Brass Napoleon Award Were Confederate Ironclads Worth The Effort/Cost?

The point being, that the few Confederate ironclads that were finished, had almost no affect on US water born logistics. The owned and chartered fleets grew at a geometric rate. They defended a few hard points in the Confederacy, but they were noticeably absent during the US joint operation to capture Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The resources were not spent to organize and support a successful invasion of the north, which was probably the only way the Confederacy could win the war. The ironclads were part of the strategy of outlasting the US. History has granted that strategy an undeserved credibility. Part of my response is that any Confederacy that would have somehow survived the US, would have had a very limited prospect of recovery. Since the US industrial base was untouched, a second war was inevitable. As momentum towards the abolition of slavery gathered in the US, the prospects of any foreign assistance for the fledgling Confederacy would have declined.
 
The resources were not spent to organize and support a successful invasion of the north, which was probably the only way the Confederacy could win the war.
Out of interest, how do you think that those resources could have been spent on organizing and supporting a successful invasion of the north? It's a few thousand man-years of labour and some iron, fundamentally; about the main use I can see is the cannon, but those cannon as siege guns assume a situation which never quite obtained historically (to whit, the CSA having the ability to operate against Washington unmolested for a couple of weeks).
 
Out of interest, how do you think that those resources could have been spent on organizing and supporting a successful invasion of the north? It's a few thousand man-years of labour and some iron, fundamentally; about the main use I can see is the cannon, but those cannon as siege guns assume a situation which never quite obtained historically (to whit, the CSA having the ability to operate against Washington unmolested for a couple of weeks).

Its a fair question. And I think the answer is that the Virginia/Carolina corridor had to be built up until there was enough logistical strength in Richmond to strike the blow. But that was not Confederate strategy.
 
An all out effort to capture Washington, might not have worked, or might not have been enough to force an armistice. But the Confederates settled for a long war strategy after Antietam. And that is why the devastation in the south reached horrific proportions.
And in addition, in a long war, there was not going to be enough slavery left in US to maintain the institution. The US would have abolished slavery and a second war of unification was inevitable.
 
Its a fair question. And I think the answer is that the Virginia/Carolina corridor had to be built up until there was enough logistical strength in Richmond to strike the blow. But that was not Confederate strategy.
But how? As of June 30 1862 the Confederates have already thrown 37% of their entire mobilization (counted by companies) into Richmond; by the end of July that's up to 42%. They could perhaps have sent some of the Western armies, but it's not really something that a few thousand man-years is going to help with... is the suggestion that those men who worked on the ironclads instead make up an extra brigade and that's enough to turn the whole campaign around?
 
But how? As of June 30 1862 the Confederates have already thrown 37% of their entire mobilization (counted by companies) into Richmond; by the end of July that's up to 42%. They could perhaps have sent some of the Western armies, but it's not really something that a few thousand man-years is going to help with... is the suggestion that those men who worked on the ironclads instead make up an extra brigade and that's enough to turn the whole campaign around?
😎 Good problem for a war gamer. :us34stars:
 
According to Pres Davis, at that time 3/4ths of the CSA army was AWOL. Soldiers were voting with their feet in droves. Entire companies were deserting in mass. Officers were being shot for allowing or encouraging their men to desert. Union picket lines had designated crossing spots to encourage CSA desertion. Any man who “swallowed the dog” by swearing a US loyalty oath could go home.
Thank you for the clarification, @Saphroneth.
I unfortunately do not command the exact numbers and as a matter of fact also didn‘ t read that comment of Davis.
Without longer consideration I woulld have asked about the time Davis was overheard saying it.
Do you know it, @Rhea Cole ?
Was it maybe after the war or in the last weeks where he maybe showed himself a bit as a sore loser looking for handy explanations?
 
The point being, that the few Confederate ironclads that were finished, had almost no affect on US water born logistics. The owned and chartered fleets grew at a geometric rate. They defended a few hard points in the Confederacy, but they were noticeably absent during the US joint operation to capture Vicksburg and Port Hudson. The resources were not spent to organize and support a successful invasion of the north, which was probably the only way the Confederacy could win the war. The ironclads were part of the strategy of outlasting the US. History has granted that strategy an undeserved credibility. Part of my response is that any Confederacy that would have somehow survived the US, would have had a very limited prospect of recovery. Since the US industrial base was untouched, a second war was inevitable. As momentum towards the abolition of slavery gathered in the US, the prospects of any foreign assistance for the fledgling Confederacy would have declined.
Well....their absence in Vixksburg and Port Hudson is easily explained - with the early loss of New Orleans the Confederates had lost all ship-building capability on the Mississippi - and their effort to build new ones in the swamps and tributaries just took too long.
But reading about the brief appearance of the CSS Arkansas I am not so sure that it really wouldn’ t have made a difference if two or three confederate ironclads would have been present....

As about the ressources spent on the ironclads I am absolutely d‘ accord with @Saphroneth, @DaveBrt and @Rhea Cole - a relevant part should maybe have been diverted to the railroads - but I do not see a realistic possibility how such ressources (rolled iron, shipbuilding work, naval guns) could aid an invasion force in any way.....

About a second war.... well.... what does you make so sure about it?
Morale was plummeting in the Union in 1864 and a lot of people (some already since the beginning of the war) asked if a prolonged struggle against the South made any sense at all -
as the Union could probably very well do without the South,
as the abolition of slavery was not a question that lied near to everybody‘ s heart and
as the Southerners were not generally perceived as alien people but still as fellow americans -
and I deem it even imaginable that both portions of the US could have unified again after some years - as I really cannot see any long time perspective for a continued existence of slavery.

From that point of view one could even say that the whole secession movement was - in the end - just pointless and even irresponsible. But - as always - it‘ s all about emotions and obviously nobody in that time had a clear outline over the economic and social situation and prospect....
 
An all out effort to capture Washington, might not have worked, or might not have been enough to force an armistice. But the Confederates settled for a long war strategy after Antietam. And that is why the devastation in the south reached horrific proportions.
And in addition, in a long war, there was not going to be enough slavery left in US to maintain the institution. The US would have abolished slavery and a second war of unification was inevitable.
The devastation in the South - if it really happened to such horrific extent (in some threads people are expressing doubt about it... and I unfortunately do not command more specific knowledge about it) -
above all was a consequence of a Union decision to lead war that way.
I deem it - please excuse me - somehow unsporting to held the South accountable for it in the first place.
 
😎sr Good problem for a war gamer. :us34stars:
Sorry, but no, it's a problem you need to at least try to answer. Not building the ironclads seriously impacts the viability of CS route to independence #2 (wait out the Union's war enthusiasm) so you need to show how it helps route #1 (military victory) to a tangible extent.
 
The figures I've seen indicate it may not be as simple as adding a linear amount of iron thickness. Backing stops spall, but in addition I know the Warrior resisted at 61 foot tons per inch which is equivalent to an unbacked 6.64" plate or thereabouts - the backing has added over 2" of virtual thickness, which matters partly because you couldn't yet produce a reliable 6.5" rolled plate.

The fact that the Monitor turret was unbacked 1" laminate (and so were most of the later monitors) and that the Virginia was sloped backed 2" laminate would tend to mean the Confederates were getting a lot more value out of each lb of iron they put on their ironclads.


It might also be useful to point out that the approach taken by the USN's ironclads with their monster smoothbores was "racking" not "punching".
Racking, as explained in period works, is where the energy is delivered to the whole plate and an attempt is made to cause the fastening to fail; this is diametrically opposed to "punching" where the energy is delivered to a small part of the plate in an attempt to cause the plate to fail locally without the rest of the plate having time to react to the energy delivery.
Backing helps in both cases, but the backing has a chance to absorb a lot more energy in resisting racking because by definition the whole plate is involved.
Given the resistance figures discussed it would seem that most Ironclad era naval wargames rules, including the ones I wrote or co -wrote are wrong when it comes to protection calculations !
 
Given the resistance figures discussed it would seem that most Ironclad era naval wargames rules, including the ones I wrote or co -wrote are wrong when it comes to protection calculations !
My understanding is that punching should be easier to model - any given armour has a certain value of protection in foot-tons of force per inch of circumference. Anything which does not exceed that value will not punch, anything which does exceed that value will punch.
 
I'm sorry, but I have to make an observation that seems......well, obvious:

NOTHING the Confederacy did in prosecuting that war was "worth the cost".

Nothing. Every penny they spent on every last bullet, button and grain of powder was a tragic waste

You can't isolate this or that expense as being "worth it" while others were not. It was all waste, from beginning to end.
 
I'm sorry, but I have to make an observation that seems......well, obvious:

NOTHING the Confederacy did in prosecuting that war was "worth the cost".

Nothing. Every penny they spent on every last bullet, button and grain of powder was a tragic waste

You can't isolate this or that expense as being "worth it" while others were not. It was all waste, from beginning to end.
While to some extent I understand this viewpoint, the issue I see with it is that it assumes from the start that there was never any prospect of success.

The scale of errors committed by the Union at various times, and the extent to which people at the time - on both sides - thought Confederate independence was quite plausible at points during the war, indicate to me that we can't really say that there was no prospect of success.

Furthermore, even if the exact language is not used, it is clear that some Confederate decisions or potential decisions did or could have a positive overall impact on the Confederate prosecution of the war and others did or could have a negative overall impact. The phrasing required to make explicit that this is what is meant, however, is so incredibly clumsy that "worth it" seems an acceptable simplification.
 
Given the resistance figures discussed it would seem that most Ironclad era naval wargames rules, including the ones I wrote or co -wrote are wrong when it comes to protection calculations !
Here is a metallurgical issue that would require a rethinking of iron armor. The armor plate of gunboats that participated in the failed assault on Fort Donelson suffered catastrophic failures. This was due to the nature of iron at different temperatures.

All blacksmiths know not to to hammer steel when it is at what they call black heat. That is when the glow has left the metal but it is still extremely hot. Strike a piece of black heat steel & it will crack rather than yield to the blow. Many a piece of worked material has wound up in the scrap bin that way. What smiths probably don’t know is that iron also behaves that way as it reaches absolute zero.

The iron plating used to armor gunboats during the Civil War shared a peculiar characteristic similar to black heat. When the plate was chilled below zero Fahrenheit, it became as brittle as glass. This is not an analogy, it shattered exactly the way a piece of glass would when struck. Any metallurgical engineer will happily explain this phenomenon to you. I have discussed this with the engineer who alerted me to the phenomenon. He explained it in a manner suited to the dullest of minds. I actually thought I understood it for several hours. Don’t expect me to answer questions, you are going to have to refer to a knowledge source to understand it.

The welded hulls of Liberty Ships that cracked apart on the Murmansk run during WWII are examples of iron’s surprising characteristics under low temperatures.

Blacksmiths know that iron behaves very differently depending on the color. We never speak about temperatures, albeit there are plenty of charts that relate color to temperature. For obvious reasons, we don’t carry thermometers in our apron bibs. Get a piece of steel up to white hot & it turns into a sparkler. They to work a piece barely showing a dull red & you can hammer till your arm falls off & get nothing done. Lay a piece on the anvil that is a light honey color & it will work like a piece of modeling clay. Raise the color of two pieces to almost white & they will forge weld together perfectly. The point being that the crystalline structure of iron gives it remarkably different physical qualities at different temperatures.

Fight your war game ironclads at 20 degree below zero temps & the armor will shatter like glass. Won’t that screw up the dice rolls?
 
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Given the resistance figures discussed it would seem that most Ironclad era naval wargames rules, including the ones I wrote or co -wrote are wrong when it comes to protection calculations !
That is all well & good, but look at the dimples on the turret of the Monitor Lehigh, for example, & the laminated armor did a remarkably good job.
 
Fight your war game ironclads at 20 degree below zero temps & the armor will shatter like glass. Won’t that screw up the dice rolls?
I think if the fighting is going on at that kind of temperature there are other concerns to be going on with, like the crew being frozen to the bulkheads!

The transition temperature relating to iron armour is an issue that wasn't known at the time but which could explain some of the odd behaviour in tests.

That is all well & good, but look at the dimples on the turret of the Monitor Lehigh, for example, & the laminated armor did a remarkably good job.
That's dents in 10 5/16 inch thick laminate armour. If the same resistance could have been achieved by 4.5 inches of backed rolled iron, or indeed 3x 2" layer laminate, then that's better; 11 inch thick rolled armour would be something like ten times as resistive.

The fact the turret was taking damage at that range from those guns also restricts operations, of course.
 
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The very government that the CSA states had created prevented them from building a fleet of ironclads. It would have required a cogent national strategy to gather the material assets to construct the ships & then utilize them in a coordinated campaign.

The absolutely vital Mississippi River was divided up into six often mutually hostile commands. The commanders of some of them behaved as if neighboring commanders were the enemy, not the Yankees. The gunboat assets that the CSA did have exemplified the fractured, self defeating nature of the CSA.

At the Battle of Memphis, where the fate of the CSA’s control of the absolutely vital Western river network was decided, each of the CSA rams fought without any coordination. Not only was there not a squadron commander, the individual captains of the rams did not meet to establish a coordinated plan of attack. Every Captain acted as he saw fit. Predictably, in short order, almost the entire flotilla was destroyed & Memphis was lost.

As we know, at great expense & effort, a few CSA ironclads of the fort on a raft design were constructed here or there independently. No national strategy focused the limited iron plate & engines available to where they could do the most good.

As a result of the impossibility of a united, coordinated, allegation of limited assets coupled with a coherent strategy for deploying them, a squadron of ironclads could not be built or deployed by the CSA. Individual CSA ironclads that were built were a waste of essential material. The only way that the CSA could have mounted a challenge to the Union riverine & littoral forces would have required a unified command & national strategy that was never going to happen in the CSA. It would have violated everything the CSA stood for.
Jefferson Davis: "If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: 'Died of a Theory. '"
 
The devastation in the South - if it really happened to such horrific extent (in some threads people are expressing doubt about it... and I unfortunately do not command more specific knowledge about it) -
above all was a consequence of a Union decision to lead war that way.
I deem it - please excuse me - somehow unsporting to held the South accountable for it in the first place.
A good deal of the devastation was the farmers being away for four years, and the livestock resources of the south being consumed without replacement. That was solely the consequence of Confederate leadership resorting to a long war strategy.
 
A good deal of the devastation was the farmers being away for four years, and the livestock resources of the south being consumed without replacement. That was solely the consequence of Confederate leadership resorting to a long war strategy.
I don't think they did, though. A lot of Confederate decisions are focused on front loading - that's why they have so much mobilized strength in summer 1862. They probably could have gone further there though.
 
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