Design 12.1 (counter): Instead of a huge artillery piece, build a one-ton artillery rocket with an distance of about thirty to fifty kilometres.
Alright, now we're actually talking.
One ton's not going to get us that much, though. While admittedly the V1 was around two tons and pulled a nice 200 kilometers, its... tech level? is a bit too high for us now. I don't think we exactly have researched liquid fuel engines just yet, the torpedoes running off solid fuels.
The V-1 is technically NOT a rocket. It is a pulse Jet which is much simpler.
...do we even have jets?
I'm fairly sure we do not have jets.
Correct me if I'm wrong, though. Tried to run with what I'm sure that exists.
Let's be honest now, these guys have a bit more power than we're going to be able to muster unless we cripple their infrastructure via ways various, I initially envisioned the artillery gun as a means of doing so (with giant frag shells, accuracy is not much of an issue as your goal is to kill the skilled workforce than destroy the plant). Also, we haven't actually been attacked at home. Crow's has been taken, but we'll get it back soon enough, and it could be a good staging point for our rocket bombardment campaign. Albatrosses could be relegated to such duties as being a transport plane for our various airdroppable forces or whatever we can do with them. Or just dropping incendiaries for the heck of it.
So you wanted rockets as the main method of attack and bombers secondary? That's unfortunately just throwing away resources I'm afraid. V-1 isn't a very successful weapon, either.
Actually, yes. I wanted to make rockets our primary method of attacking the mainland, while our fleet of bombers which I expect to start being shot down sometime near soon as they figure out to make high-altitude fighters can take of [insert task here]. I'm not saying we'd throw them on the backburner altogether, just that there'd be more volume of bombs delivered by rocket than bomber due to simple production cost. Note that the bombers
are reusable, after all. Nobody's been voting to increase production capacity though, I find them one of the more prospective weapons we've produced to date.
If you think we can win this war, please tell me in which way you do see it possible, as I'm stuck. No, really. I am. We've been on the defensive for a split second just now, and they aren't even in high gear.
I will now counter your counter-proposal with a seven ton, gyrocompass-and-pendulum piloted system with an assumed range of 300-400km and a payload of between 800 and 1500 kilos.
It will come in the form of four connected tubes intended to be launched at once in the direction of the target, this version usable on various ships (if we make the launch tubes reloadable on-ship, it'd be a pretty great anti-carrier weapon for the time period).
I don't actually intend for these to ever be free-standing as for morale strikes we'll want to keep to barrages. Talking 100-200 rockets fired at once at the very least, targeting the major cities (preferably ones that we'll be able to justify as having military installations in them).
The V-1 weighted 2.5 t. The Ohka is about 2 t but being a true rocket its range is pretty poor. The Tomahawk which is somehow a direct descendant of the V-1 weighted less than a ton and a half. 7 t would be too large to evade enemy AA; I would prefer a more conservative design of say one or two tons at best. In addition, even you are trying to do things in BoB style, mounting them on specialized light platforms might not be the best Idea.
The Tomahawk's a design from the 1980s, mind you. While I'm guessing Ebbor'd be capable of stretching the limits of our ability to even the late 40s or early 50s if we really put our hearts to it, that's too far for us to be looking at.
While looking at the Okha design though - I assume we're talking about the Japanese human-piloted rocket, not the later Soviet design (which did get stuff done now that I look at it ) - you'd notice that more than half of it was the warhead itself. 1.2 tonnes explosives to 2.1 tonnes loaded weight. It barely had any propellant, I mean. It also had... a
really different purpose than what I'm trying to pull off.
Speaking of specialized platforms - how else do you expect them to be fired from a ship? I'm... not exactly sure as to how you would even aim it without at least a tube of some sort. Making it compatible with our cannons regarding width is out of the question though it might be a decent solution when we get 400mm or so guns.
The difference between the V1 and what I proposed is rather simple - namely, fuel limitations. There is indeed no jet to be using, unless you want us to risk making a jet
and something using the jet at once (though I were daring enough to suggest making a giant gun and ship to house it at once, so I'll look past that). Though if you pull out a jet for us to use, I'll settle at three, maybe two and half tonnes, if just for the sake of having slightly better range or additional room for our guidance devices.
Feel free to tell me what you think before I actually throw it into the main thread, though.
If I were you I would rather designate a cruiser as a dedicated missile boat.
An already existing one? I'm fairly sure one of the older ones could be refit to be a dedicated missile boat, but we need missiles first. We could just grab one of the commerce ships and stuff it with rockets like our enemy took their civilian ship and turned it into a carrier.