A question about the battle of Saltash

drothgery wrote:

saber964 wrote:It depends whose SD's are being shot at. SLN SD's would be in a world of hurt being hit by Mk16, remember the mk16 has the hitting power equal to capital missile circa 1905 PD which is roughly where the SLN SD are at.

It's worse than that for the SLN. Their warships are effectively pre-laserhead designs. The RMN started rolling out designed-for-laserhead ships with the Star Knight in the 1880s.

Their smaller ships are probably better - the smaller the ship is, the more often it appears to be refreshed. However, the SLN CAs, CLs and DDs may be designed with laserheads in mind, but the RMN ships are designed for 3-4 major tech iterations past that.

We're not talking about missile heavy Burks vs 1940s Iowas anymore, we're discussing AD 2030 Zumwalts armed with Railguns and Free Electron Lasers vs pre-WWI Dreadnaughts, where a Zumwalt sits 140 KM away and devastates a formation of Dreadnaughts with railgun plunging fire they are not armored against, and if they are able to close, the laser will at least ruin their superstructure and firecontrol. (Not to mention the Zumwalt has radar, visual audio and radar stealth, satellite coverage, a 15 knot speed advantage, computerized firecontrol and maping, high speed communications, extended range torpedoes, and sighting drones, in addition to a Burk's missiles)

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:But the US of 1941 isn't the Sollies. The Sollies don't like to upset the applecart. And they're not going to develop such officers at present because they're so overmatched. Anyone with the potential to become a good officer is almost certainly going to see the writing on the wall and do whatever the Manties command, up to and including scuttling. That's going to get them demoted or cashiered, not promoted.

They have two options, change or lose. Surrender now is certainly an option, and time'a wasting it they are not going to change. And the head of the SLN knows this. Even Czarist Russia found some effective leaders.

The thing is they have to actually fight in order to get better--and anyone who fights dies. They'll lose before they can get their act together.

munroburton wrote:

Theemile wrote:The admiral (Cleary?) he was assigned to was sent home on a Manty messenger to deliver the news and detailed TAC recordings in person. If the admiral was smart (and Byng's flag captain was able to inform him sufficiently of such), he would have brought back the 1 person who saw this coming and no one listened to. If so, our plucky lieutenant is no longer on New Tuscany, and the SLN leadership has his 2 reports and any follow up he wrote while returning to Sol with the TAC details.

I'm afraid not. O'Cleary did indeed get sent to Sol, but she was the third in command of Crandall's task force.

Evelyn Sigbee's report was passed to Sol, but the admiral(and her staff) remained in New Tuscany. It was unclear whether the Lieutenant's original reports even left Byng's flagship, although of course he's got plenty of time to reproduce them now.

Oh yeah... I just realised the SLN personnel at New Tuscany weren't taken prisoners, just left with lobotomised ships. They have as much freedom of movement as the NT government allows them.

Which was probably a lot. The NTs were trying to pick a fight with the Manties, with Sollie support. Having the survivors around is kind of embarrassing for all concerned. They wouldn't have tried to stop Sigbee leaving, though it might take a while to arrange transport for her 40–50k people. We never do find out what happened to them, though it would have been funny if they'd made it back to Meyers ... in late June of '22.

noblehunter wrote:For the record, the discussion is not if DDs can destroy SDs but whether or not they can do it before they run out of missiles.

Does that strike anybody else as a little bit nuts?

No, what it's showing is how fundamental the difference is between Mantie and Sollie weapons tech.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

noblehunter wrote:For the record, the discussion is not if DDs can destroy SDs but whether or not they can do it before they run out of missiles.

Does that strike anybody else as a little bit nuts?

No, what it's showing is how fundamental the difference is between Mantie and Sollie weapons tech.

Which is nuts!

cthia wrote:
No, what it's showing is how fundamental the difference is between Mantie and Sollie weapons tech.

Which is nuts! [/quote]

It may sound nuts to us who have been in a fairly stable naval tech environment for the last 50+ years but I can think of recent historical precident for how badly outclassed the sollies are.

The most obvious is the dreadnought race in the pre WW1 era. Imagine taking admiral Togo's battleships from Tsushima and putting them up agains the 5th battle squadron from Jutland a mere 11 years later.

Togo's ships are predreadnoughts less than 10 years o;d and have 4 x 12" guns each and a realistic top speed of 18k and an effective speed of more like 16k are visiable from miles away because of coal firing and no long range targeting devices beyond the Mk 1 eyeball.

The 5th battle squadron has Queen Elizabeth class superdreadnoughts equiped with 8 X 15" guns, fire control devices designed for firing to the horizon more armour, much less smoke due to being oil fired so lower visibility and most importantly a theoretical top speed of 25k and an effective speed of 23k.

Even under the command of admiral Evan-Thomas who is somthing of a real life Elvis Santino in terms of being promoted on social merit and who's performance at Jutland is considered to be fairly mediocre the QE's will shred the Japanese ships with ease taking at most one-two hits. The difference would be even worse a year later when the brits have absorbed all the lessons of Jutland and improved rangefinding and firecontrol and greatly improved shell quality.

Silverwall wrote:

cthia wrote:
No, what it's showing is how fundamental the difference is between Mantie and Sollie weapons tech.

Which is nuts!

It may sound nuts to us who have been in a fairly stable naval tech environment for the last 50+ years but I can think of recent historical precident for how badly outclassed the sollies are.

The most obvious is the dreadnought race in the pre WW1 era. Imagine taking admiral Togo's battleships from Tsushima and putting them up agains the 5th battle squadron from Jutland a mere 11 years later.

Togo's ships are predreadnoughts less than 10 years o;d and have 4 x 12" guns each and a realistic top speed of 18k and an effective speed of more like 16k are visiable from miles away because of coal firing and no long range targeting devices beyond the Mk 1 eyeball.

The 5th battle squadron has Queen Elizabeth class superdreadnoughts equiped with 8 X 15" guns, fire control devices designed for firing to the horizon more armour, much less smoke due to being oil fired so lower visibility and most importantly a theoretical top speed of 25k and an effective speed of 23k.

Even under the command of admiral Evan-Thomas who is somthing of a real life Elvis Santino in terms of being promoted on social merit and who's performance at Jutland is considered to be fairly mediocre the QE's will shred the Japanese ships with ease taking at most one-two hits. The difference would be even worse a year later when the brits have absorbed all the lessons of Jutland and improved rangefinding and firecontrol and greatly improved shell quality.[/quote]


More like Togo at Tsushima vs W A Lee at Samar.

saber964 wrote:More like Togo at Tsushima vs W A Lee at Samar.

Do you mean Willis Augustus (Ching) Lee, VADM, USN, commander of BATDIV 6 at the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal? He had USS Washington (BB 56) and USS South Dakota (BB 57) under his command, flying his flag aboard Washington. Washington engaged in a successful one-on-one duel with IJS Kirishima.

He was considered an expert in the then new technology of radar, which he used to great success against Kirishima. In Sep 1944, he was Commander, Battleships, Pacific Fleet and was with Halsey chasing after the carriers of the Japanese Northern Force. He would have been the commander of TF 34, if Halsey had deployed his fast BB to guard the San Bernadino Strait.

Lee's presence at Samar is most noticeable by his absence.

"Turkey trots to water. Where, repeat where, is TF 34? The world wonders."
msg from CINCPAC to COM3FLT

The force imbalance in middle size ships is worse than that; many other posters have already commented on that -- but I thought I'd address a very small aspect relative to the EW capabilities which create that force imbalance to begin with. Then insert the Mod-G warhead as the finisher.

Here's a comparable: take the WW-II battleship Bismarck against any current generation US surface ship WITHOUT radar or air cover, and within range of the Bismarck's main battery. The result would likely be a lot like history, see the wikipedia article at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ba ... p_Bismarck

That is, several ships sunk including a comparable size battleship, and a task group in danger while maneuvering to take out that ONE ship. The Bismarck PLUS radar could still defeat nearly any small non-missile third world navy all by itself, and terrorize the waters it patrolled until it retired.

Now then, fast forward to a single 199X forward US missile cruiser engaging a fleet of Bismarcks, all trackable by that single smaller ship, plus for kicks and giggles, let's give the cruiser a couple of P3-Orions flying detection and cover. he cruiser's missiles also give the cruiser the ability to fire from well beyond the battleship task group's range.

It doesn't matter how those battleships maneuver, they can't escape targeting, and worse yet, the missiles' own EW final acquisition routines practically guarantee a hit. Bad day to be on the Bismarck's, yes?

In the Honorverse at Saltash, a single Sag-C carrying a full pod loadout and all 16-G's would have taken out the four Solarian battlecruisers just about as quickly as Zavala's DD's. Make it eight or sixteen- same difference. The force imbalance doesn't change until you stack up enough targets that the RMN cruiser has to shoot itself dry of offensive missiles, and you still have enough undamaged ships to englobe and close on the RMN ship which for some plot reason will not maneuver to escape. (say like defending a planet a la HotQ) Otherwise, the -C's commander saves enough missiles to blow an opening in the globe and escapes rather easily, re-arms and comes back for round two.

SharkHunter wrote:The force imbalance in middle size ships is worse than that; many other posters have already commented on that -- but I thought I'd address a very small aspect relative to the EW capabilities which create that force imbalance to begin with. Then insert the Mod-G warhead as the finisher.

Here's a comparable: take the WW-II battleship Bismarck against any current generation US surface ship WITHOUT radar or air cover, and within range of the Bismarck's main battery. The result would likely be a lot like history, see the wikipedia article at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ba ... p_Bismarck

That is, several ships sunk including a comparable size battleship, and a task group in danger while maneuvering to take out that ONE ship. The Bismarck PLUS radar could still defeat nearly any small non-missile third world navy all by itself, and terrorize the waters it patrolled until it retired.

I'd quibble with that. None of the US battleships in service were as vulnerable as HMS Hood to plunging fire. Even the few still in service that pre-dated her (like USS Arkansas and USS Texas) had thicker armor.

If the Bismarck had stuck around to slug it out with a pair of them it's quite unlikely that either US BB would be sunk - damaged yes, probably heavily, but not sunk. But with far less chance for a golden-BB to sink a US BB it's going to take a while to batter them down and it's unlikely that Bismarck will avoid taking damage in return in a lengthier firefight.


However the real difference in swapping in the USN is that the only modern battleship the US had at the time of the Bismarck fight was the USS North Carolina (commissioned just a month earlier). She was about as fast as HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Hood (in '41 condition), but none of the other US Battleships were. So she'd either have to try to keep up with Bismarck solo or else stay in formation with one of the 21 knot Standards and watch Bismark steam away.