Battle of Hypatia questions

Hi Relax,

Thanks for the new info.

I obviously wasn't there, but I've read about the Griffin Mustang's speed of 505mph at 5,000'more than once from different sources.

Regarding the P-51H, I was under the impression they all had Allison 1710's of only 1800 HP with only a mechanical supercharger (not a turbocharger) and weren't as popular as the Packard Merlin's at 'only' 1450-1650 HP while the Griffin had 2200 HP for a 33-51% increase in power.

Feel free to elucidate further for my edification.

Best wishes,

Relax wrote:

lyonheart wrote:
Hi all!

Post divergence

While the P-72 or super thunderbolt would have been great since the P-47 was designed as the first single engined single pilot strategic fighter with something like 3 times the Spitfire's original fuel load, the air force was again more interested in publicity than meeting effective mission requirements.
I'm also reminded the Aussies shoehorned a Griffin engine into a locally built P-51 and hit 505mph at 5000' in November-December 1945, but didn't pursue development as they were already in line for Meteor jets.

Blatantly not true. P51 with RR 1650-7 engine at 5000ft could barely hit 400mph with 150 octane fuel pumping out nearly 2000hp. The Griffin Engine using same fuel was giving ~2400hp. 400 extra HP does not equal 100mph... You may wish to look at difference when same 2400HP engine put on Spitfire vrs Merlin 1650-3 engine. Gave additional measly ~30mph.

CA-15, is what the Aussie Mustang was with Griffin, I believe made ~450mph or so.

P51H(Completely different than D model) hit +475mph with 2400Hp at ~25,000ft.

P47J, did hit over 500mph in a test, lightly loaded, at high altitude, with an engine boosted to about ~3000HP...

Rare Bear hit average of 520+mph with roughly 4000HP on a special VERY cold day at low elevation. Do note that is a F8F airframe that was highly modified(cut down) and lightened...

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org is your friend; USE IT next time.

Hi Everybody!

Thanks for sharing all your thoughts!

For clarification, unless RFC has updated things while I was inactive, the Nike had 40 minutes missile launch endurance, which a 18 second interval means around 6600 M-16's onboard.

The text says the Sag-B's were double stacking volleys of 84 missiles, which according to those launchers listed in SoS at Monica had an interval of 9-10 seconds.

The Nike can launch 50 missiles off bore, the Sag-B somewhat less in some aspects according to SotS, but a maximum missile launch of 42 per salvo still doesn't add up to the 396.

The improved gravitic lensing etc pushed the Mark-16 from 15 megatons to 40 or the SD killer range at the beginning of the first Haven war, and while some improvement was made on the single stage missiles they were too small to get the same increased rate of power.

I don't recall the cruiser range missile being boosted to 84 tons (where in textev or RFC post?), but it means an extra 7.7% increase in the Sag-B's missile fraction, which I still find unlikely to be more than the Sag-C's.

Is there an out of the box solution?

Best wishes to all!

Relax wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:quote="ThinksMarkedly"](though I'm not sure this is a qualitative gain, as the Mk14 were designed to go against Peep SDs, or am I confusing things?)

I think you're confusing things. Both the Mk16 and Mk14 were heavy cruiser / battlecruiser grade missiles[1] -- neither are capital grade missiles, and aren't designed to go up against anybody's SD.

Now the latest mods of the Mk16 do include an improved grav lensing which pushes their throughput up near older capital ship missiles -- meaning they're better able to deal damage to older SDs than you'd expect from a BC weight missile. But that's not their intended or designed role. (And I can't recall whether or not older missiles like the Mk14 could, or did, get that same grav lensing retrofit)


[1] Though the RMN/GSN never actually built a BC around the Mark 14 ERM.

I just spent some time trying to search RFC's posts. If I recall correctly here on forum several years ago, as in nearly 10 or so, we were discussing that if the MK16 could have a new grav lens, and pinnaces had new grav lenses both which appeared in SoSAG, surely the MK14 would also have new grav lenses and upgrade kits for the old missiles along with every other missile/graser/laser that uses grav focusing. I believe it was never brought up in a book, but I believe rather RFC took pity on us fools and basically agreed with the above logic.

Maybe someone else has vastly superior memory on said subject or better kung foo in the advanced search. Apparently I have neither memory nor good search ability. /quote

lyonheart wrote:I just spent some time trying to search RFC's posts. If I recall correctly here on forum several years ago, as in nearly 10 or so, we were discussing that if the MK16 could have a new grav lens, and pinnaces had new grav lenses both which appeared in SoSAG, surely the MK14 would also have new grav lenses and upgrade kits for the old missiles along with every other missile/graser/laser that uses grav focusing. I believe it was never brought up in a book, but I believe rather RFC took pity on us fools and basically agreed with the above logic.

Maybe someone else has vastly superior memory on said subject or better kung foo in the advanced search. Apparently I have neither memory nor good search ability. /quote

I do not know how the forum software decides to prune the oldest posts, but there are only three threads that had a last post date in 2011, none with a last post date in 2012 and four with a last post date in 2013. I do not understand how those are still around, when 2014 seems to be where the pruning currently stops.

In the past I have searched for old threads where RFC has posted and put in a dummy comment to bring their last post date into something more current. But I think the oldest thread that I rejuvenated had a last post date in 2014.

Relax wrote:I just spent some time trying to search RFC's posts. If I recall correctly here on forum several years ago, as in nearly 10 or so, we were discussing that if the MK16 could have a new grav lens, and pinnaces had new grav lenses both which appeared in SoSAG, surely the MK14 would also have new grav lenses and upgrade kits for the old missiles along with every other missile/graser/laser that uses grav focusing. I believe it was never brought up in a book, but I believe rather RFC took pity on us fools and basically agreed with the above logic.

Maybe someone else has vastly superior memory on said subject or better kung foo in the advanced search. Apparently I have neither memory nor good search ability.

The only thing I could find in my cheat sheet of RFC posts about "grav lens" had some detail I'd forgotten about the 16G, but nothing about the 14.

runsforcelery: Tue Aug 28, 2018 9:08 pm Re: Should have brought a BC(P) or three to the party. wrote:all that was really redesigned was the "front end" (the same "end" swapped out to turn strike weapons into EW platforms) to incorporate the new focusing fields, the more powerful nuke, and the larger fusing rods (I believe the number of rods was downsized, but I don't recall for certain without diving into notes I can't access at the moment. But the nuke didn't have to be physically larger to give a bigger "boom," and the Mark 16 --- like all RMN missiles --- was always designed so the same drive and power plant could be mated to different payloads. This is why in the books there is repeated mention of "x percent of the incoming salvo carried nothing but penetration aides." These are the same missile; different business end.

Logically you should also be able to swap on an improved "front end" for a Mk14; with the improved grav lensing (if not necessarily the fewer larger fusing rods). (The post RFC quoted claimed that the 16E was the first with upgraded grav lensing; with the G adding the larger/fewer lasing rods but as you see RFC didn't explicitly address that claim)

Couldn't find anything in my notes from RFC about "Mk14", "Mk-14", "Mk 14", or "ERM". But it's entirely possible I missed some post.

Jonathan_S wrote:I think you're confusing things. Both the Mk16 and Mk14 were heavy cruiser / battlecruiser grade missiles[1] -- neither are capital grade missiles, and aren't designed to go up against anybody's SD.

Now the latest mods of the Mk16 do include an improved grav lensing which pushes their throughput up near older capital ship missiles -- meaning they're better able to deal damage to older SDs than you'd expect from a BC weight missile. But that's not their intended or designed role. (And I can't recall whether or not older missiles like the Mk14 could, or did, get that same grav lensing retrofit)


[1] Though the RMN/GSN never actually built a BC around the Mark 14 ERM.

Thanks, I did go through the Battle of Hypatia section and found this, which is what I had vaguely remembered:

Uncompromising Honor wrote:All of them were Mark 14-ERs, not Mark 16s. The inability of the Saganami-Bs to launch the Mark 16 had forced Commander Ilkova to step down Phantom's Mark 16s' acceleration in order to maintain concentration. That density paid a major divident when it came to penetrating the Solarian defenses, but the Mark 14 wasn't fitted with the Mark 16-G's improved laserhead. The Mark 16-G could kill superdreadnoughts; the Mark 14 couldn't.

It was, however—unfortunately for Enterprise—quite capable of killing battlecruisers.

lyonheart wrote:I obviously wasn't there, but I've read about the Griffin Mustang's speed of 505mph at 5,000'more than once from different sources.

Regarding the P-51H, I was under the impression they all had Allison 1710's of only 1800 HP with only a mechanical supercharger (not a turbocharger) and weren't as popular as the Packard Merlin's at 'only' 1450-1650 HP while the Griffin had 2200 HP for a 33-51% increase in power.

This won't be very pleasant. You never even looked at the original documents link I sent you did you?
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org is your friend with the ORIGINAL documents; Here is performance with 90inches mercury with water injection original doc...
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ... -91444.jpg
Here is a cleaned up powers/speed curves for different manifold pressures of RR Merlin 1650-9 engine on P51H, 2200HP at sea level up to ~10000ft.
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ... t-pg10.jpg
Here is the specs manual http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ... h_1949.pdf

Also the F82 twin mustang, using Allison engines also had 2200Hp

The Griffon has ~35% larger displacement if I recall compared to Merlin/Allison. One would think it should produce 35% more power, but it did not. It made ~2000Hp during the war, and post war made 2400Hp with water injection, higher boost pressure, etc changes as put in Spiteful? with a top speed of just under 500mph at ~30000ft, but only ~400mph at sea level. In case you are wondering, Mustangs top speed will be lower than a Spitfires with same HP rating with ever increasing speed as the Mach number of its wings is lower. Mustangs wing design was ONLY good up to WWII speeds and dropped off in efficiency with increasing speeds, but for WWII standards it was the best.

USE http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org next time instead of blathering about happenstance ancient memory which we all have large deficiencies in. Especially when probably recalling RENO air race aircraft info and your 505mph is most likely from Dago or Red Baron or some other such aircraft all with clipped wings/tails, lightened fuselages minimal fuel, and engines boosted to well over 3000HP.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Without the tractor, an active pod reactor at standby levels will last ~30 days without refurbishment and refueling, which has been defined as replacement of the fuel, refurbishing a part or 2, and replacement of 1 or 2 wear parts that are undefined, but any warship can carry them in abundance. This is the same use period if the pod is in standby or if the pod is in system defense mode.

If they need to do maintenance on system defence pod shoals every 30 days, that's a monumental task. Not to mention all too easy for someone to make a list of where they are and sneak in contact nukes.

I'd expect the Mk40 system defence Apollos and their pods to have a longer shelf life.

Then again, how long does it take to go from storage to firing, in case of an emergency? Warships can do that with resupply from colliers within a few hours at best.

I was speaking of the standard shipborn pods, the Sysdef Variant I believe had a 90 day standby life (more fuel). But the shipborn "do everything" pod I was speaking of has a Sysdef setting also, just more limited endurance. by internal fuel.

Fresh pods are probably prefueled and ready to go, but manty fusion pods require an injection of plasma to start the reactor. That is taken care of in the back of the podbay, and probably takes ~18 seconds like a missile reactor does (they are identical hardware after all). I'm not certain how exactly colliers and other warships relight the reactors, it's never been stated.

Theemile wrote:Fresh pods are probably prefueled and ready to go, but manty fusion pods require an injection of plasma to start the reactor. That is taken care of in the back of the podbay, and probably takes ~18 seconds like a missile reactor does (they are identical hardware after all). I'm not certain how exactly colliers and other warships relight the reactors, it's never been stated.

We do hear more about resupply by colliers in a certain battle that shall remain unnamed for now. But that same battle did not give us the timeframe that it took those resupplies to become useful. For all I can tell right now, it could have been hours.

In system defence mode, you do have hours if you need to fire that many missiles. But even the ready-standby at 90 days is too short. With those numbers, I'd deploy the ready-standby ones closer to the known stations/forts, which can bring up their wedges and bubblewalls, but more importantly because those have their own sensors and would detect a contact nuke before it struck.

lyonheart wrote:Hi Everybody!

Thanks for sharing all your thoughts!

For clarification, unless RFC has updated things while I was inactive, the Nike had 40 minutes missile launch endurance, which a 18 second interval means around 6600 M-16's onboard.

The text says the Sag-B's were double stacking volleys of 84 missiles, which according to those launchers listed in SoS at Monica had an interval of 9-10 seconds.

The Nike can launch 50 missiles off bore, the Sag-B somewhat less in some aspects according to SotS, but a maximum missile launch of 42 per salvo still doesn't add up to the 396.

The improved gravitic lensing etc pushed the Mark-16 from 15 megatons to 40 or the SD killer range at the beginning of the first Haven war, and while some improvement was made on the single stage missiles they were too small to get the same increased rate of power.

I don't recall the cruiser range missile being boosted to 84 tons (where in textev or RFC post?), but it means an extra 7.7% increase in the Sag-B's missile fraction, which I still find unlikely to be more than the Sag-C's.

Is there an out of the box solution?

Best wishes to all!

Relax wrote:(though I'm not sure this is a qualitative gain, as the Mk14 were designed to go against Peep SDs, or am I confusing things?)

Jonathan_S wrote:I think you're confusing things. Both the Mk16 and Mk14 were heavy cruiser / battlecruiser grade missiles[1] -- neither are capital grade missiles, and aren't designed to go up against anybody's SD.

Now the latest mods of the Mk16 do include an improved grav lensing which pushes their throughput up near older capital ship missiles -- meaning they're better able to deal damage to older SDs than you'd expect from a BC weight missile. But that's not their intended or designed role. (And I can't recall whether or not older missiles like the Mk14 could, or did, get that same grav lensing retrofit)


[1] Though the RMN/GSN never actually built a BC around the Mark 14 ERM.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I just spent some time trying to search RFC's posts. If I recall correctly here on forum several years ago, as in nearly 10 or so, we were discussing that if the MK16 could have a new grav lens, and pinnaces had new grav lenses both which appeared in SoSAG, surely the MK14 would also have new grav lenses and upgrade kits for the old missiles along with every other missile/graser/laser that uses grav focusing. I believe it was never brought up in a book, but I believe rather RFC took pity on us fools and basically agreed with the above logic.

Maybe someone else has vastly superior memory on said subject or better kung foo in the advanced search. Apparently I have neither memory nor good search ability. /quote

In Fire Forged has an Armor discussion that is all about armor on lighter units, The Star Knight Cruiser and the Mk 13 missile. it gives the stats for the Mk 13 missile. This discussion is also found in SITS Scenario Book 2:SVW

Mk 16 stats are from Storm from the Shadows, partially in Text and in the Appendix.

The advanced Grav lensing came on later Mk 16 missiles (E and G); the original Mk 16 had the same nuke, sensors, laserheads, etc as the contemporary mk 13 (a grav pinched 10 MT nuke, a Grav focusing unit, six "cruiser sized" 5 Meter Laserheads. The later -E mod upgraded the sensors, upgraded the grav pinch to cause a 40 Mton explosion, and increased the strength of the grav focus field (this was a field upgrade to existing weapons). The -G mod was the above upgrades in a new rearranged package to allow six 10 Meter capital Laserheads from the Mk-23 in the same outer mk-16 package.

(This is discussed in the text of SFTS)

The Mk 14 (developed prior to the Mk 16) logically had the same warhead of the contemporary version of the earlier Mk 13 missile and the later designed mk 16. BUT, since the "standard" mk 13 components in the early Mk 16 mods were field upgradeable to the -e mod, It stands to reason that the Mk 13 and Mk 14 could have the same component upgrades, allowing a ~4x increase in hitting power. BUT - this upgrade did not include the addition of the 10m capital grade laserheads from the MK 23, but continued to use "cruiser grade" 5m laserheads. So while a -G type upgrade is possible, it is a complete redesign of the missile, not the simple "field upgrade" of the -E upgrades which logically should be able to used on older hardware designs.

BUT - none of this outside of the Mk 16 upgrades has been discussed in cannon.

(From HoS, David's comments, IFF, and other writing, it appears that Laserhead design has been a a spiral development process since it was first developed in the early 1800s, being "perfected" by the Andermani and Manty navies in 1860-62 for Capital missiles, and slowly upgraded and miniaturized over the next 60 years. So the original mk 13 deployed in the 1870s and the Mk 13 used in 1919 (just previous to the "-e mod") are most likely very different devices, with vastly different capabilities. And the rest of the missile marks probably have a similar wild upgrade story.)