Post by dickturpin on Oct 31, 2015 4:58:16 GMT -6
Some good points are made regarding the advantages possessed by land fortifications and tbr's point about the cost of such installations is entirely valid.
At the tactical level though, some advantages would be possessed by warships; for instance, the land defences need to be spread across the entire cost line whereas the mobility of bombarding ships would enable concentration of force. In addition, ships could chose the time of an attack to gain the most advantageous conditions of visibility.
The point made by tbr about range is certainly valid as ships designed for bombardment accounted for this. For example, the old battleship Revenge was modified to be fitted with bulges in ww1; these could be flooded on one side to enable the ship to take on a list to increase elevation and range. Battleship guns (including those from old ships) were incorporated into monitors for attacks on land targets and these incorporated 30° elevation for the heavy guns.
The question of how likely hits are going to occur at ultra long range is however debatable; whilst the fire control solution is rather better for a fixed land defence that is not pitching and rolling, it is still a significant task.
A further issue that occurred in actual bombardments is that the battleships could not adequately observe fall of shot and the target rapidly became obscured by dust and smoke; this would presumably inhibit shooting by the land defences also.
In practice, had the RTW era seen more examples of aggressive use of battlefleets, the effectiveness of combined operations using marines to attack shore installations under cover of bombardment by warships would in probability have been realised and developed.
My experience of attacks on fortifications is limited to the base S&I game (as I did not encounter them in the campaign I completed in RTW). Whilst there are limitations with shore batteries (i.e. increasing their range also increases armour penetration) I find them a fair challenge. I would like to see some form of lag in the campaign between destroying shore batteries and them re-spawning though to represent repairs.
In the campaign that I am currently playing, attacks on Oostende resulted in the loss of the Battleships Hannibal and Bulwark with Lord Nelson being quite badly damaged for little gain; a second attack in greater force with advantageous visibility was successful but Prince of Wales was so badly damaged as she is likely to be out of action for at least 4 months and 3 further Battleships required dockyard attention following the mission.
At the tactical level though, some advantages would be possessed by warships; for instance, the land defences need to be spread across the entire cost line whereas the mobility of bombarding ships would enable concentration of force. In addition, ships could chose the time of an attack to gain the most advantageous conditions of visibility.
The point made by tbr about range is certainly valid as ships designed for bombardment accounted for this. For example, the old battleship Revenge was modified to be fitted with bulges in ww1; these could be flooded on one side to enable the ship to take on a list to increase elevation and range. Battleship guns (including those from old ships) were incorporated into monitors for attacks on land targets and these incorporated 30° elevation for the heavy guns.
The question of how likely hits are going to occur at ultra long range is however debatable; whilst the fire control solution is rather better for a fixed land defence that is not pitching and rolling, it is still a significant task.
A further issue that occurred in actual bombardments is that the battleships could not adequately observe fall of shot and the target rapidly became obscured by dust and smoke; this would presumably inhibit shooting by the land defences also.
In practice, had the RTW era seen more examples of aggressive use of battlefleets, the effectiveness of combined operations using marines to attack shore installations under cover of bombardment by warships would in probability have been realised and developed.
My experience of attacks on fortifications is limited to the base S&I game (as I did not encounter them in the campaign I completed in RTW). Whilst there are limitations with shore batteries (i.e. increasing their range also increases armour penetration) I find them a fair challenge. I would like to see some form of lag in the campaign between destroying shore batteries and them re-spawning though to represent repairs.
In the campaign that I am currently playing, attacks on Oostende resulted in the loss of the Battleships Hannibal and Bulwark with Lord Nelson being quite badly damaged for little gain; a second attack in greater force with advantageous visibility was successful but Prince of Wales was so badly damaged as she is likely to be out of action for at least 4 months and 3 further Battleships required dockyard attention following the mission.
