It is time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Me with the big guns on that first day
Last Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of my first visit to Iowa, and I figured it was worth noting here, given that Naval Gazing definitely wouldn't have happened if not for that.
I also have the official dates for the 2026 Naval Gazing Meetup. We'll be in Dayton Ohio from May 14th to the 17th. Look for a signup sometime in the next couple months.
Overhauls are Air Attack on Ships Part 3, Understanding Hull Symbols, Nimrod, Battlecruisers Part 3, Secondary Armament Part 2, Spanish-American War Part 7, Riverine Warfare - China Part 1, Standard Part 2 and for 2024 Carrier Design and Organizational Structure, The Flavor of the Military, A Visit to the ADA TSF and Suez Part 1.
Comments
I have become consumed by a desire to figure out what 32-pdrs the HMS Caledonia (the 1808 first-rate) started with (and, more generally, what the whole deal with her lower-gundeck 32-pdrs is).
I have created a more in-depth explanation on the Talk page of the Wikipedia article (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:HMSCaledonia(1808)), but in short: Winfield's British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1817-1863 contains a single mention of "64cwt 32pdrs" being replaced by 55-cwt models in 1831...
...but there were no 64-cwt 32-pdrs, right? At least, not till much later (there's a rifled variety that maybe fits the bill half a century down the line, IIRC?); and even the 63-cwt Millar 32-pdr only came onto the scene in 1829, so it's hard to imagine that these could be the guns being replaced in Caledonia's first (1831) re-armament.
It's tempting to imagine that Winfield meant that 63-cwt 32-pdrs replaced the LD 56 cwt 32-pdrs, instead of that "64cwt 32pdrs were replaced by 55cwt 32pdrs"... but I don't know—that'd require two different errors...
...or maybe I am in error, and her original LD cannon WERE 64-cwt? Help me, O Great Bean! Help with your crowd-wisdom, O Naval-Gazers–generaliter!–
[Whoops—either I fucked up the link there, or the Markdown did. Well, y'all probably know how to get to the Wiki page, anyway!
One other erratum: by "single mention", I mean that for the Caledonia this was mentioned, and that nowhere else in the volume (nor in his 1793–1817 volume) is a 64-cwt 32-pdr mentioned.]
This is, unfortunately, a problem I can't really help you solve, because my usual solution in this is to look up what Rif Winfield has to say and then relay that.
Curses—that's my secret strategy for appearing to know stuff about ships-of-the-line, too, heh. But lemme ask: what's your intuition say, here?
I.e., unlike some of us here, I'm really just a dilettante: I can count the number of times I have cracked open Winfield on one hand (ironically, for being about sailing warships, they are somewhat dry reads... uh, so to speak); and it was not too long ago that I was unaware of the existence of different (British) 32-pound cannon, heh ("but it's a 32-pounder—that's the designation; what do you mean, different types?–")...
...so I figure that perhaps you (or maybe another reader here, if you inexplicably fail to love the tall ships as much as more modern exemplars) might have an intuitive feel for whether or not it would be so unusual, at the time, for a single RN warship to have a complement of totally unique cannon shared by no other vessel... or if it is as suspicious as I thought it was? 🤔
It does strike me as rather weird, particularly given the lack of mention of any gun of that size in some rather formidable sources, and the fact that even though there were slightly larger guns we don't seem to have weights for, they wouldn't have been that heavy on simple scaling. Best guess is a mixup somewhere along the way, most likely getting "to" and "from" swapped and that never getting sanity checked, but there are plenty of other options. The obvious other explanation is that the cannons weren't originally British, but Caledonia wasn't captured, and I would expect that if they had to press French guns into service on a new-build ship, it would not be a first-rate.
I would really want if someone explained to me, how the new US "island hooping" actually should have work. I never completely get it, but I have seen an video and I think I get it even less.
What I have understood they want to fly C-130 to island, then get out with HIMARS, shoot 2 PrSM and then get on the C-130 and leave. Why just they do not shoot missiles from B-1, or just shoot it from a ship? I presume that there needs to be some reason why they want to do it so much complicated, but I can not find any.
Or if anyone knows some article about how island hooping actually should have look like, because most of the things I have seen about the topic looks like pitch deck of pre-seed stage start-up.
Because a B-1 is an Air Force asset and a ship is a Navy asset.
Have any of you ever played "Pacific Theater of Operations" on the SNES? Or its sequal, PTO 2? (or the later sequels, but I think those were only released in Japan)
I've been messing around with them lately and it's really something else. Normally I like Koei's historical simulation games- they were detailed enough to give a nod to real history, but still simplified enough to enjoy just playing as a casual game. But this one really takes the details to the extremes. You start with a cabinet meeting minigame where you have to argue with grumpy old men about how to allocate the budget, and it took me like an hour to get through it all. Then you have to go and individually manage every single port, ship, fleet, and officer. I eventually gave up trying for any real strategy and just sped through it trying to get to the battles, but it still takes forever. feuling up every single ship and moving them across the ocean feels like an actual job in itself.
Maybe if I had more patience I could enjoy playing this game. I'm just amazed that it exists at all, trying to cram in so many details on a 16bit PC game then ported to SNES. It's like some sort of strange performance art that was meant to be appreciated but never played. Or at least, it makes me appreciate why a military needs an entire staff, not just one person making all the decisions.
@Anonymous I hoped for some strategical explenation, but this is maybe a truth.
@StupidBro
That is an excellent question. I wish I had a similarly excellent answer.
ASW Question:
Consider ships like the new Constellation class or the LCS, which do not have a hull sonar but can trail a towed array. How effective might they be at ASW?
I understand that's not the primary mission of these ships. I'm just curious how much the lack of a hull mounted sonar might her them should they be called on to execute an ASW mission.
Towed array by being far from the ship is probably a better sensor than a hull mounted sonar so would not be surprising if they have serious capabilities (provided they tow it).
Having been on towed-array sonar-equipped and non-tail equipped DDGs, Tails beat hull-mounted any day of the week.
Now, ideally you have a VDS (Variable Depth Sonar, a towed-array with active capabilities)...but given the choice and my emphasis is on tactical operations, I would prefer the towed array.
I'm sorry if I was unclear.
I want to compare (1) Towed array + hull mounted to (2) only towed array.
Chatgpt would make you think (1) was much better than (2), so much so that (2) would not be super useful for real asw.
@Kit: ah, I see. That makes more sense.
I think I would agree with GPT that 1) is better than 2), but 2) is cheaper than 1), and that's not an unimportant factor. Also, without a hull-mounted sonar (HMS), what you're primarily losing is fairly short-range stuff and the possibility of using convergence zones, which are nice but not essential for ASW (and limited on their own anyway). So I would not agree that without an HMS, the Constellation or the LCS will not be super useful at ASW. They might be at a disadvantage in short-range defense and escort in that you lose a sensor...but you're already at a disadvantage because at that point you're bringing a knife to a gun-fight anyway. The Connies should be perfectly capable of fighting submarines by deploying aircraft and the tail to find cued submarines, or at least roughly as capable as most surface ships (LCS has its own limitations for ASW). I would also be surprised if ASW isn't a primary warfare area for the Connies, in that "convoy escort" has meant dealing with submarines as a primary threat for 100 years now.
It seems worth pointing out that getting rid of the hull sonar probably makes certain design problems a lot easier, because you can rely on distance to isolate the sonar from the ship's noise instead of needing to deal with that noise mechanically. I would not be surprised if that drove a lot of costs for high-end ASW ships, but don't have cites to that effect offhand.