NationStates Jolt Archive

This is a link for my new battleship, which I believe you will find a better alternative to aircraft carriers because of less time for rounds to hit target and no men or machines are put in risk every fire mission. Pic to come.
http://s6.invisionfree.com/International_Mall/index.php?showtopic=372

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Several nations have battleships of one sort or another in their inventories. Your reasoning on the benefits of the BB over the carrier is flawed, however. An aircraft carrier can strike targets several hundred kilometers away. No battleship can do that.

This is not to say that BBs are not a good idea. Battleships are ideal for specialized antisurface actions and shore support.

TEO

That is kind of amusing, though. If that battleship tried to fire its 50 inch guns, it'd roll over and sink.

Besides, Parlim has been using a modified version of the Iowa Battleship in its navies for years. In NS, the battleship never really left service as it did in real life.

50"/84 guns? :lol: And you're going 45 knots on four screws with a 750' beam? I'd love to know the hull characteristics of this leviathan that make that possible!

Realize, of course, that I love the concept of the battleship - hell, Iansisle runs five of them, with four building and two planned! But the numbers on this are just so utterly absurd I hardly even know where to start!

just to clear up something, the S.O.P. for firing is to fire by section, not all at once... I've just put up a pic of it. I've based it on the Nimitz class carrier so it can go that speed and turn that fast. We're currently running twenty of these.

A Nimtiz is largely a big empty shell stuffed with aircraft. Battleships are much heavier by comparison, since they typically have more armor, more ammo, and the lack of big open hangers Carriers posses.

And 50" guns is just to friggin huge. Thats a projectile thats over four feet wide, and would require a huge amount of powder to propel it any great distance. Even firing turret-by-turret, with all three guns at once, would probably shatter the turret ring if not flip the ship over like a rubber duck.

100 megatonne nuke? From what range?
I admit I don't know the specifics about this, but I'm pretty sure an inch of titanium still has to be a fair distance from a nuke to survive it.
Even if your metal was feasible, and your battleship floated long enough to be near a nuke, it'd probably from a missile or torpedo directly aimed at it. This means that even if it could survive the shockwave, it'd almost certainly be melted by even a 1 megatonne nuke.

Yes, a non-direct hit, I forgot to add that, It'll survive if it detonates a mile and a half away. I'm sorry, that's what most ppl have hounded me on. I'll try to clear that up asap. The ship will still be in on piece, the crew might be baked except in certain compartments, but the shp will still stand.

A Nimtiz is largely a big empty shell stuffed with aircraft. Battleships are much heavier by comparison, since they typically have more armor, more ammo, and the lack of big open hangers Carriers posses.

And 50" guns is just to friggin huge. Thats a projectile thats over four feet wide, and would require a huge amount of powder to propel it any great distance. Even firing turret-by-turret, with all three guns at once, would probably shatter the turret ring if not flip the ship over like a rubber duck.
Your not even thinking of the true physics of this. Imagine the recoil of that puppy. We aren't talking bolting these turrets on, we are talking about building the hull around them. The largest shells ever were 80cms...I.E. less than 36', and those where on DORA, the largest gun ever made.

Firing a single round wouldn't just take massive amounts of powder, but would require a specialized barrel so that the powder wouldn't just blow the damn thing up. Furthermore the shell casing would have to be removed by crane, as it would weigh thousands of pounds.

To have a ship moving 40 knots is hard, doing it with armor is harder, doing it with a battleships armor is nigh on impossible, firing anything larger than oh...12' at that time is just plain impossible.

The ship is so physically impossible its beyond comprehension

Hmmm...I'd like to see that behemoth go up against an HIHS Retribution class destroyer.

Sadly, I use my navy mainly for defending my coast line and/or those of my 'protectorates'. And if you're going up against that, then you're within range of my coastal batteries.

And, since that ship looks like it'd be too slow to move out of the way of a musketball, a missile salvo is out of the question.

The Largest guns I have ever heard of being on an battleship in RL were the 21 In. guns of the Yomato class Battleships back in world war two. The physics of that ship of yours is nigh impossable.

Well, the turks made some very, very, very, large cannons for the attack on Constantinople.

True and they never breached the walls with them though. The Germans had some massive guns back during worldwar one that they needed rail road cars to move around, the orginal railguns so to speak.

This might work if you use a real (magnetic :P) railgun, since they have pretty low recoil and the large mass of metal would just make it go faster.
But your modern...I think. Which basicaly means you would have to replace the barrels after every firing until you develope some sort of frictionless surface O_O

Ronia, you said something about casings. There are no casings that have to be extracted. Notice that I said ten, fifty-pound BAGS of powder. It is faster to reload that way.
Also, because of the sheer weight of the ship, it will NOT capsize when fired. Each blade in each of the screws to propel it are bigger than a school bus. EVERYTHING about this ship is big. That's the whole point.

A few last things. My nation is right between modern and futuristic tech. We are like the US and Japan (IRL) five to ten years from now. We have developed magnetic railguns, and as you see, it is included as a retrofit.

I'm a pretty new nation, and i know i shouldn't be talking about things i'm not familiar with, but something like that, to me, looks like a sitting duck for a tactical nuke fired from one of my near-future tech aircraft.

Interesting. I'm not utterly convinced it could even sink a Glamorgan, Walmington's latest generation of battleship, and we only just got out of the Second World War. These super dooper 50" shells, that'd apparently take a week to load (charge included), seem to weigh little more than half what our 15.5" shells do. It's ten feet long, more than four feet wide, and filled with high explosives? Baking soda in carboard? Am I off my rocker, or should it weigh many many times more than that? Here, shoot one at HMWS Indefatigable's turret face and we'll see if it bounces off.

I can't imagine how it'd turn 180 degrees in 500 feet. How you'd build one for US$500million I don't know- HMS Ocean's hull, built to merchant navy standards not military, cost several hundred million. I don't think you could even extract ore enough to build it for that, or in so little time as quoted for its construction.

Plus, GW Bush Class? That thing's going to attract fire from people you're not even at war with.

Well, I suppose what I'm saying is that I would expect anyone caught up in the same RP as such a vessel to ignore it, or to assume your government bankrupt.

*Tag for lunacy of the project*

... These super dooper 50" shells, that'd apparently take a week to load (charge included), seem to weigh little more than half what our 15.5" shells do. It's ten feet long, more than four feet wide, and filled with high explosives? Baking soda in carboard? Am I off my rocker, or should it weigh many many times more than that? Here, shoot one at HMWS Indefatigable's turret face and we'll see if it bounces off....

((actually, you're right! Converting numbers to metric (I love the imperial system, but you can't do physics with it), figuring the volume of the shell (assuming it's a perfect cylinder) you find 567 kg / 3.861000 m^3 -- or, in other words, ~146 kg/m^3, roughly the 1/9 the density of WATER (~1000 kg/m^3).))

EDIT: Oh, that reminds me - I like MY bullets to have a positive buoyancy as well!

Hehe. I think that at least deserves a token reply.

Hey, we have 16 in the fleet and haven't had a single problem. If you want to see how good/bad they are, buy a few to test...I might even give you a discount...

We're not in the habit of just 'buying' massive 100,000+ ton ships on a whim. It takes us YEARS to gather the materials, clear the yard space, employ and train enough workers, draw up the plans, construct the hull, mount the final fittings, or do the thousands of other things that figure into building a proper ship. Our new Crown class of 44,000 tons, with four ships building at once, are just reaching completion now - five years later.

Of course, we'd MUCH rather have one superb 44,000 ton ship than 15 massive white elephants with shells made of cardboard, engines that rely on spit, good luck, and the magic of movies, and that were mass constructed on a shoestring budget. Thanks anyway.

The Largest guns I have ever heard of being on an battleship in RL were the 21 In. guns of the Yomato class Battleships back in world war two. The physics of that ship of yours is nigh impossable.

Yamato and Musashi had 18 inch guns, not 21 inch. 21 was proposed for one of Hitler's Lion class superbattleship designs, but none of those were ever built.

Hey, we have 16 in the fleet and haven't had a single problem. If you want to see how good/bad they are, buy a few to test...I might even give you a discount...

No problem because you were too blind to see it?

The largest shells ever were 80cms...I.E. less than 36', and those where on DORA, the largest gun ever made.

Um, incorrect. Schwerer Gustav or 'Dora' was the largest gun in terms of size and mass, not barrel calibre. Mortars far larger have been built.

The largest shells ever were 80cms...I.E. less than 36', and those where on DORA, the largest gun ever made.

Um, incorrect. Schwerer Gustav or 'Dora' was the largest gun in terms of size and mass, not barrel calibre. Mortars far larger have been built.
I'm trying to stay away from mortars...they are tricky when you talk about artillery