Optimal Charisian Navy (IMHO)

Randomiser wrote:
Re WW2, escorts were certainly needed, but the war in the Pacific would have been lost without the carriers, i.e. capital ships, so the historical precedent is nowhere near as one-sided as Dilandu makes it out to be.

I normally disagree with a lot of Dilandu's thoughts and opinions, but I agree with him here on the initial concept... The need for capital ships was to fight other capital ships, which the Japaneses had. They were the 3rd most powerful navy at the time and had the Yamato class battleships. What capital ships do the NoG have?

In order to put this into perspective of Safehold terms, the war in the Pacific is more aptly what happened before the SoS, IMO. Island and naval battles to secure positions to leap frog to the mainland. With the threat of any true navy practically extinguished, there is no need at the current time to allocate production to the KHs when there are more pressing needs, such as changing production to increase output of materials needed for the army.

Randomiser wrote:I'm not an expert in naval warfare, perhaps those who are could comment, but the idea that you could replace 74 gun galleons on a one for one basis with gunboats which have exactly 5 guns total, only one of which is any longer ranged than the opposing galleon's weapons seems ludicrous.

But the problem is, that it's the right idea.

When the shell guns was invented, it became obvious, that you wouldn't need a lot of guns anymore. In 1850-1860, even before the ironclad era, the steam frigates with only one deck of shell guns practically replaced the screw ship-of-the-lines in all world fleets exept the British and French. You don't need a hundreds of shell guns to sunk a wooden warship. What you need, is a bigger shells to make more destructive effect in each hit. One big shell gun is generally better than a few small, because her shell could be much more powerfull.

Of the 74 guns of the galleon, only a guns on the lower gun deck coud be made effective shell guns. Because shell guns are heavy. Very heavy. You couldn't place them on the upper gun decks, without compromising the ships' stability. And all the guns that couldn't fire shells are useless in shell-guns era. The destructive power of solid shots is so ridiculously small in comparsion to the shells, that there is no reason to have a lot of non-shell guns on the ships anymore.

Another consideration. With the solid shot, to make the effect, you need the shot to come through enemy sides. It could be done only at the small distance. With the shell, all you need for shell is to get INTO the enemy sides - and the detonation inside the planking is, actually, even better than inside the hull.

So, the shell guns could work effectively on the much greater distance then solid shots. I.e. with a few big shell guns you could sunk the solid-shot armed enemy without even coming into the range of his guns. This is another reason to make shell guns BIG. The gunboat with, for example, one 11-inch smoothblre Dahlgren, could wreck the galleon armed with hundred of 36-pounders without even coming into the range of galleon's guns. Her single guns threw shell, that is much heavier - and have much more kinetic energy - than 36-pounder's.

How could a 74-gun sail galleon battle the one-gun steam gunboat? The galleon's ability to aim her guns is pretty limited, and the angle of fire isn't good either. The gunboat could easily stay out of range and out of the fire angle for the galleon boardside, and methodically pound the galleon with heavy shells until it would be wrecked. And even if the galleon manage to come into the gun range of gunboat - the galleon is big, towering target, and the gunboat is small. Very small.

About "what could the gunboat do", you could read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Selma_(1856)

CSS "Selma" vs USS "Masssachussets" was the pretty good poin about the power of gunboat. Basically, the more agile "Selma", armed with two big rifles, just stand outside of "Masssachussets" boardside smoothbores, and give a few nasty hits. And "Masssachussets", at least, was a propeller, too!

ChaChaCharms wrote:Little wooden gunboats are going to be, relatively speaking, eggshells and deathtraps with very little survivability. How effective can that be?

Pretty much effective. Because they are small and agile. It would be WERY hard to hit the gunboat evenwith the best 1860-1870th artillery - even if the guns of both sides are comparable. If the gunboat armed with a 1880-th rifled breechloaders, and against her is at best - the 1860th early banged rifles, the chances to actually damage the gunboat is pretty small.

For that matter, the galleons are far worse deathtraps. Because the gunboat at least protected by her small size and agility. The sail galleons are big and clumsy; it wouldn't be hard to hit the galleon.

Is it honourable for the ICN to produce such fragile new ships and ask people to serve in them when there are other options available?

Please. Charisians have guts at least as the same as the guys who served on hundreds of gunboats during the XIX century. Do you think, for example, that the French navy think about "is it honourable to produce such fragile new ships and ask people to serve in them when there are other options available?", when they build the torpedo boats? They just build them, and their crews was eager to serve on them!

Re WW2, escorts were certainly needed, but the war in the Pacific would have been lost without the carriers, i.e. capital ships, so the historical precedent is nowhere near as one-sided as Dilandu makes it out to be.

And let's recall how the Royal Navy was strained in 1940-1942, without the sufficient numbers of escorts? They were desperate enough to trade all their western naval facilites for the fifty outdated american destroyers! They even tried to trade their new "King George V"-type battleships for more cruisers and destroyers.

The fleet, that haven't got enough light utility units is, actually, in worse condition that the fleet, that haven't got enough capital ships. The US navy lacked the modern battleships and have only a handfull of fast carriers in 1942 and early 1943, but they have a lot of escorts to use. The Japan have a lot of battleships and plenty of carriers (at least light carriers) until 1944, but they lacked enough escorts, and were forced to transport reinforcements onboard the "Yamato"!

How does one project force with those small, short ranged iron clads? Why with a plethora of refueling ships, of course. Try refueling coal burners in open ocean. Dangerous proposition.

The strategic necessity for force projection is sufficient range to pose a threat to one's enemies or potential enemies. The minimum range required would be getting from Chisholm to Gorath Bay. Ships that can't do that pose an insufficient threat to the mainland. RFC has posted that the minimum tonnage required to have that range and carry enough armament was about 7,000 tons. That would mean a much thinner armour belt, 3-4 inches at most.

The mainland is rifling the heavy guns. That means heavier shots if not heavier effective shells. A 6" rifle firing slugs might well punch through 3-4 inches of armour. Not likely to do more that dent 6 inches or armour. Yes, the CoGA will make bigger rifled pieces. So what? Charis will build bigger ships with thicker armour. The entire process increases the amount of innovation everywhere on Safehold.

ChaChaCharms wrote:PeterZ wrote:

The threat the KH VIIs pose to mainland nations is sobering; Charis can sail into ANY harbor and flatten its defenses with relative impunity. Coupled with the ICAs demonstrated superiority, and the jihad becomes a decidedly unsafe proposition to join. That would not be the case without the KH VIIs.

I feel the need to disagree here. The EoC has already proven it can flatten a coastal city with likes of HMS Volcano, granted the angle guns were on wooden hull galleons.. but the concept still stands, replace the rifled breech-loading guns on the iron clads with angled breach-loaders and you will have the same effect from small mobile steam powered ships vs the shock and awe of massive ships of the line.

It will not be nearly as impressive to see the little black boxes float into the harbor compared to the massive KH, but it will get the job done.

If however the AoG develops a weapon capable of penetrating the hulls of the iron clads, it will be only a matter of time until they penetrate the KHs... which would show how much better off the EoC would be if it had focused on the quantity of quality ships instead of the quality of overkilling fire power.

The strength of Dilandu's arguement is that for the current task which for the short term to intermediate term future the job is commerce protection and surpression of commerce raiders. The ICN doesn't have enough hulls to manage that. So rather than build KHs, he proposes to put steam engines in light wooden boats.

Two difficulties with his idea. One is that the other side could start sending out raiders with explosive shells at which point his gun boats have to run or they're toast. The other is that given all the other places where steam engines are needed, there would quickly be a bottleneck.

So rather than focusing on wooden egg shells, I would suggest accelerating the ironclad program. You don't get your hulls as fast that way, but you do end up with better ships.

In an earlier discussion of the shortage of hulls, RFC commented or at least implied that lots of schooners are under construction. Given the fact that the convoys are sail powered, lack of steam engines is probably not a handicap. So as a short term fix, schooners are fine... at least until explosive shells start showing up.

Don

n7axw wrote:
Two difficulties with his idea. One is that the other side could start sending out raiders with explosive shells at which point his gun boats have to run or they're toast. The other is that given all the other places where steam engines are needed, there would quickly be a bottleneck.

Nothing like that. The wooden gunboats, sloops and cruisers served pretty well into 1880th, when the shells were common weapons!

Yes, they are vunerable. Are they too vunerable? No: their small size make them hard to hit. And armed with rifled guns, they could smash any raider from far beyound her effective artillery range.

The gunboat have and advantage of being the SMALL AND MANEUVRABLE target. And it work even in XX century.

Small gunboats don't have the range to keep up with the convoys. If those gunboats are only taking convoys from Tarot to Siddar City, that's ok but very limited utility. How does the ICN threaten the major mainland ports well beyond the reach of the ICA? It can't. That means the axis of advance becomes rather obvious and predictable. More lost lives is an unavoidable consequence.

Dilandu wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Two difficulties with his idea. One is that the other side could start sending out raiders with explosive shells at which point his gun boats have to run or they're toast. The other is that given all the other places where steam engines are needed, there would quickly be a bottleneck.

Nothing like that. The wooden gunboats, sloops and cruisers served pretty well into 1880th, when the shells were common weapons!

Yes, they are vunerable. Are they too vunerable? No: their small size make them hard to hit. And armed with rifled guns, they could smash any raider from far beyound her effective artillery range.

The gunboat have and advantage of being the SMALL AND MANEUVRABLE target. And it work even in XX century.

PeterZ wrote:Small gunboats don't have the range to keep up with the convoys.

On steam alone - haven't. On the sail&steam - pretty much have.

How does the ICN threaten the major mainland ports well beyond the reach of the ICA?

Currently it's incapable of threating any port, and even operating near the coastline with the exeption of several unseaworthy ironclads. With the gunboats, they could.

And let's not forget the french lesson during the war with Prussia in 1871! The big fleet of capital ships aren't good for action against the coastline, if they haven't a fleet of small crafts for support.

With the KH VIIs they can and will threaten any port they wish to. The ICN does have a massive fleet of small ships. Heck, they have a massive fleet of the most powerful ships on Safehold NOT including the KH VIIs.

The KH VIIs are meant as a weapons system that targets harbor forts. Not just current harbor forts but those in the near to mid term future. The ICN has sufficient capability to address any and every other naval threat.

Dilandu wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Small gunboats don't have the range to keep up with the convoys.

On steam alone - haven't. On the sail&steam - pretty much have.

How does the ICN threaten the major mainland ports well beyond the reach of the ICA?

Currently it's incapable of threating any port, and even operating near the coastline with the exeption of several unseaworthy ironclads. With the gunboats, they could.

And let's not forget the french lesson during the war with Prussia in 1871! The big fleet of capital ships aren't good for action against the coastline, if they haven't a fleet of small crafts for support.

PeterZ wrote:With the KH VIIs they can and will threaten any port they wish to. The ICN does have a massive fleet of small ships. Heck, they have a massive fleet of the most powerful ships on Safehold NOT including the KH VIIs.

The fleet, that are enormously outdated, costly, and unfitted for the type of warfare they faced. If the Church managed to arm a significant number of even small fast sail gunships with one or two of the Church new rifled guns - all Charisian galleons would be usefull only as firewood. Even the primitive, Parrot-to-Brooke-style rifled guns enormously changed the balance in favor of smaller and more agile wooden ships.

Simply speaking - if the Church managed to produce a hundred of their new rifled guns, and placed them on a hundred of Deshnarina raiders (with Church guncrews, of course!) - the current RCN would be Absolutely Awesome Screwed. Not only their blockade squadron would be forced to retreat (or be annihilated), not only the Charisian communications lines would be devastated, but even the turnover of the naval situation is possible.

Think about it. The Charisian Navy currently have:

- Obsolete galleons, that are no more than floating targets and have no real use

- Old-type sail shooners in unsufficient quantites

- A few ridiculous sail ironclad floating batteries, even without auxilary engines

- A few river ironclads, completely uncapable to FIGHT in open sea (they would jus sunk immediatly if they try to open gunports).

- And a single KH's somewhere near launch

What could they do, if the Church would play Jeune Ecole, and unleash an armada of a hundred fast sail raiders, armed with new rifled guns? They would be pretty capable of gutting any galleon squadron, fight the schooners on their own ground, and simply flee from the few ironclads, that Charis may send against them. And hunting the hundred of raiders in Safehold oceans with the single KH's... Is next thing to the useless waste of money.