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P.B. Hurley, Treatise on Gayan Naval Warfare, Pt.1 The Battleship
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
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Picture the world. It is 1900. The world is filled with developed and developing nations which, upon being disabused of their notions of empire, are chasing the dream of global power. Without the opportunity to colonise, enslave and otherwise exploit the rest of the world1 they would have to look for new avenues to power - avenues that started (and for many, ended) at sea.
Trade exploded at the end of the 19th Century. Fair or unfair, advantageous or exploitative there were more ships than ever sailing the seas and oceans of the world and all of them needed protection. Thus began the first, largest industrial naval arms race the world has ever seen. With the construction of HMS Juggernaut in 1910, it should have ended. It lasted much longer than it should have. And, amongst all the other hundreds of reasons2, that was the reason for the Great War.
Prior to the arrival of the Juggernauts, the battleship dominated. From 1901 to 1906, Albia built twenty-three battleships armed with a mix of twelve to fourteen inch main guns. Each had a small, quick-firing secondary armament of standardised six inch guns, these 'mixed-calibre' battleships found ranging their weaponry difficult even with their high fighting tops and modernised directors. The problem lay in their shell trajectories. Two shells firing from different calibre guns would travel different trajectories to the target and then, upon reaching it, cause similar water funnels to be thrown up. Thus, it was difficult to know whether it was the main guns that were falling short of the enemy or if it was the smaller, less-effective weapons3.
Then what would later become known as the semi-juggernaut, or Motoko-type battleship found a four-year rule between the completion of the Hibernia and of the first all-big-gun HMS Juggernaut. These powerful ships combined a heavy primary armament, with a heavy secondary battery. In Akitsukini six of the Motoko class were built, fourteen inch turrets supported by eleven inch guns. While this change improved things, it was still impossible to tell the difference between the splash of a seven hundred kilo shell and a three hundred kilo one. Trajectories only matched when the gun calibre did. It did not take long for this problem to be overcome.
HMS Juggernaut was exactly that. The largest warship ever built when she slipped into the waves at Portsmouth, she carried twelve fourteen-inch rifles in six twin turrets and no other main guns at all. At 25,000 long tons, she exceeded the next largest Albian ship by four-thousand tons and her nearest competitor by similar margins. In the same fell swoop she sentenced every other battleship afloat to the scrapyards4. None could match her for accuracy with her unified battery and the finest director lenses at sea. Not even the Goeben who launched some time after the Juggernaut but to the older standard.
Of course as soon as Juggernaut put to sea it accelerated the arms race far beyond the desperate pace it had already been keeping. The Albian Royal Navy put ten in the water in the four short years between Juggernaut and the outbreak of war. The League of States, including Gallia and Otrusia, launched fourteen of their own, while the Central Concord (Dyskelande, Caspia et al) managed twenty-three. Akitsukini, a world away from most other great powers, managed just four but that was more than enough to threaten regional powers such as Cathay.
New Alleghany was an outlier in all of this. Separated from all but Vespucia itself by oceans and mountains, it had managed to ignore the 'exploits of Europa' for a long time but with the coming of the Juggernaut that changed. An injection of funding5 saw six Juggernaut-style battleships laid down within months of each other in 1910, and by 1913 and the outbreak of war, New Alleghany had fifteen at sea and another four under construction. It was, by all accounts, the construction of a navy at a breakneck pace. It was, by all accounts, as much a threat to global stability as the 1911 gathering at Stralsten turned out to be6.
P.B. Hurley's Treatise on Gayan Naval Warfare will be followed by Pt2: Aircraft at Sea and Pt3: The Battlecruiser in time.
Trade exploded at the end of the 19th Century. Fair or unfair, advantageous or exploitative there were more ships than ever sailing the seas and oceans of the world and all of them needed protection. Thus began the first, largest industrial naval arms race the world has ever seen. With the construction of HMS Juggernaut in 1910, it should have ended. It lasted much longer than it should have. And, amongst all the other hundreds of reasons2, that was the reason for the Great War.
Prior to the arrival of the Juggernauts, the battleship dominated. From 1901 to 1906, Albia built twenty-three battleships armed with a mix of twelve to fourteen inch main guns. Each had a small, quick-firing secondary armament of standardised six inch guns, these 'mixed-calibre' battleships found ranging their weaponry difficult even with their high fighting tops and modernised directors. The problem lay in their shell trajectories. Two shells firing from different calibre guns would travel different trajectories to the target and then, upon reaching it, cause similar water funnels to be thrown up. Thus, it was difficult to know whether it was the main guns that were falling short of the enemy or if it was the smaller, less-effective weapons3.
Then what would later become known as the semi-juggernaut, or Motoko-type battleship found a four-year rule between the completion of the Hibernia and of the first all-big-gun HMS Juggernaut. These powerful ships combined a heavy primary armament, with a heavy secondary battery. In Akitsukini six of the Motoko class were built, fourteen inch turrets supported by eleven inch guns. While this change improved things, it was still impossible to tell the difference between the splash of a seven hundred kilo shell and a three hundred kilo one. Trajectories only matched when the gun calibre did. It did not take long for this problem to be overcome.
HMS Juggernaut was exactly that. The largest warship ever built when she slipped into the waves at Portsmouth, she carried twelve fourteen-inch rifles in six twin turrets and no other main guns at all. At 25,000 long tons, she exceeded the next largest Albian ship by four-thousand tons and her nearest competitor by similar margins. In the same fell swoop she sentenced every other battleship afloat to the scrapyards4. None could match her for accuracy with her unified battery and the finest director lenses at sea. Not even the Goeben who launched some time after the Juggernaut but to the older standard.
Of course as soon as Juggernaut put to sea it accelerated the arms race far beyond the desperate pace it had already been keeping. The Albian Royal Navy put ten in the water in the four short years between Juggernaut and the outbreak of war. The League of States, including Gallia and Otrusia, launched fourteen of their own, while the Central Concord (Dyskelande, Caspia et al) managed twenty-three. Akitsukini, a world away from most other great powers, managed just four but that was more than enough to threaten regional powers such as Cathay.
New Alleghany was an outlier in all of this. Separated from all but Vespucia itself by oceans and mountains, it had managed to ignore the 'exploits of Europa' for a long time but with the coming of the Juggernaut that changed. An injection of funding5 saw six Juggernaut-style battleships laid down within months of each other in 1910, and by 1913 and the outbreak of war, New Alleghany had fifteen at sea and another four under construction. It was, by all accounts, the construction of a navy at a breakneck pace. It was, by all accounts, as much a threat to global stability as the 1911 gathering at Stralsten turned out to be6.
P.B. Hurley's Treatise on Gayan Naval Warfare will be followed by Pt2: Aircraft at Sea and Pt3: The Battlecruiser in time.
- W.B.Taylor, The End of Empire, pg. 194
- Autumn Matsuhara, The War To End All Wars, pg 177-201
- For a perfect example, look at the reports of the engagement between HMS Canopus and NAS New Kent, both of them pre-Juggernaut mixed battery ships.
- Every one that is, bar the other Juggernaut-style ships that were already under construction such as the Akistukini Mochizuki.
- Congressional Budget of 1909
- Autumn Matsuhara, The War To End All Wars, pg 84
This is all @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl fault