An accurate depiction
Keep in mind that during World War 2 the 88mm made a great AA and anti-ground weapon. Large caliber artillery rounds are probably the best defense, before you get dedicated A systems, or MLRSs if you have them.
Does your world have incendiary or chemical rounds?
edited 16th Sep '10 8:14:49 PM by Morgulion
This is this.
Eye'm the cutest!
Don't forget shotguns! In World War One the M1897 Trenchgun (a John Browning design) was a serious Game-Breaker in the trenches. Being able to slamfire it could fire 6 shells faster than any pump action shotgun before it and made since! The Germans tried (and failed) to have it outlawed from war!
"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."
An accurate depiction
Gas is generally useful, as will be napalm and other such things. If you have tanks, don't forget to include the ever-useful self-propelled artillery, which will be very helpful in dealing with enemy tanks.
This is this.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
There will be incendiary and chemical weapons and munitions.
Yeah that trench gun is a nasty bit of work. Interestingly there existed at the time a semi-automatic shotgun the Browning Auto-5. :) good ol browning weaponry.
What would be useful in helping a soldier cross no mans land? There were attempts at body armor including a rather bulky suit that covered down the front half way to the knees and could take a British .303 and remain intact. I was thinking a smaller Riot Shield type design with a notch cut out for the shotguns to rest.
Self Propelled arty would be interesting in World War I how would you execute it though? What vehicle would you use for the ground war? What kind of artillery would you mount?
Rocket artillery didn't make a big come back until World War II when we improved our knowledge of rocketry. But there were some forms of rockets for planes.
edited 16th Sep '10 8:32:57 PM by TuefelHundenIV
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An accurate depiction
I'll definitely look forward to seeing this. But on topic:
The ISU-152.
Since the Russians were premier self-propelled artillery users, I'd recommend taking cues from them.
The Russians used something similar to their heavy tanks, which also mounted 152mm mortars. Since your tech is pretty advanced, I'd assume you can use 152 mm guns as well.
They were useful in anti-bunker and anti-tank roles, and were also able to provide long-range support; they could be dug in to be stationary as well. I'd guess you can also mount mortars and similar stuff on such a chassis, useful for urban combat or demolitions.
The one problem was ammo supply, which was rather limited.
EDIT: Speaking of which, heavier tanks with large cannon such as the IS-2 or King Tiger would provide a useful means of breaking entrenched enemies. These tanks were practically impenetrable to lighter vehicles, and were effective at their jobs. consider using those.
edited 16th Sep '10 8:40:42 PM by Morgulion
This is this.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Hmm those tanks would be a bit too advanced but the idea is not bad. they did indeed have a large variety of big guns in use in World War I as well as World War II the big bore mortars might make better mobile gun platforms until the tech advances enough to make the mobile gun systems more viable.
Speaking of the Russian Weapons the KV-2 Assault Gun comes to mind. I could work something like that. It would be feasible for their frames to carry a single large gun and trundle along a set path lob shells and move out to keep counter batteries from nailing them. Have a mobile ammo cart follow it to keep it stocked.
There was a apparently a flame thrower variant.
Made of awesome I forgot about this site initially.
Grey Falcon site Very strange yet interesting. Might be work a look through.
edited 16th Sep '10 9:38:52 PM by TuefelHundenIV
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OMG NO NOSECONES
Crossing no-mans land was always a royal pain to do. Chemical warfare was spotty. More psycological than anything else.
They had these periscope deals done up - they popped up a fake head in a helmet, let it get shot, and stuck the periscope in teh bullet hole that went through the fake head.
Bam, you now know where the sniper fired from. Cue an artillery strike at that location. I think the British devised it to counter the Germans and their Gewehr 98's.
Germany, having the best chemical industry (dyes and other chemicals - 80 percent of the worlds total production at the time) gave them the upper hand in chemical warfare.
How will you adjudicate this in your story? IIRC, you mentioned something about Britain being the agressor in this conflict.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
That is a good question on chemical warfare. I think the airships may change the dynamic enough that they avoid using poison gas or on the flip side decide to have airships help deploy various chemical weapons in addition to their other munitions.
Britain may have enough industry after its aggressive colonization efforts over the years allowing it to rapidly build a large military and a potentially powerful industry. It could be feasible for them to develop and field the first poison gas to try and break up enemy advances but the problems with those weapons made them difficult to use.
I have considered the first few uses ie the irritants being the corner stone and the path they take instead of lethal gas. The lethal attempt that famously failed and blew back on their lines could be the factor that makes them quit it in favor of less dangerous by comparison weapons alternatives.
edited 17th Sep '10 2:11:02 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Just did some more reading on the Battle of the Somme what a mess and it points out how the German's were old hands at making durable combat shelters.
Who watches the watchmen?
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Anyone who has helped with the airship thread have any other ideas for the ground war part of the story world war I and world war II wise.
Interesting ideas or concepts that might possibly work?
Who watches the watchmen?
OMG NO NOSECONES
I'd have to do a lot more reading on what actually happened, including conflicts that transpired prior to WWI, to get a feel for tactics and tech of the time.
Oh, Spanish-American War, or is that a bit early for you?
We found out failry early that single-shot rifles totally sucked. Then we got the Krag, which wasn't a whole lot better. Handsome rifle, though.
Oh, snap. The USS Olympia, oldest steel-hulled warship still afloat and having taken part at the Battle of Manilia in said SA war, is to close to visitors this November. It needs a drydock rotation. They might scrap her.
edited 24th Sep '10 6:55:27 PM by pvtnum11
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
That will be sad if they have to scrap it.
We can go back that far. The tech didn't hit large leaps until after the war had started. Well aside from Airplanes.
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OMG NO NOSECONES
Okay, so I'll do some digging around. Using the Olympia as an example of a fairly state-of-the-art Protected Cruiser, it had two turrets, one fore and one aft, with two 8-inch guns in them. Smaller guns were mounted five per side of the ship in casemates. It also have a number of anti-torpedo boat guns as well, as the torpedo boat was becoming a hassle.
Oh wait. This is ground war.
FFFFUUUU-
I'll chime in later...
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Hey input is input :P
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Eye'm the cutest!
Tueful do you have the concept of the Squad Automatic Weapon implemented? They existed in World War One in the form of the Browning Automatic Rifle (last year of the war, limited but effective use in open terrain) and Chauchat.
edited 24th Sep '10 9:16:46 PM by MajorTom
"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
There were other guns as well. A portable lewis machine gun was also used. Don't worry those will be in. The 37mm guns the british had will find more use for both armored cars, early tanks, Enemy in dense cover, and of course firing at airships :D.
Other Wiki Page There is a scene in the Movie The Trench (es) I think it was called where these guys rush out to a shell crater to get a better firing position to blunt a German storm trooper rush. Two man team.
What would you guys think of the Lee Enfield firing .40caliber rifle rounds instead of the .303 too powerful or would it better as a specialty rifle like say a sniper rifle.
edited 24th Sep '10 9:44:04 PM by TuefelHundenIV
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OMG NO NOSECONES
...Maybe as some experimental thing, to determine if it'll have better ballistics, armor penetration and other things that would matter at the time. I wasn't aware they had a .40-cal rifle cartridge to use back then, but hey, they didn't have airships either, so...
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Dreams of Revenge
Although they would be expensive, what about massive warheads mounted to relatively crude rockets/liquid metal engines (I think that's the name we agreed upon), which are then launched at airship formations?
What about cannons that launch long, sharp strings of wire at the gas bags of airships? Once they hit something, they wrap around it, lacerating it. In fact, they could be repurposed as trench protection systems, cutting bloody swathes through enemies advancing in no man's land.
Rockets that launch into the air, their warheads spinning rapidly once the rocket reaches a certain distance (how it "knows" it is at the correct distance is a different story). This flings bomblets away from it - they have different loadouts. For example, there are chemical warfare, anti-personnel, high explosive, and incendiary types. They would act as either anti-trench systems or area denial weapons.
Perhaps in the twilight years of the war, they experiment with fitting these liquid metal engines on ground vehicles - same with biplanes and that sort of thing.
I'm terribly sorry, but the air war is my forte, and this is only compounded by my lack of knowledge of the time period.
edited 26th Sep '10 10:40:36 AM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
There were couple of .40 cal rounds in that era but they were not chosen for the common combat round. Well sort of. The Winchest 1907 uses a Winchest .401 cartridge.
There is a English big game cartridge that fires .404 rounds Which is why I thought maybe a sniper round.
Winchester again with a .405
The British again with the dangerous game ammo the .416 Rigby.
I had to look up some of the Winchester ones and one of the big game cartridges.
The Germans 1871 Infanterie-Gewehr 71 had a .446 cartridge.
Winchester again with the .44-40 rifle catrdige.
Spring Field .45-70
Sharps .45-90
These were all the cartridges I could find that fit the Caliber and could be in the time period for World War I.
To be fair most of them are hunting rifle rounds or older military cartridges from the 1870's onward. But big cartridges can be reduced in overall power if needed and use more modern powder in the older cartridges and bam you get a new round.
The big game rounds though would have too much kick to make a proper battle field round so they would need some of the power bled off the rounds. But they would not make a bad sniper rifle round.
edited 26th Sep '10 10:51:32 AM by TuefelHundenIV
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OMG NO NOSECONES
Sure, why not? Make it a bolt action, as at the time, pretty much everybody were fielding long-ranged rifles that could shoot out to a thousand meters, give or take. Bolt-actions are simple, easy to use and maintain, and can handle horrifically-powerful rounds and still weigh in at around seven to ten pounds. Semi-automatics need to get way heavier and stuff to handle larger and more powerful cartridges.
...of course, why not just make tuned match version of the the typical issued rifle and call it a day? Logistics and Supply officers tend to disfavor the introduction of an entirely new widget, especially if that widget ins't using stuff already available in the supply system.
Amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics.
Part of the reason why the US was loathe to get away from .30-caliber ammunition following WWII, and we told the British to piss up a rope with their (superior) .276 round they had developed, and that was what the FN-FAL originally was designed for. That's why we went to the 7.62X51mm NATO round, and due to the problems of producing a selective-fire rifle in that caliber (recoil), we switched to the 5.56x45mm caliber later on. The .276-caliber round was done right the first time - or so I've read in several publications.
IIRC, I think even the Garand was designed originally for a smaller cartridge, but due to having mountains of 30-06 ammunition left over from the previous war, was redesigned to fire that, instead.
Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
And the Garand is still an impressive beast.
I could see them sticking with a .40caliber rifle round after some big game ammo Manufacturer smoozes the right people on a safari.
edited 26th Sep '10 5:12:35 PM by TuefelHundenIV
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Shrike
In the way of infantry weaponry you actually have a very large pool to draw from. Bear in mind my knowledge is mostly in strange weapons that worked.
- A little late to the party
which was only a year late for the war. Same goes for the cooler TKB-022PM if you're willing to give a decade. Playing a little more probable you have the M1 Carbine that could have very easily been up sized to an intermediate round. It's called an "almost assault rifle" for a reason.
- Air Powered Assault Rifle
and you will find a real 11mm (Roughly .46 caliber) air rifle that was used against the Nazis with a nice sized magazine.
Need to know about strange weapons, especially weird guns? I know em, and if i don't I'll find them.
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Those are very interesting finds I can use those for the world war II section.
Who watches the watchmen?
Shrike
Oh I have a ton of odd ones. Need a WWII era RC bomb that looks like a tiny tank, electric targeting systems, balloons made from rice paper and loaded with firebombs, or an electric gun? Check these out.
Ok this is linked to my Air Ships and Their Weapons Topic. Airships and Their Weapons Courtesy Link
I need some ideas for the ground war portion of the story.
Noted Innovations of the time for ground war include the Machine Gun, the First True Automatic and burst fire battle rifles for the Russians, The first Submachine gun, Rapid Fire Artillery courtesy of the French, Tanks, poison gas, Flame throwers, the return of the mortar as a modern warfare weapon this includes the invention of the famous Stokes Mortar system, Spigot Mortars, Trench weapon ideas, Rifle Grenades were big, hand grenades really got going with this war, and various creative methods to break enemy defenses including massive underground explosives under defenses 2 ton flame throwers etc.
Idea pitch time. Ways to battle an airship from the ground starting with not anti-aircraft artillery and machine guns, creative ways to cross no mans land, and creative vehicle ideas. If you want there can even be some creative use the system that makes airships flying possible. There were some armored car combat groups as well as tank battles. The tank will have an early start fielded by the British to help them take Paris, France. Creative anti-tank ideas pointing existing methods of that era works well too.
The first armored cars are going to get an unfriendly meeting with the first tank very shortly making the French pause and giving the British the break the needed to finish solidifying the defenses. Remember the British emperor is a Magnificent Bastard but a bastard none the less.
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