HFQ Official Snippet #9

Hi ChrisD,

You raise an interesting question, but some of those require special cannon, and were never that effective to begin with, though tried many times.

Carronades firing 30 pound gun powder shells are comparatively far more lethal to the commerce raiders and their crews; while being much easier to mount, have smaller gun crews, and stress the ship much less etc.

All in all, a much better solution.

L

chrisd wrote:For defence against privateers would it not be advantageous for merchantmen to use "Langridge", "Chain", "Bar" or other "Dismantling Shot"?

A privateer with rigging and sails shot down cannot quickly overtake a merchant ship, especially if there is a convoy available

Not a navy expert, but those tactics would depend on highly trained gunners.

Gunners on merchant ships wouldn't be trained to the level that gunners on navy ships would be trained at.

For one thing, the average merchant ship couldn't afford the live firing that navy ships could afford. The price of the gunpowder and shot comes out of their profit. While it may be better to spend money there than to lose your merchant ship, the likelihood of needing to use the guns is less likely than it would be for navy ships.

Unless of course, the Charisian navy pays for the gunnery practice.

chrisd wrote:For defence against privateers would it not be advantageous for merchantmen to use "Langridge", "Chain", "Bar" or other "Dismantling Shot"?

A privateer with rigging and sails shot down cannot quickly overtake a merchant ship, especially if there is a convoy available

lyonheart wrote:Hi Don,

Nope.

No textev yet.

Which is why we wait for snippets.

I'd suspect sharing the production circles concept, along with Dohlar's production numbers, NTM Silkiah's, besides the temple lands; would act as enough of a goad to Siddarmark's gun makers to try to compete for their families' survival sake.

You'd think they were already 'highly motivated' to produce all they could, but now with the pressure off, thanks to the ICA, who knows?

L

n7axw wrote:Hi Lyonheart,

Your post up thread raises an interesting question about Siddarmark's rifle production. We know as of the last textev that it was quite low, but the rate was climbing upward.

Do we have any way to speculate on how much the rate has improved as of the end of LAMA?

Don

Hi Lyonheart,

Oh I don't think there is going to be a motivation problem for the Siddarmarkians... Revenge makes a fine substitute for survival as a motivator.

I have the impression the Howsmyn's methods are being introduced into Siddarmark which would mean assembly lines rather than circles.

Don

lyonheart wrote:Hi ChrisD,

You raise an interesting question, but some of those require special cannon, and were never that effective to begin with, though tried many times.

Carronades firing 30 pound gun powder shells are comparatively far more lethal to the commerce raiders and their crews; while being much easier to mount, have smaller gun crews, and stress the ship much less etc.

All in all, a much better solution.

L

chrisd wrote:For defence against privateers would it not be advantageous for merchantmen to use "Langridge", "Chain", "Bar" or other "Dismantling Shot"?

A privateer with rigging and sails shot down cannot quickly overtake a merchant ship, especially if there is a convoy available

Hi L
couple questions.
Which of the rounds mentioned require special guns? My recollection is is that all of them can be fired from "regular"guns.
Not sure untrained crews would be given the new exploding rounds. Do we know if the navy's providing trained gun crews to merchantmen?

EdThomas wrote:Hi L
couple questions.
Which of the rounds mentioned require special guns? My recollection is is that all of them can be fired from "regular"guns.
Not sure untrained crews would be given the new exploding rounds. Do we know if the navy's providing trained gun crews to merchantmen?

They didn'tr need the special guns, but their effective range is bad. They was usefull against simple pirate, but the Church-backed Deshnarina privateer may just stay outside the chain-shot range and pound the merchant with his guns. After all, the main reason for the Deshnarianb privateering is to inflict damage to Charis, so they aren't concered about the salvageability of the cargo as regular pirates.

Dilandu wrote:

EdThomas wrote:Hi L
couple questions.
Which of the rounds mentioned require special guns? My recollection is is that all of them can be fired from "regular"guns.
Not sure untrained crews would be given the new exploding rounds. Do we know if the navy's providing trained gun crews to merchantmen?

They didn'tr need the special guns, but their effective range is bad. They was usefull against simple pirate, but the Church-backed Deshnarina privateer may just stay outside the chain-shot range and pound the merchant with his guns. After all, the main reason for the Deshnarianb privateering is to inflict damage to Charis, so they aren't concered about the salvageability of the cargo as regular pirates.

Oh, I don't know... A few more cargos of M96s would probably be welcome. And even if it is purely civilian stuff it would probably help pay the expense of sending the raiders out.

Don

dwileye13 wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
True, but your groveling might have been more effective if you'd recalled that in addition to all those other minor commemorative dates, today is also the 62nd October 24th since a rainy day in Cleveland, Ohio, when Alice Godard Weber gave birth to a baby boy who grew up to annoy the hell out of everyone around him.

:

42 days older than me, Happy Birthday - - and many happy returns
Old Man

Happy if belated birthday to all you young people.

Hi USMA74,

Thanks for bringing up this important subject, while 50% DNBI losses in 11 month's seems bad, that's only around 25-30 per day, around 1/500-1/600 of the division's nominal strength according to the 1942 TO&E per day, although with all the extra attachments, it was probably even smaller, and accidents were quite common during the war, the Germans actually demotorized 10 whole infantry divisions in mid-1939 before the war began because the Army's accident rate was so much higher than the army's share of the motor vehicle production.

Besides winter weather could wreak havoc upon lazy soldiers who didn't maintain proper hygiene on things like trench foot even in the Korean war are shocking.

While the ICEF arrived in July and its now March, that's less than 7 month's, while Sympkyn arrived in September with the second echelon, and EHM with the major troop convoy arrived in late October, for less than 5 and 4 month's [possibly less than 100 days in Siddarmark, at the moment] respectively.

The lack of motor vehicles reduces the lethality of many accidents [they don't have jeeps that roll real easy] for the ICA, but I do wonder at what kind of very tough discipline they're proud they maintain, which of course includes Pasquale's sanitary proscriptions, that might be more powerful and effective than Earth's medical war record until the second world war.

Until RFC let's us know what the ICA's DNBI rate is, we can only guess.

If the Second Armored Division's rate were comparable, that would be around 6-700 per day given the ICA's combat force is around 360K in theater, after the September contingent arrived [end of November to February near Silkiah?], so individual replacements are certainly in order.

L

USMA74 wrote:Happy belated birthday RFC. Sorry about missing a good reason to beg for another fix.

Breaking subject/lane change.

The troop ships could be filled with individual replacements for EOC forces. Disease and non battle injuries (DNBI) take a huge toll of forces. Even forces with fairly up to date medical services. Did a noontime professional development class to my office on 17 October on the history of the U.S. 2nd Armored Division in World War II. The division lost almost half of its table of organization strength to DNBI during the war. (Yes it was to set a historical basis for everyone to watch the "Fury" movie.)

The management of replacements is a very complex process. May I suggest the book "Hell to Pay" by D. M. Giangreco for a discussion of how past and projected future casualties plaid a major part in the decision to push the Soviets into declaring war on Japan by the U.S. and the decision to use nuclear weapons.

Hi Ed Thomas,

Quite aside from DNBI casualty replacements, which might be up around 20,000 a month now, those troop ships might be carrying more specialized troops whose value has already been recognised; more mortars, in this case doubling the number of mortars for the dragoon brigades.

I posted before the first ICA battles that the dragoon mortars would be the most effective ICA weapon, making machine guns irrelevant for this war, due to their lethality and mobility, and the exchange rate so far seems to bear that out.

I believe there are 12 dragoon brigades in theater,and despite the 4th infantry brigade that had one regiment with only three battalions, I'm assuming the dragoons have 4 in each of theirs for 96 battalions, each needing another mortar platoon of 78 men for 7488 total.

We don't know how many troopships there were in the savaged convoy, which if the above were aboard then 9 troop ships would average 832, if only 8 then 936 each, 1070 for 7, etc.

While I suspect the scout snipers may have 6 mortars manned in their regiment [of 2 X 1000 man battalions?], for those times when it pays to reach out and touch someone, especially when they can't see where it came from; I suspect they may have at least another half dozen that other S/S are trained to use when juicy targets just demand to be hit.

L

EdThomas wrote:

AClone wrote:All right, so here's another question that struck me.

The roster lists "half a dozen troopships" in the attacked convoy, which was heading from Tellesburg to Siddar City.


I thought all of the Marines and ICA units were either already gone from Old Charis, or still in Chisholm. So...if no one has asked already, where did additional (presumably trained) troops come from?

I would have thought that new enlistees would be heading from Tellesberg, etc, towards Chisholm for training, not the front.

Somewhere in the Convoy Escort thread RFC said the troopships came from Corisande to Emerald where they linked up with the cargo carriers which had come from Tellesberg to pick up some mysterious stuff being manufactured in Emerald. The two convoys merged in Emerald and continued on to Siddar City. My old brain also seems to remember him saying the originating troopship escort turned around and returned to Corisande with another convoy.

PLEASE don't jump up and say the troopship escort should have remained with the troopships and not returned to Corisande since The Anvil is much closer to Desnair and all the piratical privateering bases. Not you, AClone,this is addressed to the more excitable members.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Ed Thomas,

Quite aside from DNBI casualty replacements, which might be up around 20,000 a month now, those troop ships might be carrying more specialized troops whose value has already been recognised; more mortars, in this case doubling the number of mortars for the dragoon brigades.
(snip)

I've always understood that in more modern armies, especially during prolonged "trench warfare" Scenarios, frontline units were regularly replaced.
I'd assume something like that should happen for the ICA as well. It all, depends on the need to beef up frontline unit by the ICA and SRA, of course. And I'm not aware of the current plans on that score. But I'd assume that the SRA should now be able to provide the necessary bodies provided EoC delivers the weapons.