Army mortars v screw galleys

Silverwall wrote:

Hooked wrote:The Go4 has come up with something Russian katyusha rockets from WWII.
Chairis is going to produce a better version using Lewsite(sp?) (like dynamite)
Is it possible to have a multiple rocket launcher on a ship. Enough explosions, even just close to a screw may be enough to damage its hull? It may not be necessary to hit the screw galley. Just like horseshoes, close enough is all you need.

Mount the Katyusha's to fire over the front of a galley and they could be practical harbour defence weapons. Probably won't do much to a true ironclad but the open topped ships and older galleons would be in trouble.

n7axw wrote:Nice post, Silverwall. Like Keith said, it sort of takes the wind out of my sails. But, oh well, I guess I can still blow hot air.. On a more serious note, let's see if we can flesh out the discussion just a bit more.

Silverwall wrote:
Accuracy of mortars from ships is historically known to be complete shit. Read about the bombardment of the forts protecting New Orleans during the civil war. Firing on a massive immobile target from a moored flat bottomed craft specifically designed as a mortar platform they missed something like 75% of the shots. The complexities of dropping trajectories is massively more complex than you assume, literally a single degree of roll can cause you to miss your target by several hundred feet.

I take your point. However, against the screw galleys, the battle will be mostly in sheltered waters such as inlets and coastal waters, or perhaps, enclosed bays like in HFQ. That would make a bit of a difference for the aiming, I would think. But even so, your point is well taken.

Silverwall wrote:
The other issue is that for accurate mortar fire you need very consistently burning and consistently sized propellant charges, something that is not really doable with black powder.

Brown powder is already available for the ICN and smokeless powder will be available shortly. This is just an extraneous thought, but could mortar shells be designed as effectively as shells for angle guns?

Silverwall wrote:
As for your idea of using shrapnel from above on crew it will work once maybe and then just putting some light 1" or less timbers or plyboard above the heads of the gun crews will negate all effectiveness as shrapnel from a mortar will only be falling at terminal velocity + a small amount from the bursting charge. A lot of what made Napoleonic shrapnel powerful was the horizontal velocity of being fired from a long barreled cannon.

How effective your plywood would be would be dependent upon the powder, I would think, or the size of the shell you were able to use the pound the plywood with. But still, after that is said, virtually everything has a counter so one could also shelter with iron or steel, except in the case of the screw galleys they are probably not going to be able to handle a lot more weight than they already have.

Silverwall wrote:
Finally with all due respect shredding the sails is not actually that important in a sea fight, The real aim is to cut the rigging that controls them and or the masts/spars so the sails loose all power.

cutting one halyard or stay has the same effect as punching hundreds of holes into the body of the sail. Also with the projectiles coming almost straight down there will be very few sail hits as the sails are oriented parallel with the direction of travel. Again you would get better results with shrapnel fired horizontally from a long gun perpendicular to the sail.

OK, I get the point. The bursting charge would have to be either to the front or the rear of the galley to have the horizontal impact you are talking about. There would be some, but not to the extent of a directly driven shell. Again, the kind of powder used in the shell would be important to how effective this could be.

So what this ends up amounting to is that my original idea is impractical as proposed. But perhaps there could be some modification of it that would work.

Don

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Darman wrote:Now, obviously this would be a bit of a regression technology-wise, but would mounting a powerful catapult-launcher be an effective weapon against screw-galleys? The idea would be to arc projectiles up and over the armored bow to hit the unprotected decks. To negate the inaccuracy problem, create cluster-projectiles that will break up into smaller incendiary devices, showering down like shrapnel onto the decks of the screw galley, setting it on fire, or at least distracting its crew from cranking or manning the guns as they try to put out the many fires. Its not something that should be considered back home and manufactured accordingly, but something that can be made up pretty quickly on the front-lines as a stop-gap measure and mounted on individual galleons. I'm not certain how far the range would be, nor how large the projectiles could be, or would they have to be a minimum size in order to be effective?

n7axw wrote:Humm... You mount them in the bow in front of the rigging or in the stern... Doesn't seem to to be any insurmountable problems here...

Don

Darman wrote:Now, obviously this would be a bit of a regression technology-wise, but would mounting a powerful catapult-launcher be an effective weapon against screw-galleys? The idea would be to arc projectiles up and over the armored bow to hit the unprotected decks. To negate the inaccuracy problem, create cluster-projectiles that will break up into smaller incendiary devices, showering down like shrapnel onto the decks of the screw galley, setting it on fire, or at least distracting its crew from cranking or manning the guns as they try to put out the many fires. Its not something that should be considered back home and manufactured accordingly, but something that can be made up pretty quickly on the front-lines as a stop-gap measure and mounted on individual galleons. I'm not certain how far the range would be, nor how large the projectiles could be, or would they have to be a minimum size in order to be effective?

n7axw wrote:

Darman wrote:Now, obviously this would be a bit of a regression technology-wise, but would mounting a powerful catapult-launcher be an effective weapon against screw-galleys?

I would imagine that pretty much the same arguments that apply to mortars would apply to catapults. And they would be even less precise.

Don

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Silverwall wrote:Historically the correct answer to heavy armouring itsn't to try and bypass the armour with arcd fire becasue that is unworkable as demonstrated. The correct answer is to either build a bigger gun as part of the gun/armour race or to let water in below the waterline thus bypassing the armour. This can either be a ram which was innefectually popular at the start of the steam era or a torpedo.

Given that Charis has access to Owl a torpedo is a far more realistic idea and it can be run off compressed air with no electricty if necessary. Short ranged but that is all that is needed.

JeffEngel wrote:

Silverwall wrote:Historically the correct answer to heavy armouring itsn't to try and bypass the armour with arcd fire becasue that is unworkable as demonstrated. The correct answer is to either build a bigger gun as part of the gun/armour race or to let water in below the waterline thus bypassing the armour. This can either be a ram which was innefectually popular at the start of the steam era or a torpedo.

Given that Charis has access to Owl a torpedo is a far more realistic idea and it can be run off compressed air with no electricty if necessary. Short ranged but that is all that is needed.

On the other hand - it's liable to approximate duplication by the Temple, and Charis at sea succeeds most particularly because it's got steam engines and armored ships. (And existing fleets, manufacturing and ports and the will to mess up the ports and manufacturing of would-be rivals now.) Mediocre mobile torpedoes would be horrible things to have the Church use. Charis giving them the idea for them to counter a niche Dohlaran navy weapon may be too high a price for their value yet.

Rams, by contrast, aren't going to be all that effective against an armored, steam-powered ship on anything short of another armored, steam-powered ship. A ram on a screw galley is going to have a challenge maneuvering to ram an armored steamship; it's going to suffer egregious damage in the attempt; and it may just make a lot of noise and rocking with the force of its impact if there's any below the water line armoring or internal compartmentalization. The armored steamship hitting the screw galley will break it in half and move on to the next.