Not when they're on fire. I'd say if it was Cold War equipped with full ordinance, a Coast Guard cutter with helicopter complement would destroy before they even got within visual range of the wessel.
thats like millimiter thick "plate", big ships have thick hulls, 30mm HE is basically anti-aircraft ammo, you need AP to have a snowballs chance in hell
1 year ago
Anonymous
Modern naval guns have programmable shells that allow you to set fuse delay and penetration values. If you want straight AP they can punch through reinforced steel hull, so I think some 6x6 boards aren't going to really phase them much.
Any modern destroyer probably has a steel hull that can shrug off 1500s cannon balls. It could just drive around and ram every ship since it is vastly faster than a sail boat.
Wooden warships were pretty fricking sturdy. Your modern warship would have to stand off or everyone would be murdered by boarders, so it really is a shell availability problem.
>boarders
how exactly do you do this to a ship that is moving up to 30 knots regardless of wind direction ? the wake of some bigger capital ships would probably capsize half that armada
>Any modern destroyer >ram every ship since it is vastly faster than a sail boat.
usually you don't want to ram anything bigger than yourself because you're only going to do it once
Whatever the smallest US warship that can resist 16th century naval cannons is
some of these boats are pretty wimpy when it comes down to it even when they're made of metal, meanwhile the Monitor from the civil war fought the Merrimack to a standstill so that's a guaranteed winner there as long as its got the ammunition reserves
So you can use a smaller boat. It's not like they're going to be able to hit a modern boat traveling at speed.
Whatever the smallest ship is which can mount a .50 cal loaded up with blue tips would absolutely wreck the armada. Pepper a ship with a belt and there's now 100 fires going, move onto the next one.
way too small
a coast guard cutter with a 76mm would work pretty well, though. i guess both LCS are smaller than those practically so probably those.
machineguns might be bad but those ships were made to fight with and against cannons
>but those ships were made to fight with and against cannons
They were also floating tinderboxes: a bunch of wood, natural fiber rope, everything waterproofed with tar, and gunpowder all over the place. Incendiary ammo would be bad fricking news, even if couldn't penetrate the hull.
how much 50 cal is typically loaded on a cutter? im assuming this scenario is a "ship-isekai"
the old ships would definitely retreat with losses, but if they pushed their advantage, with a smart plan, they could sink or seize the cutter.
A Canadian MCDV with only the .50 cals and the C8s would run circles around it and frick the crew on the upper decks and masts. The only issue would be running out of ammo but then you could ram the frickers stern first.
lmao. like those old ass ships weren't already taking on water by the fact of existing.
Joseph Conrad, probably THE author of the sea, in “Youth,” talks about about a storm, with water coming through the hatches, through the planking seams, through deck leaks, and the soaking that the cargo of coal received then causing spontaneous combustion. To probably misquote:
“It was our fate on that ship to pump. First we pumped water out of her for our lives to keep her afloat, then we had to pump water into her for our lives to stop being burnt to death.”
And from Stan Rodgers, “Barrett’s Privateers:”
“We were 91 days to Montego Bay, Pumping like madmen all the way.”
Says it all, really.
Crew slept in hammocks in the older ships, in the navy the hammocks were slung over the guns. In combat the hammocks, bundled up like sausages, were racked along the rails to absorb musket fire and splinters. The officers had bunks, in tiny cramped cabins. Later on, in the era of the clippers, thanks to the Merchant Seaman’s Act, the crew had narrow cramped bunks in the foc’sle. Since the hawse pipes for the anchor chain came through the foc’sle, and were imperfectly waterproofed, chain is not easy to seal off, in heavy weather the foc’sle was commonly awash.
And what were the men doing? Log excerpts are enlightening:
“August 15th: 0230, lost (first) Mate and eight washed from the main topsail yard. Put Second (mate) and five in number 2 boat, wore ship for a lee.
0435, recovered all personnel, wind remains hurricane force, South East.
Cape Horn bears 150 miles due North.”
Think about it, read between the lines. No lights, no engine, in the middle of the Southern Winter, hurricane force (64 knots plus,) 150 miles South of Cape Horn. A sail made from damn near bullet proof frozen canvas being beaten into submission by men in likely bare feet standing on a one inch steel wire foot-rope 45 feet out on a topsail yard, 50 feet above the ocean are suddenly swept over board by a huge wave.
The Captain sails backwards and forwards to create a wave break, launches a boat, signing his own death warrant if he does not get his crew back as he no longer has enough crew to work the ship, and gets them all back.
The insurance company actually criticised the Captain for going back for the nine men, as they considered his action had jeopardised the cargo.
ripped from quora because i cant be bothered.
> The above results indicate that after coal is immersed in water for a long time, the pore volumes and specific surface areas of the mesopores and micropores decrease, while those of mesopores and macropores increase, additionally, average pore diameters increase substantially. This resulted in the development of pore channels in coal, enhanced connectivity, enhanced oxygen adsorption and circulation capacities, enhanced oxidation, and increased risk of spontaneous combustion.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c00521
huh
Still it may increase the chances, unless salt water is different again
probably the legion wins. they have access to plenty of catapults, fire, battering rams, etc, all the need to do is not get blown up before you runout of shells
The most badass would be PT-658 (The last operational PT boat left in the world, most were decommissioned right after the war because wood ships are expensive as shit to maintain)
depends what you mean by defeat, to actually sink them probably one of the early dreadnoughts or a late predreadnought. wooden warships are fairly hard to sink and ammo stowage is a concern.
to kill enough people and drive the rest off in disorder, a single ww2 destroyer could probably manage
A Gearing or Fletcher would be fricking devastating. I would like to see an Atlanta square off.
For modern? I Mean, the 57mm bofors gun alone on a Freedom-class LCS would be absolutely devastating beyond the range of the armada in a multitude of sea states. Shit, a PC-461 Sub chaser would probably shit out enough firepower to cripple the armada at over 1000y.
>the spanish stole so much gold that some of their shitty little boats sank under the immense weight on the journey home, they stole so much gold they could have built a cathlel cathedral out of solid gold.... And they are still poor
Literal inbred moron absolute power monarchs spending like mad for literal insane shit followed by LE COMMUNISM giving the nation's entire gold/treasure stockpile to the Soviets in exchange for shitty arms (and losing the civil war anyways) kinda does that to a nation's finances.
Spain is just a lazy country historically. Nearly half the days of the calendar year were taken up by the feast days of Saints and other holy days where you weren't supposed to be doing work, either resting or eating or partying or whatever the given holiday observances called for. Combine this with the average European peasant only working about 6 hours total per day between naps, small meals, and little day to day crap and Spaniards probably only worked maybe a quarter as much as we do today, if even.
As for the nobles and royalty, they were plagued by a different problem: being inbred morons unable to function without dedicated tard wranglers. I forget if it was picrel or another monarch but one king of Spain was so moronic he couldn't feed himself, he had to be fed by his servants like an adult baby so he wouldn't drown in his soup bowl or something.
>Nearly half the days of the calendar year were taken up by the feast days of Saints and other holy days where you weren't supposed to be doing work
That's just your average medieval kingdom.
Spain is just a lazy country historically. Nearly half the days of the calendar year were taken up by the feast days of Saints and other holy days where you weren't supposed to be doing work, either resting or eating or partying or whatever the given holiday observances called for. Combine this with the average European peasant only working about 6 hours total per day between naps, small meals, and little day to day crap and Spaniards probably only worked maybe a quarter as much as we do today, if even.
As for the nobles and royalty, they were plagued by a different problem: being inbred morons unable to function without dedicated tard wranglers. I forget if it was picrel or another monarch but one king of Spain was so moronic he couldn't feed himself, he had to be fed by his servants like an adult baby so he wouldn't drown in his soup bowl or something.
catholicism and it's consequences....better than being a prot npc though
Cyclone class, easy. Pretty much the smallest haze grey ship we had until a year or so ago, but I'll still count it. Next biggest combat vessel is something like the Ticonderoga, but that's a bloodbath.
Spanish armada was ~150 ships, with roughly half of them galleons or equivalent. Stock loadout for a Mk38 is two packs of 200 rounds, but that number could easily be increased. It's got ~500 yards on the absolute maximum effective range of 1500's era cannons.
You're going to need explosive proximity rounds. Modern shells would go through wooden ships.
During the Battle of Hainan Island in 1949 for example, when the CCP/PLA made the invasion using 300 traditional wooden junks, the KMT Corvette that patrolled the island moved in to intercept them. While the corvette's guns were able to kill men & equipment on the ships, its shells went cleanly through the hulls leaving tiny repairable holes. In desperation PLA soldiers unpacked mountain howitzers and fired on the Corvettes, managing miraculously to drive it away.
Well, there are several issues here. A modern ship might actually be damaged by cannon balls given that they're not particularly well armored, so it would have to be able to stay out of range, which might exceed a mile if we go by cannons from that era. I think grape shot had a range of about 400.
Second, a modern ship would have to have armaments strong enough to actually sink those ships in just a few shots, while also having enough ammo to sink something like 130+ ships, while, as mentioned above, staying at a safe range.
Basically, you'd need something with a proper cannon and enough ammo. A patrol boat that would have to get close would likely get shredded, simply due to the volume of fire that would come at it, and a cannon ball would rip through it, while grape shot would easily shred the crew to pieces.
Just like in the real world, just wait in the port for the storm to be over, the Spanish think they command to the wind and arrogantly stay in the sea.
Anything with a 50mm or bigger cannon and enough ammo for 2 shots per ship.
You don't even need to sink them all, when they are taking direct hits from 4km and can't return fire or outrun the attacker they will surrender.
Technically, the USS Constitution is still in service, although I expect her crew would need more than a little practice time with black-powder smoothbores.
Hear me out, though: the Spanish galleons of 1589 were slower than the English fleet even then, and the Constitution has a hull design from around 200 years later. She's a frigate that can make 13 knots under sail, and was designed as kind of a sail-age dreadnought: 44 guns of sufficient calibre to curbstomp any vessel of a certain class or below, plus enough speed to handily outrun threats larger than that threshold.
I certainly can't prove it empirically, but I wonder if the Constitution could prove a credible threat over enough time, picking off galleons in hit-and-run attacks.
>but I wonder if the Constitution could prove a credible threat over enough time, picking off galleons in hit-and-run attacks.
depends what kind of cannons we are facing, there are many types of black powder guns, ranging from a shot every five minutes to shots per minute
Whatever the smallest US warship is.
I'd wager the smallest ship wouldn't have enough ordnance to actually sink dozens of ships.
you would be really surprised to see what explosive autocannon rounds do to wooden hulls at the waterline
You are apparently unaware that wooden ships will float even with a hole at the waterline.
But they are disabled and defeated. OP said defeat, not sink.
Not when they're on fire. I'd say if it was Cold War equipped with full ordinance, a Coast Guard cutter with helicopter complement would destroy before they even got within visual range of the wessel.
This, plus age of sail warships are FULL of gunpowder. Modern autocunnon precision + range will make great fireworks.
>what explosive autocannon rounds do to wooden hulls at the waterline
nothing at all
I beg to differ
?t=53
>inb4 not a naval autocannon
I know but footage of 57mm or 45mm hitting wooden anything is practically nonexistent.
thats like millimiter thick "plate", big ships have thick hulls, 30mm HE is basically anti-aircraft ammo, you need AP to have a snowballs chance in hell
Modern naval guns have programmable shells that allow you to set fuse delay and penetration values. If you want straight AP they can punch through reinforced steel hull, so I think some 6x6 boards aren't going to really phase them much.
Any modern destroyer probably has a steel hull that can shrug off 1500s cannon balls. It could just drive around and ram every ship since it is vastly faster than a sail boat.
Wooden warships were pretty fricking sturdy. Your modern warship would have to stand off or everyone would be murdered by boarders, so it really is a shell availability problem.
>boarders
how exactly do you do this to a ship that is moving up to 30 knots regardless of wind direction ? the wake of some bigger capital ships would probably capsize half that armada
>Any modern destroyer
>ram every ship since it is vastly faster than a sail boat.
usually you don't want to ram anything bigger than yourself because you're only going to do it once
Whatever the smallest US warship that can resist 16th century naval cannons is
some of these boats are pretty wimpy when it comes down to it even when they're made of metal, meanwhile the Monitor from the civil war fought the Merrimack to a standstill so that's a guaranteed winner there as long as its got the ammunition reserves
Any modern ship would sail circles around anything from 16th century. Outside it range.
So yeah, its all down to how much ammo you carring.
Why enter their gunfire range? They've got maybe 2000 yards on a good day. Sit 20km away and pelt them with radar directed 3 inch HE.
So you can use a smaller boat. It's not like they're going to be able to hit a modern boat traveling at speed.
Whatever the smallest ship is which can mount a .50 cal loaded up with blue tips would absolutely wreck the armada. Pepper a ship with a belt and there's now 100 fires going, move onto the next one.
1 ironclad.
I would imagine a small coastguard cutter with a .50csl loaded with API would work
way too small
a coast guard cutter with a 76mm would work pretty well, though. i guess both LCS are smaller than those practically so probably those.
machineguns might be bad but those ships were made to fight with and against cannons
>but those ships were made to fight with and against cannons
They were also floating tinderboxes: a bunch of wood, natural fiber rope, everything waterproofed with tar, and gunpowder all over the place. Incendiary ammo would be bad fricking news, even if couldn't penetrate the hull.
how much 50 cal is typically loaded on a cutter? im assuming this scenario is a "ship-isekai"
the old ships would definitely retreat with losses, but if they pushed their advantage, with a smart plan, they could sink or seize the cutter.
Can you imagine?
Would be a good time travel movie honestly.
Defeats the entire Spanish armada*
Any with an autocannon and enough ammo.
Explosive shells (Palliser) rendered wood ships obsolete.
A Canadian MCDV with only the .50 cals and the C8s would run circles around it and frick the crew on the upper decks and masts. The only issue would be running out of ammo but then you could ram the frickers stern first.
Uss johnston
Not a fair comparison considering the boats couldn’t get within 1 mile of a modern warship
1 scuba diver with a power drill
lmao. like those old ass ships weren't already taking on water by the fact of existing.
Joseph Conrad, probably THE author of the sea, in “Youth,” talks about about a storm, with water coming through the hatches, through the planking seams, through deck leaks, and the soaking that the cargo of coal received then causing spontaneous combustion. To probably misquote:
“It was our fate on that ship to pump. First we pumped water out of her for our lives to keep her afloat, then we had to pump water into her for our lives to stop being burnt to death.”
cont-
And from Stan Rodgers, “Barrett’s Privateers:”
“We were 91 days to Montego Bay, Pumping like madmen all the way.”
Says it all, really.
Crew slept in hammocks in the older ships, in the navy the hammocks were slung over the guns. In combat the hammocks, bundled up like sausages, were racked along the rails to absorb musket fire and splinters. The officers had bunks, in tiny cramped cabins. Later on, in the era of the clippers, thanks to the Merchant Seaman’s Act, the crew had narrow cramped bunks in the foc’sle. Since the hawse pipes for the anchor chain came through the foc’sle, and were imperfectly waterproofed, chain is not easy to seal off, in heavy weather the foc’sle was commonly awash.
And what were the men doing? Log excerpts are enlightening:
“August 15th: 0230, lost (first) Mate and eight washed from the main topsail yard. Put Second (mate) and five in number 2 boat, wore ship for a lee.
0435, recovered all personnel, wind remains hurricane force, South East.
Cape Horn bears 150 miles due North.”
Think about it, read between the lines. No lights, no engine, in the middle of the Southern Winter, hurricane force (64 knots plus,) 150 miles South of Cape Horn. A sail made from damn near bullet proof frozen canvas being beaten into submission by men in likely bare feet standing on a one inch steel wire foot-rope 45 feet out on a topsail yard, 50 feet above the ocean are suddenly swept over board by a huge wave.
The Captain sails backwards and forwards to create a wave break, launches a boat, signing his own death warrant if he does not get his crew back as he no longer has enough crew to work the ship, and gets them all back.
The insurance company actually criticised the Captain for going back for the nine men, as they considered his action had jeopardised the cargo.
ripped from quora because i cant be bothered.
>copypastes from quora
>answer is totally irrelevant
it's not totally irrelevant but he could have literally just said "they had pumps so drill divers wouldn't work"
>and the soaking that the cargo of coal received then causing spontaneous combustion.
How does soaked coal spontaneously combust?
> The above results indicate that after coal is immersed in water for a long time, the pore volumes and specific surface areas of the mesopores and micropores decrease, while those of mesopores and macropores increase, additionally, average pore diameters increase substantially. This resulted in the development of pore channels in coal, enhanced connectivity, enhanced oxygen adsorption and circulation capacities, enhanced oxidation, and increased risk of spontaneous combustion.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c00521
huh
Still it may increase the chances, unless salt water is different again
What is the smallest tank that could defeat the Legio I Germanica?
I wonder how much ammo you can fit inside one of these.
probably the legion wins. they have access to plenty of catapults, fire, battering rams, etc, all the need to do is not get blown up before you runout of shells
You wouldn't need shells to kill the legion, just run them over like they're chinese protestors/PLA troopers
Whichever can run over the most.
But 120mm canister against shield wall formations must be pretty devastating.
The most badass would be PT-658 (The last operational PT boat left in the world, most were decommissioned right after the war because wood ships are expensive as shit to maintain)
God will blow his wind, and they will scatter.
pontoon biplane. drop 1 tungsten rod at terminal velocity through each of their oldtimey gunpowder magazines. tacoBlack folk go bye bye
gunpowder is shock-stable, you'd just punch a hole in the ship.
depends what you mean by defeat, to actually sink them probably one of the early dreadnoughts or a late predreadnought. wooden warships are fairly hard to sink and ammo stowage is a concern.
to kill enough people and drive the rest off in disorder, a single ww2 destroyer could probably manage
A Gearing or Fletcher would be fricking devastating. I would like to see an Atlanta square off.
For modern? I Mean, the 57mm bofors gun alone on a Freedom-class LCS would be absolutely devastating beyond the range of the armada in a multitude of sea states. Shit, a PC-461 Sub chaser would probably shit out enough firepower to cripple the armada at over 1000y.
Zumwalt can't, which is kinda funny. Maybe as a ram.
Once they get HELs it's Joever for the Armada
>the spanish stole so much gold that some of their shitty little boats sank under the immense weight on the journey home, they stole so much gold they could have built a cathlel cathedral out of solid gold.... And they are still poor
Literal inbred moron absolute power monarchs spending like mad for literal insane shit followed by LE COMMUNISM giving the nation's entire gold/treasure stockpile to the Soviets in exchange for shitty arms (and losing the civil war anyways) kinda does that to a nation's finances.
Plus (supposedly) the nobility thought that work was something only for the poor, leading to a lazy, impotent ruling class.
No amount of money can fix laziness.
Spain is just a lazy country historically. Nearly half the days of the calendar year were taken up by the feast days of Saints and other holy days where you weren't supposed to be doing work, either resting or eating or partying or whatever the given holiday observances called for. Combine this with the average European peasant only working about 6 hours total per day between naps, small meals, and little day to day crap and Spaniards probably only worked maybe a quarter as much as we do today, if even.
As for the nobles and royalty, they were plagued by a different problem: being inbred morons unable to function without dedicated tard wranglers. I forget if it was picrel or another monarch but one king of Spain was so moronic he couldn't feed himself, he had to be fed by his servants like an adult baby so he wouldn't drown in his soup bowl or something.
>Nearly half the days of the calendar year were taken up by the feast days of Saints and other holy days where you weren't supposed to be doing work
That's just your average medieval kingdom.
catholicism and it's consequences....better than being a prot npc though
>consequences....better than being a prot npc though
Yeah ok Kyle
yeah exactly like that
A safe bet would be any ww2 era light cruiser, lots of small guns, lots of ammo and some actual armor instead of the cuckluminum modern ships use
Cyclone class, easy. Pretty much the smallest haze grey ship we had until a year or so ago, but I'll still count it. Next biggest combat vessel is something like the Ticonderoga, but that's a bloodbath.
Spanish armada was ~150 ships, with roughly half of them galleons or equivalent. Stock loadout for a Mk38 is two packs of 200 rounds, but that number could easily be increased. It's got ~500 yards on the absolute maximum effective range of 1500's era cannons.
You're going to need explosive proximity rounds. Modern shells would go through wooden ships.
During the Battle of Hainan Island in 1949 for example, when the CCP/PLA made the invasion using 300 traditional wooden junks, the KMT Corvette that patrolled the island moved in to intercept them. While the corvette's guns were able to kill men & equipment on the ships, its shells went cleanly through the hulls leaving tiny repairable holes. In desperation PLA soldiers unpacked mountain howitzers and fired on the Corvettes, managing miraculously to drive it away.
A screw-driven US civil war era frigate could probably clap the cheeks of most of that armada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manila_Bay?wprov=sfla1
Th US has done it before
wouldn't it run out of ammo and get boarded?
I bet a Coast Guard cutter could do it.
>57mm Bofors
>8.5km effective range
>220 rpm
>small enough ammo to carry lots
Well, there are several issues here. A modern ship might actually be damaged by cannon balls given that they're not particularly well armored, so it would have to be able to stay out of range, which might exceed a mile if we go by cannons from that era. I think grape shot had a range of about 400.
Second, a modern ship would have to have armaments strong enough to actually sink those ships in just a few shots, while also having enough ammo to sink something like 130+ ships, while, as mentioned above, staying at a safe range.
Basically, you'd need something with a proper cannon and enough ammo. A patrol boat that would have to get close would likely get shredded, simply due to the volume of fire that would come at it, and a cannon ball would rip through it, while grape shot would easily shred the crew to pieces.
Just like in the real world, just wait in the port for the storm to be over, the Spanish think they command to the wind and arrogantly stay in the sea.
Anything with a 50mm or bigger cannon and enough ammo for 2 shots per ship.
You don't even need to sink them all, when they are taking direct hits from 4km and can't return fire or outrun the attacker they will surrender.
unironically a RIB, just boat around in front of them and shoot them just out of their range/speed like this
Technically, the USS Constitution is still in service, although I expect her crew would need more than a little practice time with black-powder smoothbores.
Hear me out, though: the Spanish galleons of 1589 were slower than the English fleet even then, and the Constitution has a hull design from around 200 years later. She's a frigate that can make 13 knots under sail, and was designed as kind of a sail-age dreadnought: 44 guns of sufficient calibre to curbstomp any vessel of a certain class or below, plus enough speed to handily outrun threats larger than that threshold.
I certainly can't prove it empirically, but I wonder if the Constitution could prove a credible threat over enough time, picking off galleons in hit-and-run attacks.
>but I wonder if the Constitution could prove a credible threat over enough time, picking off galleons in hit-and-run attacks.
depends what kind of cannons we are facing, there are many types of black powder guns, ranging from a shot every five minutes to shots per minute