Perhaps. If only the animators didn't screw up on the number of barrels per turret (there's only 2 rather than 3).
Belated Battleships (KanColle) [REHOST]
- Thread starter theJMPer
- Start date
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
Whatever happened to the P-8 Posideons? I thought they'd be operational by then. Haven't the Orions already been retired?
- Location
- Sunny SoCal
Agreed looks pretty Des Moines-ey to me, but at this point I played so many games in the DM today in WOWS my eyes might be playing tricks on me.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The flip side of that is, they can zig-zag around at extreme range, launch a night attack and try to escape into the darkness a la Wash, and generally be difficult for the Abyssal task force to sink. They don't have to inflict damage, they just have to be close enough and threatening enough that they can't be ignored, and since "they might torpedo us when night falls" is a major part of the threat, I would think they achieve that just by being in the neighborhood.
I'm not sure that MQ-4Cs would be able to penetrate Tenebrous Abyssal Magical Bullshit well enough to actually spot raiding Abyssals, at least in the Belated Battleships continuity.
Which means we can expect the best maritime patrol aircraft with radar in the world to work about as well as the best WWII maritime patrol aircraft with radar at the time. Not necessarily terribly, but not nearly as well as we're accustomed to.
- Location
- 'Murica
That's a Baltimore, not an Iowa.There's also a later scene, where the Iron Giants chest cannon narrowly misses a battleship whose silhouette looks like an Iowas (artistic liberties aside). After some research, it turns out Wisconsin was the only Iowa still in service (or at least still out and about) at the time of the movie (sometime shortly after the Sputnik I launch).
So, Jersey (@theJMPer ), did Wisky ever tell you anything about meeting the Iron Giant?
Nope, Baltimore. Des Moines only has one stack.
Burning Baron
This position needs more entrenching.
- Location
- In here, not out there.
Props to the artists, who hand drew them for keeping them accurate.
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
What a wonderful point for me to get caught up with this. Clearly, my timing couldn't be more perfect. In unrelated news, I am drowning in my own sarcasm.
That said, from the sounds of it, they actually plan on engaging. Which makes sense, actually. Once daylight hits, they're going to lose many of the advantages night-time gives them, that help equalize things. If they can get some good licks in during the night, then they're in a much better position come daylight. Particularly if they can slow the battleships down.
Honestly, the best outcome might be if they manage to knock some knots off all the ships, rather than crippling/mission-killing an individual ship. The Scharns are almost certain to simply be left behind if they're rendered too slow, or unable to move. Bismarck's more iffy, but it's possible that the Scharns would carry on without her, especially if she was simply slowed. Whereas, if the entire Abyssal force has taken light-to-moderate damage, they're much more likely to stay together. Particularly if the slowest is still a tad faster than Maya and Sendai.
It was. Maya's float-plane was what spotted the Abyssals. In-terms of detection capability, it's probably better at spotting Abyssals than most human-piloted aircraft. Admittedly, it's not likely to be well-armed, and the Abyssal AA would eat it for breakfast, but it's there.
Maybe. I've considered something similar. It does buy time for the convoy, which is one of their main goals, here. It also increases their odds of survival.
That said, from the sounds of it, they actually plan on engaging. Which makes sense, actually. Once daylight hits, they're going to lose many of the advantages night-time gives them, that help equalize things. If they can get some good licks in during the night, then they're in a much better position come daylight. Particularly if they can slow the battleships down.
Honestly, the best outcome might be if they manage to knock some knots off all the ships, rather than crippling/mission-killing an individual ship. The Scharns are almost certain to simply be left behind if they're rendered too slow, or unable to move. Bismarck's more iffy, but it's possible that the Scharns would carry on without her, especially if she was simply slowed. Whereas, if the entire Abyssal force has taken light-to-moderate damage, they're much more likely to stay together. Particularly if the slowest is still a tad faster than Maya and Sendai.
- Location
- Mountains of Appalachia
Well, one thing that's going to be critical in this engagement if the Abyssals know about Japanese torpedo performances. It's possible they could not know and wind up eating a bunch of Long Lances at 20km on the high-speed setting because they 'know' that torpedoes don't have that kind of range and that Maya can;t hurt them at that range. Especially if the girls launch their spread without a major course change afterward so the Abyssals don't 'know' that there are torpedoes in the water until they arrive into visual sighting range (at night, note). It won't apply for the second and later launches, but a good first sucker punch could go a long way toward getting the convoy clear.
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
Pretty much yeah, that was my thinking. But it's still better than nothing.
This is why I like Eternity more as a setting (and not just because I'm a sidestory author
). Sure, the Abyssals are still bullshit, but even if you're a ghost-demon-kaiju-thing made from radar absorbing materials, if you're the size of a battleship you'll still appear on radar.At the time BelaBatt is set, circa 2014, the P-8 has been produced but is only deployed at VP-30, the Fleet Replacement Squadron responsible for writing doctrine and training new P-8 squadrons. Hawaii has 3 P-3 squadrons, but by 2016 they will relocate to the mainland for conversion to the P-8.
Plenty of USN and JMSDF Orions are still flying, but that will change within the next decade or so.
The design, however, is very much NOT a BB-49 unless you want to presume they got a complete superstructure replacement as a refit for AA work at some point, based on the 5"/38 twin mount. (The BB-49s were to have 6"/53 casemated secondaries in the superstructure.) Except for the shape of the bow not having the "Coke bottle" neck shape, that's clearly an Iowa.Oh hey. I was rewatching The Iron Giant. (Don't look that up, destroyers. Plz no) And during the Giant's rampage, I noticed the battleship has the number 51 on her fore.
It's 51. I promise.
And that makes her the third ship of the aborted South Dakota class, laid down in 1920, but cancelled by the WNT.
Most likely, the convoy hugged the coast from Balboa up to San Diego or Los Angeles (to stay under air cover/coastal gun cover as long as possible), then turned great circle out to Hawaii. That would mean that they are pretty much directly under the moderately heavily-trafficked air route from LAX to Honolulu, and I'd bet my bottom dollar that the Navy (and, probably, the airlines!) would have paid to train airline flight crews as aerial observers; remember, at typical airliner cruise altitudes, the horizon is between 208.7 and 248.2 miles away, and a ship's wake is easily visible at those ranges. While clouds would hinder visual scanning from those altitudes, you'd better bet that the instructions to pilots would be to report all ship wake sightings with approximate locations, to get instructions on whether to divert to avoid possible AA fire from Abyssals. If they're reporting them already, then you know that they'd be passing the information on to the Navy.
The airliners might not be able to do anything to help the convoy, but they'd at least have reported in any unknown wakes, helping the Navy react. (The problem here is that the raiders are someplace where there's really nothing that can be done to respond, at least not in a timeframe that would help the convoy.)
Early 2016; we had The Force Awakens come out shortly before the Christmas and New Years segments. Given the war situation, P-8 production and deployment would certainly be accelerated--but at the same time, P-3 retirement would be deferred and there's no way that Hawaii's MPA squadrons would go back Stateside to convert; more likely, entirely new P-8 squadrons would be formed and sent to Hawaii to bolster the P-3s. MPAs of any sort are as precious as diamonds in this sort of war, and the only way that P-3s would be retired is if they either suffer so much damage that they are no longer repairable, or they literally fall apart and can't be put back together again. Hell, if Lockheed still has the P-3 tooling, I wouldn't be shocked if they were ordered to put it back into production, too, just to bolster the fleet.
MQ-4C work would also be massively accelerated, and I suspect that efforts to make MPA variants of the MQ-1 and MQ-9 would also be started on a crash basis. And I'm sure that any aircraft at Davis-Monthan that aren't reactivated for other war requirements (and which aren't past their fatigue lives) would end up being reactivated for ad hoc conversion to MPA duties. (There's a LOT of C-130s there...)
Whiskey Golf
Being of Editing & Technical Assistance
- Location
- Chained to my desk
Quite true, and I agree with all of this. There's a chance Lockheed still has the P-3 tooling, given that they were offering what was essentially an upgraded P-3 which lost to the P-8.
What I'd left unsaid, which I should have clarified, was that there's that opportunity for the Abyssals if BelaBatt takes place in 2016 when the Hawaii MPA squadrons are away and converting, instead of 2014. On the other hand, it's also much faster to redeploy aircraft than it is to redeploy ships, and the Navy would be quite negligent if they didn't route other MPA squadrons back to Hawaii, so it's not as if Hawaii without MPA squadrons is a state of affairs that would last long.
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Yep. Unfortunately, Germany was allied with Japan during WWII, so I kinda doubt they aren't at least aware that their torpedoes are very good.
Re: Plane deployment:
One thing to keep in mind is the effect the Abyssals will have had on the Navy and Air-force. The odds are they lost a lot of ships and planes when the Abyssals first showed up, and in the time since. After all, modern armaments are surprisingly ineffective on most Abyssals.
Even though they did likely sink some of the Abyssals (since apparently the ancient gods of the sea really care about your country's KDR, when it comes to getting shipgirls), they would have had disproportionately large losses in the process. And their efforts would have been mostly focused on holding the line, and aiding Japan, due to our treaties promising such aid. So they may have had to divert that production capability towards replacing their lost planes and ships.
Also, the odds are that the R&D budget was refocused on one thing, and one thing only: getting weapons that can fight the Abyssals. Whether it be shipgirl summoning or some new type of gun, that would be their goal. They'd be throwing everything they could at the wall, and hoping something stuck.
Hell, given the capabilities the formerly-museum-ship Iowas have been showing, I'm kinda surprised they haven't tried making more of them. It's not like they don't have the plans. Sure, it probably wouldn't work. But it'd be worth a shot.
One simply doesn't waste years of effort/manpower and many billions of dollars of a shaky maybe like that. It's quite possible that, with smart deployment and some luck, the Abyssal War will be won or well on the way to that state by the time the first hypothetical Iowa 2.0 class hull is ready for sea trials.
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Maybe, maybe not. But given the desperation implied in the first chapter? I wouldn't be too shocked if they were considering it. At the very least, they might consider making a Fletcher or two. I wouldn't be surprised if you could manufacture them a lot more cheaply and quickly with modern equipment, too.
Thing is, the war against the Abyssals was going pretty poorly, on a strategic level. A lot of countries were/are staying out of it, and the only countries with decent numbers of shipgirls were under siege. And both of them are countries highly dependent on trade to keep their population fed. And even now, there are pretty big chunks of ocean that are Abyssal territory. The amount of ground they've managed to retake is still fairly small, comparatively. Their logistics are also fairly fragile, which was the point of the recent campaign to take those islands. While things are nowhere near as bleak as they were, they're still not great.
ijnfleetadmiral
CinC Rengo Kanmusutai
- Location
- Admiral's Bridge, HIJMS Kongo
The Germans might have been allies with the Japanese in WWII, but if these Abyssals exhibit the Nazi qualities, they'll pretty much consider the Japanese and anything associated with them to be inferior to German stuff. Hitler's Mein Kampf plainly stated that the Japanese were an inferior race and lacking in imagination, despite being skillful and clever, which made them perfect for Germany to use as they saw fit. Therefore, Abyssmarck and the Abysstwins might've heard about the range of the Long Lance, but they probably won't believe it. Perfect chance for Maya and Sendai to pull one off by the skin of their teeth.
Scenario:
- Maya and Sendai fire full spreads of torpedoes at Long Lancer range without changing course.
- Abyssals - thinking they have target practice - eagerly maintain course and close range.
- One, both, or all three take torpedo hits. Abysstwins are badly damaged (maybe even sunk, depending on number of hits, as they're nowhere near as heavily-armored as Abyssmarck; remember the battle with HMS Glorious in 1940, when a lucky torpedo hit on Schanhorst (one hit) badly damaged her and put her out of action for some time, then Gneisenau later took a torpedo that punched clean through her bow), and Abyssmarck (whether damaged or not) has a flashback to her 1941 cruise where a well-placed torpedo was her undoing, freaks, turns tail, and runs.
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khan2012
Very Tired.
- Location
- North Carolina
- Pronouns
- He/Him/They/Them
That is a very much best case scenario, although is this Abyssmark or Tirpitz? Because Tirpitz won't be as scared by torpedoes.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The converse of that, though, is that if you're worried about a Japanese cruiser firing Long Lances at you from extreme range... what can you do about that, exactly?
You can zig-zag to preemptively avoid the torpedoes and make it pointless to launch them, but zig-zagging slows you down significantly and delays your forward progress towards the convoy. Mission accomplished for Maya and Sendai.
You can divert course towards the cruisers and start shooting at them, but the range is long and they can do a LOT of shell splash chasing if all they're worried about is not getting blown up by your shells at extreme range. And, again, this draws them away from the convoy.
A big part of the question is, how fast is the convoy? What is its best speed?
Yes, but different types of plane tend to have different production lines. You can rev up the production of maritime patrol aircraft AND fighter jets separately, so the enemy having shot down hundreds of your fighter jets doesn't necessarily inconvenience your MPA production, especially since the two kinds of planes use so very many completely different parts.
- Location
- Mountains of Appalachia
Well there's a difference between 'our allies have good torpedoes' and 'TYPE 93 OP PLZ NERF!!!!'. I'm certain the Kriegsmarine heard rumors Japan had good torpedoes, but the exact specifications would be a closely guarded secret. Likewise, if Bismarck knew about Yamato, she wouldn't call herself the best battleship EVAR (Yams would eat her alive 1v1, her only real advantage would be speed). Keep in mind the 'official' performance of the Type 93 was 11,000 meters at 42 knots (and not 20,000 meters at 50 knots). Considering the British equivalent on a CA would be at best 6400 meters at 41 knots (for the 21 inch Mark VIII* which was cutting edge RN tech in 1941), I can see Abyssmark taking the official performance that their allies told them as truth instead of a major sandbag. Hell the KM Torpedo was 5000 meters/44 knots and a max range of 12000 meters on low speed settings, so...yeah.
Now, all this said, if Abyssmark has had offscreen experience with the Long Lance, she will know about it, and be a lot more cautious. Which again plays into Maya and Sendai's hands, since a bluffed torpedo run is as good as the real thing for forcing your target to take evasive action if they are cautious. That worked for the Taffies' aircrews off Samar after all.
Yeah, that's how I see the opening moves of the chess game going. I see Abyssmark more in the RAEG mode and deciding to stomp a mudhole in these ships who wounded/sunk her babies. Also even if they are inclined to hunt down the convoy versus mix it up, they do not want to let Maya or Sendai reload their tubes for another shot at them as they pursue.
One thing to remember is as per Abyssmark's internal monologue she's scared of carrier aircraft versus surface vessels. Keep in mind that the RN's torpedoes were distinctly inferior to IJN models (although better than the Mark 14 in 1941, almost anything was) and slightly marginal to KM torpedoes. Again, a lot depends on what kind of opposition she had faced. If she's discounting the Long Lances, she could be in real trouble (probably not fatal trouble because she is a very tough customer) if she gives Maya or Sendai a clean shot. OTOH, if she's already experienced what the USN did at Tassafronga, she will so not want to let either get a clean shot at her.
Battle of Tassafaronga - Wikipedia
That said, I see Maya and Sendai both getting very badly battered at best, at worst they take an escort with them back to Davy Jones' Locker.
Bismarck. She specifically references the 9 days hunt for her in the Atlantic. Now, Tirpitz is also on the loose somewhere, so that's a problem.
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Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Indeed. Unfortunately, convoy speeds are based on the slowest member. Which is not a good thing.
The production lines might be different, but not necessarily the workforce, the raw material supplies or the funding. Remember, trade is down big-time, and a lot of the shipping capacity is being used for food. The US produces a lot of raw materials, but there are limits.
Very true.
- Location
- Mountains of Appalachia
Oh I agree, they will have to get stuck in, and cripple at least one ASAP to prevent someone being detached to track the convoy down while the other ships engage them. My argument was as they close to engage, they can perhaps toss in one spread of torpedoes off one side's tubes at say 18K before getting seriously stuck in, which they will have to do.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Maritime patrol aircraft would be among the top priorities for war production, because just by existing the planes can potentially do a lot to limit damage caused by Abyssal surface raiders.
PAGDTenno
Verified Warmind. Probably on fire.
- Location
- South Carolina
The G7a had a range of 7.5km/40kt when launched from surface vessels, the 44kt setting was only used by torpedo boats.
To be fair, the G7e/T4 Falke was also an acoustic homing torp - the world's first.
So German torpedoes as a whole aren't quite as shit as Mushitits claims.
Granted, in terms of how hard they hit they're distinctly lacking compared to Pacific torpedoes, but the acoustic homing feature makes it much more accurate despite its (much) lower speed of 24 knots when launched - as it would be - by a submarine in a surprise attack on a ship at cruising speed. Especially if they're not towing Foxer or similar acoustic decoys (Which, granted, they may be.)
Nixeu
Lord of Madness, Harbinger of Llamas
- Location
- Your nightmares.
Maybe. But if the turn-over rate is high enough, that might not matter. The Abyssals seem to have much more in the way of air-support. If, for example, they have a tendency to park carriers near enough to the route to send their fighters over, to put out any metaphorical eyes that might sport something, you would have a fairly high turn-over rate.
However, I think we might be missing something obvious, here.
Emphasis mine. Being under Pearl's air umbrella isn't the same as reaching Pearl. An air umbrella is "A force of aircraft used to give air protection to a military operation." So, from the sounds of it, they're a day away from even being in the area that Pearl's planes patrol, much less Pearl itself.
This:
Seems to support the idea. I don't know how far out the planes patrol, as compared to their potential operating distance. But being a day out from even the edge of their patrol area probably isn't a good thing, in that regard.
A similar problem might also explain the lack of patrolling planes. Planes, after all, have maximum distances they can travel. You can build all the planes you like, but they'll still need a place to refuel. That's why air-craft carriers became a thing. It's likely that they've lost enough bases that their coverage net is shredded, and recovery hasn't yet made it to the top of anyone's to-do list. They probably didn't have the firepower to spare to take back and hold the bases the Abyssal took, up until Jersey and the other US ship-girls showed up. And after that, they had other ways to use the addtional firepower, which were considered higher priority.
I suspect some people are going to be rethinking their priorities, after this. Which might very well be the point of this attack. Disproportionate attacks on vulnerable locations in the enemy's supply line are often meant to get the other side to cut down on their frontline forces, and make them focus on convoy protection.
The thing is, this tends to work, even when it's obviously the goal, simply because logisitics is too important to warfare to ignore such threats. It's one of those annoying, Catch-22 strategies that you can't help but play along with, at least a little.
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