Reverse Tax Day edition! (Your correspondents got their economic stimulus payouts today. If you’re due one and don’t need it, consider sending it, or some of it, to a local food bank.)
Books and Other Media
I read Under the Eagle, which I found at a library sale a while ago. It’s the first in a long line of historical military fiction set in Imperial Rome. I’m likely to try to find some others.
I will be reading the next two Jim Butcher books, which are due out this year. Finally.
I’m presently reading the My Hero Academia manga, because I enjoy the show and have a lot of time on my hands.
Journalists among the non-essential – Unfortunately, this is likely to disproportionately fall on local reporters who might actually contribute something to society, as opposed to the glorified celebrity bloggers in the White House press corps.
Air USA buys 46 Hornets – Old RAAF birds, except ‘old’ undersells them. They’re well-specced and have been well maintained. Between this and their other planes, by my reckoning this makes Air USA the 57th largest air force in the world.
The Drive with an article on modern torpedoes – With the exception that it glosses over firing transients, it seems like a pretty good look. On the topic of submarines and subsims, I give Cold Waters the thumbs up. It’s a little arcadey when you’re dodging torpedoes, but the tension on the hunt is exactly right.
Google ruined the internet – By, the argument goes, emphasizing popularity over accuracy. I think this is true, but the causality is reversed. People used to care more about being right or linking to correct things on the Internet. We here actually feel the recency bias pretty keenly. Many of our (by which I mean parvusimperator’s) most popular articles were written a few years ago, which is eternities in Internet time.
Guns
Plans for Deterrence Dispensed’s FGC-9 are now available – The FGC-9 is a 9mm carbine you can make with a 3D printer, a set of calipers, common power tools, and zero gun parts. It accepts Glock magazines, but there are plans for making your own Glock-compatible magazines. DIY ammunition is forthcoming.
Parvusimperator had a heartwarming story about a guy who paid $20,000 above asking price for a bottle of Pappy a restaurant was selling to help keep the lights on, but it won’t load now, so I have neither details nor a link. Update: I have a link.
We’re too lazy to set up a proper shared byline, but this is a collaborative work, and both our names are on it. – P. & F.
The Kasarda drill is stupid.
There, we said it. The Kasarda drill is a fixture of the sort of action matches featured on Ian and Karl’s Inrange channel down in Arizona. Briefly, it involves a stage where there is one (1) steel silhouette-type target at the end of a bay. The shooter has to cover a distance by repeatedly tossing a heavy kettlebell, and scoring a hit on the target from wherever the kettlebell lands. After the shooter has gotten the kettlebell across some predetermined line and scored a final hit, the drill is complete.
We hate this drill. We think it is profoundly stupid. Here’s why.
Karl loves to gripe about “practicality,” or the lack thereof in matches not designed in accordance with his preconceived notions. He doesn’t like raceguns. He doesn’t like compensators. Et cetera. And that’s fine. Open division isn’t for everyone. Fancy race guns aren’t for everyone. That’s why there are other divisions. Of course, he’s also griped about the 180 safety rule, lack of required use of cover, and other rules designed to make rules enforcement easily understandable by shooters and ROs.
And yet the Kasarda drill is also a massively impractical, completely artificial drill. It bears exactly zero resemblance to anything actually done by any law enforcement officer or soldier ever. Literally none, unless you want to completely abstract everything away and think of it as “physical thing plus shooting thing.” Let’s break that down.
First, the physical. This is not drag your buddy, or carry ammo, or lug a “support weapon”. It’s fling a heavy kettlebell. And they have to dictate how you do it, because if you do it wrong, you’ll screw up your shoulder or your back and be out of the match. And while the folks at Inrange preach about accessibility, there are plenty of folks who are going to look at a big ol’ 62 pound (or whatever weight) kettlebell and say “Nope!”, and I can’t seem to find the place where Inrange tells you how to accommodate those with bad backs. Anyway, matches near me have plenty of middle aged folks, and making them get into shape before they come to my match is going to result in a very empty match with not a lot of fees to cover my expenses. Likewise, being perceived as requiring people to get into shape before they come out and play at my match is also going to result in a very empty match.
If the point is “exhaustion and then shoot”, there are other ways to do it that are more accessible and less potentially injurious. Carry something heavy (cops and soldiers might do this). People can drag a heavy weight if they can’t actually carry it. Or, you could have people run a lot (cops and soldiers might do this too). Heck, the running challenge automatically adjusts to fitness levels if you do laps around a bay or something. You’d just have to make the par time work. And hey, it even reasonably simulates a real-world incident. Check out this video from Active Self Protection.
Second, the shooting. Seriously, just one plate? Really? No transitions? Not even a mandatory reload? This “drill” feels like someone is trying to inject a bit of shooting into Crossfit. If I want to crossfit, I’ll hit the gym. I’m on the shooting range. Can I at least have an interesting shooting challenge?
Between Easter and an evening-hours project I’ve been working on, I didn’t have time to compile the What We’re Reading post this week. I’ll roll our selections from this week into next week’s.
February 1923
The new-model German light cruiser Thetis is broadly equivalent to our recent light cruisers, though granted with added anti-air firepower and minelaying capability. (Our next European-service light cruiser will have those issues corrected.)
March 1923
This will let us build a better seaplane tender, one which doesn’t have to stop to launch a seaplane, as well as build cruisers (potentially even light cruisers) with the ability to conduct seaplane scouting.
Currently, our doctrinal preference is to use seaplanes for scouting over torpedo bombers or dive bombers. This will save us ten or fifteen planes for strikes, when the time comes for that, but float planes are slower and less reliable than wheel-equipped carrier aircraft. Something to consider in the future.
April 1923
Loire loses its place as the provider of fleet torpedo bombers.
Because we got dinged for not building enough destroyers, I elect to rebuild Requin (the last and best of our 12″ gun ships) instead of starting a new Ocean-class. This will bring her up to 25 knots, fast enough to hang with Ocean. Hopefully, when the rebuild’s done, we’ll have the budget in hand for a new Ocean follow-up.
May 1923
After a long, long wait, we’ve finally worked out how to do double gun mounts on a light cruiser. That might call for a new class—superfiring double turrets will give us a broadside advantage on known enemy light cruiser designs.
July 1923
Commandant Teste‘s replacement in the build order will be a light aircraft carrier. Why that, instead of a seaplane carrier? Well, this carries 24 aircraft to Teste‘s ten, mainly. Split evenly between fighters and torpedo bombers, it’ll be a better scout and be able to provide a CAP over the fleet.
No catapults, but it’s just large enough so that we won’t lose the ability to operate planes with heavy load from it. (That cutoff is, I believe, 10,000 tons.)
August 1923
On the plus side, at least for interesting gameplay notes, another naval treaty is signed, limiting us to 30,000 tons displacement and 15″ main guns for 8 years. On the minus side, it really tanks our budget.
For comparison, Ocean is a 30,800-ton ship with 14″ main guns.
November 1923
The new budget is a real kick in the teeth, doubled in intensity by our invention of quality-0 16″ guns so soon after the naval treaty. The building program will, alas, be somewhat reduced.
March 1924
Somewhat delayed by the treaty budget, the first Arromanches-class carrier hits the shipyards. In four months or so, we’ll be in position to try an Ocean-class follow-on, budget-wise.
July 1924
Suffren, our next in the Ocean series of battleships, goes into the design studios. She’s almost identical to the Ocean class, but drops a half-inch of belt armor and a few secondary guns in exchange for torpedo protection 3 and fitting in under the weight limit.
November 1924
Project ‘annoy Austria-Hungary into a war they can’t win’ proceeds without a great deal of success.
It does make us enough money to pay for Suffren and a destroyer, at least.
December 1924
Britain’s working on an interesting cruiser. High speed, light armor, light weight.
January 1925
The middle way in an African crisis puts us in a good position financially. Rather than decide what to spend it on myself, since we’re right at the end of an update, I’ll put it to a vote. Read on.
Plans and Intentions
Tensions are low-ish across the board, with Austria-Hungary and Germany taking the lead at about halfway up the to-war meter.
Currently, we’re running a surplus of 1,352 funds per month, with three ships under construction: a Glaive-class destroyer, our first Arromanches-class light aircraft carrier, and Suffren.
That surplus is enough to do one of three many things, in combination with what we have in the rainy-day fund:
Rebuild the Redoubtables, our 1913-era battleships, with modern fire control, anti-aircraft guns, and 25-knot speed, one at a time. That would give us a decent 24-knot battle line,
Build another two of the new Condillac overseas-service cruisers. That would save us a little bit on maintenance as we pull older ships out of service.
Build some destroyers. We have a good number already (third-most in the world, and many more than our standard competitors Germany, Italy, and Austria; we don’t have many corvettes, though).
Potentially in concert with building destroyers or a Condillac, update the submarine fleet. We’re quite a bit behind in submarine count.
Build another aircraft carrier.
Build a new fleet-service light cruiser, with a burly dual-purpose secondary armament for maximum future-proofing.
Improve our air bases on the Channel Coast to help in future wars with Germany.
Last week’s readership made three strong suggestions:
Stick with new battleships, rather than big refreshes of old ships. (I may still do one now and again, as budget allows, just to start bringing the fleet speed up to 24 or 25 knots.)
Build some airbases in northern France, given the proximity of that part of the country to two major potential foes.
Build another seaplane carrier or two. The most important thing aviation can do for us right now is to provide fleet scouting, and seaplane carriers are a way to do that without spending aircraft carrier money.
To those suggestions, I add my own item:
Start refreshing our old light cruisers with a new, cheap model for foreign service.
We’ll see how much we get done. I’ll start with two airbases, one at Cherbourg and one at Dunkerque.
February 1921
We have a shot at an alliance. I try Britain again, but they turn us down.
April 1921
A mild crisis (a cruiser of ours runs aground off of a neutral power’s shore while conducting wireless intercept operations) sees tensions up to about the midpoint with Germany, Austria, Italy, and Britain, but buys us some extra budget in exchange.
July 1921
Nieuport gets the nod for our next-generation flying boat. It’s quite a bit faster than our old one, and has a range in excess of 250 nautical miles—an excellent scout.
September 1921
The British aren’t messing around with their new dreadnought.
October 1921
The money’s on hand for a seaplane carrier now. This one is somewhat more capable than our previous two.
In particular, it has AA guns, and carries 10 seaplanes instead of 5. It should make a good fleet scout in the future.
February 1922
With the seaplane carrier well on its way, I can now turn my attention to a light cruiser.
I wanted to call the class Lavoisier, but forgot I still have some of those around. I settled for Condillac instead, and will call the first ship Lavoisier.
May 1922
The Germans are saber-rattling again; tensions continue to creep upwards with them.
June 1922
A peace conference in the midst of tensions with Germany produces no results, but does slightly lower tensions across the board.
July 1922
The Austrians catch a French spy. I elect to make him a national hero, but the Austrians barely respond to the provocation.
September 1922
The defense minister wants 15 new destroyers building. I don’t intend to have that many going at once, but I am willing to take his money and try a new design.
The Glaive class has six torpedo tubes, four turrets in a superfiring-fore-and-aft arrangement, mines, and a moderately heavy anti-aircraft armament.
October 1922
We’ve secured a new colony in Albania! The only problem is that it bumped tensions with Germany considerably above the halfway mark.
January 1923
All in all, a quiet two years, although war with Germany is looking increasingly likely.
Interlude: Fleet Exercise
I wanted to show some of the ups and downs of early carrier combat, and the fleet exercise is a natural way to handle that. Pay a bit of cash, get some fleet experience in return.
Money is a bit too tight for that, though, so I’m going to savescum it as an exercise in battle-writing. In-universe, we’ll say it’s junior staff officers messing around with chits and a mapboard.
1:20 p.m.
Amiral Charner, our lone CVL, cruises in company with two light cruisers, three destroyers, and a seaplane carrier. Altogether, they are Team Red. The enemy fleet, Team Blue, is Redoubtable, a mid-tier battleship, and an exact mirror of Team Red’s supporting force.
We’ve started at standard range, because this whole aircraft carrier thing is very new, and we’re not sure how it’s going to play out.
As a quick reminder, Amiral Charner‘s air group is eight fighters and fourteen torpedo bombers.
Given that Team Red knows Team Blue is in the area, Amiral Charner prepares a strike. She has room on deck to spot thirteen planes. I expect we’ll have the enemy in sight before crowding out our CAP becomes a problem.
1:33 p.m.
Our light cruisers, ten miles in Amiral Charner‘s van, spot the enemy. The carrier and her supporting seaplane carrier turn away, while the light cruisers prepare to run interference—and hopefully spot the enemy battleship.
The red specks are aircraft formations.
The wind is out of the east-northeast, problematic given the range and location of the enemy forces.
1:55 p.m.
The light cruisers spot an enemy ship sailing a) toward the battle and b) solo, which is probably the battleship.
2:30 p.m.
The light cruisers and scouts confirm that it is indeed the battleship.
A strike takes a little while to ready and spot, and in the meantime, reconnaissance aircraft and CAP planes are returning, clogging the deck.
3:45 p.m.
By the time that the deck is clear, and that your intrepid correspondent remembers that he has to check the boxes next to the aircraft rows to actually give them orders, not just highlight the rows, the opportunity is lost. The January sunset fades into a wintery night, and the scenario ends without combat.
We’ll try this again in the summer, provided we aren’t at war with someone by then.
Plans and Intentions
Research
We uncovered two major technological items: improved directors on the fire control front, and torpedo protection 3, which adds (still more) weight but protects better against torpedoes.
Our current research priorities are naval aviation, anti-submarine technology, and turrets and gun mountings. Should we leave it that way, or focus on other items (light forces, guns, amphibious operations, machinery and hull design, other things)?
Shipbuilding
Ocean is nearly complete—she’ll be ready in three months. Should we build a slightly improved version when she’s done, improving her fire control and torpedo protection?
Should we perhaps build a battleship with an eye toward survivability in the coming age of aircraft? That is, heavy deck armor, lots of room for anti-aircraft firepower, and battlecruiser speed? Should we hold off on more battleships altogether?
Soon, we’ll be able to convert ships to full-size carriers. The 24-knot Duquesnes seem like perfect candidates—their machinery is very old, so giving them reasonable speed should be easy, and they have the displacement to support an air wing of decent size.
Other ships on the ways include Commandant Teste, our large seaplane carrier, three light cruisers to take over some colonial duties, and three Glaive-class destroyers (with minelaying technology!). Should I build another seaplane carrier, or lean harder on the light forces?
In more general terms, at present, our destroyers are about 35 knots, our light cruisers and battlecruisers go 27 to 29 knots, and our battle line goes 22. Is it worth rebuilding the slower ships in the battle line (the Redoubtables, Requin) to get their speeds up to, say, 24 knots? Should I push for faster light forces?
Diplomacy
France is again a middle-tier naval power:
Germany has an edge on us if you count dreadnought ships in total. The US and the UK are both far ahead. Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Japan are clearly inferior.
Tensions are middling. Germany is rattling sabers again.
[Abbott (the health care equipment manufacturer) has a coronavirus test coming soon](https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/product-and-innovation/detect-covid-19-in-as-little-as-5-minutes.html0 – Also, the ‘lab’ it runs in is a toaster-sized box that looks like it was designed by an Apple alum. Abbott expects to have five million tests produced in April, which would more than double the current test-per-day capacity in the US if they can all be processed.
A guy on Twitter reads a biochemistry paper so I don’t have to figure it out for you – It proposes a mode of action for the coronavirus, by computational analysis: the virus makes proteins which kick iron out of hemoglobin, reducing oxygen delivered by the blood. Lung issues are a result of lack of O2 in the blood, not its cause. Chloroquine binds to the hemoglobin-busting proteins, hence its effectiveness. In the Discord, boomerang-pigeon provides some additional context.
KC-46 suffers from ‘excessive fuel leaks’ – Excessive is not defined in the article, beyond Boeing’s statement that maintainers are finding fuel between the primary and secondary fuel leakage barriers.
Space internet company OneWeb goes bankrupt – I saw it observed that someone’s going to get a sweet deal on a bunch of orbital hardware, and that railroad companies in the 1800s oftentimes grew in similar ways. First, you go bankrupt. Then, someone buys your assets at a deep discount, finishes the last bit of the work you couldn’t, and turns out to be massively profitable.
Grab Bag
The crude oil market is broken – Worldwide oil demand is down by 25%. Wyoming Asphalt Sour, was bid at -$0.19—they’ll pay you to take it. Also, apparently, there are only about 700 oil refineries worldwide1.
Unrelated, but I found out this last week that there are 700,000 active ham radio licenses in the US. I would have never guessed that community is some 20 times larger than the USPSA community. ↩
Our modern light cruiser Linois, patrolling the Mediterranean for Italian raiders, happens upon one of Italy’s ancient (1900-era) Nino Bixio light cruisers, and quickly sends it to the bottom.
March 1919
Not only does this choice give us prestige, it might keep Italy in the war long enough for our current shipyard efforts to come to fruition.
Research has now advanced to give us the full benefit of something I’ve been doing all along (leaving off the belt end and deck end armor for weight reasons).
April 1919
Loire has a clear winner as far as torpedo bombers go: 90-knot speed, range of 77 nautical miles with a torpedo and 141 when serving as a scout. As soon as it enters service, I’ll start setting up our airbases with slightly fewer flying boats and fighters, so we can start covering the Mediterranean better.
It’s time for a new fighter prototype, too; speed and range seemed like the most broadly popular priorities.
Italian submarines sink a pair of French destroyers; we’ll have to build a few more (now with depth charges and AA guns!) when our near-term projects (a light cruiser, the Amiral Charner CVL conversion) finish.
May 1919
In a strong gale in the central Red Sea, Tourville and a trio of old light cruisers, supporting the invasion of Eritrea, attack an Italian convoy with supplies for the defending troops. The only ships the Italians have here are armed merchant cruisers; though Tourville is no longer quite the ship she once was, she’s still more than capable of sending 13 merchants to the bottom in the space of about 20 minutes.
Our torpedo bomber enters service. I start pushing it out to our various airbases. It appears that we’ve developed dive bombers as well; once the current fighter procurement process winds down, I’ll start on one of those.
June 1919
Regrettably, the war ends before the shipyards can quite clear their backlogs.
To save a bit on new destroyers, I embark rebuilding my ancient ones. The Francisques and Fauconneaus were valuable parts of my trade protection strategy; if I’m going to keep them around, I might as well spruce them up a bit.
On the matter of new ship classes, I’m going to hold off until January 1920, when oil trade becomes widespread enough for me to build oil-fired ships despite not having any oil locally.
September 1919
Loire wins again on fighters. Time to get a dive bomber design under production.
Correction: nobody’s actually figured out dive bombers yet—the aircraft types dialog lets you filter by types you can’t build, presumably so you can see other countries’ attempts at same—so that’ll have to wait.
October 1919
The very brief period of French dreadnought superiority is quickly coming to an end, since the war ended the naval treaty and the British and Germans (and Americans, for that matter) are free to kick their battleship programs back into high gear.
For example, this German ship is tremendously scary.
Light on AA, though.
March 1920
Two major inventions this month: director-controlled firing for secondary batteries and light cruisers, and dual-purpose mounts for 3″ and 4″ guns. The next battleship is going to be brilliant.
Named after one of our predreadnoughts, the Ocean class has 8 14″ guns in two quad turrets forward (a French specialty!), better armor than her German opponents, and 26-knot speed. Her secondary guns are director-fired, dual-purpose mounts, and she mounts a number of light AA guns around her superstructure as well.
Why eight guns instead of twelve? It saves about 500 funds per month, and given that we’re very limited in our battleship construction for budgetary reasons, it makes sense to reserve a bit extra for light forces.
April 1920
The Flamberge-class, a new destroyer type, will be entering service soon, with three 4″ guns, six torpedo tubes, 35-knot speed, and extra depth charge stowage.
I decide it’s about time to scrap the old Trident-class predreadnoughts; now that there are new battleships in the offing, our next few targets for conversion will be Tourville and Dunkerque.
August 1920
The first Ocean enters production, and will arrive in 32 months. Given peacetime budget constraints, we’re likely to be on a one-ship-per-class diet for some time to come.
December 1920
All quiet this year. We host an international regatta, reducing tensions, and join an international squadron sent to contain violence from a revolution in Africa, bumping our budget up somewhat.
There are seven of our new Flamberge-class destroyers in the shipyards now, along with Ocean, and we just worked out how to do purpose-built aircraft carriers. I’m going to see what I can do for a CVL design.
January 1921
Our CVLs can carry at most 34 planes, which we can do, plus anti-air guns but sans armor, for 1,800 funds a month over 20 months. That’s more aircraft at a lower cost than our Gueydon conversion.
Status
All’s well. Our budget, at 20,158 per month, is about a battleship per year below its wartime peak, and we’re 218 funds per month in the black (with seven destroyers and one battleship under construction).
Our prestige is 48, a new peak for us. Tensions are low across the board.
The fleet is in good shape. We have eight ships classified as battleships and two as battlecruisers, although I would hedge that by saying that only five of those are first-line ships now (the two Redoubtables, Requin, and the two Rouen-class battlecruisers), and the Redoubtables will be obsolescent soon. Our dreadnought ships are, however, either new or recently rebuilt, so we should have them on hand for a good little while.
We have a pair of heavy cruisers of reasonable efficiency for the first time in a while, the 27-knot, 8″-armor, 9″-gun Montcalm class.
In light cruisers, we have nine obsolete ships, largely on foreign stations, but they’re small and still relatively cheap to maintain. We have ten new-model light cruisers, with more centerline turrets and 27- or 28-knot speed. They do, however, predate anti-air armament, so we’ll have to fix that eventually.
We have one aircraft carrier at present, the converted Amiral Charner, and two seaplane carriers, Seine-et-Marne and Savigny-et-Temple. In terms of air power generally, we’re on top of the world leaderboard, with 272 fixed-wing aircaft and 24 zeppelins. We have a good network of air bases across the Mediterranean, including on Corsica and Sardinia to threaten Italy, and in Greece and Libya to contain Austria-Hungary.
Finally, we have 41 destroyers in service and 7 more coming soon. Somewhat more than half of them are modern, with speeds in excess of 33 knots, lots of torpedo tubes, and three or more guns. The remainder are recently-rebuilt old ships, which will play the corvette role in future wars.
Plans and Intentions
There are a few things we might want to consider doing as we roll into the 1920s.
Expand air bases in northern France, to support the fleet in the event of a war against Britain or Germany. This plan is not likely to pay off immediately.
Build a new class of gunboat-style light cruisers (or even large corvettes) to replace our obsolete foreign service cruisers. We can really pack the armament in on the centerline now, and give them dual-purpose guns so they aren’t totally helpless. Our war strategy to date has involved decisive battles in home waters, so whatever we send overseas is largely for the purpose of keeping merchants happy that we have something overseas.
Rebuild our older battleships to use oil fuel, which will let us eke out a few more knots, throw in some anti-air firepower, and perhaps upgrade to better guns in some cases. Each rebuild will cost a little less than a new battleship month over month, and finish in about one-third the time. The downside is that we’ll end up with a fleet with smaller guns. The upside is that it’ll be more advanced in other ways.
Continue to build new battleships. At present, our budget allows us to build one at a time, alongside some other smaller ships. It would be surprising if we get to the point where we could build two at a time without getting very close to another war.
Build a CVL or two. They take about 20 months to build, cost about 1,800 funds per month (half of what a battleship does), and carry 34 planes, as mentioned above. On the downside, they’re vulnerable to air attack themselves, and the Mediterranean is full of unsinkable aircraft carriers (i.e., islands).
So, what should we make our priority for the next few years? Something from the list above? Something else entirely?
Up to full isolation here at the world headquarters.
Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague
Original research! – I was interested how quickly mitigating measures work, so I made a timeline showing deaths, daily percentage increase in deaths, and mitigation measures across five European countries, the US, South Korea, and China. It also has a chart of deaths vs. tests in the US, to compare growth between the two numbers.
Masks work – Tomorrow or over the weekend, I’m going to turn some things (dish towels, cotton t-shirts) into homemade masks and report on the process.
Masks work: Czechia edition – A massive popular effort in the Czech Republic yielded near-100% mask-wearing with almost no central direction, and seems to have helped dramatically in arresting the spread of the coronavirus.
A social distancing scoreboard for the US, down to the county level – To my surprise, Pennsylvania’s actually doing pretty well, along with much of the US that’s actually imposed lockdowns. Also of note: who are these people, and where do they get their location data? (Tracking libraries for phone apps, almost certainly.)
Marines to ditch tanks – Parvusimperator is not a fan. Discord regular Kilo Sierra sees the merit. Stop by the Discord and spit in the face of death by talking about tanks instead of some dumb virus.
Chloroquine is often delivered in tablet form as chloroquine phosphate (which is also sold as a fish tank algaecide). Hydroxychloroquine has fewer side effects and is less toxic, so it can be given in larger doses. ↩
With social distancing in full swing and last week’s break, I had plenty of time for a two-year update, and it’s an eventful one.
January 1917
Four ships go into the yards for a rebuild: Tourville and Dunkerque, the two remaining Duquesnes, along with Redoubtable and Marengo, our second-generation dreadnought battleships. Per a reader note, we have the time and budget. The Duquesnes, for whatever reason, will be in for a year—perhaps being overhauled because of their age?
February 1917
Or do we?
I’ll issue the ultimatum to Italy; they’re nearby, and we can totally take them.
Tensions are high, but not to the breaking point yet. I order the rebuilding of our battleships accelerated.
March 1917
French naval engineers have managed to come up with a quality 9″ gun, which means it’s time for a heavy cruiser.
Thoroughly modern-looking! We’ll have to get a few into production.
July 1917
No change on the tension situation, but with design studies now complete on the Montcalm class, the first one enters production, with the next to start in August.
August 1917
Just in time for a new ship class to enter service and most of our battleships to finish a rebuild cycle, we develop anti-aircraft guns.
October 1917
The Italians couldn’t stand our repeated provocations. War begins.
The first battle of the war: a raid on enemy coastal installations. It’s just after midday. One notable new thing is the presence of aviation elements: floatplanes from our airbase on Corsica, zeppelins from the base at Tunis (which could stand to have an airfield, I think).
Our forces are the fast battleships (ex-battlecruisers) Lyon and Marseilles, each armed with 6 15″ guns and capable of 24 knots, escorted by five destroyers.
Happening upon two old armored cruisers, the Lyons, unblooded in the last war, prove their worth quickly. Seven hits on one of the Italian cruisers and eight on the other prove sufficient to sink the two old ships.
Either French gunnery or French technology has improved sufficiently to score hits dealing critical damage to the enemy at something like 20,000 yards.
The enemy fleet was out in force, however, and when the fog of war lifts at the end of the battle, we find them not too far behind us.
November 1917
The Italians decline a fleet battle—probably the right move, in view of our overwhelming superiority.
December 1917
And again, they decline a cruiser battle.
January 1918
The French fleet sorties in response to an Italian coastal raid. It’s a beautiful morning, and the enemy is in sight.
The Battle of Nice
On the field today are eight French battleships (four of which were originally battlecruisers, reclassified after their last rebuild), one battlecruiser in the scouting force, a bevy of light cruisers and destroyers, and a number of aircraft. The weather is partly cloudy with a gentle breeze out of the southwest.
10:08 a.m.
The situation is already favorable: the Italian fleet is divided, with the battlecruisers to the east of our fleet and the battleships to the south. As I recall, the Italian battleship line is slower than our own, so that’s where my focus will be at first.
… the aftermath (or is it?)
In the final reckoning, it goes down as a boring battle. The Italians are faster than we are all around. Their battle line escapes. We sink an old pre-dreadnought, exchange a lot of shells to no great effect, and turn away as the Italian fleet does the same, both battered, none reduced.
Except that’s not what happens. Overnight, on the 12-knot journey back home, we come across one of the Italian Francisco Ferruccios, which blows up in a flash fire.
Then, shooting between our scouting force and our main force comes the entire Italian battlecruiser squadron.
At 4,000 yards. At night. Into our swarm of 20-some destroyers.
The carnage is incredible. At the end of the day, all four Italian battlecruisers lie on the bottom of the Mediterranean, against zero French warships lost. Merest happenstance made it happen—the Italians, pushed to the southwest, made a high-speed run toward the coast to attempt to evade us in the night, and chanced to run right into us, at the range where our superior number of destroyers gave them no chance to escape.
February 1918
Italy makes a historical blunder.
The month’s battle is a coastal raid; the lone French battlecruiser Rouen takes a little jaunt in toward Italy, supported by a division of three battleships, blows up a bombardment target, and returns to Nice. Another thousand victory points, nice and easy-like.
Italy being close to France, we’re actually within invasion range. We’ll target Sardinia, which would be a wonderful feather in our cap and a second unsinkable aircraft carrier in close proximity to the Italian coast.
March 1918
Evidently, the invasion planning process is faster than I had hitherto realized. It’s the early afternoon of March 29th, and we’re approaching the western coast of Sardinia with an invasion force in tow.
The Invasion of Sardinia (1:37 p.m., March 29)
I’m going to have to mark this one up a bit.
Update: I forgot to mark it up before uploading it. I’ll just have to be better at describing things.
Selected: the scouting force. The battlecruiser Rouen is joined by a pair of modern light cruisers and five destroyers.
West-southwest of the scouting force: the main fleet. Our three most modern battleships (Requin, sole member of her class, plus Marseilles and Marengo), along with supporting light cruisers and destroyers.
South of the scouting force: the support force. Three older ships (Devastation, Tourville, and Dunkerque) serve as distant escort to six transports.
Southwest of the scouting force: the invasion force. Six transports, of which four have to reach the Sardinian coast for this mission to count as a success.
On the Sardinian coast: our objective marker, along with submarines assigned in support of the fleet.
New things to worry about: aerial scouting! Ordinarily, the defaults are good enough, but in this case, with the enemy’s likely approach routes well-defined, I’ll tweak things a bit to see that we catch them.
2:00 p.m.
The two forces under my direct command (the main force and the scouting force) split off to the north and east of the northeastward line of advance the transports will have. They’ll form a sort of search line, keeping the sea between them in visual range while positioning themselves to make a quick dash to the flanks if need be.
2:47 p.m.
Aerial reconnaissance being, in 1918, rather a slow affair, our ships spot the enemy first.
3:00 p.m.
A second light cruiser appears. A search line, perhaps?
At this stage, the goal is to find and engage the enemy before dusk, after which he’ll have a much easier time of getting in among my transports. Rouen leaps forward, turbines whirring up to speed as she accelerates to her maximum 27 knots.
3:22 p.m.
What passes for the Italian battle line comes into view.
3:39 p.m.
Rouen opens fire, aiming to pass to the east of the enemy battleships, where she can keep tabs on them into the evening.
The main force closes toward gun range.
3:42 p.m.
Requin scores with her first volley.
These Italian dreadnoughts are of the Andrea Doria class, rough contemporaries with our Duquesnes. They’re armed with ten 13″ guns, and can fire a maximum of eight of them broadside. Our Requin, though it only has 12″ guns, mounts twelve, and can fire all twelve at a broadside target.
Armor, however, is where we really look smart. Requin has a 14″ belt. The Andrea Dorias have 9.5″. Even Rouen, our notional battlecruiser, is more heavily armored.
3:52 p.m.
The fleet is nearly perfectly placed for this battle, running on either side of the Italian ships at long range. Although Marengo can only make 22 knots, the rest of our fleet can keep up with or surpass the Italian dreadnoughts in speed.
4:52 p.m.
The Italian light cruisers, off to the northwest, try an attack on the battle line. We’ll see if they manage to get through the screen.
The Andrea Dorias are both down to around 10 knots now.
5:46 p.m.
One of the Andrea Dorias goes up in a flash fire. At 5:53, the other follows in the same manner.
19:22 p.m. (and overnight)
Night sees the remains of the Italian fleet scatter. We manage to find the transports, taking up station on either side to cover them through the night.
Aftermath
The invasion is in progress. Soon, hopefully, Sardinia will fall.
April 1918
The invasion doesn’t take long to bear fruit. Sardinia is ours.
May 1918
Stubbornly refusing to surrender, the Italians lose a pair of light cruisers to Rouen, who proceeds otherwise unopposed on a coastal raid.
June 1918
Well now, what’s all this about?
And, in news concerning the unluckiest name in the French Navy…
This is the third Lavoisier lost in combat. Who wants to skipper the next one?
July 1918
Now that CVLs are on the table, our last Gueydon class (Amiral Charner) gets a rebuild as a light aircraft carrier. Replacement machinery increases her speed to 26 knots, and she has room for an air wing of 22. She’ll be ready in a year.
Tensions are on the rise with Germany, but the sympathy of the world is with us.
August 1918
A quiet month; the Italians don’t even bother stopping a raid on their coast by a pair of light cruisers.
September 1918
The Italians move to raid the French coast, at which time the French fleet comes out to play.
In particular, Rouen comes out to play; the battlecruiser is as fast as the Italian light forces, and easily sends them to the bottom with accurate fire from her 12″ guns.
October 1918
Rouen and escorts attack an Italian convoy, which is defended by a single destroyer. Thirteen merchants sink.
November 1918
Two light cruisers raid the boot of Italy, coming within about twenty miles of Taranto, sinking two corvettes and returning to Greece (also a French possession, if you’d forgotten).
There are rumors of falling morale in the Italian fleet.
We begin construction of air bases in Benghazi, Libya and Patra, Greece, which will provide coverage of the west coast of Italy.
December 1918
I put in a request to France’s aircraft manufacturers for a torpedo bomber, something to give the air fleet some teeth. After that, we’ll update the fighters. See the end of this post for some questions on aircraft design priorities.
The month’s battle is a raid on the Italian coast. Rouen takes a torpedo, but since she’s a modern warship with good torpedo protection, she’s fine. We sink the destroyer that launched it, too.
Spies deliver blueprints of one of the Italian heavy cruisers under construction: slightly superior to our own in armament, but one knot slower.
January 1919
In this last month of the update, I start planning an invasion of Eritrea, which is, I believe, the last Italian territory small enough to invade. The battle is a convoy attack, in which we sink almost the whole convoy again.
Two-Year Report: Status
Money is a bit tight, with the invasion of Eritrea costing about as much as a low-end heavy cruiser would, but I’m not especially concerned. The fleet is in tip-top shape. Under construction is Rouen‘s sister ship, a trio of Montcalm-class heavy cruisers, one more Troude-class light cruiser, Amiral Charner‘s reconstruction, and the last of a class of corvettes designed to supplement the remaining Francisques.
Our prestige is at an all-time high.
Two-Year Report: Diplomacy
Tensions with Germany are high, but when the war with Italy ends (provided Germany doesn’t jump in), they’ll reset.
Plans and Intentions
There are a few things on my list:
Continue to try to find an ally. I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do on that front beyond just being nice to people.
Build out our aircraft carrier capabilities.
Build a new, 14″ dreadnought battleship, possibly retiring the old Duquesnes or converting them to aircraft carriers, as time and budget allows.
Build a new class of destroyer, mounting the recently-invented depth charge.
Begin refitting older ships with anti-aircraft guns.
How should those tasks be prioritized? Should any of them be dropped? Should others be added?
I mentioned something about aircraft priorities earlier. When soliciting aircraft designs, we can pick among a number of priorities: speed, maneuverability, range, toughness, firepower, and reliability. We can further pick two to focus on. Which two should we focus on?
Is the cure worse than the disease, asks Victor Davis Hanson – The Imperial College report which made Britain change its tune predicted that uncontrolled spread would yield 2.2 million deaths in the US. Obviously, uncontrolled spread was never going to happen, but I lean toward thinking that successful aggressive attempts to arrest the spread of the virus are going to make it look like aggressive attempts were not required.
Time-shifting coronavirus diagnoses – Even after mitigating measures go into place, the official count of cases will go up for a while, as people infected before the lockdown started become symptomatic, get tested, and find their way into the official counts. You can see the same thing with Italy on the avatorl.org dashboard, which implemented lockdown measures on 3/9 and only started seeing results on 3/14.
WBSDP: Other Useful Information
Inside China’s coronavirus fight – Item of note from this story: the Chinese government pulled in a bunch of public servants from other fields altogether and roped them into coronavirus service. You don’t need epidemiological training to do contact tracing, or much medical training to gown up and take people’s temperatures.
On the impact of Starlink satellites on astronomical observation – “At low elevations near twilight at intermediate latitudes (45-55 deg, e.g. much of Europe) hundreds of satellites may be visible at once to naked-eye observers at dark sites.” Honestly, I think that would be pretty cool.
Parvusimperator is on vacation this week, both from our day job and from the Soapbox, so with the exception of one or two items from the end of last week, this one’s all me.
Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague
Your correspondent is under the weather, but it’s not the coronavirus1 – That said, if you have to pick a time to catch it, ‘first case in your region’ is second only to ‘the last person to catch it’.
Universities moving to online courses – The undergraduate alma mater of the Soapbox contributors and the alma maters2 of several Soapbox associates
Coronavirus dashboard of the week – This one shows US infections by county. Note that the counts on the map do not appear to be entirely accurate, but at the very least, they give you an idea of density on a sub-state level.
China can – Another new amphibious assault ship is launching soon. On that note, the Johns Hopkins coronavirus dashboard now calls Taiwan ‘Taipei and environs’.
A SpaceX launch photo you’ve never seen before – Long-exposure plume interactions between the first and second stage of the final CRS mission, showing the second stage’s engine igniting and the first stage starting its boostback burn.
