Let's Sperg Rule the Waves II: Kiwis at Sea - From Pre Dreadnoughts to the Missile Age, Something is Always Bloody Wrong With Your Ships Today

[Techpriest]

The nearly decade long war wasn't a total wash. For one thing, it means I'm absolutely SWIMMING in prestige. I'm at 39 in 1911 - that's insane. I'm totally willing to sacrifice some prestige for a bigger budget right now.

I get double torpedo mounts a few months later. So all those 900 ton destroyers I built? Useless. I'll need to make a new design.

1912 also gives me this amazing, and I do mean amazing discovery. I'll put it on high priority. I might not be able to build large ships super efficiently, but I can damn well start making carriers at some point.

The Yunagi will hopefully be more effective than some of her predecessors.

March of next year, I get this wonderful event. Prestige, tension, and money? Sign me right up.

In August I also get this wonderful tech. Now my 12 inch guns can actually penetrate 10 inches of armor.

The Chiyoda is my raider/battle fighting light cruiser. I'll only take 2, maybe 3 of her. Her role is kind of niche.

New years 1914 gives me an excellent gift.

The Fuji class will be a massive improvement. Her biggest weakness though, is lack of any kind of torpedo defenses. I haven't been lucky enough to get that tech, so I'll be worrying about torpedo boats quite a bit with her. She'll take 34 months to finish, nearly 3 years, which isn't exactly a fun time.

This raises tensions nicely with France and Russia, which is quite handy for me.

So does this.

Holy shit. This is great. Where were you last time Britain?

Glorious. I'll stop here for today, but just so you can understand why I'm thrilled -

Look at all of those battleships. LOOK! It's beautiful. So so beautiful. 17 battleships. 20 old fashioned battleships too. That's amazing. What isn't as amazing is all those heavy cruisers France has.

France, Russia, and Germany are all unhappy with me, but again, I have the brits. And that means I can put raiders pretty much everywhere and anywhere and know they'll be supplied. That's fucking glorious.

 

[GnomeofDoc]

Admiral Kensama

Good name. Now ignore the army they are pitiful and require all our help just to get that small land from Germany (Who we should totally ally over England). The army can’t stand up to our GLORIOUS thousand folded iron hulls! FULL FUNDING FOR THE NAVY! COMMIT SUDOKU @Adamska

 

[NerdShamer]

Fight the French, next? They're already pissed at you, plus you could steal one of their colonies.

 

[GnomeofDoc]

Fight the French, next? They're already pissed at you, plus you could steal one of their colonies.

Frances holdings in Indo-China then hit the Brits to get the oil in what is near the Dutch East Indies Sucka.
Edit. I found google.

 

[NerdShamer]

Frances holdings in Indo-China then hit the Brits to get the oil in what is near the Dutch East Indy’s (I have no idea how to spell that)

It's "Indies," I believe.

 

[GnomeofDoc]

It's "Indies," I believe.

Yeah I forgot about ya boi google.
But yeah Indo-China to open up a two pronged attack into mainland China for that sweet sweet man power.

 

[Adamska]

Getting Indochina would be very useful for the glorious Empire. Mainly because you can get some sweet amounts of rubber from it and you'd have a ready (but painful to manage) force of people who'd happily kick baguette out.

Also you have big daddy Britain to bail out.

But I still want you to dick punch the bear and steal Sakhalin and Amur. The former will net you oil in the future and the latter will free up china to you far more to exploit. Also this validates my job as the IJA so do it or I'll kill your government by convincing all generals to not sit in it and force you to make a new one... which the Navy can also do btw.

 

[GnomeofDoc]

I would like to request that the Admiral make a “Super” Destroyer with the biggest guns you can fit on it. For the glory of the emperor and memes.

 

[Techpriest]

I would like to request that the Admiral make a “Super” Destroyer with the biggest guns you can fit on it. For the glory of the emperor and memes.

The biggest would be 5 inch guns I think. Now, a cruiser with as many torpedo mounts as possible, that I can do

 

[GnomeofDoc]

The biggest would be 5 inch guns I think. Now, a cruiser with as many torpedo mounts as possible, that I can do

I accept this compromise.

 

[Save the Loli]

Those dumb Japs seriously thought they could take on the Aryan race and win.

But seriously are there any other good tutorials? Tried playing the demo and I am confused as hell (never played anything more than complex than Hearts of Iron or Darkest Hour) and not about to drop 35 dollars on this just yet, but this does look pretty interesting.

 

[Techpriest]

Those dumb Japs seriously thought they could take on the Aryan race and win.

But seriously are there any other good tutorials? Tried playing the demo and I am confused as hell (never played anything more than complex than Hearts of Iron or Darkest Hour) and not about to drop 35 dollars on this just yet, but this does look pretty interesting.

Honestly? Read the manual for the game the whole battle system is based on. Read the manual for the actual game. Watch a video or two. If you don't understand what's going on, don't worry, that's historically accurate! Plenty of commanders in this era had no idea what they were doing. If you're wondering how to design ships, do whatever the fuck you want. Whatever works works, even if it's ugly as sin and not optimal.

 

[NerdShamer]

About the military occasionally being run by idiots, it's a combination of: Not being aggressive enough, promoting some guy that a politician likes letting too many chefs in the kitchen, or just starting a war because you think you can win (blame Imperial Japan).

For instance, the Brits had a custom of promoting officers via bribery (although, it's more like gambling with your pension that you just paid for if you really are incompetent) and when that died out, it was partially based on someone important liking you. The Imperial Russkies had a meritocracy set up, but Catherine the Great ruined it by making most (if not all) of the promotions automatic once every seven years or so, resulting in plenty of the branch's equivalent of a colonel or bishop wandering about. The Union side of the American Civil War was partially mismanaged by General George McClellan, who was generally dragging his feet and retreated from Virginia when he outnumbered the defenders by a wide margin. For the Confederates, there's Braxton Bragg, who was a disciplinarian who relied too much on attacking from the front. Plus, people hated him because he was always getting into arguments with his superiors. In fact, there's quite a few incompetent leaders in that war, but it was mainly the Confederates' infighting and the Union employing neckbeards like Burnsides who thought it was a good idea to repeatedly send his men across a narrow bridge that was covered by snipers (to be fair, Burnsides knew he was bad at leading an army and was kind of charismatic and unlucky, but this incident at Antietam can't be overlooked).

And I would pick on Imperial Japan, but they picked a fight that they couldn't really win.

 

[RadicalCentrist]

And I would pick on Imperial Japan, but they picked a fight that they couldn't really win.

Japan needed fuel and other resources that have been denied them by the embargo. With the world crawling towards WWII, and the jingoistic national cult of the Meiji, war was inevitable. As such, it is best to take it on their terms. Had they sunk our carriers (that were normally there,) the U.S would have been utterly fucked.

Even with the U.S industrial base, carriers are both disgustingly expensive and time consuming to build.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Japan needed fuel and other resources that have been denied them by the embargo. With the world crawling towards WWII, and the jingoistic national cult of the Meiji, war was inevitable. As such, it is best to take it on their terms. Had they sunk our carriers (that were normally there,) the U.S would have been utterly fucked.

Even with the U.S industrial base, carriers are both disgustingly expensive and time consuming to build.

Fucked for an extra year or two maybe, end result would have been the same.

 

[Adamska]

Japan needed fuel and other resources that have been denied them by the embargo. With the world crawling towards WWII, and the jingoistic national cult of the Meiji, war was inevitable. As such, it is best to take it on their terms. Had they sunk our carriers (that were normally there,) the U.S would have been utterly fucked.

Even with the U.S industrial base, carriers are both disgustingly expensive and time consuming to build.

Eh, the thing is the Japanese didn't understand the US mindset with shit like Pearl Harbor and their big sweep across the Pacific. They thought we'd crumble like Russia, or fold more like the Euro powers. They didn't get that doing shit like that would just piss us off and get us going for a war.

Besides; they couldn't even really hit beyond Hawaii as it'd be on the ass end of their logistics, so even if they dunk on our fleet, they technically only make our fight a lot more annoying, but we're still going to fucking nuke them.

 

[Techpriest]

Eh, the thing is the Japanese didn't understand the US mindset with shit like Pearl Harbor and their big sweep across the Pacific. They thought we'd crumble like Russia, or fold more like the Euro powers. They didn't get that doing shit like that would just piss us off and get us going for a war.

Besides; they couldn't even really hit beyond Hawaii as it'd be on the ass end of their logistics, so even if they dunk on our fleet, they technically only make our fight a lot more annoying, but we're still going to fucking nuke them.

Don’t forget we had 4 modern battleships in the yards at the time of Pearl Harbor, about to leave the docks early in ‘42. Then there was the other flat tops we had - Ranger in the Atlantic, and the two Lexington’s, plus the Essex class fleet carriers just starting their constructions. As Yamamoto himself said, “I can promise you six months of success at the start. After that, I cannot promise anything.”

EDIT: I’ll do a quick run down on the real failure of the Japanese war planners. First, the Pearl Harbor raid was aimed at the main heavy ships of the US. Most of those battleships were outdated by decades. The Pearl Harbor raid was also designed and desired to effect a battle plan in the making for decades. The Japanese planned to make the Americans scramble to recover the Philippines, and hoped to draw out the undamaged or partly damaged American battleship force out into a long, slow march over the pacific directly towards the Philippines. The idea was that the carrier and submarine fleets of the IJN would harass and damage them along the way as well, while the remenants would then be crushed in a decisive fleet action off of Luzon. The thing was that Pearl was even more successful than the Taranto raid had been - the one that partly inspired Pearl.

There wasn’t an American fleet capable of steaming full speed to the western Pacific left. The ships that escaped damage weren’t the newest, most battleships had taken at least enough damage to mandate repairs in San Diego, The Japanese surprise attack had also focused on only the airfields and Harbor itself. It left the oil and critically, the submarine pens totally untouched.

See, American and Japanese submarine doctrine was very different. America had looked at the WWI and early WWII sub campaign of the Germans and saw how successful they could be. Japan modeled theirs after the British fleet support model. And unlike the British, the Japanese had very little to no ASW experience or weaponry. Convoys were about the only defense, but many Japanese merchants were unaccompanied by any kind of escort.

Part of the reason the head of the Kreigsmarine wasn’t hanging during the executions at Nuremberg was that fucking Nimitz and King, the big American admirals, objected vehemently to the idea of unrestricted submarine warfare being a war crime. Why? Because the US conducted the most successful unrestricted submarine warfare campaign of all time. Ton for ton, the US submarine fleet sunk a higher ratio of Japanese shipping than the German campaigns did to allied shipping - and lost far less doing so. By early 1945 even shipping from China to Japan was heavily restricted, and most large merchant vessels already sunk. The US submarine fleet was also actually more effective at fleet support too, sinking more warships than the Japanese submarines. By the end of the war US submariners were doing gun runs on and ramming fucking sampans, because there was nothing else left to sink.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Don’t forget we had 4 modern battleships in the yards at the time of Pearl Harbor, about to leave the docks early in ‘42. Then there was the other flat tops we had - Ranger in the Atlantic, and the two Lexington’s, plus the Essex class fleet carriers just starting their constructions. As Yamamoto himself said, “I can promise you six months of success at the start. After that, I cannot promise anything.”

EDIT: I’ll do a quick run down on the real failure of the Japanese war planners. First, the Pearl Harbor raid was aimed at the main heavy ships of the US. Most of those battleships were outdated by decades. The Pearl Harbor raid was also designed and desired to effect a battle plan in the making for decades. The Japanese planned to make the Americans scramble to recover the Philippines, and hoped to draw out the undamaged or partly damaged American battleship force out into a long, slow march over the pacific directly towards the Philippines. The idea was that the carrier and submarine fleets of the IJN would harass and damage them along the way as well, while the remenants would then be crushed in a decisive fleet action off of Luzon. The thing was that Pearl was even more successful than the Taranto raid had been - the one that partly inspired Pearl.

There wasn’t an American fleet capable of steaming full speed to the western Pacific left. The ships that escaped damage weren’t the newest, most battleships had taken at least enough damage to mandate repairs in San Diego, The Japanese surprise attack had also focused on only the airfields and Harbor itself. It left the oil and critically, the submarine pens totally untouched.

See, American and Japanese submarine doctrine was very different. America had looked at the WWI and early WWII sub campaign of the Germans and saw how successful they could be. Japan modeled theirs after the British fleet support model. And unlike the British, the Japanese had very little to no ASW experience or weaponry. Convoys were about the only defense, but many Japanese merchants were unaccompanied by any kind of escort.

Part of the reason the head of the Kreigsmarine wasn’t hanging during the executions at Nuremberg was that fucking Nimitz and King, the big American admirals, objected vehemently to the idea of unrestricted submarine warfare being a war crime. Why? Because the US conducted the most successful unrestricted submarine warfare campaign of all time. Ton for ton, the US submarine fleet sunk a higher ratio of Japanese shipping than the German campaigns did to allied shipping - and lost far less doing so. By early 1945 even shipping from China to Japan was heavily restricted, and most large merchant vessels already sunk. The US submarine fleet was also actually more effective at fleet support too, sinking more warships than the Japanese submarines. By the end of the war US submariners were doing gun runs on and ramming fucking sampans, because there was nothing else left to sink.

It really can't be overstated how liitle people know about US submarine ops in the Pacific. The focus is always on German U-boat ops, but American wolfpack results would make the Germans blush.

I'm going to chalk it up to the huge carrier operations being much flashier, whereas that sort of action wasn't taking place in the Atlantic.

 

[Adamska]

It really can't be overstated how liitle people know about US submarine ops in the Pacific. The focus is always on German U-boat ops, but American wolfpack results would make the Germans blush.

I'm going to chalk it up to the huge carrier operations being much flashier, whereas that sort of action wasn't taking place in the Atlantic.

The scary part is we were murdering Japanese shipping with shitty torpedoes and a bad sub doctrine too. So about the former...

The Mk 14 was designed to use a magnetic exploder that sought to punch below the torpedo belts in the ships of the time, as this was when those were added or thickened in a lot of models. Our naval research by this point was pretty much just in house in one area, Rhode Island. The researchers basically formed a bubble since there was no real competition in the states, and believed that every thing they were doing worked fine. The problem was is they never fucking tested those exploders.

Oh, they did lab tests in cool water, using a variety of gauges and experiments to show off what it could do. But they never bothered to live fire or test the exploder because the government couldn't be fucked to put money into testing it (they were cutting funding). They then dug their heads into the sand and ignored any complaints that they recieved about it not working, believing it was just the stupid sailors that could not appreciate their effectiveness and THEY were screwing it up. The big issue was that this exploder would either pre-ejaculate explode, or fail to bother even with perfect hits. They also had a fishtailing problem as well since the magnetic guidance didn't like high magnetic activity,

The doctrine problems that sub captains had in WW2 was they were taught to be overly cautious. This can be laid at the feet of the Big Gun Club, a group of senior naval advisors and admirals who believed that the Battleship was the Queen of the Sea and could carry the day. They often had stakes in more being built, and so during war games would pre-emptively declare subs sunk at depths their ASDIC knock offs couldn't anticipate and over emphasized their gun effectiveness to the Navy. This happened for decades by this point, so the sub captains were inclined to think it was really easy for them to get spotted and sunk by an enemy ship, no matter what. This at least was resolved by 1943 or so, but the exploder fucked with the Mk 14 until the end of the war.

 

[NerdShamer]

The scary part is we were murdering Japanese shipping with shitty torpedoes and a bad sub doctrine too. So about the former...

The Mk 14 was designed to use a magnetic exploder that sought to punch below the torpedo belts in the ships of the time, as this was when those were added or thickened in a lot of models. Our naval research by this point was pretty much just in house in one area, Rhode Island. The researchers basically formed a bubble since there was no real competition in the states, and believed that every thing they were doing worked fine. The problem was is they never fucking tested those exploders.

Oh, they did lab tests in cool water, using a variety of gauges and experiments to show off what it could do. But they never bothered to live fire or test the exploder because the government couldn't be fucked to put money into testing it (they were cutting funding). They then dug their heads into the sand and ignored any complaints that they recieved about it not working, believing it was just the stupid sailors that could not appreciate their effectiveness and THEY were screwing it up. The big issue was that this exploder would either pre-ejaculate explode, or fail to bother even with perfect hits. They also had a fishtailing problem as well since the magnetic guidance didn't like high magnetic activity,

The doctrine problems that sub captains had in WW2 was they were taught to be overly cautious. This can be laid at the feet of the Big Gun Club, a group of senior naval advisors and admirals who believed that the Battleship was the Queen of the Sea and could carry the day. They often had stakes in more being built, and so during war games would pre-emptively declare subs sunk at depths their ASDIC knock offs couldn't anticipate and over emphasized their gun effectiveness to the Navy. This happened for decades by this point, so the sub captains were inclined to think it was really easy for them to get spotted and sunk by an enemy ship, no matter what. This at least was resolved by 1943 or so, but the exploder fucked with the Mk 14 until the end of the war.

Yeah, the Mk 14s with the contact fuse didn't explode on a perpendicular hit because it was partially designed from older, slower equipment; and as the Lieutenant Commander running the Tinosa found out, they only went off on glancing hits. Keep in mind that this happened on a unguarded tanker where the Lt. Cmdr. basically had all the time in the world to verify that his dozen or so torpedoes were defective...Although the one that he brought home wasn't.

And another reason why America's torpedoes were shit is that there was shortage of them from WWI and it was deemed too expensive to properly test them.

But otherwise, the Japs were pretty much fucked in the ass for a lot of reasons, with codebreaking being one of them.