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Old 05-08-2018, 06:47 PM   #11
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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Originally Posted by Minuteman37 View Post
All tests done to stabilize Nitroglycerine either failed miserably with large explosions or the result was TOO stable for military applications.
Too many variants that can do the same thing. Unless chemistry is radically different, you can slow things down a bit, but someone will have found something workable within a few decades.
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Old 05-08-2018, 09:14 PM   #12
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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Too many variants that can do the same thing. Unless chemistry is radically different, you can slow things down a bit, but someone will have found something workable within a few decades.
Well Let's examine an alternate history were smokeless powder wasn't discovered till after the Great War.

Alternatively MAGIC SPACE MEN WILL IT SO!!!!
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Old 05-08-2018, 09:49 PM   #13
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

Could be that it's simply illegal to use smokeless powder. Perhaps there was a terrible attack on civilians or something that used an exotic explosive. At that point, nations came together to allow only one type of explosive in warfare: (pick your favorite variant).

It's too difficult to update the treaty, and nobody wants to violate it because it makes the perpetrator an international pariah. And retaining the law allows for more military stability.
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Old 05-09-2018, 03:36 AM   #14
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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Could be that it's simply illegal to use smokeless powder. Perhaps there was a terrible attack on civilians or something that used an exotic explosive. At that point, nations came together to allow only one type of explosive in warfare: (pick your favorite variant).

It's too difficult to update the treaty, and nobody wants to violate it because it makes the perpetrator an international pariah. And retaining the law allows for more military stability.
I can't believe that would happen, the Western world had a very different mind set to our current 21st century internal community. We're talking a world were there waren't any child labor laws, and just browsing through the history of smokeless powder I'm seeing a comical number of setbacks do to factories/labs being exploded. This isn't to mention the world wasn't anti-war like it is now. The Great War was what tought us that there isn't glory in battle anymore. Artillery, mustard gas, being shot from across the horizon, these are things that were front incenter in those wars. Many of the eurapion powers are eager for another war before it happened that's in appart what made the continent the powder keg it was.

Yeah there was the haggs convention, but I'd describe the mood of it more as a group of gentlemen agreeing to the rules of a game so everyone has a sporting chance, more then anything else.

This isn't to mention that France pushed their first smokeless rifle into service early to deter Germany from war. At that point they know what a large advantage the French had and waited to develop their own smokeless powder rifle, but by then tensions had died down.
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Old 05-09-2018, 03:50 AM   #15
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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I can't believe that would happen, the Western world had a very different mind set to our current 21st century internal community. We're talking a world were there waren't any child labor laws, and just browsing through the history of smokeless powder I'm seeing a comical number of setbacks do to factories/labs being exploded. This isn't to mention the world wasn't anti-war like it is now. The Great War was what tought us that there isn't glory in battle anymore. Artillery, mustard gas, being shot from across the horizon, these are things that were front incenter in those wars. Many of the eurapion powers are eager for another war before it happened that's in appart what made the continent the powder keg it was.
Unless I'm much mistaken, the Hague conventions had already rejected the use of chemical weapons, dropping things from aircraft and the use of naval mines prior to the Great War ... and look how well that turned out.
These conventions were of a piece with the prohibition of exploding or expanding small arms ammunition which was also ignored by everyone but remains a rumour that will not die...
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Old 05-09-2018, 04:11 AM   #16
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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Unless I'm much mistaken, the Hague conventions had already rejected the use of chemical weapons, dropping things from aircraft and the use of naval mines prior to the Great War ... and look how well that turned out.
These conventions were of a piece with the prohibition of exploding or expanding small arms ammunition which was also ignored by everyone but remains a rumour that will not die...
Exactly, as soon as things got serious it didn't matter if a convention was signed, everyone just said "we'll worry about that after we win."
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Old 05-09-2018, 06:37 AM   #17
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

minuteman37: what time period are you interested in? Like I said upthread, at least through WWI, I think the effects of only using black powder would pretty much be a wash. Massed machine gun fire is more difficult, because the MGs shroud themselves in smoke clouds, and that will generally make defense harder. But artillery and small arms will also be shorter ranged, which I think makes things a little harder for the attacker - especially for the kind of huge artillery the Germans used in WWI to devastate the Belgian forts. And Germany's problem in WWI wasn't an inability to defeat French troops at any given battle during the initial invasion of France, it was an inability to deploy and supply enough troops to conquer Paris, and nothing about this change would affect the position of the German supply depots or the distance to the railheads.

One possible change might be that naval mines and shore defense batteries would be a lot less effective. If that's the case, the initial Allied attempt to force the Dardanelles may have succeeded, and the Ottomans knocked out of the war in 1915. Russia wouldn't have been in a two front war, and more importantly, would have been able to trade through the Mediterranean. It's possible, under those circumstances, that the Tsarist forces could have avoided the February Revolution. There would have been no fresh troops for the German spring offensive in 1918, and its possible that Germany might have been actually conquered instead of surrendering at the November armistice.

If you go with that assumption, the middle half of the 20th century looks a lot different. A ramshackle but still Tsarist Russian that is periodically undergoing revolutions and rebellions is not a Communist menace. A lot of the impetus to allow Germany to rearm (so they can fight Red Russia) goes away. There might still be a war in the early 40s, but it would be hard to figure out the players.

Alternately, if the Dardanelles mines are nearly as effective as they were historically and the Allies fail to force the straits and the Russian revolution occurs, again I don't think much changes meaningfully until 1945. No smokeless powder and no high explosive almost certainly means no atomic bomb. It's really unclear to me if the Japanese would have surrendered absent the atomic bomb, and it's also unclear how badly the US invasion forces would have been mauled had an invasion actually occurred. My guess is that they wouldn't have, the US invasion would have failed when all the extra kamikaze planes appeared*, and the US would have backed off and besieged Japan, starving them out. But that's speculation and you can justify things occuring however you want.

* The US severely underestimated the number of kamikaze planes available. Given how badly the US Navy got mauled at Okinawa, when the kamikaze planes had to make a longer attack run over open water, I'd expect the US Navy to lose a couple of carriers and troop transports. But the US admirals also had a plan to feint and draw out the kamikazes to attack a bunch of transport Q-ships converted to high speed floating AA batteries. Would that have worked? Maybe.
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Old 05-09-2018, 08:27 AM   #18
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I am only vaguely aware of it, but there were "needle guns", infantry weapons comparable to chemical rifles using compressed air. In OTL they never really caught on because they were more expensive due to machining tolerances, and required repumping to maintain air pressure in the storage tanks.

But if nothing better than black powder is available maybe they would have caught on, and larger or more rapid firing versions developed. How far you can go with artillery on that I don't know.

I would also wonder how much you would get self propelled projectiles instead of those with all the the impulse at firing. Black powder gyrojet rounds? Assuming there are still internal combustion engines, would some sort of very primitive drone aircraft come in sooner and be more popular? Things like the V-1, but also longer range black powder rockets with some kind basic controls to keep them flying straight, at least?
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Old 05-09-2018, 08:51 AM   #19
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Default Re: An Alternate History Without Smokeless Powder

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I am only vaguely aware of it, but there were "needle guns", infantry weapons comparable to chemical rifles using compressed air. In OTL they never really caught on because they were more expensive due to machining tolerances, and required repumping to maintain air pressure in the storage tanks.
The needle gun was something else, but there were certainly a couple of military air-rifles kicking about in the C19. Girandoni springs to mind as a manufacturer...
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Old 05-09-2018, 10:53 AM   #20
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just browsing through the history of smokeless powder I'm seeing a comical number of setbacks do to factories/labs being exploded.
Or to video-quote James Burke, from Connections way back in 1978....
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