"Or how about the Merchat Auxilliary Carriers which had a Hurricane or two
mounted on a catapult with NO retrieval access at all. The guy hit the silk
and waited in a rubber raft for a boat to pick him up. There's dedication for
you!"
Think those were called CAM ships. The MAC ships, the Merchant Auxillary
Carriers were regular merchantmen (mostly bulk ore and grain carriers if
I'm not mistaken) decked over with a flight deck and carrying 4-6
Swordfish
biplanes (gotta love the "stringbags" -- open cockpit biplanes in WWII?
kinda like bringin' a knife to a gunfight? Yet surprsingly they worked).
No hangers as I recall, carried 'em lashed down on deck 24/7. I've
tinkered with the concept a little - freighters that trade out a little
hold space for a hanger bay or two or strap on a little extra armor and
guns and pretend to be a cruiser - an idea that was given serious
thought during both world wars. The RN, short on escorts, commissioned quite a
few Armed Merchant Cruisers which occassionally got in way over their heads.
One was present at the battle of Coronel in WWI and escaped from the
Scharnhorst and Gneisenau mainly by being hardly worth sinking, another, the
Rawalipindi, was sunk by S&G's WWII namesakes, while another, the
Jervis Bay, fought a hopelessly one-sided action (four 6-inch guns vs
six
11-inch and numerous 5.9's) against the Admiral Scheer (but saved most
of a convoy in the process). I've played a few commerce raiding scenarios of
that sort: auxilary cruisers guarding a convoy versus a small raiding force.
Amazingly, despite its obvious drawbacks, the auxilary cruiser was regarded as
a real threat going into WWI, particularlly since the Germans armed several
fast liners, including a few that had won the Blu Ribband for the
Atlantic crossing (as fast, if not faster than most cruisers -- by
comparison the thrust-2 liner in the FB seems a rather pokey old tub).
The RN even armed a few liners as a response (plans at one point called for
arming the Lusitania and Mauritania, a factor in the Lusitania's sinking
-
ie German insistance that she was armed). Once two of these "eggshells
armed with hammers" even fought - the RN AMC Carmania sank the German
Cap Trafalgar off Trindad in 1914.
That's one intersting wrinkle between FT and 20th century wet navy models:
commerce raiding. While carriers may function more or less like WWII,
there's nothing comparable to a u-boat, so commerce raiding is taken
back
to more traditional days - fast cruisers along the lines of the CSS
Alabama, the Emden or even the Graf Spee, quietly lurking near the "safe jump
limit". Reading about the KRS Kohl in the Rot Hafen saga (great stuff by the
way) has had me toying with the idea of small "stealth boats" or
some such as a sort of u-boat stand in. Thoughts?
-M
G'day,
> (gotta love the "stringbags" -- open cockpit biplanes in WWII?
That's mostly because they were flying too slowly for the other aricraft or
anit-air weaponary to stay with them ;)
Beth
I considered for awhile a way to use the cloaking optional rules to create a
sort of space U-boat. This however was never followed throuhg because I
could never, under the exsisting rules for cloaking in FT, figure out an
effective method of operation.
Under the rules, a vessel is complete blind while cloaking. I assume that some
sort of navigational systems are functional, but that's about it. Under the
system I came up with, the vessels would operate from
pre-determined bases, who's coordinates would be used as a ready course
after an attack.
Under cloak, they would procede to a predetermined set of coordinates and
wait, only when they were in position. A swift attack, then recloak and
return along a preset course.
This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot, but as
far as commerce raiding and use against actual moving targets it seemed that
the cloakign vessels would tend to come out of cloak off the mark too often.
Well, that's what I came up with. any other ideas?
Eli
> From: edens@mindspring.com (Matt Edens)
The
> RN even armed a few liners as a response (plans at one point called for
Nah, it was cuz the gunners and pilots were laughing too hard to aim
straight... :)
--Binhan
[quoted original message omitted]
> In a message dated 7/13/99 8:01:53 PM EST, emu2020@hotmail.com writes:
<<
Under cloak, they would procede to a predetermined set of coordinates and
wait, only when they were in position. A swift attack, then recloak and return
along a preset course.
This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot, but as
far as commerce raiding and use against actual moving targets it seemed that
the cloakign vessels would tend to come out of cloak off the mark too often.
Well, that's what I came up with. any other ideas?
> [quoted text omitted]
How about using remote sensors to track targets (ala star cruiser) Or missiles
that track through remote piloting?
> On Tue, 13 Jul 1999, Eli Arndt wrote:
> I considered for awhile a way to use the cloaking optional rules to
how about this: rig for silent running (not cloaked, but under strong emission
control). close to just outside the limit of the target's passive sensors (not
hard against a civillian). track the target by her drive
emissions - being commercial types, they should be nice and noisy.
figure out where she's going. figure out an intercept course. cloak, and
execute
the course. uncloak - you should be pretty near to the target, as she is
pursuing a very predictable course. attack.
this only works well if the target is (a) unescorted - military sensors
make closing hard (b) not actively evading. the former is unlikely to be
true in wartime, whereas the second is likely to be true - jinking on a
large scale eats expensive fuel and time. thus, the real problem is geting
reasonably close under silent running without being detected by the escorts.
not easy, but not impossible.
> This made a lot of sense against emplacements that don't move a lot,
if the target has a known course, it is as easy to hit as a 'stationary
emplacement (such things aren't really stationary anyway). nonetheless, it
would make sense to pack long-range one-shot weapons, so you can
uncloak, fire your entire warload in one turn, then cloak and run. you need
the
range in caase you're off the target. SMR/ER or MTM would be ideal.
however, i fear that such scenarios would be rather boring as tactical
games - only as part of a campaign might they be interesting.
tom
> In a message dated 7/13/99 8:20:41 PM EST, Lin@RxKinetix.com writes:
<< (gotta love the "stringbags" -- open cockpit biplanes in WWII?
> kinda like bringin' a knife to a gunfight? Yet surprsingly they
That's mostly because they were flying too slowly for the other aricraft or
anit-air weaponary to stay with them ;)
> [quoted text omitted]
They were still flying off CVE's in 1944 along the North Atlantic convoy
routes because they could actually operate in apalling weather conditions that
grounded everything else. A great war bird in all ways, even if she did fly
slow. (There was a floatplane version that was even SLOWER!)
> At 17:58 13/07/99 PDT, you wrote:
> Under the system I came up with, the vessels would operate from
> after an attack.
A simple imperfect modification is to allow the cloaked vessel to write orders
each turn, but with a delay: Assuming a ship starting cloaked: Turn 1: write
orders for T1 AND T2; execute T1 orders (on paper) Turn 2: write orders for
T3; execute T2 orders (on paper) Turn 3: write orders for T4; execute T3
orders (on paper) Turn 4: write orders for T5; execute T4 orders (on paper)
etc. etc.
This means that a cloaked ship can respond to other uncloaked vessels, but
more slowly (it's hard to be sure what the enemy are doing without giving
yourself away). On decloaking, use the mapped course to position the model
of the U-boat\BoP\etc. Obviously this is easier with cinematic rather
than vector movement.
Decloaking can be ordered as normal, but it might be an idea to allow "crash
decloaking" when a target of opportunity arises- e.g. roll a d6, on a 5
or 6 the ship decloaks before firing, on 1 to 4 she decloaks at the start of
the turn and isnt allowed to fire (i.e. the crash decloak has been mistimed).
Rob