The Equestrian Sea
USS Wisconsin
The teak planking of the battleship’s deck was pleasant to take a stroll on. Twilight was not enjoying herself, though. The fleet was underway, but there was still so much to do. She’d come out in the sun to take a break and clear her mind before going back to planning.
An open can of Coca-Cola drifted along beside her, surrounded by the purple glow of her magic. Human food generally did not agree with the ponies, but soft drinks were a strange novelty. There was only a limited supply of Coke onboard, but the sailors seemed content to share it with them.
Captain Mittal had been very willing to talk about the ship when she’d inquired about its capabilities. It was obvious that he took pride in the vessel, and cared for it very much, usually referring to it with female pronouns.
The United States of America was made up of fifty smaller areas, the states. “Wisconsin” was the name of one of them. The country also named ships after cities, influential humans, and even sometimes animals, although usually only sea creatures.
The ship Wisconsin was arguably one of the most powerful ships in the US Navy. It had its flaws, but in terms of offensive capability, there were few ships that could match it. Mittal seemed sad that it was probably reaching the end of its life. The ship had been upgraded with new equipment several times, but it was approaching fifty years of service.
Twilight looked at one of the Mark 7 turrets on the foredeck. The three gun barrels were each as large as tree trunks. The ship had three of the turrets, for a total of nine guns. Under ideal conditions, the guns together could average one shot fired every three seconds. Twilight had been below deck to the magazine, and seen the enormous shells. She couldn’t imagine how a chemical reaction from “gunpowder” could cause something so large and heavy to move.
The ship also carried a dozen smaller guns and a few other weapons that Mittal said would be useless in this world. He called them “missiles.”
Twilight finished her drink and went back to the war room, although the sailors called it a compartment, rather than a room. They had a lot of strange terms for everything: bulkhead, hatch, rack, head.
The rough details of the battle strategy had already been mapped out with the advisors Twilight had brought along. Most were experienced soldiers, and all were known to be inteligent.
Twilight hadn't limited herself to just the think tank on board, though. Princess Luna sent a letter revealing that she’d been working on a plan that attempted to minimize dragon casualties and end the fighting as quickly as possible. She called it Shock and Awe.
The idea was to attack as hard and fast as possible, hopefully scaring the survivors enough to convince them that further fighting was hopeless. The UL would much rather take prisoners than kill.
The first target on the list was an old Zebrican seaside fortress. It had stood abandoned for several years, and was in poor condition. The zebra leaders did not have any particular wish to save it, so it would be used as an example.
When the dragons began to push into Zebrica, the old fort was occupied. It had not much value as a strategic location, but it was a place to stay. The location had been mapped, and the strike had been organized. It was only a matter of time.
It was a little difficult to organize the fleet of boats that followed in the battleship’s wake. There were no radios, but the animal sailors seemed to understand semaphore flags and Morse light. One more thing to ponder, Mittal thought. All the small boats had been warned to stay clear as Wisconsin got into position. The guns had been checked thoroughly and made ready. The gunners stood by for action.
On the bridge in the predawn darkness, Mittal could feel the tension and excitement in the air. While they did perform routine target practice, Wisconsin hadn’t fired her guns in anger since the Korean War.
Twilight Sparkle stood with him, squinting in the dim light towards shore.
“I can’t even see it,” she said.
Mittal nodded. “We’re over the horizon. They can’t see us, either.”
The sun was beginning to rise as the Pioneer UAV was launched. In the Combat Information Center, Petty Officer Lemoore’s deft fingers piloted the small plane. It was a fairly short flight, and the stone and earth fortification soon came into view. Lemoore ducked low and made a close pass over the top.
Full grown dragons were ugly as sin, he thought, unlike the cute little guy who had come aboard with the ponies. He spiraled the Pioneer to a higher altitude and indicated to Fire Control that he was ready.
The three main turrets began to swing to the side, gun barrels elevating. Each gun was made to fire shells 16 inches in diameter that weighed between 1900 and 2700 pounds. To send them on their way, 655 pounds of gunpowder was shoved into each gun with a hydraulic ram. The maximum range was slightly more than twenty nautical miles.
Fire Control completed their calculations. Small radar units to track the shells in flight were turned on in order to make corrections to subsequent shots.
Mittal gave the order, and Wisconsin fired the first shot of the war.
There was an enormous explosion and a fireball appeared right in front of the bridge windows. Twilight squeaked in surprise.
“Sorry,” said Mittal. "But I did tell you it was going to be loud." To punctuate his words, a second gun fired, ejecting another shell at high speed.
Twilight was not teased for her astonished reaction, as everyone on the bridge had their attention focused outside, where the guns began to fall into a steady rhythm of thunder.
The Zebrican Coast
By the standards of dragons who were used to living in caves, the old fort wasn’t too bad. It was almost like living in a castle.
The sun was beginning to come up, bathing the stone walls in orange light. One dragon poked his head over the side, gazing out across the water. There had been rumors of a United Lands force coming to aid the zebra fighters. It looked like that wouldn’t be today. The dragon saw nothing.
He became aware of a buzzing noise. The dragon looked around, searching for the offending insect. He swatted at the air, but the noise continued.
Glancing up, the dragon caught sight of a small speck circling in the air over the fortress. He studied it for a moment, but had never seen anything of the kind before. He decided to go ask another dragon.
He had just started to move when it seemed like the whole world exploded. The dragon was blown off the wall and knocked head over heels through the fort. Seconds later, there was another blast and one of the heavy stone walls disintegrated.
The dragon picked himself up from where he had landed, dazed and injured. He could see no source of the attack, and yet it was utterly destroying the earthworks of the fort. He stretched out his wings to flee, but a boulder thrown from one of the blast craters knocked him flat.
In less than a minute, everything within a quarter of a mile of the old fortification was pulverized. There was little evidence that a structure had existed there at all, other than scattered rubble.
Only a few dragons, those that had flown away immediately after the first shell had landed, escaped the bombardment. They arrived at other dragon strongholds with compelling stories of the sneak attack that had wiped the fortification off the map.
Author note:
This is another fairly short chapter, but what comes next is going to be fairly long. It’ll probably take me until Saturday evening.
I love this story
Keep it up!
BOOM
and SHIT GOT REAL YO lol to them its like apes flinging solid explosive shit
Yeah!!
Wooo, go humans!
229443 i'm saying i'm used to 12k word chapters.
It's just one of those days where you're walking along, enjoying killing and eating innoccent zebras, and all of the sudden hell lands directly on your head.
229502 gotcha i understand ive read all the fallout stuff
"Fire the cannons!"
"Which ones?"
"ALL OF THEM!"
"Targets acquired?"
"Targets locked in!"
"FIRE!!!"
229547
It's a shitty day for someone when goddamn ALIENS are fighting along side the enemy.
Let the navy boys have their fun with the big guns
personally im looking forward to the landings
Marines all the way
Semper Fi, do or die
that is all
kthanxbai
229547
It's a shitty day for someone when goddamn ALIENS are fighting along side the enemy.
Let the navy boys have their fun with the big guns
personally im looking forward to the landings
Marines all the way
Semper Fi, do or die
that is all
kthanxbai
What's your definition of "very long" author?
spreading the armony and friendship with artillery shells since 2010
Ps: ^da fuck happened with the coments?
229652
You're gonna get your wish
229769 SQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
author you should really really really put a railgun on the ship.. make it like a secrete weapon for them or something... Railgun is the most powerful gun in the world is is able to break the sound barrier 8 times..... The U.S. is already putting them on our navy's ship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Sd_wsYBUU&feature=fvst
229916
I <3 railguns, but I don't think slapping one in this story is the best idea. The ponies are already confused by normal artillery.
...I can't wait until the dragons got acutely aware about Wisconsin's presence. Things will get ugly if one of them reached the ship
230117
No it won't.... CIWS baby. And besides, even if they did get close about all the dragons could do is char the nice teak decking. The Iowa class's armor came close to being able to repel attacks from weapons equivalent to it's own; so while dragons are big and scary, I doubt they can get through 14.5 inches of solid armor plate.
P.S. They didn't happen to bring any W23 shells along, did they?
229113 Lol k
you know the wisconsin was fitted with guns that could fire nuclear shells during the cold war. I'm not saying that the wisconsin ever had nuclear shells but the U.S. designed a nuclear shell specifically for the 16 in main gun on these Iowa Class battleships.
This is what Wisonsin is saying to dragons.
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/thumb/mlfw945.webp
230198
But early CIWS software was specifically programmed to ignore big slow targets in favour of small fast ones. Phallanx ammo storage is also very lightly armoured against fire, as is the bridge and the nearby CIC.
The chapter was a lot better then previous ones, but the updates are still coming in too fast.
230378
You're assuming, of course, that they can't reprogram the Phalanxes, manually crew them, or use the Wisconsin's 12 Mk. 28 Mod. 2 5"/38 caliber guns to lay the smack down on any approaching dragons. In reality they can do all three. The Wisconsin will be a death trap for any target approaching it, and that trap will extend far past the range of anything that can hit it. .
230458
Mr. Fett, please stop telling people what I'm going to publish before I do!
Firepower and america are things that are always and will always be associated with each other. Our military is proof of said point.
Anyways, I look forward to more, although longer chapters may be nice, however you deem them to be written shall be respected from my point of view, as long as they don't lose the good grammar I see.
230458
The SP guns are of course potentually useful here. However the mark 28 twin mounts are intended strictly as surface engagement weapons only. IF the crew has the training and IF the crew has the ammunition (and I'm not sure they have either at the time) and IF the turrets can rotate fast enough, they can try for an airborne target, but it will not be an easy shot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%22/38_caliber_gun#Types
But this is 1991 you dolt! There is no onboard capacity or knowledge to repromramme the CIWS and the capacity to 'man' them is restricted to an On/Off button. Once activated the crew has zero control or foreknowledge over what the Block 1 Phalanx actually choses to shoot at. See this story that actually features BB-63:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Dart_(missile)#Gulf_War_.281991.29
You don't get precise visual tracking until Block 1B in 1999 - eight years after this story is set.
Twilight says Go Read A History Book!
229479
We're not fast, we're not strong, we have no claws or fangs, we can't fly, and we can't use magic and just about anything has the potential ability to kill us.
Logic would say that we should have gone extinct thousands of years ago.
But who needs logic when we've got curiosity, brainpower, and firepower to make a gamer grin, and a pacifist pee themselves?
Dragon's thoughts: WHAT THE FU-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!
249451
"We poison our land and air to weed out the weak! We detonate atomic weapons in our only biosphere! We nailed our God to a stick! Don't [ ] with the human race!"
-Anonymous
230269
Now that's an interesting thought...
311999
We are the most dangerous thing on the face of this planet. In the universe...eerrrnope! Until we reach the day when we can freaking destroy whole galaxies in a second, the human race can and might be fucked with by the universe.
What a great first impression humans made with dragons.
230269
Doesn't really have to have nuclear shells. The Wisconsin was equipped to fire Tomahawk Cruise missiles.
One of the variants of the Tomahawk was the BGM-109A Tomahawk Land Attack Missile - Nuclear.
Which mounted a W80 nuclear warhead. Which is not to say that the USS Wisconsin was nuclear armed during 1991, but the point is, it certainly COULD have been...
America...F**K YEAH!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj-15O-BTDw&feature=fvwrel
Ok, so it's not technically the Wisconsin, but that's sure as hell what it would look like!
Dragons get up after the Bombardment? What the fuck.?
Those dragons should be blood stains on the walls.
231561
Sorry, but it's you that should check your facts. SP means Single Purpose - i.e. for surface engagements. It was the DP (Dual Purpose) mounts that could do both. And as your link states, the twin mounts on the Destroyer Leader ships is of the SP type. However, for battleships the twin 5" mounts were Dual Purpose. See here, for instance. And there's no reason the ship wouldn't be carrying time-fuzed or proximity fuzed shells for its primary AA weaponry.
Anyway, the story is very good so far, totallynotabrony, though the ROF of the guns would generally be given as 2 to 2.5 rounds/minute/gun rather than the cumulative time-averaged figure you gave.
(I had a pic with a navy BB opening fire in my list but sadly it went missing so have this instead:)
FIRE EVERYTHING
fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/093/d/1/battleship_by_diatomicdnb-d4uw587.gif
"Little value" or "It didn't have much value"
perfect-flow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/battleships-hit1.jpg
Well, it looks like square Z1 was a hit. Now I know why it's plausible that you can't see the enemy fleet in Battleship - the two fleets are really, really far away!
750457 No. They all died, the ones that lived flew away after the first hit.
1920638 Is this the one?
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2e/Uss_iowa_bb-61_pr.jpg/220px-Uss_iowa_bb-61_pr.jpg
Or this?
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/BB61_USS_Iowa_BB61_broadside_USN.jpg/250px-BB61_USS_Iowa_BB61_broadside_USN.jpg
I like the first one.
Those dragons faced the destructive power of the USS Wisconsin.
lol nice and as one might say BOOM
Swimming Pool Makers Away!
Interesting point in the comments, any chance the Wisconsin was carrying tactical nukes, Either as shells or missle warheads, even as a Top Secret plan B?
The US made it plain what was going to rain down on Iraq as a response to any undisputed use of chemical weapons on US troops in Desert Storm. The question would be whether the Air Force or the Navy would win the toss on who got to deliver canned sunshine first if that happened...
On a side note, the Tomahawk missles used for the current GWOT have entirely been guided by GPS satellites. Anyone remember if Tomahawks in this timeframe were GPS, or inertial guidance/terrain following radar guided?
3663162 They would still have to get the terrain data from somewhere. I don't know if they had any backup systems or if the ship could target missiles on its own without the help of national-level systems. So I just left their usage out of this story.
O RLY? There was a fort there?
Because only REAL men use 16-in cannons
"Gunner."
"Sir?"
"Do you see that fort?"
"Yessir."
"I don't like it."
"Understood, sir."