NS Military Realism Consultancy Thread Mk X Purps Safe Space

[Nearly Finland]

It really doesn't matter either way.

A country with the population of Kenya isn't going to be resisting anything. Norway had almost twice as many people as your country and it fell like a house of cards to the Nazi Empire.

Well yeah, these are our stats in 1920, 4 years after our founding. But let's say I've got 20 years to do whatever I can to build us up to a semi-relevant power, I can pull in two million disgruntled Frenchmen and Yanks over that period (including relevant experts and innovators) and form alliances with Cascadia AKA Left Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. Just for the sake of argument, let's say I use my Mary Sue powers to get a navy similar to what I indicated I wanted in my first post here, albeit minus the cruiser submarine. What defence advice would you have besides "give up" against a period superpower (and nobody's invented the aircraft carrier yet)?

[Gallia-]

Nothing. Because that's your only "defense". 3-4 million people in 1940 is somewhere between the highly notable military powers of Norway and Sweden.

Small countries generally have to leverage things besides their militaries, unless you are either of the living anecdotes called Singapore or Finland. Since I doubt you are going to be fighting people who fight like they have an IQ of 85, or people who have two decades [now it's closer to 5] older equipment than you, I doubt you meet either of the requirements to be 1940s Finland or 2010s Singapore, respectively.

France IRL wasn't a pushover in 1940. They demolished the German Army tank divisions that feinted into Belgium, after all, and they were aptly regarded as being extremely well equipped for the time, in spite of being outnumbered by the Nazi Empire at a ratio of something like 2.2:1. Some sort of gigantic Mega!France is going to be even less of a pushover, since it'll have a much bigger navy than IRL and the ability to flex its muscle across the world. You simply are not going to stop a great power from rolling over you like a Volvo rolls over a pedestrian. Period.

Your only defense is to not be dumb and make them so mad or so horny they just have to insert their bayonet into your hinterland, because you aren't stopping them if they want to do that.

If you were the United States in 1940, OTOH, you probably could fight the entire world combined and have a better than even chance of winning.

[The Akasha Colony]

Well yeah, these are our stats in 1920, 4 years after our founding. But let's say I've got 20 years to do whatever I can to build us up to a semi-relevant power, I can pull in two million disgruntled Frenchmen and Yanks over that period (including relevant experts and innovators) and form alliances with Cascadia AKA Left Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. Just for the sake of argument, let's say I use my Mary Sue powers to get a navy similar to what I indicated I wanted in my first post here, albeit minus the cruiser submarine. What defence advice would you have besides "give up" against a period superpower (and nobody's invented the aircraft carrier yet)?

The problem is that the fleet composition itself is ineffective.

Submarines (at least during this time period) are not effective against enemy warships. The Japanese found this out the hard way in WWII when their submarine fleet spent time hunting US fleets only to achieve almost nothing and instead get wrecked in the process. Warships are bad targets for submarines because they are fast and they can defend themselves, unlike slow merchant convoys. Meanwhile, the Germans and Americans had far more success raiding commerce, but this obviously did nothing to fend off enemy battle fleets.

Destroyers and torpedo boats are not effective against surface fleets either. Despite numerous engagements in which destroyers and torpedo boats attempted to contribute to the wider fleet battle with their torpedoes, they ultimately achieved either very little or nothing at all. Unguided torpedoes are slow, relatively inaccurate, and fairly unreliable. This is why gun-armed battleships ruled the seas until the aircraft carrier came of age.

So if Britain or Germany or France sails up with a dozen dreadnoughts and an escort squadron of a dozen cruisers and maybe a few dozen destroyers, there's really not much you can do except put on a good show to satisfy national pride or some such.

[Gallia-]

Govt in exile in Berlin?

[Nearly Finland]

The problem is that the fleet composition itself is ineffective.

Submarines (at least during this time period) are not effective against enemy warships. The Japanese found this out the hard way in WWII when their submarine fleet spent time hunting US fleets only to achieve almost nothing and instead get wrecked in the process. Warships are bad targets for submarines because they are fast and they can defend themselves, unlike slow merchant convoys. Meanwhile, the Germans and Americans had far more success raiding commerce, but this obviously did nothing to fend off enemy battle fleets.

Destroyers and torpedo boats are not effective against surface fleets either. Despite numerous engagements in which destroyers and torpedo boats attempted to contribute to the wider fleet battle with their torpedoes, they ultimately achieved either very little or nothing at all. Unguided torpedoes are slow, relatively inaccurate, and fairly unreliable. This is why gun-armed battleships ruled the seas until the aircraft carrier came of age.

So if Britain or Germany or France sails up with a dozen dreadnoughts and an escort squadron of a dozen cruisers and maybe a few dozen destroyers, there's really not much you can do except put on a good show to satisfy national pride or some such.

Alright, thanks. This was probably the sort of advice I was looking for.

[Gallia-]

He literally just said what I said.

[Puzikas]

This is my Nomination. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Nominee: Puzikas

This is a mistake

you saw what I did to the IDT

[Gallia-]

We need to kill more of these threads obv.

Until the only one left is MGVoYN.

[Puzikas]

Just a single united thread called "Thread"

[Nearly Finland]

He literally just said what I said. (Image)

Well, I don't think you went into detail about how submarines and destroyers stack up against a battle fleet. That was a big part of what I wanted to know, but owing to poor communication skills on my part, I don't think I actually asked that exact question.

So clearly, a surface battle between destroyers and battleships is a curb-stomp battle in favour of the battle sheep, and submarines lack the speed to catch a battle sheep (and they'd be destroyed by escorts). But what about air power? In this alternate history, nobody's invented the aircraft carrier, and aircraft have barely even been invented, despite it being 1920. But way back in the roleplay, when we were switching from a modern tech story to this one, we were allowed that people from the future timeline could be thrown to this one. Including at least one military officer with an understanding of airpower. So let's say the baguette swordsmen have their battle fleet with no air cover, and we've got our sea mines, destroyers and submarines, PLUS a significant amount of shore-based aircraft (the fight would take place within range of these aircraft, but out of range of any shore batteries). I'm not necessarily asking for someone to stack up the odds and tell me if I could win, since the answer is still probably no. I'm asking what types of aircraft should I prioritise and how should I use them in order to, at least, put up the best fight possible.

[Allanea]

Early aircraft had serious problems carrying sufficient bombs and dropping them with accuracy enough to threaten aircraft.

[Puzikas]

modern aircraft have serious problems carrying sufficent bombs to threaten other aircraft as well

Except that one time the F-15 bombed a helicopter but that was metal

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

He literally just said what I said. (Image)

Well, I don't think you went into detail about how submarines and destroyers stack up against a battle fleet. That was a big part of what I wanted to know, but owing to poor communication skills on my part, I don't think I actually asked that exact question.

So clearly, a surface battle between destroyers and battleships is a curb-stomp battle in favour of the battle sheep, and submarines lack the speed to catch a battle sheep (and they'd be destroyed by escorts). But what about air power? In this alternate history, nobody's invented the aircraft carrier, and aircraft have barely even been invented, despite it being 1920. But way back in the roleplay, when we were switching from a modern tech story to this one, we were allowed that people from the future timeline could be thrown to this one. Including at least one military officer with an understanding of airpower. So let's say the baguette swordsmen have their battle fleet with no air cover, and we've got our sea mines, destroyers and submarines, PLUS a significant amount of shore-based aircraft (the fight would take place within range of these aircraft, but out of range of any shore batteries). I'm not necessarily asking for someone to stack up the odds and tell me if I could win, since the answer is still probably no. I'm asking what types of aircraft should I prioritise and how should I use them in order to, at least, put up the best fight possible.

This would end up like Kantai Kessen but without the planes or battleships. And you would lose because you don't have the sheer mass or volume to resist a proper dreadnought battlefleet. You ignore the fact that aircraft development was not revolutionary but strictly evolutionary throughout the World Wars, without it, nothing can be done because the entire chain of scientific knowledge is missing.

[Allanea]

Ha! I meant ships.

[Gallia-]

Aircraft aren't muscular enough until the late 1920s or early-to-mid '30s IRL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Hart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Swordfish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Vildebeest

These are the best Interwar options for an anti-shipping aircraft. Possibly quite good ones, even into the early stages of WW2.

Modern/future knowledge is almost entirely unhelpful, since any given knowledge is derived from economic-technological conditions of a particular time period. You might as well ask a modern tank officer to lead Napoleon's armies. Considering said tank officer has no useful knowledge of the workings of 18th century economies and perhaps a rudimentary-at-best understanding of tactics, he is unlikely to be successful or helpful in any capacity. The same is true of a modern 21st century military officer and the Interwar. This is doubly so for someone who is being sent to a world that is entirely unfamiliar to him historically or otherwise. You might as well ask a Martian to lead Hitler's armies across Europe and expect him to win...because he's a Martian?

Hindsight is 20/20 but that is also meaningless when trying to discover new things or recreate actual understanding of an event. It's one thing to know how Waterloo turned out. It's an entirely different thing to understand why Waterloo turned out how it did. And it's a wholly different thing to know what Napoleon knew at Waterloo to the point that you could change its outcome. Which is to say that knowledge works both ways. Just as someone from the past might have a rudimentary understanding of how tanks work doesn't mean they will be a good modern tank officer. A modern tank officer will not be particularly adept at knowing how old tanks work because he doesn't grasp the technological-economic conditions of the time.

He would require substantial retraining to be useful and it's not clear if someone with "knowledge of airpower" (whatever that means) would even have useful ideas to contribute in the first place.

Without diving into details of the engineering or industrial histories of such a radically altered timeline it is impossible to say what would be useful. If "aircraft carriers haven't been invented" then that implies that aircraft are an extremely new (as in Wright Flyer new) invention or people have a greatly diminished intelligence or economies have greatly diminished industrial capacities relative to IRL. All of these are bad for different reasons.

tl;dr Your questions are impossible to answer because you haven't provided enough detail.

[Allanea]

Primitive aircraft carriers predate the Wright Flyer.

[Allanea]

[Puzikas]

swordfish killed Bismark and therefore should never be used :<

[Gallia-]

Does Allanea consider that these men are a multiple rocket launcher?

(Image)

Yeah this is about as much an aircraft carrier as men jumping off cliffs with wings on their arms are an airplane. Very good disingenuous statement though. You are good at hyperbole and literal statements designed to deceive.

Langley gave up the project after two crashes on take-off on October 7 and December 8, 1903.

Very successful aircraft carrier good job.

But besides that:

This required a catapult for launching. The craft had no landing gear, the plan being to descend into the water after demonstrating flight which if successful would entail a partial, if not total, rebuilding of the machine.

Next you'll be telling us that a rocket sled is a fighter jet or something because they both have ejection seats? The analogy is apt since the only thing Langley's dumb catapult had in common with an aircraft carrier was that they both have catapults. I guess a better comparison is this, though:



Rare image of the US Navy's secret amphibious aircraft carrier, designed to use pre-existing runways.

[Puzikas]

if you launch drones from aircraft
does the aircraft not then become an aircraft carrier?

And if you launch aircraft carrying drones from an aircraft carrier
does the aircraft carrier not then become an aircraft-carrier-carrying-carrier?

[Gallia-]

if you launch drones from aircraft
does the aircraft not then become an aircraft carrier?

And if you launch aircraft carrying drones from an aircraft carrier
does the aircraft carrier not then become an aircraft-carrier-carrying-carrier?

The greatest aircraft carrier of them all:



Anyway, moving on, if aircraft carriers haven't "been invented yet" in the 1920s or 1930s, then you are either dealing with a world where industrial output is so diminished that people cannot afford to experiment with aircraft carriers (possible?), or a world where IQs are so low that people cannot think to combine the two (highly improbable, perhaps impossible), or that aircraft are so new that people have not yet had time to develop aircraft sufficiently powerful to land on a ship (actually happened IRL). The last one wins by Occam's razor, because the other two are too silly to believe.

Which really just makes the whole "lack of a battle fleet" thing even worse since there's nothing that can really fight big gun fleet except another big gun fleet without aircraft or carriers.

Because if aircraft exist, then carriers exist, excepting that people are so poor they cannot afford to build aircraft carriers or that people are so stupid they cannot think to build aircraft carriers and build battleships instead. So saying "aircraft carriers don't exist" is a preposterous statement by 1920, since multiple aircraft carriers had existed by then. In fact, two aircraft carriers fought in WW1, and the first aircraft carrier attack occurred then, too. Instead, something has to give. Whether its industry, intellect, or ingenuity.

Since your world has a chopped up USA and fragmented American continent, it is likely much poorer than IRL, so the lack of capital might explain an overall lack of industrial investment needed to produce carriers. Ships are comparatively more expensive, thus comparatively more valuable IRL, which only compounds the problem of the battle fleet attacking you since you will not have as large a fleet as you would IRL. Perhaps ships are more primitive than IRL, or perhaps there are just fewer numbers of the same types of ships? The latter seems a bit tenuous since research and development costs significant capital, so they may simultaneously be more primitive and fewer in number instead.

[Puzikas]

By 1921 there were aircraft that had literal negative landing distances in strong headwinds

The idea of landing aircraft on ships was older than the wright flyer, since dirigible had been used on coastal monitors, and there were airplanes taking off from ships for fun as early as 1907/08. They were launching from military ships in 1912.

As Galla siad the first Aircraft carrier fight happened in 1918.

[Nearly Finland]

Well, the first wright-style aircraft flies in the 1910s, and there was no WW1, Germany is still a confederation.

EDIT: In the alternate timeline.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

As Galla siad the first Aircraft carrier fight happened in 1918.

Does the failed reconnaissance trip by HMS Engadine's planes at Jutland count? If yes that gets pushed back 2 years. :3

[Gallia-]

Well, the first wright-style aircraft flies in the 1910s, and there was no WW1, Germany is still a confederation.

Technological
Economic
Conditions

If they are even close to similar to IRL, the ideas will be similar. Technology determines tactics: what you can do with what you have determines how you use it against your enemies. Economic conditions determines how much of what you have, and to the extent that you may or may not be skittish in using what you have. So while there might not be mega-fleets of 1942 Light Fleet Carriers or Essexes floating around, there will be some form of aircraft carrier, because this is certain in your world:

1) Ships exist.
2) Aircraft exist.

Everything else falls into place.

By 1921 there were aircraft that had literal negative landing distances in strong headwinds

The idea of landing aircraft on ships was older than the wright flyer, since dirigible had been used on coastal monitors, and there were airplanes taking off from ships for fun as early as 1907/08. They were launching from military ships in 1912.

As Galla siad the first Aircraft carrier fight happened in 1918.

TBF as Allanea mentioned the problem isn't so much flying as it is carrying useful bomb quantities.

Really it's stuff like Vildebeest and Swordfish that are serious threats to big gun ships because they can carry armor-piercing bombs and torpedoes. Anything >700 kg is lethal to any ship afloat in the '20s.