SLN Logistics

Jonathan_S wrote:True, yet... Changes don't happen in a vacuum. Germany laid down the Deutschland-class starting in 1929, in (nominal, or at least apparent) compliance with the Treaty of Versailles. Hilter didn't rise to power and and start U-Boat construction in defiance of that treaty until 1935. By that point all 3 Deutschland-class 'pocket battleships' had already been launched, and 2 were in commission with the 3rd, Admiral Graf Spee, commissioned at the start of 1936.

So in the actual timeline those resources were sunk in the pocket battleships long before Hitler was running things. I guess you could scrap them for steel and part for subs, but that's far more effort than simply allocating the raw materials in the first place.

But my actual point was if Germany had started building subs in 1929 its massively unlikely that Britain would allow them to do so unmolested for a decade before war kicked off. But even if they had the fact that Germany is now building subs and not battleships means England would be free to, say, cut back on their King George V-class battleship building and divert those resources into additional convoy escorts and anti-submarine forces. Yes if Germany could wave a magic wand and have their early 1943 U-boat forces available to them in the fall of 1939 - with everything else unchanged - England would be in a lot more trouble. But like I said, changes don't happen in a vacuum - you can't build those forces on Earth in the 20th century without people knowing and starting to make plans to react to your build-up.

Of course what dos not help the situation is that the Battleship was the prestige weapon of the time period.

Jonathan_S wrote:True, yet... Changes don't happen in a vacuum. Germany laid down the Deutschland-class starting in 1929, in (nominal, or at least apparent) compliance with the Treaty of Versailles. Hilter didn't rise to power and and start U-Boat construction in defiance of that treaty until 1935. By that point all 3 Deutschland-class 'pocket battleships' had already been launched, and 2 were in commission with the 3rd, Admiral Graf Spee, commissioned at the start of 1936.

So in the actual timeline those resources were sunk in the pocket battleships long before Hitler was running things. I guess you could scrap them for steel and part for subs, but that's far more effort than simply allocating the raw materials in the first place.

But my actual point was if Germany had started building subs in 1929 its massively unlikely that Britain would allow them to do so unmolested for a decade before war kicked off. But even if they had the fact that Germany is now building subs and not battleships means England would be free to, say, cut back on their King George V-class battleship building and divert those resources into additional convoy escorts and anti-submarine forces. Yes if Germany could wave a magic wand and have their early 1943 U-boat forces available to them in the fall of 1939 - with everything else unchanged - England would be in a lot more trouble. But like I said, changes don't happen in a vacuum - you can't build those forces on Earth in the 20th century without people knowing and starting to make plans to react to your build-up.

The vote in 1928 was supported by Hitler and 11 other Nazis who were elected to the Reichstag at that time.

The Versailles treaty limited the Germans to 10Kt warships with no armament restrictions, and the Deutschland class came in at 10,600t standard displacement. The Allies weren't happy, by had no direct control over this armament.

Calling them capital ships...tricky. What they are is a more advanced form of the Armoured Cruiser design, that later developed into the Heavy Cruiser.


Now, if we we're talking about commerce raiding by Tirpitz or Bismark, then that would be a point.

Jonathan_S wrote:True. And yet sometimes you need to fly the hump to keep even a shoestring military operation going until you can build up the logistics base to do it right.

(Admittedly no a perfect parallel as at least that used primarily transport aircraft -- but it was still about the worst way to ship real tonnage; but also about their only option at the time)

Until Saipan and Tinian were taken and made into B-29 bases, the Superforts were working out of China. Which included using B-29s to haul bombs, other supplies, and any net gas they could carry from India. As well as the C-46s and C-47s one would expect.

WLBjork wrote:
Now, if we we're talking about commerce raiding by Tirpitz or Bismark, then that would be a point.

But that is exactly what Bismark and Prinz Eugen set out to do in Operation Rheinübung, and why Tirpitz was posted to the Norwegian fiords - to hunt down and kill convoys.And why Nelson was going convoy escort duty - to fend off surface raiders smaller than BBs, such as Schornhost and Gneisenau (and going to Brooklyn Navy for a refit).

David has one of basic assumptions underlying honorverse combat that you cannot easily intercept ships in hyper.

Unfortunately this makes no sense. It should be trivially easy to catch merchants in hyper as they exit a system and go into hyper. Alpha Hyper is vic 62x smaller than real space, so on Alpha the typical ~40lm sphere that contains the hyper limit is a ~40 light second sphere. Realspace to Alpha transitions are very noticeable on Alpha, so as soon as a freighter enters hyper any warship on Alpha knows it is there, and the chase is on. And a SLN SD can catch a freighter.

You could argue, "but it could go to Beta". Well, the hyper limit is even smaller on Beta, it's 3 light seconds across on Beta. And on Gama it's 1.6 LS wide, and on Gama it's 1.1 LS wide, which means the SLN SD quietly waiting in the center of the hyperlimit will be in energy range of anyone crossing the Gama wall after climbing out near the hyper limit.

I think he intends to ignore this, since it messes with his setting, but that's how it logically works.

kzt wrote:David has one of basic assumptions underlying honorverse combat that you cannot easily intercept ships in hyper.

Unfortunately this makes no sense. It should be trivially easy to catch merchants in hyper as they exit a system and go into hyper. Alpha Hyper is vic 62x smaller than real space, so on Alpha the typical ~40lm sphere that contains the hyper limit is a ~40 light second sphere. Realspace to Alpha transitions are very noticeable on Alpha, so as soon as a freighter enters hyper any warship on Alpha knows it is there, and the chase is on. And a SLN SD can catch a freighter.

You could argue, "but it could go to Beta". Well, the hyper limit is even smaller on Beta, it's 3 light seconds across on Beta. And on Gama it's 1.6 LS wide, and on Gama it's 1.1 LS wide, which means the SLN SD quietly waiting in the center of the hyperlimit will be in energy range of anyone crossing the Gama wall after climbing out near the hyper limit.

I think he intends to ignore this, since it messes with his setting, but that's how it logically works.

I basically agree, and I think we may have had this conversation before. Logically the volume in hyper should be evenly shrunken - that certainly seems to be how RFC describes and uses it. And while I don't recall a definitive statement about the range of sensors in hyper (other than shorter ranged) we've seen examples of ship's in contact at ranges of over a light-minute. Hotwing's little unannounced drill in HAE had her on Artimis's sensors at about 3 LM, and Prince Adrian was in communication with the trailing convoy from a point about 9 LM out in front. So covering 40 LS or so appears easily within their capabilities.

Now even though he doesn't use them much RFC does sometimes refer to multiple sub-bands within each major hyper band. I don't think he's ever said if sensors can see across them -- for all the talking about things like "Alpha bands" he seems to treat hyper like it's only 5 (now 7) bands wide. But if you can hide from sensors by switching to another sub-band then you might be able to try to evade interception by jumping up and down among dozens of bands - multiplying the search volume enough to hopefully slip out of sensor range... But that's not how anything is described as working.

As for you're higher bands - it seems fairly clear you have to traverse the bands in order; passing through Alpha on the way to Beta, and Beta on the way to Gamma. But what's not clear is when heading up if you have to stop in each band and let your generator recharge, or if you can do a somewhat continuous climb. And if fairly continuous how much of a signal is there in Alpha as you pass through it on the way to, say, Delta.
Still even if there's not much of a signal, or you don't want to give the ship the minute or 5 head-start it takes for your hyper generator to go from standby to jumping you'd only need a stack of 6 ships to picket every major level of hyper: 1 in alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, theta. (Assuming that, as it appears, a ship in the Delta "bands" can see any ship in any "sub-band")


But incorporating this logical implication would require explaining why, 30-ish books in nobody thought of it or attempted to exploit it before. Better, from a story telling sense, I think to simply continue to quietly ignore the issue and not even try to cook up some explanation for why it isn't (or can't be) done.

Sure, it would be POSSIBLE to modify existing SL SDs to carry LACs.

That would mean whatever modifications you had to do to carry them and certainly you MIGHT be able to convert various capital missile magazines and the handling gear/passageways to do the same for the LAC missile weapons.

Same thing for crew space for the LAC crews/admin-command staff and maintenance/riggers. It would be a serious question about where people were being housed/trained/fed etc vs. where they duty stations would be but that is mostly a question of time to get to where you need to be. At least in the situation where you were involved in a planned strike, your crews would be in the LACs awaiting launch. In any non-combat day cycle they would just have to allow enough time to get where they needed to be.

You could also take away the crew otherwise needed for the SD weapons that you would need to remove or not be able to use because of having to modify for the LACs (hanger space/ C&C, etc).

Couple of things though. You probably are going to want to upgrade the SD's defensive suite of weapons to get rid of the auto-cannon in favor of defensive energy weapons and a massive additioin to counter-missile batteries (and related handling and logistics) plus the sensors etc needed.

IF the SL were to take commissioned SDs out of deployment- which mostly would keep the crew with them and train on the changes- while you do the upgrades to weapons and add the LAC modifications, you would get them back faster with trained crews and more modern ships (or at least newer) than attempting to upgrade anything in the Reserve Fleets for which you would still have to the upgrades plus find all new crew.

The other thing is just exactly what LACs would the SL be using and where would they get them? They don't have anything like the current generation RMN or RHN LACs or the weapons/sensors/defences of said LACs. Putting current "standard" SL LACs on the converted SLs might be such a great idea as SL LACs are more like customs enforcement gunboats and primarily equiped to do things like theaten merchant ships, not full up warships. I suspect that the engagement ranges of SL LACs both defence and offense is signicantly less than any of the current GA LACs and they will have siginicant speed and sensor challanges as well.

That would put a SL SD LAC tender conversion more in the range of carrying a load of clay pigeons if they have to launch against a stike by GA warships or LAC raid.

As a raider or participant in a raid against a verge system with SL equivenent weapons and a few actual warships, sure, they would probably help. Certainly just the size of one SD showing up as part of a strike had a certain level of intimidation but you are not going to get the same level of effectiveness against almost anything that a GA LAC strike would carry.
Sure, hitting a Manticorian system such one in the Talbot Clusterusing a multi-starship force and one or more SL SD LAC tender conversions against "only" three or four squadrons of RMN LACs is probably going to suceed in "capturing" the system and doing significant damage to the infrastructure but the cost to the raiding force is going to also going to be significant. The SD would survive- probably wouldn't even get attacke by the RMN LACs- but the SL LACs would be butchered and the lighter starships of the SL will probably get a bit hammered and take damage. How much damage depends on a lot of things but anything that ends up not being able to hyper out is going to be a write-off for the SL.

All of this will, however, let the SLN at least say and show they are "doing something". Tough on the crews though.

Brigade XO wrote:Sure, it would be POSSIBLE to modify existing SL SDs to carry LACs.

That would mean whatever modifications you had to do to carry them and certainly you MIGHT be able to convert various capital missile magazines and the handling gear/passageways to do the same for the LAC missile weapons.

Same thing for crew space for the LAC crews/admin-command staff and maintenance/riggers. It would be a serious question about where people were being housed/trained/fed etc vs. where they duty stations would be but that is mostly a question of time to get to where you need to be. At least in the situation where you were involved in a planned strike, your crews would be in the LACs awaiting launch. In any non-combat day cycle they would just have to allow enough time to get where they needed to be.

You could also take away the crew otherwise needed for the SD weapons that you would need to remove or not be able to use because of having to modify for the LACs (hanger space/ C&C, etc).

Couple of things though. You probably are going to want to upgrade the SD's defensive suite of weapons to get rid of the auto-cannon in favor of defensive energy weapons and a massive additioin to counter-missile batteries (and related handling and logistics) plus the sensors etc needed.

IF the SL were to take commissioned SDs out of deployment- which mostly would keep the crew with them and train on the changes- while you do the upgrades to weapons and add the LAC modifications, you would get them back faster with trained crews and more modern ships (or at least newer) than attempting to upgrade anything in the Reserve Fleets for which you would still have to the upgrades plus find all new crew.

The other thing is just exactly what LACs would the SL be using and where would they get them? They don't have anything like the current generation RMN or RHN LACs or the weapons/sensors/defences of said LACs. Putting current "standard" SL LACs on the converted SLs might be such a great idea as SL LACs are more like customs enforcement gunboats and primarily equiped to do things like theaten merchant ships, not full up warships. I suspect that the engagement ranges of SL LACs both defence and offense is signicantly less than any of the current GA LACs and they will have siginicant speed and sensor challanges as well.

That would put a SL SD LAC tender conversion more in the range of carrying a load of clay pigeons if they have to launch against a stike by GA warships or LAC raid.

As a raider or participant in a raid against a verge system with SL equivenent weapons and a few actual warships, sure, they would probably help. Certainly just the size of one SD showing up as part of a strike had a certain level of intimidation but you are not going to get the same level of effectiveness against almost anything that a GA LAC strike would carry.
Sure, hitting a Manticorian system such one in the Talbot Clusterusing a multi-starship force and one or more SL SD LAC tender conversions against "only" three or four squadrons of RMN LACs is probably going to suceed in "capturing" the system and doing significant damage to the infrastructure but the cost to the raiding force is going to also going to be significant. The SD would survive- probably wouldn't even get attacke by the RMN LACs- but the SL LACs would be butchered and the lighter starships of the SL will probably get a bit hammered and take damage. How much damage depends on a lot of things but anything that ends up not being able to hyper out is going to be a write-off for the SL.

All of this will, however, let the SLN at least say and show they are "doing something". Tough on the crews though.

Unless I am forgetting something, the SLN has not witnessed the true power of the GAs LACs. So they will not be thinking in terms of LACs until they have a demonstration of the power of those ships.

And yes, the SLN could convert some of their SDs into LAC carriers but the amount of effort would discourage them. They might try on one or two and even they would realize it would be easier to start from scratch. And considering they would have LACs even weaker than the RHNs LACs they will need a carrier that can bring as many LACs as possible with it... something a converted SD would not.

It seems to me that using the merchant ships would be easier to move the Lac then fully fitted war ships. On the other hand, their ship yards are filled with ships of the line that they can't use, so they might as well repurpose them.

Fox2! wrote:

WLBjork wrote:
Now, if we we're talking about commerce raiding by Tirpitz or Bismark, then that would be a point.

But that is exactly what Bismark and Prinz Eugen set out to do in Operation Rheinübung, and why Tirpitz was posted to the Norwegian fiords - to hunt down and kill convoys.And why Nelson was going convoy escort duty - to fend off surface raiders smaller than BBs, such as Schornhost and Gneisenau (and going to Brooklyn Navy for a refit).

Indeed. Trouble is, most of the time a BB raider is overkill. There's only so many ships that you can run down with a singleton.

It doesn't help when your opponents have significantly more ships, some of which are Aircraft Carriers to boot.

As memory serves, Tirpitz only got out a couple of times, one of which did cause Admiral Pound to make the mistake of ordering PQ17 to scatter, though Tirpitz claimed no ships directly.

As for Bismarck, she claimed one pretty much obsolete Battlecruiser, and no freighters.

If the RAF and RN hadn't been so well equipped, it may have been another story of course...