It's weird visiting a doomed museum. Not one that's slowly dying, with money and volunteer enthusiasm gradually ebbing away, where you sort of know in the back of your head that if there's a catastrophe with the roof or something like that, there may not be enough money to fix it. I've been to a few of those over the years. In those cases, there's always hope. Maybe a donor can be found, or new leadership can turn things around. This wasn't that. This was a museum that is already dead, and we're just waiting to pull the plug.

A week ago, I visited the Puget Sound Coast Artillery Museum in Fort Worden, Washington, at the gateway to Puget Sound. Tomorrow, September 7th, 2026, is their last day after 50 years.¹ And I, crazy person that I am, said "well, I'm going to be on the West Coast anyway, might as well tack on a couple days and see it before it closes." So I left Lord Nelson among the Pokemon people of San Francisco and flew up to Seattle, then drove out to see what there was. And it was a nice little museum. It's clearly a smaller operation, with laminated printouts for signage and displays that show what they have, rather than a carefully-selected subset of the collection to best tell the story they're trying to tell. But those can be lovely and charming. That was more or less how the 45th Infantry Museum felt, and I regularly miss it now that it's been replaced by something more modern and sterile. As for this museum, well, it wasn't going to set the world alight. It wasn't even the best one I visited today. (Turner Joy down in Bremerton is one of the best-executed museum ships I've ever seen. Review coming at some point soon.) But they did a pretty good job of telling the story of coastal defenses in the early 20th century, and it's a story that is pretty hard to find elsewhere. I've tried quite often to visit coastal fortifications, and it's generally been a frustrating experience in some dimension. The concrete may be there, but the stories aren't. The Fort MacArthur museum seems to have folded at some point in the last couple years, and there wasn't anything in the area around San Francisco except for Fort Point, which is from an older generation. Here, there was not only a place to learn the stories, but also several lovely batteries to go hike around, and I'm sad that only the second half will remain for visitors after tomorrow. Read more...

I've long wanted to do an analysis of how bomb accuracy has changed over the last 80 years or so, and how this impacts the cost of destroying a target from the air. The problem has always been that all of the data I need, from bomb accuracy to the cost of flying the planes, is scattered and sparse, and so I haven't really made much progress. But a recent comment from cassander inspired me to give it a try in Command: Modern Operations, which is basically a medium-level simulation package that is sold on Steam. I've used it for other experiments, and it could give at least a fairly reasonable number for how many bombs it takes from a given platform/delivery mechanism to destroy a generic target.

The basic setup I used for all of these tests was fairly simple. I set up a grid of 10 medium buildings (130' x 80') in CMO and then on the opposite side set up a nearby airbase with 12 planes of the type under test. All were given the same loadout (usually the heaviest one for the weapon in question) and set up to attack one at a time, using only one bomb at a time on a given target to prevent overkill from messing up my numbers. I would run the scenario until either all of the targets were destroyed or all of the planes had flown their sorties. Variables included the plane, the weapon, attack altitude and environmental conditions (day/night and weather). Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.

Overhauls are Information, Communication and Naval Warfare Part 1, Falklands Part 5, The Battleship of the Future?, Wedding Decorations, A Brief Overview of the United States Fleet, Naval Radar - More Advanced Stuff, Speed and Range in Battleships, and for 2025, SCUBA Parts one and two, The Tanker War Part 2 and Exotic Hulls Part 1.

I've been watching through the documentary series The World at War lately, and figured it was worth talking about here. For those who don't know, it was aired in the early 70s, and is generally acclaimed as one of the greatest documentary series ever. I'm not much of one for documentaries in areas I'm familiar with, because they're frequently not particularly efficient and I often find myself frustrated by the editorial decisions made, but The World at War mostly manages to avoid these problems, and illustrates a conscious approach to doing history for the public that I really like.

The most obvious problem that any series like this is going to run into is simply how to divide up the war, because even with 26 episodes, a lot is going to be left out. TWAW handled this particularly well, abandoning any real pretense that it was going to be comprehensive and instead making each episode a self-contained story about a specific aspect of the war. This could be a battle or a campaign, the home-front experience of some nation or it could be something narrower like the Holocaust or the occupation of Holland. Particularly groundbreaking at the time was a significant focus on Russian experience during the war, and those portions were still some of the most interesting to me, as it's not an area I've studied extensively. But more importantly, each story generally does a really good job of balancing the human stories with the broad operational story of the war. Often history focuses either on "what happened and why?" or on "what was it like to be there?", and TWAW manages to balance both rather well. Read more...

Probably the most obscure corner of carrier aviation is COD, Carrier Onboard Delivery. This is exactly what it sounds like, the practice of delivering high-priority cargo, mail and personnel from bases ashore to aircraft carriers. The role originated in the immediate postwar years, and was first carried out by TBM Avengers modified to carry six passengers or cargo in the former bomb bay. But it was soon clear that the limited cargo weight and volume would be a problem for air-delivery of important cargoes like jet engines and nuclear weapons.²

A C-1 Trader

The Navy ultimately chose to procure the C-1 Trader, a variant of their existing S-2 Tracker ASW aircraft with an enlarged fuselage. Entering service in 1956, the Trader would go on to serve for three decades in the USN, ultimately becoming the last operational piston-engined aircraft to fly from American carriers. But it was slow and limited in range, and, more importantly, it was soon unable to carry the largest jet engines in use by the fleet. The Navy again turned to Grumman to adapt an existing design with a new fuselage, turning the E-2 Hawkeye into the C-2 Greyhound. Ultimately, it would serve for almost 60 years until the growth of jet engines, in particular the F135 for the F-35C, caused the Navy to procure a new COD airplane capable of carrying it. The winner in this case was the CMV-22,³ based on the V-22 Osprey beloved of the Marines and loathed by budget analysts. Read more...

In mid-October 1944, the American carriers under Admiral Halsey were operating in the waters between Taiwan (then known as Formosa) and the Philippines, to destroy Japanese power in the area before the US invasion of Leyte. Unfortunately, on October 13th, the heavy cruiser Canberra was torpedoed by Japanese aircraft, flooding both engine rooms. Normal practice would have been to take the crew off and abandon her, but Admiral Halsey decided to tow her clear by cruiser Wichita instead. The next day, light cruiser Houston was also torpedoed, losing not only her engines but also all of her boilers, which meant there was only emergency power available throughout the ship. She was in considerably worse shape than Canberra, with serious concerns that she would break up early on, leading most of the crew to abandon ship before the decision was made to try to tow her clear as well.

The path of CripDiv 1⁴

On the morning of October 15th, a group, dubbed "CripDiv 1", was formed to protect the two crippled cruisers, with three light cruisers and eight destroyers to provide close cover. Light carriers Cabot and Cowpens, with a separate group of escorts, would provide air cover. Houston, towed by heavy cruiser Boston, spotted the group shortly after Wichita passed the tow to tug Munsee, and finally reached her station around noon. Meanwhile, Radio Tokyo was putting out increasingly outlandish claims about the damage inflicted on the Americans, prompting parties in the streets. Halsey's staff wondered about how much was deliberate propaganda and how much the Japanese genuinely believed. If they were taking their more outrageous claims (half a million tons of shipping sunk, 53 ships including 16 carriers on the bottom) seriously, then it was plausible that they'd send surface forces out to mop up. One carrier group was sent to hit airfields around Manila on the 15th and 16th, while two others were pulled out of range of Japanese search planes in the hopes of luring them out. Only one was left in position to protect CripDiv 1, an understandably unpopular move among the men of the group. One of the captains of the escorting light cruisers commented "Now I know how a worm on a fishhook must feel" and the name "BaitDiv1" began to circulate. Read more...

After the Naval Gazing meetup in Dayton, my parents and I headed for Montreal,⁵ which meant a road trip, mostly across upstate New York. I've already talked about one of the museums we visited along the way, Old Fort Niagara, but there were several others, none of which deserve a full review of their own.

The canal boat at Port Byron

The first was only sort of naval-related, but fits well with my general interests. The Old Erie Canal Heritage Park at Port Byron is just west of Syracuse and right off I-90, and is dedicated to the history of, unsurprisingly, the Erie Canal, originally opened in 1825. This was one of the great wonders of the era, dramatically easing transportation between the Hudson River Valley and the interior of the continent, and this fairly small park has the remains of one of the locks, as well as an old tavern, where crews would get a beer while their boat was locked through, and a visitor center with some exhibits on the construction and history of the Canal. The tavern has recently been restored, and is a fairly typical slice-of-life history museum, while the museum has recently acquired a replica canal boat, which they are in the process of setting up to open to the public. On the whole, it's a pretty nice way to take a break if you happen to be cruising that part of I-90, although it's probably not worth going particularly far out of your way for. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.

Something of interest to lots of you is Naval Estimates, a new game that is best described as Rule the Waves, but with a much more detailed engineering simulator built in. Or at least that's the plan. Right now, it's just the weapon and ship design simulator that's available, and it's just set up for the British, c.1905. That said, it's remarkably good for that. I did some checking against a few books, and it does as good a job as you can ask modeling pretty much everything. I plan to do a longer writeup when the battle system is available, but it's still an impressive result for a one-man operation, and Elouda (the creator) is hopefully just getting started.

Overhauls are my review of Batfish, Falklands Part 4*, Museum Ships - United States, Signalling Parts one, two and four, NWAS - ASW Part 1, Zumwalt Parts one and two and for 2025, my review of the Oakland Air Museum, Military Spaceflight Parts eleven and twelve and Allied Military Aircraft Part 1.

When Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran ended in a bloody stalemate, it was natural for both sides to turn to other ways of bringing pressure on their enemies. These ranged from firing missiles at the other guy's cities to attacking the oil exports that fueled their economies. Iraq had started to route its exports through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and as Iran expanded its attacks to include neutral shipping, the US grew increasingly concerned, both about the flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf,⁶ and potential Soviet influence in that vital region. As a result, the Administration agreed in March 1987 to reflag 11 Kuwaiti tankers as American vessels, allowing the USN to escort them through the Gulf.

Stark next to flagship La Salle in Bahrain

Two months later, even before the escort operations began, the frigate Stark was accidentally attacked by the Iraqis in a tragic case of mistaken identity. Previously, the increasing US involvement in the Gulf had been a matter of little concern, but 37 dead sailors was enough to get the country's attention. Opponents of the administration charged that it was involving the US in an open-ended war against Iran without thinking through what would be needed to win or getting the approval of Congress. Many compared it to the Administration's bungled Lebanon strategy of a few years earlier. A particular concern was that the Iranians usually attacked tankers in retaliation for Iraqi strikes, so the vulnerability of American ships depended heavily on what Saddam did, and he wasn't even vaguely an ally. But he was smart enough to pause attacks on Iranian shipping as the escort operation began. The Iranians were obviously upset, but their actions rarely matched their rhetoric, so the reflagging went ahead and the first convoy was scheduled for late July 1987. Read more...

One of the first tasks of a new British prime minister is writing four letters. These "Letters of Last Resort", each identically worded and written by hand after a briefing on the destructive power of the Trident missile, are sealed and delivered to the four British Vanguard class submarines. They contain instructions on what to do in the event of nuclear war, and will only be opened if the submarine's crew determines that Britain has suffered an attack and no orders are forthcoming. If this doesn't happen, they will be destroyed unopened when the next Prime Minister takes office.

One of the chief problems of any nuclear deterrent is that both the weapons themselves and the command-and-control infrastructure will be prime targets for an enemy's nuclear weapons. The first problem is relatively easy to deal with, and most countries solve it by sending some of their nukes to sea aboard submarines, which are by nature difficult to find. The British, in fact, like this approach so much that they chose it for their entire nuclear arsenal. But nuclear weapons aboard a submarine, while fairly safe, are also of little use if orders to fire them can't be given. The US solves this with a massive command-and-control infrastructure, including not one, not two but three different converted airliners. But there are two problems with this kind of system from a British perspective. First, it's really expensive, and the British can't afford US defense budgets. Second, Britain is considerably closer to potential threats, who should remain nameless but who I will assign the randomly-chosen name "Russia" to, than the US is. This gives even less time to get a message off to any nuclear forces, to say nothing of the problems of communicating with SSBNs. Read more...