Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

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bunnyboy
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by bunnyboy »

dfacto wrote:They were actually at peak production at the end of the war (at least the factories around Essen), but nobody was there to use the gear.
Oh. I thought germany was bombed to edge of stone age and marshal help was given to overcome that.
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Trantor
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by Trantor »

bunnyboy wrote:
dfacto wrote:They were actually at peak production at the end of the war (at least the factories around Essen), but nobody was there to use the gear.
Oh. I thought germany was bombed to edge of stone age and marshal help was given to overcome that.
That´s correct. At least for the western part. The eastern part was totally robbed out by soviet union. You could still see this in the 90ies after reunification.

Overall peak production in germany was somewhere in ´43.
sapere aude.

dfacto
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by dfacto »

bunnyboy wrote:Oh. I thought germany was bombed to edge of stone age and marshal help was given to overcome that.
No, the "reap the whirlwind" doctrine was more or less revenge. It destroyed priceless architecture, killed people, and didn't really do anything to stop the war.

TrashMan
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by TrashMan »

Trantor wrote:@ TrashMan: It´s all answered in the Fred. ;)
Nothing is answered.
Waht exactly are we comparign here?

Production quality? Hard to judge, given that Bismarck is sunk. I can't really take a close look at it's welding. The only somewhat reliable info on it's construction comes from Okun, where the materials used seem to be inferior.

Performance? Again hard to judge. Citing the military excercise doesn't really help your case much as:
a) it's an excercise, so it's unlikely the ship was pushed to it's limits.
b) Bismarck is sunk, so we can't see how it would fare in such an excercise.

Iowas has 5-6 knot speed advantage. Do you really think that bad weather woudl result in it loosing all that extra speed, and the Bismarck loosing none?

If Iowa is faster in that scenario too, Bismarck stands no chance.

Even if we assume their speed in bad weather ends up the same, the Iowa can still keep the distance and shell it from afar. Bismarck is again, in a huge disadvantage.

The only scenario where Bismarck has some chance, is if the Iowa is slower (bloody unlikely) and even then, it would still be at an disadvantage (range, guns). Bismarck would have to zig-zag to reduce chances of getting hit, which would drasticly increase the time needed to close range (and hence, increase the time in which the Iowa can pummel it with impunity).

Speed and range, as well as firepower are rather big tactical factors.

Also on the Panamax thing. It means the Iowa can go where the Bismarck can't follow. It gives the Iowa greater tactical flexibility.

This is all very common sense stuff.

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Trantor
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by Trantor »

TrashMan wrote:Iowas has 5-6 knot speed advantage.
Jaja. On the next page we´ll sure reach ten or more... :roll:
TrashMan wrote:Also on the Panamax thing. It means the Iowa can go where the Bismarck can't follow. It gives the Iowa greater tactical flexibility.
First of all it gives her a narrow beam and a higher center of gravity. And that makes her roll.
TrashMan wrote:this is all very common sense stuff.
Again a semantic trick. You trick yourself, so this is useless. EOD for me.
sapere aude.

GOULimitingFactor
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by GOULimitingFactor »

The quality of a weapons system has relatively little to do with engineering specs, except insofar as those specs satisfy the needs of the operator. Let's pretend the two battleships are roughly equal (they aren't, for all the reasons laid out above by other posters and more).

By that standard, Bismarck can lay claim to the coveted title of Worst Battleship Ever (Yamato gives it a run for its money). It contributed nothing to the already incredibly tenuous security of the Nazi state, and sucked up resources that would have been better spent on more and better U-boats, more tanks, more land-based AAA, and replacing their god-awful horse-drawn supply train. Just like the Japanese should have invested in sane methods of pilot training, ASW systems, and better AA for their ships, rather than finishing a humongous obsolete boondoggle like Yamato.

There's also the issue that the United States Navy had extensive experience and training in blue-water fleet actions and the Kriegsmarine did not, nor did Kriegsmarine vessels generally have the kind of strategic endurance that USN vessels did - they really were just a glorified brown-water navy with a lot of subs. The 40's USN could afford to replace ship losses, even battleship losses, on a scale that boggles the mind, and an Iowa is going to be a lot less shy about taking damage, which the USN can repair at harbor facilities outside the range of enemy bombers - which means that a USN commander can afford to be a lot bolder in a winner-takes-all engagement than his Kriegsmarine counterpart, and that gives him one hell of an edge.

War is not a meticulously balanced accounting exercise, it's a toilet stall knife-fight with shit-covered* switchblades. There are no hard rules, especially once you get into the kind of hardcore total strategic warfare that defined the Second World War. The hardware might be nice on paper, but it did nothing to fill the very real operational needs of the Kriegsmarine - it was just another flaccid Nazi prestige project to compensate for Hitler's insecurity about his deformed testicle**.

To bring this back around to Outsider: Terran ships are probably armed the way they are to engage multiple small targets simultaneously, to compensate for inferior accuracy by volume fire, and because they may face hard tech limits on the size and power of their weapons and compensate by simply mounting more of them. Mass drivers, in particular, are less like main guns and more like deck-mounted autocannons - you use them to brutalize small craft and boarders, not to fight it out with another ship.

* I can moderate my language here if needed, but I have always liked the way that phrase sounds unmodified.
** Totally not kidding. Look it up.

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Ktrain
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by Ktrain »

Ok, Ok, to settle this debate I suggest we get some participants to play a game of Hearts of Iron III and load up either the 1940/1941 scenario and take the Iowa and the Bismark to battle.
OUTSIDER UPDATE => HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED?

TrashMan
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by TrashMan »

Trantor wrote:
TrashMan wrote:Iowas has 5-6 knot speed advantage.
Jaja. On the next page we´ll sure reach ten or more... :roll:
Impossible.the highest reported speed of hte Iowa is in the 35-36knt range, and for the Bismarck is it's 30-31 (IIRC)

TrashMan wrote:this is all very common sense stuff.
Again a semantic trick. You trick yourself, so this is useless. EOD for me.
If you wish to simply dismiss or ignore any (serious) advantages other ships have over the Bismarck, then it is indeed uselesss.



@Ktrain;
O.k. ...hold on.
*runs a few battles*
10 out of 10 times, the Iowa won. :mrgreen:

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Arioch
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Re: Physiological/psychological effects on Ship Design.

Post by Arioch »

I think this mine has no more gold to offer, so let's board up the entrance before someone else gets buried by a cave-in.

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