Mister Hoover's Navy

[Tobius]

As for your tank's 50 mm, is it similar to ballistic performance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_cm_KwK_38 or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_cm_KwK_39 without the over-engineered gun breech and is the US Army consider the belief of the tank destroyer doctrine of the late 30s to early 40s as a viable strategy against enemy tanks and not the proper doctrine of the multi-role tank tactics of the post WW2 years?

As I actually carried it forward from the time of Mr. McKinley's Navy, the gun which is the basis used has the following characteristics:

Designed in 1894
Produced M1894 5 cm/40 - 1895
..............M1894A 5 cm/50 - 1913
Specifications
Weight: 240 kilograms (530 lb)
Length: 2 meters (6 ft 7 in)
Barrel length: 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in) for the 40 caliber
Shell: Fixed QF
Shell weight 1.75 kg (3.9 lb) which gives it, its nickname "the 4 pounder"
Caliber/(bore diameter): 5 cm (~2.0 in)
Breech: Wedge block type
Elevation: on naval carriage -5° to +20°. in army use, varies by
Traverse: 360° on pedestal mount
Rate of fire: 10 rpm
Muzzle velocity: 656 m/s (2,150 ft/s)
Maximum firing range: 6.2 km (3.9 mi) at +20° for 40 caliber model

Now it is based on a Driggs Seabury naval gun that started its life out as an anti-torpedo boat gun. It was never intended to be used in the anti-armor role, either afloat or ashore. It has a high explosive shell as a standard base issue shell. That is usually the shell that a breech loading gun of this era is designed around. That practice (with rare exceptions like the Rheinmetal 12 cm tank gun one finds on most western tanks these days) remains standard practice to the present. One designs the base shell, then one designs the gun/howitzer around it. It, the 5 cm/40/50 will acquire a tank-busting shell as the US gains more experience with this kind of vehicle, but even then a tank is properly expected to use high explosive shells most of the time. It should be noted that this did not come out of thin air, that this use is so, for the way tanks are used in 1925-31 (Paraguay War) and by Poland and Russia against each other, is known to the American army. The main ammunition needed, the Americans see, is high explosive shell to deal with infantry and machine guns. This, despite J.F.C. Fuller and Liddell Hart is not going to change much through and up to the mid 1950s. Tanks spend most of their time fighting infantry and artillery.

For HE 50 mm ammo, they should have an elongate shell for higher explosive yield insert into regular shell cartridges and training of firing them when supporting infantry or develop HEAT and/or HESH shells. Or rely on the self-propelled AFVs to do infantry support.

How is that supposed to happen again? The American army (1928-1931) thanks to Patrick Hurley has one (1) experimental motorized regiment. It is not going to have a full division, nor is it going to do things, British. The American army hates things British. The Americans are influenced by France. The "fact" that the US Army has a lot of armored cars in the motorized regiment is more a function of the "police function" the army has than due to any battlefield doctrine. Congress funds those cars because they recognize that the "red menace" and racial tensions which produces vigilantism needs a quick reaction force to stamp out the riots. The army simply uses the armored cars in the RTL (and in the AU) to outfit some cavalry troops. This shows up in the experimental motorized regiment.

For next generation US tanks, they must accept a high-velocity 75 mm similar to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5_cm_KwK_40 or a 76 mm variant similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/76_mm_gun_M1 because the Germans use their high-velocity 75mm when they encounter the T-34s and the KV-1s and that should apply to the US Army if they encounter more heavily armoured future conflicted European tanks in 1940s and beyond. The M4 Sherman of the RTL was an adequate tank for late 1930s but they nerf the 75 mm gun for infantry support and could attack only tanks like the Panzer MK. 3 and MK. 4 equivalents.

It is too early to think about PZKW II's III's and IVs. The AU, objectively, has to make sense. The Americans, RTL or AU, are more concerned about Vickers 6 tonnes they may face in Mexico, or Japanese Type 87s and Type 89s (armed with a decent 4 pounder 47 mm/40 gun) they might fight in the Pacific in 1931. In the AU the Americans develop from the T-3 (1927) a tank of their own to match the contemporary threats they expect to meet.

As for machine guns, the Browning Model 1917 will be made because the US military didn't like the Vicker Maxim variant and used them as substitute to supplant the existing US Maxim model stockpile and return them or scrapped them when WW1 ended.

The American army RTL spend a boatload of money before WW II they do not have to replace the Browning .30 because they do not like it.^1 The Maxim as well as the Browning are used in WW II. Just depends on what is in the National Guard armory and who is issued what, where and when. WW II is, in the RTL, a come as you are war. The Americans are certainly using Lewis guns and even Hotchkiss guns in the Philippines. Later they standardize on Brownings, RTL, because that Is all they have and can make in their government arsenals. Post WW II, they try again to develop a new machine gun. Why? They, still, do not like the heavy cumbersome Browning medium machine gun that they use in Korea. The weapon is hard to move on a mobile battlefield; which is what the American army now expects. It gets hot (even the water cooled versions) and suffers cookoff. It is despised on Guadalcanal when it replaces the Johnson LMG (Marines) and it is disliked in Korea.

As for the .50 Browning HMG, it maybe created or the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotchkiss ... achine_gun wins the design contest and for LMGs or the real GPMGs, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotchkiss ... achine_gun with a proper metallic strip ammo belt feed system or an AU BAR design.

??? The Browning .50 cal is effective for what it is originally supposed to do. It is scaled up from the .30 machine gun as the medium AAA machine gun and as a truck/tank killer that General Pershing requests. Later Browning and his successors after he dies evolves it (out of necessity) as an aircraft borne weapon; but as such an aircraft weapon, it is not the RTL history purpose for which Browning weapon develops it.

The BAR needs a lot of work and it will not end up as expected, either. (See below about the Belgian MAG.) The Colt made BAR stovepipes. It, (European version), is heavily modified by FN to produce the MAG; a rather good belt fed machine gun (1950). The Hotchkiss, is in the here and now, that uses Obrice's gas operated cyclic. it makes for a good but awkward base of fire fixed position machine gun, excellent for trench warfare. The RTL advantage it has over the American Browning medium machine gun in .30'; a recoil operated machine gun of similar purpose, is that Benet (USN) and Mercie (French engineer and co-gun maker) figure out the quick change barrel method in 1902 RTL. In this AU, that solution happens in Connecticut and not at all at St. Etienne. The RTL 1897 Hotchkiss air cooled weapon is also the RTL granddad of the Nambu Type 3, Type 1, and the Type 03 machine guns. None of these Japanese machine guns have the quick change barrel, because Colonel Nambu can not figure it out. Won't matter anyway, because in this AU, the Japanese, like the French do not obtain the Hotchkiss. They are stuck with Maxims. (Good luck with that.) The US Hotchkiss in the AU is based on the post WW I French Hotchkiss export model (1924) which will be used RTL in the Paraguay War. All up, it weighs a hefty 40 kg weapon.

As for WW II, the US should have tooled up for the T23E1^2 that it developes at great expense. Ruger knows what he is doing. The best RTL competitor, the Johnson LMG has serious problems; mainly it being jam prone in deserts and not very ergonomically friendly with that awkward magazine arrangement. The US rejects the T-23 because it has to be milled from block steel. The Americans want a stamped metal machine gun like the Browning. It is "cheaper" to make a gun that way. Sure that stamped sheet metal process makes industrial sense if you have two equally effective machine guns, one milled and one stamped. However, this is not the RTL case, here. (Colt has quality control issues.) How many G.I.s die, clearing feed jams in a Browning 30 cal (John Basilone being one) or die while they try to carry that dead paper weight across ground on their shoulder, because it can not be assault fired at the walk/run like a Bren or a modern SAW?

The T23E1 can be used that way, like a SAW.

^1 The history about John Browning's genius is mostly true. But like most "popular' histories, the details matter. His guns work well for what they are meant to do. If one understands that the M1919 is intended to solve WW I problems (trench warfare) one realizes that the machine gun, while a good trench weapon, is not the right solution for the kind of "colonial" wars the Americans expect to fight. The Americans are not stupid. They see what is going on in Europe. They see what their own gun designers do. Thompson's "trench broom" is a step in the correct direction. But the problem is controlled automatic fire from a man carried weapon that one uses on the run. The BAR is the first American attempt at a solution. The Thompson is the second.

What is the problem? Wrong bullet. The candidate bullets in use: 7.5 mm (French) 7.92 (German) and (7.7) (British) or the US and Russian Remington (7.62) are all wrong. The only solution in sight is either the 6.5 mm Schoenauer or the 6.5 mm Mauser. Pedersen, a prima donna, actually develops a special bullet for his rifle. (7x51mm). That seems a reasonable solution. Macarthur (see him above) kills the rifle (correct decision) but also decides to stay with the 30.06 (7.62 mm, the wrong decision.). Nothing in the AU can fix that outcome unless the US adopts the 7 mm (Spanish Mauser) and sticks with that "right" decision.

^2 During WW II, the American army learned a lot about what happens when one tries to take a precision piece of machinery based on the MSL system (metric) and tries to reverse engineer it to FSG (Imperial English system of measurement) tech. It does not work. The British simply adopt (French) metric tools to make BESA (Czech) machine guns according to BRNO drawings and use the German 7.92 bullet. Smart? It depends on what one accepts as an acceptable logistics nightmare. The American army hires GM (should have hired FORD Canada) to make an American clone of the stamped metal process German designed and used MG-42. Should be simple, but headspace errors (millimeters to 1/1000ths of an inch) and the wrong bullet (30.06 is powerful, too powerful for the German weapon as 7.92mm designed since the bullet blows the weapon apart; there are other errors built in; such as the roller bearing arm indexer geometry.), anyway, the point is that measure errors matter. The US should have gritted its teeth and used its superior but expensive milling technology and built the Ruger.

[Tobius]

Back to the navy.

[acelanceloet]

Is it weird that I wonder how a conversion of an earlier ship can be the first purpose designed carrier? what would the earlier ships be? designed as toasters and suddenly they were aircraft carriers?

EDIT: also, did the Derfflinger not have an extremely narrow stern, which would require extreme sponsons for the flight deck to be fitted there?

[Tobius]

Is it weird that I wonder how a conversion of an earlier ship can be the first purpose designed carrier? what would the earlier ships be? designed as toasters and suddenly they were aircraft carriers?

Not that I want one to go back and read the earlier fluff that explains what I drew... but if this AU US Navy is going to use foreign ships turned over to it as war reparations to make experimental aircraft carriers then some things have to be taken into account.

First, experimental American warships are expected to be combat capable. That includes oddball one-offs such as the USS Wolverine which could mount some kind of a deck strike if the Great Lakes Naval Air Station needs it. (Such as ASW training missions).

The sample ships to be converted have to be at least 200 meters long and make at least 21 knots. People like Glenn Curtis and Orville Wright tell this to the US Navy. The USS Jupiter (collier), RTL, is too short and too slow. Next, how do you explain the Lexington and the Saratoga in the RTL? USS Langley was the "toaster" and proved what Orville said was right. Next, look at the sample Derfflinger hull. It is a "fine hull. Put a flight deck on it? Where do the lifts go? One Mississippi, two Mississippi, one can see that any lifts have to be deckedge lifts to not foul the hangers (Two, fore and aft, and even then the hull has to be bulged for stability, keel ballast and GCM roll period. The thing is a lot more primitive than the RTL Lexingtons.

That is why it is drawn the way it is.

[acelanceloet]

What I mean, purpose designed kind of means the ship is designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Alternatively, you could say it means the conversion was designed to be an aircraft carrier.

In other words, either you say this ship was designed as an aircraft carrier, or the earlier conversions were not designed to be aircraft carriers but suddenly ended up that way. Neither of those things happened here, right?

[Tobius]

What I mean, purpose designed kind of means the ship is designed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Alternatively, you could say it means the conversion was designed to be an aircraft carrier.

In other words, either you say this ship was designed as an aircraft carrier, or the earlier conversions were not designed to be aircraft carriers but suddenly ended up that way. Neither of those things happened here, right?

Hmm. The SMS Derrflinger is a battlecruiser. The HMS Furious starts as a battlecruiser. Why would the USN not first experiment on a useful "enemy" ship that they have acquired that they can not use as a gunship in their own fleet?

The RTL Jupiter is converted as a toaster just to train the air groups and learn deck handling procedures. The first genuine RTL American aircraft carriers are the Lexingtons. Converted on the stocks; these ships are the American versions of the British Glorious and Furious and are highly experimental.^1 Unlike the British ships, the American designers knew that they needed a full length flight deck to make wheeled deck landing capable aircraft operations work.

Question; where does one read that the Derfflinger is anything but a conversion?

^1 The British should have converted the HMS Hood into a carrier.

[acelanceloet]

in your image, you list that this ship is the first 'purpose designed plane carrier'
Which can be explained in 2 ways: the 2 ways I described in my previous post.

[Tobius]

in your image, you list that this ship is the first 'purpose designed plane carrier'
Which can be explained in 2 ways: the 2 ways I described in my previous post.

Purpose designed in conversion. There are no two ways to interpret the note. SMS Derfflinger arrives at the Philadelphia yards as a battlecruiser, goes into drydock #2 for a year and nine months and comes out as an aircraft carrier. It gets Lexingtoned.

[acelanceloet]

wasn't Jupiter/Langley designed and converted before these ships? so they should not be the first?

[Tobius]

wasn't Jupiter/Langley designed and converted before these ships? so they should not be the first?

FLUFF: HOW DOES THE USN ACQUIRE THE USS DELAWARE AND HER SISTERS?

Blackmail.

Here is the RTL (and AU) situation when Wilson, (regarded by some modern US military historians as completely incompetent in matters military, and some political historians as being naïve; as if the U-boat war and the sabotage campaign was not enough, it takes a British ruse and the Zimmerman Telegram to move that brick.), finally asks Congress for a declaration of war. It is April 2, 1917. It will be a year before any army goes "over there" but in the meantime, his equally "incompetent" secretary of the navy, Josephus Daniels^2, goofs and taps William Sims, currently beached as president of the US Naval War College as the US representative to Great Britain, as head of the naval mission sent over to London. OOPS.

Why does Daniels "goof"^2? He is "allegedly" unaware that Sims for much of his career ashore functions aa a political spy for the Office of Naval Intelligence. Sims starts off that way during the Spanish American War as an attaché at Paris and Saint Petersburg. He is the actual guy who feeds Secretary of Navy Long all those intelligence reports on the Spanish that bypasses the General Board, Mahan, and McKinley. Daniels expects the same thing again.

The USN command wants to deadhead Sims at the NWC, so Daniels rescues him. This is a doubly fortuitous "mistake". Sims is a personal friend of the cashiered Jackie Fisher^1. What makes that important, is that Fisher is the wedge that Sims can use to enter the RN establishment known as "The Club" and thus gain first hand contact with such "gentlemen"^2 as Geddes and Wemyss.

It does not take long for a political operator like Sims to figure out or find out^3 what is rotten inside the British admiralty. So what does he discover?

• a. The Jutland Controversy. Essentially a bizarre blame game between Sir David Beatty and Sir John Jellico, it boils down to a Schley/Sampson type imbroglio that poisons the top British RN command echelon. The politics is dirty, Beatty's crimes, in battle and in his post battle records falsifications, many; and Jellico's fall from grace that Beatty (currently) also engineers, rotten; but the upshot is that Sims finds out by August 19i7 what the RN "establishment" actually knows what goes wrong at Jutland and that it hides from its politicians. (RTL). It is political dynamite the USN uses to force the RN to adopt some "joint allied policies" such as convoy and the North Sea Barrage.

• b. Gallipoli has lingering effects. Asquith, Churchill and Fisher are all tainted and forced out. Sir Ian Hamilton, the man generally now held responsible; though, is not that badly damaged in reputation or career. That "gentlemen"^2 somehow bamboozles the Gallipoli Commission that investigates the disaster and makes Stepford his fail guy. This man's criminal behavior may be where Beatty gets the idea to paint Jellico in a bad light for Jutland.

• c. The U-boat war has split the RN into a curious version of what will later plague the Japanese Imperial Navy; the fleet faction (offense) and the convoy faction (defense). Sims has direct orders from Daniels to get RN cooperation on the First Battle of the Atlantic. Despite British official historical claims to the contrary, the US/UK records seem to indicate that as late as December 1917, the RN admiralty is reluctant to adopt convoy. Popularly, it is British claimed that one of the "unofficial official reasons" Jellico is retired for health reasons is because he refuses to pull destroyers from the Grand Fleet, first as commander, then as First Sea Lord to reinforce the convoy escort forces. This is errant nonsense. Geddes just wants Jellico's job. Meanwhile, Beatty, who now commands the Grand Fleet, out-Jellico's Jellico for caution, now that he has to sit in the hot seat.^4

The remarkable information goes straight to Washington. Sims, meanwhile, applies "persuasion" to obtain RN cooperation for the American view of the naval war, which is to handle the U-boat crisis FIRST, so that American armies can reach France. To a degree that not even France can manage, the British are "persuaded" by Sim's arguments. It is out and out blackmail he applies in the proper quarters. And it is in the RTL record. Sims may like the British as a rule, the RN as an ideal, but he is ONI. He actually despises some of the individual Britons he has to manipulate, just as he has no use for his own navy secretary and president. Sims is the consummate politician, here.

^1 one of the many political casualties of the Gallipoli Campaign.
^2 intense sarcasm.
^3 There is evidence that Sims employs one of his junior staff officers as a mole inside the USN/RN liaison group in addition to Sims own contacts.
^4 This is complicated. Beatty politics for Jellico's job as Grand Fleet commander. But Beatty has a big problem. Jellico knows how Beatty mishandles contact reports, fails to coordinate with Evans Thomas of the Vth Battle Squadron, loses the battlecruiser battle to Hipper, fails to support the Grand Fleet battleline and in general makes a complete hash of Jutland, doing to Jellico, what J.E.B. Stuart does to R.E. Lee at Gettysburg, leave his commander blind to enemy movements, loses the recon battle, and subject to enemy surprise and defeat in detail. Whether it is blind luck or inspired guess that allows Jellico to survive the debacle in similar fashion to how Lee escapes destruction, the parallels of incompetencies displayed between Gettvsburg and Jutland is surprisingly and disturbingly similar with one noted difference. Jellico does not charge his fleet into German torpedoes the way Lee sends Pickett's infantry into Union general Hunter's gunline. What is even more remarkable is some other facts Sims digs up by August 1917. This may be because the American fleet detachment (now based in Ireland), has officers visiting their British opposites at Scapa Flow. The Americans notice that some extremely shoddy ammunition handling practices are present aboard British ships, and that the British are still currently trying to revoke these unsafe rapid gun drill procedures. This fault appears to be British fleet wide and happens under Beatty. Whether that explains "Something seems to be wrong with our bloody ships today." Sims understands the smelly rat when he sees one. That the British civilian leadership is blissfully unaware of it, actually surprises the Americans. It is an exploit.

==============================================

Postwar, Sims is the naval adviser to Woodrow Wilson at Versailles (well, one of them). His advice to hamstring the Japanese ambitions in the Pacific is mostly ignored. His advice to go lenient on German naval matters is over-ridden, and generally what Sims tries to get Wilson to see, seems to not happen. Not exactly true, that is. The USN, to a remarkable degree, loots Kriegsmarine records and interviews German naval officers about their side of the war in the RTL. American naval reparations from Germany are rather larger than most of the other co-belligerent and allied powers. And what is most significant (The Germans notice it.) is that it is not the British RN, alone, who accept the High Seas Fleet surrender at Scapa Flow while these negotiations and diplo-dances are underway. It is an Anglo-American fleet.

===============================================

THROUGH A GLASS MUCH DARKER:

The AU has to make sense. To keep it reasonable and still obtain the Derfflingers as American war prizes, some things have to be adjusted.

• a. In the case of the SMS Lutzow, for the ship to survive, the Lion's shooting needs only be as terrible in the AU as it is in the RTL. It is where that lucky forecastle hit that opened Lutzow to the sea and put her down by the bow and leads to her eventual scuttle, that has to move about ten meters to glance off the belt armor as a skip-off. Of course, goodbye Lion if that happens. Hipper's battlecruiser gunners can shoot.
  
  b. Somehow; Beatty has to survive after Lion blows up. His continued existence as an impediment to the Royal Navy in its future and as a form of American leverage remains as necessary to the AU as it is in the RTL. He places himself into such a position postwar by his frankly foolish actions during 1917-1919, so that he is easily "persuadable".
  
  c. At the Versailles conference, Josephus Daniels has to be replaced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt is a more pliable and more "navy friendly" superior who Sims can persuade to the USN point of view. In many ways, young Franklin, is as immature as "young" Winston Churchill and can be guided along the "right ways". Later in life, King will find that FDR is a tough sell on USN matters, partly because FDR as assistant secretary of the navy, sees how Daniels muzzles the admirals and runs roughshod over them towards his own goals. (Not a bad thing, if the British had a first sea lord like our "incompetent"^2 navy secretary, their naval war would have gone better in WW I.) Sims needs a pliant superior to fill out the shopping list under d..
  
  d. The shopping list:
  1. Get those German island positions and possessions in the Southwest Pacific that the US fails to acquire by the `1899 Treaty of Paris. This is to cork Japan and solidify the US sea line of communications to the South China Sea.
  2. Make sure that the Germans have enough of a fleet left to stop the Russians in the Baltic.
  3. Set up the Royal Navy for its downfall as the premier power in the North Atlantic.
  4. Establish a workable world naval treaty framework in which another lunatic European naval arms race is avoided so as to prevent pressures for a world war.

Among the side deals cut in the AU Versailles treaty, the Germans (Ebert) get to keep a "small" fleet that includes some of their HSF veterans and new construction. This will go a long way toward keeping the German sailors out of freikorps and will (As the shipyards work to finish the Mackensens, you think the modern British Labour governments are not using the Queen Elizabeth class carriers for exactly this same political reason?) keep otherwise unemployable in post-war Germany, German shipyard workers busy building otherwise useless ships instead of joining communist street gangs.

Where do the Derflingers come into this situation? American shipping losses have to be compensated. In the normal course of events, this would be settled by admiralty insurance courts and exacted as cash reparations as part of the overall peace treaty. Since Uncle is cutting side deals and is generally going to ignore what the French and British cook up, the US can and in this AU will accept hardware in lieu of fungibles. That includes ships. which means the three Derfflingers as part of the compensation for US warship losses.

And with three unusable German battlecruisers sitting at Gosport in the Chesapeake bay, what is the USN supposed to do with them? Scrap them? Use them for target practice?

The USN wants them for a reason. (See next post.)