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Ship of the Day

carmenara

carmenara

Pandora's Kitten
Storm Modder
Have you heard of a... KriegsFischKutter? War Fishing Boat?

What is that, a Sea Shepherd pirate boat?

Nope, it's an auxiliary naval patrol and escort vessel from WW2.

ham12g.jpg


There's not much info on the net, I came across this rather cutely named ship type from the in-game ship recognition manual in Silent Hunter III (GWX Mod)

They served under the German mine sweeping administration after the war - of the thousand or so built, about 20 survive today in private ownership.

No info on wikipedia... but wait, there's an article in German!

They sure make good RC boats, don't they?

12.10.2008150200.jpg







EDIT:

I couldn't resist making a video of the Kriegsfischkutter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9_tGGdNl4Q

Okay, it's not a WW2 KFK but it's a fishing sloop that went to war!
 
Nice find SWS! I don't think I had ever heard about that type of boat before. She has some pretty nasty armament for a boat that size.

Fantastic video, btw, I haven't got the chance to test out your new ship handling yet. From the video though, it looks like it adds some interesting characteristics! I just gotta get the manual finished first! :modding
 
Today's ship of the day is not really a ship unless you are a fan of animes (hint... Last Exile), where such things would not be regarded strange:

lun01.jpg


Yes, it's a WIG (Wing In Ground effect) vehicle, which is in layman's terms, a sea-skimming aircraft. You can read more about ground effect aircraft in the relevant wikipedia article, which tells you that the Russians first experimented successfully with these concepts in the Sixties, cumulating in a very impressive prototype of a carrier busting Ekranoplan with long range supersonic antiship missiles.

Lun has the firepower of a missile cruiser and a speed of an aircraft; she is a sci-fi military writer's wet dream.

Russian Ekranoplans were nothing short of impressive, and some designs had the capability to operate outside of ground effect up to about 10,000 feet. The Lun can cruise on the wavetops at 300 knots, ten times faster than a warship. She had the potential to change the face of naval warfare, if developed further. Take a look at the missiles she carried; they had impressive specifications as well, ramjet propulsion, Mach 3 capability.

Have a look at some Ekranoplan videos

But as sci-fi projects go in real life, few are really practical.

We may not ever see a flying capital ship, but it didn't stop the development of smaller, more versatile WIG aircraft such as FlightShip:

http://www.se-techno...&code=&craft=50
 
So THAT's a WIG! I always did wonder. It's part of the Collision Regulations, so I read about them, but never saw such a weird picture of them! :shock
 
Indeed; they wouldn't be able to skim over Atlantic rollers but in closed waters these things are incredible. The A-90 can even beach itself like a hovercraft and deposit cargo directly ashore!

Unfortunately they are not longer in service.

I would imagine that huge ekranoplans such as the Lun would be very vulnerable to fighter aircraft (and AWACS detection), having little maneuverability and no self defense weaponry. They may be incredibly fast for a maritime vessel, but no match for an aircraft.

But for transport WIGs this is a nonissue. It's interesting to note that the Pelican strategic airlifter concept is designed to fly in ground effect but can also be operated as a normal aircraft up to 20,000 ft.

boeing_pelican.jpg


Not a true WIG, but it shows that ground effect aircraft can be a big thing in the future. The Russians do have a 1,000 ton heavyweight challenger too. You can read about it somewhere down this page.

It contains some very scary Sino-Russian future military technologies as well, including AWACS jammers and directed-energy weaponry:

NEW LASER COUNTERMEASURE DEVICE

While the device has been in existence for several years, for the first time at MAKS the Nudelman Precision Engineering Bureau displayed its PAPV “portable automatic sighting device.” Its purpose is to blind snipers and other electro/optical devices that specifically use optical systems.


It combines a laser which can perform laser radar-like functions to find and home in on a target optical device. Then the laser produces a much more powerful impulse which an official said can harm the sniper. “You really want to hurt him” said the official. Nudelman officials professed to be unaware of a new Chinese laser device on the T-98 tank which may be able to perform the same kind of function.
Click to expand...

Give the Chinese a couple decades. They'll be as hi-tech as the current US military. And much, much larger.
 
Give the Chinese a couple decades. They'll be as hi-tech as the current US military. And much, much larger.
Click to expand...

If not, the'll tell you anyway just to keep you on your toes.
 
No ship today, but lots of strange maritime happenings here:
http://motomom.tripod.com/sea
 
Snow White Sorrow said:
Have you heard of a... KriegsFischKutter? War Fishing Boat?

What is that, a Sea Shepherd pirate boat?

Nope, it's an auxiliary naval patrol and escort vessel from WW2.

ham12g.jpg


There's not much info on the net, I came across this rather cutely named ship type from the in-game ship recognition manual in Silent Hunter III (GWX Mod)

They served under the German mine sweeping administration after the war - of the thousand or so built, about 20 survive today in private ownership.

No info on wikipedia... but wait, there's an article in German!

They sure make good RC boats, don't they?

12.10.2008150200.jpg







EDIT:

I couldn't resist making a video of the Kriegsfischkutter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9_tGGdNl4Q

Okay, it's not a WW2 KFK but it's a fishing sloop that went to war!
Click to expand...

Aye. They're used to be quite a lot around the German Occupied Channel Islands.
 
Interesting nautical web page there SWS, nice find mate! :onya
 
God knows what happened to this huge container ship:

disaster2007.Ital.Florida7.GIF


This is the blog archive I got the pic from:
http://robinstorm.blogspot.com/2007_07_16_archive.html
 
This was done to avoid any chances of boarding, I believe. It must be difficult to land this deck. :rolleyes:
 
LOL that would be a most effective deterrent, indeed.

You know, we should have modern Q-ships for "anti piracy duty".

Put a bunch of rednecks with automatic weapons into one of the upper containers, let the pirates get close, jettison the doors and let er rip!

(I'd volunteer for such duty, automatically :p )

On a more serious note - I'm actually wondering how the heck did they salvage the cargo on that thing.

The blog report says 3 containers were lost, but from the looks of it there was significant damage to the ENTIRE cargo on the aft deck, and the bottom containers were squashed like ping pong balls.

On hindsight it might have been prudent to not load containers to max height on the extremities of the ship, but you know, these days profit is everything.
 
Something to keep you occupied:

http://www.elizabethan-era.org.uk/preliminary-skirmish-with-the-spanish-armada.htm

Spanish galleons were unsinkable. Literally. A magazine explosion didn't sink one. Neither did hours of point blank cannon fire by the British.

These traits of course, have been incorporated into WBT. I will make a blog article on this later. If I manage to finish all 217 ships in WBT..
 
How fast are today's merchant ships?

It appears that gone are the days of 9 knot "slow convoys" of the Second World War; today's major cargo haulers are impressive feats of engineering on a massive scale. A vessel similar to the unlucky Trieste above apparently could cruise in excess of 25.5 knots thanks to modern technology.

Very few non-nuclear ships can cruise at such a high speed efficiently. Sure, you could sprint an Arleigh Burke way faster than 25, and for that matter the fastest warships of WW2 could sprint to 30-38 knots (or more, if you count torpedo boats), but a transglobal voyage at that speed?

Emma Maersk is a modern ultra large container vessel. She's what stocks up your country's equivalent of Wal-Mart with Chinese goods :3

emma_maersk.jpg


And surprise, she has just one engine and one shaft. Huge ones. Reason being, if you read my Economy of Scale article, that means increased reliability as you're dealing with one huge set of propulsive machinery. The big, slow pistons of a classic American V-8 motor is more efficient and reliable under heavy workload than a Toyota inline-4 which at highway speeds, might be running constantly at a very high rpm (depending on gearing).

If you're like me and ride a Japanese sports motorcycle with insanely high max RPMs, you're of course familiar with the "rocket mode" - running flat out to the redline and achieving excessive speeds but you'll burn off the whole tank of petrol in no time. Like a rocket. A "heavy, inefficient" Harley-Davidson could do the same highway speed running at a very low RPM, giving you much greater range and comfort in doing so. And more fun, because the engine won't be buzzing in your ears like a million bees the whole time.

Yes you heard me. Big can be more efficient in stressful conditions. If you drove a Toyota Prius like a BMW M3 in track conditions, the BMW's big engine will give better fuel consumption. You can read about that comedic test here and watch it here!

But back to ships - the Emma Maersk is powered by a 14-cylinder RTA96-C two stroke diesel that weighs more than 2,000 tons that generates more than 110,000 horsepower and 7 million newton metres of torque! That literally earth-moving torque turns a big propeller which runs at about 100rpm.

Here's the second benefit of using a giant slow piston engine - you don't need reduction gear to convert engine RPM to shaft RPM, which means even more efficiency and cost savings.

So you don't believe the size of this thing?

image001.jpg


Now you do. That appears to be a 6 cylinder model; double the length and then add one more cylinder for the biggest inline-14 internal combustion engine in the world.
 
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