xthetenth

Standard Aircraft Characteristics pages: F4H-1 Phantom SAC 1 February 1963 F4H-1 Phantom SAC 30 April 1960 F-4B 1 July 1967 RF-4B 1 July 1967 F-4J August 1973 F-4S May 1984

Good point, thank you for the correction.

Our priorities are actual facts. Facts don't give a damn about game balance. You are attempting to pick a fight because your pixel tanks aren't good enough and the documentation of facts is inconvenient to you. As it stands, the only thing you provide is an increase to the signal/noise[sic] ratio on a forum that strives to reduce it at every step. Hopefully you take the gracious gift of my time in the spirit it was intended and contribute signal in the future. Thanks!

I found a ballistics nerd on my travels. He knows the ways of the content sharer.

I think that is in fact the case, which meant that the CdG's reactors were designed with ideas of exportability in mind (at least by proxy).

Ah. Now I get it. If you hadn't been involved I would be horrified by the prospect that that event was noteworthy enough to mention.

Is that permanent? I can't imagine a thought process by which that would be irrevocable, but that's not what this thread is for.

Addenda based on looking at sources: First off, somehow the ability to reverse polarity on a turboelectric drive to instantly obtain full reverse power didn't satisfy the Germans. I'd want confirmation but I would not be surprised to hear that the contract had been written in such a way as to accidentally preclude it. Also, in 1914, a GE electric system was $162,441 less than a direct drive. Another thing that I think is possible with them is significantly better resistance to two damage modes, flooding of the vitals, and a PoW style disembowelment (not actually preventing it but allowing for shorter shafts that deposit less energy less deeply into the hull). Also turboelectric lets you steam astern continuously for much longer in case of bow damage. Machinery was a big problem, literally, in that the Tennessee had one of her generators break down and removing it for repairs was very difficult. Regarding turrets, the advantages of the US design over UK practice were the elimination of shell rooms (with more than half the shells stored inside the roller path support and ready use shells in the turret and on the horizontal transverse platform at the end of the guns, simplification through a fixed loading angle, and not using a platform or supports behind the barbette armor. This meant a US triple 14 or twin 16 required an inner diamater of the barbette of 31 feet versus the 30.5 feet of a British twin 15". On the other hand, Director of Naval Ordnance was much happier with the British designs, which used entirely hydraulic power, compared to US designs, which used more manpower than mechanical power in the transport of shells. The US turrets also used electric and air power, while the British preferred hydraulic, which they felt offered better reliability, simplicity, ease of repair, and quick detection of defects. One possible consideration for the US is that machinery adds displacement while larger turret crew wouldn't necessarily be as expensive.

I have been remiss, and not been through this thread in a while. Turbo-Electric was largely a curiosity. Kind of cool, lets you do some nifty stuff, but reduction gears kept getting lighter in a way that tons of electrical gear didn't. Considering its main home was the USN, and up until the start of WWII they didn't make a design where weight wasn't limited (pre-treaty ships were limited as a proxy for budget), this really limited its adoption. During the treaty period, where everyone's ships were weight limited, yeah nobody was very interested in a bunch of weight in return for some smallish benefits. They would have been perfect for the Bismarcks, but the Germans were idiots had interesting requirements tangential to actual combat capacity (in this case they required the ability to go from full ahead to full astern within one minute for reasons. They actually do show up once more in warships, in an unlikely place: the Buckley class destroyer escort. Much like the glorious Sherman, the Destroyer escorts used a variety of engine technologies in order to avoid various bottlenecks. So the Buckleys have turbo-electric, and the Cannon class were diesel-electric. This is because reduction gearing was a bottleneck. Second, regarding triple turrets, the US turrets were space efficient, their triple 14"s were pretty close in diameter to the British twin 15" (New Mexico vs. QEs). This was at the cost of a greater use of manpower rather than machinery, which is potentially troublesome. I'd have to see if it was Friedman and look up the actual numbers and points brought up in British commentary. (I should also probably check in at some point whether there were any refits between then and Surigao and whether they actually missed many salvoes, but I remember that being almost entirely a function of the radar carried. I'll see if I have that much effort in me.)

Ever since the Midways, every carrier's ship girder has been carried up into the flight deck. The Essexes were the last major carriers to have their hangar deck be the main structural deck (Incidentally, the Essexes and before had armored decks, just at the hangar deck rather than the flight deck, which is part of why I say confidently that the hits the Franklin took wouldn't have been stopped by a British style armored flight deck.) Basically, the hangar exits, island location and catapult tracks can tell you a lot about how well the ship design's been able to reduce stress to free it up for those things. Now I'm kind of wondering whether the Fords have more stresses so the island couldn't go between the elevators, or they're doing it to free up space forward.

Every single ton of carrier you put into a single hull gives you more capacity than the last one. It takes a lot of tonnage to be able to launch even one plane, let alone launch, maintain and arm one plane. If you compare the air wings of light carriers to supercarriers, the latter have a lot more air wing per ton because things like maintenance, seakeeping, launch facilities and deck space are amortized over more planes. Big missile batteries end up on their own platforms with their own superstructure optimized for radar and so on for very good reasons because the USN can afford the tonnage to make their carriers part of a task force. Lastly, VLS cells are a non-trivial cut in the flight deck, which is part of the strength deck and has to have four long cuts in it for catapults, as well as the cuts in the ship girder for the hangar exits onto the elevators. The cuts that already exist are only possible due to classified structural shenanigans of the deep wizardry sort. The Charles de Gaulle has to have a weak spot in her deck because the reactor needs refueling more frequently. As a result, when their new short catapult designs turned out to only work with literally neck-breaking accelerations, they had to cut down to two cats, and the island is way the hell forward, which sucks because that's prime real estate for spotting planes before launch. The Zumwalts are the first missile focused ships to not need the VLS cut to be in prime centerline real estate, and the way they talk about that development indicates that it's bigger than you'd think.

I've got a cav arms lower full of KE arms goodies that's rock solid. I used a Faxon pencil barrel and carbon fiber handguard and an Aero upper with no FA, but if I were doing it again, I'd be tempted by Sionics' upper sans handguard and the Faxon carbon fiber, since that means the upper QA process is more than me with a dumb look on my face. If I were trying to go cheaper, I've got a very favorable impression of ALG handguards as a budget sensitive solution.

Has there ever been a time where custom work could ever get you as much money as you put in?

Ah okay. That sort of mutant. What I'm trying to do really warrants a dismissive "it's the platform for a system with these cool things, let's talk about those because they're cool".

I give myself something like odds of finishing a stage before the par time. Maybe. If I do well. That'd be awesome, you should totally give it a go.