Optimal Charisian Navy (IMHO)

The Delthak works is huge. I read somewhere that Howsmyn employed over 60,000 workers of which 40,000 are at Delthak. And Howsmyn is not the only industrialist out there. I agree that deciding to build the KHs was not necessarily the best decision, but there is no question but what they can build them.

Gentlemen, we can't rewrite RFC's story for him. However real it usually seems to us, Safehold is entirely the product of David Weber's creativity. That means that if he says that the KHs are going to be launched and commissioned this summer, that's the way it is.

That really renders the dicussion of what the British, French, Russians or whoever did in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries irrelavant except for the fun of the mental exercise. Nothing at all wrong with that except that sometimes I get the uneasy feeling that the distinction between our opinions and David's creativity gets blurred. When that happens we are really no longer discussing David's books, bit our own ideas.

Don

There are similarities to Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century industrialization and technological development but they are not precise ones. There is a much larger set of machining etc. skills available at the start. They know what won't work and are avoiding dead end alleys. They have the backing of enormous computing power. Developing new designs would be quick. You just have to hide how you did your calculations. There are many reasons why the industrialization of Charis would be far faster than any comparable historical case.
I have my doubts about whether it could be as fast as in the books mostly because while there is a strong basic set of skills it would still take time to train the workforces. But I could be wrong.

Charis is not going down precisely the same path as Nineteenth century Earth. There will be combinations of technologies that did not occur here because different technologies would not develop at the same rate on Safehold.
The most important difference is their inability to use electricity. They will have to do work arounds for this. For example it will affect lighting and ventilation in ships, especially large ones. It will handicap fire control.
So there will be development stages skipped over. There will be other technologies not developed. For example Charis has decided not to make sea mines for now. If introduced they would be copied easily to the disadvantage of Charis. RFC has implied that someone will introduce them eventually but possibly not till after this war. Charis similarly will not introduce torpedoes. Spar and towed torpedoes are easy and someone will eventually introduce them but again probably not Charis. Locomotive torpedoes are more difficult and less obvious and might not be introduced at all.

n7axw wrote:The Delthak works is huge. I read somewhere that Howsmyn employed over 60,000 workers of which 40,000 are at Delthak. And Howsmyn is not the only industrialist out there. I agree that deciding to build the KHs was not necessarily the best decision, but there is no question but what they can build them.

Gentlemen, we can't rewrite RFC's story for him. However real it usually seems to us, Safehold is entirely the product of David Weber's creativity. That means that if he says that the KHs are going to be launched and commissioned this summer, that's the way it is.

That really renders the dicussion of what the British, French, Russians or whoever did in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries irrelavant except for the fun of the mental exercise. Nothing at all wrong with that except that sometimes I get the uneasy feeling that the distinction between our opinions and David's creativity gets blurred. When that happens we are really no longer discussing David's books, bit our own ideas.

Don

I think the phrase 'King Charles' Head' springs to mind

Ok, maybe lets return to the theme of discussion?

One thing to note is that RFC has a doctrinal preference for general purpose units and argues against specialized units. I suspect this is the influence of the American naval tradition.
Now this makes sense in the Honorverse. It made sense in the Pacific War where there was not a lot of shallow water around the islands. It makes sense with current naval technology.
But it was not such a good idea in European waters where there was much more coast offence in World War 1 and there had been much more coastal operations in the Nineteenth Century and earlier. There there was a need for specialized coast bombardment vessels and I think with the coastal operations that Charis does there is a need for more specialized coast offence vessels. This is cheaper than trying to make your capital ships do the job as appears to be the case with the King Haarald VIIs.

JustCurious wrote:One thing to note is that RFC has a doctrinal preference for general purpose units and argues against specialized units. I suspect this is the influence of the American naval tradition.
Now this makes sense in the Honorverse. It made sense in the Pacific War where there was not a lot of shallow water around the islands. It makes sense with current naval technology.
But it was not such a good idea in European waters where there was much more coast offence in World War 1 and there had been much more coastal operations in the Nineteenth Century and earlier. There there was a need for specialized coast bombardment vessels and I think with the coastal operations that Charis does there is a need for more specialized coast offence vessels. This is cheaper than trying to make your capital ships do the job as appears to be the case with the King Haarald VIIs.

According to textev, the "Cities" class ironclads are a more seaworthe craft designed primarily for work in coastal waters.

Don

n7axw wrote:

JustCurious wrote:One thing to note is that RFC has a doctrinal preference for general purpose units and argues against specialized units. I suspect this is the influence of the American naval tradition.
Now this makes sense in the Honorverse. It made sense in the Pacific War where there was not a lot of shallow water around the islands. It makes sense with current naval technology.
But it was not such a good idea in European waters where there was much more coast offence in World War 1 and there had been much more coastal operations in the Nineteenth Century and earlier. There there was a need for specialized coast bombardment vessels and I think with the coastal operations that Charis does there is a need for more specialized coast offence vessels. This is cheaper than trying to make your capital ships do the job as appears to be the case with the King Haarald VIIs.

According to textev, the "Cities" class ironclads are a more seaworthe craft designed primarily for work in coastal waters.

Don

As far as I know they do not have the ten inch guns of the KH VIIs. What I was suggesting is that if those guns are primarily for shore bombardment then they might best be put on a gun vessel of some similar shallow draft vessel rather than as an unnecessarily large gun on a capital ship. And perhaps a less ambitious central battery ship might have been available sooner. Though RFC has implied that triple expansion engines became available sooner than expected and this allowed them to skip some development stages.

Specialized coastal bombardment ships are well and good but secondary to your principal power projection platform. That platform needs to have the range to threaten any coast on Safehold. It needs weapons that can breach any known or defenses likely to be built in the near to midterm. It should be able to defend against weapons likely to be built in the near to midterm. That argues for a relatively large platform to mount those weapons, armour, fuel, engines, internal repair facilities and supplies.

Support ships to deal with specific situations might not have all these features. Since they don't they are limited in their use. A collection of platforms are needed to accomplish all the missions of that general purpose platform. I believe the USN concluded that relying on purely specialized units would require a great deal more tonnage than using a core of general purpose ships supported by specialists.

On Safehold, Charis' biggest need is to project force into the Gulf of Dohlar. The minimum size of ships that steam to Claw island and later to the other islands closer to Gorath isn't that much smaller than the KH VII. Smaller ships would have trouble mounting 10"ers and protecting against shells from similar weapons. As a means to schlepp around 4 10" guns on a well protected platform, the KH VII is a pretty efficient system.

The KH VIIs have two serious disadvantages in the shore bombardment role. Expense and draft.