Drakafic discussion forum and submarine question

[Coiler]

First of all:

Since Divine Salamis seems to have died, I've decided to try and make a new Drakafic discussion forum, located here. Anyone involved with Drakafic is welcome to use it, though there are no posts or topics in the Drakafic related forums as of now.

Second:

Was the Drakan submarine campaign against Allied commerce any more or less successful than the similar OTL German U-Boat campaign?[/url]

[MKSheppard]

Since Divine Salamis seems to have died, I've decided to try and make a new Drakafic discussion forum, located here.

oooh thanks.

Was the Drakan submarine campaign against Allied commerce any more or less successful than the similar OTL German U-Boat campaign?[/url]

Not really. But then again, the Draka never held any great hopes for starving out Europe or Britain, unlike the Germans. Europe's internal rail lines and the smallness of the english channel mean that it's easy to supply food to all parts of it.

What the submarine campaign does is force the allies to institute convoying, a huge timewaster in terms of transport efficiency, and build specialized ASW ships. All this is manpower and materials which could be used directly against the Draka.

Allied wise; the Allied submarine campaign against the draka is mainly concentrated in the Med; attacking and sinking the transports the draka are sending from North Africa to Italy to support their army; and attacking Drakian coastal shipping like luggers (I know they have a vast railroad network along with shipping canals, but there's going to be a lot of stuff which is going to move coastal wise on tramps).

[Sidewinder]

Are you guys talking about the Draka in the stories you write, or the ones in S. M. Stirling's original novels? If you're talking about your stories, can you tell me how successful Drakan submarine warfare was in Stirling's novels?

[KlavoHunter]

First of all:

Since Divine Salamis seems to have died, I've decided to try and make a new Drakafic discussion forum, located here. Anyone involved with Drakafic is welcome to use it, though there are no posts or topics in the Drakafic related forums as of now.

Just as I started using a private forum here on SDN to do it...

Second:

Was the Drakan submarine campaign against Allied commerce any more or less successful than the similar OTL German U-Boat campaign?[/url]

In the Atlantic, I would guess that it was less effective than the equivalent German U-boat campaign. However, the Draka have other fronts to be fighting on as well, such as the Mediterranean. It would be child's play for the Draka to flood the Med with relatively small mass-produced submarines.

Are you guys talking about the Draka in the stories you write, or the ones in S. M. Stirling's original novels? If you're talking about your stories, can you tell me how successful Drakan submarine warfare was in Stirling's novels?

Like all things related to Draka effectiveness in Stirling's novels, take the effectiveness of the most effective nation in WW2 in that area of war, and then triple it to obtain how good the Draka were at it.

In 1948, the Alliance was deploying hydrogen fuel cell-powered submarines.

This is irrelevant, however, as the Draka were prosecuting a land war against German-dominated Eurasia, and were at no time at war with the United States or Britain. They had nobody to perform commerce raiding against. Therefore, I imagine that the Draka never really engaged in submarine warfare (Though it's possible to believe that some ridiculously advanced Draka ubersub sailed into the North Sea on a daring raid and sank an ahistorical H-class battleship...)




If we talk about the Draka here on SDN, it's almost certainly DrakaFic.

[Coiler]

oooh thanks.

You're welcome.

snip descriptions of submarine operations

Makes sense.

What doesn't make sense is that the Draka made a class of steam powered submarine cruisers. Did the K-class submarine not exist in Drakaficverse?

[MKSheppard]

What doesn't make sense is that the Draka made a class of steam powered submarine cruisers.

Actually it makes perfect sense....for them.

They have a mania for steam, so why not logically extend it to submarines?

[Coiler]

Actually it makes perfect sense....for them.

They have a mania for steam, so why not logically extend it to submarines?

Further proof that the Draka are completely insane......

[KlavoHunter]

Now that's unfair to say - in this timeline, steam engines were far better-developed for far longer than OTL. The mass-production of Internal Combustion Engines was a post-WW1 innovation by Ford, who combined their already-successful autosteamer production lines with the IC Engines they had been using for airplanes.

The Draka's use of steam engines isn't a foolish mistake of obsolete technology, it's simply something they have invested in deeply and have an infrastructure for it that's been very heavily built-up.

[Coiler]

Now that's unfair to say - in this timeline, steam engines were far better-developed for far longer than OTL. The mass-production of Internal Combustion Engines was a post-WW1 innovation by Ford, who combined their already-successful autosteamer production lines with the IC Engines they had been using for airplanes.

The Draka's use of steam engines isn't a foolish mistake of obsolete technology, it's simply something they have invested in deeply and have an infrastructure for it that's been very heavily built-up.

I wasn't calling them completely insane for using steam engines in general-I was calling them insane for using them on a submarine, with the result that it becomes "Not a very happy craft underwater".

[Big Orange]

The Drakians using steam power is not quite as bad as the Nazis mainly using fucking horses for logistics across Russia (steam engines for road vehicles may sound wacky and archaic, but the Drakian steam engines were developed past the 1910s, and perhaps had a few advantages above mainstream combustion engines powered by petrolium).

[Sea Skimmer]

The K class wasn’t so bad in terms of design (especially compared to other WW1 subs which all truly sucked) as in employment, trying to combine squadrons of surfaced submarines, cruisers and battlecruisers was never going to work. For the Draka subs steam power is useful because they don’t have much of a battlefleet, and they need a submarine that can outrun a 30knt battleline (which might cruise at speeds as high as 24knts) to gain an attack position.

The fastest diesel subs in OTL could only make about 23 knts surfaced which was sufficient to deal with a 20knt battleline, but not faster ships. Those Jap boast that could make 23 knts had a lot the same problems a steam sub will have too, mainly high diving times, crap underwater maneuverability and generally excessive size.

Ultimately a steam powered sub is a pretty bad idea, but this wouldn’t have been fully apparent in the interwar period. Every last navy in OTL after all underestimated the effect of air power, which among other things suddenly made a 3-5 minute submarine diving time completely suicidal.

[Coiler]

Thank you all for telling me this. I guess hindsight is 20/20 after all. :p

[Coiler]

Sorry if this would be considered necromancy, but I currently can't access the Drakafic index at the moment. Can anyone else do so or is something wrong with the server?

[KlavoHunter]

It's not necromancy, the corpse is still fresh enough for Ein to bugger.


Check Shep's sig for the most up-to-date links to the WB and such, as we're re-organizing this stuff.