How many Greek triremes would it take to take down a battleship

[Tycho]

Eleventy billion triremes.

In all seriousness, here is a multi-step plan to destroying a battleship.

Spoiler :

1. Point triremes at battleship.
2. Attach metal fronts.
3. Set on fire all triremes.
4. Watch.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Eleventy billion triremes.

In all seriousness, here is a multi-step plan to destroying a battleship.

Spoiler :

1. Point triremes at battleship.
2. Attach metal fronts.
3. Set on fire all triremes.
4. Watch.

So...you have a bunch of triremes, facing a battleship, on fire?

 

[Dachs]

While I commend the Empire for completing this powerful space station, I was troubled to read about the installation of an exhaust port leading "directly to its hyper-sensitive power core." I was further disturbed to hear this opening described as "torpedo-sized."

At least they built a massive belt of fortifications to defend it, along with squadrons upon squadrons of elite fighters flying BARCAP. It's not like anything could get through that. You'd have to be the avatar of some sort of mystical, all-powerful energy field to even have a shot at getting through fire that intense.

 

[Harvin87]

LOL... it's absolutely impossible for triremes...

 

[druidravi]

Each tireme could fire balls of highly dense material like osmium , iridium on the battleship deck.Given enough such shots the centre of gravity of the battleship shifts upwards making in unstable , then some co-ordinated ramming action could disturb its equilibrium for it to start toppling.

This might exhaust the supply of Osmium/Iridium on earth though

 

[Disgustipated]

question: How many tiremes are still in operation today?

The question seems a bit nonsensical. But then again, how many battleships are in operation today? Both classes of ships are obsolete.

 

[Dachs]

question: How many tiremes are still in operation today?

The question seems a bit nonsensical. But then again, how many battleships are in operation today? Both classes of ships are obsolete.

It's a hypothetical question, chief.

 

[Crezth]

I'm sure that's true, but all we need to do is find a 2-meter wide thermal exhaust port that leads to the engine. Fire a couple flaming arrows down that & ka-boom! Sure, 2 meters isn't much to work with, but I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.

This made me laugh out loud.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm sure that's true, but all we need to do is find a 2-meter wide thermal exhaust port that leads to the engine. Fire a couple flaming arrows down that & ka-boom! Sure, 2 meters isn't much to work with, but I used to bull's-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. They're not much bigger than two meters.

It's called the smoke stack. Good luck getting up there with flaming arrows fired from a little wooden boat. Particularly when the battleship can begin to shoot back 20 miles before you can begin to shoot.

 

[Old Hippy]

with Zena as captain, Herc as second mate 18 sirens rowing and Archimedes's flaming steam cannon mounted on the bow it would not sink it .... but would make a great episode of DOC WHO, and he would sink it...

 

[Tarquelne]

It depends. It would be cheaper and faster to make a retrofit missile system for a some old boats than to build a fleet of new missile cruisers. History is full of all sorts of improvised weapons that destroyed much more valuable enemy assets.

Good point. We could assume a trireme that tows a seaplane armed with very powerful missiles. Or carries a nuclear-armed torpedo. Actually, it could just carry a nuke and get within the kill-radius.

Since we're allowing non-trireme technology how about going for broke and taking a trireme made of anti-matter neutronium? I'm pretty sure that'd destroy the Earth, so a battleship wouldn't be a problem.

If we want to destroy *just* the battleship we could use a tiny anti-matter trireme contained in the warhead of a missile launched from a plane towed into range by a trireme.

 

[Synobun]

Makeshift catapults can launch buckets of oil and other flammable material on top of the battleship. Shoot flaming arrows, light top of battleship on fire. Wouldn't sink it, but hey, it'd screw them up and they'll probably end up running ashore.

 

[Promise]

How fast can a Battleship cover fire a full 360degrees?

 

[Cutlass]

An Iowa class battleship has 20 5" guns in 10 turrets (originally). Each gun can fire 12 rounds per minute out to a range of 10 miles or so. The 16" guns have about a 1/2 minute reload time. The 40mm antiaircraft guns can fire essentially as fast as you can load them. And then there are dozens of 20mm cannon mounts.

 

[Promise]

So we can't surround it and hope it won't be able to hit everything before we reach it?

 

[Cutlass]

A quick google tells me that 8 knots is about the max speed, with 4 knots sustainable speed. So from the max range of the 16" guns, the max possible speed of a trireme in range for some 3 hours before it can attack.

3 plus hours under heavy fire before even being able to return attack on your own is pretty much beyond average human endurance. So then at least 1 1/2 hours under attack from the 5" guns. Given the ammo capacity of the battleships, that means that 10s of 1000s of triremes would be needed to have any real possibility of reaching attack range.

 

[Ajidica]

Since I presume the Greeks are captaining the Triremes, couldn't they just take them apart and build a Trojan Whale or something like that?

 

[Cutlass]

And you expect the crew of the battleship to just bring that inside? Odds are they've heard the story.

 

[Antilogic]

An Iowa class battleship has 20 5" guns in 10 turrets (originally). Each gun can fire 12 rounds per minute out to a range of 10 miles or so. The 16" guns have about a 1/2 minute reload time. The 40mm antiaircraft guns can fire essentially as fast as you can load them. And then there are dozens of 20mm cannon mounts.

Fortunately (?) for the trireme captains, the Iowa only has a limited magazine of roughly 1,200 16" shells, and the expected barrel life for its main armament is roughly 350 rounds. So it will eventually stop killing them.

Battleships actually have a preset kill limit, so you simply have to send wave until wave until it shuts down on its own.

I tried to dig up the clip--sorry for the cruddy quality, couldn't find a good one on short notice:

Link to video.

 

[Cutlass]

350*9 > 1200 And unless the triremes are very widely dispersed, each shell will destroy more than one.