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The Aerial Navy

Interesting discussion..

someone mentioned the WW2 bomber setup with 10 man crews of bombers. If you captain and pilot are the one in the same, it may very well end up feeling like this. Especially if airships are more about air superiority and bombing runs than shifting of troops.

For another look at a "small crew" ship, check out the Firefly series. They start out with 5 before the passengers are added. Yes, it is a "cargo" ship, but might give you an idea of what a split pilot/captain would look like even in a small crew.

As has been mentioned a few times, think redundancy. Military is about making sure the ship doesn't lose its effectiveness if a single guy gets hits by a stray bullet.

In any case, I like reading about this. I just finished a novella featuring airships quite heavily, and I realized that I just picked a 6 man crew for a cargoship out of the air (or subconciously from Firefly) without really thinking so much about it. Will make me think for further books.
 
If you want armored airships, go for a zeppelin base(rigid balloon) and build the rest of the airship on the outside of the balloon.In fact you could have some hallways pass through the balloon. To keep a battle away from one shot and done, compartmentalize the balloon.Even if it's hit you don't lose the whole bag, just the damaged sections.

Now guns aren't going to be big. In fact the largest gun on a airship will be the size of the boarding cannons on a naval ship. Able to be carried by one or two persons. Why? Recoil! A navy vessel can be overturned by firing it's larger guns, and your airship is lighter, and doesn't have the water to help absorb the impact so a large gun will not work. and reason number two works into the next consideration....

WEIGHT! Your Ariel Navy is going to be NASA level obsessed about weight. Every crewman, gun, uniform, utensil, bullet, tack, etc... will be weighed, and accounted for, and depending on mission requirements could even lead to crew being left behind or swapped out because they put a little on.

Crew: your looking at about 40 people for a "small" vessel. Captain, CO, Dedicated back-up pilot, dedicated comm, dedicated navigator, Back ups for each position, Engineer, 6 mechanics to cover shifts, Doctor, and at least 2 assistants, Dedicated support staff including Cook, aides for officers, Bosun or Quartermaster, Gunnery crew(at least 2 for each gun) and a gunnery chief, plus Midshipmen out the wazoo. Midshipmen would be underage children that act as gofers, and extra hands for maintenance, as well as lookouts since your captain isn't going to have a complete view of the area around his ship.(The bag at least will get in the way, especially if he's piloting from the back(as you suggested) which would really be more of a Command position.

OH! and Marines. The Marines would be your "ground forces" as well as your boarding parties. Figure 2 6 man rifle squads and a CO of their own. And while they are on your ship they ARE NOT part of the Navy ,and don't count as part of the 40 man number above,and have their own bunks, and areas. They will probably be trained to back up your gunners, and repel boarders, and act as MPs on board.

:D! That's it; more like a sailing ship than an army. And the lower tech you are, the more crew you need. The R101 had a crew of forty-two, including a steering coxswain and an altitude coxswain (and a meteorological officer, plus a chief wireless officer which suggests they had an assistant sparks), and was certified flyable by fifteen; but this was a civilian craft, and I can't see stewards outnumbering weapons specialists, nor comfort for passengers outweighing survival against damage caused by enemy action.

Would they really need the marines? Boarding would be an extremely hazardous operation, surely not one you would plan for?

One of the reasons that it's so much fun writing airships is how big they are. My transdimensional (Oh, and I wrote it well before the Baxter/Pratchett long earth books) one is over a kilometre in length (I was going to add a URL to some of those stories, being vain, but it seems I've not yet qualified for links/attachments); can you imagine a squadron of these? When you picture a field of mooring masts, it's much bigger than a modern airport, and you need a rail network between them for resupplying and winching down the personnel; with high winds, keeping them untangled… unless you compress down the gas, bring them all down to the ground and tether them to tent pegs. Strong tent pegs, set in concrete blocks.

Actually, the airship I mentioned is ultra high tech, remote controls and motors everywhere, and carries a crew of thirty. There again, it is a scientific/diplomatic expedition — minimum weapons.

When you release a bomb big enough to do any real destruction the craft's going to jump like a hot air balloon when you dump ballast, and probably (depending on the elasticity of the envelope) stay jumped. Not convenient for precision aiming. Tracer? Since your protection is largely keeping out of range of enemy fire, precision is critical, and it's not going to be as easy with airships as planes.

Hmm, I suppose both sides have them?
 
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Gryphos

Auror
One of the reasons that it's so much fun writing airships is how big they are. My transdimensional (Oh, and I wrote it well before the Baxter/Pratchett long earth books) one is over a kilometre in length

I can imagine, but my airships are quite a bit, actually quite a lot, smaller. The deck of an average sized military ship in my world is about the size of a large sailing boat or a small yacht, which is really the main reason for the small crew size.

There are some larger ship varieties, equating to about the size of a galleon. These would have relatively much larger crews, but these sizes of ship are rare. There are even a few super ships, which would be roughly the size of a modern warship. But only a few of these exist and are only owned by the most powerful nations.
 

Saigonnus

Auror
I am experimenting with an aerial navy in a modern fantasy I am world-building for, so they are equivalent in size to the ships we have now. My ships (since they are supposed to be "modern") are equipped long range bolt-throwers (equivalent to fireballs, ball lightning or anti-magic ammunition) and "distortion fields" that hide their presence from enemies. Commonly, they have magic-users aboard and at least a unit of shock troops on board that use gliders to raid other ships, levitation charms to save their life if they fall and some even have short-range teleportation devices for attacking beyond the conventional weapons.

In many cases the largest ones serve as floating command centers for the military activities below, or for high-altitude reconnaissance.
 
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Now for a different topic. I've been wondering about what effect an aerial navy would have on ground forces. Basically, would aerial navies such as this make standing armies obsolete?

I think every military idea in history has someone claiming this (alone with many more who ignore it and want to "fight the previous war"). Agreed, the main limits of an airship force are their cost and flying limitations, especially once everyone starts responding with antiairship weapons.

Really, nothing makes standing ground armies (is that a redundancy?) obsolete. Other forces may do more and more of the work, by swinging enough power to win part of a battle on their own terms. But history always shows you need those "boots on the ground" too-- if only because they're cheap enough that the enemy will always have some there, and your advanced forces will never root out all of them without your own ground forces finishing the job. And then they're the only way to properly hold territory once you take it.

Infantry could be terrorized by cavalry, but not when they set their spears right and picked good ground. Troops got pinned down by WWI machine guns and outraced by tanks in WWII... but the troops still did their own fighting, and they started carrying rocket launchers to deal with the tanks. The Russians swept into Afganistan with helicopters dropping strike forces into the mountains... until the Afganis got shoulder-launched Stinger missiles. Weapons change, but there are always "ground-pounders" left that soak up part of the maneuver's force and have to be dug out on the ground.
 
Two other military ideas that might apply:

World War I air power started out with scouting flights (including spotters for artillery), and from there evolved into adding bombers and fighters. If you have airships but not the real speed or wind-independence of planes, they might be used more to guide forces and less often to attack on their own.

Add to that, airships might be very cautious getting close to an enemy, since they don't have the mobility to retreat as easily (especially against the wind). I can see airships playing a sort of long-range game of chicken with each other, one force deciding how close to venture into enemy territory and watching for enemy ships (with both sides easy to see at a distance-- cloud cover permitting!) that might move in and trap them. A ship that could simply fly above the reach of enemy ships would have a real advantage, at least as long as it could handle the altitude. (Edit: up there they couldn't see much of the ground action (without longer-range magic scrying?) but they could watch for airships below and then drop to observation level.)

And of course, the more weather magic you have...
 
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Gryphos

Auror
And of course, the more weather magic you have...

Yes, I can imagine such magic being deadly effective against airships. But in my world there is no institutionalised magic or battle mages or anything like that. Magic is actually something only practiced on a small scale by occultists, and even then only the few most extremely powerful ones would be able to do anything like alter the weather. Magic is actually even outlawed by almost all governments, but that's another topic entirely.

I do really like the whole psychological warfare idea about the two fleets toying with each other at a distance, each one waiting for the other to make the first move. I can imagine there being standoffs that last whole days before the battle actually starts.
 
That's pretty much how I see it. It's part of naval tactics too: you're very careful not to risk your fleet unless you know the odds are in your favor, because ships sink so completely (unlike armies that lose a fight), and then you've wasted such an expensive asset.

If they can't control the weather, how well can they predict when the winds and clouds are coming, or even interfere with each other's probes of it? And that's the kind of hidden power that would let any side could keep someone around that gives them an edge without publicly admitting they're using magic-- which is how governments usually use "forbidden weapons."
 

Gryphos

Auror
If they can't control the weather, how well can they predict when the winds and clouds are coming, or even interfere with each other's probes of it? And that's the kind of hidden power that would let any side could keep someone around that gives them an edge without publicly admitting they're using magic-- which is how governments usually use "forbidden weapons."

They can't really predict the weather either, as obviously no things like meteorological satellites exist. The best they can do is get vague predictions of wind movement and possible direction based on current readings in other places. However, with battles like these, that knowledge, however unreliable, can become a deciding factor on where and when battles are fought. Admirals would wait until a favourable wind or lack of wind to attack. But as I said, the predictions are sketchy at best.

The forbidden weapon idea is interesting, but the thing is that the kind of magic occultists use is really small scale. Most often they can simply do basic illusions, subtle mind manipulation, stuff like that. Only a few can do advanced things like weaponised magic and physical manipulation of objects. Really, I would imagine only a small handful could change the weather.

And even then, if an occultist was that powerful, they probably couldn't care less about politics or wars and would feel no loyalty to anything other than the Occult. And then of course the governments themselves would have to trust an occultists, which I doubt any but the most determined (or forward thinking) could bring themselves to. The fear and hatred of magic runs deep in society.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
And even then, if an occultist was that powerful, they probably couldn't care less about politics or wars and would feel no loyalty to anything other than the Occult. And then of course the governments themselves would have to trust an occultists, which I doubt any but the most determined (or forward thinking) could bring themselves to. The fear and hatred of magic runs deep in society.

You would be surprised, I believe, to discover just how fast even the most pious sorts would cut a deal with the devil in a dire situation - or in all too many cases, just for a momentary advantage.

As to the motivation of the occultists, three glaringly obvious possibilities leap to mind:

1) The government has members of the occultists immediate family as hostages in a secure, secret location;

2) The government offers the occultists a pardon for the crime of being able to work magic; and

3) The occultists have a vested interest in something near or in the combat zone, and see conjuring a storm to aid one side or the other as a possible means of getting to or protecting that interest. Said item/location would be of major occult importance.
 

Gryphos

Auror
Yeah, I could definitely see any of these happening, and in fact that could make a very interesting plot point in and of itself: One side of a war managing to harness occultists to its advantage. But in any case it would be exceptionally rare and probably a move made out of desperation on the government's part. Occultists, always at risk of the noose should their crimes be discovered, go to great effort to keep their practices secret, shoving the candles under the bed when the constables come visiting. This, together with their magical abilities to avoid capture, mean very few occultists are ever actually convicted.

But regardless, should one side somehow manage to get a enough occultists to conjure storms (which would have to be quite a lot, or as said previously, one or two super powerful ones), they would be able to reign havoc on any enemy fleet.
 
Basic Illusions and subtle mind manipulation would wreak havoc on an army or another airship Captain/pilot. Heat of the battle, and he exposes his flank to a broadside, or empties his pistol into his own crew? Not to mention the occultists don't have to be willing participants. Just look at all the horrible things our government did to it's own citizens trying to get a slight advantage over the Russians, and all of a sudden those arrested occultists are training special liaison agents that are there to "observe" the battles....
 

Gryphos

Auror
Basic Illusions and subtle mind manipulation would wreak havoc on an army or another airship Captain/pilot. Heat of the battle, and he exposes his flank to a broadside, or empties his pistol into his own crew? Not to mention the occultists don't have to be willing participants. Just look at all the horrible things our government did to it's own citizens trying to get a slight advantage over the Russians, and all of a sudden those arrested occultists are training special liaison agents that are there to "observe" the battles....

Indeed, occultists would be a very potent force on the battlefield and dangerous to the world in general, which is a big part of the reason magic is outlawed, sort of an unofficial Geneva convention thing about nations, should they have access to such powers, not using them. Of course rules would get thrown out almost as soon as such an opportunity did present itself to a nation an that nation would have a huge advantage in battle. But as I said, such a thing would require that government to actually apprehend an occultist, which is something the Constabulary hardly ever manages to do.
 
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