(SPOILERS) ATST Snippet #5 Should be called "Forum Answers"

Snippet #5 contains all of these answers, and sometimes answers that create additional questions.

1. Dohlar’s support of its’ navy, and Sir Fahstyr Rychter’s Army of the Seridahn is utilizing all of Dohlar’s productive capacity. That leaves no capacity for the COGA.

2. Already there is a slowdown of supplies that South Harchong is able to transport to COGA. That is going to get worse when the two ICN Rottweilers arrive in the Gulf of Dohlar around the end of October, and the beginning of November.

3. Inflation has increased the problems the Church has in financing the war.

4. Sahndrah Lywys’ version of TNT has been tested, and approved, but production of the explosive will not achieve needed volume until late spring or early summer. In HFQ August 897 Chapter VII, Sahndrah said that she was finally getting smokeless propellants into production. She said that in reference to the rockets where she wanted to stick “dynamite” in the warheads. Can the supply of smokeless propellant be too far behind for artillery, especially breech loading artillery?

5. The ICA has a new Balloon Corp that is specifically dedicated to utilizing the advantage that the ICA has in artillery accuracy and range. The new balloons will be used by both the ICN and the ICA. The balloons will use hydrogen, and the gas cell will not be made of cow gut, or even dragon gut.

6. In HFQ June 897 Chapter I, Ehdwyrd Howsmyn says that all but two of the ten inch mounts for the King Haarahlds were caught in the fire. He said the mounts whitch included the mount’s recoil would have to be torn down examined and rebuilt. He said that half the ten-inch barrels and eight-inch barrels were still in the production queue. Howsmyn speculate that he can use rebuilt machinery, or new machinery on the burned out naval barrel shop foundations to complete the King Haarahlds naval guns. In Snippet 5, Howsmyn discusses using hydrogen in the new balloons while looking at the new “Kahrltyn Haigyl Barrel Finishing Shop”. We don’t know whether Howsmyn has been able to proceed on the naval barrels from a temporary configuration, or if the barrels have all been stalled waitng for the rebuild of the barrel shop. The Delthak fire occurred sometime in June, and Howsmyn said it would delay the King Haarahlds by three to five months. Sometime in November will be a full five months. Can the King Haarahlds be commissioned by the end of the year, and arrive in the Gulf of Dohlar sometime in March?

James

SNIP

JRM wrote:5. The ICA has a new Balloon Corp that is specifically dedicated to utilizing the advantage that the ICA has in artillery accuracy and range. The new balloons will be used by both the ICN and the ICA. The balloons will use hydrogen, and the gas cell will not be made of cow gut, or even dragon gut.
James

We've seen it in other threads, but it just popped into my head as I was reading your post...

Balloons = serious advantage. But (and here's my question): How does one communicate from the balloon to the ground / ship and vice versa? Signal flags would only be useful is the balloon is pretty close to the site it's communicating with or even directly overhead. Ditto a heliograph. And if there's no way to use something like a telegraph (proscription on electricity). Maybe there's some new communication technology we haven't seen yet?

Don't get me wrong, if you're in the "crows nest" on a ship at 150 feet above the waves, the visual horizon is at 15 miles. If you're in a balloon at 500 feet, the visual horizon jumps to 27.4 miles - beyond the range of any current Safehold artillery. So there's immense value in having balloons as "artillery spotters."

But I also can't get this picture out of my head of balloons ranging out in front of a fleet of galleons or Haarhalds - perhaps at distances up to 15 miles, and at altitudes as high as 5,000 feet. At 5,000 feet, your visual horizon is all the way up to 86.6 miles, and combined with the distance in front of the fleet, you're up to just over 100 miles. Think about how useful this might be somewhere like the Gulf of Jahras (Howard Island) where you could easily float a balloon overhead to detect any Temple privateers trying to sneak past (at least during daylight hours) and could use that info to dispatch a City class to sink them before they get out of the gulf... That has been an ongoing problem: privateers sneaking out.

WeberFan wrote:SNIP

JRM wrote:5. The ICA has a new Balloon Corp that is specifically dedicated to utilizing the advantage that the ICA has in artillery accuracy and range. The new balloons will be used by both the ICN and the ICA. The balloons will use hydrogen, and the gas cell will not be made of cow gut, or even dragon gut.
James

We've seen it in other threads, but it just popped into my head as I was reading your post...

Balloons = serious advantage. But (and here's my question): How does one communicate from the balloon to the ground / ship and vice versa? Signal flags would only be useful is the balloon is pretty close to the site it's communicating with or even directly overhead. Ditto a heliograph. And if there's no way to use something like a telegraph (proscription on electricity). Maybe there's some new communication technology we haven't seen yet?

Well, you could simply send the messages down the cable)

Or, some sort of pneumatic telegraph, which would connect the balloon with the surface.

Or just wyverns) After all, on USS "Langley" scout planes used pigeons to report about the enemy ships detected...

Weberfan is envisaging free-floating or powered balloons. I tend to agree with Dilandu's implication that we will get tethered balloons, certainly at first.

Dilandu wrote:Or, some sort of pneumatic telegraph, which would connect the balloon with the surface.

I tend to agree with the "tethered balloons" faction.

Wikipedia says a speaking tube can be used up to 300 ft (~100 meters). A relay basket with a person to repeat the information from the observer in the balloon could be affixed to the balloon tether every 300 feet to extend the altitude of the balloon. Of course the more relays the more errors in the transmission will happen, so 900 feet (two relays) would be about the limit of such a system. It would NOT be useful for free-flying balloons or un-tethered airships.

WeberFan wrote:SNIP


We've seen it in other threads, but it just popped into my head as I was reading your post...

Balloons = serious advantage. But (and here's my question): How does one communicate from the balloon to the ground / ship and vice versa? Signal flags would only be useful is the balloon is pretty close to the site it's communicating with or even directly overhead. Ditto a heliograph. And if there's no way to use something like a telegraph (proscription on electricity). Maybe there's some new communication technology we haven't seen yet?

Hi,

I thought about using a task force with balloons against Desnair's privateers instead of Rock Point reassigning the Cities. Even given that the ICN has binoculars, the gaps you could spread out task force with would be limited to your signaling device.

As for signaling to a ship or army directly below you. If you are over a few hundred feet high, that would be easiest if you painted the bottom of your gondola black and put signaling light in the center of the floor. Even in the daylight, the signal light in the middle of a black field would be visible.

If you are less than a few hundred feet high then you could attach a message package to your balloon tether. The message package would have a weighted body to hold the message. The body should be attached to the tether like a carabiner clip. The message package should also have a parachute that can be clipped around the tether.

I wouldn't get in a balloon that was going to be on a tether of more the a few hundred feet. Chasing a JLENS from Maryland to Pennsylvania is one thing. Chasing a hydrogen balloon with a broken tether across miles of ocean is completely different.

James

This puzzles me - didn't Sahndrah find her new explosive by spilling acids on her laboratory smock? In which case, wouldn't the product be nitro-cellulose (guncotton), not TNT. I don't think there is anything you can spill on cotton and create TNT.

JRM wrote:4. Sahndrah Lywys’ version of TNT has been tested, and approved, but production of the explosive will not achieve needed volume until late spring or early summer. In HFQ August 897 Chapter VII, Sahndrah said that she was finally getting smokeless propellants into production. She said that in reference to the rockets where she wanted to stick “dynamite” in the warheads. Can the supply of smokeless propellant be too far behind for artillery, especially breech loading artillery?

ColinD wrote:This puzzles me - didn't Sahndrah find her new explosive by spilling acids on her laboratory smock? In which case, wouldn't the product be nitro-cellulose (guncotton), not TNT. I don't think there is anything you can spill on cotton and create TNT.

JRM wrote:4. Sahndrah Lywys’ version of TNT has been tested, and approved, but production of the explosive will not achieve needed volume until late spring or early summer. In HFQ August 897 Chapter VII, Sahndrah said that she was finally getting smokeless propellants into production. She said that in reference to the rockets where she wanted to stick “dynamite” in the warheads. Can the supply of smokeless propellant be too far behind for artillery, especially breech loading artillery?

She discovered gun cotton which led to the smokeless powders. TNT was after she was brought into the Inner Circle. I suspect that even though TNT production is as yet insufficient for general deployment in ICA artillery until later this year or even early next year, there may be enough to provide the KH VIIs with 8" & 10" shells filled with proper HE.

I wonder if Nahrmahn's brain child for fire control involved pneumatic gyroscopes and pneumatic triggers for the KH VIIs 8" & 10" guns? I can see how the gyro could align high pressure air tubes to trigger the percussion caps on the big guns. So long as the ship is not sufficiently level, the tubes do not align. When the ship levels, the tubes align and sends a blast of pressurized air to the trigger which trips the hammer to set off the percussion cap to fire the gun.

I suppose we shall see soo enough.