Spoilerish. "Swarm ship"

Vinea wrote:
Torpedo boat carriers were a thing for a short period beyond just having tenders.

http://www.navypedia.org/ships/uk/brit_dd_vulcan.htm

Coordination without radio is doable within visual range for swarm tactics using blinker or semaphore. Raiding without radio limits range as finding the mothership without a radio is problematic if it has to move differently than planned.

Corvettes/frigates are better suited for that.

Ah, interesting!
Every day you learn something new, ta for the info


Oh the short range of small boats is an issue, plus Safeholdian tech proscriptions.
Brtish had problems in WW2 by putting extra fuel tanks on the decks, or iirc some designs the main tanks were too high up so in a fire fight they burned up

Having some kind of system of draining extra tanks down into main tanks quickly, rather than slow chore of simple "hose and pump", and that n disposing of the empties (major flash fire risks!) Might be an idea?

Ie boats sneak up on an enemy harbour using main tanks, congregate for last minute instructions and refuel from deck canisters which are then lowered overboard and let sink.

Sure corvettes would be good but I think better in defence?
Point of small fast boats was quiet surprise, they got so close torpedoes and guns were way more effective.
Or, for a commerce.raider, as noted, you could have a LOT of craft wrecking a lightly guarded convoy, if you catch the escorts out by surprise or whatever, you could do lots of damage far cheaper.
With a well deck, surprise is easier and like a Q-ship, your raider swarm ship could have a battery of nasty guns or even torpedo tubes below waterline.
An escort comes over to check on the raider's identity, or to lend aid from false request for help, gets hammered, boats hiding behind it swarm out, finish escort and play hobb on the cargo ships.

(Ruse requesting non-emergency aid seems moral, I think?
Abusing emergency aid is another matter.
Then again, some of the likely enemies wouldn't have such moral qualms.....)

From what I understand from reading, a Whitehead-style 'Locomotive Torpedo' is well within Safehold, not just Charis' capabilities now. If I remember correctly the original Whiteheads were powered by compressed air. Later they used I think in one case developed in the USA called a 'Howell Torpedo (I think) a flywheel spun up on deck before launch to both provide stabilization and power. It wasn't until later than tiny turbines were used by burning small amounts of fuel and compressed air if I remember right. That's what was used in WW2 if memory servers correctly.

Its actually not so much motor torpedo boats that interest me so much as possibly the introduction of well, the destroyer, or it would probably be called soumthing different because they probably would not start out as 'Torpedo Boat Destroyers' on safehold now that CHaris is talking about the possibility of steam turbines.

Swarms of small torpedo/gunboats were tried repeatedly in real life and were amazingly inefficient and ineffective. All that happened was Destroyers with major gun armament evolved to swat them.

Even then DDs went from 250ish tons to 800+ tons in 15 years from 1900 and by the end of WW1 were in the 1200 ton range as this was the minimum size to be practical in a high seas engagement. The greater size gave far better seakeeping and stability for the guns and the destructive power of a 4" is just a massive improvement on the 50mm or 12lb guns mountable on the smaller ships.

The RN considered 1 4" gun hit to be equivalent to 6-8 12lb gun hits and one 4 inch mount weighed less and required less crew than 2 12lb guns.

Basically size wins big time here.

Chaser617
Iirc there were also trials of torpedoes powered by chemical reaction, peroxides??

Silverwall wrote:Swarms of small torpedo/gunboats were tried repeatedly in real life and were amazingly inefficient and ineffective. All that happened was Destroyers with major gun armament evolved to swat them.

Even then DDs went from 250ish tons to 800+ tons in 15 years from 1900 and by the end of WW1 were in the 1200 ton range as this was the minimum size to be practical in a high seas engagement. The greater size gave far better seakeeping and stability for the guns and the destructive power of a 4" is just a massive improvement on the 50mm or 12lb guns mountable on the smaller ships.

The RN considered 1 4" gun hit to be equivalent to 6-8 12lb gun hits and one 4 inch mount weighed less and required less crew than 2 12lb guns.

Basically size wins big time here.

Yes for oceanic work
But for somethings I gotta disagree with you.

PT boats did very well in circumstances you could not use a destroyer in the Pacific islands
And Royal Navy gun boats harassed the German S boats way down but even so the Germans did cause serious losses with them and would have been far worse without our own gun boats opposing them.

Destroyers are good, were much more needed than the brass hat idjits would allow built...but they are not "wunderkin".
You need a mix of forces and fast small boats are very useful in shallow coastal waters.
And when used properly, attacking from surprise, even a destroyer is not going to take attack from several torpedo boats lightly...torpedo being the operative word here. Destroyers and torpedoes do not mix well in collision

Gun boats were also able to shoot the hell out of enemy gun crews. They were so fast, got.in close, their machine gun and autocannons did a right number on poor berks crewing guns :/

German ship design had some flaws, like little protection for the AA guns that were the biggest threat to their most serious enemies: torpedo boats, submarines (surfaced at night) and aircraft.

And as I suggested, mining would be a superb use of such small vessels...and same can be said for airships!
More than torpedoes and bombs, naval mines are severe threats that sank a lot of ships.



And as I've said on the Monitor thread, there was a huge establishment bias against ANYTHING the Brass Hats didn't like and control, so often "unloved" things got screwed over and even reports "binned" etc to keep biases in power.
So a pinch of salt must be taken considering the "official" outlooks.

My particular bete noir is the way the British Air Ministry and RAF brass outrageously prevented the UK from getting dive bombers and ground attack aircraft, which if we'd had them instead of useless bombers, could have carved up the Panzer thrust in France...etc etc
Oh also, the Admiralty bias against anything that wasn't a battleship!
Yeesh, who needs enemies when our own Establishment were busily screwing us up, lol! *face palm*
Really left us hanging with our ass in the wind by time WW2 started

SilverbladeTE wrote:Chaser617
Iirc there were also trials of torpedoes powered by chemical reaction, peroxides??

High Test Peroxide was experimented with in the mid to late fifties by just about everyone on torpedoes. The only country that actually put a HTP-based torpedo into production was the Russians with the 53-57, the torpedo that some theorize caused the Kursk disaster. Just about everyone else after fiddling around with test objects decided 'nope, nope too volatile to stick in a submarine.' (where most the HTP tests were undertaken)

Another early experiment was the Brennan 'wire propelled' torpedo but that was limited to shore-based harbor defense because it required a rather large steam winch.

Modern torpedoes still use a variety of methods, the ADCAP, Spearfish and YT-6 use mono-propellant-based turbines where their fuel is vaporized and its components react to create steam on a turbine, high capacity batteries or in an intresting case, the Mk50 sulfur hexafloride is sprayed over a block of lithium to create heat and steam to spin the turbine.

However the WW2 era Mk15 with a 'wet heater' turbine propulsion, basically kerosene burned to create steam to power the turbine with water circulated to cool the combustion chamber to improve efficiencies I would guess would be well within Charis' capabilities with the way Prager(spl)steam engines are described as running on the newly refined kerosene. Dolar and the Temple Lands could probably reproduce the original compressed air reciprocating engine Whitehead designs even without any assistance from Charis, and the Howell Flywheel or Brennan Wire Propelled style would probably be able to be produced by Desnair's tech base. (not sure about South Harchong)

Hooray for being a history teacher with an interest in turn of the century naval warfare and lots of books to reference giving probably too much needed info?

PT boats and the british/german/italian equivalents are badly over-rated and subject to massive myth-making.

They were very glamorous and were heavily hyped by the media but were generally considered stop-gaps to be used because they were cheap and more expendable than DDs but all navy's preferred proper DDs if they were available. The most valuable service they performed was Reconnaissance and scouting and sans radio they are of limited use to Charis, especially if there is an inner circle commander on site with access to SNARCs. This is not to say some famous successes wern't scored e.g. torping the Virbius Unitus because the captain was an idiot in 1918.

The fact that no power really built them after 1945 suggests strongly that their performance was not really good enough to invest in. Supported by the fact that even in the massive navy build-up the USN went under from 1941 onwards they built more DDs and DEs than the much smaller cheaper and easier to man PT boats.

Chaser617 wrote:

SilverbladeTE wrote:Chaser617
Iirc there were also trials of torpedoes powered by chemical reaction, peroxides??

High Test Peroxide was experimented with in the mid to late fifties by just about everyone on torpedoes. The only country that actually put a HTP-based torpedo into production was the Russians with the 53-57, the torpedo that some theorize caused the Kursk disaster. Just about everyone else after fiddling around with test objects decided 'nope, nope too volatile to stick in a submarine.' (where most the HTP tests were undertaken)

Another early experiment was the Brennan 'wire propelled' torpedo but that was limited to shore-based harbor defense because it required a rather large steam winch.

Modern torpedoes still use a variety of methods, the ADCAP, Spearfish and YT-6 use mono-propellant-based turbines where their fuel is vaporized and its components react to create steam on a turbine, high capacity batteries or in an intresting case, the Mk50 sulfur hexafloride is sprayed over a block of lithium to create heat and steam to spin the turbine.

However the WW2 era Mk15 with a 'wet heater' turbine propulsion, basically kerosene burned to create steam to power the turbine with water circulated to cool the combustion chamber to improve efficiencies I would guess would be well within Charis' capabilities with the way Prager(spl)steam engines are described as running on the newly refined kerosene. Dolar and the Temple Lands could probably reproduce the original compressed air reciprocating engine Whitehead designs even without any assistance from Charis, and the Howell Flywheel or Brennan Wire Propelled style would probably be able to be produced by Desnair's tech base. (not sure about South Harchong)

Hooray for being a history teacher with an interest in turn of the century naval warfare and lots of books to reference giving probably too much needed info?

One correction. Every reference I've seen says the Mk 48 uses a swashplate piston engine powered by OTTO 2, not a turbine.

Ugh your right. That was my fault. I knew that all those 'heavy weight ' torpedoes used Otto II monoprop as their fuel. I had forgotten that the Mk 48 used a swashplate not a turbine like the Spearfish and YT-6.

Silverwall

After WW2, radar controlled gunfire made small boats suicidal risks vs attacking larger warships, that was the big issue!

And, yer wrong, Sweden and others stuck to small ships because their geography etc supported their use