Monitors

[tigercat]

Monitors seemed to have been mainly a British ship type although I have seen pictures of an Italian Barge thing with an open turret with a parosol/hat affair  but WHat if other nations had designed them what would they have looked like or even better improvised monitors how feasible would have been a rail gun mounted on a train ferry what would have been the largest gun you could have got away ewith before the recoil and impact sank the ship. Or how about  a LCT packed with M40 self propelled guns or other armour

Any thought on Monitors the Royal Navoes cinderella ships although looks wise they were more ugly sisters.

HMS Sarcen by Douglas Reeman is a good example of a fictional WHIF monitor.

[tigercat]

http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/faa-di-bruno-a

[mkhulu]

IIRC the US Army had 105mm howitzers mounted on landing craft during the Vietnam War.

To support ops in the Mekong Delta

[rickshaw]

Monitors usually come about 'cause a Navy has a specific problem with needing to bombard shore positions in usually shallow estuaries and has excess gun tubes and mounts which can be utilised fairly cheaply on a shallow-draft hull which can get close inshore to shell the enemy.   Most RN monitors were quite small, armed with excess 6 and 8 inch guns.  There were a few with guns up to 14 inch but most were much smaller.   They carried some armour but not too much.

The most effective use I can think of where monitors worked well are in the East Africa campaign in WWI.   Fascinating campaign, with real mobility, fractious natives (and white colonists!), pioneering use of aircraft for scouting and attacking naval craft, large naval ships, monitors and even the movement of an entire flotilla of small attack craft over 1500 miles to take control of Lake Tanganyika from a lone enemy steamer (the movie "African Queen" was loosely based on this).

[Weaver]

There were some RN monitors with guns of 15" and even 18" too.

[sideshowbob9]

The Erebus and Roberts class monitors certainly both had 15-inch guns.

Edit: Ouch! Just read up on the Lord Clive class. Wouldn't want to end up on the receiving end of one of those!

[PR19_Kit]

AFAIK the US invented monitors, and the first one was called 'Monitor'...... 

That was the 'ship' that sunk, or severely damaged the 'Merrimac' in Chesapeake Bay, and it was little more than a big gun turret mounted on top of a VERY low freeboard hull.

I'm sure our US friends will put me right if I have warped the history of this episode somewhat....... 

[James]

I think that Monitors only have a real role in coastal bombardment. Not sure you would want to get in a fire fight even if you had 15in guns - they're not manoeuvrable, fast or that well armoured. IMO river monitors are quite good. The Austrians had quite a fleet. If a retreating army blew a bridge over a large river to stop an enemy advance and then deployed river monitors, I'm sure they would certainly slow down/pin down an advancing army. 

[kitnut617]

I have a book in the stash somewhere called 'Armed with Stings'. It's all about these coastal battery ships which could be called Monitors.

Quick Amazon search found it:

http://www.amazon.ca/Armed-Stings-Saga-Gunboat-Flotilla/dp/0450027376/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316179129&sr=1-1

[Rheged]

AFAIK the US invented monitors, and the first one was called 'Monitor'...... 

That was the 'ship' that sunk, or severely damaged the 'Merrimac' in Chesapeake Bay, and it was little more than a big gun turret mounted on top of a VERY low freeboard hull.

I'm sure our US friends will put me right if I have warped the history of this episode somewhat....... 

Kit is correct.  The Monitor  was described as a "Cheesebox on a raft"  and I think, although I'm not sure, that the Confederacy  altered the Merrimac's name to the "CSS Virginia"

[tigercat]

The Breastwork Monitors were the precursor of the modern battleship

Cerberus and ships of her type were described by Admiral George Alexander Ballard as being like "full-armoured knights riding on donkeys, easy to avoid but bad to close with


so no one fancies mounting a rail gun aboard a ship  evil grin.

[NARSES2]

I think you can get quite an overlap between Monitors and River Gun Boats. Monitors however tend to have heavier (much heavier) armament then river gun boats. The RN used a lot of gun boats on the Tigris/Euphrates in WWI. Off the top of my head the heaviest guns were about 6". Monitors have normally been used to mount heavy guns that are currently without a ship, they tend to be fairly quick to produce.

In the Burma campaign the army mounted 25pdrs on landing craft as support ships. There are even rumours of a 4.5" being mounted on one such contraption.

[Weaver]

For a modern river monitor, one of those AMOS twin-barrelled, rapid-fire 120mm mortars would be an excellent weapon.

[sequoiaranger]

First off, the "Merrimack" was the Union warship upon whose hull the "CSS Virginia" was made for the epic ironclad dual off Hampton Roads in the American Civil War.

Right after the American Civil War, all the world's navies built warships resembling the original "Monitor", but they were not particularly seaworthy, having very little freeboard. But the rotatable "turret" first introduced on the USS Monitor became the standard naval method of mounting main batteries on warships.

"Monitors" of the 20th century are more-or-less "floating batteries" that can power themselves. My favorite is the HMS "Terror". Almost a laughable name for such a pipsqueak (ONE dual 15" turret), I still would be wary if I had to go up against it with merely a cruiser's battery. Terror was sunk by air attack off Tobruk.

[rickshaw]

"Turrets" I think you'll find came significantly later to most navies.   Barbettes, either covered or open (more often open) consisting of a high, armoured wall which the gun fired over were more common until the 1890s IIRC.