Armageddon???? (Part Fifty Up)

[JCady]

They're currently getting the shit kicked out of them by helicopter pilots, actual special forces would be just ugly.

160th SOAR pilots are actual special forces personnel, and it is extremely inadvisable to claim that they're not in their presence.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Shit, just the Iowas? It's time to start doing repair feasibility studies on BB-55, BB-59, and BB-60. They all use 16in guns, so we just need to manufacture 16in HE. And we know that Hell has areas in which swimming creatures can exist which breath water through gills on Earth, meaning the composition is close enough to that of Earth's oceans that the screws shouldn't be fouled. Cover them in fast 40 mounts for dealing with Harpies and find the theme song to The Final Countdown.

Of course, getting an Iowa into hell would require opening a MASSIVE portal either at the waterline, or into a canal, and it wouldn't be easy to line it up so there isn't some sort of 'drop' into hell. Can you imagine what would happen if we managed to sustain a portal in the ocean? Drown hell.

Of course, they could fill the earth with toxic slime...

The lineup doesn't have to be perfect, as long as the energy of the fall wasn't significantly different from, say, getting hit by one of those 100ft waves down in the Antarctic ocean which even a heavy cruiser can take head-on.

[Darth Wong]

Anyone else get evil thoughts about what a full broadside of 16 inch guns loaded with canister would do to a massed formation of baldricks?

What about fuel-air bombs? Although I'm starting to wonder if it would be a good idea to simply take old de-gunned tanks, put a huge sharpened plow-nose on the front, and simply drive through enemy ranks at high speed. At least you wouldn't use up any ammo, although you'd be using up diesel.

[MKSheppard]

Although I'm starting to wonder if it would be a good idea to simply take old de-gunned tanks, put a huge sharpened plow-nose on the front, and simply drive through enemy ranks at high speed. At least you wouldn't use up any ammo, although you'd be using up diesel.

RAMMTIGER!



Only cover it with spikes.

EDIT: and weld sharpened scythes on the road wheels for maximum fun!

I propose that we begin working on Abrams Flail-Tanks and Abrams Ram-Scythe Tanks.

[Setzer]

Well, if we're going to do that, we should get those Shermans with the mine flails, only replace them with morning stars on the end. High speed spinning spikes FTW!

[MKSheppard]

Can you imagine the carnage a Abrams with it's turret removed and covered in razor wire; and it's governor removed crashing into Baldrick ranks at 70 MPH would do?

[MKSheppard]

By the way; is the Crusader Program reactivicated? I know that pure range is not a worry because there IS no counterbattery fire; but more range means that a single unit can cover a lot more area. Plus Crusader has an automatic loading system, and automated re-arm system; which is vital for the kind of long range sustained fire we're going to be needing.

It also reduces the crew of a SP Howitzer from like 5 men to 3; a vital consideration if we're gonna field 25 million men, we'll need to cut corners anywhere we can find manpwoer wise.

[MKSheppard]

People's Liberation Army Flame Tank, with 12 x Flamethrowers

I propose we resurrect General Electric's DIVAD (Sgt. York) Proposal



Yes, that's a GAU-8.

Either that, or revive the actual DIVAD; 2 x 40mm firing Prefragmented rounds exploding in the midst of a Harpie cloud is beautiful...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Anyone else get evil thoughts about what a full broadside of 16 inch guns loaded with canister would do to a massed formation of baldricks?

What about fuel-air bombs? Although I'm starting to wonder if it would be a good idea to simply take old de-gunned tanks, put a huge sharpened plow-nose on the front, and simply drive through enemy ranks at high speed. At least you wouldn't use up any ammo, although you'd be using up diesel.

Putting a flamethrower on top is another alternative. A big one. Like the ones we put on Nam-era Zippo Boats. Demons have not yet encountered flamethrowers or napalm. What are they going to think when they realize that humans can breath fire, too?

Speaking of which, we should start mass production of Willy Pete rounds for anti-personnel use.

[Stuart Mackey]

Her Majesty seems to have survived - probably as the only head of a church

I had imagined that the Archbishop of Canterbury was one of those suggesting to the PM that Britain should just accept the inevitable, so the C of E is probably gone. Dr. Williams would be one of the new residents of HMP Belmarsh.
I was going to include a line mentioning that the government had seased the land and assets of both the C of E and RC church in the UK, but it slipped my mind I'm afraid.

Indeed, I would imagine that the basis for this would be some of Henry VIII's legislation. It goes without saying that Her Majesty would have survived, she is a most practical Lady. Of course, I would love to see the personal use of the Royal prerogative should anything bad happen to the government. I am surprised that the House was prorogued, as it was kept in session during WW2 to ensure parliamentary supervision of the war.

[Sidewinder]

People's Liberation Army Flame Tank, with 12 x Flamethrowers

Is that a T-34 with six-flamethrower batteries mounted on each side of the turret? Where can I find more info on that mod?

I propose we resurrect General Electric's DIVAD (Sgt. York) Proposal

That's one way to get some use out of an old M48/M60 tank chassis. I expect other nations using those models, e.g., Taiwan, will license the design.

[Sidewinder]

Can you imagine the carnage a Abrams with it's turret removed and covered in razor wire; and it's governor removed crashing into Baldrick ranks at 70 MPH would do?

I remember hearing that barb and razor wire can get tangled up in a tank's wheels and cause a mobility kill, so tankers will avoid barb and razor wire at all costs. Of course, gluing a mass of broken glass or knife blades on top of a tank should be just as effective, although the tankers will still have a headache whenever they have to perform maintenance.

[Stuart Mackey]

snip
So HMS Belfast and HMS Caroline might be seeing some service again.

HMS Caroline requires armament and Boilers. I don't know what the condition of her engines would be, I believe they are still there, but would not exactly have been preserved to museum standards during her long period alongside, but her boilers were removed for classrooms (I asked them).
Belfast might be a goer, but would require a lot of work. The Iowa's will be definite, but I don't know about the Texas I have heard that old BB is pretty much shagged out from corrosion.

[Stuart Mackey]

Can you imagine the carnage a Abrams with it's turret removed and covered in razor wire; and it's governor removed crashing into Baldrick ranks at 70 MPH would do?

Channeling Major-General Sir Percy Hobart are we?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

snip
So HMS Belfast and HMS Caroline might be seeing some service again. :D

HMS Caroline requires armament and Boilers. I don't know what the condition of her engines would be, I believe they are still there, but would not exactly have been preserved to museum standards during her long period alongside, but her boilers were removed for classrooms (I asked them).
Belfast might be a goer, but would require a lot of work. The Iowa's will be definite, but I don't know about the Texas I have heard that old BB is pretty much shagged out from corrosion.

I have no plans for Texas; it would be utterly impossible to restore her, and completely pointless. I was talking about BB-55, BB-59, and BB-60. USS North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Alabama respectively. They all have compatible main gun ammo, they have the speed to keep up with amphibious task groups and OHPs, and they have the raw deck space to be used for masses of anti-aircraft cannon.

[Stuart Mackey]

I have no plans for Texas; it would be utterly impossible to restore her, and completely pointless. snip.

Good. I do trust that some money can be diverted to get her properly preserved? That vessel has been terribly neglected over the years, its last of the dreadnoughts after all, and her condition is appalling.

As for the rest, defiantly doable, that fellow, Dick Landgraff, who was in on the Iowa class return to service in the 80's and involved their current status, would be very useful. I think he mentioned once that the Iowa's could be back in service after two years, but that time frame may well have lengthened by now. The earlier class would be more problematic, parts for them, or the Iowa's are not exactly in production but getting people out of retirement to run them shouldn't be a big issue depending on priorities for those skill sets.

[Col. Crackpot]

I have no plans for Texas; it would be utterly impossible to restore her, and completely pointless. I was talking about BB-55, BB-59, and BB-60. USS North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Alabama respectively. They all have compatible main gun ammo, they have the speed to keep up with amphibious task groups and OHPs, and they have the raw deck space to be used for masses of anti-aircraft cannon.

i have toured BB-59 extensively, Hell i slept on her overnight and have spoken with the curator. Big Mamie's main guns are useless. Filled with concrete to the breeches, and stuck in position. According to her caretaking staff (bear in mind this was in 1991) you would need to build tooling, to build the tooling needed to replace her gyroscopes and fittings as well as the gearing need to move her guns. She has one intact boiler, one sorta functional engine room and one intact screw. and she leaks like a sieve. Old girl is in rough shape. She underwent a minor refit of her hull a few years back just to keep her from sinking into the bay. I'd love nothing more than to hear of the old gal in action, but she's done.

[Cecelia5578]

USS Little Rock and Salem would of course have to be reactivated.

What about Midway, Lexington, Hornet and Intrepid?

[Col. Crackpot]

I have heard the North Carolina might be in better shape. IIRC she was made as a museum ship before Massachusetts and a lot of Mamie's parts went to North Carolina.

[White Haven]

Seeing Uriel in action, I really get the idea of just why Lucifer lost the First War... definitely second the 'chilling' comment about his description.

[Stuart Mackey]

I have heard the North Carolina might be in better shape. IIRC she was made as a museum ship before Massachusetts and a lot of Mamie's parts went to North Carolina.

Indeed. I recall the difficulties of museum work that is not government funded from my time doing just that, and I hate to think of the difficulties in getting any museum piece into working order, let-alone anything that hasn't been in some kind of preservation. It must be borne in mind that anything in a museum will, in all probability, be completely worn out from service (there are exceptions) and may have deteriorated even more since, depending on when it went into the museum.
Those pieces that have been preserved properly should have had all their moving parts, or any exposed metal, coated with a non tacky wax or other non biological/neutral ph/non toxic substance, all of which needs to be removed before operating, and that assumes that engines on piece X don't require a lot of spares to begin with because the originals are shagged (museums don't replace original items unless they have to, less they delve into the great no no of grandfathers ax paradox, and imperil funding as a result).

Of the exceptions there are those oddities that had very little active service life to begin with, and will be ok from a material point of view, but just need the preservatives/protective coating removed. A good example is the Canberra bomber at the RNZAF museum Wigram, Christchurch: All it needs is its protective coatings removed from every single engine part/ moving part and she's good to go, lot of time to do that though.

But there are a lot of museum pieces that have had no real preservation work done on them, and while they may look ok superficially are essentially of less use than paperweights.

What ever the case, just because its in a museum does not always mean it can just be back in service in a day or so, or that its in good condition. Indeed, time to service may be years, it may be easier to build a new one, people need to remember that.

[Darth Wong]

A word on tooling; it would be a bad idea to simply throw old tooling into use. Dies and moulds and pretty much everything else wears out over time and occasionally suffers breakage (all it takes is some idiot tossing a bolt into the works), and unless you have the old engineering data at hand, you could very well have some serious trouble replacing that tooling after the fact.

What you'd want to do is divert the tooling from the factories before it gets worn down and send it to toolmakers. The toolmakers can quickly reverse-engineer an old piece of tooling if it's still in good shape; they can take it apart and figure out its basic dimensions in a day or so, working hard, and it only takes a few hours to laser-scan any complex shapes that can't be dimensioned.

Once that work is done, they can send the tooling back to the factory and be in good shape to make new tooling. But if you wreck the old tooling and you can't find the engineering data, you could waste months in reconstruction of old data.

I'm just pointing out that if so much as a single piece of tooling out of an entire set survives, you can reverse-engineer it pretty quickly, and then rebuild the rest of the set pretty quickly. So the situation for old tooling may not be so bad, assuming people act reasonably intelligently.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I have no plans for Texas; it would be utterly impossible to restore her, and completely pointless. I was talking about BB-55, BB-59, and BB-60. USS North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Alabama respectively. They all have compatible main gun ammo, they have the speed to keep up with amphibious task groups and OHPs, and they have the raw deck space to be used for masses of anti-aircraft cannon.

i have toured BB-59 extensively, Hell i slept on her overnight and have spoken with the curator. Big Mamie's main guns are useless. Filled with concrete to the breeches, and stuck in position. According to her caretaking staff (bear in mind this was in 1991) you would need to build tooling, to build the tooling needed to replace her gyroscopes and fittings as well as the gearing need to move her guns. She has one intact boiler, one sorta functional engine room and one intact screw. and she leaks like a sieve. Old girl is in rough shape. She underwent a minor refit of her hull a few years back just to keep her from sinking into the bay. I'd love nothing more than to hear of the old gal in action, but she's done.

Unfortunate. BB-60 survived Katrina with a minor list and just had 4 million in repair work done on her, so she and BB-55 will be the ones we'll add to our battleship force, then, most likely.

[Firethorn]

What ever the case, just because its in a museum does not always mean it can just be back in service in a day or so, or that its in good condition. Indeed, time to service may be years, it may be easier to build a new one, people need to remember that.

Indeed.

BTW Stuart, I was wandering around and visiting a static air display - Specifically a number of WWII planes.

We built over 18,000 B24 bombers in two years during WWII. 12,000 B-17s. Tens of thousands of other planes. We're talking about planes with 4 or 5 turrets.

We should be able to build something like that, just updated in many respects without difficulty. As part of the design specs, we know that Apaches are too slow, but they're only 309 km/h. The B-24, a propeller plane, has a max speed of 470 km/h. The apache also has a service ceiling of 21k feet, but more like 15k loaded. The bomber can reach 28k. Go to the B17 and you loose some range and speed(462km/h) but pick up damage resistance, better flying, 35k ceiling. Oh, and the bombers have at least 5 times the range over the helicopter.

If you look at modern car engines, you'll realize that we can make them lighter, more powerful and more efficient today. Modern construction techniques can make them stronger and cheaper. Modern plane design will give them more lift capability, range, maneuverability, etc...

I'm thinking of something along the lines of the bastard son between a B-52 bomber and a AC-130 gunship. I'll let you figure out who'd be the momma in that relationship. Fast enough to turn any harpy pursuit into a serious stern chase at the least, with enough firepower to punch a hole if it gets surrounded and can't simply climb out of their reach*. In cases of heavy harpy attack, that's where fighters or formation flying would come in.

With the expansion of the military we don't necessarily need a 'one size fits all' plane, we can afford to build a number of plane lines, at least partially to test and develop new concepts.

*at least most of the time

[Stuart Mackey]

snip

Unfortunate. BB-60 survived Katrina with a minor list and just had 4 million in repair work done on her, so she and BB-55 will be the ones we'll add to our battleship force, then, most likely.

It may be doable, but it will require years to get them up to standard when you recall the era in which they became museums. The Iowa's must be the priority and the others may only have real utility as spares bins to keep the Iowa class operational, depending on condition and considering the industrial ability produce parts for them.