The Navy of God against Charis naval superiority

the idiom 'piano in the bushes' is Russian in origin. it means to prepare [with great amount of planning] for a spontaneous event.

EdThomas wrote:What's a "piano in the bushes

An interesting Google Search?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Gorin wrote:Cultural impact

Many of Gorin's aphorisms became popular among the Soviet people, e. g. piano in the bushes,[citation needed] which means painstaking preparations for a would-be impromptu.[2] This particular one appeared in a humoresque called Quite accidentally by Arkanov and Gorin, published in that 1966 book.[3]

Dilandu wrote:

If Charis builds ships which are merely good enough to deal with the current situation, then there is a risk that those ships will not be sufficient for future needs. Something along the lines of the KH VII is going to have a much longer useful service life.

In theory - yes. But in that theory, Charis must immediately started to produce fuel for ballistic missiles and uranium for nuclear warheads; what if after 50-100 years, the Church started a revanche war in tferms of nuclear attacks against Tesselberg and Cherayth, and paratrooper invasion in Emerald and Tarot?

The problem is, that the current war is much more important for Charis that the possibility that some warships may be useful in some other war after. In order for this theory to work, it is necessary that some enemy ironclad fleet appeared in a very short period of time, during "King Haarald"'s proposed service life.

No nation in any Earth war ever do somethin like that. The United Kingdom don't laid up new battleships during First World War (although certainly could do it "for the future") and United States cancelled a great number of warships (including two half-finished battleships, one almost finished grandcruiser, more than nine state-of-art heavy cruisers and several heavy carriers) durin the later phase of World War II. By your logic, USA should had a frantic pace to finish building all twelve planned "Des Moines", just in case that some other navy could pull out of the hat a cruisers with autoloaders.

I'm gratified that you enjoy the Safehold books enough to worry about points like this, but I think you've completely missed several points I've made in other discussions about the ships. I assure you, that the Imperial Charisian Navy — and the inner circle — are neither insane nor ignorant of their industrial capabilities and limitations.

First, let me say a few things about the Alexandria bombardment to which you are referring. While the number of guns you are citing is impressive, one should remember that they were all rifled muzzleloaders; these are rifled breechloaders, with a much higher rate of fire, better shell design, and fuses (which, unlike Inflexible's) work quite reliably. Muzzle velocity is higher (which improves both accuracy and penetration), and the guns are designed to convert without modification to the use of nitrocellulose propellants and shall fillers.

In other words, there is something like 30-plus years worth of real-world artillery development difference between these guns' performance and those of the majority of the RMLs mounted by the British fleet and the fort defenses at Alexandria. As just one example of the difference between the ICN's current artillery and that used by the Brits at Alexandria, Inflexible's 16" 80 RMLs had roughly 20-foot gun tubes (the best numbers I have give 24’ lengths, but I’m pretty sure that includes the chamber) whereas the King Haarahlds’ 10” have 33-foot barrels (not including the chamber). This means the 16” had a muzzle velocity of about 1,500 fps and could penetrate about 2’ (24 inches) of wrought iron armor at point-blank range. The King Haarahlds’ 10” have a muzzle velocity (using “brown powder,” not the more powerful nitrocellulose which will eventually be available), of over 1,900 fps and can penetrate roughly 10” inches of “Howsmynized” face-hardened armor at 6,000 yards with a 90˚ impact. (Penetration will increase with the new propellants because MV will rise to well over 2,000 fps, but I digress.) Howsmynized armor is essentially the same as Krupp Cemented or Harvey Steel, which means that 10” of Charisian armor = approximately 20” of composite armor (iron plate with a wrought iron backing; the type of armor Inflexible’s guns were intended to defeat). While this means the 10” has less brute penetrating power, it should be pointed out that the range cited — 6,000 yards — is somewhat greater than the design range called for in the 16” gun’s penetration evaluation (which, I believe, was 2,000 yards). Rather more to the point, perhaps, these are “modern” — as in at least World War One vintage — breech-loading guns designed for “all around loading,” which means that they can fire as many as three rounds per minute (for a brief period; after the first few minutes, rate of fire would be decreased because of concerns about overheating and burning at the guns), whereas Inflexible’s weapons are muzzleloaders, which must be returned to the same bearing and elevation to reload after every shot, meaning that a sustained firing rate of one round every 10 minutes (with shells weighing over 1,600 pounds and powder charges of up to 400 pounds) was pretty darned good. (There’s also the minor problem, as the Brits discovered the hard way, that in a two-gun mount it is entirely possible for one rifled muzzleloader to fail to fire without anyone’s noticing, which allows the unfired gun to be double loaded for the next salvo, leading to a very nasty explosions and lots of dead people when the gun bursts.)

This means that in a 10-minute window, each 10” gun will fire up to 30 (but we’ll take that down to 25, to avoid excess barrel overheating and wear) 510-lb armor piercing shells for a total weight of fire of 12,750 while the 16” MLR will fire 1 shell for a total weight of fire of 1,600 pounds. In other words, the 10” is putting roughly eight times as much weight of metal on the target. The 10” gun’s black powder bursting charge is only about 9 pounds, which doesn’t sound like much, but is actually more than the British AP shells at Alexandria carried. Moreover, they will soon carry a 9 pound charge of high explosive, which will make them several times as powerful as they currently are. And, finally, the performance/reliability of the British fuses used at Alexandria was far, far, far lower than that of the ICN’s guns. That is, the Charisians can confidently expect an armor piercing shell to explode where and when it is intended to, whereas British doctrine at this time emphasized armor piercing shot, with no bursting charge, and the crudity of their fuses made it uncertain — at best — whether or not a given shell would explode on target even if it managed to hit it.

The point to all of this is that you aren’t even comparing apples to oranges when you compare these ships’ armament to that used at Alexandira. The Charisian guns are enormously more powerful, rapid firing, reliable, and accurate than the Brits’ fleet at Alexandria could boast.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure I posted the following somewhere on the forum some time ago. As the books made clear, the original King Haarahld design was significantly modified following the success of the Great Canal Raid. The new design is:

HMS King Haarahld 896 Redesign

Design Displacement:
11,400 Tons

Dimensions:
Length: 431’ 6”
Beam: 76’ 1”
Draft: 22’4”

Armament:
4 10”/40 (2 x 2 centerline with shields)
10 8”/40 (10 x 1 in casemates)
8 4”/45 (8 x 1 with shields)

Machinery:
2-shaft, triple expansion: 31,000 SHP

Speed:
28.3 knots (24.6 Old Earth knots)

Bunkerage:
Design: 2,500 tons
Maximum: 3,600 tons

Endurance:
7,143/10,286 miles @ 12.5 knots (10.9 Old Earth knots).
3,643/5,294 miles @ 21 knots (18.2 Old Earth knots)

Armor:
The main armor belt is 220’ long, 12’ deep, and 6” inches thick, tapering to 2” at the lower end. It extends from the main deck to 5’ below the waterline. The ends of the belt are closed by 5” armored bulkheads, and a secondary belt 2.25” thick extends from the ends of the main belt to bow and stern. The deck is protected by 1.5” armor.

The 6” guns are mounted in a casemate protected by 6” armor. The 10” guns are protected by open-topped gun shields with 6” faces and 4” side panels. The 4” guns are protected by gun shields with 2” faces and 2” side panels. All guns are capable of "all around" loading.

The belt armor is backed by 6” of Charisian teak, reduced from the original 12” following experience with the River-class ironclads in 896.



Third (and I know that I've discussed this point on the forums), everyone involved in their design recognizes that these are transitional ships which are not intended to be superior to all opposition in perpetuity. They are being built (and everyone in the inner circle knows this, whether or not it's been discussed generally by the ICN's officer corps) to lay down a measuring stake. These ships will be built, commissioned, and (hopefully) used in combat in the war against the Group of Four. That means there won't be any theoretical argument after the war among Safeholdian navies as to what constitutes the minimum warship they will have to be able to build if they are to have any hope at all of contending with the ICN in any future war. In other words, the ships are specifically designed to produce a naval arms race which is guaranteed to push Mainlander industrial development to the max. In this context, the thinking behind these ships is not "what do I need to defeat my enemies militarily" but rather "what do I need to defeat my enemies ideologically," which has been the entire long-term strategy of the inner circle from the beginning.

Fourth, there are other factors involved in constructing useful "power projection" vessels than armor thickness, gun power, and draft. Armor and gun power automatically drive up hull size. To carry a given weight safely aboard a seaworthy vessel requires a given displacement, and as the displacement goes up, so does the power required to drive that hull at any given speed and the bunkerage (fuel) to provide that power. If Charis wants to put sufficient gun power at sea under armor to take out hardened fortifications, then they have to build a hull big enough to carry it. And, of course, as size goes up, power increases, and the bunkerage to provide a useful operating radius increases in step. All of this means that, given proper design, a larger vessel will almost always have greater value and utility for power projection than a smaller vessel, and that in an ideal world every navy would build the larger ship. For close inshore and “brown water” work, smaller ships become more useful, but that’s not the purpose of the King Haarahlds. Ultimately, cost and production capacity also have to be figured in, which is why real-world navies can’t build ideal-world fleet mixes, but I address that consideration below.

Fifth, Charis has the industrial capacity to build these ships plus the smaller ironclads you are proposing, and those smaller ironclads are being built. They have much lower endurances, and hence a much reduced operating radius, compared to the King Haarahlds, and they also carry fire lighter guns (and weight of broadside). This means that their operational flexibility is much lower than that of the King Haarahlds, and that (unfortunately) is an inescapable consequence of their smaller size.

Sixth, you appear to be assuming that a 22'4" draft means that they can't come in close to engage coastal defenses. In most instances, they certainly can; if there isn’t deep water handy, people don’t tend to build heavy coastal fortifications that need heavy guns to suppress them. The King Haarahlds draw less than a foot more than USS Constitution, a 44-gun frigate built at the end of the 18th century, and more than 3 feet less than HMS Inflexible drew at Alexandria in 1882, and the water in most of the harbors where they are likely to be engaging heavy defenses is ample to permit them to come within point-blank range of the defenses. At that point, they will be effectively invulnerable to the shore guns and be able to engage targets ashore with 10" guns capable of penetrating 10” of Howsmynized steel armor and 8" guns capable of penetrating 7.5” of Howsmynized armor (all penetrations at 6,000 yards), each firing a round at least every 20-30 seconds or so as opposed to one round every 10 minutes or so. The current-generation Charisian 6" can penetrate only 4” of Howsmynized steel armor, by way of comparison between the weapons' performances.

I will cheerfully concede that the Eraystor-class coastal ironclads which you will be seeing shortly are absolutely capable of doing the job of dealing with most shore defenses. Their margin of superiority in terms of ballistic performance is lower (or will be) than you appear to be assuming, due to developments on the Church's size, but there's no question that enough of them could easily do the job of tackling the defenses of, say, Gorath. First, however, you have to get them there, which goes to that question of operational radius. Second, the industrial/cost benefit of building the smaller ironclads is smaller than you might think. By my calculations and applying the same industrial/costing formulas to the two ships, a King Haarahld will cost only about 2.5 times as much as an Eraystor-class seagoing ironclad. Personnel costs for the two ships are roughly 600 for the King Haarahld versus 300 (actually about 280, but I’m rounding up) for the Eraystor. The Eraystor has a broadside of fourteen 6” guns, with a weight of broadside (5 minutes’ fire) of 27,300 pounds versus King Haarahld’s broadside of four 10”, five 8”, and for 4” guns, for a (5-minute) weight of broadside of 51,650 pounds, and aside from the 4” (which provide only 3,400 lbs — 06.5% of the total) each shell has much greater individual penetrating power and explosive effect. The one advantage of the Eraystor as a class is that for the same investment you can be in twice as many places at once, which is not to be sneered at but certainly doesn’t suggest that Charis “can’t afford” to build King Haarahlds as well as the smaller, lighter draft ships.

In other words, while it may appear to you that these are absolutely the wrong kind of ships for Charis to be building at this point, neither the Imperial Charisian Navy — nor your humble servant — agrees with you.

Edited to correct embarrassing gaffe. Eraystor's broadside guns are 6" weapons, not 16". I estimate she'd have to be about 85,000 tons to mount that many sixteen-inchers!

wow I love DW info dumps!

EdThomas wrote:

Dilandu wrote: dangerously close to the piano in the bushes,

What's a "piano in the bushes [/quote]

The russian idiom for the theoretically possible, but highly unlikely events. The original was "I play the piano perfectly. Oh, by accident there is a piano standing in the bushes, and I'll demonstrate it now."

runsforcelery wrote:In other words, while it may appear to you that these are absolutely the wrong kind of ships for Charis to be building at this point, neither the Imperial Charisian Navy — nor your humble servant — agrees with you.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. There is still some doubts but it make the whole situation a lot more clear. Thank you!

these are rifled breechloaders, with a much higher rate of fire, better shell design, and fuses (which, unlike Inflexible's) work quite reliably. Muzzle velocity is higher (which improves both accuracy and penetration), and the guns are designed to convert without modification to the use of nitrocellulose propellants and shall fillers.

I have my doubts that such guns in general can be made in the conditions of an industry that has only recently begun industrialization. Everything I read about the manufacture of large naval guns in the 19th century - it is an extremely complex process, requiring skilled labor. Not just training, but also experienced.

Fifth, Charis has the industrial capacity to build these ships plus the smaller ironclads you are proposing, and those smaller ironclads are being built.

But they were able to build in just a few years, the industry is comparable with the industry for at least the 19th century Spain? The Japan took more than three decades to just start building modern armored cruisers and almost four decades to produce big naval gun in anything like sufficient quantity. AND, the Italym the Japan and the Soviet Union had the opportunity to buy industrial equipment, not to build it all by themselves.

runsforcelery wrote:In other words, the ships are specifically designed to produce a naval arms race which is guaranteed to push Mainlander industrial development to the max. In this context, the thinking behind these ships is not "what do I need to defeat my enemies militarily" but rather "what do I need to defeat my enemies ideologically," which has been the entire long-term strategy of the inner circle from the beginning.

I don't think you can emphasize this point enough.

Weird Harold wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:In other words, the ships are specifically designed to produce a naval arms race which is guaranteed to push Mainlander industrial development to the max. In this context, the thinking behind these ships is not "what do I need to defeat my enemies militarily" but rather "what do I need to defeat my enemies ideologically," which has been the entire long-term strategy of the inner circle from the beginning.

I don't think you can emphasize this point enough.

Yeah, until I saw this I was thinking "yeah, the KHVII's really do seem way overkill".

That's interesting though, because it seems to imply that the Inner Circle expects the hostility between Charis and the Mainland to go on long-term rather than be settled in the next year or two or three.

Napoleon said the moral to the physical is as three to one. No competent naval officer (Thirsk) is going to be relaxed about any operation which might meet one (let alone three)of these ships. Less competent officers? Who knows? But effectively the first time one of these monsters is spotted and the news gets around the ICN will have naval supremacy for the forseeable future.

I would have been remarkably unhappy if my frigate had come within the range of the new Kirov class! Last stand fights like 2nd Sirte in WW2 have sometimes succeeded where the opposition has fear or constraints but at present at least the ICN is the best organised and most experienced war fighting navy in the history of Safehold. So its enemies will know they are outclassed before they start with a corresponding decline of morale. Look at the stagnation and fate of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet after it failed to break the blockade and fighting power of the Royal Navy at Jutland.

My understanding is that by choice a navy always builds the most powerful possible vessels for it's battleline. Why would it choose otherwise? (Of course there are financial constraints that might hinder that.)

Dilandu wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:In other words, while it may appear to you that these are absolutely the wrong kind of ships for Charis to be building at this point, neither the Imperial Charisian Navy — nor your humble servant — agrees with you.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. There is still some doubts but it make the whole situation a lot more clear. Thank you!

these are rifled breechloaders, with a much higher rate of fire, better shell design, and fuses (which, unlike Inflexible's) work quite reliably. Muzzle velocity is higher (which improves both accuracy and penetration), and the guns are designed to convert without modification to the use of nitrocellulose propellants and shall fillers.

I have my doubts that such guns in general can be made in the conditions of an industry that has only recently begun industrialization. Everything I read about the manufacture of large naval guns in the 19th century - it is an extremely complex process, requiring skilled labor. Not just training, but also experienced.

Fifth, Charis has the industrial capacity to build these ships plus the smaller ironclads you are proposing, and those smaller ironclads are being built.

But they were able to build in just a few years, the industry is comparable with the industry for at least the 19th century Spain? The Japan took more than three decades to just start building modern armored cruisers and almost four decades to produce big naval gun in anything like sufficient quantity. AND, the Italym the Japan and the Soviet Union had the opportunity to buy industrial equipment, not to build it all by themselves.

Why do people persist in describing Safehold as "an industry that has only recently begun industrialization"?

Safeholdian technological capabilities — I'm speaking here of metallurgy, toolmaking, and the availability of skilled craftsmen — were probably on a par with, say, 1850 without steam power or electricity. Yes, their artillery pre-Merlin was extraordinarily crude in design, but there was nothing especially crude about its manufacture. The same is true, in many ways, about their galleons, which were still in the process of development as a type, but whose manufacturing standards were very high. The main thing that Safeholdian industry lacked pre-Merlin (aside from steam power and electricity) was a universal system of standardized measure. Go back and look at what I've said about the plumbing industry, for example, in relationship to the development of breech-loading rifles. These people understood precision in manufacturing; the problem was that they were still producing as individual craftsmen and did not yet have the concept of interchangeability of parts and the degree of mass production of parts and the inspection processes necessary to produce those parts to common, repeatable dimensions and specs.

Look, they already have highly sophisticated applications of wind and water power — go back and look at my comments on the Corisandian water supply arrangements in Manchyr, just for starters. They know how to make crucible steel of relatively high-quality but in relatively low quantities. They know how to make "blackheart iron," which is essentially a much less expensive substitute for wrought iron (which they also know how to make) but which requires a very skilled foundry master, since it's all still being done empirically. They know how to make very high quality bronze/brass. The problem is volume production of iron and steel, and that requires innovation. This is not the situation of Earth's industrial revolution in which it was necessary to train the workmen from the ground up. This is a situation in which a muscle/wind/water-powered society has been producing consumer goods which are as sophisticated as anything available to a mid-to late-19th century society in relatively high volumes by having lots and lots of skilled artisans because (outside Harchong and [possibly] Desnair, whose industry is the most backward of all), agricultural production is vastly higher on a per-farmer basis. That means that the demographics — the availability of skilled workers/artisans — is significantly different (higher) than anywhere on Earth during the early periods of industrialization.

Add to that the fact that thanks to Merlin and Owl, Howsmyn (whose Delthak operation is rather larger now than Krupp of Essen had managed on the eve of the First World War) doesn't make any critical mistakes in the development of new industrial techniques and capabilities. He may not always do things in the most optimum possible way, since part of the process here is to involve as many people as possible in the innovation process, but he and the inner circle do not allow "blind alley" projects and are able to provide the supporting infrastructure — the inspection techniques and gauges, the concept of the assembly line, metallurgical formulations, the proper temperatures and chilling processes to produce face-hardened armor, et cetera — which had to be developed from the ground up in real-world industrialization.

I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of the Delthak Works to the survival of Charis or the speed at which advanced techniques are being introduced all across the Empire of Charis. If it were possible for Zhaspahr Clyntahn to call in a rakurai strike on Delthak and the satellite facilities Howsmyn is well on the way to constructing in both Charis and Chisholm, the war would be over — probably in less than a year — with an overwhelming victory for the Group of Four. Whether or not they would be able to stay on the back of the tiger after militarily defeating Charis is another question entirely, but it really is the Delthak Works, as much as Baron Green Valley's adaptation of Terran military history and techniques to Safehold, which has allowed Charis to survive.

Japan doesn't really suit your purposes for your example all that well. Commodore Perry visited Japan for the first time in 1853. At that time, Japan was a feudal society with no advanced industry (by 19th century standards) and in which it was illegal to build a vessel larger than 50 tons. Japan then fought a civil war which ended only in 1869, which was fought largely with weapons purchased from foreign powers, not produced by domestic manufacture. The first authorized construction program of the Japanese Imperial Navy was not authorized until 1875. As part of that program, they ordered three armored vessels from Great Britain and built some relatively simple, wooden-hulled vessels under French supervision at Yokohama. Despite the fact that Japan had no steel industry in 1860, that the only real resource for industrialization Japan possessed was coal, and that Japan completely lacked the large numbers of skilled artisans/craftsmen Safehold possessed before Merlin's arrival, Japan still managed to lay down its first iron-hulled ship (with British assistance) in 1882, only seven years after deciding that a genuine navy was necessary. By 1890, Japan was beginning to build vertical triple expansion engines in Japan, although naval ordnance was still beyond Japanese capabilities. By 1905 and the Russo-Japanese War, the Japanese were able to produce armored cruisers with 7" armored belts domestically. By 1905, Japan had laid down domestically the first two Satsuma-class battleships (which could be considered proto-dreadnoughts) in Japanese yards to a Japanese design using Japanese ordnance (manufactured under license from Vickers). By 1911, her naval program was able to produce everything required to build a complete, modern, steel-hulled navy — from battleships to torpedo boats — including ordnance, domestically. )This, by the way, is rather better than I am postulating Charis can build in 897 YoG.)

The best figure I have for Japan's population in 1853 is about 37,500,000, in what amounted to a subsistence-level economy. This is about twice the population of the Kingdom of Charis (about 240%, actually), but in a country with no domestic industry, no real exports or contact with the outer world, a state of agriculture which required a huge percentage of the total labor force just to feed itself, and a societal/cultural mindset directly opposed to modernization and industrialization. Under the circumstances, given the difference in starting points and the survival impetus to improve from that starting point and the availability — courtesy of Merlin and Owl — of all of the necessary knowledge, it doesn't strike me as unreasonable that Charis could compress roughly 28 years (1876-1904) into a quarter of that length (890-897).

Again, I think people persist in misunderstanding the Safeholdian starting point. There are what I fondly imagined were numerous hints scattered all through the books that underscore the fact that Safehold in 890 YOG is not Old Earth in 1650, yet the degree of existing infrastructure — not just in Charis, but in the Temple Lands and Dohlar — is consistently underestimated. I will readily admit that I am making some optimistic assumptions about the process in Charis, but I don't think they are unreasonably optimistic. You may disagree, but my understanding of the starting point for the society and the planet I created as the backdrop for this entire story tells me that Charis' accomplishments — and the tsunami of shockwaves they are sending out across the rest of an essentially static planetary society — are completely in line with the capabilities of that society. Nobody on Safehold, including Merlin, truly realized the extent to which the entire planet was a compressed spring, waiting to launch a furious spate of innovations and technological advances which had been dammed up by the Church for the better part of 800 years, given that Safehold started with a far more sophisticated toolbox than Old Earth enjoyed anytime prior to the end of the 19th century. That's what readers need to understand if they want to put the Safeholdian rate of progress into context with the historical rate of progress here on Earth in real life.