Shipbucket

Hi Tobius:

I made the question because I knew that the answer will be intresting !

I thought that the canvas belt was of a single use (yes, like the Browning M1917) also in the british, russian and german MG. But if it must be a reusable equipment, I think that I makes sense search for something of a more durable material.

Do you remember the spanish Alfa Machine Gun? It was a proyect with bits of both the Hotchkiss and the ZB 53/37 (Besa). The feeding was a metalic belt, but not a disintegrating link one. I think that the soviet Goryunov had a similar non-disintegrating link metallic belt. Do you think that is feasible for the industry of late XIX century this kind of metallic belt? (well, at least in your AU). Of course, forget of any oiling device for your MG . Cheers.

Continuous hinged articulated belt? In 1895 America, with its brand new (to them) smokeless powders still round nosed copper jacketed bullets that were mounted in the "Russian" fashion in a semi-rimmed metallic cartridge, and with a watchmaker industry (precision tools for the pins needed between links) that was an utter joke? I am not that much of an ammunition expert, but I would say, that of the nations making machine guns at the time,

1. Britain-certainly if someone thinks of it.
2. France-most likely, but it will take them a while to learn.
3. Germans-too conservative, they will stick with canvas until their geese are cooked.
4. Russians-not until the second 5 year plan.
5. Japan-innovators, but only when they see it done. Took the US 10 years to perfect the Browning (1919-1929). The Japanese saw their first working model in 1941 and had a better one in use by 1943. US went and refitted their inventory with Japanese improvements just in time for Korea.
6. The US problem is called NIH/MSM (not invented here/make stupid mistakes). If the Yanks do see it, as they did in France 1917, they can copy. If they invent it, originally, then yes they can make it. But here's the thing. Invention they seem all right, but copying they fall short. Either they do not understand the why of the thing, or they goof it up in the detail design. Too many RTL emergency wartime examples exist for me to list, but the MG-42, the German G-7e torpedo, the Oerlikon autocannon, the HS 404 autocannon, the Bofors autocannon for Murphy sakes shows this as a national characteristic.

An articulated feeder strip, such as Mlle 1914(T) to be used in 1895 needs a consistent quality smokeless powder (which does not exist in the US), a mass production and assembly pin joint technique (which can be imported as machine tools from Britain [Bristol], so no problem there), and ideally the US military has to convert over to a steel jacketed bullet mounted Russian style in a rimless cartridge. (The 8 mm Lebel was a rimmed cartridge, but the Mauser 7 mm for this weapon was not. The 6 mm I propose to use will be rimless.) Now that is a one out of three tall order, since the US Army is still fixated on rimmed cartridges thanks to a generation of officers brought up on lever action rifles.

The US Navy CAN do it. They are radical innovators in that era, because the politicians told them they had to be. The powder problem is the actual big one. Remington or Winchester is going to have to be hand-waved as the solver. In the RTL they did not (Navy Lee 6 mm.). As for the articulated feeder strip, that is a hand wave also, but of lesser magnitude. Benet (actually Mercie) solves that around 1906. Two decades earlier, I have to have a historical reason. The Sino Japanese War comes too soon and the Russo Japanese war comes too late. What is the reason?

Is that too much of an AU stretch?

HEROES OF SPAIN:

The man responsible for the near disastrous Tenerife Campaign in this AU is Arent Schyuler Crowninshield. In the RTL he is the head of the Bureau of Navigation and serves on the General Board, during the Spanish American War. He was the hawkish opponent of the more cautious Alfred Thayer Mahan.

He first RTL proposed the Canary Islands operation as an adjunct to the attack on Manila Bay in the Philippines. That was in 1894. The US Naval War College wargamed it and gave it a fail grade. That was the start of the Crowninshield/Mahan feud, since it was Mahan who failed the plan.

Now the plan was straightforward enough. Strictly out of US experience, from the Civil War, the idea was to send an amphibious expedition to Gran Canarias; land on the east shore, south of Las Palmas, march north, storm the town and anchorage, secure same, place the fleet there and wait for the Spanish navy to show up to be sunk. After that fleet was blown out of the water, send the peace commissioners to Madrid and ask what the sale price for Cuba was.

ONI pointed out that Gran Canarias' lee shore was bristling with guns, Tercios and rocks.

New plan. Try for a windward landing on Tenerife's west coast somewhere along the north peninsula. March over Mount Mercedes onto the Laguna plain and set up siege artillery to catch the cowardly dons between the devil and the deep blue sea.

THAT plan this AU General Board approves. Idiots. Mahan is not there to argue sense to them. He's at sea with Admiral Erbin supervising the latest fleet problem. Actually Mahan is trying to find out for Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt and for himself; if Admiral Erbin is insane. Since the admiral talks to himself and to an imaginary parrot on his shoulder and keeps complaining that the topsails are not set as he ordered, Mahan has an answer.

That will be a problem. Erbin may well be insane, but aside from the imaginary parrot fixation, the man can handle a fleet in battle. There was an incident with the Mexicans that Erbin had cooly handled with gunboat diplomacy dispatch. As senior admiral and in command of the North Atlantic Squadron, he was expected to do those things. But this insanity thing had finally reached the press, and it would not look good to the public if the commander of America's main battle fleet who acted like a literal pirate, was sent forth to handle a cool tough customer like Cervera.

That meant replacement, and Alfred Mahan was not too keen on the likely replacements. George Dewey was a hothead. He might be alright for where Mahan (and Roosevelt) wanted him, in the Pacific, where ably assisted by Bradley Fiske, he was expected to do good work soon. The other two candidates were William Sampson, a "political admiral" and currently one of Navy Secretary John Long's favorites; and Winfield Scott Schley, Mahan's preference, because unlike Sampson, Schley had a track record of good staff work and actual (peacetime) expeditionary experience. The third man, James Watson, currently commanding the battle line of battleships was too junior and carried too much baggage as a Democrat to get past McKinley. Mahan was a realist. It would be Sampson, but Mahan could spoke his wheel by urging Schley, the Roosevelt man, as second in command (Scouting Force) and making sure that Watson retained direct tactical charge of the battle line. Sampson would have two competent deputies. As long as he followed current fleet doctrine and followed the fighting instructions he could not possibly screw things up as overall tactical officer commanding.

Mahan had made mistakes before, but this one would be a LULU!

=============================================

The landings go in at Tocoronte. This is a miserable inlet, suitable only because it holds a fishing village with a stout stone pier where Common Service Vessel ships can tie alongside and disgorge, men, mules and supplies.

The man running the Army side of things is Joseph Wheeler, senior Major General of Volunteers and Congressman from the Great State of Alabama. He once led the Confederate cavalry of the Army of Tennessee, CSA. McKinley needs a Confederate hero to sell the war to the American South and here is Congressman Wheeler. Actually as McKinley's wartime decisions go, (RTL or AU otherwise), Wheeler is a rare good one. He promptly demonstrates why he was such a dangerous general against the Union. He sends assault waves immediately forward as soon as the 3rd Pennsylvania and the 15th Alabama land to take two mamelons he can plainly see through the Fiske Bushnell optics of the USS Vermont. No time for reconnaissance or to set up artillery; the battleships can shell Mount Mercedes and Mount English he decides. The troops will storm the blockhouses atop those features (Fort Alcambra on Mount Mercedes and Fort Madra de Dios on Mount English).

It is costly. Two American regiments (2200 men each) are shredded by Mauser fire from entrenched Tercios, (Mainly local Tenerife militiamen) who are not the "cowardly yellow dons" who "cannot hit the broad side of a barn at fifty paces" the national guardsmen were told to expect. And when the 3rd Pennsylvania reach close quarters after strewing Mount Mercedes with dead and wounded, they discover to their horror, that the Tercios are better with bayonet, knife, club, fist and even rocks than the tough Pennsylvanians are. It takes Captain Parsons' experimental machine gun company, firing at point blank range in enfilade to clear the military crest for the final assault on the blockhouse. Of the 400 Spaniards defending, 230 are killed 167 are wounded. Three escape to carry back warnings. Mount English is worse. Here is no experimental machine gun company to support the close assault. The 15th Alabama actually disintegrates as a unit and it is the 39th Ohio that has to finish the job. Present there are 500 Spaniards. Not a one of them is taken unwounded. 311 of them are killed, a quarter of them when a 30 cm shell from the Vermont blows up the blockhouse and its ammunition dump inside it.

All Joe Wheeler says when he receives the butcher's bill; that is 540 American dead and an additional 697 wounded; is; "Get the siege mortars over the saddleback. And be quick about it!"

The 2nd New York Heavy Artillery is quick about it. A few lobbed shells into the moro south of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and a blown up battery later, and the Alcade and the military governor send a delegation forward to ask for a cease fire to negotiate terms.

The Gringos are spared the prospect of street fighting for Laguna and Santa Cruz as Joe Wheeler has the fine sense to allow the Spaniards to capitualate with honor as they understand it.

Meanwhile at sea, the harsh truth about what kind of people they are up against, slowly permeates among the bluejackets and the nervous officers who lead them, told as tales to them from the surviving wounded who come to the fleet for medical care. A sense of dread hangs like a pall among tbe previously confident naval types. Sampson, especially, is hard hit by doubts.

His doubts lead to some fumbling decisions, and those decisions almost cost the war.

=====================================

CERVERA:

Rear Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, Commander, Spanish Squadron: he does not want this war. He does not want this command. He does not want the responsibility of leading 2,500 fellow sailors to their deaths. For twenty years he has watched the Americans move from a mostly wooden hulled bark rigged fleet of oversized, badly built, poorly armed sail and steam ships; into a modern New Steel Navy that dwarfs Spain's fleet by two to one in tonnage, and five to two in shell throw weight.

Cervera is a realist. He might be the Mahan of the Armada. He has professionally published in the journals. The Americans must think so of him, for their naval officers constantly read what he writes and debate what it means in their own "Naval Proceedings". Cervera has met some of them. Frances Cooke and James Watson in particular were most impressive in their professionalism. As long as it is theory, the fellows freely discuss what ifs and maybes are. They reveal that they are more technical minded and precise in their study of the naval art than even the Germans. And they are also more close mouthed than the Russians when it comes to the actual practical matters of real navies; especially their own.

A messenger rate hands Cervera a message at his cabin door. It is five day old news, for the cables between Spain and the Cape Verde islands actually run to Dakar in Africa. Messages come from the consulate there to him, via hired dispatch boat. The opportunities for message intercepts weigh on Cervera's mind as he reads the lengthy missive. It is from that fool, Minister of Marine Segismundo Bermejo y Merelo, Getting through the bureaucratese to the plain bad news irritates Cervera. But how else is a fool to impart such news? The Infanta Maria Teresa has blown up inside Cadiz Harbor and it is apparently not an accident. The Cortez is in emergency session.

Cervera barks out in laughter. His friend, Captain Fernando Villaamil, the Armada's expert on torpedo boats has written the Directorate of Harbors and Ports several letters warning that Spain's ports and harbors were vulnerable to "infernal means" of attack. He had urged nets and booms as a security measure. Cervera endorsed those letters and passed them forward to the navy ministry. The letters had been ignored, the measures pooh poohed as too costly and unnecessary.

At least that news explained why the Americans, a notoriously impatient people, allowed the French sponsored negotiations to settle the Maine Incident, to drag on for six months. The Yanquis were making preparations of their own for war that took that much time. The Infanta Maria Teresa was doubly damnably pointed as a message and as an opening shot, a tip for tap for the Maine, but this happened in CADIZ, the practical home of the Armada!?!

There were no new orders from Sigismundo Bermejo to pair with the news about the Infanta Maria Teresa. Cervera thought about that one for a moment. Could it be, that the sinking (by laid American mines probably) of the Teresa, would shock sense into the Sagasta government? "Make Peace, You fools!" is an old sentiment among the best generals, but Cervera feels the brief wave of optimism pass. He can expect the lunatic orders as soon as the anger sets in at Madrid.

=========================================

It is another five days. This time there is more news and now the orders. The Americans were not merely satisfied with Cadiz. They went after Ferrol, too. The port is closed, while Spain seeks help from some friendly nation to clear the Hertz mines discovered in that harbor.

Orders are to proceed to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, to break up an invasion in progress. Cervera sees Mahan's hand in this situation. (In this case, Cervera, is mistaken. It is Crowninshield's reckless hand at the tiller.). Cervera crumples the letter. It would be nice if Madrid could tell him something about the enemy dispositions and strengths, and whether there would be an intact coaling anchorage in Spanish hands when he gets there. For all he knows, he might be sailing into a preplanned and well prepared United States Navy gunnery exercise with his own ships as the target sleds.

He shakes his head. He orders a captain's conference, sends for his secretary and prepares to draft a letter for his eventual court martial for this pending defeat.

=======================================

It is not as if Cervera has been sitting on his hands for six months.

He has accomplished some miracles.

a. By prodding and pleading (and in some cases private blackmail, an interesting and distasteful method to Cervera, but one that he knows how to use against people, well. He is a Spanish politician after all.); Ansaldo has come across with the annelled shells and charges for the 14 cm guns. The Cristobol Colon's main guns have been installed (though they are suspect) and fresh from Bilboa comes the Princesa de Asturias. Any hope for the Carlos V goes a glimmer because the Americans have her bottled inside their infernal mines. Vizcaya and Oquendo have their bottoms clean and boilers repaired, Pluton, Furor and Terror are ready in all respects. The ammunition, not the best condition, at least is present and the filler is explosive and not sawdust. The collier, Ferdinand Magellan, is packed with French coal. Even the Schneider torpedoes, so long a problem are supposedly working according to Villaamil.

b. Villaamil will be a problem. He, aboard Pluton, probably has seen the same dispatch from Sigismundo that Cervera just read. Fernando will argue again for a guerre de course. Scatter and make the Americans scatter to hunt the fleet down. Kill Yanqui commerce.

c. Cervera agrees. That is the sensible course now. But there are no colliers for such a plan, no coal, no neutral friends with ports prepared to look the other way, now that hopeless war is upon the Armada. There are orders, there is honor and there is death.

To Tenerife they will go.

BLOCKADE:

The Adventures of the USS Hunley and USS Fulton would not become well known until after the war, when their captains published accounts of their raids on Ferrol and Cadiz.

In the background however was the work of the fourteen submersibles of the Carp and Codfish classes. These carried on a new kind of naval war never seen before. Captains such as Andrew Harlock of the USS Chub and Harry H. Caldwell of the USS Carp soon made the waters around the island of Cuba dangerous for anyone attempting to run the McKinley proclaimed "quarantine".

In general the blockade was tedious patrol boredom marked by the occasional near surface chase (best speed as they could operate on the snort) to get ahead of, to submerge, and to torpedo the gunrunners and smugglers operating out of Jamaica, the French West Indies and surprisingly ports of the southern United States. A good third of the one hundred twelve ships (38 of them) torpedoed by US submarines during the Cuban campaign were American!

In addition to blockade duty, these boats sent ashore small parties of blue jackets along the Cuban coasts to make contact with the Renegados, (Send a Message to Garcia) or to raise merry hell with the Spanish occupiers.

The British noticed and began work on means to thwart this new form of warfare. It would come in handy for them in WW I.

Just something to tide over until the epic charge of Fernando Villaamil.

How much air support did the Spanish get from Aeropuerto Reina Sofia?

With your ships, what sort of transmission/reception ranges do you expect to get with the short masts on your ships? (Have a look at the British and German ships of the time - the masts were really tall, with lots of aerials.)

Does one know about photo-phones and does one know something about Henri Giffand?

One will then know why the US fleet can communicate up to but not much greater than 10 km with TBS and why topweight (It is heavy equipment.) means short masts.

And since this comment (see immediately above) brings it up... Certainly within his rights, someone told me to not comment on his AU or any thread he posts as the thread author. I intend to take that as a given demand and I will not so comment (as a courtesy). I do not demand the same of that person. But I* do expect that person's criticisms of my AU to be grounded in actual science and history. Which in this case the criticisms levied above are not.

Incidentally, if one bothers to do the photoelectrics history research involved, that person will find that a suitable lamp of the time can hit and vibrate the mirror detectors possible through clear air to about 14 km. That case would be proved ~ 1898 and it would be the Germans who did it. In this AU, it is the Americans who pursue the work a lot more energetically than the Germans did.

Radio in 1897? A laboratory toy. 1906... still mostly a toy. There is no way to rush it into service before it is proofed. Won't see it until 1908 in common commercial use. Only then will the navies adopt it en masse, otherwise spark gap transmitters and crude coherer receivers would have been present and in widescale use at Tsushima (1905) by both sides. The Japanese were very forward thinking and used radio for message relay from their scouts to the main fleet, but not for actual fleet maneuvers during battle. Not enough was known about the shared frequency regime to prevent signal interference. Radio signal discipline (still a problem today) was poorly understood.

As for Spanish air support. None. A slight map error easily fixed and I thank the individual who pointed out my error. That was rather nice of him.

Heroes of Spain II:

Fernando Villaamil had occasion to visit “William Cramp and Sons”, located in Philadelphia in his round the world circumnavigation in command of the Spanish ship, “Nautilus”. This Spanish naval officer was highly trained and very technically astute, having acquired his formidable skills in England during the construction of the Spanish destroyer; “Destructor”.

He could not foresee what those warships abuilding would do to Spain or to him. Or perhaps he did, and simply refused to pen those thoughts. In the RTL; the USS Gloucester, the USS Iowa, the USS New York and the USS Indiana meleeed with the Pluton, Furor and Terror off Santiago de Cuba. Perhaps it was the USS Gloucester with the former captain of the USS Maine, Richard Wainwright, in command, which riddled the Spanish ship, “Furor”, with her six pounders. Whatever the truth, the Spanish reported that Fernando Villaamil was killed by an exploding American shell that hit the Furor’s bow. He lies there in the wreck of the Furor, a true hero of Spain.

He never got the chance to employ the Whitehead torpedoes with which his destroyers were equipped. My guess is that the fish were not maintained to the degree required or the Americans in their own confused maneuvering never allowed a torpedo shot. Remember this happened in the days before torpedo gyro control, good depth sensors and sealed cycle torpedo combustion engines, so to make a controlled run count, the torpedo shots had to be extremely close, not much over 500 meters from launch ship to target. Hence; machine guns and low velocity rapid-fire small bore cannon were viable and deadly RTL defenses.

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TORPEDOES (again?):

Is this meant as your way of saying 'you are wrong, I am right'? because if it is, you failed quite hard.

- the hull has very little in common. you have no clipper bow and stern, instead you have both round. ships of the time had a rudder quite similar to that of the clippers as well, instead of the one you attached (well not attached, it is still floating a bit below your hull without connecting parts). the deepest point of such a hull was near the rudder, or underneath the propeller.
- the funnel is too small, that has quite a lot of influence on the boilers of the time.
- the superstructure has no position from which the ship can be overseen and steered.

I could go on, but it is up to you to fix things. I know you like doing things differently from historically, but try to find out why it was not done. the fact that technology was there, does not mean it is really the best thing to use.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
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