The longstanding tension between the US and Spain over the latter's actions in Cuba boiled over after the battleship Maine was destroyed in Havana harbor. There had long been at least some pressure for war from both sides, and despite the best efforts of President McKinley and the business community, who feared another recession, this pressure became irresistible.

New York, Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Columbia and Iowa

On paper, the two sides were reasonably evenly matched. The United States had the edge in battleships, with Texas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon and Iowa to the lone Spanish vessel of that type, Pelayo, a ship roughly contemporary to Texas and much inferior to the American pre-dreadnoughts. The balance in cruisers was more even. The Spanish had seven armored cruisers to a pair of American ships, but the USN had the edge in modern protected cruisers, 14 to 3. The Spanish also had a number of older cruisers, although they were of negligible combat value, and a significant edge in terms of torpedo craft. The USN countered with a half-dozen monitors, vessels suitable primarily for coastal waters but powerfully armed. However, the apparent balance of forces was deceiving. The USN was a modern, professional force with high standards of training and readiness. The Armada Espanola, on the other hand, had serious issues on both fronts. Ships were undermanned and their crews were largely green, while many ships, most notably Pelayo and three of their armored cruisers, were unable to go to sea at the beginning of the war. Some of these ships were made ready for sea as the war went on, but others were still being completed, and there was no practical hope of bringing them into service in time to be of use. Even the operational ships had serious deficiencies. Some were slowed by engineering problems or foul bottoms, while others were crippled by defective guns. Despite this, Admiral Pascual Cervera received orders on April 22nd to take the bulk of the Spanish fleet to Cuba to resist the just-announced American blockade. Read more...

As a follow-up to my previous post with picture of Iowa's boiler room, I've put together a set of images from the engine room. I'm not going to spend a lot of time reviewing the actual mechanics of the ship's propulsion system, as I've discussed them at length elsewhere.

You step off Broadway, and into a tiny atrium, then go down one of the longest and steepest ladders in the ship. It's tricky even for me, and I'm pretty sure-footed around ships.

The ladder down to Engine 2. The yellow-and-black striped box is for lubricating oil.¹

Read more...

The North Carolina class was the first of three battleship classes built during the treaty era by the United States. It was overshadowed by the more numerous and more powerful South Dakotas and the incomparable Iowas, but the second ship, Washington, compiled probably the best war record of the American fast battleships, and North Carolina also gave good service during the war.

Washington with Home Fleet, 1942

In 1935, with the negotiations for the Second London Naval Treaty looming, the Bureau of Construction and Repair, like its British counterpart, began planning for the ships it would build when the battleship holiday ended. From the first, the main thread of development for the North Carolinas was a radical departure in American capital ship design. All previous US battleships, with the exception of the abortive South Dakota class, had been limited to 21 kts. But the first series of sketch designs were designed to be capable of 30 kts, intended as a reply to the Japanese Kongo class battlecruisers/fast battleships. It was expected that later classes would revert to the American tradition of slow battleships, probably around 23 kts, as the basic logic behind a slow battle line remained sound in the eyes of American strategists. Read more...

It's time for our biweekly Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want.

Book Review: The Yard

The Yard profiles the construction of the USS Donald Cook at Bath Iron Works in Maine. It's slightly dated (Cook commissioned in 1998) but it's well-written, and I couldn't find more than a few minor technical details to take umbrage with, which is really good in a book of this type. The author, Michael Sanders, paints a good picture of not only the process of shipbuilding but also the people who do it. It's definitely written more on a popular level than a scholarly one, but I learned quite a bit from it, too. I'd say it should be easy to find in libraries (it certainly was 10 years ago), but I suspect that the reason it's so cheap at Amazon is that they're getting rid of their copies. Overall, highly recommended.

Overhauled posts since last time are Amphibious Warfare Part 4, Classes, my discussion of Dreadnought, Strike Warfare and the first two parts on battleship propulsion.

The term "cruiser", like "battleship", dates back to the age of sail. It initially referred more to a mission than a type of ship, the cruising missions of raiding, commerce protection, and scouting. These were usually carried out by frigates and sloops operating independently, although ships of the line could be and were used for these missions. The chance for captains to get out from under the eyes of senior officers and maybe earn some prize money made cruising missions very desirable.

USS Constitution, a sailing frigate²

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, cruising missions became even more important. As imperialism kicked into high gear, increasing numbers of ships were needed to police the growing network of colonies, protectorates, and commercial interests. These were mostly fairly small and slow, but had sufficient armament for service on the far-flung naval stations that dotted the globe.³ However, Britain's enemies had noted her dependence on seaborne commerce, and soon began to build large, fast frigates to raid her shipping, most notably the American Wampanoag class. The British responded by building similar ships to protect their commerce. All of these vessels were unarmored, as they had to combine big engines, lots of coal, and reasonable firepower into a single hull. Sails remained vital, thanks to the high fuel consumption of early steam engines and the lack of coaling stations in much of the world. Read more...

Neal Schier, a pilot for a major US airline, has graciously agreed to continue my series on commercial aviation.

Airline delays and the idea of scalability

Woah! What kind of boring title is that? Ok, I admit it is rather boring, but delays and scalability frequently play a role when you travel—and an important role at that, for who likes to be late? With that old maxim in mind of “with every factor added, complexities grow exponentially”, I will look at why delays are an anathema to the air transportation system. In part 2 on this topic, I will look at how the authorities get the system back on track—an effort that to me as an airline pilot is still nothing short of miraculous.

Imagine for a moment that it is a Wednesday evening and you are sitting in a full airliner at New York’s La Guardia airport. It has been a sweltering August day and you have had three days packed with meetings that did not go as well as you had hoped. Add in the annoyances of a chatty cab driver and delays going through security, and you are entitled to want nothing more than to get back home to Chicago. You want to get into the office early tomorrow morning for an “after action” report of all that went wrong in New York. It has not been a good week… Read more...

I visited Singapore in April of 2017, and took the opportunity while I was there to visit as many military-related sites as possible. I'm going to give a short review of each, in case I have any readers who are headed that way. For non-military things, my recommendations are Gardens by the Bay, which was flat-out amazing, and the National Museum of Singapore, which was really well done.

Changi Museum

The replica of the prison chapel at the Changi Museum⁴

Website

When Singapore fell to the Japanese, a large number of British, Australian, and Indian soldiers became POWs. They, along with a number of civilians who were deemed suspicious, were held at Changi, on the eastern tip of the island, in conditions of almost unimaginable brutality. The Changi Museum tells the story of these men and women in gut-wrenching detail. I have an incredibly strong stomach, and I was queasy during my visit. It's an excellent rebuttal to those who think dropping the atomic bombs was unjustified, and a touching memorial to those who suffered and died in the camps. I also ate dinner at restaurant next to the museum, and it was pretty good (not that good food is hard to find in Singapore).

The museum has been renovated since I visited, so things may have changed, but it appears to be open again. Read more...

The initial German deployment of guided bombs in the Bay of Biscay was worrying for Allied naval commanders, but the focus of the German bomber groups soon shifted to the Mediterranean. There, the Allies had recently taken control of Sicily, and it was only a matter of time until they landed in Italy. Germany would be ready to oppose them with their new weapons, and it was in the waters of the Med that the Hs 293 and Fritz X would have their day in the sun.

Fritz X

Fritz X was first used on July 21st, 1943, in a raid on the Sicilian harbor of Augusta. This raid, and several later raids through the end of August, were so ineffective that the Allies didn't even realize that a new weapon was being used against them.⁵ But events were moving swiftly that would soon provide the new weapon with an ideal target. Four days after that first raid, the Grand Council of Fascism overthrew Mussolini, opening the way for Italy to try to leave the war. On September 3rd, an armistice was signed, although it wasn't to be made public until the Allies began landing. Read more...

I've shared a few photos of the engineering spaces of Iowa before, most notably when I discussed her propulsion system, but I thought it was high time to break out more of them. Let's take an in-depth look at the various systems inside the boiler room. I'd recommend reviewing the post on Iowa's propulsion system first, as I'm not going to go into detail on the mechanics of a steam plant here.

You enter the room from the top, onto the catwalk at the top of one of the boilers. The first thing you see is the steam drum and the water level controls for the boiler.

The controls for the water level in the boiler. Too much water, and it gets into the turbines, which is bad. Too little, and the boiler melts, which is really bad.⁶

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So what was actually needed to build a battleship? How was a pile of metal turned into a vessel capable of ruling the waves?⁷

Iowa takes shape on the building slip at Brooklyn Naval Yard

It all started with a piece of land. This land needed to be firm enough to support the vessel as it was being built, and next to a body of water into which the vessel could be safely launched. It also needed good access to the sources of building materials, and to skilled workers. Once the land was secured, a building slip was constructed. This sloped gently towards the water, usually at about 3°, to make it possible to launch the ship when it came time for that. The ways, the main supports for the ship under construction and the rails which she would slide down at launch, were then laid. These were built primarily of timber, and for a battleship were approximately 8' wide and 30' apart. In the center, a line of wooden building blocks was placed to provide the primary support for the vessel as it was assembled. These allowed men to work underneath the ship, and provided clearance for the launching cradle when it was installed. Read more...