(SPOILERS) From David re: a certain ship's fate

I'm still waiting for the scene, where Zaghwair is going over the captured Dreadnaught and realizes that something is really different about the Charisian powder.

It makes brown smoke...

Now how do we duplicate that stuff?

Sure the RDN could make shells to fire out of Dreadnaught's guns, but they won't have the performance that Charis was getting.

Lower quality shells, and poor quality Dohlor black powder.

I'm looking forward to the first scene, where smokeless powder is used.

McGuinness, I'm not going to quote you since you're post is just 2 above this.

I see where you are coming from, and it might work out like that.

However, on a) while Thirsk's credit with the navy and the populace may currently be going up I don't see any evidence of the political class liking him any better. When the immediate sympathy for his shooting dies down, more than few are going to start criticising his judgement as seen in his inability to spot the 'fact' that his chief aid, who was party to all Dohlar's naval secrets/plans, was a Charisian spy. Especially if someone begins to wonder what the ICN fleet were doing in that bay in the first place, what target they might have been going for and who told them about it. The situation of turmoil you suggest explicitly requires that the Navy just got blown to bits or 'cravenly' surrendered, and it's hard to see how that's going to look good for Thirsk either, at least where his fellow aristocrats are concerned.

On b), even in your scenario, it looks like a race between the ironclads arriving and Clyntahn's orders to drag Thirsk off being implemented. Should Thirsk literally bet his life on the power of these ships he has never seen the like of, the Charisians having them finished in time and nothing else arising to change their deployment plans in the interim?

Randomiser wrote:When the immediate sympathy for his shooting dies down, more than few are going to start criticising his judgement as seen in his inability to spot the 'fact' that his chief aid, who was party to all Dohlar's naval secrets/plans, was a Charisian spy.

Well, he could perfectly argue that it wasn't his job - to look for spies. And the fact that Inquisition was also unable to found such high-placed spy, would, actually help to defuse situation a lot. The Dohlaran high-ranked nobility definitely would not want some wild "which hunt" in their own ranks. So, they would probably support Thirsk in that matter - just to defend their own positions.

Dilandu wrote:
Well, on Earth, Britain, France and other major naval power held inquiry pretty often, if something went screwed. In this case, they clearly have the situation with shipbuilding program.

That's one benefit of not having politicions in charge. Decisions can actually can made on merit. There's also the lack of politico's looking for scapegoats to throw under the bus.

Dilandu wrote:
The question would be "why we are chasing the wunderwaffe instead of building the large numbers of wooden steamships that we could already have"?

This argument could have been made about the original decision to build war galleons with their strange new sail plans rather than galleys and then arm them with newfangled cannons with trunions and carriages. It would have had just as much merit as well.

Dilandu wrote:
P.S. By the way, as i recall, they have only problems with 10-inch guns for KH's. They could just commission them in time with additional 8-inch guns placed instead of waiting for 10-inch guns.

I don't get the logic here. We can't make 10 inch guns until the gun factory is rebuilt, so let's use 8 inch guns that we can't build until the gun factory is rebuilt.

Dilandu wrote:
Basically, this is another demonstration that wunderwaffe chase is always the bad idea. When you started to pouring a large number of resources in some sort of superweapon that "would be so cool, that it would scare every enemy"- instead of producing the more standard weapons - it usually went wrong. The Charisians learn this a hard way...

So all those wunderwaffe that Charis has been building have been a huge mistake. The galleons, new cannon, breachloaders, ship armor, cased ammunition etc... have been a gigantic waste of time and effort on the part of Charis. Just imagine where they could be today if they hadn't wasted their time building any of this stuff.

Easternmystic wrote:

Dilandu wrote:
Well, on Earth, Britain, France and other major naval power held inquiry pretty often, if something went screwed. In this case, they clearly have the situation with shipbuilding program.

That's one benefit of not having politicions in charge. Decisions can actually can made on merit. There's also the lack of politico's looking for scapegoats to throw under the bus.

Dilandu wrote:
The question would be "why we are chasing the wunderwaffe instead of building the large numbers of wooden steamships that we could already have"?

This argument could have been made about the original decision to build war galleons with their strange new sail plans rather than galleys and then arm them with newfangled cannons with trunions and carriages. It would have had just as much merit as well.

Dilandu wrote:
P.S. By the way, as i recall, they have only problems with 10-inch guns for KH's. They could just commission them in time with additional 8-inch guns placed instead of waiting for 10-inch guns.

I don't get the logic here. We can't make 10 inch guns until the gun factory is rebuilt, so let's use 8 inch guns that we can't build until the gun factory is rebuilt.

Dilandu wrote:
Basically, this is another demonstration that wunderwaffe chase is always the bad idea. When you started to pouring a large number of resources in some sort of superweapon that "would be so cool, that it would scare every enemy"- instead of producing the more standard weapons - it usually went wrong. The Charisians learn this a hard way...

So all those wunderwaffe that Charis has been building have been a huge mistake. The galleons, new cannon, breachloaders, ship armor, cased ammunition etc... have been a gigantic waste of time and effort on the part of Charis. Just imagine where they could be today if they hadn't wasted their time building any of this stuff.

Of course. Charis would be better off with pikes, horse bows and Arblasts!!

Don

Easternmystic wrote:

Dilandu wrote:
Well, on Earth, Britain, France and other major naval power held inquiry pretty often, if something went screwed. In this case, they clearly have the situation with shipbuilding program.

That's one benefit of not having politicions in charge. Decisions can actually can made on merit. There's also the lack of politico's looking for scapegoats to throw under the bus.

A military "Board of Inquiry" isn't a political process, it is more akin to an "accident investigation" intended to discor what happened and how it can be prevented from happening again.

There will almost certainly be an inquiry, probably a formal Board of Inquiry, into the loss of two steamships, including the capture of one.

Easternmystic wrote:
So all those wunderwaffe that Charis has been building have been a huge mistake. The galleons, new cannon, breachloaders, ship armor, cased ammunition etc... have been a gigantic waste of time and effort on the part of Charis. Just imagine where they could be today if they hadn't wasted their time building any of this stuff.

Yes, you completely missed my point.

Please, learn the difference between the "superior weapon" and "superweapon" There is difference, and pretty sharp, actually.

To make things easier, let's look at the World War II and the USN shipbuilding.

The superior weapon way (real): the USN started to build a large number of not individually perfect, but quickly avaliable fleet carriers of "Essex" and "Independence" classes, and armed them with the F4F and latrer F6F fighters. None of this weapons were perfect, but they were superior to the cotemporary japanese, and they could be build quickly and in large numbers. And they won the Pacific War.

The superweapon way (charisian): if the USN decided to play Charisian, they would not build any fleet carriers in 1942-1944. Istead they would wait until the "Midway"-class supercarrier would be avaliable in 1945-1946; in hope that japanese would be so scared of this giant ships, that the IJN would surrender without actual combat. Also, the USA wouldn't build "Wildcat's" or "Hellcat's", but they would wait until the "Corsair" would be perfected.

Also, in the "superweapon" model the USA did not build any destroyers, escort ships, submarines or landing crafts in 1942-1944. Only a handful of cruisers as scouts and counter-raiders.

See the difference?

Basically:

The superior weapon is the best and most effective weapon that we could build without pulling resources from all other important programs and without disbalancing our military.

The superweapon is the weapon on which we concentrated all resources that we could pull from other areas without immediate disastrous consequenses. We hope that this superweapon would compensate for the weakening of our military, that the creation of superweapon caused.

I.e.:

- If you build great tanks, but still have enough capabilites to supply your military with other kind of weapons in sufficient quantites - i.e. cannons, aeroplanes, trucks, ships, ect., ect., ect., - you are building a superior weapon.

- If you build great tanks, but to build them you are forced to cancel gun production, reduce the aeroplanes production to minimal level, and ordering the navy to decomission half of the ships in the middle of the war - you are clearly building a superweapon. You better drop this idea; no matter how great your new tanks would be, they would not do much good, if you would have no artillery, no air force and no navy.

P.S. Must admit, it was, probably, better for Charisians. The wunderwaffe chaze is pretty new for Safehold. They learned the hard way, but eventually they understood perfectly, that the military should be balanced anytime.

Weird Harold wrote:
There will almost certainly be an inquiry, probably a formal Board of Inquiry, into the loss of two steamships, including the capture of one.

Er, they lost two sail ironclads. The problem was, exactly, that they haven't got any steamship avaliable in Dohlar Bay. If they have at least a few wooden steamers - even paddle-steamers - they would avoid the disaster.

Weird Harold wrote:
A military "Board of Inquiry" isn't a political process, it is more akin to an "accident investigation" intended to discor what happened and how it can be prevented from happening again.

There will almost certainly be an inquiry, probably a formal Board of Inquiry, into the loss of two steamships, including the capture of one.

I agree that the ICN will almost certainly go through the process of an inquiry; if for no other reason than to distribute a lessons learned.
One correction though; neither of the two lost ironclads were steamships - not even auxiliary screws. Making then even closer to obsolescent.