WORLD WAR (1942-1964) Mod

[MarkSheppard]

Give me a moment to dig up my Draka stuff.

Here's some more notes from the DIXIE mod scratchpad

Tank Names/Designations:
United States: "Mx" numbers, e.g. M2 Light Tank.
CSA: Names; as in "Longstreet"

Gun Designations:
USA: German style; as in 75mm Gun.
CSA: UK style; as in 6 Pdr Gun.

Rifle Designations:
Both US and CSA go by armory; e.g. Springfield 1903 and Tregedar 1905.

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

Give me a moment to dig up my Draka stuff.

Looking forward to it

[MarkSheppard]

So here we go. Be gentle...

Drakafic mod for SPWW2 v7.0 DOS

You'll need to run it in DOSBox.

It's ugly, crude; and no scenarios.

I have a WinWW2 version built on v1.0 WinWW2, but I don't know how to distribute it because I was a CD Owner right from the start, and my modded version is based upon a CD install that has the CD files in it that unlock "extras".

I basically zipped these up back in 2012 for storage, and the last modification date for the OOB in SPWW2 v7 DOS version is February 2006.

[MarkSheppard]

Regarding DIXIE:

Ten years ago, I wrote regarding Turtledove's TL-191:

...the kind of aircraft that the USA and CSA would build in a sane universe would be very large, very long legged aircraft, due to the much greater distances in North America.

From the western border of Germany to its eastern border, it's about 450-500~ miles. From Savannah to Dallas, it's 900~ miles; and many states are several hundred miles tall or wide. The sheer distance means that the USA and CSA are going to trend towards much heavier and longer ranged aircraft than the European norm.

Basically, instead of Ju-87 Stukas, you'd see something similar to SB2A Buccaneers -- capable of flying a 500 lb bomb to 1,100 miles (combat radius of around 500 miles).

Either that, or you get twin engined ground attack aircraft.

I actually found something in the National Archives, where the AAF seriously asked for:

continued production of P-51A (Allison) engined mustangs as "A-36" strike aircraft

or

production of P-38s with no turbochargers as ground attack aircraft.

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

You'll need to run it in DOSBox.

Right now I need to see if the Ommissah is going to let DOSBox and I work together or not. So far it's been on the NOT going to happen side.

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

So here we go. Be gentle...

I have read your Draka stuff over on SSBStarDestroyer and had been working some of the ideas there into my version, more for the POST WW2 side as well as the WW2 side. Looking back at my notes, I have stuff for them being WAY over the top or so underrated. It will be interesting to see your stuff in this format.

I tried to stay true to the novels as far as weapons went, but I do like the stuff you came with though for the breakdown for your setting.

[MarkSheppard]

Originally Posted by MarkSheppard

Current spec-cing:

Landcruiser: 110mm gun; 5 to 6mm caliber coaxial, SAM on side of turret. Visually very similar to the AMX-40 or OF-40; at about 43 to 45 metric tons combat weight. Armor protection of around mid production T-55 to early T-62 level -- because its stated canonically that a 88mm L56 can't penetrate it frontally, they're still vulnerable to side shots from PAK guns. Plus, by the 1960s, German tanks are pretty much at parity (or close to it) with the Race; something not possible if it was a blinged up M1A1(HA) equivalent. Autoloaded gun, due to the need to economize on manpower in conquest fleet.

...

Artillerycarrier: Analogous to the TAM VCA artillery, but in 100-120mm instead of 155mm. The Race is physically much smaller than humans, so I don't think they can easily manhandle 155mm rounds around.

So let's see...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-5TS
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2-62

115mm gun 2A20 (L/52.6)
Maximum muzzle energy is 6.96 MJ
3BM3 Sabot: 5.5 kg projectile out of a 22 kg shot weight, 1615 m/sec muzzle velocity.
3UOF HE Frag: 14.86 kg projectile out of 28 kg shot weight, 905 m/sec muzzle velocity

From my website:

http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Ballis...ights_Calc.htm

Scaling down the T-62's gun to 110mm gets us:

Sabot: 4.81 kg projectile and 6.28 MJ muzzle energy at 1,615 m/sec.
HEF: 13 kg projectile and 5.33 MJ muzzle energy at 905 m/sec

Dropping back to my website again:

http://alternatewars.com/BBOW/Ballis...stics_1-07.htm

and plugging in:

110mm Proj Diameter
13 kg projectile mass
905 m/sec initial velocity
45 degree departure angle
0 m fire/target altitude
G8 Drag Model with a form factor of 1.0
0.1 integration interval
Ballistic Trajectory Evaluation

Gets us:

Maximum Range: 15,500 meters, with a time of flight of 67 seconds and a fall angle of 66 degrees

This isn't actually bad. You could get it up to maybe 19-20~ km with rocket assisted shells (wild *** guesstimate, not scientific analysis).

Bonus of using the same gun in your tank and SP howitzer (albeit in different mounts, allowing different elevations):

Resupply problems are dramatically eased for ammunition and spare parts -- important if the Race can only bring the ammo it needs on the ships it departed with.

As for AP penetration, you can just close your eyes and imagine pretty much the same performance as the 115mm:

3BM4 (1963 Steel) 228mm @ 1000m
3BM21 (1970s Tungsten) 360mm @ 1000m

Albeit with tungsten as the main weapon, since the shipping costs of a 4.8 kg sabot projectile across interstellar distances is so high that why not bring the best -- even if it's solid gold?

Depleted Uranium, I don't think the Race would use it -- due to their "long view" tending to avoid messy contaminated battlefields or carcinogens in conquered races.

One thing you'd have to do is have multiple landcruiser slots filled in the OOB representing:

1.) The initial invasion fleet, 100% tungsten sabot rounds, 100% MANPADs

2.) A year or two in, where you're forced to use earth-made steel sabots since you expended a lot of your tungsten rounds in the initial fighting.

[MarkSheppard]

Some more thoughts...

I'd rather use SPWW2 because that gives us all the OOBs, Icons and stuff already preloaded for WW2, saving development time vs porting SPWW2 stuff to MBT.

But this would require some changes to the Turtledovian "Race" OBAT.

In his classic OBAT, everything has built in MANPADs; capable of shooting down helicopters to fighters; but there's no built in MANPAD or SAM weapon class for SPWW2.

We can just abstract the lack of SAMs away; by explaining that the heavy SAM stuff (S-300-PMU equivalent) is kept well away from the frontlines, and assigned to guard supply depots, using their extreme range vs low flying, low performance WW2 planes to shoot down stuff like paratrooper transport formations from 200 miles away.

What we could do is do some more "thonkery" and modify things a bit; and keep things in line with Turtledove's "roads less travelled" path that he likes to do.

Since 1945, everyone from time to time keeps proposing autocannons for coaxial armament in tanks (Centurion prototypes in 1945, AMX-30 early run, and serious proposals to have the M1 armed with 105mm and a 25mm Bushmaster).

So what if the Race did that? I mean, we already have real world examples with the BMP-3 weapons module which has a 100mm gun plus a 30mm autocannon.

The way it could be explained is that they could use advanced blue force networking so that a group of tanks can slave their autocannons together and pre-slew their turrets so as to deal with incoming enemy aircraft.

So you'd have weaponclass 4 "AA Capable FLAK MG/AUtocannon" as the coaxial on their tanks, and as a primary weapon on their IFVs.

Since we're drifting from Turtledove's original concepts, we could have their 30mm stuff firing advanced combined VT/time fuzes to increase their efficiency vs aircraft or against ground targets such as infantry in foxholes via airburst, or delayed detonation to kill targets behind walls. So the 30mm autocannons would have about 20-25% more HEK than what they normally would have for their calibre.

Further, since we're drifting even further, what if for large caliber guns such as tanks or artillery, they use liquid propellant since rate of fire will be low enough with those that refilling it between shots won't be bad, and it will ease the resupply burden of these 4.5 foot lizards loading their tanks.