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Changing Destiny (Kancolle)

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Hideki101 said:
To be completely honest, I think just a summary of the important battles is sufficient for high school history. There's a lot of history to go through in a year, even if it's only narrowed down to US history like my junior year. Further, the focus of a history class is generally not details of which ships/companies/divisions were at which battles, but how an important battle/tactic affected the overall war. For example, with Midway, the carrier divisions on either side of the war may not even be mentioned by name, nor the fact that a specific number of ships sank on either side. Rather, the main focus is the fact that Midway was the turning point of the Pacific war, after which the other battles are mostly details in the overall narrative of the Pacific front. And that's fine. You could fill an entire year with classes on just the events of the war, but that kind of focus is what college classes are for.
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Except... Midway wasn't. That was Guadalcanal.

The IJN was plagued by two issues throughout the war- not enough trained pilots and not enough escorts.

They lost three times as many planes in Guadalcanal as they did in Midway, and 14 destroyers to boot.

Midway limited their operational flexibility, but Guadalcanal was by any definition a far worse battle for the Japanese than Midway.
 
Also, compare high school history (hell any subject really) textbook from say 1955 to 1975 to 1995 to today. It puts paid to the idea that children today are receiving a superior education. The textbooks from 1955 are university course level work today. Hell, I graduated high school in 1994. I recently met an old friend who has a kid in high school now. The contents of his highschool textbooks were what was considered to be a sixth grade level education for me when I was in school.
 
I already know that I'll cover a lot more detail on things when I teach, since I know how to use time well. I can give the standardized test nonsense (and most of it is nonsense, by-the-by) while still leaving time for more important things. Hell, I've got a stockpile of books that I read in High School (this being 2009-2012) to store in my classroom. Only good thing I got out of my first student teaching stint, that collection of library castoffs.

Also downloaded a bunch of old documentaries from back when documentaries meant something.
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
I already know that I'll cover a lot more detail on things when I teach, since I know how to use time well. I can give the standardized test nonsense (and most of it is nonsense, by-the-by) while still leaving time for more important things. Hell, I've got a stockpile of books that I read in High School (this being 2009-2012) to store in my classroom. Only good thing I got out of my first student teaching stint, that collection of library castoffs.

Also downloaded a bunch of old documentaries from back when documentaries meant something.
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I think Sky, and others, can sadly agree this is 100% true. And while it might be soapboxing in the story, might want one of our time traveling Admirals take quiet pains to support certain ideas, and shred others (likely via requesting, quietly, the aid of shipgirls to help support, who'll be media darlings in the decades to come).

On that note...have a shipgirl shutdown McCarthy. Hard and Early.
 
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McCarthy wanted to duplicate Nixon's success in the House, but forgot the most important thing was that Nixon bothered to get the actual documentation to back up the investigations and accusations. The really depressing part was that was the Soviet Union fell and the KGB archives opened up, McCarthy was right about the communists in the State Department. But the drunk then decided to go after the Army when he ran out of suspects and his alcoholism ended up destroying his career.
 
MagisterAurelius said:
McCarthy wanted to duplicate Nixon's success in the House, but forgot the most important thing was that Nixon bothered to get the actual documentation to back up the investigations and accusations. The really depressing part was that was the Soviet Union fell and the KGB archives opened up, McCarthy was right about the communists in the State Department. But the drunk then decided to go after the Army when he ran out of suspects and his alcoholism ended up destroying his career.
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True, but it was the WAY he went at it that utterly destroyed a lot of innocent careers, and, in many ways, made it easier for the KGB to infiltrate via acting in the exact opposite ways McCarthy 'taught' the public to view Communists. The bull in a china shop approach rarely works, and he made an utter, utter mess of things.
 
Based on my (medium sized, public) experience, High School level history generally comes in two types: AP, and non-AP.

AP is usually teaching to the test. The European / American history had a curriculum refined over years, that got everything for the test and then some over the course of three quarters. Midterms and Finals were secured previous AP exams, which meant that they were only available if you searched really hard. Our unit exams also came with a free-response question.

Non-AP... Well, our teacher made time for fun and interactive current events "debates". This was... interesting. We still covered everything in two quarters, though. Limited depth, but I had much more free time and much less stress over writing examinations. Much less stress, much better for mental state in some ways.

Meanwhile, AP World was Euro, but more content, and the same course length, but without the curriculum refinement.

Both Euro and American History covered Midway. Neither saw more than 15 minutes or so of class, and maybe two questions tops. Euro focused on broader trends, US just didn't have the time or depth to match.

My best essay in Euro was on the technology of WWII. Unsurprising, given that I'm a KanColle/WWII fan :V
 
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To me this is funny. When I looked at the stuff my 12 years younger sister had to do for her Abitur, I remember my Abitur 12 years prior and I'm like "Man, they really upped the difficulty levels over the years."

They cram ever more stuff to be covered into history courses, it wouldn't surprise me if they soon decide that prehistory up to the fall of Rome needs only 1 year in 5th grade. 6th grade is fall of Rome to the Reformation, 7th Reformation to the French Revolution, 8th is Industrial Revolution, Napoleonic Wars up to the 1848 revolution, 9th grade is German Unification from Zollverein to Empire, Bismarck's Era, Wilhelmine Era and WWI. 10th grade is WWII, Cold War and post-reunification. Grades 11 and 12 are most likely reserved for a deeper look at the German Empire, Industrialisation and WWII.
 
That sounds far more interesting than my experience of history in school, which devoted two full years to the Industrial, Agricultural and related (but not political) revolutions of the 19th century. But no mention of such minor details as the rise of a united Germany and united Italy, the Crimean War, Indian Mutiny, American Civil War, Opium Wars...

There is a reason I, despite a strong interest in history, didn't take the subject after that.
 
I get the feeling that at the start of the story, it was simply a case of researching the historical notes regarding the war, the ships, and the historical domain characters. Now; it's all that, plus real life priorities, plus two-three different story arcs, plus trying to figure out what happens now as a result of the timeline going increasingly off the rails from the real timeline.
 
Hmmm.... you know, if your struggling to figure out what happens next, you could try consulting users from Alternatehistory. They may not be historians, but they are experienced in alternate history, especially around ww2.
 
Sgtsoldier123 said:
Hmmm.... you know, if your struggling to figure out what happens next, you could try consulting users from Alternatehistory. They may not be historians, but they are experienced in alternate history, especially around ww2.
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Thorthemighty said:
Not to mention, a few Alternate History authors do kick around on the site.
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Reminder:
- Sky has well-received timelines both here and on AH.
- Sky is, in fact, a historian.
 
I got my (teaching) degree a couple years back. Finding a job is difficult, though. That aside...Purple Phoenix actually averages about 100 or so likes on AH.com per update (sometimes more, sometimes a little less). I think the record is 130 or so? Something like that. From my reading on there, that's actually way above average.

The main issue with writing Destiny is not so much not knowing the history, but trying to keep things interesting and juggling characters. We are, though, jumping back across the Atlantic soon.
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
That is something I doubt, myself. Even so, I appreciate what you are trying to do, Admiral Thompson. But at the same time, you are wrong. Carriers are to support the battleships, not the other way around.
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Was just rereading the story and got to this line and the discussion they have here. What keeps going through my head is how the military leaders of the time tened to go with what had worked for so long, thinking of the battle and war as a 2 dimensional battlefield when, with the use of planes so heavy in the war, it was a 3 dimensional battlefield. The irony is, if one side had truly embraced that before they entered the war, then that side would have had a very clear advantage. Instead, it was something they had to learn, on all sides.
 
Not really. Carriers at the time were the ultimate eggshells armed with sledgehammers. One serious air attack and they're either decorating the seabed or limping home. It took the air battles of 1942 and advancements in radar tech to make the kind of late-war fighter direction that made the carrier task forces so hard to attack from the air possible.

But without that experience? If one side brings battleships to the party and the other doesn't, the battleship side has the advantage. And if one side is shackled to WWI holdovers and the other has modern BBs, well, same thing.
 
Carpet bombing was a thing even as early as WWI; the best battleship was nothing to high flying planes dropping large payloads of explosives. Typically speaking, that was saved for ground targets but the same could easily be used on a ship or fleet. If the Japanese had carpet bombed Pearl Harbor, things would have been a lot worse. That is the difference between a 2d battle and a 3d battle
 
Talusan said:
Carpet bombing was a thing even as early as WWI; the best battleship was nothing to high flying planes dropping large payloads of explosives. Typically speaking, that was saved for ground targets but the same could easily be used on a ship or fleet. If the Japanese had carpet bombed Pearl Harbor, things would have been a lot worse. That is the difference between a 2d battle and a 3d battle
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Carpet bombing? Really? That's your argument? High-altitude level bombing was completely useless against ships at sea, as every effort with bombing ships with B-17s showed.

Carpet bombing works on land because your aim point - either a city or a dig-in Army - is stationary. Not wildly maneuvering like a ship or dispersed like a fleet.

As for your "carpet bomb Pearl" idea, that's even more brain-dead. Pearl Harbor is too big and inflammable to be effectively carpet-bombed. Restrict it to Battleship Row and since you're using basic GP bombs the ships are actually better off than OTL. And finally, carpet-bombing requires thousands of carrier planes to achieve the kind of bomb loads of a few hundred heavy bombers. I.e. the kind of AirPower the US Navy would have trouble putting up off Okinawa.
 
CV12Hornet said:
Carpet bombing? Really? That's your argument? High-altitude level bombing was completely useless against ships at sea, as every effort with bombing ships with B-17s showed.
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Minor argument: High-altitude bombing is worthless for actually hitting things, but great for scattering ships and fucking up their attempts to shoot down your dive and torpedo bombers.
 
CV12Hornet said:
Carpet bombing? Really? That's your argument? High-altitude level bombing was completely useless against ships at sea, as every effort with bombing ships with B-17s showed.

Carpet bombing works on land because your aim point - either a city or a dig-in Army - is stationary. Not wildly maneuvering like a ship or dispersed like a fleet.

As for your "carpet bomb Pearl" idea, that's even more brain-dead. Pearl Harbor is too big and inflammable to be effectively carpet-bombed. Restrict it to Battleship Row and since you're using basic GP bombs the ships are actually better off than OTL. And finally, carpet-bombing requires thousands of carrier planes to achieve the kind of bomb loads of a few hundred heavy bombers. I.e. the kind of AirPower the US Navy would have trouble putting up off Okinawa.
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I was using carpet bombing as an example. It wasnt the only way of attacking. Torpedoes off of a plane puts the plane at a disadvantage, bringing them into a two dimensional fight and was the first weapon to go with regards to modern aerial warfare. There were many options even then that were better then using torpedoes that could have changed the tide of any battle. If the Japanese had hit the ammo stores in Pearl Harbor, then they could have had a repeat of Halifax, and that wouldn't have required to carpet bomb the entire place, one plane hitting the right spot would have been enough.

Oh, and what good is the modern battleship when it doesn't exist. The battleship is too slow and cumbersome in the modern war, making it an easy target. The easiest way defeat one would be to drop mines in it's path, something that was actually frequently done in the later part of the war.

There wouldn't have been a shift in how naval battles were fought if they didn't have to shift from 2d to 3d. The fact they did shift, proves my point. Yes, there was limited technology to do some of the things we can now but the facts that they switched tactics so much over the course of the war when they had stayed the same for so many centuries before says something
 
Just as a reminder for the difference of scale between a land-based bomber and a carrier-based one of the same era:

The Avro Lancaster. 4-engine heavy bomber. Prototyped in early 1941, Adopted for general use at the start of 1942.

70 feet long, 102 foot wingspan, weighing in at just under 17 tons completely empty, with a maximum takeoff weight (Full tanks and an 'optimal' bomb load) of 31 tons (68,000 pounds)

Normal bomb load of 14,000 pounds (6.4 tons) or a single 22,000 pound Grand Slam Earthquake Bomb (10 tons with modifications to bomb bay).

A typical early war 'fuck you and everything around you' load would have one 2-ton 'cookie' and 2,832 Incendiary 2-kilogram bomblets. Per bomber. In a formation of around 100. It was normally used to attempt to delete industrial sites, and did a pretty good job of it.

Around the same time the Lancaster was turning cities like Hamburg into ashes, the biggest and beefiest carrier-based bomber was probably the SBD Dauntless, which made its mark on history by turning the IJN's CarDiv 1 and 2 into Funeral pyres at Midway.

And the Dauntless is a zippy little brute, don't get me wrong.

33 feet long, 41 foot wingspan, weighs under 3 tons when empty, and has a total rack weight of just under 5 tons (10,700 pounds) when loaded right to the limits.

Maximum bomb load of 2,250 pounds of assorted explosive devices.

So, even if you can somehow cram 3 Dauntless into the same space as one Lanc, the four-engine Heavy bomber simply has the capacity to go 'ha, no' and out-explode whatever mostly-stationary target the Daunts were ordered to hit. (Also, the Lancaster was faster by 30 mph, clocking 282 to the Daunt's 255)

@Wobulator; your suggestion of HA bombing being used to break up formations is all well and good, but at the time, synchronized coordination between planes especially land-based and naval forces, was somewhere between 'laughable' and 'nonexistent'; a typical bomber formation might cruise along between 25 to 35 thousand feet, while a dive bomber tends to peak at 10 thou right before going into the actual dive part.

I don't know about you, but I'd be plenty leery of flying into a grid area designated as the dumping ground for the Heavy Bombers, and there's been more than one instance of heavy bombers, in the same formation no less, accidentally blue-on-blueing each other with dropped ordnance, either because of prior battle damage and drag, or simply bad luck.

At best, the TBs and DBs would have to hang back until after the HA run was over, by which point the affected ships would already be restoring formation. At worst, some wild gloryhound with a rampaging murderboner orders the light planes in while the bombs are still falling and ends up with a swath of allied planes getting domed by sticks of 250 or 500-pounders.

Another example of just how ineffective High-Altitude bombing is against ships is the case of the USAAF versus the then-crippled Hiei, which had a jammed rudder and could only steam at a speed of around 3-4 knots after the Friday the 13th Battle of Guadalcanal. Despite allocating 20-odd B-17 bombers (averaging 8,000 pounds or 4 tons of bombs per plane), there were no confirmed hits on Hiei, leaving the task of finishing her off to Enterprise's planes that afternoon.
 
Talusan said:
I was using carpet bombing as an example. It wasnt the only way of attacking. Torpedoes off of a plane puts the plane at a disadvantage, bringing them into a two dimensional fight and was the first weapon to go with regards to modern aerial warfare. There were many options even then that were better then using torpedoes that could have changed the tide of any battle. If the Japanese had hit the ammo stores in Pearl Harbor, then they could have had a repeat of Halifax, and that wouldn't have required to carpet bomb the entire place, one plane hitting the right spot would have been enough.
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Oh? Do explain what these "better methods" are in 1941, because torpedo bombers were by far the most reliable carrier-based killer of heavy ships until they figured out how to cram a decent anti-ship missile into a carrier-borne* plane.



*And yes, I know guided glide bombs were a thing in 1943, but these were enormous monstrosities restricted to land-based bombers.

Talusan said:
Oh, and what good is the modern battleship when it doesn't exist. The battleship is too slow and cumbersome in the modern war, making it an easy target. The easiest way defeat one would be to drop mines in it's path, something that was actually frequently done in the later part of the war.
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Uh, we're still talking the 1940s here. The early 1940s, at that. Modern BBs exist, they're plenty fast compared to other surface combatants and-

Mines. Are you serious right now? Tactical minedropping. Well, I'll give you points for creativity. Of course, it's also a complete galaxy-brain idea.

First, mines do not like deep water, so right off the bat you're restricted to trying this in coastal waters. Not exactly an argument for the primacy of carriers over battleships.

Second, many countries err stuck with contact mines, which leads to my next point.

If you want to actually have ships hit the mines, you're going to be dropping them close enough that the ships can see the mines being dropped and just... go around them.

Terrible idea, which is why no one ever tried it.

Talusan said:
There wouldn't have been a shift in how naval battles were fought if they didn't have to shift from 2d to 3d. The fact they did shift, proves my point. Yes, there was limited technology to do some of the things we can now but the facts that they switched tactics so much over the course of the war when they had stayed the same for so many centuries before says something
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Which is all well and good, but the tech, tactics, and doctrine were not there before 1943/1944 to make carrier's supplant battleships as the arm of decision.
 
Wobulator said:
Minor argument: High-altitude bombing is worthless for actually hitting things, but great for scattering ships and fucking up their attempts to shoot down your dive and torpedo bombers.
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It's pretty much worthless against ships that are already underway, full stop.

If you want your large and slow heavy bombers to be relatively safe from naval AA fire you're going to have to stack them at above 37k ft (~12km) (basing off of 5"/38 caliber DP used by USN firing AAC MK49 shells).

Assuming minimum safe height above AAA fire, your level bombers will drop their sticks at 12km. (note: B17's have a service ceiling of 10.8km)

Free Fall said:
s = v₀ * t + 0.5 * g * t²
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Assuming constant resistance from the air and a starting velocity of zero, we can simplify this down to:

s=0.5*g* t²

SqRt(2s/g)=t


SQRT(2*12000/9.8)=49 (roughly)
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It will take about 50 seconds for the first bomb to hit.

The slowest capital ships in the Pacific, the USN Standards have a top speed of 21knts or about 24mph. In the time it takes between bomb release and impact, it would have traveled 536 meters (or about three times its own length). Your bombers would have to be able to ID the ship's speed, accurately anticipate any future course changes as they realize they're under air attack and properly canvas a stretch of sea that has a surface area of about 301,000 m^2 that the ship could be in; the next 50 seconds.

Then you come to the issue of the ordinance being dropped. Capital ships by nature tend to have armored decks, which means you need either large volumes of High Explosive or an AP bomb to cause meaningful damage, both require direct hits to the ship to do anything beyond kill a bunch of fish. Carpet bombing on land as "effective" because a bomb doesn't need a direct hit to damage a target, the blast and shrapnel increase your margin of error by hundreds of meters. That isn't the case in the ocean. A missed HE bomb will detonate underwater, where the ocean takes the brunt of the blast, a missed AP bomb is just a 2000lb rock, and airbursting bombs won't amount to anything against the actually critical components of a ship.

The sheer number of bombers that would need to be brought to bear to make any ship captain do more than make basic evasive actions would make the 8th Airforce blush.

Keep in mind, this is if you are targeting one of the slowest possible combat ships in the theater, if you want to catch a ship moving at 30knts, that target area increases to 471,000 m^2.

With the material resources you would have to spend on those level multi-engined bombers you could get something like 4 times the number of single engined dive and torpedo bombers and keep them supplied and armed for twice as long.
 
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