Sure, Congress represents the people so it stands to reason that a couple of them share the same fallacy as many "normal" people (cf John Ringo's military porn) do.


@Ninja: Modern guided munitions easily keep up with the big-ass Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs from WWII at a fraction of the size and weight. And the big takeaway message from WWII was that no matter how much armor you pile on a ship, a lucky hit gets through. Drop a few CBUs on an Iowa and they will hit something important or start a fire in the wrong place...

Military Porn and Gear Porn are two of my biggest guilty pleasures.

Indeed.... Got to get me some of that...

Hey Mili, my name's Iowa. How would you like to feel my sixteen inches pounding into you?

Heh... *shakes Head*

Wrong kind of military porn?

Yeeaaaahhhhhhhhh !!!!!

Strange
*puts on sunglasses*
What does CSI Miami have to do with this?

Absolutely Nothing... Am I mising something?
*strange*

From my account on "The Other Forum":

I wonder what's the Other forum? there are millions of other forums out there, too many to be members of.

From the somewhat reliable but useful online encyclopedia, I knew the USS Missouri sounded familiar when it came to the end of WW2 and held a very important role in world history...and I had to relearn what I already "knew", in case anything was wrong. The war came to an end on Sept. 2, 1945 when Japan signed their act of surrender to the U.S. armed forces and the U.S. was made in temporary position of power over Japan during the occupational era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Missouri_...nt_of_Surrender

I can't imagine a future when the U.S. or alternative union are at war with Mexico or Aztlan as a subsidiary of Mexico populated by mostly Hispanic or Spanish-speaking majority inhabitants. The thought of such conflict is reminiscent of "race war" against innocent Japanese-American civilians during WW2 when the U.S. MPs rounded them up to internment camps across the western states. Would there be an Asian-American sector homeland is part of the balkanization of America in 2072 is indeed a video game scenario world.

The official shadowrun4.com

I keep coming back to DLN's idea. Imagine something shaped like the CSS Virginia, only BIGGER with missle banks in place of gun ports and lots of armor with the delicate bits hidden inside the armor until it's needed. Operating almost like a 20th Boomer- it has it's mission and doens't deviate until done.

Just the hint of such a ship existing would cause a scramble for research , false information and such. Does nayone know how big current guns are? I get the feeling were talking 4.5 QF, so we wouldn't need a 16" to make a statment even an8" or 11" gun could be an issue, mounted as a bow chaser in such a ship. In a world of radar locks and evasion electics a massive direct fire gun could be a serious surprise-something looking like a sleek barge shrugs off a missle and suddenly has a radical punch could prove devistating for it's influence on maritime planning out of all proportion to the real power.

seriously look at the bows of capital ships in WW2 and late WW1- they have a bulbus swelling, which was reinforced to ram submarines-after an accidental ramming, but it was never used in planning. Likewise the HMS Dreadnought was a major game changer in maritime engineering BUT she herself never fired a shot in anger.

Likewise they can go up cul du sacs. For exampleithe Queen elizabeth Class were SOTA in 1916 with oil burning egines. BUT the next class of hsips the British build, The Revenge Class, could be am ix of oilor coal- there was a fear of reliance on oil which had tobe imported BUT the resulting mish mash or tech meant they were inferior to their predessessor class.

You could make it submersible with a mission similar to Soviet SSGN's and the idea's for converting Ohio SSBN's to Arsenal ships with VLS.

Current ships carry guns of between 4 and 5.5 inches (100mm to 135mm) which fire much more rapidly than WW2 guns a British Mk8 4.5 inch effectively outgunned Argentinian WW2 Vintage DD's with multiple 5 inch guns. The same would be true of the rapid fire guns on other modern combatants
Current thinking for the US is I believe a Rail Gun for the gun armament of their next generation surface combatants
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/military-v...ewest-rail-gun/

Note that the Muzzle enerfy of the Iowa's Naval Rifles was about 20MJ but their heavier and slower shells had very different characteristics. Although I think there is some intent of being able to fire different types of ammo from the rail guns at different velocities to give some more flexibility to the guns


I think the bulbous projection on the bow is actually designed to improve seakeeping in heavy seas and continues in modern vessels including merchant ships but I am not a Naval Architect.
There was a craze for ramming in previous generations of Ironclads due to the performance of Austrian ships ramming Italian ships. Interestingly HMS Dreadnought is the only battleship ever to sink a submarine , ramming a U-Boat and sinking it without suffering any damage (destroyers were damaged by ramming u-boats Dreadnought was to big and strong to notice) and she did fire her AA Guns at German Aircraft while serving in the channel squadron but missed Jutland the only battleship action of the war due to being refitted.


The Revenge class could also be smaller and cheaper due to the change in propulsion and the reduction in speed from the QE's was not a problem as the other earlier ships of the Grand fleet set the speed anyway

Wow. The comments...
I thought that people saying stuff like that was just bad american stereotypes!
Anyway, the project is the coolest piece of obsolete technology I've ever seen, simply because modern warfare isn't about pitched battles anymore. Investing that money into man-portable sensors that can pick out an armed insurgent from a crowd of civilians or a car-bomb from a traffic line-up would seem more useful to me in this day and age than yet another big gun, however cool said big gun is.
The sixth world is excused for continuing development on this sort of thing simply because spirits with ITNW mean that railguns aren't overkill anymore.

Anyway, back on topic...
I think that an older battleship could still pack a nasty surprise in the sixth world, between it's heavy armour, excessive (and nigh unblockable) firepower and the fact that few people are going to view it as a serious threat until after it's started firing. Remember, as it lacks the computerized nerve system of modern vessels it can't be hacked, since it doesn't fire missiles they can't be jammed or shot down... It will get sunk quickly if serious modern force is brought to bear on it but people will initially take it about as seriously as a muzzle-loading cannon would be taken by the modern military... against most ground targets short of a tank a muzzle-loader is still going to do some serious damage, but it's going to be a lower priority than anything invented this century even if the more modern weapon packs less punch.

Anyway, bows and crossbows are considered viable weapons in the sixth world, as are swords. Is there a 'dead zone' somewhere between medieval and modern tech that stuff stopped being useful until Ares came along or something?

The Revenge were made on ther cheap with smaller hulls then the QE's the result was that when time came to renovate them the QE's were much easier to work with. in WW2 the QE's were still front line warships-just-and the Revenge classes were back up reduced to escourt duty. QE's were still fast enough to stay in the line but the speed of the Revenge class was such that they could be run away from.

The bulb was a ram
it got other emelents on WW2 ships but look at the later WW1 ships and it's almost a knife edge

I am almost certain that this is what you are referring to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow

However I am not a naval architect, its just I have not in 30 years of reading about warship design and history ever seen anyone else refer to ramming bows on battleships built after the 19th century . So I could very easily be wrong.

The other reason the R class Battleships where second class ships in WW2 is that they were not upgraded becaause they were due to be replaced by more modern ships and treaty limits (before the war) , cost and manpower limits meant that they would have been retired as the Lion class came into service . Of course the Lion class were never built.

(This is way OT of course but I can't help it)

* You post and then keep searching, I found a reference to what you meant and we were talking about 2 different things and that means I was wrong about WW1 British and American Dreadnoughts having a ramming bow . 30 years of reading and still learning , thanks!

The bulb had been known since WW1 to increase ship speed and fuel efficiency so it became more and more prevalent for capital warships over cruises and destroyers since the latter group had a better top speed due to their lighter weight. If I recall correctly, the fuel efficiency gains are also related to the size of the ship so smaller ships see smaller gains. The bulb bow has a slightly high cost in both manufacturing and design which is another reason they were mostly reserved for capital ships.

Ramming bows were never fitted in the twentieth century.

We're not off topic since we're discussing technological elements that could be translated into the game. The ideas we're kicking around show how others could be plotting and developing.

1) the Revenge class were built on the cheap-war time production without the same level of care that when to the QE class. The smaller, tighter frames meant they were less able to be changed over with post war refits. The QE class had larger hulls with more room to work. Their high point in the second was was when HMS Ramillies drove off the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gniesenau from a convoy she was escorting. With orders to avoid risking significant damage they pulled back from her 15" guns rather than engage her.

2) Digging around for the front 'bulb'/ram idea. The ramming idea was older than I thought. Coming out in the late 1860's after the CSS Virginia rammed and sank USS Minnesota at Hampton Roads, ship designers started seeing rams as a weapon again. They discovered that it also create a degree of stability below the water line. By 1906 when HMS Dreadnaught was launched the bulb was no longer a weapon but shaped out to provide stability.

3) You can still see it on smaller modern ships like the current USS New York but it seems to have disappeared from larger ships like aircraft carriers.

Um...

The Gerald R Ford uses a bulb bow and she's the lead ship of the US's new aircraft carrier. I don't believe it's disappeared from larger ships like aircraft carriers.

Bulbous Bows
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulbous_bow
They are nothing to do with ramming now days. They also appear in a different form in smaller ships due to the need to mount Sonars away from the engines.

It does seem that British and American Early Dreadnoughts (pre WW1) still had ramming bows as a legacy of their earlier designs , they were not really expected to Ram after Tsushima demonstrated long range gunnery was now effective. It is entirely probable that they were maintained because they had a beneficial effect on Sea keeping and Navel Architects were used to them.

Small point about Ramming the indecisive bumping of a couple of second rate coastal defense ships in a river somewhere in the backwater known as America in 1860 had little to do with the move towards steam rams . The influence which was taken seriously (more so than it should have been) was the battle of Lissa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lissa_(1866)
There where already concerns that armour was more effective than current guns (that probably was reinforced by the American Civil War) But at Lissa 2 first class Italian Ironclads were sunk by ramming while the gunfire of both sides was ineffectual (Probably because the Italian force was incompetent and the Austrians had serious shortage of guns on their most powerful ships). The Italian and Austrian navies were both notable 2nd or 3rd Rate navies , unlike the Americans of the time which were at best a 4th rate navy and that was before the civil war.
It turns out the Rams would have been of some use in battle as when tested by one RN Battleship on another it worked (oops)
http://www.worldnavalships.com/forums/arch....php/t-912.html
(By the way in Shadowrun should that be the 1st American Civil War , as the Amerindian revolt looks like a Civil War to me)

The performance of German ships in WW2 was a good demonstration that good ships with awful orders will perform badly, their orders to avoid risk at all costs made them fairly ineffectual as actual raiders. I believe HMS Ramilles also fought in the battle of Cape Spartivento. although nothing much happened


You could possibly do something with the idea of the Battle of Lissa a plot, in Shadowrun there does not seem to have been a signifiagnat naval action since at least the Euro Wars and possible not since the Falklands. This means lots of bad ideas have had time to develop into ships (I seem to remember the CAS having Submarine Aircraft carriers.....) A battle between 2 second rate navies could see a lot of shadow activity with people trying to reover detailed after action reports or falsifying them to confuse others. Amazonia and Aztlan could meet those requirements as both seem to fairly poor navies and are actually in a conflict, although I can't think were either would inherit a navel relic as Brazil doesn't have any real relics and none of the Aztlan nations have a navy worth mentioning today

Actually there may still be pitched battles between the US and the North Koreans (though South Korea probably would only need our help if china got involved), there were pitched battles in Gulf War V 1.0&2.0, and god help us if there is one between US and China. Note that the US Marines small wars manual was developed in the 30's and dealt with how fight guerrila style warfare. The basics of warfare has not changed much since WWII. Just the reliabilty, accuracy and speed of it.

Hopefully RL mankind has become smart enough to realize that massed warfare involving large fronts and 10's of millions of conscripts) as seen in WWII as unacceptable and will avoid it like the plague it is.


They would also be safer to use because only the warhead would contain explosives, and since it uses energy as opposed to propellent less logistical issues and space needed for armamanet.



The era of battleships as major surface combatants ended in WWII. They were out ranged by fighters from the carriers. The main guns on a ship could shoot out to 20+ or so KM depending on the gun in question. Throw in spirits and the magical security component and you basically have a big floating target. About the only use for them is off-shore fire support for the landings. Even that can be handled be better handled by the more accurate cruise missiles and aircraft (or a 155mm with GPS guided shells from a destroyer). Battleships are expensive to operate and maintain, and given the current options available not the best choice for any role given. You could mount VLS on them, in a BBG but submarines, destroyes and cruisers already perform that role.





Yeah, so is my black powder revolver...but I'd sooner have a modern revolver in a gun fight. Less prone to misfires...

Should upgrade from that Wheellock to a Cap & Ball.

That concept (with less armor, giant piles of armor achieve nothing positive) saw some popularity under the moniker "Arsenal Ship", but currently the research is on backburner...probably surface ships and especially submarines carry enough cruise missiles to go around...