>>2061 >grenade launching

>>2067 that rifle made launcher seems like a good idea but wtf is the sturmpistol? was that shit actually used and is the effectiveness documented?

>>2068 >sturmpistol it was a flaregun modified to shoot grenades, it was used but probably not effective.

>>2069 >sturmpistol ok that makes a lot more sense >einstossflammenwerfer based and werwolfpilled >MG45 I didn't know cooming at the mere sight of a gun was possible but apparently it is

>>2071 >>2072 Makes you wonder what a WW2 attack helicopter would look like

>>2069 80mm of RHA penetration is fairly fantastic.

>>2079 80mm could definitely fuck most allied tanks if you hit the side, but that raises the question of how well it fired and if any malfunctions were common

>>2087 leave it to britbongs to leave the heart exposed

>>2096 WW2 nightvision has the best aesthetic

>>2102 Knee mortars were not actually fired from your knee and that's a good way to end up with a fucked leg.

Had the US entered the war at a later date than they did historically due to Japs going for Soviet instead of Western European+American owned clay in late 1941 would they have gotten bamboozled even harder in the opening days? The US sure had lots of raw material and many factories for lend-lease production but much of their peacetime domestic military inventory wasn't entirely up to the standards established by the European warring parties.

>>2137 >would they have gotten bamboozled even harder in the opening days? Ironically, probably not. Most of the early war inventory was already being replaced. From the Naval side of things, for instance, the program for the Hellcat was already active in 1938 (the Wildcat wasn't even in service yet). Not a single major ship class that made it to the war was designed during the war - most of them were actually even ordered before the war. From the army side of things, the Mustang was a prewar design (and designs did exist to power them with P&W Double Wasps, so the original anemic engine would have been settled internally), the B-17 was from well before the war, and even the B-36 development program technically predated the US' involvement in the war! Sticking to the ground, both the Sherman and the Pershing were technically pre-war designs, the various Tank Destroyers were also pre-war developments, and so on and so forth.. Very little of the equipment that the US actually got to the field in time to see combat was an intra-war development. In fact, the US had independently created the STG-44... in 1940 (see: Thompson Light Rifle). While the TLR failed Carbine competition it was submitted to, the Infantry Command had become incredibly interested in the gun's capabilities and were throwing around plans for 'Strike Infantry' (Airborne/Rangers) armed with these selective fire, medium caliber rifles. Furthermore, the US was already tossing around 105mm AT guns, Super-Heavy Artillery, at least one 9.5in SPG, several heavy tank designs, at least one super-heavy tank design, and so on. The US actually was 'forced' (haha) to enter the war far before the Army had planned to and ended up having to ditch 90% of their programs, if they hadn't had to, they probably would have showed up in Pershings and M32s. In short, they probably would have entered the war and wondered why everyone else's equipment sucked. Of course, tactically the US would have been just as rusty as they were historically and got kicked around for a few months. But equipment-wise, they would have been all set.

>>2087 >aluminum armor

>>2083 Time consuming to get loaded and ready. Open rifled flare gun, insert the boom load through the muzzle, screw on the charge, close and bang.

>>2137 Possibly there would have been overinvestment in more battleships instead of carriers.

>>2161 We are speaking about the US Navy, they had more than enough Essex-class carriers as it is. Building a few more Iowas and some Montanas wouln't have made any difference overall.

>>2161 The US' warplan to fight the Japanese didn't actually change because Japan sunk the Grand Battle Fleet. The US had from the beginning intended to use Carriers as the strike platforms. They just wanted a lot of Battleships to protect the Carriers, and were very unhappy that they were 'running naked' (to use their own terms). This forces the extremely defensive US Navy (who had planned for a slow war of attrition) to ramp up the schedule on everything and go full on aggressive, attacking as much as they could because they were convinced they'd lose a defensive battle without their Battleships - Midway was essentially a miracle in their books where CVs managed to win a Defensive Conflict. >>2183 They were also throwing these things (image) around, the 18in-gunned 'Super-Montanas' (if the Montanas had been built, these would have been called the Texas-class, as they had planned to withdraw the New York-class from service). Furthermore, they already had pre-preliminary plans drawn up for 24in gunned (they skipped 20 and 22in) 'Virginia-class Ultra-Battleships' - specifically designed to be larger and more powerful than anything that anyone else could conceivably build. As a NavEng guy, I can only wish these would have gotten far enough to see the light of day - at least in fiction.

>>2195 >image didn't upload Here.

>>2195 >or 24in gunned (they skipped 20 and 22in) 'Virginia-class Ultra-Battleships' Do you know how many guns they wanted and in what configuration? And would it be comparable to a Tillman-battleship in size and tonnage, or significantly bigger? Although I guess they were still making sketches for different possible variants. >>2196 >3x4 18" >2x3 8" >8x3 6" >23x2 3" Do I remember correctly? Also, my autism really can't take the uneven number of AA mounts. I can't help myself but look at it and wish they brought up the number to 25 or even 30.

>>2201 >Do you know how many guns they wanted and in what configuration? You are correct when you say >Although I guess they were still making sketches for different possible variants. so it varies depending on the design. They hadn't even gotten far enough to begin making serious springstyles (late-stage design proposals). However, what seemed to be the most popular for the main battery was 4x2 24in (various calibers were being discussed), although there were 3x3 and the rare 4x3, and I recall reading that there was at least one overly optimistic engineer who submitted both a 4x4 and 6x3 design. I also recall reading that they had also been considering a mixed battery design of 2x3 24" and 2x3 16in/50 due to the sheer amount of time they believed it would take to reload the main battery (roughly 2.5 minutes, manually), although advances in automation reduced this to acceptable numbers by 1941 (roughly a minute). The parbuckling system they devised to sling around the ~12,000lb Super-Heavy AP shells that quickly was and is, in my opinion, nothing short of a marvel of engineering. The secondary batteries they were considering varied wildly. Some proposals had the centerline secondaries (as in that design posted), some preferred the broadside gun houses as seen on the rest of the US' Fast Battleships. Bores ranged from 8inRF to 6inDP to the early 5inAutos >And would it be comparable to a Tillman-battleship in size and tonnage, or significantly bigger? 'Significantly bigger.' The largest of the Maximum-Battleships was only 975ft long, 108ft beamed, and of 72,600 l.ts displacement. The Scheme 12b1 Super-Montana design up there was 1224ft long, 160ft beamed, and of 132,440 l.ts displacement. Larger than the Ford-class, in other words, and at the time would have been the largest ships in the world. The 'Virginia-class' Ultra-Battleships ranged from slightly larger than those to dwarfs the Knock Nevis/Seawise Giant. Now, I only mention it because it's worth a giggle, but the 6x3 battery is the example of the latter group - it had 4x3 8inRF centerline secondary mounts on top of it basically being a Super-NelRod with 24in guns. As a matter of fact, it would have dwarfed the mythical 'H45' design that the internet created (it wasn't actually the internet, it was cooked up in the 70s-80s, iirc) because they wanted to see the Heavy Gustavs on ships. The guy who proposed it would have been disregarded entirely as throwing hyperbole if he hadn't also proposed the method to actually build the things. Surprisingly a very well thought out method involving building the ship in multiple water-tight pieces on the slipways and then assembling it in a specially made floating drydock - since he correctly noted they'd be needing those anyway for any of the ships they were proposing. A majority of them ended up around the Knock Nevis/Seawise Giant's 1504ft length and around 200,000 l.ts displacement, which I admit is still absurdly large but as a NavEng anon, I can't help but let it get the old brain gears turning. >Do I remember correctly? 12-18in/48 Mark 1 (4x3), 6-8in/55 RF Mark 16 (2x3), 18-6/47 DP Mark 16 (8x3), 46-3in/50 AA Mark 22 (23x2), Misc. 20mm/70 Mark 4 in Mk24 Twin Mount (as desired, for anti-suicide craft work). For all worth, yes, you did. (Post war, the 3in Twin was referred to as the Mark 27) >Spoiler I honestly agree, and question the effectiveness of the bow mount. I cannot help but feel like it would have been deleted right after the shakedown cruise since it'd just spend forever washed out. While the 'full bow' of this design wouldn't create nearly such a wet forward as the Iowas' needle bow, it was still going to spend a lot of time submerged as it didn't really have enough flare to it for such a brick trying to push itself through the water... as the designers were obviously well aware considering they went full British with the number of breakwaters they included. Adding mounts would be problematic (there are no more locations they could due to blast effect), but removing that one would have made organization of the mounts a lot easier.

>>2202 >The parbuckling system they devised to sling around the ~12,000lb Super-Heavy AP shells that quickly was and is, in my opinion, nothing short of a marvel of engineering. Could you tell us more about this? And how would it compare to the Yamato's system at a glance? https://invidio.us/watch?v=9T3rvxlz03U >the 6x3 battery is the example of the latter group - it had 4x3 8inRF centerline secondary mounts on top of it basically being a Super-NelRod with 24in guns So it had two 24" turrets on the same level, a third 24" turret in a superfiring position, a 8" turret superfiring over that, and a second 8" superfiring over that? And it was replicated on both ends of the ship? >Surprisingly a very well thought out method involving building the ship in multiple water-tight pieces on the slipways and then assembling it in a specially made floating drydock - since he correctly noted they'd be needing those anyway for any of the ships they were proposing. How would we build such a ship today? Do we have the drydocks? Although I assume the main challenge of building a gigantic drydock is the gates, and considering that by now we can create things like the Maeslantkering, it might not be necessary to use this technique. On the other hand, it might be simpler and cheaper to do so. >Post war, the 3in Twin was referred to as the Mark 27 I've read claims that by the end of the war the US Navy was started to abandon the Oerlikon in favour of the Bofors, and then the Bofors was still inferior the the Mark 27 due to the VT fuse. If that is true, then what's the point of going back to the Oerlikons? Is it to deal with the odd kamikaze that somehow went through the fire of those 3" cannons? But why wouldn't they use 40mm guns for them? Especially because the Mark 27 was designed to take up as much space as a quad-Bofors, so I imagine they could have used the same ˝platforms˝ to mount either of them. >Adding mounts would be problematic (there are no more locations they could due to blast effect), but removing that one would have made organization of the mounts a lot easier. Well, deleting that mount is obviously the superior choice, the only place I could imagine would be the superstructure. But I've only seen the Japanese playing with a similar idea of mounting twin 5" guns in the four corners, and they never actually built a ship that had them.

>>2222 >it had two 24" turrets on the same level, a third 24" turret in a superfiring position And looking at that picture I now realize that the Nelson-class has the middle turret in a superfiring position.

>>2222 >Could you tell us more about this? Not easily. It would be as hard as putting that video into words and only words. Without visuals, it's nearly impossible to do so in a way that would actually make any sense to someone who hasn't seen it (including schematics). >And how would it compare to the Yamato's system at a glance? The turrets were designed for off-turret 'reserve' shells, similar to the Yamato-class', but otherwise they were in effect massively scaled up versions of the NoCo/SoDak/Iowa type turrets... with massive, powered, rotating columns with winches and hydraulic rams built into them that the designers were trying to pass off as capstans; multiple independently rotating shell rings, some of them built into the ship instead of the turret; the aforementioned off-turret shell deck; and even more flash screening. If that seemed like word-soup to you as well, this is why I don't think I could tell more about the parbuckling system and have it make any sense. >(Layout of the 6x3 Virginia) Sort of yes, kind of no. Instead of actually using the Nelson-class layout doubled, they used the Type-A North Carolina-class proposal's layout design (only insofar as the main battery arrangement) and doubled that. Pic related. I brought up the Super-NelRod concept since that was a popular meme design that I believed would be easily picked up on. For clarity's sake, though, it was Deckmount 24", Overfiring (or 'Half-Superfiring') 24", Superfiring 24", Ultrafiring 8", Gigafiring 8", Amidships (with 6" broadside turrets), Gigafiring 8", Ultrafiring 8", Superfiring 24", Overfiring 24", Deckmount 24". Of these, only the 8in guns were 'stacked' (barrels over another turret), the rest were 'spaced'. It sounds absurd because it is absurd. It only was possible at all because the sheer amount of bulk held low on the ship (such as below deck armor) dragged the metacenter of gravity down to reasonable levels. >How would we build such a ship today? Do we have the drydocks? Assuming you're still referring to the 6x3 Virginia, it's still as unreasonable to build today as it was back then. Entirely possible, but unreasonable. We still do not have the floating drydocks which would be required to build such a thing - quite simply because there's never been any need for it, mankind has not yet attempted to build a >2000ft long ship. We certainly have the technology to build such a thing if we needed to, we did back then too - look up the Advanced Base Sectional Drydocks. There's just not been a need for it. >gates If you are meaning a slipway to build the entire ship on land in one go, the challenge isn't the floodgates, the challenge is finding enough level ground where you can cut a ~3300ft long ditch perpendicular to the shoreline and not have cut through protected land or a city. >I've read claims that by the end of the war the US Navy was started to abandon the Oerlikon in favour of the Bofors, and then the Bofors was still inferior the the Mark 27 due to the VT fuse. This is true. >then what's the point of going back to the Oerlikons? The Oerlikons weren't for anti-aircraft, they were for shooting at small suicide craft (boats) trying to make a run at the ship. BuShips was concerned about the high-speed suicide boats the Japanese had started to use at the end of the war, and had decided - since basically anyone could take a fishing boat (or, worse, a speedboat) and load it down with explosives - it was worth preparing countermeasures for. While they were confident that the 3in guns would make short work of a few such craft, they were hesitant to say that they could react fast enough if there were leakers, so they wanted at least a few 'light guns'. The Active Navy, however, were not so keen on the idea and didn't believe the light guns were of any benefit even under the circumstances that BuShips outlined. But come all these years later when the Navy actually started dealing with explosive-laden fishing boats, and the first thing they did was reach for Light Guns such as the M2HB and the 25mm Bushmaster.

>>2236 And I would forget the image, again.

>>2195 >>2202 Why isn't this common knowledge in naval circles? People always bring up the Tillman designs and the H proposals, yet even those look like toy boats now.

>>2247 I could give you the conspiracy theory (the WW2-era designs were reliant on the US already knowing about the 18.1in and 20.1in guns of the Yamato and A-150s, which conflicts with the narrative), the slightly more ridiculous conspiracy theory (some of these ships - the Super-Montana, the Virginias are a little too silly - actually exist and are kept super secret, hahaha), or the possibility ripped from a Tom Clancy novel (institutional embarrassment at falling for the Soviet ruse that were the K-1000/2000/3000 classes). But there's a much simpler reason that better meets which what I know about people who tend to be in naval circles: The Tillmans and the H-class are funny because they're impossible and were impossible to begin with, the Post-Montanas which 'almost happened' are decidedly not funny and leave 'a bit of a strange taste in your mouth' to talk about, to say the least. Most would much rather simply deny the concepts even existed rather than think about it, much simpler to stop with the immediate next generation of 'what could have been'. That and most 'naval circles' today get their information from the NavWeaps forums, World of Warships forums, or - worse - Drachinifel. I'll take my leave on the number of times I've encountered people who supposedly should have known better who gave World of Warships figures for ship data (especially USN gun accuracy data - if the guns were that inaccurate IRL, they would have never been accepted past trials) or repeat Drachinifel's absolutely retarded claim that the chambers behind the Iowas' rider plates (aka decapping plates) would flood if the ship was hit - meanwhile back in reality, the chambers behind the rider plate were either filled with reinforced concrete (debatable, I've seen period paperwork from WW2 that indicated yes and no) or sea water to begin with, you cannot flood a flooded chamber.

Does anyone have ballistic info/tests on the SSh-36 and stahlhelm. The former is rare to where it's almost memory-holed and all the stahlhelm tests I found on YouTube had them break at 9mm either due to a multitude of previous rounds or old age. Also since sloping is best for steel helmets why not just make a smaller version of the M1916 stahlhelm if not for the aesthetics.

>>2263 Is there a paper trail buried in an archive where all of this information is neatly organized, or are the pieces scattered in various out-of-reach places? >if the guns were that inaccurate IRL, they would have never been accepted past trials Do you mean those claims that an Iowa-class ship would struggle a target of its own size close to the maximum range of her own guns? >Drachinifel's absolutely retarded claim that the chambers behind the Iowas' rider plates (aka decapping plates) would flood if the ship was hi Not to defend him needlessly, but he's a civil engineer who works with whatever information is available to him. If somebody showed him a document stating that it was already flooded or filled with concrete, then he'd most likely correct himself.

>>2355 >struggle a target Maybe I shouldn't post in a sleep-deprived state. It should be read as struggle to hit a target, obviously.

>>2355 >(Paper Trail) All of this is in the archives if you know where to look and God favors you that day, but as anyone who has ever dealt with the US Military archives could easily tell you: the US Military does not organize anything at all, ever. Their perpetual state is chaos and that is the way they prefer their archives. In about 7 million unlabeled, dust covered boxes stored in about 50 different warehouses across the planet. >(Iowa Gun Accuracy) I was referring to in general, really. WoWS' inaccuracy with the USN guns comes from a failure of conversion. At the time of WW2, the US was the only major Navy that was reporting gunnery accuracy in maximum dispersion (2.5 Standard Deviations, 99.68%% of shells will fall within range given), everyone else of note was reporting in Standard Deviations (50% of shells will fall within range given). The USN wouldn't get with the program until on into the 1970s, which is why the modern 5in guns are 'magically' so much more accurate than the older ones - they aren't, they are just reported differently. However, Wargaming for whatever reason used the USN's reported numbers as if they were Standard Deviations and then increased those numbers to 'maximum deviation', which gave an ahistorically large number (comically still within the ballpark of the other factions' guns, though). But people still insist the 5in/38cal was a horrible anti-surface weapon because 'slow, floaty, inaccurate shotgun-like shells'... To your actual question, that claim stems from a report that actually did come from Annapolis and became codified in AMP Report No. 79.2R (SRG-P No. 48). While it gets blown out of proportion, the claim does have some basis in fact. That report in turn stemmed from an earlier report studying an Iowa vs. Bismarck scenario and they just extrapolated the numbers from there. Annapolis determined that vs. the Bismarck at top spot (using optics) range of 23,584yd/21,565m, Iowa had a ~7% chance of hitting vs. a broadsiding Bismarck; this was data was generated using practice shoots from the NoCo/SoDak class battleships' 16in/45cal Mark 6s, which the USN considered accurate stand ins for the Iowas' 16in/50cal Mark 7s. Vs. an Iowa-sized target, they estimated the chances of hitting: At 10kyd/9,144m: 32.7% vs Broadside, 22.3% vs End-On. At 20kyd/18,288m: 10.5% vs Broadside, 4.1% vs End-On. At 30kyd/27,432m: 2.7% vs Broadside, 1.4% vs End-On. The Kriegsmarine for their part, however, didn't think the Americans were very good at math. According to my notes, they - using the same exact data - determined that the USS Iowa shooting at the Tirpitz from 35,000yd/32,000m (which they were well aware was the Iowas' blindfire range) had a 1 in 11 (9.09%) chance of hitting with every shot when broadsiding and 1 in 23 (4.34%) when end on. Comparatively, they gave the Tirpitz a chance to hit of roughly 1/3rd of that and quite frankly didn't think their shells could penetrate the Iowa's armor anyway - note the disparity between the German figures and the American figures for ~30k yards. The Americans were absolute pessimists when it came to these types of figures. I got off on a tangent. My point is if someone wants to use the claims you mention, they have to realize that it applies to everyone else's guns - and missiles (the old system gives most AShMs a joke of a chance to hit) - equally. The US gave the British guns an even worse score, which rightfully pissed off a bunch of the crown's sailors. >If somebody showed him a document stating that it was already flooded or filled with concrete, then he'd most likely correct himself. In his video, he had up an image of the Iowa's armor scheme which clearly labeled the rider plate as a decapping plate. In fact, this (image 1) is the very image he had up. He continued to insist the rider plate did absolutely nothing. Which I believe came from one of Friedman's books, but I'm not sure - I've read too many books on the subject. Almost any of them would have brought up the water fill. This, combined with several other points has convinced me otherwise. Don't get me wrong, he's pretty solid when it comes to tactics and the ships of the Royal Navy, but he has a particularly strong bias against the US Navy including a very strong unfamiliarity with USN doctrine, and I don't think he's ever even touched a copy of The Influence of Sea Power upon History nor any of Mahan's later treatises - not that I can blame him, if you jewgle 'From the Sea' all you get is a music single. ...Unless he's changed tune over the last 2 or 3 years since I stopped paying attention to him, that is, I may have to give him a chance again sometime. Anyway, for fun, now that R.A.Landgraff has passed on and the Iowas are essentially fully off the reserve, since I posted tht old Image 1, Image 2 is a more accurate depiction of the Iowa-class' Armor scheme as they sit.

>>2373 > In fact, this (image 1) is the very image he had up. I had a think on this and I now seem to remember the image in his video being the other direction, so it may not have been Image 1 in this. Not reasonable at my current location to go actually check and can't be assed to anyway, so take it or leave it. Apologies if I was wrong; still, the image he displayed contained all of the information in Image 1 including the decapping plate label.

>>2350 Guy takes a potshot at a fairly well repro with a .45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvBHq5PW0Ag

Why didn't they adopt this superior design?

>>2442 kek

>>2202 >both a 4x4 and 6x3 design Forgot to ask this before: how would the 4x4 design compare to the 6x3 in size? Although the Brits and the French had many problems with their quad (or twin double for the French) turrets, and those only had 14" and 15" guns. So I can't even imagine what a nightmare a 24" quad turret would have been. Although I'm quite partial to quad turrets for some reason. >>2373 >All of this is in the archives if you know where to look and God favors you that day If it is not too personal: did you have to learn all of this as part of your job, or just out of curiosity, or a mixture of both? I'd like to imagine that somebody presented the plans for these ships armed with 24" rifles to congress in the 2000s, just to show them that building a modernized Iowa would be a cheap and reasonable decision. On that note: do you happen to know if nuclear-powered battleships were ever considered? Or maybe some other unusual power or propulsion system? >(Iowa Gun Accuracy) To build on this: in Drachinifel's opinion the superheavy shells for the 16"/50 guns were not a good idea overall. He says an Iowa-class would still stand a good chance at wrecking a Yamato-class even with them, but those shells were meant plunging fire at longer ranges, and at closer ranges they offer no benefit. According to him in an artillery duel between two battleships both of them would start to close in to increase accuracy, and the limited window-of-oppurtunity for plunging fire combined with the low chance of hitting meant that they would have been better off with a shell that has a "normal" weight for its calibre but is fired at a significantly higher velocity. And your figures seems to suggest that he is at least correct when it comes to the problem of accuracy. Is he missing the actual tactics here? Or are the superheavy shells not meant for plunging fire, and instead they are the result of the Navy trying to make a 16" shell that weights as much as a 18" one? >I don't think he's ever even touched a copy of The Influence of Sea Power upon History nor any of Mahan's later treatises I admit that I only have a passing familiarity with them, but I'm not sure why is that a problem in this case. He seems to be at least rather nostalgic about the British Empire (e.g. he often says that Britain had an empire in spite of her government, and then said government managed to lose it), and often mentions how protecting trade routes is one of the most important reasons to have a navy. Is there something specifically about the US of A that he misses?

>>2496 >Forgot to ask this before: how would the 4x4 design compare to the 6x3 in size? Approx. 1600ft in length and a ~260ft in beam with a mostly full form like you'd see on the Tillmans. So, (barely) wider, but of much less length. Although incredibly long, those designs tended to be comparatively stout when stood up next to the trend in US BB development in the time period and were designed around being gun platforms first and foremost. The turrets were proposed as two-twin-guns, much like the Richelieu-class', and frankly I think they would have performed far worse in practice. Given the extremely limited room to sling around such monsters of shells and that they hadn't designed the improved parbuckling system with quad turrets in mind. Later, automated turret designs could theoretically make quad turrets work, if someone could find a practical use for them. >If it is not too personal: did you have to learn all of this as part of your job, or just out of curiosity, or a mixture of both? A mixture of both. Work took me there, curiosity kept me there. Something about cruisers I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about yet, so won't. Before you get any ideas, the program failed in the early stages, much to my and a bunch of others' disappointment. >I'd like to imagine that somebody presented the plans for these ships armed with 24" rifles to congress in the 2000s From my understanding, they actually tried to sell Congress on modernized versions of the 24in designs on merit of the designs themselves instead of as a 'door in face' negotiation strategy; if they were wanting to do that, they'd have pulled out the Grand Union design (32-36in guns, it's just the Navy preempting any Senator that decides to be the modern Tillman). See the artillery thread, Heavy Artillery has been attempting to make a come back for ~30 years and politics is getting in the way. >On that note: do you happen to know if nuclear-powered battleships were ever considered? Yes, multiple such designs were proposed as far back as the early '50s and continued as long as BB designs have been mulled over. One of the requirements for an Iowa-replacement in the 80s/90s was for a Nuclear-Powered derivative design to also be submitted. >(Iowa Gun Accuracy) I could write a book on this, but character limits are making this complicated. Drachinifel is attempting to force British Doctrine on everyone else's navies. Once they have acquired the target, no navy other than the British would attempt to decrease range in a naval combat just to improve accuracy. Zero, none, nadda. All of them would pick a defensible range they preferred and more or less stick with it. That's exactly what happened at Surigao Strait, that's even what happened at Guadalcanal (albeit at much shorter ranges, because nighttime), even the Bismarck tried to do it. In fact, one of the Iowa captains actually told an Admiral to 'go fuck yourself' when he suggested closing in, and that was during shore bombardment against field artillery guns that had no chance of penetration at point blank range. Obviously, that captain lost that fight, but it just shows the extreme resistance to breaking range that was instilled in USN Battleship Captains. As I said, Drachinifel is trying to force the British Fischerian Doctrine on everyone else in the world. The problem is, by WW2 literally every other major navy on earth used some derivative of the American Mahanian Doctrine. Including the Kriegsmarine! Hell, the only Commonwealth member (aside from the British themselves) to stick to Fischerian Doctrine was the British Raj, which amounted to nothing. This is why I criticize him for not familiarizing himself with the Mahanian Doctrine. Furthermore, the 16in AP Mk8 Mod6-8 (SHS) beat or equaled the 16in AP Mk5 (standard 16in AP) in both accuracy and penetration at any range past 4k yards when fired out of the 45 caliber guns (Mk6 and Mk5/Mk8, respectively), and inside 4k yards it really doesn't matter anyway. I fail to see how the Mk5 shell would fare any better in the Mk7 gun.

>>2550 Fuck it, I'm writing a book anyway. One more thing, it's easy to misunderstand the accuracy data in my earlier post. Consider for a moment that both the Germans and the British strongly disagreed with the Americans. In fact, no other navy's data matched the Americans'. The Americans weren't magically the only one right, nor were they exactly wrong, their test was just considered ridiculous because they were asking for what everyone else considered absurd things. Namely: the target ship in the American tests was assumed to be performing extreme evasive maneuvering and rapid shifts in speed using reserve steam/overpressure and 'twist' turns. Everyone else's tests assumed the target ship was returning fire - which meant sailing in a mostly straight, predictable line. That's also something the Kriegsmarine lambasted the USN over: according to then-conventional wisdom, an evading ship was not a shooting ship. It's not something that gets thought about often today because people tend to think of the US Fast Battleships (NoCos/SoDaks/Iowas) as the 'standard' of battleships - after all, they are the ones they can easily go look up information on, they still exist after all. But in reality, they were 'the exceptional'. Life and operations on other battleships (aside from Jean Bart and Vanguard, but they don't count) were nowhere near as easy. No other battleships of the period were capable of maintaining 'lock' while maneuvering, let alone performing evasive action. The British and Germans kind of had it good in that they could sort of track targets with their KGVs/Bismarcks' central director while turning (the older USN battleships also fell into here), but they would still have to come to line in order to allow their guns to re-stabilize, acquire connection with the central director, and then aim - a process that could take upwards of 30 seconds on a good day, minutes in a bad one. Comparatively, the USS North Carolina during tests was tasked with performing extreme evasive maneuvers (read: crazy eights, clover wheels, 160 degree turns, 'full twists', and the whole nine yards) during rough conditions and the ship once never lost 'lock' on the target (obviously, when out of arc the 1 to 2 of the turrets couldn't fire, but at least one of the turrets was on-target at all times). No other Battleships could do that - especially not the Japanese - meaning that to return fire they would have to come to a predictable, steady course and maintain it for likely a good minute and change (Japanese upwards of 90 seconds). This, according to USN Doctrine, was asking to be murdered; but for everyone else it was standard operation. Now for the hilarious bit that throws mud on the USN's face and explains why this doctrine formed: The US honestly believed that the US was late to the game and was the last major navy to develop stabilized heavy batteries; they assumed that all enemy battleships would be performing extreme evasive maneuvering at all times while engaging, which gave them their unoptimistic view of accuracy and the figures given in the report. This of course also ignores the fact that only the USN Fast Battleships, the Bismarcks, and maybe the Richelieus could even attempt to pull off the extreme maneuvers they were assuming to begin with. Basically everyone else (correctly) thought that type of maneuvering would destroy the ship faster than the enemy could. The Iowas were the only Battleships actually built to do it intentionally, and even they took damage doing it. Note, technically this means the report was correct - in combat situations, an Iowa shooting at an Iowa would only have a joke of a chance of hitting, but shooting at a Yamato? Different story, you're looking at around a 10-25% chance to hit per shot (depending on if the Yamato was maneuvering or not, she wasn't exactly nimble) at 32-34k yards at a range where the Yamato is looking for a magic bullet with a <1% chance to hit (the Iowas's maximum dispersion was only 36% the size of the Yamato's, so consider the earlier 2.7% figure vs. the Iowas) if they take the time to aim - which the Iowas would punish them for. The Iowas were the most expensive battleships ever built, with the SoDaks and NoCos falling in the 4th and 5th positions (Richelieu is at #2 due to Jean Bart's protracted build time, Yamato is #3). The Americans got what they paid for, the Japanese didn't. Just to put some form of 'evidence' down, this image is a snippet from a report on the Iowas' 1980s reactivation accuracy (the graph it refers to at the end is unimportant). The improvements, while significant, were not so great as to let them be as bad as WoWS claims back in WW2, to go back to my point of common false information.

>>2442 Look familiar?

>>2635 Yeah but why didn't they adopt the helmet design in 1942? Better in every way compared to the stahlhelm except for looks.

>>2656 It was literally looks. Its also why the NVA went with the M56 Stahlhelm instead of an ssh40/60, because they wanted a uniquely "German" look, while not offending their Soviet overlords and fellow satellites, and they wanted different looking dudes compared to the early West German border guard since they still used surplus stahlhelms.

>>2550 >Later, automated turret designs could theoretically make quad turrets work, if someone could find a practical use for them. Considering how far robotics have come, I imagine a modern battleship would have a fully-automated turret. If nothing else that would make it more expensive, and that means somebody can pocket more money. >Grand Union design (32-36in guns, it's just the Navy preempting any Senator that decides to be the modern Tillman) Did they came up with this idea right after the 24" designs, or a bit later when it looked like that they won't get the funding? >I could write a book on this, but character limits are making this complicated. Not to discourage you from posting here, but considering how successful those two books at Forgotten Weapons were, that might be a good idea actually. Just give it a somehow vague yet overly specific name (e.g. US Navy gunnery in the era of the Dreadnought and beyond) and just write down all of your thoughts in a relatively chronological order. >Once they have acquired the target, no navy other than the British would attempt to decrease range in a naval combat just to improve accuracy. Was it a sound decision on their part, or just that 300 years of tradition at work? >In fact, one of the Iowa captains actually told an Admiral to 'go fuck yourself' when he suggested closing in, and that was during shore bombardment against field artillery guns that had no chance of penetration at point blank range I take it happened in Korea. But I'm quite the autist, so please clarify it if he said that ad verbatim. Because it sounds like a great anecdote to prove this point. >Comparatively, the USS North Carolina during tests was tasked with performing extreme evasive maneuvers (read: crazy eights, clover wheels, 160 degree turns, 'full twists', and the whole nine yards) during rough conditions and the ship once never lost 'lock' on the target Was it due to the combination of both the radar and the stabilized guns? Or is it just the stabilization that matters this much? >The US honestly believed that the US was late to the game and was the last major navy to develop stabilized heavy batteries Sounds like pessimism combined with faulty intelligence. Did they find out about some experimental (or even just theoretical) technology and they panicked, so they went above and beyond, to the point that left everyone else well behind? > This of course also ignores the fact that only the USN Fast Battleships, the Bismarcks, and maybe the Richelieus could even attempt to pull off the extreme maneuvers they were assuming to begin with. Is it because they had the propulsion, and they were also sturdy enough not to fall to pieces during the first turn? Or am I misunderstanding something? >Yamato Actually, could I ask for your assessment of that ship? I mean, as far as I know it had some very innovative and good ideas (like the loading mechanisms of the main gun and the shape of the bow), but other parts were hopelessly behind the times (fire control and everything related to anti-air warfare). Was it a top-of-the-line 1930s ship that was hopelessly obsolete by the early 1940s, or was the US Navy so beyond everybody else that it would be a magnificent marvel of engineering by the standards of every other navy of the world? Although I guess the truth lies somewhere between those two, but I have no idea where exactly.

Also, just to recap: battleships with big guns didn't became obsolete during the Cold War, but the USSR was a land empire first and foremost, so they were happy to concentrate on the Afro-Eurasian landmass, and their Navy went for more asymmetric tactics and strategies focused on gigantic missiles and submarines. As such the US Navy had simply no need for battleships (other than shore bombardment), because the soviets had nothing on sea that would warrant 16" or bigger shells. They still wanted them just in case, but congress had a long-standing tradition of hating fun. Is this mostly correct? And something I'm not sure about: what was the supposed role of the Iowas during the Cold War? I think you wrote somewhere that they were reactivated as a response to the Kirov-class, but as far as I know those were mostly gigantic missile boats. Were the BBs meant to join carrier groups and protect them that way, or was the idea to use them like battlecruisers that would hunt down the Kirovs?

>>2717 >Considering how far robotics have come, I imagine a modern battleship would have a fully-automated turret. Theoretically speaking, yes, such things could be designed. I don't personally think fully automating the design is a wise choice, given the number of minute things that could go wrong, but it is entirely possible given modern technology and definitely sounds like something the Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex would try. >Did they came up with this idea right after the 24" designs, or a bit later when it looked like that they won't get the funding? The Grand Unions were a result of the US Navy's in-house design exercises back in the day, where they tried to push what was possible with then-modern technology without regard to practicality. These design exercises were done in part to keep them from getting rusty and to hopefully push the envelope on naval architecture. That type of thing was, of course, canceled by Congress as a 'wasteful expense' because 'the commercial market could do it better'. That and closing the State Shipyards were probably the two most major things which killed the US Navy from an industrial standpoint. Tactical and doctrinal is another story. >Was it a sound decision on their part, or just that 300 years of tradition at work? I would honestly say it was a sound decision backed up by tactical and strategic realities of fighting on the North Sea. Since they didn't have the advantage of vertically stable guns, long range gunnery was basically impossible to conduct in the harsh north-sea weather; so getting in the enemy's face was basically the only practical way of engaging. As a result, their Battleships were generally some of the best 'White Water' Battleships ever designed, but they fell short on 'Blue Water' and everyone aboard would get seasick due to how aggressively the ship would attempt to correct the open ocean's calm and gentle rolls. Comparatively, the Iowas were poor White Water Battleships - where they would try to become submarines - but on Blue Water handled absolutely superior to the nearest RN Battleship, what with their long, calm, and stable (meaning highly predictable) rocking with the waves. It really depended on where the ships were designed to fight and what they were designed to do. >I take it happened in Korea. But I'm quite the autist, so please clarify it if he said that ad verbatim. I believe it actually happened off Iwo Jima, although I'm not entirely certain what landing it was. I know it was a WW2 event, at the least; by Korea most of the BB Captains were being extremely aggressive with their ships as if they had a point to prove, which got the Iowa, New Jersey, and Wisconsin hit by 6in shellfire, costing lives. And yes, the Captain literally told the Admiral "With all due respect, sir, go fuck yourself." To further show how deep the resistance to breaking range ran, despite losing the argument the Captain was not punished for insubordination. >Was it due to the combination of both the radar and the stabilized guns? It was a combination of the stabilized guns and having a fire control system designed from the onset to handle and keep up with it. The Radar was just a component of the whole and no more important than any of the other parts, including the Optics. >Did they find out about some experimental (or even just theoretical) technology and they panicked... As far as I know, that one was actually just their institutional pessimism at work. Of course, back then they viewed their own pessimistic outlook as a challenge and threw everything that had at overcoming that perceived challenge. So, in a sense, it was less pessimism and more an internal systematic form of combating institutional complacency. But that also led into things such as the Alaskas, which were solutions that had no actual problems to solve. >Or am I misunderstanding something? Their various propulsion systems could handle that type of operation (the Bismarcks' diesels gave near instant response to power shifts and the American/French heavy powerplants could employ reserve steam and overpressure effect to massively decrease the response time at the cost of slowly melting the boilers) and their steering systems and aftquarters were designed sufficiently strong. So, you were understanding correctly. >could I ask for your assessment of that ship? (Yamato) The truth lies somewhere between the two, yes. The Yamatos were really fine ships, easily marvels of engineering the world over, and the Japanese put a lot of attention into fine details that even left the US Navy lamenting the lack of a chance to learn from them post-war; but the Japanese industrial/technological deficiencies virtually crippled the ships in crucial areas which made them drastically less effective than required. Despite downplaying them against the likes of the Iowas, I actually hold them to be easily one of the best Battleship designs actually built in history, if only they could have been taken as far as the designs deserved.

>Also, just to recap... Is this mostly correct? Yes. The US Navy also wanted to maintain the Battleships for shows of force, high-threat Carrier escort, and as both Anti-Surface and Anti-Air command ships since they considered the Carriers too crowded to command those roles from and Cruisers too cramped given how everything required kept multiplying. Even AEGIS hardly changed that, the Ticonderoga-class are considered ~30% efficient for the role. Bit of a tangent, but that earlier posted Super-Montana design actually had modernized missile variants that replaced the 6in wing turrets with heavily armored launchers for the RIM-2 Terrier (then SAM-N-7) and/or RIM-8 Talos (then SAM-N-6), while keeping the centerline guns (although at least one design nixed the 8in guns in favor of centerline Talos launchers). Even later, these were supplanted by equally armored Standard missile (rail) launchers (which they insist no longer work due to a lack of required missiles, but then they reactivated the arm-launcher systems for Taiwan - which used the same missiles - and sold them new production Standards for them...). While 'battleship grade' armored VLS systems exist, I do not know if the Super-Montana designs were altered farther as by then the designs were considered 'long in the tooth.' Such a design change would be trivial to make, however - hell, I could do it. >what was the supposed role of the Iowas during the Cold War? Both. On the American side, the Iowas were considered the only ships capable of taking one or more direct hits from the P-700 Granit and remaining in a suitable condition to return fire, even if only as a 'martyrdom' maneuver. While they were mostly used as missile platforms for land strike, from my understanding the original idea was that they patrol with the CVNs and would basically trade with the Kirovs (sink each other, in other words) if the Kirovs moved against the CVNs during a hypothetical war scenario - which the US believed to be drawing close, since they didn't expect the Soviet Union to allow itself to collapse without WW3. Their Shore Bombardment capability was mostly an afterthought until they remembered that 16in AP shells make short work of Reinforced Concrete Bunkers. However, for their part, the Soviets didn't think the US was being realistic in their 'dour' assessment of the Iowas' capabilities. I believe Soviet Fleet Admiral Sergei I. Gorshkov put it best after witnessing the USS Iowa during a NATO exercise in 1985 shortly before his retirement: > "You Americans do not realize what formidable warships you have in these four battleships. We have concluded after careful analysis that these magnificent vessels are in fact the most to be feared in your entire naval arsenal. When engaged in combat we could throw everything we have at those ships and all our firepower would just bounce off or be of little effect. Then, when we are exhausted, we will detect you coming over the horizon and then you will sink us." And to be clear, due to the US actually considering selling the Soviets Iowa-class Battleships in the 1940s, the Soviets had the builders plans for the Iowas. They knew exactly what they were up against, and that was their conclusion. I've personally heard former Soviet Mariners back this claim up and insist that the Iowas were the only things the Soviet Mariners were actually terrified of, with more than one Soviet sonarman saying they could still hear the Iowas' distinctive acoustic signatures in their nightmares, likening it to the biblical Leviathan. They dreaded all four Iowas being sent as the vanguards of an invasion force, because they did not even remotely believe that they could prevent the combined Iowas from making a breakthrough into any of their Bastions, basically saying the whole of the Soviet Union was open to invasion at that point. Incidentally, they also told me that their long-range AShMs couldn't even target the Iowas because the Iowas' RCS was so large and indistinct that it was effectively identical to that of an island or glacier, and only an idiot programs their anti-ship missiles to not avoid landmasses; meaning they would have to close to within the Iowas' own engagement ranges to engage with land-strike profile missiles, at which point they would be hopelessly outmatched by 16in gunfire, and - I quote - "and stupid torpedo does nothing, is worthless." That sounded so dumb and stupid that I honestly had to believe it and have since seen data which backs their claim up.

>>2756 This was meant to be a reply to >>2719

>tfw no super-BB arms race in the Atlantic because Hitler couldn't win the war and regain the German Empire's African colonies At least there's hope the Chinks pulling anudda Pearl Harbour might change the current Zog naval meta back towards heavy capitals with a primary gun armament as it ought to be. On another note, is there a possibility of submarines carrying scout aircraft becoming a thing again come WW3?

>>2828 Submarines already carry UAVs, Anon. Those literally are the scout aircraft of today.

I decided to stop being lazy and start making vids again, enjoy

>>2829 Increase UAV range by a few thousand more miles and subs would be able to deliver a payload pretty much anywhere on earth. It's the real future of warfare imo. If you have satellites, UAVs and no ROE, then why bother with anything else?

>>2865 >It's the real future of warfare imo. If you have satellites, UAVs and no ROE, then why bother with anything else? Because UAVs are extremely easy to shoot down with HELs; you know, the things that every major military power on earth has been developing for 30+ years and are finally fielding working models. Additionally, every warfighter realizes that satellites would be the first thing to go for all sides in any war between major powers - even the US has plans to cause that to happen and the US is heavily reliant on satellites.

>>2866 Submarine-launched F-35 floatplanes with mirror instead of RAM coatings soon?

>>2870 Mirrors are still subject to the thermal effects of lasers, meaning they just melt. Mirrors defeating HELs has always been a meme. Speaking of HELs and memes, Fog/Smoke/Mist/Spray as HEL counters are also memes. Aside from just ramming your head into it with more raw power (at some point the medium is going to become saturated with energy and allow pass through), applying the correct forms of frequency modulation basically defeats those types of wave attenuation outright. FIRESTRIKE has demonstrated the ability to cut through storm clouds, which is basically the single worst mix of natural phenomena to a laser, by use of this technique - and the FIRESTRIKE used was just one of the 15kW modular units, not the upper potential of FIRESTORM (megawatt version of FIRESTRIKE). That being said, why the fuck would you want the F-35 as your aircraft? Even Lockheed Martin hates the damned thing.

>>2871 Would the old Russian trick of using a cork heat shield work?

>>2873 Not in volumes practical for aircraft. Theoretically could be used against the lower ends of HELs on ground vehicles, but on aircraft you're talking about a flying boat at minimum, which defeats the purpose. There are effective countermeasures against lasers, they're just not even remotely cheap.

>>2859 We'll, rest in pieces my porr speakers, otherwise enjoyed.

>>2892 >Theoretically could be used against the lower ends of HELs on ground vehicles, but on aircraft you're talking about a flying boat at minimum, which defeats the purpose. Can the Mountain RCS trick mentioned in >>2756 be applied to aircraft too in some fashion? It'd make for a very interesting picture to have picrels defeat F-35Cs in a BVR engagement because Lockheeb's advanced 5th gen targeting and IFF systems think the flying boats are resurrected Hindenburg scout carriers from a timeline where the Central Powers won WW1.

>>2920 >Can the Mountain RCS trick mentioned in 2756 be applied to aircraft too in some fashion? No, Anti-Air missiles have different targeting priorities than an Anti-Ship missile, which make that essentially impossible. Furthermore, there are no flying islands in real life, so simply detecting open air under the potential target would reveal it as a large flying machine, and if IFF failed then it's a valid target.

>>2755 >The Grand Unions were a result of the US Navy's in-house design exercises back in the day, Could you tell us more about these designs? Anything really crazy, or ˝just˝ variations on the theme of gigantic battleship with varying amount of guns in different configurations? Did they try to make triple or quadruple turrets? Also, are they related to the 24" designs, or it's an earlier exercise? >Tactical and doctrinal is another story. Would you mind telling us about this story? >I would honestly say it was a sound decision backed up by tactical and strategic realities of fighting on the North Sea. I take it stopped being a sound decision later on, if even the Germans tried to keep their distance. Of course most British ships were quite a bit old by that point, and not all of them modernized. And that makes me wonder: was the Vanguard a combination of true-and-tested technologies with the newest ˝gadgets˝? It seems to be a very conservative British design overall, kind of the opposite of the Yamato that looked nothing like the other battleships and battlecruisers of the IJN.

>>2756 >But that also led into things such as the Alaskas, which were solutions that had no actual problems to solve. Is it because Japanese didn't have the cruisers that would have warranted such a cruiser-killer? Or their tactics didn't make use of their cruisers in such a way that made these ships useful? >The US Navy also wanted to maintain the Battleships for shows of force, high-threat Carrier escort, and as both Anti-Surface and Anti-Air command ships since they considered the Carriers too crowded to command those roles from and Cruisers too cramped given how everything required kept multiplying. That remind me of yet one more question: all these things about battleships, are they actually common knowledge in the navy? Or did too many of them grew up learning that carriers are the alpha and omega of modern naval combat? Also, a few years ago somebody posted that there was a Cold War wargame conducted by the US Navy where a modern battleship was fighting against a modern carrier group, and the battleship won most of the time simply because it had enough AA to just shoot down anything the carrier could threw at it. Is this more than a rumour? >And to be clear, due to the US actually considering selling the Soviets Iowa-class Battleships in the 1940s, the Soviets had the builders plans for the Iowas. They knew exactly what they were up against, and that was their conclusion. That's quite shocking. Did they want to sell them finished battleships, plans to build them, or both? And what was their logic here? It's not like they needed battleships to fight Germany, and Japan wasn't a big enough threat to warrant a strong soviet navy. Was it something the Navy wanted, or it was the bright idea of some politicians or bureaucrats? Because if it's the later, then I seriously suspect that it's the work of communist infiltrators. >I've personally heard former Soviet Mariners back this claim up and insist that the Iowas were the only things the Soviet Mariners were actually terrified of, with more than one Soviet sonarman saying they could still hear the Iowas' distinctive acoustic signatures in their nightmares, likening it to the biblical Leviathan. It makes me wonder if they ever seriously thought about building their own battleships. Although I guess they realized that the US would have started a program to build more and better battleships, so it was best not to try it. Still, it would be funny and terrifying if it turned out that they pulled a Yamato and there is a nuclear-powered battleship division hidden in the Arctic Sea.

>>2756 >Incidentally, they also told me that their long-range AShMs couldn't even target the Iowas because the Iowas' RCS was so large and indistinct that it was effectively identical to that of an island or glacier So carriers with their high sides and flat surfaces are distinct enough from islands and glaciers and so you can program the missiles to target them?

>>2949 What about blip enhancement jamming to confuse radar guided missiles into detonating earlier than they should? Is that possible?

>>2967 >Could you tell us more about these designs? By the time you've reached the 6x3 Super-Virginia, everything beyond that stops seeming as notable in the department of craziness. The Grand Unions themselves were a later development than the 24" designs, but the term was retroactively applied to the various 30+ inch bore Battleships that they designed over the years. The only thing particularly notable about the earlier designs that wasn't just their sheer bulk or ever-increasing technological evolution of their components is that a majority of their 36in 'guns' were armored missile launchers in everything but name; but that's not exactly a crazy concept for the time period just before SSBs became practical. As for later designs, I haven't actually seen the modern Grand Union designs, sadly; I do know for certain that they had reverted to (smoothbore) naval cannon for them, however, as I have seen the turret designs. Some of which were Three-Gun, and at least one of which was Four-Gun (all guns independent). I have no idea how they would manage to fit that Four-Gun design in an actual ship's hull, though, far too deep (tall) of a design unless you made a Battleship with the main deck at the height of the CVNs'. >Would you mind telling us about this story? Outside my field, so I cannot actually give any more information that you could find on the internet. Suffice to say, like the US Army, their initial problem after WW2 was that they got used to having allies. This let them specialize in certain areas and completely disregard other areas, at least in theory. This has bit them in the ass now that those allies are turning their backs on the weakened US, and the US has lost that valuable institutional knowledge and competency. Secondly, this specialization mentality - and the 'long running' (by modern mentality) cold war - led them to getting too used to fighting the same enemy, which decayed doctrinal flexibility. Thirdly, post-fall of the Soviets, the Peace Dividend effectively gutted the US Navy's limited remaining institutional knowledge, the training facilities, and the ability to in theory regain said knowledge; as well as maintaining the industrial capability to produce the various equipment. Fourthly, the US rode that single-enemy specialization mentality right into shifting everything over to bomb goat herders in the sand box for 40 years, and have become complacent, forgetting the value of 'Next War-itus' (focus on the next major war). That's just my opinion, though; of course, this is all before the modern complete convergence. THAT is a fairly obvious story that doesn't need explaining. >I take it stopped being a sound decision later on, if even the Germans tried to keep their distance. In a way, yes, but in a way, no. They were just risking complete obsolescence and they knew it, they were aware of what the US was developing (even if they didn't have the details) and it caused them no end of turmoil; yet, as you mentioned, a majority of their Capital Fleet was veritably ancient by the late 1930s - all but the Nelsons being WW1-era designs - and with the new KGV designs, they made the strategic decision to design them for the same range and role. This allowed them to integrate their old and new ships in the same 'battle line' (as abstract as this was for the British during those times) without risk of exposing one or the other to vulnerable zones. However, they were gambling everything on the next war happening before the next 'dreadnought moment' happened. Well, their bet paid off. The next 'dreadnought moment' was Pearl Harbor which brought the rise of the Carrier (not actually what 'killed' the Battleship, mind you), and realistically speaking a majority of Battleship naval engagements during WW2 did happen at the ranges the Royal Navy had prepared for. >Vanguard Vanguard was essentially a wartime expedient Frankenstein's Monster of a warship constructed of (initially) whatever they had lying around and (later) whatever they could hobo the US into giving them (the Vanguard's gun stabilizers were practically US designed). I must say, they produced an absolutely splendid result considering what they had to work with.

>>2968 >Is it because Japanese didn't have the cruisers that would have warranted such a cruiser-killer? Or their tactics didn't make use of their cruisers in such a way that made these ships useful? In theory, it's because the Alaskas were designed to fight a Japanese 'Super-Cruiser' that ONI had made a faulty intel reading about (they mistranslated Shoukaku's name) and thought the Japanese could be building. Later, they discovered information on an actual Japanese Super-Cruiser design that - to them - validated their suspicions. Laughably, that Japanese Super-Cruiser was actually a response to the Alaskas. It never materialized beyond design stages, though. In practice, it's because by the time the Alaskas made it in theater, the Japanese barely had any cruisers (of any sort) left for them to shoot at. >That remind me of yet one more question: all these things about battleships, are they actually common knowledge in the navy? Or did too many of them grew up learning that carriers are the alpha and omega of modern naval combat? The latter. While this type of information was the scuttlebutt back pre-2000, and reverberations lasted until the death of the Naval Gunfire Support Debate, I personally doubt you could find 2000 souls in the current US Navy that knew half of this. >Also, a few years ago somebody posted that there was a Cold War wargame conducted by the US Navy where a modern battleship was fighting against a modern carrier group, and the battleship won most of the time simply because it had enough AA to just shoot down anything the carrier could threw at it. Is this more than a rumour? That's more than just rumor, I have read the (redacted/censored) documents on that wargame - if I'm thinking of the right one. If being completely honest, the Battleship's direct engagement victory (the BB won by 'sinking' the CV) was a result of the confines of the engagement zone, but considering victory conditions for the BB was to survive, I think they would have more than accomplished the requirements had the engagement zone been far larger. For another hilarious one, I've read reports on recent Navy computer simulations (for what those are worth) that pitted a hypothetical Flight III Iowa against an endlessly escalating number of Burkes. The Iowa was only sunk after sinking some 30 of them, and only because the ship had ran out of ammunition and fuel. They hadn't planned for it to last that long and hadn't given the Iowa any method of resupply. >That's quite shocking. Did they want to sell them finished battleships, plans to build them, or both? And what was their logic here? It's not like they needed battleships to fight Germany, and Japan wasn't a big enough threat to warrant a strong soviet navy. Was it something the Navy wanted, or it was the bright idea of some politicians or bureaucrats? Because if it's the later, then I seriously suspect that it's the work of communist infiltrators. Both. The logic was simply that the Soviets asked - Stalin was a fan of the big-gun ship, and had good relations with FDR. As for the source, well, McCarthy was right. >It makes me wonder if they ever seriously thought about building their own battleships. Although I guess they realized that the US would have started a program to build more and better battleships, so it was best not to try it. Still, it would be funny and terrifying if it turned out that they pulled a Yamato and there is a nuclear-powered battleship division hidden in the Arctic Sea. As far as I know, you are correct. I'm not allowed to say anymore. >>2969 >So carriers with their high sides and flat surfaces are distinct enough from islands and glaciers and so you can program the missiles to target them? Yes. From what I remember, the RCS of the Nimitz looks like a giant box wearing a tiny top hat. It's obviously not a perfect box and has a lot more 'sides', but is just blatantly an unnatural object. The Iowas, however, had gradually - but unevenly - rising returns that peaked in the middle exactly where a massive thermal return was being generated. In other words, the same as a volcanic island. >>2974 >What about blip enhancement jamming to confuse radar guided missiles into detonating earlier than they should? >Is that possible? Won't help. That's the oldest form of radar spoofing, even the Iowas had such spoofers during WW2, has too many counters today and basically every 'smart missile' and fighter's targeting systems have countermeasures for it by default.

>>2977 >As far as I know, you are correct. I'm not allowed to say anymore. Wonder if that Siberian oil spill is a coverup for something else.

>>2976 >a majority of their 36in 'guns' were armored missile launchers in everything but name So it had the same loading system as a turret armed with a gun, but instead of cannons it had tubes for launching missiles. Were those existing missiles, or did they want to develop something new and exciting? >SSBs I can't for my life figure out what this acronym is supposed to be. >whatever they could hobo the US into giving them Was the US supportive in this, or was it more of a case of Churchill convincing Roosevelt that they need these new technologies, and then that lead the Oval Office arm-wrestling with the Navy? >they mistranslated Shoukaku's name Did somebody managed to mix up the string of kanji for aircraft carrier and cruiser? Although I guess they were only aware of the dimensions and displacement, because a cruiser that is bigger and heavier than the Dreadnought yet armed only with 2x8 5" guns sound a bit strange to me. >I personally doubt you could find 2000 souls in the current US Navy that knew half of this. So, if e.g. China laid down some actually decent battleships today (let's just ignore all the practical problems involved with that), could you see them properly gauging the threat, or would it lead to a ˝pseudo-Dreadnought moment˝ of them not wanting to build battleships of their own as a response? >The Iowa was only sunk after sinking some 30 of them, and only because the ship had ran out of ammunition and fuel. So it tested 1vs1, then 1vs2, and so on, until it capped at 1vs30? I wonder what would have happened if it was a nuclear-powered BB with terminally guided shells for all of her guns.

>>2263 >or - worse - Drachinifel.

>>3086 As far as I understand, it's not that he wrong about every single thing he says, but he does make mistakes, and there is nobody in a similar position to refute him. So people keep parroting his words as if they were gospel.

>>3070 >So it had the same loading system as a turret armed with a gun, but instead of cannons it had tubes for launching missiles. They were mechanically closer to the twin-arm rail launchers than they were the 24in guns. There were actual gun variants of the design which did use basically larger Heavy Gustavs, however. >Were those existing missiles, or did they want to develop something new and exciting? They were 'new' missiles, but they were always a scaled down variant of an existing (or planned) missile - usually a land-based ballistic missile. Initially, for example, they were scaled down Redstone Missiles and then Pershing I/a/II missiles. Not as entertaining as entirely new designs, I admit. >I can't for my life figure out what this acronym is supposed to be. SSB technically stands for 'Fleet Submarine, Large', but is used as 'Submarine, Ballistic missile'. SSBs in the US Navy were the pre-nuclear SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile) launchers. >Was the US supportive in this, or was it more of a case of Churchill convincing Roosevelt that they need these new technologies, and then that lead the Oval Office arm-wrestling with the Navy? Initially, the US Navy loathed the Royal Navy, but by the end of the war had a firm working relationship bordering on brotherly with them. The suggestion of technology transfer of the stabilizers, for example, was actually the US Navy's suggestion, and the British were floored that the US just gave it to them when they originally asked to buy it. Guns, bolts, rivets, sheets of steel and such, though, were shamelessly hobo'd and I don't really think the Navy had an opinion beyond it being more lend lease. >Did somebody managed to mix up the string of kanji for aircraft carrier and cruiser? Although I guess they were only aware of the dimensions and displacement, because a cruiser that is bigger and heavier than the Dreadnought yet armed only with 2x8 5" guns sound a bit strange to me. They managed to mistranslate 'Shoukaku' as 'Kakeduru' or something equally crazy, couldn't find anything else about this 'kakeduru' (because it didn't exist), and ended up (incorrectly) piecing together random Japanese probing as a Japanese desire for a super-cruiser, and assumed 'kakeduru' must be it. They were unaware of what type of ship 'kakeduru' was, and just made assumptions. It's really one of the largest bungles of USN intelligence in history. >So, if e.g. China laid down some actually decent battleships today (let's just ignore all the practical problems involved with that), could you see them properly gauging the threat, or would it lead to a ˝pseudo-Dreadnought moment˝ of them not wanting to build battleships of their own as a response? 'Situation Yaoguai.' They've actually thought of this, but I don't know if the current US Navy would be capable or willing to stick with the plan. If they laid down said ships, and the US did have a firm grasp of what they were doing, the plan was to just accept that the 'Dreadnought Moment' they had been fearing for 30 years had finally happened respond by pulling out their archives and building a battleship of their own. Since China would be doing guess work on near everything, the US Navy was hedging on institutional theoretical knowhow giving the US a fast enough turn around time that the US' ship would enter service within months of the Chinese's. But as I said, I don't know if the current navy would stick with the plan. >So it tested 1vs1, then 1vs2, and so on, until it capped at 1vs30? I wonder what would have happened if it was a nuclear-powered BB with terminally guided shells for all of her guns. IIRC, it started out as a 1v4 and they kept adding from there in an endurance fight, ending with about 10 Burkes 'on the field'. The Iowa had sunk >30 of them before succumbing. >>3086 >(confused cat image in response to Drachinifel) >>3090 is correct, it's the fact a lot of people treat his videos like infallible gospel. I actually have a decent amount of respect for him, even if I stopped watching his videos, and he tends to do well when it comes to British tactics and doctrine. As I expressed earlier, he just has a really bad habit of assuming every navy followed British Doctrine and making some silly mistakes (decapping plate). 90% Truth is more dangerous than Half-Truths, since it's less likely that persons will go through the extra steps of doing the study themselves if they believe they have a condensed and reliable source, which is why I suggested his devotees could be worse.

>>2978 I like to think that there's all the /x/-tier shit inhabiting Siberia and that the oil spill was the result.

>>3094 >There were actual gun variants of the design which did use basically larger Heavy Gustavs, however. Did they plan to abandon the good old Welin breech and separate loading bags? Although I see no reason why would they do that. >They managed to mistranslate 'Shoukaku' as 'Kakeduru' or something equally crazy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%BF%94#Japanese https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%B6%B4#Japanese So whoever was responsible for it went for the kun reading. The same reason 神風 is knows as kamikaze instead of shinpuu. I wonder how the US spy network was set up, because either somebody sent the wrong name to the HQ and then they distributed that; or the kanji arrived there, but the resident translator choose the wrong reading and that's the root of the problem. Still, I assume telegrams were involved, because those can't be used to send kanji, and this all could have been avoided if only they gave the kanji to the spies in Japan. Also, do you know anything interesting about that 8" gun from the 1970s? Was it a solid idea that they aborted due to a lack of funding, or more like a weapon of desperation that they developed only because they couldn't build battleships? In either case, it's strange they didn't try to resurrect it for the Zumwaits. They could be used to fore those extra long 155mm shells with the help of sabots.

>>3266 ebin facebook meme :DD upbooded :D

>>3254 >Did they plan to abandon the good old Welin breech and separate loading bags? Although I see no reason why would they do that. No, they continued to use the Welin Breech. As for the powder charges, I believe they still continued to use the same powder bags in theory, but I have seen (and personally advocate) the use of 'semi-fixed' charges in designs. These were not conventional semi-fixed charges like we see with the 5in guns of today, but instead basically bag charges that are preloaded into special steel tubes below decks to speed up and simplify the loading cycle, and still required a Welin-style breech for a proper breech seal. These tubes would then be pulled out of the chamber and sent back down to the powder decks to be reloaded when they cooled down. >Also, do you know anything interesting about that 8" gun from the 1970s? Was it a solid idea that they aborted due to a lack of funding, or more like a weapon of desperation that they developed only because they couldn't build battleships? The 8in/55cal Mark 71 MCLWG was, in the opinion of myself and many ordnance specialists, probably the single best automatic gun system the US has ever created and the second best gun system in general right after the 16in/50cal Mark7s. It massively outperformed expectations in every single test, was exceptional in every regard, and wasn't even that expensive. At the time that the program was abruptly canceled, it had already been labeled a complete success and cleared for production, even if they only had the old-style shells and Paveways yet. >In either case, it's strange they didn't try to resurrect it for the Zumwalts. They could be used to fore those extra long 155mm shells with the help of sabots. They actually wanted to. From the moment the AGS became a conventional gun - instead of a vertical launch system - the Navy Surface Warfare school began complaining that they should just put the MCLWG in stealth housing and call it a day, noting that the already designed 8in ERGM shell met the Navy's 58nmi range requirement. They received pushback from the rest of the navy, however, due to the fact by that point the AGS had become an interim weapon system until the Rail Guns could be finished, and the Rail Guns were not designed to slot into the MCLWG mounting, while the AGS was billed specifically to allow that. We both know how that turned out, considering only the Third and final Zumwalt is going to have the Railgun mounting. Beyond that, from what I remember, they were arguing that the CGX should at least have the MCLWG, but the entire CGX program was canceled before they could get beyond the preliminary design phase. I do know that the US Navy considers the Mk71 an active weapons system design and it is valid for use on industry proposed designs for RFDPs - for example, an industry proposal for the Future Large Surface Combatant could nix the 5in/64cal guns and replace them with the Mk71s and they'd still be valid proposals.

>>3283 >preloaded into special steel tubes below decks to speed up and simplify the loading cycle, and still required a Welin-style breech for a proper breech seal So a case that is open on both ends. Was it rimmed and straight-walled, or did they try to scale-up some case designs used in small arms? Although the idea of taking a .30-06 and scaling it up to 16" sounds like something /k/ would come up with. And were they meant to be used with electric firing guns? >the single best automatic gun system the US has ever created and the second best gun system in general right after the 16in/50cal Mark7s That does sound exceptionally good. But do you mean that it is good as an automatic gun, or the gun itself is also beyond most 8" guns? Also, I can only work with NavWeapons, and based on the information there it seems like that this was a semi-fixed gun, but I'm not sure because they don't state it plainly. >even if they only had the old-style shells and Paveways yet Did somebody consider turning it into a dual-purpose gun by developing AA shells, or was it always meant to be strictly a surface weapon? >the US Navy considers the Mk71 an active weapons system design and it is valid for use on industry proposed designs for RFDPs If somebody (be it the Marines, Army, some ambitious company, or even the army of a different country) pointed at it and yelled ˝We want this gun on tracks!˝, would the Navy be a partner in that program? I imagine it would give them both valuable experience and a reason to produce ammunition and keep developing new shells. After all, as far as I know a similar line of thinking lead to choose 155mm gun for the Zumwait. Even though they managed to forget about that as it was developed, hence that tragicomedy of no shells. Of course an self-propelled gun would be more similar to the M110, because putting the whole turret on track would be a bit of a bad idea overall. But speaking of the M110, are the two somehow related? I've read the claim at multiple sites that they originally wanted to use that Army's 175mm gun, but in the late 60s the Army itself abandoned the M107 in favour of the M110A2 with the L/37 barrel. That's still not L/55, and based on what I've read the Navy changed the rifling during development, so I guess the ammunition wasn't 1:1 compatible. >vertical launch system Was that a good idea overall, or somebody had too much creativity in his system? >railguns Are they a resounding failure? Everything I know about them points towards expensive yet useless toys that are just a waste of resources overall.

>>3311 >strictly a surface weapon I mean anti-surface. A flying 8" sounds fun, but fun and sane are two very different things.

>>3311 >So a case that is open on both ends. I didn't mention it, but both ends of the case are plugged. The breech end is tapped for the primer mechanism, which can be unscrewed and replaced when it wears out; while the other end is plugged after the case is loaded. >Was it rimmed and straight-walled Yes. Due to the nature of on-ship reloads with powder bags (more doughnut shaped than the marshmallows of the Iowas, really), a necked case would be counter productive. >And were they meant to be used with electric firing guns? Yes here too. >That does sound exceptionally good. But do you mean that it is good as an automatic gun, or the gun itself is also beyond most 8" guns? I meant it in an overall general sense, although I should have said 'the US Navy has ever created'. It is still one of the best gun systems the US has created even across the branches, but I do not know if it is specifically the 2nd best. I would, however, say that the entire system is far superior to all other 8in/203mm gun systems out there, but comparing Naval Gun Systems to Land Gun Systems is an exercise in futility. >If somebody (be it the Marines, Army, some ambitious company, or even the army of a different country) pointed at it and yelled ˝We want this gun on tracks!˝, would the Navy be a partner in that program? Unlikely, as the Navy doesn't stand to benefit from the program unless they believed at the time that such a program would convince congress to give them more money. At present, they do not have any 8in guns in service, so they would require new shipbuilding to benefit at the minimum. It would be entirely possible to create such a land based variant, however, but you'd be losing a lot of the automation of the system. Instead of the M110's system, however, I would expect a system akin to the modern automated 155mm systems, such as the PzH 2000 or K-9 Thunder, with a dedicated (automatic) ammunition feed vehicle which automatically feeds shells into the main vehicle. >But speaking of the M110, are the two somehow related? There is no direct familial relation between the Mk71 and the M110. The claims you referred to are possible, however, and nothing I have personally encountered would exactly refute them. Additionally, you are correct, the ammunition of the Mk71 and the M110 are not compatible. >Was that a good idea overall, or somebody had too much creativity in his system? It is my personal opinion that whoever thought of that system should have been hauled to a drug test to see how much LSD he had in his system. There was not a single direct advantage that the vertically launched projectiles had over VLS missiles, considering the shells were at the end projected to cost half as much as a Tomahawk. >railguns I would say they're an interesting development but not exactly ready for prime time. They do have conceptual uses which, considering some of the other things that are on the cusp of being developed, make their continued development worthwhile; but I personally do not believe they will be ready for another 10 years - if they actually worked on it. >>3312 >A flying 8" sounds fun, but fun and sane are two very different things. At one point at least, the Air Force did throw around designs for a larger cousin of the AC-130 armed with 8in artillery. So, I wouldn't exactly say it's outside the realms of possibility.

>>2137 >due to Japs going for Soviet instead of Western European+American owned clay in late 1941 This is a scenario I often hear people mention, Germany and Japan going for a pincer movement and attacking Russia on both sides, but I don't think it would have ever happened. From what I understand, the Japanese really didn't want to get involved in another war with Russia and they weren't such close allies with Germany that they would attack them just because Germany did. Also, even if they had been able to defeat the Soviets in the Pacific they still would have had to march across Siberia to do any major damage to the Russians and that seems like it would have been a nigh-impossible task for Japan at the time.

>>3375 The scenario wouldn't be Japan marching on Moscow, the scenario would be Japan taking Russia's non-Siberian Asiatic holdings and then holding the line to force the Soviets to relocate their heavier divisions to deal with the Japanese and then the Germans would get involved. In effect, the idea would be Japan distracting the Soviets initially - probably even with (pre-coordinated) 'disapproving words' from Germany to Japan - so Germany could sucker punch the Soviets while they were reorganizing to react to the Japanese 'threat'. It obviously would have required plans being laid far before 1941, but that's where things such as the Meeting of Five Armies comes in. Hell, if they diverged from historical at that point, the US probably would have sided with the Axis... and for that matter, so would the Allies, Stalin had no ruling party friends in the early 1930s. The Rothschilds were in a state of flux at that point outside of the Soviet Union, and by the time the plan was sprung they wouldn't be willing to gamble away their holdings on the untenable position of the Soviets.

>>3318 >I didn't mention it, but both ends of the case are plugged. Now that is getting interesting. Then the chief difference between this and a ˝proper case˝ is that it doesn't expand (enough) to create a gas seal? >while the other end is plugged after the case is loaded. Is that to protect the powder bags and make sure that they don't fall out? And is it supposed to be simply blown out during firing, or something more interesting going on here? >more doughnut shaped than the marshmallows of the Iowas, really Cultural differences might be a problem here, so to make sure: by this you mean that there is a hole in the middle, and that they are not as long (or tall) as what Iowas had, right? I take the hole in the middle is to make them burn more even, but why are they shorter? >but you'd be losing a lot of the automation of the system True, but that also comes down to the difference between land and naval systems. I'd say on land reducing the number of crew required is much more important than increasing the RoF, so it would need a completely different automatic loading system that also fits into a reasonably sized chassis anyway. >with a dedicated (automatic) ammunition feed vehicle which automatically feeds shells into the main vehicle. Considering the size of a vehicle that would have to carry a gun that is longer than most tanks in service (or indeed, most tanks ever built), I think it would be big enough to have a replaceable magazine that is the size of a shipping container. Then you could use any of the trucks that is designed to haul them to bring it to the SPG, and then the truck could bring away the empty magazine. >At one point at least, the Air Force did throw around designs for a larger cousin of the AC-130 armed with 8in artillery. That sounds like they'd come up with during the Vietnam war. Was it the typical case of putting whatever old guns they had laying around onto a plane? I imagine they had some of them from all the scrapped heavy cruisers.

One of my favourite theories is that Hitler was baited into attacking the USSR by the British diplomatic corps and secret services. The main evidence is the flight of Heß to Britain: he honestly expected to find a strong anti-communist and anti-war group who would gladly partake in peace talks with him. And he was a core member of Hitler's circle, and Hitler himself wanted an alliance with Britain. Therefore it's possible that the Brits covertly but strongly suggested to Hitler and co that the British people would oust Churchill and join Germany in an anti-Bolshevik crusade if there was undeniable proof that Hitler wants to eliminate the USSR. So Hitler started Operation Barbarossa, expecting the UK to sue for peace and offer an alliance. But then that didn't come to be, and we all know what was the end result.

>>3383 >Then the chief difference between this and a ˝proper case˝ is that it doesn't expand (enough) to create a gas seal? Correct. The case was designed to survive through 60+ firings, which precludes it expanding. >by this you mean that there is a hole in the middle, and that they are not as long (or tall) as what Iowas had, right? Yes. >I take the hole in the middle is to make them burn more even, The hole slid over the primer tube. I forget what that type of primer system is called, but it was all a form of ensuring even and complete burn of the powder, so yes. >but why are they shorter? Weight. The Mk7's Powder Bags already weighed 110lbs (~50kg) individually, and these would each be much larger. The individual bags were thus made shorter to keep the weight roughly the same, even if it meant they had to move a lot more bags. This was part of why they went with the case system, since when it came to firing the gun they could just move the entire case through a rail system, which would then be passed off to whatever turret-side ready- reserve system that the design in question was using. >Is that to protect the powder bags and make sure that they don't fall out? Yes to both, it also serves to protect the more vulnerable end of the projectile from being damaged during the firing, as a lot of these larger shells were RAP, or even carried jet engines - later ramjets or scramjets - with some being guided projectiles. >And is it supposed to be simply blown out during firing, or something more interesting going on here? It's just blown out like any wad, plug, or spacer on more conventional cartridge or powder canister. >Considering the size of a vehicle that would have to carry a gun that is longer than most tanks in service (or indeed, most tanks ever built), A lot larger SPGs have been fielded or experimented with by the Soviets, such as the 2B1 Oka or the 2А3 Конденсатор 2P, which were 17in and 16in bore guns, respectively. While neither were exactly successful, an 8in/55cal SPG would be smaller than them and probably still afford space for automation. It would, of course, be quite a bit larger and less maneuverable than SPGs such as the M109 or PzH 2000. >I think it would be big enough to have a replaceable magazine that is the size of a shipping container. When you say 'shipping container', I automatically think of the large 54ft containers which are commonly carried by freight shipping (truck, train, and cargo ship). That is far larger than is practical for a SPG and would instead be a large siege gun for battalion or higher fire bases, which would require a fair deal of set up to use. Which, to be fair, would still be entirely viable. However, if you are going that far, it would be more practical to use a 9.4in(240mm) or 11in(280mm) gun instead. For modern purposes, Ramjet shells for such guns would still allow a long reach and effective payload within the confines of this thought exercise, and such a gun could still be transported in the size of a tractor-trailer/semi-truck. However, if you are referring to something more the size of what is in your second image (I must say, those are incredibly tiny containers for what I am used to), a dedicated ammo hauler vehicle would be a superior choice in all regards, and this a form of system that is commonly utilized already today. Such a vehicle would be specifically designed to go anywhere where the SPG could go, to keep up with the SPG, and generally be as protected as the SPG. A standard truck would have difficulty getting into the various positions that the SPGs would need to shoot from, and would definitely have trouble getting out of dodge when it came time to scoot. >That sounds like they'd come up with during the Vietnam war. Correct. >Was it the typical case of putting whatever old guns they had laying around onto a plane? I imagine they had some of them from all the scrapped heavy cruisers. The guns were M115 howitzers re-purposed for the role, they were not from heavy cruisers as those were far too large to be carried by aircraft of the time.

>>3384 While that sounds exactly like the sort of mindgame the bong intelligence services liked to pull it's more likely that Hitler and his inner circle convinced themselves of that almost independently. It's so close to what they'd have wanted and it's very easy to convince yourself of your own dream. Of course it could be that they started doing that and were then fed bullshit to back it up.

>>3399 >Of course it could be that they started doing that and were then fed bullshit to back it up. That's the theory. Hitler had these fantasies about a Grand Germanic Alliance that included Britain, and after he came to power he found that Brits bent over backwards to appease him. And there was at least Mosley and his party there too. Based on those two factors it's not hard to imagine that he'd develop this false image, and in that age it's also not hard to control the flow of information so that a select few Britons (including members of the royal family) tell him exactly what he wants to hear. It's like convincing somebody to kill himself: not that hard if your target developed strong suicidal tendencies and you happen to be a master manipulator.

>>3408 Seems reasonable to me. Also of course the prevailing view at the time in both the German Leadership/High Command and in the world in general was that the Whermacht was unbeatable so the Soviets would inevitably fold meaning that the UK would scramble to get the face-saving alliance when the outcome was clear, probably if the deal was sweetened with the release of a suitably weakened France as well. To some degree that could even have worked if the Germans hadn't allied with the nips because the British would have then also have been free to go defend/retake the Asian colonies they'd lost but the alliance made it fairly obvious any peace deal would have to result in Japan getting to keep its gains. It's hard to offer the UK to retain its dominance of the Empire when half of it is in the hands of your allies who wouldn't have tolerated losing it again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Haushofer >The influence of Haushofer on Nazi ideology is dramatized in the 1943 short documentary film, Plan for Destruction, which was nominated for an Academy Award. I recommend watching this ˝documentary˝: https://invidio.us/watch?v=ncLxx9QyHOY The war is far from over, yet the only thing it misses from the common narrative is that Hitler did it to turn all the jews into soapbars.

>>3416 >To some degree that could even have worked if the Germans hadn't allied with the nips because the British would have then also have been free to go defend/retake the Asian colonies they'd lost but the alliance made it fairly obvious any peace deal would have to result in Japan getting to keep its gains. If we want to go with some speculative history, Britain's best chance would have been a Japan first policy. After securing North Africa they'd just let the Germans and Russians slaughter each other, and get America to curbstomp Japan, while they support the nationalists in China. That would end up with the commies losing the civil war, and that would directly stop communist expansion in Asia. Meanwhile in Europe, with no Italian front, and with Italy staying in the war, the two sides would grind each other down, and then the Anglo-Saxons could get rid of either of them, or potentially both. In any case, I don't think half of Europe would end up in the hands of Stalin.

It's almost two hours but /k/ might be interested in it. Hitler's War https://www.bitchute.com/video/Zn1VNMM5GRee/

>>3311 Addendum to the subject of Railguns and my response in >>3318, as my response there was more or less specifically on the concept of Railguns as artillery. Technically speaking, Railguns capable of functioning as CIWS/Point Defense already exist as by this point is actually old technology. Look up the US Army's Cannon-Caliber Electromagnetic Gun Launcher project from the 90s; as that was already reliably demonstrating basically all of the qualities that would be required from a gun-based CIWS.

>>3388 > When you say 'shipping container', I automatically think of the large 54ft containers which are commonly carried by freight shipping (truck, train, and cargo ship). I was actually thinking of the 20ft shipping container that is getting increasingly popular among all militaries of the world, but I selected the wrong picture. A half-height one would have an internal height of 1195mm and an internal width of 2340mm. NavWeapon says this gun was designed to fire shells with a length of 10-11 calibres, so roughly around 2000-2200mm. My half-baked idea is to have the projectiles lay on their side in either the upper or lower half, and the other half is for the charges that lay on their sides the same way. Of course the container would need some kind of an internal machinery to push the shells and charges to the ˝exit˝, and preferably it should permit selecting different projectiles and charges. But once the right ones are at the ˝exit˝ the loading mechanism of the SPG can take over the job of actually loading them into the breech. The next question in my mind is how to load the container-magazine onto the SPG. Assuming it's similar to the 2S7 (or the modernized 2S7M in this case), it could have an arm like on the 4th picture that slides the container under the cannon to the area under the barrel. Alternatively, go with the 5th picture and add a crane that then puts the container to the same area, but from the top of the vehicle. Of course a lot depends on what kind of a loading mechanism one comes up with, but I think the best one would be a much more modern version of what the 2S7 has: https://invidio.us/watch?v=oTlbVLoU9JE https://invidio.us/watch?v=3gg4vH6Gb0A Add a secondary arm that puts the shells and charges from the exit of the container to the first arm that will load them. Needless to say, this system would require a completely different vehicle that actually has space under the barrel for this container. And once the container is empty, the SPG just places it to the side, and then the crew can either replace it with a loaded one and send the old one to a depot for reloading, or they can reload the empty one themselves if they are not in a hurry (or there aren't enough magazines going around to always slap in a new one). >Such a vehicle would be specifically designed to go anywhere where the SPG could go, to keep up with the SPG, and generally be as protected as the SPG. A standard truck would have difficulty getting into the various positions that the SPGs would need to shoot from, and would definitely have trouble getting out of dodge when it came time to scoot. I think one of the lessons of the war (or maybe more like an extended slapfight by now) in Ukraine is that in this day and age everything close to the front lines should be armoured against random artillery strikes, and be able to navigate heavy off-road. Not to say that all trucks should be replaced, but a ˝frontline supply vehicle˝ that can haul 20 feet containers to nearly anywhere would be rather useful, and it could bring these half-height ones to the SPGs too.

>>3467 But aren't solid projectile CIWSs a bit of a dead-end if lasers can do their job much better? And that reminds me: what is the future of torpedoes in your opinion? I remember you've mentioned underwater laser batteries in an other thread, and that makes me wonder if there is any use of them if even the Iowa is so well protected against existing ones. Are they good against submarines, and that's all?

>>3514 >(artillery piece) So, you're wanting basically a stacked pair of huge P90 magazines for 8in shells/powder canisters to be loaded onto an SPG? Obviously that's reduction to absurd simplicity and it wouldn't actually be like that, but the fact that doesn't actually sound that unreasonable to me from an engineering standpoint says enough. While more complicated, it's similar in theory to what the M270 MLRS does. A lot of it would come down to the way the machine itself was designed to work, as you said, but I see no reason why that couldn't work. >>3515 >(Projectile CIWS vs. Laser) I wouldn't really call them a 'dead-end', as theoretically speaking they would have distinct advantages over Lasers when you're in the theoretical high end; while the upper end of lasers (high-megawatt lasers) can act as a do-all-end-all (they do have theoretical counters in the form of forced plasma barriers, but at that point we're talking force fields and at that point I'm just going to retire from thinking), they are large and extremely power hungry - you effectively have to design the ship around them, and only the largest of hullforms could generate enough power to use them as a primary system. The CCEGL comparatively used little enough power that they could haul the entire power plant into the field on the back of a truck. It'd be larger for a shipborne CIWS, seeing as such a thing would require radar, stabilization, and all of the other standard kit, but such is also true of the laser. On top of that, there's the issue of putting all of your eggs into one conceptual basket. >(Torpedoes) Torpedoes will always have a future in anti-surface warfare so long as merchant vessels exist, because I strongly doubt that essentially any standard cargo ship - civilian or military - will have underwater heavy laser arrays. Other than that, most navies have already moved away from torpedoes as ASuW weapons and started to use tube-launched missiles as their Submarine ASuW weapon of choice.

>>3517 Don't forget weather affects lasers much more than projectiles.

>>3523 In one sense, yes. A bit of inclement weather can easily be pierced by lasers with proper frequency management and more applied power. However, at higher air-energy saturation levels, you've created a plasma channel between the sky and your firing platform, requiring you to brace the system for regular lightning strikes during use. Easily doable, but it's even more weight and bulk in the end.

>>3552 I say all of that, but here hours later it occurred to me that Lasers absolutely would be shut down in a sand storm, whereas projectiles would still function. The downside of specializing on one field of warfare is that you tend to forget obvious things about other fields.

>>3517 >So, you're wanting basically a stacked pair of huge P90 magazines for 8in shells/powder canisters to be loaded onto an SPG? Pretty much. Without something like this I don't think that there is a point in automatizing an SPG of this size, because reloading the magazine would take up too much time, to the point you might as well load them continuously by hand. And I have a feeling that bigger cannons are going to have a place in the near-future, because they are constantly increasing the range of 155mm shells at the expense of warhead size. Just imagine how bad the ˝bang-to-buck" ratio of this thing must be: https://invidio.us/watch?v=6J0XwLYmAc0 >you effectively have to design the ship around them, and only the largest of hullforms could generate enough power to use them as a primary system. Now I'm imagining a modern rating system that rates ships based on the output of their laser weapons. >On top of that, there's the issue of putting all of your eggs into one conceptual basket. Will we see systems that combine projectile and direct energy weapons, the same way some AA and CIWSs have both guns and missiles? I imagine if nothing else, putting a laser in an independent mount on top of a gun turret would at least make sure that their arcs-of-fire aren't interfering. And they could use the same fire control system. >Other than that, most navies have already moved away from torpedoes as ASuW weapons and started to use tube-launched missiles as their Submarine ASuW weapon of choice. Is there something that keeps navies from making a submarine that has no horizontal torpedo launchers, only VLS cells along the hull? I imagine those same cells could be used to launch torpedoes too, and they are guided anyway. >>3558 Could lasers be counted by filling the air with sand then? Because the idea of launching hundreds of projectiles filled with sand (and explosives to scatter them) sounds like a stupid simple low-tech counter. I guess naval warfare will be similar to the late 19th century, when they had all these new and crazy technologies giving life to strange yet theoretically effective ships and weapons (like the torpedo ram) that got obsolete at a moment's notice.

>>3559 >Without something like this I don't think that there is a point in automatizing an SPG of this size, because reloading the magazine would take up too much time, to the point you might as well load them continuously by hand. A variant of the automated loading systems of the PzH 2000, K-9 Thunder, or XM2001 Crusader would reasonably be able to load 2-4 complete rounds per minute, reasonably 4-6 with a good design - which is roughly the maximum theoretical firerate of such a gun in the first place due to the physical limitations of having to lower the gun barrel to load the gun. Manual loading as with the M110 would only allow 2-4 for very short bursts by highly trained and physically self-destructive crews. There is no practical reason to achieve higher hand-off rates than this. >And I have a feeling that bigger cannons are going to have a place in the near-future, because they are constantly increasing the range of 155mm shells at the expense of warhead size. I would agree with you. So does the US Army, see the Strategic Long Range Cannon. >Just imagine how bad the ˝bang-to-buck" ratio of this thing must be... Considering that munition is a reduced casualty, precision guided 'kinetic-kill' weapon, the answer is 'not very much at all' - and that's exactly what they wanted when they designed it. Ramjet and Scramjet shells can be designed with proper warheads, payloads, or bursting charges, but the minimum bore for effectiveness of that type of shell is considered to be 11in/280mm. An 8in/203mm gun will not gain that much in range benefit over the 155mm. >Will we see systems that combine projectile and direct energy weapons, the same way some AA and CIWSs have both guns and missiles? It's possible, but I wouldn't expect it to happen due to the massive differences in the internal workings of the weapons systems and the potential for the gun to damage the lasers' optics. >I imagine if nothing else, putting a laser in an independent mount on top of a gun turret would at least make sure that their arcs-of-fire aren't interfering. You could theoretically build the gun turret around the laser, but to just put an independently training laser on top of a proper gun turret would require the laser's source components to also be in the rotating structure of the turret, which would massively increase the turret's size. As for building the gun turret around the laser, it's theoretically possible to make it function, but it is inadvisable for a multitude of reasons, the simplest being the aforementioned damage issue. >And they could use the same fire control system. They couldn't. Projectile weapons have shell arcs, lasers are point weapons which require calculation of frequency modulation. The formula are too different for them to be in the same fire control system. Making them function as co-elements of the same central control system - such as AEGIS - certainly could be done, but different fire control systems/subsystems themselves would be required. >Is there something that keeps navies from making a submarine that has no horizontal torpedo launchers, only VLS cells along the hull? Horizontal tubes are superior for ASW work, by far. Furthermore, at periscope depth a horizontally fired torpedo would likely jump out of the water and waste fuel, if not burn out the engine right then and there. >I imagine those same cells could be used to launch torpedoes too, and they are guided anyway. They cannot. Firstly, the VLS tubes are designed to throw the missile out of the water entirely before the missile engine fires. If a torpedo was launched out of one of them, it would fly out of the water with enough force that it probably would detonate on impact with the water. Secondly, modern torpedoes tend to be wire-guided, which simply would not work from the VLS tube - you would have to mount the torpedo tube vertically to make it work. >Could lasers be counted by filling the air with sand then? Because the idea of launching hundreds of projectiles filled with sand (and explosives to scatter them) sounds like a stupid simple low-tech counter. >hundreds of projectiles filled with sand So, you're suggesting that some military power fill billions of dollars worth of missiles with... sand? As decoys/chaff? At that point, instead of spending 90 kill missiles' worth on what is effectively 100 dummy missiles, why wouldn't they just buy the 90 extra kill missiles and just over-saturate the defense system? Every hard-kill defensive system can be overwhelmed, either by wasting all of its ammo or by sending more attacks than it can respond to in any given time. That's why I also advocate heavy carbon-based armors, for the inevitable moment that the enemy does overwhelm your active defenses and all you can do is eat it. Obviously, cost is the big issue with that one and it's entirely impractical to heavily armor an entire army forward base, for example, but if nobody takes such positions no development at all will be made in that critical field. But I digress.

>>3561 >reduced casualty, precision guided 'kinetic-kill' weapon It looks like a typical case of miscommunication or outright manipulation on the marketing team's part then. Every piece of news on the internet goes on and on about how this is supposed to be some kind of a game changer because the range is so much higher, and there is nothing about its actual purpose. Of course, most of those press releases and whatnot also claim that this is a completely new idea, even though the idea of gun-launched ramjets is more than a century old. >the minimum bore for effectiveness of that type of shell is considered to be 11in/280mm. Would those subcalibre (sc)ramjet projectiles be significantly longer than ˝normal˝ full-bore shells? >function as co-elements of the same central control system - such as AEGIS - certainly could be done That's what I was thinking of, but I'm obviously not familiar with the correct terminology. I know enough about basic ballistics to realize that lasers and guns need to be aimed quite differently. > So, you're suggesting that some military power fill billions of dollars worth of missiles with... sand? As decoys/chaff? My big idea was to use rockets with as simple and cheap of a guidance system as possible, but I can see the overall fault here.

>>3600 >It looks like a typical case of miscommunication or outright manipulation on the marketing team's part then. Pretty much. It's outright propaganda, really. The ERCA program, of which this Ramjet shell is nominally a part of, is pretty much an attempt to turn the 155mm Howitzer into a 100km sniper rifle. With all the hypothetical positives and negatives that implies. This ramjet shell is basically its equivalent of the full copper bullet - something else that was gone on about as if it were revolutionary, but fell out of popularity basically instantly. >Would those subcalibre (sc)ramjet projectiles be significantly longer than ˝normal˝ full-bore shells? Depends on the gun they were designed for, but under ideal conditions, yes. While 'normal' shells are between 4 and 6 calibers, 'ideal' Ram/Scram shells would be 8-11 calibers in order to afford room for both fuel and a payload (usually cluster munitions). The 155mm/58cal XM907 gun of the US Army's new M1299 SPH from what I have heard can accept such a length shell, which if applied to the earlier Ramjet would actually allow it to carry a small (for a 155mm, it'd be more in line with a 5in/127mm shell) bursting charge, still. That actually could be a game changer for the US Army. >That's what I was thinking of, but I'm obviously not familiar with the correct terminology. I know enough about basic ballistics to realize that lasers and guns need to be aimed quite differently. I got confused as you seemed to suggest it would require them to be stacked in order to use the same system. Forgive me, it was a long day. >My big idea was to use rockets with as simple and cheap of a guidance system as possible, but I can see the overall fault here. I can see your reasoning, though. It's similar to Chaff Missiles, which was a good idea at the time. The problem with the Chaff Missiles would be the same problem as these Sand Rockets or Missiles. Firstly, the sand cloud could prevent air-breathing missiles from passing through it, since the sand could kill the engine, damage the guidance system, and potentially even cause the missile to explode (catastrophic engine failure). While that is a matter of chance, I don't think many military planners would be willing to risk their expensive missiles on their own countermeasures. Secondly, if they designed their missiles to pass through the sand cloud, the Sand Rockets would still be shot down by the lasers at the maximum range. The kill missiles would become killable again the moment they passed through the sand cloud, and by that point the ship's defense systems would all be active and already aiming at the sand cloud, resulting in basically an instantaneous response. The element of surprise is the best friend of any anti-ship missile, since most ship defense systems take several seconds (3-5) to activate from standby, which is the reason for stealth missiles and the sea-skimming profile. The sand cloud is basically giving this up, doubly so if their delivery systems are 'less-smart'.