Beyond The Sprues
Modelling => Ideas & Inspiration => Sea => Topic started by: jcf on May 10, 2016, 02:39:45 AM
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(http://i729.photobucket.com/albums/ww291/joncarrfarrelly/BTS/RAMUS_RAM_01.jpg)
The Reverend C.M. Ramus, he had the living of Playden near Rye in Sussex, is considered the originator of
the stepped hydroplane. His notions were tank tested at the Admiralty by naval architect William Froude in
the early 1870s up to the equivalent of 130 knots, but found unworkable because of the power required to
plane the hull, of course they were modelling a large ship of 370' length and several thousand tons.
;D
Evidently it never occured to either to apply the principle to small, high-powered vessels. :-\
Ramus continued his own tests with rocket-powered models, test speeds in excess of 30 knots were
common and in one test over a carefully measured distance a model achieved a speed of 72 mph.
The Rocket Ram was conceived as an unmanned coast defense anti-ship weapon with the dimensions
120' X 20' X 7' made of 1" boiler plate, weight of 140 tons and 175 tons of rocket propulsion force,
rockets would fire for 30 seconds with the Ram covering a distance of over two miles with a terminal
speed of 500-700 feet per second.
His hope was that it would so terrible a weapon "... the power of which is illimitable. It will
sweep away all existing navies, and will, I trust, render war at sea no longer possible."
Illustration and info from:
Aeromarine Origins, H.F. King, Putnam 1966
Speedboat, D.W. Fostle, U.S. Historical Society and Mystic Seaport Museum Stores 1988.
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Would be interesting to model. Any other images available?
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Nope, but I have been working out a 3-view based on the dimensions, the shapes shown in the illustration and
other drawings made by Ramus as he worked out his step concept.
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Even if the propulsion did work I see a severe lack of a guidance system.
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Well, the propulsion of the period, powder rockets, did work and was fairly reliable, as to
guidance it's probable that the Reverend's concept, like others of the period, would have
been one of firing swarms at the approaching enemy fleet. Some would hit, many would miss,
but the enemy fleet would be in disarray and thus easily picked off by the home fleet. Remember
the ships of the period were not particularly fast and also fairly slow to maneuver, so something
weighing 140 tons traveling between 340 and 470+ miles per hour would be devastasing if it hit
and even a near miss could cause damage and a great deal of consternation and certainly disrupt
any attack formations or plans. In period it wouldn't need to be accurate.
;D