Shipbucket

I have to agree with Colo here. You seem to be going for an effect that just doesn't work in this style.
Also, unless that stand is bolted or otherwise connected to the deck it's not going to work on a pitching deck.

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That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

It is bolted to the deck. They had drills and threading tap bits in 1898. That was how temporary guns were fitted to USS Gloucester.

Why not use a proper deck stanchion then? That coat rack is going to be nigh impossible to use in the field since it requires a perfectly flat surface to use. The use on converted civilian ships is such a weird edge case to optimize for and it's not like an actual tripod or even an artillery style mounting can't be made to work.

_________________
“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

I added a 2 axis spirit bubble level and jack legs for the army version. Also an invention used for emplacing machine guns such as the Spandau 1908 (the dog sled) or the St Etienne 1906 (the stove piper) or the Maxim (any iteration). (Ace # 2 steel shovel.)

And this is a war expediency case. If you've read the fluff, the gunboats Lake Champlain and McCullough had additional machine guns fitted to supplement their Gatlings and 4.3 inch converted Breech loaded Civil War MLNR Dahlgrens. And the Hotchkiss is the specific gun used.

eta

Experience is a teacher is it not. By 1899 the army had adopted the Model 1898 tripod.

Why... why is the shovel called a ground leveling tool. Pretty sure even by official army designation they would be called shovel/spade/entrenching tool... Whatever floats your boat Tobius.

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Best regards,

RegiaMarina1939

Sense of humor, RM. Just a sense of humor.

US Army calls a shovel an "entrenching tool" as you noted. When in the American Civil War, they called it a spade. WW I it was a shovel. WW II it was a folding shovel. After Korea, it became an "entrenching tool".

WHAT KIND OF MADMEN ARE THESE?




The Americans (Commanders)

Wesley Merritt (Brigadier general Regular Army, Major General of volunteers, commander of 8th Corps)
George Dewey (Officer in tactical command, newly minted Rear admiral, fresh off the SS Esmeralda Incident and a confrontation with German Vice admiral von Dederichs)
Arthur MacArthur, Jr. (Hero of Lookout Mountain during the American Civil War, and a hothead. Colonel of Regulars, Brevet Brigadier of volunteers. He’s the calm one on the American side.)

The Filipino Rebels
Emilio Aguinaldo (Befuddled leader of the Filipino Army of National Liberation. As an Illustrado (intellectual) he knows as much about military matters as a six year old child.
Antonio Luna (The scheming conniving one. Knows the old adage well, Let’s you and him fight. Is the one who plots the Blockhouse 6 Incident that starts the whole ruckus. How was he to know Dewey was not bluffing?)

Spanish Commanders
Fermin Jáudenes (Military commander, and after Basillio is arrested, Captain general of the Spanish Philippines.)
Basilio Augustín (Captain general of the Spanish Philippines caught negotiating with the Americans. It is not the fact that he negotiates; it is the size of the bribe he inveigles to surrender the city of Manila to the gringos. He was not going to cut Fermin Jáudenes in on it. Fermin Jáudenes arrested him and made his own deal with the Americans, which you will see below. (RTL altered a tiny bit for the AU. ) )

The Order of battle for the US Army Eighth Corps (in this AU):
Commanding General, Eighth Army Corps: Major General Wesley Merritt
2nd Division - Brigadier General Thomas M. Anderson
1st Brigade - Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur
23rd Infantry Regiment RA- Colonel John W. French
14th Infantry Regiment RA Colonel Lafayette Hawes Jr.
13th Minnesota Volunteer Infantry Regiment - Colonel of Volunteers Mathew Johns
21st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry Regiment – Lt, Colonel Edward Susskind
11th Idaho Volunteer Infantry Regiment – Colonel of Volunteers Gustavus Montjoy
9th Wyoming Volunteer Infantry Regiment – Colonel of Volunteers Abner Peacock
Astor Battery - Captain Peyton C. March (Volunteer 2nd machine gun company)
2nd Brigade - Brigadier General Francis Vinton Greene
18th U.S. Infantry Regiment RA Colonel James Gordon Howell
1st Battalion - Colonel Clarence M. Bailey
2nd Battalion - Major Charles Kellar
3rd U.S. Artillery Regiment RA (Siege Train Apple) Lt. Colonel David Silwell
1st Battalion - Captain James O'Hara
2nd Battalion - Captain William E. Birkhimer
U.S. Engineer Battalion, Company A - 2nd Lieutenant William Durward Connor
12th California Infantry Regiment - Colonel James S. Smith
24th Colorado Infantry Regiment - Colonel Irving Hale
18th Nebraska Volunteer Infantry Regiment - Colonel John P. Bratt
22nd Oregon Volunteer Infantry Regiment-Colonel Rufus Truscott
10th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment - Colonel Alexander L. Hawkins
Utah Volunteer Artillery Regiment (Volunteer 7th Artillery) The Right Reverend Abner Cobblepot, Colonel of Volunteers
Light Battery A - Captain Richard Whitehead Young
Light Battery B - Captain Frank A. Grant
California Volunteer Heavy Artillery Detachment (Siege Train Baker) Major Thaddeus Jones

Roughly speaking, each dot represents a strong point or a unit equivalent to about a battalion of 1000 men. this does not mean that all battalion units are equivalent. A Filipino battalion was only 1/4 the actual combat effectiveness of a Spanish Tercio battalion or an American infantry battalion. Roughly speaking the Americans and Spaniards should have been equivalent, but poor leadership at Manila, decayed morale and material and logistical handicaps reduces the Spanish troops outside of Zapote fortifications to exactly 1/2 the effectiveness of American equivalents in a maneuver battle.

The RTL US Army shows astonishing blitzkrieg prowess in the 1898 Spanish American War. Madman Joe Wheeler did launch lightning attacks at Guasimas and at El Canay in Cuba. Kettledrum and San Juan Hill were executed with a rapidity that astonished European observers who saw the fights. Fighting Native Americans does that to you. In the Philippines, in the RTL, the same lightning war style overwhelms the Filipino Army of Liberation, in the Philippine American War as it is shattered in a forced march campaign conducted by MacArthur, Otis and Anderson. Once thrown out of their trenches, the Filipino insurrectos are relentlessly pursued up the Luzon central plain to be encircled just south of Lingayen Gulf and harassed to destruction. MacArthur in particular makes certain that Aquino’s men are not allowed to escape into the Cordillera. He does this by seizing the Manila to Dagupan railroad and dares the insurrectos to cross that clear ground. Machine guns (Gatlings on captured Spanish trains) form a part of that RTL tactical containment. US infantry, yes infantry! outmarches the Katipuman irregulars in their own country, ambushes the Filipinos, and cuts them to pieces again and again. This kind of warfare was conducted in a pampas and semi-jungle at the platoon and company level by young boys from Colorado, Oregon, Utah and Montana, men who had never seen a jungle or savannah in their life and it is utterly astonishing. It gets no historic play at all, because it is a dirty war, fought the dirty way, with little quarter.

You can compare that American campaign and the pacification war that follows with the utter mess the British make of things in the Sudan, in Zimbabwe, in Boer ruled South Africa, in Zambia and you just shake your head at it.

Aquino's men in this AU are armed with Marata 22 rifles or rolling block Winchesters and a dozen or so captured or stolen field guns (Ordunez or Schneider Canet 3 inch mountain howitzers). As far as can be historically determined, Luna's bunch of revolutionaries were armed with anything that ranged from Napoleonic era muskets to old shotguns. What artillery they had, consisted of a battery of four 12 pounder cannon they stole from an old Spanish fort that defended Bocaue.

The Spanish troops had their 7 mm Spanish Mauser and were alleged to have bought a dozen or so Maxim Model 1894 machine guns in the 7 mm Mauser cartridge, but these models were shipped to Havana, sited in the Cubano and never used as other than fortress guns. The Spanish did not use machine guns in the Philippine Islands; period. Artillery: modern field or fortress guns such as the Spanish had; was either Hontoria, Krupp, Ordunez, Schneider Canet, or Vickers and was 6, 7.5, 7.8, 21 or 12 cm in field guns, and 12, ,15.2, 16, 18, 20.3, 23.4 or 25.5 cm coastal defense or landed naval guns in the Manila area, using a bewildering array of types and kinds of ammunition.

The Americans, being American, have simplified their logistics. They use three types of rifle, the Springfield 1893 (Krag system), the 1895 Remington Navy (Lee system) and the 1897 Various (Mannlicher system) all in the Navy Lee 6 x 60 mm cartridge. Field artillery is the 8cm/40 caliber Driggs howitzer. Siege artillery is courtesy of Mr. Driggs in the 25 cm Endicott mortar.

And that artillery… both ship and ashore, the Americans believed in their artillery in the RTL. The biggest Moro uprising of the insurrection, the Bud Dajo Massacre, when suppressed was an artillery bombardment of a trapped rebel encampment inside a volcano! It makes Wounded Knee look like a peaceful pow-wow. 1000 people blown to bits. Americans hauled 1 tonne field howitzers and a machine gun I(Gatling on a gun carriage) up 2400 meters of steep grade so inclined that soldiers used bayonets jammed into the ground as steps and pitons to haul themselves up, fought off the Tausogs at the top, knife to knife, and then block and tackled the guns up by hand, because mules could not climb it.

THAT was the American army of 1898-1908. Incredible.

WHAT KIND OF MADMEN ARE THESE? (Part II)

Things in the real time line in Manila Bay were dicey after the May 1, 1898 battle. Dewey had a tenuous grip on Corrigedor, Marivelles Bay and at Sangley Point and Cavite City and the naval yard. The first large scale troop movements from the US would not arrive until the week of June 21st, 1898. Naval reinforcements are urgently needed to handle Camara's squadron sent from Ferrol to reinforce the Philippines, for that Spanish squadron included a pair of "battleships"^1 that Dewey's battered fleet was not prepared to handle^1.

^1 Those would be the Carlos V, a Spanish armored cruiser akin to the Infanta Maria Class, only larger; and the Pelayo, an oddity based in design on the French battleship, Marceau. On paper those two ships alone would sink Dewey's fleet. In RTL fact, Dewey's gunners would have a field day with those slow, unwieldy and completely unready for sea practice targets. Their crews were untrained, physical plant was not repaired, guns were deficient... If Tsushima, Rozhestvensky and Nabagotov was eminently predictable because of Russian governmental incompetence and those two admirals' own ineptitudes, then Camara's fleet was in exactly the same state and him with it. At least the Sagasta government recalled them all from the Port of Suez before the certain disaster happened.

The British, for reasons of their own, stalled that move at the Suez Canal for the moment. American naval reinforcements could not reach Dewey until September 1898 at the earliest.

Then the German East Asia Squadron under von Dederichs shows up. Now it must be admitted that Britain, France, and Japan also send naval forces to protect their nationals in a war zone, but the international law custom and practice they follow is a single warship or two shows the flag presence custom; (The kind of practice that started the Spanish American War in the first place, remember?), to just remind the warring parties that neutrals' rights in a war zone should be respected. This practice was/is in the days of "gentlemen's colonial wars" and that practice was/is the European custom codified as international law.

Except the Germans are new and boisterous to the game and the Americans have just been through the Maine Incident. Admiral von Dederichs has just cowed the Qing Chinese into a massive concession of a naval base lease at Tsing Tsao (*Near modern Dalian, PRC.) and he is cocky and confident off this recent victory through force majeur. He now receives a cable from his lunatic sovereign, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, "to go down to Manila and see what is cooking. See if any scraps fall off the table for Germany for us to snap up." It is the immediate precursor to the kind of insane post Bismark diplomacy Germany undertakes against America that will set the Americans on the warpath and have them visit Germany in person twice to discourage that sort of behavior.

Even so... Lunatic telegram from lunatic monarch. Admiral von Demerits understands these factors and facts. Fine and good. Send ONE German armored cruiser and show the flag. That is the custom. Chichester, the local British muckymuck in these waters, does that with the HMS Powerful and another protected cruiser from Hong Kong. The French guy, Reinier, over in Indochina, shows up with a French cruiser (La Perrouse?) from Haiphong and the Japanese send one of their Emil Bertin designed rejects, the Akitashima, hustling down from Shanghai to Manila, too.

What does von Dederichs do? He brings everything he has afloat. One "battleship", five armored and protected cruisers and a transport packed full of 1,400 German "marines" intended to garrison that new German base at Tsing Tsao show up over a three week interval in June at Manila Bay.

Unannounced.

And the German ships start nosing around, sniffing up near Subic Bay, measuring it for a naval base, the transport lands German troops on Bataan peninsula, forcing Dewey to scrape up landing parties from his own ship's companise (He has ~1800 men total aboard his six warships and he's already landed 500 of them to take Corrigidor, patrol Marivelles and occupy Cavite.) to chase them around and keep an eye on them.

Dewey, outgunned and outmanned, battle damaged and low on ammo, keeps his temper. Wait for Merritt. Meanwhile von Dederichs holds secret meetings with Aguinaldo, Luna, and the Spaniards (Jaudenez.).

THAT is the RTL.

Fortunately, while at Hong Kong, Dewey in addition to training his squadron, running a spy ring in Manila (Smythe and that weird transaction to buy SS Zafiro and SS Nanshan. Remember him?), also becomes best drinking buddies with Admiral Chichester. When the crunch comes and the cruiser SKS Irene is caught where she has no business being (Subic Bay), and shots are fired... Chichester moves his two ship squadron from its separate anchorage opposite Manila very ostensibly and anchors next to the USS Olympia. And the gun muzzle covers come off from both British ships' guns. Likewise on the Olympia, the Baltimore and the other American ships present gun muzzles are exposed, ready for war shots.

It is a game of chicken. The odds are still against the Anglo-Americans.

Admiral von Dederichs sends over his flag secretary to the Olympia to demand from Dewey an immediate explanation for this breech of international naval decorum.

"If it is war you want, then you shall have it, sir!"

Dewey bluffs that poltroon. He goes back and tells his admiral that the American commodore is insane. The news of the meet and not greet gets out inevitably as Dewey intends it to spread. The uproar from this breach of international law and courtesy is so extensive, that the ripples reach Berlin. Admiral von Dederichs has pulled such a massive series of diplomatic blunders that he feels compelled to write an alibi letter direct to his sovereign to give his version of events.

Maybe Kaiser Bill believed him. I do not know. The Tirpitz faction in the Kriegsmarine sure uses the Manila Bay debacle to push their own man and his vision for the German navy. Overseas German ambition cools down a bit. Better to concentrate in Home waters they say. Build the Riskflotte. The Germans just did and do not learn to this day the right sea-power lesson when they first crossed guns with a nation that invented the term, and an admiral who understands it.

And I do not mean Great Britain and Chichester.

I mean the victor of the Second Battle of Manila Bay... promptly promoted to admiral by a navy that knows exactly what he did... George Dewey.

Better diplomat than fleet tactician, George Dewey is, but Sun Tzu would approve this action against the Germans. It was a razor close thing then.

In this AU (see above) because of time, miscalculations, and certain differences in the American situation, it ends differently and rather badly.