Really?????? Mk2

Annachie wrote:Why the need to hit the guns? As always, it's the crew that is soft and squishy.

Well, the crew are generally in close proximity to their guns. Successive generations of artillerists have found this helpful when trying to fire the things.

Silverwall wrote:

Randomiser wrote:
IIRC they were trying to force passage through a relatively narrow channel with fortifications on both sides, in order to get to within bombardment range of the harbour and city without risking their one and only battleship. The route chosen was considered the best of their few poor options. The Dohlarans had been expecting the ICN to come for them for quite a while and hadn't been sitting on their hands while waiting. Surprise! Surprise! The main Dohlaran Naval base was in a very defensible and well defended area.

So as Dilandu says ... "Because reasons" if the channel is so narrow as to be blockable by fire then the batteries should be visiable from sea and provoke some rowboat reconnisance or scout sniper investigations. I can't think of any real world situation where artillery was a supprise to a fleet trying to force a channel and the correct course of action has action is to neutralise them first. This is what brought on battles like Fort Donelson, Charlston, The Dardenelles etc.

I always get in trouble when I try to be allusive or clever. Of course, the ICN knew about the defensive batteries and had a pretty good idea of most of what was there (the new rockets excepted). The Surprise Surprise bit wasn't connected to the early part of the post but to the last sentence. It was unsurprising that the main Dohlaran naval base was in a easily defensible position, which Dohlarans had proceeded to defend. You were originally asking why the ICN were so close to the shore. I was trying to point out that the geography of the area made that inevitable, which was part of the reason the area was chosen for a major naval base.

Bluesqueak wrote:

Annachie wrote:Why the need to hit the guns? As always, it's the crew that is soft and squishy.

Well, the crew are generally in close proximity to their guns. Successive generations of artillerists have found this helpful when trying to fire the things.

Slightly more seriously, shrapnel and overpressure means you don't need to hit the gun to get the crew.

Damage to the overhead structure droping bits on them, or rubble in the gun slot blocking the shots, also means you don't have to hit the gun.

Let alone morale.

Annachie wrote:

Annachie wrote:Why the need to hit the guns? As always, it's the crew that is soft and squishy.

Bluesqueak wrote:Well, the crew are generally in close proximity to their guns. Successive generations of artillerists have found this helpful when trying to fire the things.

Slightly more seriously, shrapnel and overpressure means you don't need to hit the gun to get the crew.

Damage to the overhead structure droping bits on them, or rubble in the gun slot blocking the shots, also means you don't have to hit the gun.

Let alone morale.

Dilandu's point, which is valid, is that hitting individual gun positions is difficult. From my own reading of naval history, including bombardment efforts of the Civil War (Fort Fisher I, a disaster for the Union; Fort Fisher II, a disaster for the Confederates; Fort Sumter I, victory for the Confederacy, practically no casualties; Fort Sumter II, the Feds turned it into a rock pile with, I believe, one gun still in action to be fired at sunset) to WW I (DeRoebuck in the narrows, guns in fixed fortresses silenced [in large part because surviving gunners skedaddled], Dardanelles II --- searching gunfire without air spot can't chase down and destroy the mobile Turkish guns), to WW II and Korea (Tarawa and Okinawa, massive bombardments with varying degrees of success; D-Day with high degree of success, including near destruction of the Herman Goering division of [mobile] panzers on the way to the beaches; South Korea and Vietnam, highly successful coastal shoots in ultimately stalemated or losing wars), he is way too pessimistic about what breechloading guns with high explosive shells can do to fixed fortifications firing at relatively short ranges, especially with a handy balloon around to spot for you.

The ICN screwed up --- or, rather, the Inner Circle did (and guess what? They can make mistakes, too) --- in their tactics (particularly the failure to have the SNARC incendiaries already deployed to the rocket barges). They were looking at their inside knowledge of what Thirsk and Ahlvarez were going to try and their object was to put the most possible pressure on Dohlar (in part to make sure Thirsk and Ahlvares did launch their coup) while avoiding anything the Church might have been able to point to as "obvious demonic intervention" while resisting the coup in the process. They were willing to risk losses in return for the political gains to be had, although Sarmouth, whose men would suck up those "acceptable losses," was less on board with that than the rest of the Circle.

The real mistake, in many ways, however, was to make insufficient allowance for the unreliability of visual signaling in the midst of all that smoke and noise. There was plenty of time for Eraystor to have avoided the rockets' fixed threat zone (which she wasn't originally supposed to enter in the first place; she sailed into it closing to cover the minesweepers and "engage the enemy more closely") . . . if she seen the signal when it was sent and obeyed it promptly.

Annachie wrote:Slightly more seriously, shrapnel and overpressure means you don't need to hit the gun to get the crew.

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It is NOT easy to put shrapnel from long gun into gun pit behind the breastwork. It would require very high percision on the fuse.

Differing usages for 'shrapnel'.

In this case the reference is to shell splinters, not VT-fused anti-personnel rounds. Which would, given enough rounds, make a mess of the gun crews if the emplacements are open to the rear. Not, I'm sure, as quickly as Annachie seems to think, given the propensity of casings to _not_ shatter evenly. Shock wave effects would be a consideration, though, but you're still talking a lot of rounds.

Dilandu wrote:

Annachie wrote:Slightly more seriously, shrapnel and overpressure means you don't need to hit the gun to get the crew.

.

It is NOT easy to put shrapnel from long gun into gun pit behind the breastwork. It would require very high percision on the fuse.

Louis R wrote:Differing usages for 'shrapnel'.

In this case the reference is to shell splinters, not VT-fused anti-personnel rounds.

...I'm sorry, but shrapnel existed more than a century before VT fuses. The earliest shrapnel - spherical bomb, filled with bullets with small bursting charge and burning delay fuse - was invented during Napoleonic era. The "classic" shrapnel - steel tube projectile, filled with bullets with bursting charge behind - appeared later in XIX century. Basically, the idea of shrapnel was that shell burst in the air at pre-calculated point, and threw forward a relatively narrow cone of bullets, which was incredibly effective as anti-personnel weapon (but basically useless against other targets, with the exception of anti-tank use, when the fuse was set "on strike").

Problem is, penetrating force of shrapnel bullets is very limited, because their energy is taken from the remaining velocity of the shell itself. So even relatively light overhead protection would stop shrapnel.

To overcame such problem, some XIX century navies used "segmented shot", which basically contained a hard metal tube, cut on segments, and bursting charge inside the tube:





The idea was to provide heavier segments, capable of overcoming the light overhead protection. The disadvantage was the much wider dispersion cone, and smaller number of fragments, which made hit probability... somewhat limited. The segmented shots were generally used as anti-torpedo boat weapon.

runsforcelery wrote: he is way too pessimistic about what breechloading guns with high explosive shells can do to fixed fortifications firing at relatively short ranges, especially with a handy balloon around to spot for you.

Er, I never denied that firing at relatively SHORT ranges might be effective (albeit also not guaranteed, because guns breastworks could be literally of any practical thickness). I stated that the long-range bombardment of fortifications is usually the waste of ammunition, because the probability of hitting the gun is too low. The good example is "Texas" and "Arkansas" against "Hamburg" battery - despite the fact that two battleships have ten 14-inch and twelve 12-inch guns against four 11-inch guns, and the retaliatory fire wasn't very good, they managed to knock out exactly one gun of "Hamburg" battery. And it cost 264 shells.

Never meant to imply that it would be easy, just that there's more options than hitting the gun.

That and in the end, probability is your friend.

Annachie wrote:Never meant to imply that it would be easy, just that there's more options than hitting the gun.

That and in the end, probability is your friend.

Probability is good, but smaller units which could provide close-range fire support (aiming against enemy guns, not just general areas) are good also.