A visual look over, as well as other things I have read suggest it is some kind of mortar projector rather then what we think of as a railgun.

You've heard of an SSBN? Lemme tell you about the SSRGN.

???◊

or?◊

I hate to tell you this, but humans being humans have tried this before.

China's "railgun" looks more fake it til they steal it kind of thing. I have no reason to suspect they've engaged in any meaningful progress in making actual Magnetic Weapons.

I'm thinking more like the USS Vesuvius, with the guns sticking out of the bow, but you know, a submarine and not a cruiser out of someone's weird steampunk fantasy.

The second image, the M-Class is your thing then, it could fire the gun while submerged using a bead on the muzzle to aim it at periscope depth.....

....

Because some one really thought this was a good idea, and that a submarine with an optically aimed battleship gun could go in any way that isn't bad. >.>;

Edited by Imca on Jul 2nd 2019 at 12:07:32 PM

There appears to have been a collision between a Chinese warship and a Taiwanese freighter.

Details are few on the incident and the regional political situation is....not good.

Rear Adm. Collin Green has given commanders until August 7 to detail the problems they see and provide recommendations on how they will ensure troops are engaging in ethical and professional behavior.

This is in light of a SEAL Platoon in Iraq getting their leash yanked all the way back to CONUS over allegations of the troops drinking alcohol in the warzone, as well as an allegation of one of the SEA Ls raping a female servicemember.

Random musing thought:

What if the "battleship theory" was retained For Want Of A Nail? Say the Tondern Raid was called off (or intercepted), that Billy Mitchell's demonstration was denied or failed, that interest in aircraft carriers just simply faded away and World War Two came and went without the great carrier struggles of Midway, Santa Cruz Islands, Philippine Sea and more.

How would ship design have proceeded in the absence of major carrier investments? Even into modern day weapons like cruise missiles?

Battleships were already a dead end in terms of development around WW 2 is the problem.

That's like asking what longbows would look like today if gunpowder never got popular.

Not like you would really improve over WWII if carriers never happened any way, not at the current tech... The lack of planes would mean that you wouldn't see defences like CWIS being a necessity, I mean you can't stop a slug after all... infact they wouldn't even have as much close in guns as they did in WWII since those were added after the fact to deal with planes.

You can't improve the main guns since we don't currently have functional railguns, and the big ones that were 406 and greater already shattered the bridge windows, injured crew, and broke the decks and mounting links when fired.... making bigger guns unfeasable.

You cant make the guns bigger, so why would you need more armor at that point....

And cruise missiles? They were really taken off because of Kamikaze tactics being by the numbers the most effective option, yet well... no one wanted to do them... no airplanes, no kamikaze, no cruisemissles.

The end result is your just looking at something with the gun layout of a WWI era battleship, but scaled up to WWII sizes and armor layouts and with modern fire control computers.....

....

Which is pretty boring.

When Garc says it dead ended, he isn't joking, and its not just carriers out dating them.... Remember, battleships trace there linage all the way back to ships of the line in the age of sail, they had over a thousand years of development, and as such were kind of at there peak.

Edited by Imca on Aug 18th 2019 at 11:18:58 AM

Anti-ship missiles were becoming A Thing by the end of WWII (the US Navy fielded an 11-inch rocket which was naturally named "Tiny Tim"), so I could see smaller ships being fitted with racks of missiles for anti-ship use (not unlike what they started doing anyways for Anti-Air use). And of course submarines were becoming ever-more-capable, so it's possible that the battlewagons would begin to phase out simply because of that.

As an alternative, what if aircraft carriers didn't catch on until WWII, but instead of the queenly capital ships launching dozens of aircraft, we skipped straight to the jeep carriers, making carriers more of a defensive screen and scouting element? One downside is that the jeep carriers never had the legs to accompany capital ships, being far too slow to keep up with the battleships over long ranges.

X-posted from the Mil thread:

'NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA "NAVY SEALS GONE WILD- PUBLICITY, FAME, AND THE LOSS OF THE QUIET PROFESSIONAL'

Here is the Scribd.com link in case the Navy memory-holes it.

I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE AS YOU ARE ME AND WE ARE ALL TOGETHER.

Kaga has been found, and she is well preserved and compleatly intact, not fractured, all in one peice, and just.... sitting down there

Kaga... hasshin!

Since they're in the area, can they find Hiryuu, Soryuu and Akagi sorta quickish?

I know they already found USS Yorktown (also intact and upright).

Fascinating...it seems the Midway wrecks are in rather good condition, between Kaga and Yorktown. That's rather nice to hear.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but none of Japan's other fleet carriers that sunk in anything deeper than the shallows of port have been found, right? Taiho, Soryu, Zuikaku, Shokaku, Akagi, Hiryu, etc.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 19th 2019 at 2:22:36 PM

Well I'd expect them to find Hiryuu, Soryuu, and Akagi sorta quickish, it's not like the Combined Fleet was scattered over hundreds of kilometers at Midway.

Why can't the Russian navy stop being a joke?

Russian Navy: 0 Walrus : 1

Because they got their drunken faces pounded in at Tsushima and ever since then they've kinda relegated navy stuff as unimportant.

Part of why those wrecks might be in such good shape is they are too inaccessible for metal scavengers. Several wrecks have been raided by scavengers who break them up with explosives and float the bits up and haul them away.

^ I've heard that's a very common issue with shipwrecks in and around Indonesia.

Oh yeah, the Battle of the Java Sea now has the distinction of being the most thoroughly scavenged undersea battlefield of World War 2. All eight of the sunken Allied ships are now lost to scavengers.

Meanwhile you have Truk Lagoon and the New Guinea government seems to have done a rigorous job of fending off scavengers because the large number of war wrecks is what draws most of the tourists in.

According to the BBC, Akagi has also been found.

Two down, two to go. And then a destroyer and heavy cruiser too.