Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins
Let's keep score. Surcouf encounters a merchant with three deck guns running by itself. It's pretty even: Surcouf's two 8" guns against the frieghter's three 5" guns. However the frieghter is a very superior gun platform to Surcouf.
Although the 8" guns have longer range, Surcouf's lousy surface handling properties mean that she must be at lower range to get any hits. Let's say they both open up at 6000 yards. Surcouf is carrying only 60 shells, barely adequate to sink one and if very fortunate, two freighters. However one hit from a single shell to Surcouf's pressure hull means that the submarine can still dive but will never surface again. It will take several dozen hits from Surcouf to cripple the freighter. My money is on the freighter to sink the Surcouf without suffering a single hit.
Surcouf was fancifully built as an "underwater cruiser." Obviously the crazy French had fantasies of running gun battles between Surcouf and some cruiser out there. It would have been her last and would have lasted several minutes.
Surcouf: Frankenboat! Failure as a cruiser, failure as a submarine. Looks cool though!  |
Yep, probably a very fair assessment of how it would play out. Still would be fun to play with in the game, if it were represented anything like 'reality' just to see what it maybe could have done.
There was some weird ass **** they came up with in the 1920s, actually quite a bit into the 1940s too . . .
There was a web page I found years ago through one of my WWII game communities that I've lost the link to. It had a series of "fanciful" parody WWII technologies for each nation, each one meant to reflect the fanciful notions that each nation seemed to entertain in engineering and operational doctrine. So for example, the Japanese tech was a bicycle powered balloon lofted "bomber" that had a basket with either bombs or rabid dogs underneath.
The Soviet one was this enormous bomber with like 12 engines, etc., Wish I could find that stuff.
This Surcouf thing seems pretty good as an analogy of French interwar fantasies, sort of a Jules Verne thing
