One day I really want to make that late 19th century succession war thing like in Air Power. In it you had four claimants to the throne starting at opposite edges of the empire each with their own advantages that ranged from more agile fighters to more sturdy bombers to just being good at diplomacy - and that stuff was important because at the start of the game each claimant only has his own estate which is of course a major city. With an abundant amount of neutral cities and strategic towns many with their own garrisons of airships and aircraft it would often be very advantageous to convince them to join your cause rather than to shoot down their fighters, suppress the aerial defenses and force them to capitulate via bombing. It was a fun little game back in the day. You'd get assign the task for your main fleet's ships or only use detachments such as commiting only a few frigates and gunships for the attack along with your fighters and bombers. Sometimes you'd run across a rival's main fleet and would scramble fighters for a fleet to fleet encounter. I really think that a modern spiritual sequel would be a ton of fun.
I'd say drones. If the X-47C ever gets built (funding only really. And if the Navy decides they want drones). It has a proposed payload of 10,000 pounds. The A-10 has a total payload (not counting the gun) of 16,000 pounds. The F-35 has a max payload of 18,000 pounds. At only about half the weight of the F-35. The avenger (most recent version of the predator) has a max payload of 6,500 lbs and max weight a little over 18,000 lbs. From a dirigible carrier your just increasing mobility/endurance of them since they already have a crazy endurance. Cruise speed for the avenger is 402 mph. and endurance is 18 hours so however far it can go in roughly 9 hours is it's range. (if it's a strike mission and not loitering over an area like air support.) max speed is 460 mph. so 3,500ish miles range? airships with howitzers and probably a ton of CIWS. But would missiles work better than a howitzer?
Couple of missiles quickly weigh as much as a howitzer. That said if you're already high up, as in trying to climb high enough to avoid most AA systems' ceiling, you could make special munitions for it - essentially winged munitions that didn't need to be shot to begin with. Assuming you're somewhere around 5 - 25km high (not a big feat for a balloon really, the main issue mostly being wind etc) you will start to get pretty decent kinetic energies for your munitions just dropping them off from a rack. Not necessarily even needing a warhead towards the higher altitudes and starting to have decent penetration even against hard targets. Humm. I thought missiles were going to be a lot heavier than artillery shells but 155mm shell weighs 40-45kg and a Hellfire missile weighs 45kg. In fact the Hellfire missile has a heavier warhead than many 155mm shells. The bigger difference is that if you're high above something you can fire at that something with direct fire, from above. The 155mm rounds range from around 500$ to ~1200$ for the AP rounds. Hellfire missiles seem to go from 25,000$ to 100,000$ a piece. Since it's a balloon you can just make it a little bigger for the added weight - I mean it uses no fuel to lift the gun - so going for cost effectiveness you could easily throw ~20-50 rounds of 155mm per Hellfire missile at a target. Like, spot a target and start firing and just keep dumping the whole magazine just to make sure and you're still going cheaper than the missile option. And I'm saying that even that 20 rounds of 155mm HE - that's a lot of punishment.
I only accept 406 mm or larger (the main guns on the Iowa battleships). The HC (maybe HE? HC seems like a typo on Wikipedia) shells weigh 862 it. The AP are 1,225 it. His something from that altitude with those. Edit: HC is High Capacity. I just don't remember ever seeing it. The High Capacity (HC) shell can create a crater 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep (15 x 6 m). During her deployment off Vietnam, USS New Jersey (BB-62) occasionally fired a single HC round into the jungle and so created a helicopter landing zone 200 yards (180 m) in diameter and defoliated trees for 300 yards (270 m) beyond that.
Yup, these ships launched a family wagon every time they fired their guns, per gun. That's what, 9 family size cars on every volley except they're packed with high explosives and traveling with tremendous kinetic energy.
I mean 1 of those shells (the He/HC ones) weighs slightly less than 30 of the 155 mm ones. I would probably go with 1-2 of those guns (406 mm) per port/starboard side (because of weight maybe 1 forward. I don't know if anyone ever made dual purpose 155 mm but there are plenty of dual purpose 152mm so I don't see why it couldn't be done. And have maybe 10 of those. Because defense against airborne threats (planes mostly. I would assume flak would work against missiles. I think somewhere in the middle East, maybe Israel, developed a active countermeasure system for ground vehicles that works against missiles, RPGs and such that is essentially a computer controlled shotgun). Trophy (Israel Defense Forces designation מעיל רוח, lit. "Windbreaker") is a military active protection system (APS) for vehicles. It intercepts and destroys incoming missiles, rockets, and tank HEAT rounds with a shotgun-like blast. Once the incoming weapon is classified, the computers calculate the optimal time and angle to fire the counter-measures. The response comes from two rotating launchers installed on the sides of the vehicle which fire a very small number of a MEFPs (Multiple Explosive Formed Penetrators) which form a very tight, precise matrix, aimed at a specific point on the anti-tank projectile's warhead. Sounds pretty much like a flak shell to me.
Yea, it's the same concept but shorter range and higher efficiency. Also, these among a few other things mean you don't want to have the armored jägers or what have you standing around the perimeter of the vehicle. This as well as the active plates (the armor panels that explode against the projectile hitting them) etc. are all such that they pulverize your own infantry caught in the blast arc. Not a problem when driving 90kph into an ambush or if you happen to be a flying thing. Don't know much about dual purpose guns, all I can recall is that the old 88mm was designed to be high velocity to reach as high as it did to be useful at the cost of barrel wear - something like you're either going to wear down the barrel a lot throwing those shells all the way to the bombers or you're going to have a bunch of guns sitting around while the enemy bomb your cities to hell with impunity. Turns out that using them against tanks was still mostly OK but using them for artillery just resulted in very low efficiency - the barrel gets worn out really quickly and artillery work tends to have lot hit percentage against entrenched enemy. Resulting in knocking out your own AT guns trying to suppress the enemy. Then again it was never designed to be dual purpose, it was merely pressed to it as a second thought. The caliber question is always fun. The bigger you go the more the atmospheric resistance is going to limit the blast zone and the less rounds you'll have but on the other hand if you're really hitting something hard and you have a good aim just getting it taken out on one go can make all the difference versus throwing 200+ at it that merely requires a new paint job.
All the secondary guns on the US battleships were dual purpose. Probably the ones for most other nations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-purpose_gun
At our CV9030 training too it was noted that our AFV's were capable of engaging aerial targets with their Bushmaster II cannons, aided by targeting computer. It's part of the training too. Though no specialized AA ammunition at the moment, it's only this year that Northrop Grumman announced proximity airburst rounds to be coming available, increasing the effectiveness of these vehicles against drones and small craft. I always heard that in WW 2 they fired the main guns themselves to create water columns against the torpedo planes. Don't know much about the effectiveness of the dual-purpose secondary guns. Then again most descriptions were "a wall of steel and fire" or so.
Totals for War RoundsKillsR.P.B. 5" Com223,770342.0(15%)654 5" VT117,915346.5(15%)340 3"/5029,61487.5(4%)338 40 mm1,271,844742.5(33%)1,713 1".185,99644.5(2%)1,932 20 mm.3,264,956617.5(28%)5,287 .50-cal729,83665.5(3%)11,143 .30-cal112,5064.028,127 RPB is rounds per bird. Antiaircraft Action Summary · World War II October 1945 Headquarters of the Commander in Chief UNITED STATES FLEET UNITED STATES FLEET HEADQUARTERS OF THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF NAVY DEPARTMENT WASHINGTON, D.C. 8 OCTOBER 1945 From here. https://www.history.navy.mil/resear...tically/a/antiaircraft-action-summary.html#II Five-inch guns destroyed 30 percent of all "sures" during the war. VT-fuzed projectiles, used in only 35 percent of 5-inch rounds, were responsible for 50 percent of 5-inch kills And 5 inch guns surpassed the stats of the 20mm. Best was the 40 mm.
The swedes know how to make AA guns. The 40 mm bofors was swedish. I believe they wouldn't sell the designs to the Americans so the Americans had to buy a gun and reverse engineer it. Enough that the non export version of the CV90 uses a modern version of the 40 mm. Not the 30-35 mm Bushmaster.
It's not just about the rounds per kill but you can also look at it in terms of space and tonnage taken aboard a ship as well as total cost of the weapon system with it's ammo compared to all the kills or so. Though quickly looking the 40mm does indeed seem overwhelmingly the best. Chrysler built "60,000 guns and 120,000 barrels by 1943", it seems the problem was that the Swedes had issued the drawings in Swedish, the measurements in metric and the angles were "from first angle of projection", meaning Chrysler had to translate the text, transform the units and convert the angles before they could even begin to manufacture them. But once they did they eventually find ways to halve the production time per unit. They were trying to further improve the design itself with help from rapid speed filming but the war ended before this was achieved. The British found that while the guns were superb they were very difficult to track and aim at fast moving targets so they integrated the guns with a targeting computer. Americans too were able to combine targeting computers with automated timing system for the fuses greatly enhancing the effectiveness of AA fire. For instance over here in Finland the primary method was to plot a saturation point in front of a enemy formation and concentrate all fire to it and as soon as it was reached keep moving it with the target or fire a new 'barricade' in front of the enemy. Against Soviet bombers this proved highly effective as it occurred so often that they would simply drop bombs and evade rather than fly in to the barricade. British used similar tactics successfully to repel Italian bombers in Mediterranean but found these tactics unsuccessful against the IJNAS pilots who were mostly undeterred by the defensive fire which ultimately both caused them to suffer much heavier casualties from AA fire but also allowed them to more often actually engage their targets as opposed to being merely repulsed. With IJNAS and other Japanese pilots you had to find a way to physically take out the incoming planes or be hit yourself. This was achieved to great effect by the USN. The IJNAS started out the war with superior pilots selected and trained through utterly rigorous processes but their pilot casualties combined with their inability to replace the quality lost quickly turned the tables on them - both having inferior aircraft and pilots and eventually barely able to make any sorties and if able then often relying on pilots who by no means would have passed the entrance threshold nevermind being anywhere near gaining their wings. With their many strengths that Imperial Japan possessed force preservation was not one of them. --------------------- Finland and other countries could have bought the 40mm CV9040 models, they were offered. Sweden also planned to get both 9030 and 9040 models but they only got the 9040 ones in the end. Other countries Finland included went for higher rate of fire and more of a mechanized IFV support weapon role, Sweden wanted the higher power per round. CV90 is imho best at getting us to the front fast, unloading and then supporting the assault from a hull down position. It's quite vulnerable and has virtually no side armor. It can be equipped with the modern additional side armor to increase resilience but still, it doesn't have good armor, it's armor is mostly on the front and there ain't a lot of it. I liked riding in it and it's definitely nice to have a few behind you to suppress those defenders in front but I don't see much advantage over having the 40mm gun - if we run into T-80 or so the plan is to just have a couple of CV9030's pepper it like hell while an AT team or a MBT can quickly pop up and take it out while it is suppressed. Actually, here's what that looks like, though we don't have any T-80's as target practice lying around
