanted every thing perrrrfecccct. But if you do it, you often are 10 years too late. The DP-gun wasn't produced because the fleet branch wanted them stabilized in three dimensions - why not start with a 2-d stabilized version and see how it works? The Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were outfitted with every gun and FC gimmick (useful or not) that was available. Result: An overloaded design. A few tons more and the main armor belt would loose its function as it would wind up below the waterline. Likewise, the upperworks of the superstructures were the favorite playground of every ambitious technical naval officer who was in command in the MA - I'm sure you noticed the different deck layout for each of these two ships. This is the reason for it. Remember - not technical qualification, but rank is required for all decisions. Things like are why it's so important to study the Axis powers in-depth: you learn a lot about how not to wage a world war. It really is disheartening to realize that they were their own greatest enemies. >The invention of the torpedo and its cost-to-effect-ratio lead to the (I believe) best torpedo defense system of that time. Night is the friend of the small vessels, especially the Torpedo Boat. Fear of such vessels was the only reason that the IM trained for battleship combat at night. And that's one of the reasons the Germans never dropped the concept of three different calibers on their capital ships. That actually reminds me: would going backwards with design concepts and putting the 150mm guns of the Scharnhorst-class and Bismarck-class into casemates, and then covering all available deck space with 88mm guns in pedestal mounts and 37mm autocannons have been an improvement? Yes, that's some 1910s level of design work, but for the most part they were stuck in the 1910s anyway.

>>11265 It would help a little, but you'd have to put the casemates on the freeboard deck anyway (the Scharnhorsts didn't have enough freeboard to put them any lower) so you're only freeing up enough room for a handful of new guns. The real solution would be to develop a simple DP mount for one of the 128mm guns, then replace all the 105mm and 150mm guns with one huge DP battery of probably 20-24 128mm guns. It would also help immensely if Rheinmetall had introduced their navalized 37mm guns in time for the start of the war, instead of waiting until the Kriegsmarine no longer had any surface ships left to put them on.

>>11310 >The real solution would be to develop a simple DP mount for one of the 128mm guns, then replace all the 105mm and 150mm guns with one huge DP battery of probably 20-24 128mm guns. Knowing the Germans, they'd most likely make it overly complicated and unreliable, and then somebody would demand a 150mm version, because they need to have the bestest DP gun. And just after the first prototypes were manufactured (and proved themselves to be utterly unreliable) they'd make sketches for a DP mount that can handle both 170mm and 210mm guns, and has more moving parts than a quadruple 380mm turret.

Since we're already talking about the Kriegsmuhrine, how would Strelok unfug this marvel of germanic naval engineering?

>>11320 Would've been a nice toy but was there ever a situation during the war where the Germans could've used of a carrier? Seems just like a total liability to me, even in a more favorable course of events.

>>11320 I'd redesignate it as a monitor, mount a 80cm gun on it with a magazine so big the barrel has to be replaced by the time it's empty, and then mount as many AA weapons on it as humanly possible. Then use it to bombard Leningrad, and if that's enough to make the city fall, then I'd issue some fake orders to prepare it for a raid on Britain, then park it in Kiel or a similar place, and just use it as a floating battery that the RAF might prioritize over much more valuable targets.

>>11322 Although, looking at the size of the ship, it might be possible to mount both 80cm guns on it, one forward and one aft. If the structure can deal with the stress, then it could fire both of them in a broadside, and that just sounds like a lot of fun. Of course it wouldn't carry a single aircraft in either case.

>>11320 I wouldn't. Aside from the Germans not knowing how to build CVs, they were heading in a valid direction with the concept and, had they ever actually developed actual naval aircraft the ship would have been completely viable in its designed role. Obviously, they lacked an actual strategic need for a Carrier, so building one in the first place is essentially retarded, but as to unfugging the Graf Zeppelin, there really isn't much to unfug beyond horrible shipbuilding practices - even the casemate battery makes sense in context. >>11322 While I'm not 100% positive on the the Graf Zeppelin herself, there's an extremely sizable chance that she couldn't withstand the recoil of even one of the Gustavs. Carriers tended to be built with 'wider' spaced frames to even out loads (due to their massive superstructure weight), where Battleships and other heavy gunships (CAs) tended to concentrate their frame work to withstand the intense localized forces from recoil. In short, a Gustav Monitor would have to be built from the start as such - MAYBE a Yamato or Iowa could take one in place of their front two turrets, but that's a big maybe. And to be clear, this isn't a question of the size of the ship, this is a question of the stress forces that the frames those guns are resting on is designed to take.

>>11363 >the ship would have been completely viable in its designed role. A 42 aircraft complement is quite mediocre for a full sized carrier of the late 1930s, even with Royal Navy CVs at the time fielding slow two-seat fighter-reconnaissance planes.

>>11366 That doesn't change anything. The Graf Zeppelin was not a Fleet Carrier, she was a heavily armed Scout Carrier, or arguably a 'Raid Carrier', in line with the Tirpitzian/Raederian doctrine of the Kriegsmarine. She didn't need any more aircraft to do her job as conceptualized. Yes, she ended up lacking on plane count if you compare her to full fleet carriers, but that doesn't change the fact that she didn't need them since her air arm was conceptually primarily defensive in nature and most of them would be concentrated in CAP.

>>11370 She was too large to be really viable as a raider. It would make more sense to build several CVLs of about half the displacement, since any one ship would run a much higher risk of getting Bismarcked on its first sortie.

>>11371 This, and remember some genius wanted her to engage convoys with her own onboard 15cm SK C/28 guns because that makes perfect sense for a carrier. >>11370 Her displacement at 33,000t full was comparable to contemporary CVs which carried 70+ planes, so even with the 42 aircraft she would've carried at some point being enough for her role as an epic convoy raider it's still a terribly inefficient design compared to the CVs and CVLs field by competing Navies.

>>11371 The theory wasn't the Graf Zeppelin cruising around solo to raid merchant ships, you're thinking platforms instead of systems. The ship was meant to work in conjunction with other ships, specifically including the Bismarcks, to provide scouting and projected air defense while at the same time keeping the fleet small-ish by remaining with the fleet instead of being a detached unit (or dragging the other ships around with her instead) and was expected to carry as much weight as a CL in direct surface actions. In other words, the Graf Zeppelin was a support element, not a primary element, she wouldn't be doing the raiding, she'd be enabling the other raiders to raid. >It would make more sense to build several CVLs of about half the displacement Americans or Japanese, yes, they both had excellent CVLs for raiding. Germany, however, didn't have the shipbuilding industry for it — everything they made was oversize and of excessive displacement for what they carried. Anything smaller than Graf Zeppelin wouldn't have been able to carry enough aircraft to have an effect. >>11375 >and remember some genius wanted her to engage convoys with her own onboard 15cm SK C/28 guns because that makes perfect sense for a carrier. That's because it does. If operating as part of a raider fleet and you're moving with the fleet anyway, there is no reason to not open fire. Splitting off the CV elements from the Surface elements was tantamount to dooming one or the other for smaller navies that couldn't afford US style 'drown them in hulls' strategies — as even the US and IJN found out the hard way. The Americans, Japanese, and British decided to slave their surface elements to their carrier elements. The Graf Zeppelin, as a scout carrier, was designed from the keel up to be slaved to the surface element and therefore would be in range to, in the German mentality, require strong self-defense ability against the cruisers they were likely to encounter — and as mentioned if you're in range anyway there's no reason to not open fire on other more vulnerable targets. >it's still a terribly inefficient design compared to... competing Navies. Strelok, literally every WW2 era ship the Germans built with the exception of their CLs and a handful of DDs were terribly inefficient, massively under performing, and way too large for their capabilities. Prinz Eugen, for example, was ~2500 tons heavier than her contemporarily-designed (but late to the party as all things US were) USS Baltimore, but carried fewer/less effective guns in bad layouts; had roughly half as much armor; and had the typical German horrible three-prop propulsion layout supposedly as a weight saving measure (it actually cost weight). This is one of the damning elements of the German shipbuilding practices I referred to earlier, they did not have the industrial knowledge to produce better designs, they couldn't have designed a smaller Graf Zeppelin since their industry couldn't build it. If the Japanese had designed Graf Zeppelin, for instance, she'd probably have weighed in at only 28k tons — role and design criteria remaining the same (although if they took the raiding role seriously, she may have ended up with torpedo launchers). The Americans would likely have still spat out a 33k ton design, but nicked the SP guns in favor of having as many dual purpose guns as Midway (or more) and ended up with 70 aircraft. But the Americans were insane and expected crews to put aircraft together from dismantled components within 15 minutes on top of counting deck spotted aircraft, leading to inflated numbers only they could pull off (example: Lexington [Essex]'s world record 128 aircraft airborne at the same time).

>>11363 >isn't a question of the size of the ship, this is a question of the stress forces that the frames those guns are resting on is designed to take. That's a pity, my other idea would have been turning a pair of pre-dreadnoughts into floating 80cm batteries. I take those would end up in pieces after a few shots. >>11382 >they did not have the industrial knowledge to produce better designs Did it affect what they can produce? E.g. if they somehow laid off their 'tism and brought Italian designs, would have it been possible to build those? Of course they'd have to be adapted to the Atlantic, and that's where either the Germans or the Italians can fuck it up.

Would it have been sensible to outfit the Bismarck class with a diesel propulsion setup instead of steam turbines?

>>11382 The US, Japan and Britain all did a ton of experiments with armed carriers and concluded that anything short of a Lexington was totally fucked in a gunfight, even against a small CL or a few destroyers. The only way to protect the carrier is to never get shot at in the first place, which means you need to either avoid detection (difficult with a huge capital ship, especially when it's your only one) or hide behind tons of escorts. The Royal Navy would notice immediately if half the Kriegsmarine sortied all at once, and they could easily intercept that fleet with three times as many ships, which is exactly what happened to Bismarck and Scharnhorst in real life. (Also, the Kriegsmarine IRL hardly ever sent out more than 2-3 ships at a time on raiding missions so I don't know where you're getting this whole "commerce-raiding task force" concept from.) >Anything smaller than Graf Zeppelin wouldn't have been able to carry enough aircraft to have an effect. The Graf Zeppelin actually had a pretty reasonable hangar space for her displacement. I suspect the "13 fighters" number was either because they assumed she'd carry fixed-wing Bf-109s and weren't willing to deck park, or because Messerschmitt had a production shortage and the Luftwaffe got first priority. In either case, Graf Zeppelin would have entered service alongside the folding-wing BV-155, allowing for an air group of probably ~70 planes with deck parking (or ~30 per ship for my hypothetical CVLs). >>11401 They tried that with the Scharnhorsts, but they couldn't find a way to fit the whole powerplant within the citadel. With the Bismarcks all their autism was redirected towards the wonders of turboelectric, except they couldn't get that to work because some manager insisted that all proper battleships must have three screws and nobody could make a 50,000hp motor.

>>11386 >I take those would end up in pieces after a few shots. Correct. >Did it affect what they can produce? Yes, the industrial knowledge of the building nation was important in regards to what they could produce, Take for example the Japanese and the 40mm Bofors. They had the designs early on, but they found it impossible to produce in quantity with the Japanese industry. A little known fact is that the Germans actually had the designs for the US' 5in/38cal DP Gun (and related mounts), the best general purpose DP gun of the war, from day one. At the time (1934-early1936) the US and the Germans were virtually allied and were sharing research. However, the German industry was incapable of producing the complex electronics required to make the US' system work, so the US' gun was useless to them. >>11457 >The US, Japan and Britain all did a ton of experiments with armed carriers and concluded that anything short of a Lexington was totally fucked in a gunfight, even against a small CL or a few destroyers. I'd disagree, given the reports I have read from the time (the US, for example, was critical of Fleet Carriers' direct defensiveness, but the same report suggested that Hybrid Cruisers were the way to go for Scout CVs, which indicates they didn't think all Armed Carriers were totally fucked in a gunfight - just the unarmored ones), but even if it was correct, my response would be 'Yes, and?' What does this have to do with the GERMANS' conclusions? The Germans who did not have access to this testing data and had to come up with their own conclusions via the time honored method of scientific-wild-ass-guesswork. Certainly with the benefit of hindsight one can say that the direction they took the Graf Zeppelin was incorrect for the tactical/strategic circumstances of the time. But if you're arguing from a position of hindsight, then any surface development for the Kriegsmarine was retarded and they should have focused entirely on submarines; furthermore, any armor on USN Battleships not named USS North Carolina, USS South Dakota, or USS Iowa was pointless. >The Royal Navy would notice immediately if half the Kriegsmarine sortied all at once By late 1941 the Royal Navy would notice immediately if so much as a single DKM surface ship left harbor, so I'm not sure what your point is. > so I don't know where you're getting this whole "commerce-raiding task force" concept from. The ConOps of the Graf Zeppelin envisioned a BBCV Division of 1 CV, 1 BB, 1 Cruiser (CL or CA), 2-3 DDs, and 1-3 SS' acting in fleet support role. Far less a 'task force' and far more a raiding party, because that's an extremely small division as far as ships go (far too few escorts to pass muster in USN/RN OoBs). Ships are not designed with future sight of what will happen, they are designed with forward projection. Which is nothing more than wishful thinking with a dose of pessimism. How the Graf Zeppelin was intended to operate has absolutely no bearing on how she would have been operated, just like the Bismarck was designed to operate in proper divisions instead of the historical 2-ships-and-a-boat band she died with. > In either case, Graf Zeppelin would have entered service alongside the folding-wing BV-155, allowing for an air group of probably ~70 planes with deck parking You're overestimating a fair bit. By the time the Me-155 (the BV-155 was never to be navalized) was a thing (late 1942), the Graf Zeppelin's prospected aircraft compliment had been reverted back to mostly fighters and a handful of dive bombers, and the fighters were not exactly tiny even with folded wings. Between that and the ship's limited handling systems, I'd reckon the Graf Zeppelin could have managed a maximum of 52-55 aircraft and no more even with deck parking. Incidentally, however, deck parking was not something the Germans ever even figured out. Contrary to public perception it was neither obvious nor simple. You had to have designed the carrier to allow it in the first place (due to wind effect throwing the aircraft around when the CV is maneuvering, the lines and placement of the tower and any deck-level batteries have to be taken into consideration). They were making scientific wild ass guesses about it after observing US and RN CVs doing it, but - from all indications given the design of the Graf Zeppelin's superstructure when the Russians sunk her - they got the math wrong.

>>11467 >They had the designs early on, but they found it impossible to produce in quantity with the Japanese industry. I've actually found a great period piece about that gun, and it might even explain the problems: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=yVeLsJtId_g It was still designed for handfitting, so that it could be produced even by countries that were one or two decides behind the cutting edge of industrialization (that is, the US of A). I imagine that the varying tolerances combined with the overall complexity already made it a nightmare to reverse-engineer, and then they had to figure out how to produce it, and then teach the workers how to do their job. Not to defend the Japanese industry, but that's a tall order, to the point one might be better off designing a gun that functions the same way, but otherwise none of the parts are interchangeable with the gun it was copied from. But then that's the same as developing an idea from zero. >However, the German industry was incapable of producing the complex electronics required to make the US' system work, so the US' gun was useless to them. Is it because US fire control systems were so integrated that copying just the mount with different electronics would have been the equivalent of making a new mount? Although this is where I have to realize that I don't even know what makes a naval DP mount so special compared to the bog standard static AA gun. And for a more concrete example: could the Germans produce the guns and turrets of the Littorio-class if they had the blueprints? Or was it so different in small but significant ways from German industrial standards that it wouldn't have been anything more than inspiration to develop their own 15in triple turrets?

>>11468 >but that's a tall order, to the point one might be better off designing a gun that functions the same way, but otherwise none of the parts are interchangeable with the gun it was copied from. But then that's the same as developing an idea from zero. Ironically, that's essentially what the US did with the Bofors to produce so many of them, although not quite to the extent of no interchangeability. IIRC, roughly only 9% of the US-redesigned Bofors were interchangeable with the original Bofors. I'm not sure exactly which video you've linked to, I haven't had time to sit down and watch it, but if it's the one I'm thinking of they probably mentioned as much in it. As you suggest, the Japanese were extremely unlikely to have been able to pull off such an industrial feat in the middle of a war in the first place. >Is it because US fire control systems were so integrated that copying just the mount with different electronics would have been the equivalent of making a new mount? I'm actually not entirely positive what the issue was exactly, although I've been told it had something to do with the rammer. > could the Germans produce the guns and turrets of the Littorio-class if they had the blueprints? Could they, yes. The Italian and German industrial bases were close enough that they could pull off each others' engineering, exception granted to the Italians somehow messing up every aircraft they tried to make except one (entire type) which even the Germans loved (of course I would forget its name).

>>11482 >the Italians somehow messing up every aircraft they tried to make except one (entire type) which even the Germans loved (of course I would forget its name). The C.202?

>>11485 The Fiat G. 55 Centauro. They liked it so much that they initially decided to replace their own Bf-109s with it before the war deteriorated to the point they couldn't afford the switch over. In fairness, the Germans also liked the Re.2005, but considered it too complex to produce.

>>11482 >that's essentially what the US did with the Bofors to produce so many of them, although not quite to the extent of no interchangeability Indeed, but if I understand correctly they ˝demetricated˝ it mostly to make the production easier with non-metric tooling, although it's questionable if simply tightening the tolerances on the original design would have been enough to make it ready for mass production on assembly lines. I'd think yes, but life is often not that easy. Still, at least they made sure that the barrels can be freely changed between the metric and non-metric models. Also, I have a rather tangentially related question: it might be outside of your field, but have you ever heard about anybody other than Germany using (or experimenting with) sintered iron driving bands for artillery shells? Nearly every description of the ww2 88mm guns mentions how switching to those doubled barrel life (apparently without any downsides), so it's rather strange that they are not the standard today.

>>7107 are Nuclear submarines still useful?

Here are some 25 minutes of testimonies from pom-pom gunners: https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=utrkd4SDRdw

>>11521 That is outside of my field, sadly. I actually wasn't even aware of iron driving bands being used for the 88mm shells. However, I will note that the most common type of artillery shells today are Bull-type 'Full Coats', which if I remember correctly don't even have driving bands. The US and Russia both (as far as I recall) still use conventional shells, though, because they don't like the Full Coats' susceptibility to manhandling-related damage. Furthermore, when it comes to naval cannon, with the addition of things such as powder sleeves and swedish additive, barrel life has gone from being a measurement of 'the life of the liner/rifling' to 'the fatigue limit of the metal of the barrel'. Improving the driving band wouldn't really help with improving barrel life anymore, since these days the rifling practically outlasts the actual barrel. >>11557 Depends on what you mean by useful. They essentially are the queens of blue water raiding, and top-tier non-nuclear SSKs actually have comparable costs - on the order of around 2:1. While that may seem to be far too much for reason, if you have to deploy said submarines half the world away regularly, the fuel economy and readiness generally makes up for it. That is, of course, not mentioning the SSBNs, which are a far cry superior to SSBs due to their ability to hide for months on end if required.

I remember back during some naval discussion on 8/k/ Streloks were postulating that Russian military GEVs weren't suited for Operations outside the Caspian/Black/Mediterranean sea. Is that true? If they could operate in the Atlantic or Pacific, would small-ish GEVs be a suitable replacement for conventional FACs?

>>11653 GEVs have problems with rough waters in general. The Black sea is one of the calmest seas, which is why the Russkies picked it to be their GEV playground. I can't speak to Russian military ekranoplans in particular, but all GEVs have similar limitations with regard to operating conditions. They also consume remarkable amounts of fuel, and thus would be ill-suited to tasks outside a 4-500nmi area. >replacing FACs While that would be totally cool, isn't the main advantage of fast attack craft that they're generally cheap? There is nothing about aircraft (or pseudo-aircraft) that's going to be cheaper than a regular old boat.

>>11653 Man, I remember drawing that shit, fun times. Wanted to make a thread on old 8k we could trow ideas and design funs/cammo patters for shits and giggles, but then all of that bullshit happened

>>11637 >powder sleeves and swedish additive What are those things exactly? Searching for either of them brings up everything from reloading equipment to snus.

>>11884 'Swedish Additive' is titanium dioxide and wax added to the propellant charge in quantities I'm not certain of. With the Iowa's guns, it was inserted in it's own packet between two of the powder charges. It was estimated that this alone cut barrel wear down to 0.26 ESR normal with AP shells and as little as 0.11 ESR with HC shells, both with full charge. With the Iowas, the powder sleeves were simply polyurethane jackets which were placed over the powder charges like bags and tied off. The purpose of the swedish additive was to cause the powder to burn smoother, the purpose of the powder sleeve was to create a thin layer of gas between the propellant gas and the barrel to reduce wear. Combined, with the Iowas, the Service Life of the barrels went from 290 Estimated Service Rounds to 1500 'Fatigue Equivalent Rounds'. In other types of cannon, these type of things have just been directly included with the standard charges, resulting in the modern limit being the fatigue limit of the barrel itself instead of the rifling.

>>11899 Damn, that sounds beautiful. And neither of them seems to be unobtainable high tech, just some simple materials.

How would a blockade look like in this day and age? Let's say we want to blockade China: what would we need and what is the best method to actually stop shipping? Send there subs and just sink everything without warning? Have lots of destroyers patrol the area and board any ship that goes too close to the coast? Give out a warning to let civilians evacuate and then destroy port facilities with missile strikes so that container ships can't be easily unloaded? And how would you make sure that you don't accidentally cut off Taiwan and South Korea? Have some designated sea lanes for all shipping headed there, and clearly tell everyone that any ship not using one of those is assumed to want to go to China? And what should be done with seized Chinese ships? Sell them off to whoever wants to buy them for a friendly price?

>>12020 You could just try to destroy coastal infrastructure with artificial tsunamis, which might be more cost efficient. That or enforcing marine no-go-zones with nuclear powered loitering torpedoes.

>>12034 >You could just try to destroy coastal infrastructure with artificial tsunamis How would you even make an artificial tsunami? Does any military even have any weapons that could do that? I'm not sure if even a Tsar Bomba in it's 100Mt configuration would make a decent sized tsunami.

>>12035 Well, kinda: https://twitter.com/systemergent/status/1302672706618273792

>>12036 Now a hard time not to start going on about the electric universe theory.

>>12020 >How would a blockade look like in this day and age? Likely a combination of mines, submarines, extensive air coverage, and destroyer nets. Basically, what you'd imagine a total naval war would look like but without the nukes and land strikes, and it'd only last a few minutes before it got to the nukes and land strikes. >And how would you make sure that you don't accidentally cut off Taiwan and South Korea? Dedicated Convoys being escorted by allied military assets, like they were in WW2.

>>12020 The cruiser rules method: Surface ships and aircraft patrol a large radius around each port (i.e. just outside of missile range), turning away any merchants who approach. If someone tries to run the blockade, they can be freely captured or sunk. You're allowed to seize war materiel from captured ships, but this probably wouldn't be done often unless it's an oil tanker or something. Attack subs could patrol inside the blockade and sink any blockade runners or enemy warships they find. For the case of a nearby neutral port, you'd probably have to have a friendly warship follow them in. Restricting shipping lanes usually doesn't work here because you aren't allowed to intercept ships in foreign territorial waters. In this example Taiwan and SK are both US-aligned, so they'd cooperate by tracking all merchants in their waters and shooting at any obvious blockade runners. The total war method: Same as above, except you mine the approaches to every port and shoot all enemy-flagged vessels on sight. Destroying their port infrastructure is a good longer-term strategy, but unless you have air supremacy this is going to take many months of whittling away with (expensive, unreliable) cruise missiles.

Can anyone explain mine warfare to me? Apparently it's far more advanced now then I understood and not limited to defensive operations.

>>12050 I think we must achnowledge that the 'laws' of naval warfare are frequently flouted, the US has been seizing oil tankers in international waters for along time on the basis of might=right. Like cluster mines, naval drift mines are banned but mayor powers continue to produce and stockpile them. China has been carrying out acts of aggression with unflaged civilian lestles as have a number of south east Asian counties. Blockages can be enforced by targeting the global interests of 'neutral' countries shipping interests, and sabotaging merchant vessles with grey forces as we saw repeatedly in the gulf.

>>12035 You just blow up nuclear weapons underwater, near the coast, and you will thus have created an artificial tsunami. Or that's what is supposed to happen according to Soviet Navy.

>>12065 Pretty sure it doesn't work like that, because an explosion causes compression immediately and only then is water actually displaced. The compression travels through miles of water in less than 20 seconds, and when water is actually displaced it's displaced through 360 degrees. Fluid mechanics are weird, but while it's easy to make a wave with a solid object it's quiet hard to do so with energy.

>>7738 >An 11-caliber 24in bore scramjet shell weighing roughly 5000lbs would carry ~1,060lbs of bursting charge; higher than the ~945lbs of the 2000lb Mk84 GP bomb. What bore is needed to launch a scramjet shell comparable to the Mk82's ~200lbs filling? And a somehow related question: is there a reason to mount 8in guns on battleships for shore bombardment only, especially if they have a secondary battery of 6in guns?

>>12083 >What bore is needed to launch a scramjet shell comparable to the Mk82's ~200lbs filling? Not entirely positive. A lot depends on the material used in the shell and the caliber (length) of the shell. You could probably do it with an 18in shell, however, or with super-materials you could theoretically do it with a (long) 16in. >And a somehow related question: is there a reason to mount 8in guns on battleships for shore bombardment only, especially if they have a secondary battery of 6in guns? Having a mixed battery of (take your choice of large gun), 8in and 6in/155mm guns would essentially make the ship a floating artillery battery of take-your-choice for whatever fire support is needed at the moment. The 8in guns would probably be the most used, however.