|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jan 6, 2019 18:59:20 GMT -6
USS Antietam CV-36 became the world’s first angled deck carrier in 1952. She was used extensively for testing the concept and training both US and British aviators in operating from the angled deck. She remained a training carrier until she was replaced by USS Lexington CV-16 and decommissioned in 1963. She was an interesting looking ship as she never received a rebuild other than the angled deck mod so her appearance was largely unchanged. Well, the British might argue that it was Rear Admiral Dennis Campbell who invented the angled deck. The idea occurred to him on August 7m 1951 during a meeting. The US Navy had been experimenting with the idea on the USS Midway after the British were experimenting on the HMS Triumph. The US Navy just beat the British to the punch and made quick modification and out came the USS Antietam. The British were dragging their feet but not the US Navy.
|
|
|
Post by jeb94 on Jan 6, 2019 19:30:20 GMT -6
USS Antietam CV-36 became the world’s first angled deck carrier in 1952. She was used extensively for testing the concept and training both US and British aviators in operating from the angled deck. She remained a training carrier until she was replaced by USS Lexington CV-16 and decommissioned in 1963. She was an interesting looking ship as she never received a rebuild other than the angled deck mod so her appearance was largely unchanged. Well, the British might argue that it was Rear Admiral Dennis Campbell who invented the angled deck. The idea occurred to him on August 7m 1951 during a meeting. The US Navy had been experimenting with the idea on the USS Midway after the British were experimenting on the HMS Triumph. The US Navy just beat the British to the punch and made quick modification and out came the USS Antietam. The British were dragging their feet but not the US Navy. Yes he came up with the concept. Yes other ships had lines painted on their decks for angled recovery but the arrestor gear was not reoriented. Antietam was the very first true angled deck carrier with the deck edge sponsons to support it and the arrestor gear reoriented for angled operations. I’m going to hesitate on saying the British were dragging their feet on it because it seems more likely that they were developing it alongside the Americans. I suspect The US were the first to convert a ship because they had plenty of spare large carriers available with a number of them sitting in mothballs at the time. The British on the other hand had far fewer carriers, most of which were considerably smaller and with a much more limited budget it would be difficult to justify the cost of conversion to an unproven, experimental configuration.
|
|
AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
|
Post by AiryW on Jan 6, 2019 19:57:37 GMT -6
It's interesting to speculate how the way battery improvement is outpacing fuel cell improvement might change this. Batteries have the additional advantage that the mass of the electrical generator could simply be replaced with more batteries. If they become dense enough a pure battery submarine could be viable for short ranges. A battery submarine could operate without ever surfacing and the batteries would have no vibrations at all unlike a diesel or nuclear engine. They would also be extremely cheap and available to nearly any nation. So the combination of range and cost could make them quite potent tools for brown water navies. It could also be possible to recharge their batteries with nuclear weapons or surface vessels.
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jan 6, 2019 21:34:40 GMT -6
It's interesting to speculate how the way battery improvement is outpacing fuel cell improvement might change this. Batteries have the additional advantage that the mass of the electrical generator could simply be replaced with more batteries. If they become dense enough a pure battery submarine could be viable for short ranges. A battery submarine could operate without ever surfacing and the batteries would have no vibrations at all unlike a diesel or nuclear engine. They would also be extremely cheap and available to nearly any nation. So the combination of range and cost could make them quite potent tools for brown water navies. It could also be possible to recharge their batteries with nuclear weapons or surface vessels. I agree and here is an interesting article that addresses this idea which the Japanese are apparently using: www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7747/japan-goes-back-to-the-future-with-lithium-ion-battery-powered-submarines
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jan 6, 2019 21:36:23 GMT -6
Well, the British might argue that it was Rear Admiral Dennis Campbell who invented the angled deck. The idea occurred to him on August 7m 1951 during a meeting. The US Navy had been experimenting with the idea on the USS Midway after the British were experimenting on the HMS Triumph. The US Navy just beat the British to the punch and made quick modification and out came the USS Antietam. The British were dragging their feet but not the US Navy. Yes he came up with the concept. Yes other ships had lines painted on their decks for angled recovery but the arrestor gear was not reoriented. Antietam was the very first true angled deck carrier with the deck edge sponsons to support it and the arrestor gear reoriented for angled operations. I’m going to hesitate on saying the British were dragging their feet on it because it seems more likely that they were developing it alongside the Americans. I suspect The US were the first to convert a ship because they had plenty of spare large carriers available with a number of them sitting in mothballs at the time. The British on the other hand had far fewer carriers, most of which were considerably smaller and with a much more limited budget it would be difficult to justify the cost of conversion to an unproven, experimental configuration. I know that the Antietam was the first, but I believe that it appropriate to give credit to the person who had the concept. I suspect the problems for England was financial woes after the war. The RN has always been a little conservative, I think. I could be wrong.
|
|
|
Post by williammiller on Jan 6, 2019 22:10:05 GMT -6
Actually, angled flight decks will be possible to develop in RTW2...
Interesting. So what exactly is the cut-off year for technology being included in the game? My understanding is that the angled flight deck was a response to the demands of operating jets off of carriers. A quick online check finds the concept was first raised in 1944-45, but it took another nine years of development and testing the idea out in practice before it was proved, and not actually incorporated into carrier design (either as a refit or purpose built) until 1954-55. (I'm looking more at when a given technology enters actual service versus when it was first proposed. An idea may look great on paper, but until it's demonstrated in practice it remains theoretical.)
The 1950 'cutoff date' is not an absolute date for all technology, but generally we would not include anything later than the very early 1950s. Now, IIRC, angled decks are included because they are really needed for operations by jet aircraft - other techs at or near the cutoff point may or may not be included because of programming-time restraints or how important we deem them for the game.
|
|
|
Post by corsair on Jan 7, 2019 0:41:03 GMT -6
USS Antietam CV-36 became the world’s first angled deck carrier in 1952. She was used extensively for testing the concept and training both US and British aviators in operating from the angled deck.
Precisely. A lot of practical testing to demonstrate and verify the concept. Once demonstrated to be feasible, then it got adopted as a standard feature in refits and new designs two years later.
|
|
|
Post by corsair on Jan 7, 2019 0:43:26 GMT -6
Interesting. So what exactly is the cut-off year for technology being included in the game? My understanding is that the angled flight deck was a response to the demands of operating jets off of carriers. A quick online check finds the concept was first raised in 1944-45, but it took another nine years of development and testing the idea out in practice before it was proved, and not actually incorporated into carrier design (either as a refit or purpose built) until 1954-55. (I'm looking more at when a given technology enters actual service versus when it was first proposed. An idea may look great on paper, but until it's demonstrated in practice it remains theoretical.)
The 1950 'cutoff date' is not an absolute date for all technology, but generally we would not include anything later than the very early 1950s. Now, IIRC, angled decks are included because they are really needed for operations by jet aircraft - other techs at or near the cutoff point may or may not be included because of programming-time restraints or how important we deem them for the game.
Thanks for the reply. Regardless of what does or does not end up included, I am keenly interested to see the results.
|
|
imryn
Full Member
Posts: 156
|
Post by imryn on Jan 9, 2019 5:54:04 GMT -6
I hope they don't include nuclear weapons or power in the game. First off, you can't have power without weapons because weapons are so much easier to develop they are essentially an early milestone on the road to nuclear power. Secondly because nuclear weapons fundamentally change naval combat. In the real world nuclear artillery shells existed from the early 50's, and they only took that long to develop because they had to be made small enough to fit into land based mobile cannons - nobody was working on 16" nuclear shells. If they had worked on 16" nuclear shells they would have found it much easier because of the size of the projectile compared to the 280mm ones they actually made.
In the air we have nuclear bombs from 1945 onward and until 1950 the USA had an effective monopoly - other nations were testing but nobody else had deploy-able weapons. The US released tactical control of airdropped weapons to military commanders on Korea in 1951 (I think) but they were never needed.
Obviously, in RTW2 these events will not take place, however if they are going to have nuclear weapons they will have to come up with a way of determining when and where they can be used. Each nation will have different control mechanisms for their release, and many will be far less strict than the ones adopted by the US. Personally I think that nuclear weapons are a tech too far for RTW2, detracting from the game, but I agree with those who think nuclear power would be cool.
I suppose they could make an assumption that nuclear weapons exist but nobody ever gets the necessary release to use them, but I just don't see any of the totalitarian governments NOT using them if they are losing a war.
So I suppose the only choice is to have power but not weapons, but that would just feel wrong to me.
|
|
|
Post by JagdFlanker on Jan 9, 2019 7:48:11 GMT -6
|
|
AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
|
Post by AiryW on Jan 9, 2019 12:17:23 GMT -6
I hope they don't include nuclear weapons or power in the game. First off, you can't have power without weapons because weapons are so much easier to develop they are essentially an early milestone on the road to nuclear power. Other way around, nuclear power is a trivial application of the fuel. Richard Feynman has a great story about how getting nuclear patents. (If you are impatient skip to the 3 minute mark). Fission creates energy from a really dense fuel. It's obvious there are a lot of uses for that. The invention side is obvious, the hard bit is the production. You've probably heard the term "weapons grade uranium", nuclear weapons require the most highly refined fissile materials for the chain reaction. A major source of civilian nuclear fuel right now is reprocessing the falling nuclear stockpiles by dilluting weapons grade uranium with non weapons grade. Getting it up to weapons grade is what the Manhattan project was all about, they had already produced civilian grade along the way. The issue was always who was going to pay for it. In WWII the US was willing to pay a huge sum of money for nuclear weapons. As a result of that the US had enough refining capacity that peaceful power was viable. The other nuclear powers, USSR, France, later China and India are the same. The reactors are a byproduct of their desire for ICBMs. The only ones who tried to go pure civilian were the Japanese and that was a costly fiasco even in the land of the negative interest rate. This is completely tangential but I think it's interesting to note that the Golden Age of Sci Fi, which associated nuclear with "hi-tech" coincides with a certain inflection point in global economics. In 1870 ocean going steam becomes cheap, meaning that for the next 60 years or so there would be vast markets hungry for any commodity that anyone could produce. This is the age that all the Golden Age authors grew up in as well as people like Groves, Oppenheimer and Von Braun grew up in before they went on to steer the expensive projects in nuclear production and rocketry. In the world they grew up in, anything that could be build was going to be affordable. The transatlantic cables fully justified the expense of the largest ship ever. The Panama and Suez canals were slow and frustrating but were in high demand once completed. The larger a factory, the more efficient. The larger a train or steam locomotive, the more economical. That would make it seem very natural to see things as a progression, once nuclear is done it will be done more and then be everywhere. That would perhaps explain why it is that nuclear technology is spoken of as either being possessed or not possessed instead of the level of production capacity existing. At their generation the trend stopped with things like the V-2 rocket, Manhattan project, Spruce Goose, Yamato not being effective however the mindset had already been set.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Jan 9, 2019 16:27:24 GMT -6
It's interesting to speculate how the way battery improvement is outpacing fuel cell improvement might change this. Batteries have the additional advantage that the mass of the electrical generator could simply be replaced with more batteries. If they become dense enough a pure battery submarine could be viable for short ranges. A battery submarine could operate without ever surfacing and the batteries would have no vibrations at all unlike a diesel or nuclear engine. They would also be extremely cheap and available to nearly any nation. So the combination of range and cost could make them quite potent tools for brown water navies. It could also be possible to recharge their batteries with nuclear weapons or surface vessels. It is actually quite the opposite. The only navy to go "back" to "full battery" from AIP, the JMSDF, did so because their boats are, relatively speaking, "high seas" boats. With lithium batteries you get more energy and power density. More energy density means you can store more energy in the boat, with more power density you can both charge (shorter snorkel period) and discharge (higher submerged maximum speed) quicker. If you have the sea room it makes sense to snorkel since you can avoid enemy forces for the fewer and considerably shorter snorkel periods. It becomes an exercise in comparing CONOPS and technical opportuinty cost to determine whether you need AIP or not and "not" is a valid answer. Of course, I have my doubts about the type of litihium chemistry and battery cell architecture the Japanese are using, but that is another aspect.
SSK's which are used in more limited littoral environments do not have the freedom of movement to avoid enemy forces to snorkel and therefore AIP (especially fuel cell, with Stirling running second) is essential there.
|
|
|
Post by tbr on Jan 9, 2019 16:50:12 GMT -6
Interesting. So what exactly is the cut-off year for technology being included in the game? My understanding is that the angled flight deck was a response to the demands of operating jets off of carriers. A quick online check finds the concept was first raised in 1944-45, but it took another nine years of development and testing the idea out in practice before it was proved, and not actually incorporated into carrier design (either as a refit or purpose built) until 1954-55. (I'm looking more at when a given technology enters actual service versus when it was first proposed. An idea may look great on paper, but until it's demonstrated in practice it remains theoretical.)
The 1950 'cutoff date' is not an absolute date for all technology, but generally we would not include anything later than the very early 1950s. Now, IIRC, angled decks are included because they are really needed for operations by jet aircraft - other techs at or near the cutoff point may or may not be included because of programming-time restraints or how important we deem them for the game. There is another argument for the angled deck in that it is a relatively simple idea with universal utility for carrier operations. It could have been implemented in the 1930's and would have been useful on WWII carriers. While not essential for non-jet operations it would have enabled barrier free "boltable" ladings even with a deck park. Also, while without catapults some bombers might not have been able to take off at combat load from the bow area "released" by the angled deck the high powered CAP fighters could have, so at least CAP launches concurrent with recovery operations would have been enabled by the angled deck at any time in the technological progress. There are some other ideas like that which could have improved combat capability at any time, e.g. the "pickle barrel" and wooden tail applications to aerial torpedoes or the lensed landing light.
Some of this type of ideas are already in the RTW1 tech tree, e.g. AON armor, on-deck torpedo tubes for non-DD's etc. Perhaps such ideas could get a separate "random tech" mode where they get a chance to come in early (or be totally skipped)?
|
|
|
Post by oldpop2000 on Jan 9, 2019 18:55:31 GMT -6
|
|
AiryW
Full Member
Posts: 183
|
Post by AiryW on Jan 9, 2019 21:12:28 GMT -6
It is actually quite the opposite. The only navy to go "back" to "full battery" from AIP, the JMSDF, did so I was not referring to boats like the current Japanese submarines. I was referring to the possibility of a future pure battery boat with no other power source whatsoever. No snorkel, no diesel, (perhaps a small nuclear-Stirling engine for emergency level power). The mass of the diesel fuel and engine would instead just be replaced with more batteries. That is not viable currently however I think it could be viable in the future. If batteries were 4 times as dense as current prices at one tenth the price I think such a boat might be viable. Such a ship would be severely range limited compared to a conventional diesel ship but it would be low cost and could use "off the shelf" hardware for the propulsion systems.
|
|