Victory Through Air Power

[Darman]

I ran across this in a biography of G.C. Marshall and thought it would be a good thing to see.  Then I decided to share it.  Its a Disney movie based on a book.  WW2-era. 

Unfortunately I cannot embed it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paY6y87rrpE

[Borys]

Ahoj!
Wars are won by the grunt with the rifle on the ground.
Flying thingies are helpful, but they never win on their own.
Borys

[Desertfox]

Give me some slightly better aircraft and a little more warning and the Maori fleet would not have even caught sight of the Swiss shore...

[Blooded]

I disagree. You place too much reliance on aircraft at this stage. 1916 types are not worthy of your desires. At that level they can barely lift torpedos let alone manuever or fly any distance. You have not invested that much into your airforce. It is still small. You also need time, training and tradition. You rely too much on hindsight.

I would think based on airforce size that 50 torp capable aircraft would exist at most and have around 100 torpedos. MAX. it is events like your DD attack and the air attacks that make torpedos unfair in this game. Seekreig or whatever gives them too much accuracy and does not show the downside very much,they are unreliable, fragile and expensive. In WW1 hits on ships travelling over 15knts simply did not happen much at all. They were hard to hit at 10 knots even. Just launching a torpedo could throught it off 10 degrees.

Another big thing that is not taken into account is human error and the fear response. Books and computer games love to have people doing the impossible ALL the time. Real people are not Rambo. War is not pretty or easy. Stats in a book rarely convey the honest potential of equipment and personnel.

It wasnt until the 30's that reliable airdropped torpedos existed. In our settings it would be sooner but not yet.

[ctwaterman]

I agree with foxy give him some better aircraft and the Maori would not see his shore.

So lets see he needs at least late 1945 Catalina Flying Boats with Surface Search Radar and more then a 100 of them just to draw a 300 NM circle around Phoenix for searches.

He will then need at least 500 if not a 1000 Dive Bombers and Torpedo Planes from the same era.   Given the Maori very primitive AAA Defenses  this should do the trick.

Either that or a Dozen of B-52 with the Rotary Harpoon Launching system and about 20 Harpoons each.  ;D

[Desertfox]

Nah, just a B-29 with a nuke...  :P  ;D  8)

[Walter]

Nah, just a B-29 with a nuke...  :P  ;D  8)

Wouldn't this be more useful?

That way you could easily take off in NS, drop a few nukes on Maoria, and land back in NS without having to worry about refueling. :)

:D

[P3D]

Well, updating sim reports might have been a good idea.

Second, I see no way Maoria would have powered fully enclosed AA mounts with their 1910 tech level. That's about 15 years too early.

Especially as Maoria has negligible experience with heavier-than-air flying thingies, most probably their mounts has an unacceptably slow train rate.

[Valles]

Really? Are 75mm, or 150mm, or larger turrets also supposed to be hand-cranked, then?

[Kaiser Kirk]

Well, in my personal opinion - in this era- yes.
One should not be assuming that a 3" gun automatically has power assist- that would be very unusual for the period. Same with a 6".

One of the things about 8"+ guns is they required power assist, and power ramming. Smaller weapons you could dispense with that weight.

Some had hybrid arrangements, like the 7.5" guns on the Hawkins Class, for which Navweaps notes :

Notes:  This mounting was essentially a hand-worked center pivot type with additional power training and elevation provided by a 10 HP electric motor and hydraulic pump.  Run-out was spring-powered.

It was still reportedly a bit slow and cumbersome.

Historically, in this period...you just don't see many fully armored light gun mounts. You see shielded mounts, casement mounts, and singles not twins and doubles.
When you do see doubles and fully shielded- like the Omaha's twin 6", you can find that they were only lightly armored, narrowly spaced barrels and not entirely satisfactory- they certainly were not repeated.   This is why on Sachmle's cruiser I pointed out his mount & hoist twin 15cm guns should not be presumed to have power and would be slow to train - he added some electric motors in the misc weight for that.

[Valles]

Hmmm. Shall have to add powered tracking to the 'misc weight' budget for future mounts, then. Thanks for the information!

[snip]

yep, been planing on that myself