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bewbies posted:It actually has a lot of very interesting operational and problem solving elements to it and I loved hearing the navy nerds argue about it. It really doesn't though. It's like trying to argue about how history would be changed if the late Roman empire had telephones. It's such an immense game changer that no intelligent discussion can result beyond drunken bar bullshitting.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:13
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Best use would be to trade the sub and its incredibly advanced tech to the US in return for highly favourable surrender terms.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:14
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This is, if nothing else, a great opportunity to post the utterly mind blowing pictures that we’ve probably all seen before but holy poo poo there are a lot of ships there.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:16
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Japanese sailors don’t know the first thing about operating a nuclear submarine, so they achieve nothing.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:20
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N00ba the Hutt posted:This is, if nothing else, a great opportunity to post the utterly mind blowing pictures that we’ve probably all seen before but holy poo poo there are a lot of ships there. My first thought was "could the Japanese have seen all this?" I guess not, but how good was their picture of the size of the U.S. forces late in the Pacific War?
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Feb 28, 2019 05:22
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. I'm not even vaguely close to an expert, so I'm using whatever publicly available information I can find to think about this. Assuming it fills its entire complement with torpedoes and gets one reload for a first model submarine, that's 74. The hit probability on the Mk 48 torpedo is obviously going to be classified, but we know it has a lot of sensors for guidance and can supposedly circle back around if it misses. However, the submarine lacks third-party targeting provided by aircraft (as that's not included in the package). The official range without third-party targeting is likely classified, but the official stated range is "greater than 5 miles" and fas.org gives it an acquisition range of 1600 yards, about 0.9 miles. WW2 submarines generally could go about 200 meters down at best, which isn't far off from the Virginia-class. On the other hand, the Virginia can stay submerged indefinitely pursuant to food and maintenance requirements and has effectively unlimited range thanks to its nuclear engine while a German U-boat could usually only go about 100 miles underwater. The Virginia could theoretically remain totally submerged for as long as the Japanese wanted, without ever needing to become even slightly visible from the surface. This would render it impossible to locate without detection devices; information I'm finding indicates that WW2 hydrophones used by surface vessels couldn't accurately detect range for the depth charges they used and German U-boat hydrophones had a limit of about 60+ miles depending on sea conditions. Detectors like radar and diesel sniffers wouldn't work on a submerged nuclear sub. The Virginia has a speed of 29+ MPH, with its actual speed likely classified. Assuming the 29 MPH is true, this does make it slower than a lot of the vessels it would be facing. The USS Lexington can make about 38 MPH and a Fletcher-class destroyer can go about 42 MPH. Acceleration aside, however, the enemy ships attacking it would still need to find it and catch up fast enough to sink it without getting a torpedo under the keel. As long as the Bājinia-kun remains submerged, it's invulnerable to any weapon of the time except for depth charges (there was only one sinking of a submarine by another submarine during the war, so sending an American sub after it would likely end in tragedy). It would doubtlessly be able to avoid attack even if it couldn't avoid detection, as it could definitely detect enemy vessels at a greater range and/or accuracy than vice versa. Considering the power of a Mk 48 torpedo, it's inevitable that a hit would be a kill on just about any American ship. Assuming the skill of the Japanese crew and the advanced technology allowed for a 100% hit rate against American vessels, the time-traveling Virginia could theoretically destroy a number of vessels over half the number of American capital ships lost during the entire war. It could destroy the December 1941 Pacific fleet twice over if utilizing hit-and-run attacks and working carefully to avoid detection. These kills would be completely separate from what the real world IJN was able to accomplish, so the US is already contending with those losses by the time they get this sub. The big question would be if the slow-but-steady vessel could adequately protect the Japanese home islands, as this is only a few months before the invasion of Okinawa. If its top speed is close to accurate, it would take 27 hours for it to cross the entire length of Honshu, the main island of Japan. On the other hand, traditional convoy movement involving zig-zags and allowing the slowest ships to keep pace could potentially allow for an invasion force to be slow enough that the Japanese nuclear sub could catch up and begin torpedoing ships until they turn around or the entire convoy is destroyed. At this point, the mystery would likely be if the US either sues for peace after being unable to finish its invasion without its ships and artificial harbors getting blown off the shore or if the development of the atomic bombs continues as normal and ends up being enough to make Japan surrender anyway.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:23
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Platystemon posted:Japanese sailors don’t know the first thing about operating a nuclear submarine, so they achieve nothing. And they wouldn't be able to reverse-engineer anything in time (far less have the capability to do anything with it) to accomplish anything.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:24
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I mean, the real answer is that Nukes Fall, Japan Surrenders. The only difference is what ships get sunk in the eight months before August.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:31
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Does the submarine have any way to communicate with Tokyo? A period radio would be a vulnerability for the submarine, but if Japanese leadership doesn’t know what’s going on, they’d be hard‐pressed to use it as leverage in negotiations.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:33
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It really doesn't though. It's like trying to argue about how history would be changed if the late Roman empire had telephones. It's such an immense game changer that no intelligent discussion can result beyond drunken bar bullshitting. Might make a decent premise for a Syfy original movie. Or a comic book. Although you might have more fun making the IJN team up with an actual sea monster. Get some nice shots of planes taking off right as Charybdis rises up from the depths and eats the aircraft carrier out from under them. Have to work out a way to land a nuke right in its open gullet by the end.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:35
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N00ba the Hutt posted:So basically there is an invisible sea monster that can eat up to 75 vessels or so. The order of Battle for the invasion of Okinawa suggests that the US had 39 carriers (11 fleet), 8 modern battleships, and 31 cruisers present. That’s part of Fifth Fleet, which is just unimaginably gigantic. So you wreck that, the US still has more than enough ships to strangle Japan, and Harry Turtledove is hanged as a war criminal after the surrender. My question would be how the US reacts to the Virginia going after the Okinawa invasion fleet. Either the submarine single-handedly takes out every single carrier, battleship, and cruiser in the fleet (leaving the actual troop transports virtually defenseless against conventional IJN vessels and aircraft) or it attacks the troop transports and destroys the vast majority of them, leaving them without the men to enact an invasion. Against an enemy vessel that they can't adequately fight back against, the US would be forced to abandon or change its plans for the invasion. One important caveat is the US doesn't know the capabilities of this vessel. They don't know that it only gets one reload and then it's scrap metal. As far as they're concerned, the Japanese just deployed a superweapon that can continue blasting ships with impunity. Would this be sufficient for them to sue for peace?
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Feb 28, 2019 05:36
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It really doesn't though. It's like trying to argue about how history would be changed if the late Roman empire had telephones. It's such an immense game changer that no intelligent discussion can result beyond drunken bar bullshitting. Jesus you really have quite the stick up your rear end
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Feb 28, 2019 05:38
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A Virginia‐class submarine and its Mk 48 torpedos aren’t quite a hand of god that can sink a hundred capital ships at will. It couldn’t be stopped, but it can only be in one place at a time and it can only move so fast. After sinking quite a few ships, it would become an area-denial weapon. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 05:40
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It really doesn't though. It's like trying to argue about how history would be changed if the late Roman empire had telephones. It's such an immense game changer that no intelligent discussion can result beyond drunken bar bullshitting. The #1 rule of military stuff is to ignore anyone using the expression "game changer", tho.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:43
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Platystemon posted:A Virginia‐class submarine and its Mk 48 torpedos aren’t quite a hand of god that can sink a hundred capital ships at will. It's a ship that could theoretically sink most/all of a convoy through careful tactics. The psychological damage of an unbeatable Japanese vessel destroying a dozen or two ships by itself is immense.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:50
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Don Gato posted:The latter, eight banners per ethnic group. This is early Qing by the way, for the three major ethic groups in the army. It gets weird with the Han banners, as they are Officially Han It's Right There in the Name but in practice spend centuries isolated in this segregated hereditary caste intermarrying with Manchu, by the late Qing bannerman/not bannerman is a much more meaningful distinction than Han/Manchu.
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Feb 28, 2019 05:52
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so, following up on my mention of socotra, what role has island played in history? do modern Somali pirates use it, or their adversaries? how about Aksum, or the ottomans and portuguese in the 1500's? is the island just bereft of a worthwhile harbor, or is there some other reason it doesn't command the mouth of the red sea? I want to visit socotra, but I also want to visit ulithi and random Pacific ww2 places like that, those pictures are amazing in how well they convey the scale of what was going on. and then it was all over. thanks for linking that, person who linked it, I for one had never seen it before
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Feb 28, 2019 06:00
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SlothfulCobra posted:Might make a decent premise for a Syfy original movie. Or a comic book. There was a comic book that did that, or something like it. It was a Japanese manga called Zipang. The plot was that a modern Japanese missile destroyer finds itself sent back in time to the battle of Midway, and has to figure out what to do.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:23
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The Final Countdown (1980) has a premise, except it's a US aircraft carrier at pearl harbor and they spend the entire movie arguing about what to do, until a time wedgie brings them back to the future.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:26
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P-Mack posted:It gets weird with the Han banners, as they are Officially Han It's Right There in the Name but in practice spend centuries isolated in this segregated hereditary caste intermarrying with Manchu, by the late Qing bannerman/not bannerman is a much more meaningful distinction than Han/Manchu. At risk of creating a China post Circlejerk, even in the early Qing empire, there were sinicized Manchu who's descendents moved to Liaodong and were subjects of the Ming, but later joined the Manchu armies and were put into the Han Banners. Ethnicity is a fluid concept even in modern times, in early modern countries I imagine it would be much the same as what I described above.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:31
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:It really doesn't though. It's like trying to argue about how history would be changed if the late Roman empire had telephones. It's such an immense game changer that no intelligent discussion can result beyond drunken bar bullshitting. If the late Roman empire had telephones they'd probably have to behave similarly to really basic 19th century systems, which relied on the inherent electricity generated by carbon dust being vibrated and thus were mostly useful within a large building or small campus of buildings, and any sort of long distances even across a city would need to rely on having dudes in the middle who listen to the voice out of one line and repeat the message on to the next line and vice versa. The carbon grains are easily made from just burning poo poo, your speaker/microphone can be made from simple fabrics, there was reasonable availability of conductive metals to use. Not really a game changer overall, but potentially useful for things like coordinating defenses better in immediate vicinity.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:40
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Romans on bicycles
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Feb 28, 2019 06:40
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fishmech posted:If the late Roman empire had telephones they'd probably have to behave similarly to really basic 19th century systems, which relied on the inherent electricity generated by carbon dust being vibrated and thus were mostly useful within a large building or small campus of buildings, and any sort of long distances even across a city would need to rely on having dudes in the middle who listen to the voice out of one line and repeat the message on to the next line and vice versa. I fancy that the descriptions we get of its use in America are a little exaggerated; but there are conditions in America which necessitate the use of instruments of this kind more there than here. Here we have a superabundance of messengers, errand boys, and things of that kind. In America they are wanted, and one of the most striking things to an English-man there is to see how the Americans have adopted in their houses call bells and telegraphs, and telephones, and all kinds of aids to their domestic arrangements, which have been forced upon them by necessity.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:44
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N00ba the Hutt posted:Honestly, I think the better play with such a sea monster would be to just disappear a few troop convoys, but the IJN seems unlikely to abandon the chance to shoot things that can shoot back in favor of glorified commerce raiding. Right. 5th or 3rd fleet loses a lot, in fact most of their major surface and aviation combatants. This still leaves dozens and dozens of CVEs to fly off anti-kamikaze CAP and support the invasion campaigns. The Battle of Surigao Strait with 1 BB and 1 CA plays out exactly the same. Samar happens just the same, with maybe the Musashi in line ahead behind the Yamato. Kurita still goes swimming at least once. This scenario does nothing but increase the butcher's bill, the surrender is not delayed one single day.
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Feb 28, 2019 06:56
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oystertoadfish posted:so, following up on my mention of socotra, what role has island played in history? do modern Somali pirates use it, or their adversaries? how about Aksum, or the ottomans and portuguese in the 1500's? is the island just bereft of a worthwhile harbor, or is there some other reason it doesn't command the mouth of the red sea? If you need to control the mouth of the Red Sea you are much better off basing out of Aden if remotely possible. The city has one of the best natural harbors on earth and part of the city is built inside an extinct volcanic crater. I think all those people you mentioned kind of at least half heartedly competed over Socotra, you could probably throw Oman on the pile as well, but there's a lot of alternative locations to base from in the area. Besides Aden there was also Mogadishu (Portuguese) , Djibouti (French) Massawa (Ottoman). Once Europeans rounded Africa and the Ottomans occupied I'm not sure the Red Sea was even particularly strategic a region, or at least not somewhere that couldn't be bypassed if necessary. It became really important once Suez opened but as I said before, colonial powers had a lot of places to choose from when locating their coaling stations. Don Gato posted:At risk of creating a China post Circlejerk, even in the early Qing empire, there were sinicized Manchu who's descendents moved to Liaodong and were subjects of the Ming, but later joined the Manchu armies and were put into the Han Banners. Ethnicity is a fluid concept even in modern times, in early modern countries I imagine it would be much the same as what I described above. Ethnicity basically follows the rules of calvinball so its whatever argument you can make that everyone will shrug and go along with works.
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Feb 28, 2019 07:10
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Tunicate posted:Romans on bicycles The real game-changer: give any ancient culture wet-plate photography. Not for any military reason, but just to maybe see the Coliseum in its prime, or the construction of a pyramid or the first Arbys
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Feb 28, 2019 08:54
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chitoryu12 posted:diesel sniffers Never heard of these before, anyone got some info?
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Feb 28, 2019 08:55
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Google says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autolycus_(submarine_detector)
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Feb 28, 2019 08:58
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You can game the Virginia thing out at least three ways, one is there some combination of 75 ships that the Virginia can find and sink that would physically make a difference to the war outcome (fleet oilers?), two is there some sort of psychological effect you can generate by sinking 75 ships that is greater than the physical effect of sinking 75 other ships would be, and three can you use the Virginia in combination with your other assets as a sort of force multiplier to generate an effect even bigger than the previous two. In January 45 the IJN is kinda short on assets though.
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Feb 28, 2019 09:04
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How much of the pacific would the 1945 US trade for a working nuclear submarine? The Japanese could achieve their original war goals!
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Feb 28, 2019 09:36
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aphid_licker posted:You can game the Virginia thing out at least three ways, one is there some combination of 75 ships that the Virginia can find and sink that would physically make a difference to the war outcome (fleet oilers?), two is there some sort of psychological effect you can generate by sinking 75 ships that is greater than the physical effect of sinking 75 other ships would be, and three can you use the Virginia in combination with your other assets as a sort of force multiplier to generate an effect even bigger than the previous two. In January 45 the IJN is kinda short on assets though. Sink USS Indianapolis. That’s probably considered cheating. e: Even if you do it, you’d probably have to avoid using the submarine prior to 16 July to avoid spooking the U.S., at which point it’s far too late. Fat Man was moved entirely by air. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 09:43
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Tunicate posted:Not as badly as it goes for the IJA This, so much. Hell, if the Japanese had a nuclear weapon you know some dude would strap it to himself in order to browbeat other generals about only he followed the Emperors true will   
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Feb 28, 2019 09:46
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The Lone Badger posted:How much of the pacific would the 1945 US trade for a working nuclear submarine? The Japanese could achieve their original war goals! Travel back in time to 1941, reverse engineer the nuclear reactor and give IJN an independence from American oil sanctions, thus no need for war! cue for war over Australian uranium
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Feb 28, 2019 09:49
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I am surprised there is not a Japanese Manga where Godzilla shows up at Okinawa and they still lose. Hopefully the forthcoming Battle of Midway movie makes it possible for a sequel.
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Feb 28, 2019 10:26
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When it runs out of torpedoes you load it up with filler metal start ramming the poo poo out of everything.
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Feb 28, 2019 12:17
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bewbies posted:I enjoyed this stupid hypothetical discussion. The IJN loses the Virginia immediately by using the submarine as a kamikaze.
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Feb 28, 2019 12:24
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Fangz posted:The IJN loses the Virginia immediately by using the submarine as a kamikaze. A *nuclear* kamikaze 
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Feb 28, 2019 13:31
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The question wasn't would the Virginia change the eventual outcome of the war (it wouldn't) anyway, I'll parrot some of the arguments from the navy guys There are two ways the IJN might consider using Virginia. One is to sink a bunch of tankers as they transit from Pearl and the West Coast, the other is to go after the heart of the 5th Fleet. My feeling is they'd almost certainly do the latter - even if all 50-60 torpedoes sink a tanker, that's probably like 6 months worth of shipbuilding in 1945 America. In going after 5th Fleet, clearly their first target is going to be the carriers, then probably the battleships. The carriers are almost certainly a one shot kill with an ADCAP, most or all probably suffer some manner of catastrophic destruction (ie, fuel/ammo secondary explosions) after the torpedo does its thing, which means that not a lot of sailors are going to survive. The battleships would fare better, especially the Iowas...they'd almost certainly be unsalvagable, but they'd not explode and sink outright, so a lot more sailors are going to survive. The Virginia could probably get off two or three spreads its first day, depending on how quickly they detect the targets. They'd use the various crazy programs in the torpedoes to make the attack seem multi directional, and could even try and time the impacts so several of them occur simultaneously. Assuming they successfully engage even a couple of capital ships, that would, in all likelihood, surpass Antietam and Normandy as worst American military day in terms of KIA/casualties. It is likely that they hit with all or nearly all of the torpedoes they launch. When capital ships start blowing up out of nowhere, assuming the flagship isn't one of them, Halsey/McCain/Whoever and staff would probably initially assume that they were hitting mines. Eventually, though, two things would help them figure out what was actually going on: first, only capital ships were hit, and since mines can't choose their targets, that has to mean they were specifically targeted. Second, destroyers almost certainly would have heard the torpedoes, and as their reports come in they'd confirm what had actually happened. Their orders in this case would almost certainly be to scatter the fleet and get everything into sheltered locations, at least as much as possible. This is where it gets kind of interesting. I think they actually would have deduced 1) that the IJN had some sort of new advanced sub, and 2) had developed some kind of long range homing torpedo that is colossally lethal to the most advanced ships on earth. The good news, I think, is that they probably could have deduced where the Virginia was operating, and WWII destroyers probably could detect it, especially at speed or at torpedo depth. What they couldn't do was hope to kill it...you need a fast and agile torpedo to kill a deep diving attack sub, and those were still decades away. So, they could probably keep tabs on where the Virginia was, but most likely could not prevent it from attacking big ships, nor could they kill it. What does Halsey/Nimitz do in this case? I think their choices are: 1) Withdraw the heavy hitters of the Pacific fleet and keep them in shelter until the end of the war, while turning up the dials on Operation Starvation and firebombing. To us this seems like the most obvious course of action, but at the time, they 1) didn't know how bad Japan's economy had gotten, and 2) didn't know the atomic bombs were on the way. They were planning for an invasion all the way, and shelving the fleet would have essentially put a stop to any serious invasion plans, which would have had some crazy effects on strategy and policy. 2) Try and just keep tabs on where Virginia was, and steer the big ships WAY around it. They'd probably still eat a bunch of torpedoes, and depending on where the IJN puts the sub, it could seriously complicate invasion plans. 3) Say gently caress it and see how many of these fancy torpedoes the IJN really has. I feel like this would have been Halsey's preferred course of action. It is a very non-American way of doing things, but it might have ultimately been necessary in order to pull off Iwo Jima/Okinawa and the eventual invasion of Japan. This of course ends with the subs magazines empty and it performing a nuclear kamikaze on the Missouri, which blows it up and thus prevents Japan's surrender because they don't have a ship to do it on. All this came about from a "what would the US do if a couple of carriers ate a couple of advanced anti ship weapons in the Baltic or SCS" kind of discussion. Army and air force were both pretty sure the answer was "navy out of the theater" but the navy guys were all full Halsey. It really cuts to the heart of the American way of war...how much are we willing to sacrifice our wunderwaffe (and the squishy things that run them) in the face of seriously lethal resistance? edit - on reading other replies I think there's definitely an IJN COA that we missed...targeting the main body of an invasion fleet. Sending a dozen or so troop ships down with all hands would have been arguably an even bigger catastrophe than losing all of the carriers. bewbies fucked around with this message at 14:34 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 14:17
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Nice writeup. Don’t mind the killjoys, I like the occasional wild rear end speculation. Plus when it draws on historical tactics and equipment, it has educational value. Reddit has had some legendary threads, like this one about a MEU against Rome. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/
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Feb 28, 2019 14:39
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I remember when that was posted. It’s seven years later and Rome Sweet Rome is stuck in development hell.
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Feb 28, 2019 14:41
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