In Defense of Galleons sinking Submarines

[PhoenixPhlame73]

Better and cheaper, yes, but i think the direction we should be looking in is faster....

a unit is in a city. The city is building something else. There are no people availible to build a new unit. So an old unit arms itself.

Make any sense?

[Denday]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Much less than 1/100 I think. However, there is a significant chance of a mistake on board the sub leading to catastrophic failure; anything from running aground to a torpedo exploding on board.

Good thinking but then again that doesn't happen in battles.
that just happens when there moving along
and if a frigate or galleon sunk a sub it would be a laugh even if it would never happen.

in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Denday


Good thinking but then again that doesn't happen in battles.
that just happens when there moving along
and if a frigate or galleon sunk a sub it would be a laugh even if it would never happen.

in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

Chances of an accident or friendly fire are much higher when in combat. Stress, fear and live ammo are a few of many such factors. For instance, the Americans accidentally bombed the Canadians in Afghanistan. You can blame it on anything you like, but if there was no enemy forces and no war, the chances of such an accident would be drastically reduced.

For instance, the U.S. lost a B1b bomber in the Afghan conflict.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by Denday
in your quote above the sub sunk the sub not the galleon or frigate.

The point is that the experienced sub captain writing the book had no problem imagining that the junk (galleon or caravel equivalent - probably closer to a caravel) was the sub killer. It turns out that the junk was bait for the real killer, and that really scared the monkey smooks out of him. He was proud of himself for deducing that they had a junk out there doing ASW work and fired off a fish at it... and almost got himself killed when the real threat (an I boat) revealed itself by firing a fish at him.

Today's "Great Ships" was about the PT boat. Apparently they were doing ASW work at the end of the war. The two rear torpedo racks were replaced with 4 depth charges.

As an example of how ships evolve roles through incremental improvements without undergoing an Upgrade, the (Pacific fleet Elco) PT boat began the war with 4 Mk8 torpedoes, a 20mm autocannon, and two Browning .50s. It ended the war with 2 Mk15 fish (the variety used by torpedo bombers), 4 depth charges, a twin-40mm, two 20mm, a 37mm and the two .50s (with only 9 people aboard, I guess you were responsible for your own reloading - 6 on guns, 1 at helm, 1 on the engines, and 1 spare (probably feeding the twin-40)). At the beginning of the war, you could state with authority that there was no way a PT could kill a sub and that it was vulnerable to air attack. By the end of the war, they were killing subs (when they could be found) and planes (when they were dumb enough to try to attack) with regularity.

That said, I have no trouble imagining that somebody might plop a marine diesel (or two) into a "caravel" (perhaps a 12m racing yacht) slapping the sonar suite and armament of a Seahawk (dipping sonar, a metric s**tload of sonobuoys, and two or three Mk46 or Mk50 torpedoes) into it thus creating an ASW patrol boat.

It can stay on station a lot longer than the 90 minutes a Seahawk is limited to and it can call in support. At the very least, it warns of the presence of the sub for other to kill (after all, it's just a caravel... probably some rich, dumb SOB out for a weekend fishing trip in the middle of a war).