Vinea wrote:Dilandu wrote:
Currently, I couldn't see how even a single deck penetration might be achieved this way.
No penetrations are required for a mission kill if you set the ship on fire and blow up the unarmored portions of the deck. Most shallow penetrations aren’t going to be critical anyway unless it’s a magazine or engine. Mostly you want to put non-critical stuff like the ships laundry and other stuff to absorb damage.
With respect to angle guns, it depends on what the church was fielding. A 24 pounder howitzer isn’t going to penetrate 1” plate any more than a 32 pounder Congreve. If you don’t think a 300 lb Congreve with an 8” payload will penetrate then neither will an 8” mortar.
When you design a warship it’s always a balancing act to maximize the immunity zone against the most likely threats, carry enough guns that are big enough and still have enough speed and range. I might not have bothered with 1” worth of deck armor and armored lighter overall for higher speed given the steam engines are likely not very efficient yet. If there was no need to worry about QF guns I might have opted for a armor lay down like a protected cruiser vs late 19th century pre-dread armor design.
If my main batteries out range the most common angle guns fielded by the church army I’m not going to spend a lot of effort defending against them when the coastal batteries and ship batteries aren’t generally the higher angle mortars and howitzers.
Bombardment rockets? It’s such a wierd scenario I wouldn’t have considered them either. I’d have gone with less armor overall than historical for more tactical speed or strategic range since by the time I’m facing armored steam ships built by the church I’m going to have dreadnoughts style ships coming off my slips. Time doesn’t favor the Church and the tech disparity will only grow even without electricity or radio.
I’m more likely to lose a battle because I’m late because I needed to stop for coal (or plain couldn’t get there) or let a fleet get away because I’m a knot too slow than end up facing a bunch of heavy bombardment rockets that the Church didn’t have when I was designing the ship.
Even if that turns out to be wrong it’s an easily understandable why a ship designer might scrimp on deck armor and not some criminally stupid decision. Hell, I’d have spent more effort on mine/torpedo defense than worry about plunging fire the Church doesn’t have or likely good enough rangefinders and ROF to make it effective even if it did.
The earlier attack on Rhaigair Bay makes it clear that HMS Eraystor is well-armoured against shot and shell. But even so, one of her gunners is killed because he's in contact with the casement armour.
The description of HMS Eraystor's death makes it clear that it's the roaring furnace created by the rockets, not their penetrative power, that causes the destruction of both HMS Eraystor and HMS Riverbend.
He saw at least two fireballs, though, and the forward half of the ironclad's funnel simply disappeared in a rolling wave of destruction
There's then a description of HMS Riverbend, and there it is clearly explained that:
propellant charges for her 6-inch guns began exploding as they cooked off in the flames
Then back to HMS Eraystor:
her entire forward superstructure - everything forward of her crumpled funnel - was a solid mass of flame. Her navigation bridge was simply gone, ripped away, leaving only a few support girders to show where it once had been, and her conning tower had become a chimney, the flue of hell's own furnace. Flames roaring ferociously up that chimney leapt mast-head-high, and the ship was clearly out of control with no living hand upon the helm.... she steamed directly into the field of seabombs.
So - what's penetrated is the superstructure, the navigation bridge and the conning tower. We don't get any description of exploding charges (which might have added to the flames or even been what destroyed the navigation bridge), but Gahryth Shumayt is concentrating on Riverbend's struggle to survive. Eraystor is doomed; everyone on deck is burning to death or already dead and any survivors below are trapped, with no way out except through the flames. The coup de grace comes from the larger seabombs, not the rockets.
As Vinea says, it seemingly didn't occur to the Charisians that the Temple would manage to turn signal rockets into an effective weapon. As the Temple discovered throughout the war, you can't plan to protect against weapons you don't know exist. For once, with rockets, that principle bit Charis on the backside.
