9 Comments
Mar 30, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

I think you had enough pain points covered that you shouldn't beat yourself up over this. Maybe a couple of serious navy buffs thought that you really dropped the ball but, as for the rest of us lovers of 'splodey, I think you did just fine.

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Mar 30, 2023Liked by John Birmingham

Yeah I can just imagine a serious navy buff going "PPFFTT he doesn't have weapons replenishment at sea for his futuristic navy??? AMATEUR!" *throws book across room*

The rest of us: "OOOH TIME TRAVEL SPLODEY!" *reads book on repeat until it disintegrates*

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author

I wish they did throw the book across the room. Normally they find my email and enter into CORRESPONDENCE.

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Ooooh. I need to update that to *throws book across room. Gets out laptop.*

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But present day October 2022 is something that doesn't occur in WoC, so you shouldn't feel so bad.

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Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. Just ask the Russians.

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You are making this a bigger point than it would have been JB.

First off you would have to have VLS equipped ships in the first place. In Axis the Halsey class ships (which you probably would have based on the Charles F. Adams / Perth class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_F._Adams-class_destroyer ) are equipped with Terrier/Tartar launchers. Video of a Terrier launcher is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNm24GgHNsI These could fire only one or two missiles at a time and have large magazine (16-40 rounds) below decks. Those magazines can be loaded like a gun magazine so with elbow grease.

Replenishment can be done in multiple ways. Sure you can fire over a line and bring in a fuel line or pallets, but what is done also is Vertical Replenishment (Vertrep). Here you use a helicopter with a load underneath or if you use a Chinook or a Stallion you can have the stuff in the cargo hold.

VLS only came into play with the 6th ship in the Ticonderoga class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticonderoga-class_cruiser and the refit of the Spruance class. The early Arleigh Burkes had cranes aboard, but those were almost never used. A ship a sea tends to yaw and roll unless the sea is extremely calm. And you are trying to put square pegs into square holes. Every missile is in its own little box and a Tico has 2 x 61 tube launchers so 122 holes to fill.

If you were to want to remedy this, I would combine three types of ship into one.

The first is the simplest: Replenishment. The new ship should have big holds to store ammo, missiles and torpedoes. Food and fuel would be nice too, but can be offloaded via other means.

Second is a type of ship now more or less forgotten. The so-called tender supported flotillas of submarines (sub tender) or destroyers (destroyer tenders) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destroyer_tender These ships could perform maintenance on either the destroyer itself or on it’s torpedoes.

Lastly I would add a floating dry dock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_dock#Floating If you want to do maintenance, do it in an environment you can get you work done, and in a dock you can.

So to combine this you need a wee bit of real estate. So let’s think a bit outside the box. Remember the Liparus from the 70s James Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me? The former Berghe Stahl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Berge_Stahl could be a candidate with enough room to simultaneously service two decent size cruisers or other warships. And with it’s bulk it can accommodate it’s own airstrip, its own defensive armament, stores and a decent lake of fuel.

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Pretty sure this is the very important Correspondence that JB is concerned about upthread.

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JB must remember one thing: Less Diva, more writing ;-)

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