In Defense of Galleons sinking Submarines

[korn469]

Not much, admittedly. Although a .50 HMG would have a pretty difficult time chewing through wood thick enough to repel cannonballs. It would take a *lot* of ammo. A vulcan minigun (lots of very fast 7.62 mm) would have more luck than a .50 cal at penetrating the strong, wooden hull.

What is the muzzle velocity of the .50 Cal?
3,050 ft per second

http://www.armystudyguide.org/m2.htm

according to this site the muzzle velocity of a 7.62mm minigun is 2850fps

http://yarchive.net/gun/vulcan.html

if you are wondering a .50 cal is 12.7mm

here is a quote about civil war era cannons

With charges of his hexagonal powder, Rodman's 15-inch gun, even with its relatively low bore length to diameter ratio, fired its 330-pound shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,735 feet per second, much faster than the velocity achieved with any other gun, including many with bore length to diameter ratios as high as 20 to 1. With a 50-pound charge of hexagonal powder (two-fifths of the later standard 125-pound charge) the 15-inch gun at 25 degrees elevation had a maximum range of 4,680 yards.

http://www.cwartillery.org/ve/tjrodman.html

also

The first battle between ironclad warships had ended in stalemate, a situation that lasted until Virginia's self-destruction two months later. However, the outcome of combat between armored equals, compared with the previous day's terrible mis-match, symbolized the triumph of industrial age warfare. The value of existing ships of the line and frigates was heavily discounted in popular and professional opinion. Ironclad construction programs, already underway in America and Europe, accelerated. The resulting armored warship competition would continue into the 1940s, some eight decades in the future.

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/e...mes/8mar62.htm

so i'm certain that a small fiberglass pt boat with a single m-2 .50 cal machine gun could probably do serious damage to a wooden frigate and possibly even sink it

and if you were going to build a sail power ASW ship, really why wouldn't you build a fiberglass or aluminum ship that would be lighter, sturdier, less immune to rot, and cheaper and easier to produce than a wooden warship

alsoone final reason navies wouldn't upgrade old wooden warships would be this reason that relates to their structural integrity

Hogging

Until the 1920's a large percentage of the world's shipping consisted of large wooden ships and their plague, after plain old rot, was "hog". A ship floatinig quietly in still water is subjected to external forces. These are the weight of the vessel on its cargo (downwards) and the buoyancy force (upwards). Archimedes showed us that for a floating vessel, these two forces must be equal in magnitude. For a floating rectangular piece of wood, they are also equal in distribution. For most normally shaped ships, the distribution is not equal. For example, when an empty ship has more weight (relatively heavy structure, engines and equipment) in the ends, and more buoyancy in the middle. This "excess" of buoyancy in the middle cause the middle to rise up and the ends to bend down -- a hog in profile. The opposite condition is sagging. For old wooden ships, this resulted in a long term, plastic deformation. The total curvature could be a meter or more in larger vessels. Some vessels like the Wapama hogged so much that they nearly broke in two. Hogging is no longer the problem it was in the 1920's when it threatened the nation's merchant fleet -- because those ships have sunk!
Wooden ships, even wooden warships like USS Constitution, are actually quite weak even when new. Although solid shot may have ricocheted from their sides, they are generally unable, over time, to resist the fairly small forces they are subjected to moored in still water. There is a false idea that amazingly still has some following, that wooden ships were strong because they would flex. In fact, relative movement between structural members allows fresh water to enter the hull structure, carrying rot fungus spores deep inside.

Engineers have often attempted to analyze the structures of wooden ships as if they were homogeneous box girders. This is a common misapplication of beam theory. Actually, a wooden ship, especially as it ages, more closely resembles a rather weakly bound bundle of reeds. These reeds are free to slide past each other. If traditionally built wooden ships were box girders, then one would expect to see many tensile failures amidships in the upper deck of a severely hogged vessel; however, this is not the case. Failures in longitudinal structure are infrequent and tend to be scattered almost uniformly throughout the vessel. The idea of "strength decks" or "extreme fiber" is largely irrelevant to the meaningful analysis of old wooden ships. Microscopic investigation reveal a generally low level of stress in "hogged" structural members. There often is evidence of plastic behavior, creep, around fastenings. Large overall deflections in the hull can be achieved with a very small amount of creep around the fastenings.

The bundle of reeds metaphor implies that the ship is comparatively poor at resisting longitudinal loads due to a weakness in shear. Wooden ships are generally stiffer in lateral loading since the transverse frames are like individual beams. As a vessel ages and softens, even these relatively stiff beams can suffer large creep deflections. USS Constellation is an extreme example of an old, soft wooden ship and probably has large lateral deflections as well as hog -- behaving more like a wet wicker basket than a bundle of reeds. Pushing up on the bottom of the basket causes the sides to bulge out and the bilges to drop. This is evidently the case since the keel has deflected over two feet and there is much less curvature in the upper decks. The vessel is also soft transversely. That is apparent from the curvature of the gun deck which is hogged in several distinct undulations. The upward force on the bottom comes from an unequal distribution of the weight and buoyancy forces on the vessel. In a newer, stiffer vessel it is possible to minimize this net force by the judicious placement of ballast both longitudinally and transversely in the bottom of the vessel.

http://www.tricoastal.com/woodship.html

[louiethelesbo]

I happened to own my own Galleon and I sink nuclear submarines all the time. It is quite easy once you get the hang of it.

My Name, in real life?....BOND....James Bond

Now run alond and fine me a nice redhead...shaken..not stirred.

[redstar1]

Well yeah, who is going to build a warship from wood these days. The discussion was about whether or not a wooden Galleon could be used as an effective ASW platform, thereby validating some of the 'odd' combat results in the game. Noone is suggesting building a ship from scratch.

The important thing here is that Civ3 is a game. It involves sitting in front of a keyboard and a mouse for hours on end. The only thing thats going to make this have a semblance of reality is the users imagination. These 'odd' results can be as realistic as we want them to be. You may be of the opinion that a spearman can't stop a tank. Personally, I would prefer to consider a spearman when we have tanks as a unit with RPGs etc. My choice, because you can't see it doesn't make it so.

[korn469]

Well yeah, who is going to build a warship from wood these days. The discussion was about whether or not a wooden Galleon could be used as an effective ASW platform, thereby validating some of the 'odd' combat results in the game. Noone is suggesting building a ship from scratch.

forming a last ditch militia and issuing them RPGs or whatever is one thing, refitting a sailing ship to act as an ASW is another

first thing why would a WW2 submarine stay submerged against a sailing ship ASW when it could easily surface and outrun it, that is if it decides not to sink it with its deck gun or its AA guns, or a submarine could do what destroyers did to submarines in WW2, it could simply ram the wooden ship

also another big thing about civ3 is that a ship is not a single ship, and a battle isn't a single encounter, i mean the shortest turn length in the game is 1 turn equals 1 year, most of the game 1 turn equals 5 years or more, so that would be like winning the war in the atlantic with sailing ships

also as an escort the sailing ships would need a speed advantage over the ships they are escorting, if it doesn't have this the submarines could easily seperate the escorts from the convoy with a few diversionary attacks, or they would force the convoy to slow down which is a bad thing because the submarines could get reinforcements

really a galleon sinking a submarine is about as realistic as a catapult shooting down a B-1B bomber, and upgrading a 100 year old galleon to carry ASW equipment is probably less realistic than that

[dawidge]

[QUOTE]
according to this site the muzzle velocity of a 7.62mm minigun is 2850fps
[\QUOTE]

firing 4000 rounds per minute

are wondering a .50 cal is 12.7mm and 3050 fps

and 40 rounds per minute. I don't have figures on the mass of the projectiles. I'll assume that the mass of a 7.62 round is somewhere between 1/8th that of a 12.7 (x)

Kinetic Energy delivered in 1 minute of continuous fire:
KE1min = (mass * velocity^2) * ROF/2
KE1min(M2HB) = (x*(3050)^2)*40/2 = x*186050000 units
KE1min)(M134) = ((x/8)*(2850)^2)*4000/2 = x*2030625000 units

So in 1 minute of sustained fire, the minigun delivers 10x the KE to the target. I'll repeat that the .50cal would have a more difficult time than a minigun.

here is a quote about civil war era cannons
330-pound shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,735 feet per second

for a single shot KE
KEss(15"cannon) = 330lbs * (1735 fps)^2 = 993374250 units

I'll make the safe assumption that the round from a 12.7mm or 7.62mm is less than 1 lb ,-)} so the results will be smaller than the numbers I show for the 12.7 and 7.62:

KEss(M2HB) = 3050^2 = x * 9302500 units
KEss(M134) = (2850^2)/8 = x * 1015312.5 units

Assuming a rate of fire of 1 round every 5 minutes (slow for the period) we get a KE1min(15"cannon) = 198674850 units, which still wins out, even before factoring in a weight < 1lb.
(Yes, yes, I know that weight != mass, but weight/constant is, so the ratios will still hold the same proportions, that's why I use "units" rather than figuring out exactly what unit it is).

If my side armor can repulse something that delivers over 100x the KE of a 12.7mm round, I repeat that the .50 cal will have a hard time chewing through it.

If you can supply weights for the projectile (not the entire cartridge) of the 12.7mm and 7.62 mm, in lbs, we can clean up the math a bit.

Absorbing recoil (p=mv) is left as an exercise to the reader ,-)}

Then you go on to describe ironclad vs. ironclad combat, link to ironclad vs wooden-hulled frigate combat and assert:

so i'm certain that a small fiberglass pt boat with a single m-2 .50 cal machine gun could probably do serious damage to a wooden frigate and possibly even sink it

I'm pretty sure that the historically accurate wodden-hulled frigate will eat your fiberglass hotrod with a pintle-mounted .50 with one volley of grape shot. A wooden-hulled frigate with a
half-dozen .50s will eat you up, too. In neither case will you do more than scratch the finish and maybe kill a couple of the crew.

and if you were going to build a sail power ASW ship, really why wouldn't you build a fiberglass or aluminum ship that would be lighter, sturdier, less immune to rot, and cheaper and easier to produce than a wooden warship

As has been mentioned, we're not talking about building it from scratch, but using existing vessels that are just laying around. Perhaps one of these:

[url]http://www.uscg.mil/hq/eagle/[\url]

It's only a Barque, not a frigate, and has a steel, not wooden, hull, but is a fair approximation of the kind of vessel classed as "galley" in CIV terms that might exist in a modern navy.

It seems that we found some value in being able to teach our sailors how to actually sail, so we do have a "galley" unit existing in our naval forces.

I can clearly see two radars (one each on the fore and main masts) and a communications antenna (on the mizzen). I'm not sure what that little dome is low on the mizzen. So this vessel definitely has some modern sensor arrays. It may even have a decent sonar array (at the very least it has a navigational unit that can take depth soundings)

Just how difficult do you think it would be to take an old torpedo launcher out of stores and fit it 'midships? It's an active service coast guard vessel, so they are sure to have a weapons locker which may contain a couple of M2HBs. It can certainly accomodate heavier weaponry if we were really pressed for coastal ASW patrols.

also one final reason navies wouldn't upgrade old wooden warships would be this reason that relates to their structural integrity

http://www.tricoastal.com/woodship.html

Remember that the cost of maintenance and upkeep on the units includes replacing portions of it piecemeal. You don't really think that your Swordsmen pass their sword down from generation to generation and that it never breaks and needs replacing, do you?

The Constitution was suffering from less hogging than they expected. They corrected it with fresh wood and steel reinforcements and Old Ironsides should be afloat for another 200 years.

Also bear in mind that we are talking about something that is *possible*, not recommended. I doubt that the Eagle (even if it had an ASW torpedo launcher) would survive a prolonged encounter with a Kilo, Whiskey, or even a venerable Gato. But it would certainly have time to call a couple patrolling Orions (which aren't represented in the game at all) to close in on its location.

[dawidge]

What the heck happened with my quoting?
Stuff between bracket-slash-cue-you-owe-tee-ee-bracket and bracket-cue-you-owe-tee-ee-bracket is mine.

Fixed it. There's either something magic about cutting and pasting the slash q u o t e that gets inserted for you, or I'm not putting enough trailing spaces or something.

[korn469]

If my side armor can repulse something that delivers over 100x the KE of a 12.7mm round, I re[peat that the .50 cal will have a hard time chewing through it.

If you can supply weights for the projectile (not the entire cartridge) of the 12.7mm and 7.62 mm, in lbs, we can clean up the math a bit.

but the thing is that cannon was more than enough to pierce the sides of a wooden ship, i don't see where you are getting that wooden ships repulsed shells like that
if .50 cal works against lightly armored (metal) targets it shouldn't have any problem with a wooden hull

I'm pretty sure that the historically accurate wodden-hulled frigate will eat your fiberglass hotrod with a pintle-mounted .50 with one volley of grape shot. A wooden-hulled frigate with a
half-dozen .50s will eat you up, too. In neither case will you do more than scratch the finish and maybe kill a couple of the crew.

i should have specified that i was talking about a fully historical frigate, and since the .50 cal has a further range than the grapeshot and since the boat would be faster than the frigate it shouldn't have any problems at all

It's only a Barque, not a frigate, and has a steel, not wooden, hull, but is a fair approximation of the kind of vessel classed as "galley" in CIV terms that might exist in a modern navy.

i think if anything that might count as a frigate or possibly a caravel, but not a galley...if anything small boats with grenade launchers, m-2, or just sailors with rps would probably approximate a galley better

Remember that the cost of maintenance and upkeep on the units includes replacing portions of it piecemeal.

but unless you add a number of ASW features at once the ship would be useless in ASW operations for a long long time

[dawidge]

Originally posted by korn469

but the thing is that cannon was more than enough to pierce the sides of a wooden ship, i don't see where you are getting that wooden ships repulsed shells like that
if .50 cal works against lightly armored (metal) targets it shouldn't have any problem with a wooden hull

But Old Ironsides was able to repulse it, that's how it got its nickname.

By the way, I dropped a "1/2" factor on some of the calculations. I think the cannon comes in at only 50x rather than 100x (before considering the fractional weight of the MG rounds), but I'm not going back to redo the calculations.

i should have specified that i was talking about a fully historical frigate, and since the .50 cal has a further range than the grapeshot and since the boat would be faster than the frigate it shouldn't have any problems at all

And Jerry and I have been talking about vessels which are not fully historically accurate, but ones which have undergone "incremental" upgrades with off-the-shelf parts that are just laying about in depots gathering dust.

I don't see any reason why my caravel crew wouldn't bring a few articles of standard infantry weaponry aboard.

i think if anything that might count as a frigate or possibly a caravel, but not a galley...if anything small boats with grenade launchers, m-2, or just sailors with rps would probably approximate a galley better

but unless you add a number of ASW features at once the ship would be useless in ASW operations for a long long time

I don't think it would take more than a week to make a combatant out of the Eagle, and the A-team could get it done in four hours ,-)}

Doing it in a way that BUSHIPS would sign off on is a different matter. Then again, I don't think BUSHIPS would have let Nimitz send the Yorktown to Midway if he'd let them have a say in it.

For that matter, just rip the dipping Sonar suite out of a Seahawk and put it aboard a shrimp trawler along with a heap of sonobuoys, give them a military frequency radio and Orion support and *bing* you've got an ASW patrol vessel that has no inherent offensive capability, but has it in abstract form via the Orions. If I know my cousins well (they're shrimpers in Louisiana), they can probably arrange for the .50s themselves ,-)}

[korn469]

But Old Ironsides was able to repulse it, that's how it got its nickname.

ok i did some research and here is what i found

While USS Constitution was engaged in battle with HMS Guerriere (19 August 1812) in the War of 1812, an unidentified sailor exclaimed, "Huzzah, her sides are made of iron!" when British cannonballs appeared to bounce off her thick wooden sides. What actually occurred was the inability of 18-pound British cannonballs to penetrate USS Constitution's hull which is up to 25 inches thick at the waterline. Her hull comprises three layers of oak: live oak (one of the most durable wood in the World) for the frames or the middle layer, and white oak for the planking which rests on either side of the live oak. Many today still refer to USS Constitution by her nickname "Old Ironsides

http://www.ussconstitutionmuseum.org/faq/nickname.html

[uote]The 32 pounders on board HMS VICTORY are long pattern Blomefield guns, designed by Sir Thomas Blomefield, Inspector General of Ordnance, at Woolwich Arsenal. Guns of this form were manufactured between 1780 and 1822. As all are cast with the cypher King George III, they would all have been made before 1820

Shot weight: 32lbs/14.4 kg
Muzzle velocity: 1600 feet per second/485.3 mps
Penetration of solid shot through oak at 400 yds/364 m: up to 42 ins/106.7 cm
Penetration of solid shot through oak at 1000 yds/910 m: up to 31.½ ins/80.0 cm
Rate of fire; approximate: 1 round every 2 minutes[/quote]

http://www.hms-victory.com/ordnance.htm

ok so it might have been able to have 18lb cannon balls bounce off but i according to the other site 32lb cannon balls should have penetrated its sides

though i'm going to say that i personally wouldn't want to stand behind 25inches of wood that a m-2 was shooting at, plus if you hit the sails with tracers wouldn't it catch them on fire?

I don't think it would take more than a week to make a combatant out of the Eagle, and the A-team could get it done in four hours

well if you had the A-team on your side you're gonna win anyways

For that matter, just rip the dipping Sonar suite out of a Seahawk and put it aboard a shrimp trawler along with a heap of sonobuoys, give them a military frequency radio and Orion support and *bing* you've got an ASW patrol vessel that has no inherent offensive capability, but has it in abstract form via the Orions.

hehe if you have orions why would you need shrimp trawlers with sonar bouys in the first place?

plus shrimp trawlers are not exactly ocean going vessels, and you don't really have to worry about subs in the bayous

hehe here turn this into an ASW platform

Although many of our Pacific Trawler owners cruise around 8-10 knots, (and burning only 3 - 4 gallons of fuel), we have chosen the 300hp John Deere Marine Diesel as standard engine for the Pacific Trawler 40, providing a top speed of well over 15, and an all day cruising speed of 13-14 knots. This allows you to run and seek shelter if tropical depressions threaten as well as to run upstream rivers with even extreme currents.

http://www.inter-yacht.com/PT/PT.html

[dawidge]

Originally posted by korn469

though i'm going to say that i personally wouldn't want to stand behind 25inches of wood that a m-2 was shooting at, plus if you hit the sails with tracers wouldn't it catch them on fire?

I wouldn't feel too comfortable about it either, but two feet of oak will stop the first belt or so out of that 50. I definitely wouldn't want to be on deck if it was being swept by m-2s, but what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

well if you had the A-team on your side you're gonna win anyways

I pity the fool

hehe if you have orions why would you need shrimp trawlers with sonar bouys in the first place?

It's a pain in the but to keep an Orion on station for a week at a time. The pilots tend to fall asleep after the first 20 hours or so, no matter how much coffee and benzadrine they've had.

I'm sure there would also be room for a couple of Mk46 or Mk50 torpedoes to just roll off and do their sub-killing thing. Ignore the Orions completely.

plus shrimp trawlers are not exactly ocean going vessels, and you don't really have to worry about subs in the bayous

The shrimp aren't in the bayous, they're out in the gulf (which can be considered "oceanic" for the purposes of this discussion). As long as the seas aren't too high and there isn't a hurricane bearing down on you, the trawler can keep on station for weeks.
They really only have to come in when they run out of beer

hehe here turn this into an ASW platform

http://www.inter-yacht.com/PT/PT.html

Doesn't that deckhouse make it awful hard to empty the nets?


Okay, stash a couple of Mk46 or Mk 50s atop the deckhouse errrm "salon". We lower them into the water with the boom. Mount a 20mm or 40mm autocannon on the bow. Scatter pintle mounts all over the place for .50s, including atop the deckhouse to the rear and on the flying bridge. Install a small boom on the stern to handle the dipping sonar we stole from a seahawk (after all, we stole its torpedoes, it doesn't need the sonar anymore). Fill the hold with sonobuoys and the deckhouse with beer and a couple cases of grenades (for fishing) .

As for the accommodations, I don't think the Navy allows anything so luxurious. Rip out the king size waterbed and install bunks (there's room for at least nine in there). Holds a crew of up to 18 without getting uncomfortable about the bunk rotation.

You now have the A-Team official ASW trawler.

[korn469]

I wouldn't feel too comfortable about it either, but two feet of oak will stop the first belt or so out of that 50.

i don't think so, i think each bullet would go right through the oak...i haven't found anything definitive yet but here is something

the Krag rifle (a us army rifle used during the spanish american war) could penetrate 45" - 48" of dry oak @ 3 feet, it was a .30 cal rifle and it only had a muzzle velocity of 2000 fps with a 220 gr (i'm assuming this means grain) bullet

here's the link
http://home.sprynet.com/~frfrog/kragrifl.htm

i'll keep on looking for M-2 wood penetration charts

[dawidge]

The .308 at 220 grains is about 14 grams, or .07 lb

The projectile is most penetrating and damaging right out of the muzzle (3 feet is pretty close range)

I'll concede that the M-2 will damage the wooden hulled ship. It will certainly do more than scratch the finish. Sinking it would be difficult, because you'd have to hit below the waterline without losing too much KE traveling through the water.

I'm not sure how much damage it would do inside, though. There's a lot of empty space insode one of those boats and instead of ricocheting and doing a shake-and-bake (like they do in steel armored vehicles) it would just hit the soft wood on the other side and keep going (unless it hist one of those reinforcing beams we installed to support the hardware up top ). Alternatively, it might lose enough energy punching through that it wouldn't cause crippling damage to a person unless they were hit somewhere particularly vulnerable.

[korn469]

ok i found an ammo site

the normal ball .50 cal bullet appears to be 647 gr while the AP bullet appears to be 690 gr

http://secure.ttiarmory.com/cat_50bmg.html

also i was wrong about an M-2 rate of fire it appears to be in the 450-600 rounds per minute range with FAS setting it at 550 rounds per minute

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m2-50cal.htm

[Captain]

As said by others, refitting wooden ships to have a chance against modern ships would have serious costs. Upgrade costs are essential for balance and realism.

Considering that the primary cost of modern ships is not just the physical structure of the hull, but the power plant, the armaments (missiles, accompanying choppers, torps), and most of all the electronic warfare equipment that makes coordinating all this possible...

Even if you were able to refit the galleon or frigate, the cost of the refit is pretty much identical to the cost of building a new ship from scratch. The onboard equipment plus power plant cost way way more than the hull - we're talking bankrolls to peanuts here. Plus, to fit the power plant on, with the necessary reinforcement, requires redoing the hull anyways. The shape is likely inappropriate and balance skewed. You can certainly strap a rifle or pistol to a bike as easily as a car, but if you add a motorcycle engine to a bicycle, it might "work", but you can't remotely expect the same performance. Adding reinforcement is probably not enough, you need to rebuild the frame. Now if you cut the masts, redo the hull, add "boatloads" of new engines, armament and equipment... it's the same, if not more work, than building from scratch.

All considered, free upgrades are ridiculous. I think that we can all agree on that.

The more controversial question is whether upgrading should be possible or not. For realism I'd say no. For game balance, I'm inclined towards yes.

Also, wooden ships, as is, should have zero chance against modern ones. One solution is to have a dirt cheap "PT boat equivalent" upgrade, then it would make sense. Another solution might be a new era graphic, showing a few small missile batteries onboard, just like the spearman-militia solution. This would help many accept unlikely outcomes as imaginable.

[Theodrik]

Originally posted by Slyspy
My Grandfather served on RN corvettes during the war. I hate to break it to you, but they were little tin cans bobbing about on convoy runs to the US and USSR, not wooden ships. The vessels which you refer to were merely coastal listening posts, not corvettes.

As for the subject of this thread, do you really think an antique wooden ship could take the stresses of carrying and firing modern weapons? They could barely cope with their regular armament. Even adding a few cannon would destabilise the ship (the Mary Rose is a prime example). Plus many older ships couldn't fire their entire arsenal for fear of breaking apart.

Besides which, how much return fire do you think they could take? One explosive shell probably. A galancing hit from a torpedo. Even a burst from a 50cal wuld probably go right through and into the crew, let alone the damage which tracer rounds could do.

This whole discussion is laughable!

I'm glad you're so open minded on this matter. Yes, most of the vessels classed as corvettes were oversize PT boats rigged for ASW. As for weapon stresses, modern weapons as noted previously, have shock absorbing mounts. The Mary Rose is capsize this is true, however, I suspect the 300 men onboard her (her normal crew was like 120) and her green captain, a Lord although he may have been, was to fault for her floundering, not her being retrofitted to take 14 cannon! When we get to the glleon and sailing frigates, they had sides of 18-14"pf wood to bear the loads of the heavy cannon. A modern MG are mounted on jeeps, various 3rd-world nations havce 20mm AA's on light pickup trucks. Rockets are recoiless systems. I know, I've fired them from my shoulder. All I'm saying, grafing modern weapons onto obsolete systems is very historic. In WWII, germans grafted captured Russian 76.2mm pintel-mounted towed guns onto Czech Pz38 chassis with a little boiler platting to create the Marder. When it showed up in North Africa in '42, the Brtis thought they were seing a mobile 88. The previous Uss Merimack/CSS Virginia is another upgrade example. Converting WWi airplains to bomber by giving the pilot some motar shells to drop out of the cockpit is another. History is replete with upgrades. Building from scratch wholly with new tech is usually better and cheaper naturally.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

Better and cheaper, yes, but i think the direction we should be looking in is faster....

a unit is in a city. The city is building something else. There are no people availible to build a new unit. So an old unit arms itself.

Make any sense?

[Denday]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Much less than 1/100 I think. However, there is a significant chance of a mistake on board the sub leading to catastrophic failure; anything from running aground to a torpedo exploding on board.

Good thinking but then again that doesn't happen in battles.
that just happens when there moving along
and if a frigate or galleon sunk a sub it would be a laugh even if it would never happen.

in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Denday


Good thinking but then again that doesn't happen in battles.
that just happens when there moving along
and if a frigate or galleon sunk a sub it would be a laugh even if it would never happen.

in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

Chances of an accident or friendly fire are much higher when in combat. Stress, fear and live ammo are a few of many such factors. For instance, the Americans accidentally bombed the Canadians in Afghanistan. You can blame it on anything you like, but if there was no enemy forces and no war, the chances of such an accident would be drastically reduced.

For instance, the U.S. lost a B1b bomber in the Afghan conflict.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by Denday
in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

The point is that the experienced sub captain writing the book had no problem imagining that the junk (galleon or caravel equivalent - probably closer to a caravel) was the sub killer. It turns out that the junk was bait for the real killer, and that really scared the monkey smooks out of him. He was proud of himself for deducing that they had a junk out there doing ASW work and fired off a fish at it... and almost got himself killed when the real threat (an I boat) revealed itself by firing a fish at him.

Today's "Great Ships" was about the PT boat. Apparently they were doing ASW work at the end of the war. The two rear torpedo racks were replaced with 4 depth charges.

As an example of how ships evolve roles through incremental improvements without undergoing an Upgrade, the (Pacific fleet Elco) PT boat began the war with 4 Mk8 torpedoes, a 20mm autocannon, and two Browning .50s. It ended the war with 2 Mk15 fish (the variety used by torpedo bombers), 4 depth charges, a twin-40mm, two 20mm, a 37mm and the two .50s (with only 9 people aboard, I guess you were responsible for your own reloading - 6 on guns, 1 at helm, 1 on the engines, and 1 spare (probably feeding the twin-40)). At the beginning of the war, you could state with authority that there was no way a PT could kill a sub and that it was vulnerable to air attack. By the end of the war, they were killing subs (when they could be found) and planes (when they were dumb enough to try to attack) with regularity.

That said, I have no trouble imagining that somebody might plop a marine diesel (or two) into a "caravel" (perhaps a 12m racing yacht) slapping the sonar suite and armament of a Seahawk (dipping sonar, a metric s**tload of sonobuoys, and two or three Mk46 or Mk50 torpedoes) into it thus creating an ASW patrol boat.

It can stay on station a lot longer than the 90 minutes a Seahawk is limited to and it can call in support. At the very least, it warns of the presence of the sub for other to kill (after all, it's just a caravel... probably some rich, dumb SOB out for a weekend fishing trip in the middle of a war).