Forts and Navies

[pgr]

So I've been thinking about river forts lately. Many a CSA player has probably noticed that an Ironclad navy tends to obliterate land guns in pretty short order. This seems to go against historical experience, as naval bombardment alone rarely silenced batteries in forts. It's been noted that a stack of guns is capped at 40 hits when engaging ships, but if you look at a the logic file, naval damage to land batteries is also limited to 40 hits.

Given that most artillery units have something like 12 hits, would it make sense to lower the cap for naval units bombarding land units. (Lower it to say 3 or 4) That way those land batteries would be much more survivable against those navy wrecking balls...

[Cromagnonman]

Usually I see my navies getting blown out of the water by field armies that deliver many dozens of hits.
Historically speaking, Fort Henry was reduced by naval gunfire, as were several forts in the Outer Banks (and those by wooden ships).

[pgr]

Well Henry was in a particularly bad position, partially flooded etc. Vicksburg, Port Hudson, DuPont at Charleston those are more typical examples of naval gunfire being pretty ineffective. Anyway, I'm just trying to stir some debate!

[Captain_Orso]

You didn't let me answer "maybe"



If you have a large force, 50 hits can be pretty evenly distributed among the heavy ships without endangering them really. The problem is that it's 50 hits regardless of the size of the force.

Ships bombarding can do so for as long as they wish, then then pull out of range. At Fort Donelson, Foote pushed his gunboats for fight until they were disabled. He could have just as easily pulled them back sooner. The results would have been the same

Besides, the damage was repaired pretty quickly.

What both Foote and Grant failed to realize, is that Foote could have sailed passed the fort, thus cutting it off, and being able to bombard from the side on which the CS batteries could not fire *doh*

The problem with bombarding a fort, especially an earthen fort like Donelson, is that you have to get a direct hit on a gun to silence it, and that's a pretty darn small target to hit at a couple hundred yards.

I haven't tried to bombard a fort in a long time, because my experience has always been that it doesn't work, and probably shouldn't. I'll have to try it out again some time.