StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Stuart wrote:

fb111a wrote:Re-creating the production line for the FJ-4B (the Navy's version of the F-86H) is the best medium-to-long-term solution. You get common logistics, a high degree of use with present weapons in the arsenal (20mm shells, AIM-9 Sidewinders, and the dumb bombs and rockets). It also has the same benefits of simplicity. It'll be tough, but is there a better option to get the kind fo plane that will be needed to face the baldricks?

The problem is, the tooling for the F-86 (in any of its varients) is long dead so bringing it or the FJ-4 back is out of the question. By a quirk, a set of production tooling for the F-84 is in storage at Davis Monthan (probably because the RF-84 remained in NATO service until very late - well into the late 1980s - and there may have been a need to make spare parts for them) so we could restore the F-84 to production if we wanted to. However, the last four wrds there are key. There are many better options than a resurrected F-84, the Goshawk (which is carrier-capable) being the leading contender. With parallel active production lines in the UK and the US, the Goshawk/Hawk in both its single and two-seat variants is by far the best bet. The logic behind bringing an F-84 like aircraft back is impeccable but the problem is that same logic identifies many better clients for the role.

By the way, the A-10 tooling is gone. Fairchild-Republic scrapped it to make way for their T-46 trainer. Some bits remain at AMARG but that's all.

So it looks like a lot of Hawks then.

Which tooling lines have we saved, and which are gone?

Is the A-4 line still around (with all the countries that have some variant in service), or is it gone, too?

JN1 wrote:If we stick something like the old SUIT, or the current SUSAT on the rifle and it should be a good weapon.

Problem with optics is that they're seriously expensive - for the sort of volumes we're looking at around 1/3 of the cost of the weapon. Given that most of the long range shooting is going to be massed fire at large bodies of baldricks, sights aren't that important. Accuracy of the rifle will be pretty good anyway with a long barrel, and it won't be too hard to get people up to scratch with iron sights. They also have the big advantage that they're light - and an FN-FAL in .338 with bipod is going to be a heavy beast at the best of times, not to mention the weight of ammo you're going to be carrying...

JN1 wrote:I wonder if it would be possible to re-chamber the MAG to accept .338?

Shouldn't be a problem in itself. The problem is that - great as the FN MAG is for a GPMG - it's air cooled. This means that for any sustained fire role you'll be changing barrels very frequently (IIRC it's every 400 rounds when firing 7.62mm, and would presumably be higher firing .338). This will really eat into your rate of fire, no matter how slick your barrel change drills are. While a watercooled FN-MAG is no doubt possible, it'll probably take a fair bit of development. The nice bit about the Vickers is that it was around for ages, is known to be crazily reliable and is water cooled.

JN1 wrote:I think that your probably right. I think it may be a case of re-tooling factories to produce rifles rather than widgets and gromitts. I also think that a lot of the people who worked in the various Royal Ordnance Factories are still around, so their knowledge and experience can be tapped into when getting production started up again.
I suspect that we have a lot of machine tools making civilian products, but I wonder how easy it would be to convert them to military production.

The great thing about modern production that few people truly realise is that there is so little re-tooling to be done. Most factories producing machined metal parts use 5-axis milling machines or similar. Changing these over to make something different is merely a matter of reprogramming them and getting a new mandrel made up to hold the billet while you machine it. For small items like rifles it's only really specialised things like the barrel bore that can't be done on these machines. Press tooling probably takes the longest, but that's only 6 weeks or so. Given a proper drawing of most of the parts from a rifle, they could probably be in production in a matter of 2-3 weeks. The delay is in getting the drawing correct and getting it issued.

Stuart wrote:

pdf27 wrote: Having said that, we also know that Harpies somehow have the ability to kill tanks - IIRC a couple of Chally 2s and Abrams have been killed by them. Is this just that they caught the tanks napping with the lids open, or have I underestimated demon weaponry?

A tiny bit of a spoiler but the lost tanks were killed by harpies breathing fire into the engine compartments and/or setting fire to the inflammable junk tankers insist on plastering all over the outside of their vehicles. The vehicles weren't so much destroyed as the crews were forced to abandon them.

OK, so that was a mixture of bad drills on the part of the tank crew and a minor design flaw in the vehicle itself. The engine compartment problem is I suspect rather easy to fix - they'll have metal mesh welded over all the inlets/exhausts to the engine compartments that can't take heat within a week, and that should be enough to keep short bursts of fire out. After that tanks are pretty much invincible to anything short of being starved out, put on top of a very large bonfire or someone breaking their way in through the top hatch. It probably follows that quite light armour will be highly effective - something a bit like a Daimler Ferret is likely to be heavy enough to resist most baldrick weapons, fast enough to leg it when things get dodgy and simple enough to produce in huge numbers.

Sidewinder wrote:As for the ideal antidemon rifle, I hope the Pentagon still has blueprints for the T20 variant of the M1 Garand, which was designed to replace the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), and accepted the BAR's 20-round magazine and had selective fire ability. Tooling for the M1 Garand was provided to Italy as well, so Europeans can get their hands on T20 variants as well.

Yes, but what's the point? The M-14 is more or less a refined production version of the T20, and it could be easily switched "back" to .30-06 calibre while retaining the various and sundry improvements made between T20 and M-14.

Hmmm how hard would it be to make F4 style gunpiods and mount them on T-46?


Sounds like the .45 Martini Henry may make a comeback in a more modern form.

JCady wrote:
Yes, but what's the point? The M-14 is more or less a refined production version of the T20, and it could be easily switched "back" to .30-06 calibre while retaining the various and sundry improvements made between T20 and M-14.

It's my understanding that .30-06 is ballistically so close to 7.62 NATO as to not make a difference. If we need to change caliber, I would tend to agree that .338 would be a getter choice.

R011 wrote:

JCady wrote:
Yes, but what's the point? The M-14 is more or less a refined production version of the T20, and it could be easily switched "back" to .30-06 calibre while retaining the various and sundry improvements made between T20 and M-14.

It's my understanding that .30-06 is ballistically so close to 7.62 NATO as to not make a difference. If we need to change caliber, I would tend to agree that .338 would be a getter choice.

In the standard military loading, it is. However, the long case of the .30-06 gives it much greater powder capacity; in an action as rugged as the Garand's, it can be safely loaded to much higher pressure for greater ballistic performance.

You know, all this talk got me thinking about how the Baldricks would fare if the Message happened during WWII.

In terms of air power, we'd have a bit more difficulty because the Germans are the only ones flying jets and let's face it, the Me262 wasn't available in large enough numbers, and a lot of the other prop planes only had .50 cal guns.

On the bright side, the standard American sidearm is the Colt M1911, although it's limited to a 7-round capacity it gives better stopping power. As well, the M1 Garand is in use...

Even better, while most tanks don't have very good anti-armor weapons, most of them have guns starting at 20mm, even the little Polish and French tankettes.

Of course, now I have this funny image of Hitler launching a blitz into Hell itself... not that it would turn out very well for anyone involved, but it would be amusing to see Panzers punching their way straight through Dis and stopping at Satan's throne.

Crayz9000 wrote:In terms of air power, we'd have a bit more difficulty because the Germans are the only ones flying jets

The RAF begs to differ.

D'oh. Either way, neither the Me262 nor Meteor were available in significant enough numbers to make a real difference, much like WWII itself.

As for bullet cartridges, what about that new .500 S&W Magnum round? I freely admit to ignorance but it seems like a pretty powerful round.

Aranfan wrote:As for bullet cartridges, what about that new .500 S&W Magnum round? I freely admit to ignorance but it seems like a pretty powerful round.

That's a handgun round.

Does Anyone really have a serious, learned objection to the USA using the biggest, most powerful round which will fit into a Garand with the absolutely most minimal modification? Because that round is the .458 winchester magnum; the exact same overall length, 3.34 inches, as the .30-06 round. The Hornaby loading delivers a 500 grain bullet at 2,260 feet per second, or 5,670 foot-pounds of kinetic energy (7.688 kJ).

Crayz9000 wrote:You know, all this talk got me thinking about how the Baldricks would fare if the Message happened during WWII.

In terms of air power, we'd have a bit more difficulty because the Germans are the only ones flying jets and let's face it, the Me262 wasn't available in large enough numbers, and a lot of the other prop planes only had .50 cal guns.

The British had jets too. Not that jet technology was really mature enough to manufacture enough jets of sufficient reliability to be useful. Massed waves of prop-driven fighters could probably make up for their lack of speed, and .50 caliber machine guns have been proven to be more than sufficient medicine against baldricks. What would be a fun thought to consider is what happens when harpies run into massed AAA fire...

On the bright side, the standard American sidearm is the Colt M1911, although it's limited to a 7-round capacity it gives better stopping power.

Better stopping power than what, the 9mm NATO? While that is true, the .45 ACP is not a bear gun. You'd be better off digging out all those Colt M1909 revolvers from storage and buying as many Colt New Service and Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums as possible. The .45 "Long" Colt with it's original black-powder ballistics would cleanly penetrate horses from stem to stern, and the factory loadings for the .357 Magnum in those days were far more potent than the ones used today.

Though I must admit that the thought of American doughboys using Thompson SMGs against baldricks does warm my heart. Many rear-line troops would've been using M1 Carbines, though, and the dinky little .30 caliber round they fired was entirely inadequate against people, let alone demons.

As well, the M1 Garand is in use...

That's true. Though this is the M1 Garand that had to be reloaded using clips, instead of its box-magazine using descendant the M14. Most other armies in the world during WW2 were still relying heavily on bolt-action rifles, often in the hands of ill-trained conscripts. The Germans and Soviets semiautos in limited numbers, and the British never developed them at all until after WW2. Though most bolt-action calibers in existence at the time would've carried much more hurt than the 5.56mm NATO of today.

Even better, while most tanks don't have very good anti-armor weapons, most of them have guns starting at 20mm, even the little Polish and French tankettes.

Of course, now I have this funny image of Hitler launching a blitz into Hell itself... not that it would turn out very well for anyone involved, but it would be amusing to see Panzers punching their way straight through Dis and stopping at Satan's throne.

Not to rain on your parade, but I am doubtful that the crude electronics of the day would have the sensitivity needed to detect that the baldricks are using electromagnetic phenomena to pull off their mind-tricks, let alone give them even the inkling of opening counter-portals to carry the war to Hell itself. The leadership and scientists of WW2 Earth might not have picked up on the need to construct metallic brain-shielding headgear. Not to mention it was still fashionable to lobotomize the mentally ill in those days. Though the military leadership and public of the day would've been far more tolerant and willing to sustain casualty rates in the hundreds and thousands per day. And given that we lacked the stand-off fighting capability then that we have now, I'm fairly certain a baldrick invasion of WW2 Earth would've been far, far bloodier and the baldricks far more likely to have achieved victory through weight of numbers.

GrandMasterTerwynn wrote:I'm fairly certain a baldrick invasion of WW2 Earth would've been far, far bloodier and the baldricks far more likely to have achieved victory through weight of numbers.

"Weight of numbers"?

There's only 6,666 legions in Hell. That's less than 45 million troops. The Soviets maintained up to 11.3 million troops in arms alone in WW2. So the Red Army by itself is 25% of the size of the entire armies of Hell. The strength of the US Army alone, not counting the Navy and Coast Guard, was 8.3 million. So with just two out of six major countries involved in the conflict counted, Hell is facing 20 million mobilized troops. It is entirely possible that in WW2 the forces of Hell would, in fact, be outnumbered.

Which is going to happen soon enough in this story, too. If they think sending a hundred thousand baldricks at 3,900 US infantry is bad, what are they going to think when those hundred thousand baldricks are facing an entire Army Corps?

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Does Anyone really have a serious, learned objection to the USA using the biggest, most powerful round which will fit into a Garand with the absolutely most minimal modification? Because that round is the .458 winchester magnum; the exact same overall length, 3.34 inches, as the .30-06 round. The Hornaby loading delivers a 500 grain bullet at 2,260 feet per second, or 5,670 foot-pounds of kinetic energy (7.688 kJ).

This sounds to me like an excellent idea.

pdf27 wrote:

JN1 wrote:I wonder if it would be possible to re-chamber the MAG to accept .338?

Shouldn't be a problem in itself. The problem is that - great as the FN MAG is for a GPMG - it's air cooled. This means that for any sustained fire role you'll be changing barrels very frequently (IIRC it's every 400 rounds when firing 7.62mm, and would presumably be higher firing .338). This will really eat into your rate of fire, no matter how slick your barrel change drills are. While a watercooled FN-MAG is no doubt possible, it'll probably take a fair bit of development. The nice bit about the Vickers is that it was around for ages, is known to be crazily reliable and is water cooled.

Eyup. The water-cooled naval version of the Browning heavy machine gun definitely needs to go into full production, as does the .50-calibre naval variant of the Vickers.

Aranfan wrote:

The Duchess of Zeon wrote:Does Anyone really have a serious, learned objection to the USA using the biggest, most powerful round which will fit into a Garand with the absolutely most minimal modification? Because that round is the .458 winchester magnum; the exact same overall length, 3.34 inches, as the .30-06 round. The Hornaby loading delivers a 500 grain bullet at 2,260 feet per second, or 5,670 foot-pounds of kinetic energy (7.688 kJ).

This sounds to me like an excellent idea.

The length of the M14-type magazine allows for about 12.5 rounds of .458 magnum, i.e., the 12 rounds I've been stating in a straightforward detachable-magazine version of the Garand, which is what we want. But from an ergonomics perspective we can afford a somewhat longer magazine, say, 14 to 15 rounds at the most, which will still be simple and easy to mass-produce. And of course the ammunition allowance for soldiers is going to have to be extremely high, with lots of mags.

JCady wrote:

pdf27 wrote: The water-cooled naval version of the Browning heavy machine gun definitely needs to go into full production, as does the .50-calibre naval variant of the Vickers.

I can't see any reason to complicate logistics by adding another 12.7 mm round. There's already .50 BMG and 12.7 mm Russian.

R011 wrote:

JCady wrote:

pdf27 wrote: The water-cooled naval version of the Browning heavy machine gun definitely needs to go into full production, as does the .50-calibre naval variant of the Vickers.

I can't see any reason to complicate logistics by adding another 12.7 mm round. There's already .50 BMG and 12.7 mm Russian.

While there was a separate .50 Vickers round, I'm pretty sure the idea here is to chamber the Vickers in .50 BMG.

KlavoHunter wrote:
While there was a separate .50 Vickers round, I'm pretty sure the idea here is to chamber the Vickers in .50 BMG.

Unless there's a complete set of .50 Vickers HMG tooling around why bother? Make more water cooled M2, GAU-19, and AGL like the Mk 19.

Out of curisioty how would a spectre gunship rounds do as there small claiber but fire alot of them.

Also very nice update if a tad short though.

dragon wrote:Out of curisioty how would a spectre gunship rounds do as there small claiber but fire alot of them.

Also very nice update if a tad short though.

The 25mm chaingun on a Bradley is sufficient to kill your bog-standard infantry Baldrick very nicely - and multiple rounds from one were found to kill Angels, too.

Therefore, it's a safe bet that the 25mm on the Spooky, not to mention its even larger guns, are effective against Baldricks.

R011 wrote:

KlavoHunter wrote:
While there was a separate .50 Vickers round, I'm pretty sure the idea here is to chamber the Vickers in .50 BMG.

Unless there's a complete set of .50 Vickers HMG tooling around why bother? Make more water cooled M2, GAU-19, and AGL like the Mk 19.

Because the Vickers is even more reliable than the Ma Deuce in the sustained-fire role, and more rugged to boot. It's quite simply the best machine gun ever built for the role of mowing down hordes.

dragon wrote:Out of curisioty how would a spectre gunship rounds do as there small claiber but fire alot of them.

All the small caliber guns are long gone off the AC-130s, the 7.62mm weapons died off while Vietnam was still ongoing, and even the 20mm galtings have not been used in some time.

The current armament fit of most AC-130s is 1 x 25mm galting, 1 x 40mm Bofors and 1 x 105mm. However an upgrade program was recently launched which involves replacing the 25mm and 40mm guns with a pair of 30mm Bushmaster chainguns. The USAF is also looking into replacing the 105mm howitzers with 120mm mortars (which could fire a new GPS guided 120mm mortar round the army has) but that idea is still being developed and has little relevance in this scenario. The plane has the firepower and ammo to be pretty effective, but it’s slow and at least somewhat vulnerable to harpy attack, which greatly limits its utility over the battlefield.