Thanks for teaching me about sailing ships

If there's one thing I learned from the Safehold series about how Age of Sail galleons worked and sailing ships in general, it's how SLOW they are. Five mph was considered blazingly fast even for a schooner. It takes hours for ships to get into gun range after spotting each other, etc etc etc.

Quite frankly, I don't think many people in real life realize this. They might know it takes weeks or months to cross the Atlantic in a galleon, but the implications for actual galleon speed never occurs to them. It certainly never occurred to me. And for many movies made about Age of Sail ships, it certainly never occurs to the movie makers either.

The reason I'm going on about this is because of a cartoon I watched in my youth. One episode of GI Joe featured Cobra stealing a battleship. The reason they were able to do this was because a great deal of automation was installed that allowed only a handful of people to drive the battleship instead of the thousands of crew it normally would. And for some reason I forget, the Joes are unable to use their regular equipment to fight the battleship.

The Joes' solution? Take the USS Constitution, a wooden SAILING ship, and sneak up on the battleship from behind and board it. This only works because the battleship's heavy automation means there's no actual human lookouts to spot the sailing ship sneaking up on the battleship.

Except after reading the Safehold series, I realize this plan could never work. Even if the Constitution was never spotted, there's no way in hell it could be fast enough to catch the battleship, because even a completely unaware and clueless battleship is still going to be cruising along at a leisurely pace that will still be far faster than any speed the Constitution could ever pull in even ideal wind conditions. The Joes would have been better off using modern speed boats or even civilian yachts.

So thank you Mr Weber for teaching me about sailing ships.

Nope, a sailing ship could never hope to sneak up on a modern battleship - the 'sailing ships are faster' trope comes from comparing record breaking runs of some of the tea clippers to a modern container ship tootling along at a fuel saving 12 knots.

Even so, the modern container ship will still be faster over the entire voyage, even if the clipper is overhauling it in the most favourable winds. The Victory Ships are indeed the way forward for Charis' merchant fleet.

So the Joes would have to be sneaking up on a highly automated container ship (maybe with an atomic bomb on board?) to make it vaguely plausible. I suppose it wasn't exciting enough, so they went for the battleship.

The Joes' solution? Take the USS Constitution, a wooden SAILING ship, and sneak up on the battleship from behind and board it. This only works because the battleship's heavy automation means there's no actual human lookouts to spot the sailing ship sneaking up on the battleship.

Yeah, "Sink the Montana" from second season. Never gonna work, but on different reason.

Actually, for automated defenses there are absolutely no difference between sailship and enemy warship. All the automatic really see, is the radar signature (and sailship have HUGE radar aignature!)

Except after reading the Safehold series, I realize this plan could never work. Even if the Constitution was never spotted, there's no way in hell it could be fast enough to catch the battleship, because even a completely unaware and clueless battleship is still going to be cruising along at a leisurely pace that will still be far faster than any speed the Constitution could ever pull in even ideal wind conditions. The Joes would have been better off using modern speed boats or even civilian yachts.

Basically the best option would be to call nearest submarine for torpedo attack) Or, just nuke the "Montana".

The battleships became obsolete after World War II because of whole complex of reasons - carrier aviation outranged them greatly, guided missiles allowed even the motor boats to carry the same hitting power, and nuclear weapon made their heavy armor absolutely useless. The mighty "Iowa" already in late 1950s stand no chances against just one soviet missile-armed destroyer, with crude but pretty powerfull missiles.

Dilandu wrote:

The Joes' solution? Take the USS Constitution, a wooden SAILING ship, and sneak up on the battleship from behind and board it. This only works because the battleship's heavy automation means there's no actual human lookouts to spot the sailing ship sneaking up on the battleship.

Yeah, "Sink the Montana" from second season. Never gonna work, but on different reason.

Actually, for automated defenses there are absolutely no difference between sailship and enemy warship. All the automatic really see, is the radar signature (and sailship have HUGE radar aignature!)

Except after reading the Safehold series, I realize this plan could never work. Even if the Constitution was never spotted, there's no way in hell it could be fast enough to catch the battleship, because even a completely unaware and clueless battleship is still going to be cruising along at a leisurely pace that will still be far faster than any speed the Constitution could ever pull in even ideal wind conditions. The Joes would have been better off using modern speed boats or even civilian yachts.

Basically the best option would be to call nearest submarine for torpedo attack) Or, just nuke the "Montana".

The battleships became obsolete after World War II because of whole complex of reasons - carrier aviation outranged them greatly, guided missiles allowed even the motor boats to carry the same hitting power, and nuclear weapon made their heavy armor absolutely useless. The mighty "Iowa" already in late 1950s stand no chances against just one soviet missile-armed destroyer, with crude but pretty powerfull missiles.

Actually no on the Iowa class, as far as modern cruise missiles go. Battleships are very resilient. IIRC USS Nevada survived being a ground zero target ship at Bikini test Able. When the USN reactivated them in the 1980's the Soviet Union tried to develop a cruise missile to take them out but we're unable to develop one to punch through the armor completely. According to declassified Russian documents. The warhead they developed could only punch 8-10 inches of armor reliably.

saber964 wrote:
Actually no on the Iowa class, as far as modern cruise missiles go. Battleships are very resilient. IIRC USS Nevada survived being a ground zero target ship at Bikini test Able.

No. She was supposed to be ground zero for Able test, but the bomb missed, so she was over 600 yards from the center of the blast.

saber964 wrote: When the USN reactivated them in the 1980's the Soviet Union tried to develop a cruise missile to take them out but we're unable to develop one to punch through the armor completely. According to declassified Russian documents. The warhead they developed could only punch 8-10 inches of armor reliably.

Which was perfectly fine, because our missiles generally attacked the decks) And most of them were supersonic, so their penetration ability was far superior to the artillery. The average "Moskit" missile, impacting, have the same kinetic energy as 12-inch AP shell at the muzzle.