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Changing Destiny (Kancolle)

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Deidryt said:
For example, with aerial torpedoes (of which the Mark 13 was the USN's first type), the standard thought for the longest time is the entry of the torpedo into water would cause many issues. It wasn't until after the Battle of Midway and intensive studies that the actual issues with the device were discerned.
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The Type 13 mod 0 torpedoes were reasonably good, but only 156 were produced; two full loads for each 18 strong torpedo squadron on the four big carriers (Wasp and Hornet were not yet in service) with a whole 12 spares. It was this reasonably reliable torpedo that shattered Shoho at Coral Sea.

The Mk 13 mod 1, produced from 1938 on to an improved design, was another kettle of fish. In July 1941 VT-6 dropped ten exercise torpedoes of which one ran straight, five ran all over the place, and four sank outright. The erratic running was caused by a modification to the tail, and when that was resolved it was also discovered that the torpedoes could not keep depth, had weak propellers, and needed their exploders modified to keep from arming while still in the air.

Admiral Blandy, head of BuOrd, didn't think it that important as "foreign torpedoes were even worse." Admiral Halsey strongly disagreed and on July 21th 1941 send a long memorandum on the subject. In it he listed slow water speed, excessive range, insufficient ruggedness to withstand water entry at tactical speeds, excessive weight and excessive size. Presumably in addition to the torpedoes failing to run as intended. A project to increase the speed of the Mk 13 at the cost of some of its excessive range was started -- in 1943.

In November 1941 BuOrd did issue a memo instructing the torpedo squadrons on carriers to manufacture plywood stabilizers to alleviate the erratic run problem. The manufacture was their responsibility. Only the USS Ranger (being in the Atlantic and not busy fighting the Japanese fleet) had the time to do this and they found out that a torpedo could be fitted with the stabilizers no problem, but it could only be loaded onto a TBD torpedo bomber if a number of ground crew put their backs into it and lifted the tail of the plane up from the deck while the torpedo was wheeled into place.

Best Richardson can do is insist that they make depth running tests (fire practice torpedoes into a net) to 'discover' the depth keeping problem in all torpedoes. This does not waste torpedoes since they can be recovered and so is not too expensive. And when the rapports come in about failing detonators, throw his weight behind the sub skippers and request that some warshots are fired as a belated test, if only to "shut up the sub commanders by proving it's them who foul up, not our torpedoes".
 
Do wonder if our dear admiral has made a book in which he shows some more modern design principles.
I mean, the way the Queen Mary II has her props set up with the outer two being being asipods(?), plus those three bow props behind doors, could already alter things.
A modern carrier deck setup might be good for any new carriers
Maybe a dragonbone styled torpedo-bulge to reinforce the ships their main rib/beam against deept charges breaking it that easily.

Trimaran, hydrofoil and waterjets for the future Destroyer designs, perhaps?
Maybe a twin engined carrier aircraft that has radar on board in order to act as a spotter for the fleet (battleships) and flight ops for the air battle, a AWACS, so to say.
Maybe he could even suggest a anti submarine craft like the now old school Orion of the Netherlands.
With that I mean sonar buoys and the ability to drop either deept charges or torpedo's.
As for protecting against torpedo's, deept charges, try to crack them like you would a submarine.
Which funny enough, Utah might be perfecy for, if her main guns are removed, just need to give her deept charge throwing turrets.

As for the battleships not being the heart of the fleet, anymore, they lost this with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1920, which saw the canceling of the Lexington class battlecruiser.
Speed is live and air-cover is the other so not being able to keep up with the carriers or running away from a better opponent, like Yamato, is dead.
If the Battleline could reach 34 knots, then you could focus on a true heart, battleships & carriers supporting each others weak points.
As it is, they do not have battleships fast enough for this.

Anyway, my points is that he could offer design suggestions that would give better ships.
It is not only tactics he has to offer.
 
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The Admiral is not an Engineer. So I doubt he would know how to do ship designs off the top of his head.

He might know of some of these Engineer disasters, but I don't think he would know how to fix them exactly. Revolutionary tactics are understandable since he was an Admiral with years of war experience and very knowledgeable about WW2 (not that most people know this), but new technological advancements are completely unrealistic. Unless he knows one or two pieces of technology from his time that he could implement, but they are likely to be minor improvements that don't change much.
 
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SlyOverlord said:
The Admiral is not an Engineer. So I doubt he would know how to do ship designs off the top of his head.

He might know of some of these Engineer disasters, but I don't think he would know how to fix them exactly... but new technological advancements are completely unrealistic. Unless he knows one or two pieces of technology from his time that he could implement, but they are likely to be minor improvements that don't change much.
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Overall, I agree with your assessment. In the short term, not much, if anything, is going to change technologically for the U.S. Navy. However, in the longer term, Admiral Thompson is going to be very valuable because he knows what worked. Things like angled flight decks (CATOBAR), optical landing systems, and damage control measures. With a few words in the right place, he would be very likely cut down a significant amount of development time for a few things as well as making sure they work properly in the first place.
 
Simple things like angled decks, yeah, he knows about that. But knowing 'hey, sticking an angled flight deck on a carrier is a good idea yo' is not the same as knowing how to actually do it. Theory is all fine and dandy, but the engineering challenges are still in place and there's not much he can do about that. He can also point at flaws- like the avgas issue that killed Lex -in designs, but it's still up to actual engineers to figure them out.
 
SOME of those ideas, he could probably at least get BuShips to look into. For example, it would make perfect sense for a carrier admiral to have some ideas on ways to improve flight deck layout, and it could easily be explained as, "Hey, you know, I had this idea of a way to make landing less dangerous when we're using deck parking, and I was wondering if you guys could see a way to make it work," for the angled deck, and "You know, we could cycle planes a lot faster if we had the elevators off to the side, where they won't get in the way of flight operations, instead of on the centerline" for the deck-edge lifts--particularly since the Essex-class design that's already under construction has one (very minimalist) deck-edge lift already.

He might--MIGHT--also be able to get something akin to the earliest-model AIM-9s starting development earlier by, as a way to try and smooth things over with BuOrd about the whole torpedo issue, asking if they could think of a way to make something that would automatically steer an aircraft-launched rocket after an airplane's engine heat. ("I know it'll be hard, but think about what it could do for our fighter pilots. And, for that matter, think of what a career-booster it'd be to be the guy who makes it work...")

Thing is, as he's not an engineer, he wouldn't really be able to reduce development time much, since he doesn't know how these new techs worked, just that they worked. It's unlikely he'd know that lead sulfide (or, if you're willing to go exotic, gallium arsenide) would work as a key part of the seeker head for a heat-seeking missile, for example, just that heat-seekers (and later imaging infrared guidance) was possible. He'd basically have to suggest ideas to the engineers, and then the engineers would have to go through the whole development cycle. It's just that he could get them to start that cycle earlier, possibly resulting in some of the technologies being able to arrive earlier. (Not all of them--some of them are reliant on technology and materials that haven't been invented yet, and very little will speed up the development of those prerequisites. For example, an AEW&C aircraft would require a miniaturized search radar that can be carried and operated aloft, and given that radar development is a top priority, that won't be happening until 1944-ish no matter what Thompson does.)

(And now that I've been Albie'd by Skywalker, I'll add some actual content, too!)

The items that I think could happen by the end of the war, given Thompson's knowledge and position, would probably be angled flight decks, deck-edge elevators, damage control improvements (if nothing else, better strip-ship practices would prevent a lot of disastrous fires in the early going), and a greater emphasis on the use of centralized air battle control stations to help direct the fight (i.e., introducing CIC to the fleet). He might also be able to get BuOrd working on electric torpedoes, acoustic homing torpedoes, and replacing the quad-1.1" AA gun with the Bofors 40mm a bit sooner, but that's more questionable (and I'm not sure the torpedo techs would mature any sooner).

Angled decks and all-deck edge elevators could probably be incorporated into the second order of Essex class carriers (the one that came after Pearl Harbor), and thus reach the fleet in '44 or so; even if they can't be fully incorporated, the Midways would certainly be able to be built with them after testing on an Essex. DC and CIC would be simpler to get through, since they don't require significant structural changes.

Anything much more than that would either have prerequisite technologies that aren't going to be able to come any sooner, or would end up with a development cycle too long to be of use during the war.

As for battleship speed, the time to fix that is long, long past. It's early 1940; by this time, of the slower classes of "fast" battleships, only the Indiana and Alabama aren't in a well-advanced state of construction, and the Iowa-class design, due to lay down its first ship in June, has been pretty much fixed and can't be significantly altered. The only battleship design that could be altered is the Montana class, and those aren't going to get built. Besides, even the 27-28 knots of the North Carolina and South Dakota designs were only barely possible in a balanced ship within the Treaty limits--the NCs were really only armored against 14" guns, and the SoDaks were armored against their own guns only until BuOrd introduced the superheavy shell. To get an extra six knots out of the Iowas, BuShips had to accept that they wouldn't be armored against their own guns firing a superheavy shell and still spend an extra 10,000 tons (a 29% increase!) that was only allowed because of the politically very sensitive invocation of the Treaty's tonnage escalator clause. It also required a 63% increase in power to gain those six knots, so, as you can see, making the ships faster is very, very expensive in terms of power and weight. (The twelve knot gain in speed over the Standards required more than six times the power, by way of comparison...)

Honestly, the only time you could have possibly arranged an increase in battle line speed beyond 27 knots would have been about 1934, when the Second London Treaty was still being negotiated; a higher speed battle line would not be possible without a higher displacement limit, realistically.
 
It's also worth mentioning that modern angled flightdecks only really became a "thing" with the advent of jets and the use of catapults. Standard flight deck procedures during the war was to spot planes for launch at the back flightdeck and then launch all the planes that had been spotted (usually around 30-45 planes at full deck capacity). In short, the entire flightdeck had to be devoted for takeoff operations, leaving no room for anything else.

As far as deck layouts go, what may prove to be more useful are non-centerline elevators. However, this would likely require a major overhaul or maybe the technology just wasn't there... or may have presented unacceptable reduction in armor protection.
 
And the reason the Iowa class was finished that late was because they halted construction, because some carriers needed those docks.
Also part of the reason the Montana was never builded.
Maybe this can fix that.

Do remember that while the bigger modifications might not be something they could use on any currently under construction ship, it might be early enough for Destroyers & Freighters.
They where building them as hotcakes, afterall.

Do wonder if a battleship based on the Yorktown her hull, can be made, since it would be the best escort for a Yorktown class carrier, what with similar handelling.
It can keep up, while trying to kill the air around them.
 
Deidryt said:
It's also worth mentioning that modern angled flightdecks only really became a "thing" with the advent of jets and the use of catapults. Standard flight deck procedures during the war was to spot planes for launch at the back flightdeck and then launch all the planes that had been spotted (usually around 30-45 planes at full deck capacity). In short, the entire flightdeck had to be devoted for takeoff operations, leaving no room for anything else.

As far as deck layouts go, what may prove to be more useful are non-centerline elevators. However, this would likely require a major overhaul or maybe the technology just wasn't there... or may have presented unacceptable reduction in armor protection.
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However, the angled deck could still be of value even before the use of jets. Not so much in that it allows simultaneous launch and recovery operations (which is done surprisingly rarely even today--the two waist cats are used just as much as the bow cats), but because of what was SOP for recovery ops during the war--land planes on the stern, then spot them on the bow until it was either full or there was a break in the stream that would allow them to be struck down onto the hangar deck. This meant that they had to rig a barricade to catch any plane that might accidentally miss all the wires--but if it missed because the pilot bounced over the wires, it might well bounce over the barricade, too, with disastrous results.

The single biggest advantage of the angled deck was that it meant that a plane that boltered would just go off the end of the runway and either into the drink, or back into the air, depending on speed and the pilot's skill. It was a major improvement in safety, and that could be of obvious value even in 1940.

Nothing much could be done for the pre-Wasp carriers' elevators outside of a major refit, though BuShips might be able to kludge a Wasp-style deck-edge elevator onto Hornet before she's finished. However, Essex is still early enough (design "finalized," but not yet laid down) that, if the right strings were pulled, they could probably move her elevators outboard--though I note that even the SCB-125A and -125C refits of the Essexes in the 50s only moved one elevator; the other remained square in the middle of the landing area (and an absolute pain in the ass, as a result). It might have to wait for the "next class" of carriers, which would be the CV-12 class that started to be laid down in mid-1942. (I'd call it the Hornet class, but there's a good chance CV-8 will not be at Torpedo Junction. Interestingly, CV-16--who may also have a different name--and CV-17 appear to have been ordered alongside CV-9 through CV-11, since they laid down in 1941. If not that, then it'll be the Bonhomme Richard (CV-31) class, which was the order following the first six CVLs.
 
There is however one major issue with the use of angled decks in this period - it forces your planes to land through the stream of turbulence created by the island. By the time you get jets you have enough spare power for it to be less of an issue, but prop planes are likely to struggle - the less powerful they are, the more so. Putting an angled deck on a carrier in the 30s would be pretty much a straight terrible idea; by 1950 it's fantastic and it's all about the aircraft involved.
 
Scottish Ninja said:
There is however one major issue with the use of angled decks in this period - it forces your planes to land through the stream of turbulence created by the island. By the time you get jets you have enough spare power for it to be less of an issue, but prop planes are likely to struggle - the less powerful they are, the more so. Putting an angled deck on a carrier in the 30s would be pretty much a straight terrible idea; by 1950 it's fantastic and it's all about the aircraft involved.
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The reason the US Navy hung onto piston-engined planes longer than the USAF (the bulk of the Navy's aircraft in Korea were F4U Corsairs) was simply that the early jets avoided the drag of a propeller at high speed, but had terribly slow throttle response, a habit of flaming out in response to abrupt power changes, and an abysmal power-to-weight ratio as compared to aircraft with big radials. Indeed, even today, props are the propulsion of choice for low-speed aircraft because they are much more efficient at making power at lower speeds, since they apply a relatively low delta-V to a much larger volume of air. That problem wasn't really fully solved until the turbofan (which basically drives a medium-sized propeller with a truly ungodly number of blades inside a duct to generate additional thrust) arrived in the late 50s. Indeed, there were a number of USN early jet fighters that had truly horrible accident rates, with, IIRC, the F7U Cutlass being nicknamed "the Ensign Eliminator" for how dangerous it was on approach for an inexperienced pilot.

I suspect that the turbulence off the island would be less of a problem than you might think, particularly given that the spread of the ship's exhaust had the pilots having through that turbulent air on approach, too. If it was found to be a problem, though, BuShips could still mitigate it in various ways--for example, redesigning the island to be smaller and more aerodynamic, or perhaps angling the deck to starboard with the island located well forward, so that you only fly through its wake on a bolter (when you've got all of the power on already to get you through the turbulence). It's a potential problem, but nothing showstopping by 1940. 1930, yes, it would have been, but the USN isn't deploying underpowered biplanes by this point; we're looking at SBDs, TBDs, and F4Fs, all of which have plenty of reserve power on tap on approach.
 
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The point ultimately is that an angled flight deck is a rather large design proposition that would take much longer than the story's plot would currently allow. There are countless pieces of possible hiccups here, chief amongst them simply a different in technology and doctrine between the 1940s and 1950s -- much of which was learned and/or implemented or during wartime. And when the design was originally tested between 1952-1954, the way the Navy viewed its responsibilities and how to execute them had shifted drastically.

Of course, the biggest barrier at this point in time would be just fighting the inertia of the USN bureaucracy and getting the funding and time commitment to work out any design issues. This is especially the case with the ongoing battleship-vs-carrier debate within the USN.

Regarding the deck elevator -- I had forgotten about the Wasp's elevator because it wasn't a full platform elevator. It presented its own set of challenges as well, as designers had to figure out how best to have a hole in the side of the ship and maintain its strength (which they likely got away with on Wasp due to sacrifices made for her tonnage). The later platform design that was used on the Essex-class also presented issues with ship-handling, as it was reported to be problematic in severe weather, especially in the North Atlantic.

Long and short of it -- while any of these things could prove advantageous, Adm. Thompson is still one man in a relatively unproven arm of the navy. And without any in-depth knowledge on how to design any of these items, there's little chance any ideas would gain traction in the short time he has, and even less of a chance any of them could be tested, refined, and implemented (which I think we're all in agreement on). I think the story did a great job conveying this with the torpedo exercises and with battleship admirals pushing back against his suggestions.
 
Huh, just wondering about the timelines, but will HMS Hood arrive in the US when James and Admiral Richardson are still in Washington DC? Since, depending on how much The Powers That Be believe those crazy Admirals Hood might be used to prove that ALL ships have girls that represent them, not only US ships. Heck, everyone will then see how battle damage transfers itself to the ship girl.

Won't that possibly stop all weapons tests on old ships.
(I really just want to see Hood panic when she realizes those Yanks can see her)
 
Sir_Gaea said:
Huh, just wondering about the timelines, but will HMS Hood arrive in the US when James and Admiral Richardson are still in Washington DC? Since, depending on how much The Powers That Be believe those crazy Admirals Hood might be used to prove that ALL ships have girls that represent them, not only US ships. Heck, everyone will then see how battle damage transfers itself to the ship girl.

Won't that possibly stop all weapons tests on old ships.
(I really just want to see Hood panic when she realizes those Yanks can see her)
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Don't we all want to know how much Hood will panic when she realizes that the "Bloody Yanks" can see well her spirit, that will be pure comedy gold, no questions asked.

As for the The Powers That Be believing Admirals Thompson and Richardson maybe they can have their asses saved by the future CNO of the USN Admiral Chester Nimitz, because if he comes forward and claims that on occasion he also heard a female voice on occasion, that will really cement it. Or better yet if FDR comes forward as well.

As for Hood being used that is not just Yank ships but all ships in the world. That will likely do her morale wonders.
 
Vianca said:
And the reason the Iowa class was finished that late was because they halted construction, because some carriers needed those docks.
Also part of the reason the Montana was never builded.
Maybe this can fix that.

Do remember that while the bigger modifications might not be something they could use on any currently under construction ship, it might be early enough for Destroyers & Freighters.
They where building them as hotcakes, afterall.

Do wonder if a battleship based on the Yorktown her hull, can be made, since it would be the best escort for a Yorktown class carrier, what with similar handelling.
It can keep up, while trying to kill the air around them.
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No. Just... No. Carrier and battleship hulls have very different requirements structurally. A battleship with a Yorktown's hull dimensions would have serious stability problems due to all that extra weight in a long, thin hull, and you'd so need to adjust the hull to carry all the gun and armor that you'd be designing an entirely different hull anyway.

And... What sort of structural modifications are you thinking about for destroyers and freighters? Those ship types during WWII are a clear case of "If it ain't broke don't fix it".
 
CV12Hornet said:
No. Just... No. Carrier and battleship hulls have very different requirements structurally. A battleship with a Yorktown's hull dimensions would have serious stability problems due to all that extra weight in a long, thin hull, and you'd so need to adjust the hull to carry all the gun and armor that you'd be designing an entirely different hull anyway.

And... What sort of structural modifications are you thinking about for destroyers and freighters? Those ship types during WWII are a clear case of "If it ain't broke don't fix it".
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Not to mention that there would be no need to design a BB with an Essex hull for the purpose of escorting an Essex like Yorktown because the Iowa hull designs could already keep up with the Essex-class in terms of speed, and already had the best shipborne anti-air batteries outside of dedicated anti-air ships.
 
spartan448 said:
Not to mention that there would be no need to design a BB with an Essex hull for the purpose of escorting an Essex like Yorktown because the Iowa hull designs could already keep up with the Essex-class in terms of speed, and already had the best shipborne anti-air batteries outside of dedicated anti-air ships.
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Couldn't the South Dakotas and the North Carolinas do the same thing as well? Because they were quick as well. I distnictly remember that both North Carolina and South Dakota had escorted the Big E during battles, and with the South Dakota escorting Enterprise at Bloody Santa Cruz, it was the only reason that they didn't sink or downright cripple the Big E at Santa Cruz, as it stands the Japanese did give the Big E a real hard whacking at Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomans.
 
Thorthemighty said:
Couldn't the South Dakotas and the North Carolinas do the same thing as well? Because they were quick as well. I distnictly remember that both North Carolina and South Dakota had escorted the Big E during battles, and with the South Dakota escorting Enterprise at Bloody Santa Cruz, it was the only reason that they didn't sink or downright cripple the Big E at Santa Cruz, as it stands the Japanese did give the Big E a real hard whacking at Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomans.
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The SoDaks and NorCars weren't ideal for carrier escort. At 28 and 27 knots, respectively, they were considerably slower than the 32.5-knot Yorktowns and 33-knot Essexes and Lexingtons, not to mention the 31-knot Independences.
 
CV12Hornet said:
No. Just... No. Carrier and battleship hulls have very different requirements structurally. A battleship with a Yorktown's hull dimensions would have serious stability problems due to all that extra weight in a long, thin hull, and you'd so need to adjust the hull to carry all the gun and armor that you'd be designing an entirely different hull anyway.

And... What sort of structural modifications are you thinking about for destroyers and freighters? Those ship types during WWII are a clear case of "If it ain't broke don't fix it".
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And a Battlecruiser or Battleship hull ain´t good for a carrier either, they still did it, though.

As for the Destroyers, something to make them nimbler as well as faster, since that means live for them.
For the Freighters, higher basic speed, no need for tugs via the right types of prop setups and the introduction of the container, while also taking care of the Liberty problem of too straight angle welded corners.
 
Vianca said:
And a Battlecruiser or Battleship hull ain´t good for a carrier either, they still did it, though.
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It's an entirely different matter to convert a CC or BB into a CV than it is trying to convert a CV into a CC/CB/BB.
Vianca said:
As for the Destroyers, something to make them nimbler as well as faster, since that means live for them.
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Bruh, Fletchers were the backbone DD of the USN well into the 60s. Sure you had larger ships (Gearing class) but there's no need to completely redesign the ship.
Vianca said:
For the Freighters, higher basic speed, no need for tugs via the right types of prop setups and the introduction of the container, while also taking care of the Liberty problem of too straight angle welded corners.
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Well for one, Liberty ships were engineered to be made literally as fast as humanly possible and then broken up for scrap at the end of the war. As for the no props thing, that's more complexity that doesn't need to be there (the ship is meant for hauling freight not getting around a pier on its own) same with the higher speed, they did have high speed transport ships and oilers (AK and AO respectively) but they didn't carry as much as a slower ship (more engine means less space for goods) and the introduction of the CONEX container wouldn't really speed things up because the infrastructure to use them isn't available in the Pacific.
 
Vianca said:
And a Battlecruiser or Battleship hull ain´t good for a carrier either, they still did it, though.

As for the Destroyers, something to make them nimbler as well as faster, since that means live for them.
For the Freighters, higher basic speed, no need for tugs via the right types of prop setups and the introduction of the container, while also taking care of the Liberty problem of too straight angle welded corners.
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Another point for the Library and Victory class cargo ships is that several were still in use well into the 80s....

Hell, using containers in WW2 will be an overall downgrade in capabilities for them. You need special equipment to load and off load them. Equipment that isn't useful for much less, or easy to make for the first time. With bulk cargo that they originally use you can use any old crane to load them. Cranes that were usually part of the design. So you just need fork lifts or straight manpower.
 
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