I have a couple of housekeeping things. First, apologies for the lack of Aurora last week. I've been distracted, and just didn't get around to it. Second, I'm planning to scale back the virtual meetups to about once a month, now that the lockdown is winding down. Third, I'm going to designate this the semi-regular thread for ideas on what to write about. As usual, I make no promises, but anything good will go on my idea list.
2018 overhauls are British Battleships in WWII*, Sea Stories - The Swimming Pool and the Fuzes, Main Guns parts one, two and three, Life Aboard Iowa and So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Strategy Part 1. 2019 overhauls are Shells Part 2, the Four Chaplains, Continuous At Sea Deterrent, Megasilverfist's review of Polly Woodside and So You Want to Build a Battleship - Construction Part 3*. 2020 overhauls are my review of Historic Flight Spokane, Falklands Part 21 and Merchant Ships - Bulk Carriers.
Comments
Apropos of nothing, here is a video of a Russian frigate having a very bad day.
Wow. I bet the ship's laundry was busy after that.
Suggestion: an overview of lifeboats, or boats that a warship carries in general.
I was looking at a car carrier a while back and the lifeboat was an awfully long way up. I suppose dropping into the sea from that height is still preferable to being stuck on a burning vessel
Do/did other great power militaries maintain chaplains or is that a US only thing?
I believe most militaries have a representative of whatever they worship around. The British also have chaplains, and communist states have political officers.
Were British Chaplains state-church only?
For a while, yes. I just singled out the British because I know their chaplains exist, and I’m not 100% sure on anyone else. But at some point, they opened their chaplain ranks to non-state churches. Not sure when.
I looked it up and it looks like the French anti-religion laws specifically exempted the military, so they proudly fielded chaplains of all three religions.
WWI Germany - Chaplains for 3 religions WWII Germany - down to 2
WWI Russia - yes (Russian only?) WWII Russia - No
(also the wikipedia article on chaplains is just as sloppy and terrible as you would think it would be.)
So, for unknowns we have:
Italy China Japan Austria
I feel safe guessing on Austria without documentation. : )
From the Royal Army Chaplain's Department Wikipedia article: Only Anglican chaplains were recruited until 1827, when Presbyterians were recognised, but not commissioned until 1858.[2] Roman Catholic chaplains were recruited from 1836, Methodist chaplains from 1881, and Jewish chaplains from 1892.[3]
Apparently the MoD also has Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh chaplains but all the MoD webpages about them seem to return 404 errors.
It is surprising there were not Church of Scotland chaplains earlier, given its official status (Britain is weird).
Any one else read the article about Taiwan, China, and the U.S. in The Economist?
One of the most concise and dispassionate summations I have read as of late. Neither hawkish nor dovish but rather reminding of the factors involved...all in 1000 words or so.
I know the Navy has been thinking along these lines for a few decades, but lots of other moving parts now.
That article was a lot better than the economist usually is. (I hear they used to be great over a generation ago.)
It is hard not to read that article and think, "China is getting stronger every day and has (or will have soon) the men, arms, and will to win."
I assume you're talking about the article "The most dangerous place on Earth", but there are linked articles on the Chinese military, the American political outlook, and Taiwanese semiconductor manufacture which are also worth reading. The last one in particular: I hadn't realised just how dependent the world had become on TSMC, which has largely displaced Intel from the chipmaking business over the last few years. If Taiwan is invaded, or blockaded by either side, then everyone - the US, China, and the rest of the world - are going to suffer some serious economic dislocation.
I agree that this is an example of the Economist in unusually good form - possibly because their worse articles tend to be those relating to partisan politics, whereas China policy in the US is a fairly non-partisan issue.
Warship quiz. There is one person I am aware of who had a warship named after him or her on both sides of WWI. Who was it?
My guess would be one of those nobles from Anglicised German lines like Lord ~~Battenberg~~ Mountbatten or the house of ~~Saxe-Coburg Gotha~~ Windsor.
@bean
It looks like both Italy and Austria have cruisers named 'St. George'.
@Lambert
Nope.
@ike
That's good, and might raise the count of people with ships on both sides to 2 (depending on how we count that) but isn't the one I'm looking for. Also, shouldn't England have one of those?
Britain and Germany both had light cruisers 'Ariadne' (named after the goddess).
Britain also had a 'St. George' cruiser.
Looks like Russia also had a battleship '[St.] George the victorious'.
Interesting. I shouldn't be surprised there was an HMS St. George, because England. But the person I am looking for is an undisputed historical figure, not mythological/religious. We know dates of birth and death and could go visit the grave.
@DampOctopus
Yes, that's the article. Sorry I forgot to state that in my original comment.
I was also surprised at just how much of the world’s chip production is being shouldered by TSMC. Any supply interruption from them would certainly be a significant 360 degree problem
I also agree with you on The Economist. I have been a reader for almost forty years now and it is less good when it mires in some purely political topics (aren't we all sadly?) and at its best when it looks like these kinds of issues and accurately puts out what factors are at play and what needs to be considered...but alas...we used to call that straightforward geo-strategic reporting! Perhaps a lost art/skill these days?
@bean
Well, both France and Germany had a battleship 'Loraine', so if you squint you could say King Lothar (one of Charlemagne's descendants). : )
Well, I out-smarted myself there.
How about the two Battleships 'Charlemagne'?
Right. There are two historical people who had ships named after them on both sides of WWI. Good catch, that was not the one I was thinking of.
I don't know how I feel about classing the martyrs as non-historical. I would except your point more readily if it were St. Michael instead.
If you are willing to count the Reds as a third side (They fought both of the other two, after all), then there was at least one 'St. George' fighting on all 3 sides; he clearly wins. : ) Interestingly, it looks like the Russian 'St George' changed sides through capture at least 5 times: Tsar -> Red -> German -> British -> Wrangel -> Red.
Let's see... Britain built a monitor 'Prince Eugene' in '15 and the Hapsburgs had battleship of the same name.
Prince Eugene of Savoy was indeed the name I was looking for. Noticed it when looking at monitors, because the coastal defenses series isn't actually dead.
I'm not trying to make comments on the historicity of the martyrs, so much as taking the position that there's a big difference between names which come from the distant past and route through Christendom, and names which are relatively far more recent. Eugene of Savoy was closer to their time than Nelson is to ours, so it's much weirder that he ended up with ships on both sides than Charlemagne or St. George (who were significantly closer to each other than either was to WWI).
Filling out the list of gods we have:
Mars: USA / Britain / Austria Thetis: USA / Britain / Germany
That was fun. Thank you, Bean. I only searched and found the British Eugene because I thought the Italians would want to make one. It is too bad North Dakota was so far down the seniority list for a city-cruiser. That would have been great fun.
DampOctopus:
For now, should fabs become more dispersed that would be reduced (and China does want that, or at least for there to be lots of fabs on the mainland).
Could it be argued that Taiwan supports TSMC being the world source of chips as a defense policy?
If USA and Europe will go to war to stop fuel doubling in price, they'll DEFINITELY go to war to prevent computers quintupling.
@Dr.pat The RoC's diplomatic position has been crumbling for the last 50 years. You are probably right that is their last good card left.
As it stands, I feel like only the USA would show up if things went hot. Long term I don't hold out much hope without an American pivot towards Russia a la the old Nixon-Mao Alliance.
I know the RoC traditionally has terrible relations with Japan, but maybe that has improved in recent years. They both fear a strong PRC. Then again the Japanese military is some sort of nightmarish quantum fever-dream that both exists and doesn't.
There's a city called North Dakota? Where?
Agreed that it would have been good fun to have North Dakota as a cruiser, with South Dakota as a battleship.
The first rule of military/congressional relations: don't annoy anyone powerful. The second rule: all Senators are powerful. Even North Dakota has two Senators, and these Senators are for some reason allowed to write legislation, so naming a cruiser after their state when the other states are getting battleships is a bad idea.
@quanticle
If North Dakota had a city cruiser, it would presumably be the USS Bismarck Ü
When they decided to name a ship after the capital of North Dakota, they went with City of Bismarck, which I consider a missed opportunity. (It's one of the JHSVs or EPFs or whatever they're called this week.)
Here is an excellent summary of the issues involving TSMC in the case of a Chinese invasion, with some follow-up here.
Honest question: Is Bismarck (the man) not popular outside the mid-west? I know, intellectually, there are no giant statues of Arminius (of Teutoberg Forest fame) in the deep-south or New England.
How about a C-130 carrying a list of key TSMC employees and a stack of green cards sat in Okinawa?
Or maybe all the tech companies will start building up an inventory of chips.
@ike
I think it has less to do with Bismarck the man and more to do with Bismarck the ship, and avoiding the exact thing we're making jokes about. But yes, he's going to be a lot less popular in areas where the Germans didn't settle.
China wants for there to be lots of high-end chip fabs on the mainland, the way they want there to be several modern jet-engine manufacturers on the mainland. Or the way Taiwan wants there to be at least one manufacturer of modern diesel-electric submarines on their island. They want it, but the knowledge and skills necessary to accomplish it do not exist in those places and cannot be learned from books or even stolen blueprints; you need to either have someone who knows how to do it teach you the art, or you need to spend a decade or more learning the hard way all the tacit knowledge that nobody ever bothered to write down. By which point the state of the art will have advanced, making it a technological stern chase.
Often you can hire people to teach you the knack, but in those particular cases everybody with the relevant knowledge and skills lives in countries whose governments find it politically advantageous for the Wrong China to not have those arts.
Also, w/re high-end chips in particular, I don't think the relevant knowledge fits in the heads of a collection of people small enough to fit in a C-130, or an Airbus 380, never mind the extended families they'd insist on bringing with them. If there's a major war in Taiwan, I'm pretty sure TSMC's ability to build modern chips is going down for the count even if the United States does intervene. With oil you can win the war, put out the fires, and drill new holes. With chip fabs, it's a bit harder than that.
@Bean
Trying to look through your previous topics to see if you ever covered how they refloat a damaged and sunk large vessel. Is it perhaps something that you covered before?
I was watching an episode of the Russian produced Soviet Storm series and they mentioned, in passing, a Soviet battleship that had been sunk off Leninigrad in 1942 but brought back into service.
We did some pretty good work after the Pearl Harbor raid. How do they even start on this?
ike:
Japanese rule of Taiwan was pretty benign so there isn't really any hate there.
If a hostile power were to take Taiwan it would seriously complicate Japan's defense so as long as defending Taiwan seems feasible Japan would have very good reasons to contribute forces.
John Schilling:
True, but by then you won't be as far behind and will if you give it enough resources eventually catch up but it does require patience.
Thierry Breton wants the EU to do it the hard way, reaching 2nm by 2030.
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-microchip-conundrum-go-big-or-go-home/
Is the Abrams tank pretty much invulnerable from the front, except for oddball magic-BB shots? The guides I am seeing online (admittedly for video games) portray the tank as vulnerable from the back, sides, and top, but with the front being essentially secure against modern weapons.
And if it is true, what would it take to reliably punch through the Abrams front armor?
@Neal
I talked about the specifics of the salvage at Pearl Harbor here back in the very early days of the blog. A more general discussion of salvage is on my to-do list, although it's going to have to wait for the muse to call. The USN salvage manual is available online, along with a bunch of reports, if you want to read up on this yourself.
@Johan
I'd try a 16"/50. Not even sure that shell type matters, but I'll use AP just to be safe.
More seriously, you'd need either bigger shaped charges or a gun that can throw things faster and harder. (Or go in from the top, which is how most advanced anti-tank missiles work.) I know that in the 80s, NATO was looking at bigger tank guns, I believe of 140 mm or so. The problem was that 120mm is about the biggest you can load with fixed ammo by hand, so they were going to need to separate the ammo, with consequences for rate of fire. Don't have sources to hand, sadly.
The Abrams is legendarily hard for another Abrams to catastrophically kill. They've had to blow in place a couple of them at various points in the past 3 decades, and it's never been easy to do. Not to mention the assorted incidents of friendly fire.
@Bean
Thanks for the link as it gives me an idea of what is involved.
BTW, I am still waiting, after all these months, for the German bookstore to mail me the book on the coastal defences. They keep saying they will post it when they can...perhaps when modernity brings air or sea links across the North Atlantic.
I know that some international shipping has been disrupted (Lord Nelson regularly complains about issues with shipping stuff from Japan) but I’ve been getting books from the UK without too much trouble for a while.
IIRC, the US Army's own laser-tag training simulators are set to give an RPG-7 a Pk of 0.1% from the front, 10% from the side, and 30% from the rear or top. That's for a mission kill; as Ian Argent points out it is very hard to turn an Abrams into obviously-unsalvageable burning scrap metal. The Army places a high value on tank crewmen (and soldiers generally), and so they are very good at avoiding fuel fires, ammunition explosions, etc. Even the things that make them unsalvageably totally dead, won't make them visibly unsalvageable, so that takes work.
For mostly-dead kills from the front, you're basically talking about the largest tank cannons with modern ammunition (as opposed to the cheap crap Iraq bought), the heaviest (not even remotely man-portable) antitank missiles, or artillery. In the latter case, you won't be penetrating the armor but e.g. a 155mm round to the turret face will probably crack the turret ring through shock.
Artillery can also mission-kill a modern tank by landing shells within ten meters or so to the side or rear, which does things like knocking off tracks and even roadwheels.
Imagine a fight between a WWII destroyer and the Victory of Nelson's time (Yes it's silly).
A destroyer would need to avoid receiving a broadside from a ship of the line. I wonder if a full broadside could devastate the destroyer, but it could easily maneuver to avoid.
My real question is .. how much damage would 5" shells do against the thick thick wooden walls of ship of the line?
@neal I was watching an episode of the Russian produced Soviet Storm series and they mentioned, in passing, a Soviet battleship that had been sunk off Leninigrad in 1942 but brought back into service.
Russian Pre-Dreadnaught Battleship Peresvet fought against the Japanese in The Battle of the Yellow Sea and Siege of Port Arthur (1904) got badly damaged, scuttled and sunk.
The Japanese raised it, "Our's now!"
They ran it as a Japanese battleship for over a decade.
Then sold it back to the Russians who were now their allies against the Germans.
So it set off back to Europe, but got sunk again, this time by a German U-boat, and this time permanently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RussianbattleshipPeresvet
Kit:
Not sure if the destroyer would out range Victory but each shot would probably be a lot more accurate so even if Victory's shots could reach the destroyer they're much less likely to hit unless the destroyer decides to go close in.
Kit:
The explosion from a single shell might set the whole ship on fire and if it somehow doesn't probably shatter much of the wood around the hit, AP shells would barely notice and go off inside the ship (or go through and out the other side).
The destroyer is also going to carry torpedoes, one of which would be enough to easily sink anything wooden (unless it has those crappy American detonators).
Since the destroyer would be able to approach from the stern, I don't think it has much to worry about even if it had to use it's AA guns to do the job.
Regarding the Abrams, were the stories about it being immune to its own gun from before it had the 120mm? Because the 105mm L7 is nice, but was seen as inadequate for dealing with MBTs at longer ranges even in the mid 60s.
Armor penetration by a modern 5 inch shells is several inches of (steel) belt armor when firing from thousands of yards away. Off-hand, I would guess that translates into penetrating feet of wooden hull.
Check out the range of the gun, too. The modern destroyer is capable of engaging from kilometers away, a range the Victory can't hope to reach. Maximum range for the 32-pounders was maybe 2000 yards, with the effective range being a small fraction of that.
@Doctorpat
That was the only ship which appeared on my sunk battleships spreadsheet twice.
@Kit
Destroyer, no question at all. Let me put it this way. In 1890, 1000 yards was seen as the limit of effective range. That would be ludicrously close for any action in WWII. The destroyer fires a couple of broadsides into Victory, then closes to rescue the survivors. Heck, you could easily beat Victory with just the heavy AA battery fighting on the broadside. ~40mm explosive shells would make mincemeat of a wooden hull. It would take longer, but not that long.
Depends on the kind of shell. AP wasn't a common destroyer round (no need to defeat heavy armor) but I'd expect that you'd be able to use your common round to get through the sides easily. Might be more effective to shoot contact-fuzed HC and blow giant holes in the side, though. That's what killed off wooden ships in the first place. Although I'd probably make by first salvo WP to mark the target.
And let's be honest here - if you mark a ship of the line with WP, what you're marking it for is survivor pickup. Fire was no joke on those ships.
I'd be more curious about what'd happen if the destroyer appeared fifty feet off Victory's broadside, and the black-powder gang got the first shots off. That might at least pretend to be a battle.
Well, yes. That was rather the point. The comment on "marking" was a reference to the US military's official position on the use of WP.
A typical destroyer's hull plating was IIRC about 1" of steel. I am honestly unsure what that would do to a Nelson-era cannonball at point-blank range. I know that in the early days of the armored warships, it took 68 pdrs to have much chance against the 4-5" of wrought iron that the first ironclads had. Victory's heaviest guns were 32 pdrs, and modern steel, even non-armor steel, is a lot tougher than wrought iron. But probably not tougher enough to stop all of the cannonballs. But you're looking at a maximum of 15 of those, plus another 14 from the 24-pdrs on the middle deck. That's all you get before the destroyer absolutely wrecks you, and I don't think it's enough. Even a 20mm firing in manual mode would be very lethal at that range, and there's no way you can kill every gunner on the destroyer.
@Alexander: I was referring to the Desert Storm and later combat use of the Abrams, which was always A1 or higher (AFAIK, anyway, I don't think any 105mm-armed M1s ever saw combat). Wiki says all the Desert Storm usage was of A1s, at any rate.
Also says that ~80 Abrams were "forced out of action by enemy attack" between 2003 and 2005, with 63 being repaired and returned to service, and 17 "damaged beyond repair" (presumably because it was cheaper to build a new one). Another 20 "destroyed" between 2005 and 2008, but no breakdown of that number. (The article implies mobility/mission kills for the vast majority because it attributes most to RPG attacks)
That's more notable then. I think the earlier Abrams were perhaps better armoured than armed, but if the A1s were the ones with the problem, then it may just be that modern MBTs have frontal armour that is almost impossible to defeat.
@Alexander: At which point the developmental efforts spent on railguns may become important, because if your propellant is stored in your gas tank, you don't have to worry about bagged charges.
OTOH, if you need a frigate's power plant to fire a 5" railgun, then you're not mounting one on a tank...
Leading to the obvious question: WWII Destroyer vs. M1A1
At some point you mentioned wanting to watch and review Greyhound. Is that still in the works?
I watched the movie, enjoyed it, and thought it was reasonably faithful to the book (The Good Shepherd). Main differences were that they made the main character less complicated and shoehorned in one more action sequence at the end. But I have no idea how accurate it is in terms of hardware, tactics, etc.
What is a reasonable range for a WWII destroyer's 5" gun? Assume the sea has reasonable swell and the target has the speed and size of a ship-of-the-line.
The most fun ahistoric faceoff I ever imagined was: USS Nimitz vs Victory. Conditions: 10 feet apart, dead stopped, no sails up and no steam ready, not at battle stations, no aircraft in the air, both sides unprepared. I think it comes down to (1) how many broadsides can the Victory get off before the Nimitz can get a helicopter with a loaded missile into the air and (2) is the Victory stationed below the Nimitz's anchor.
Kit:
A Marine with an M203 could do probably serious damage to Victory in that circumstance.
Kit:
That would require them to be able to do damage.
The 5"/38 in common service aboard US ships in WW2 had an effective range of around 15,000 yards. This would be much less affected by weather than the broadside of a ship of the line such as HMS Victory, because the destroyer's turrets could and would elevate to compensate for a significant amount of swell. As to "the speed and size of a ship-of-the-line," HMS Victory was approximately the size of a small, old light cruiser or a very big destroyer by WW2 standards, but with her top speed described as "about 11 knots" is for practical purposes a stationary target - neither her size nor her speed would cause any difficulty to the destroyer's gunners. HMS Victory has no chance of "winning" a fight with a WW2 or later DD, and her only chance of even surviving is if the destroyer CO decides she's not worth engaging even with the light AA battery.
As to the USS Nimitz versus... HMS Victory's guns would have little chance of doing meaningful damage to a modern supercarrier, so her best chance here would be to raise as much sail as she could carry and run, hoping to blend in with other shipping traffic before the CVN could get into action starting from cold reactors. Even that wouldn't be a GREAT chance, merely a better chance than emptying your magazines into Nimitz to no effect and then sitting around waiting for the carrier's inevitable retribution.
There's been a LOT of technological development in the 200+ years since HMS Victory's heyday. Victory was in no way competitive with the state of the art a century ago, and the gap has only grown wider since.
Under these conditions, a boarding action would be Nelson's best bet. Load the carronades with grapple hooks to reach the flight deck, then hope you can get most of the Victory's crew into the carrier before they realize what's going on.
While Nimitz has x7 crew, AIUI that's less important hand-to-hand in tight quarters. Also AIUI most of Victory's crew would be effective boarders, whereas most modern sailors might not prioritize training to repel boarders?
While a WWII destroyer may have had no armor, a supercarrier does have some, so Victory can fire all day and nothing will happen. As for boarding, odds are not in the older ship's favor. The modern crew is much bigger, does train to some extent to repel boarders, and has automatic weapons.
@hnau
That review is coming up towards the end of the month.
@bean if you still want ideas:
Russio-Jappanese War (I assume you are already planning/working on this)
2nd Schleswig War (ties in nicely with "why do we want a navy", though may be hard to get sources)
Movie Review: Master & Commander (self explanatory)
Movie Review: Apollo XIII (They were all good navy men after all : ) )
I would think the victories cannons could penetrate into the side of an aircraft carrier. How thick is the side plating of an aircraft carrier?
The Nimitz might have some armor around the magazines, but I don’t think the sides are armored.
Double-checking, it looked like I misremembered on the side armor, but carriers are big and tough, and Victory's guns just aren't that strong. I'd guess that the shell plating on a Nimitz is probably at least 2", which is probably enough to stop most of the cannonballs. And even if they do get through, they're not going to take out anything important. Oh, and I forgot to mention the smaller weapons that USN warships carry to defend against small boats. A 25mm Bushmaster is going to destroy Victory. No way she wins.
If MBT armour development continues outstripping the capabilities of the main gun, would increasing the accuracy to hit weak points in the enemy's frontal armour work?
Use image recognition and laser rangefinding to figure out exactly where the enemy tank's turret ring, tracks etc. are and advanced fire control to land a round in the right place.
The question is whether you can be accurate enough with an unguided round. (otherwise it's easier to use an ATGM that hits the tank from above)
Looks like the Russians considered putting a 152mm gun on their next-gen MBT, the T-14 Armata.
I wondered about the armor-on-carriers issue. Sailors who were on the Kitty Hawks told me that they had armor, and usually said that the Nimitzes didn't, but I never did verify that. One in particular - an ITCS who had served on Midway, Kitty Hawk and Wisconsin, claimed that all three had armor and Kitty Hawk "didn't have as much as a battlewagon, but had more than Midway did, just not in all the same places".
How do you board a Nimitz from the victory? Climb up on the crows nest and try and jump across?
@Ian I believe that the current 120mm guns are still able to disable MBTs at a good range, even if the crew generally survive, and the tank may be salvageable. If I were looking for direct fire options to defeat even better protected tanks, I'd first look into a heavier gun, like the Rheinmetall 130mm, and/or investment into Electrothermal-Chemical propellants as a more speculative option, before I considered railguns or precision targeting of weak points (other than the roof, via top attack missiles).
Have any of you guys looked into all these weird new bow shapes being used now?
Those North Sea utility ships with the inverse-curved "X bows" really confused me, because I thought that hurt forward buoyancy and made the ship wetter.
There were a bunch of puff pieces about how the zumwalts are actually good in high sea states, but how much of that is just being much bigger ships than Burkes?
OK. Friedman does not list armor for the Kitty Hawks, and a check of the General Plans book for Saratoga (earlier) doesn't show a belt. Midway definitely did. I am not sure why there were rumors about a belt on the CVs, although I apparently fell victim to that.
@echo
Not sure the details on the exotic bows. I'm sure there are lots of details in the professional naval architecture press, but my access to that stuff is limited even when I can bring myself to read it. As for the Zumwalts, I am going to ask how people on deck felt.
Kenny destroyer really hit a target 10,000 yards out on anything but a flat calm day? Did mountains from World War II really compensate for the role and pitch of the ship?
Yes, they did. USN systems had good gyros, and could fire accurately even in fairly heavy seas. I talk about these systems some here.
Bean said "Yes, they did. USN systems had good gyros, and could fire accurately even in fairly heavy seas."
Battleships have amazing stuff. But did destroyers have self stablalizing guns? When did they get them? (Learning new things all the time :-)
Yes. American destroyers starting with the Downes class of 1934 had the same Mk 37 fire control system that the US battleships used for the secondary guns, but destroyers in general started to get directors and other FC gear in the years around WWI, at most a decade after they started showing up on battleships. I've written a lot about fire control, which can be found here.
Alexander:
Then a gun blows up and the whole project is abandoned.
Or at least that's how every attempt at it has gone.
Hmm, well I said it was speculative Ü
If ETC is unworkable, at least with current technology, I'm going to say stick with bigger conventional guns. AFVs aren't going to be able to manage the power for EM guns for the foreseeable future (see Ian's earlier comment).
Perhaps it depends on the time horizon. If you want the vehicles in service in a couple of years, pick an existing tank with a 120mm gun. If it's a couple of decades, you have more freedom, and the 130mm should be mature. If it's even further into the future than that, perhaps putting the money into advanced propellents would be worthwhile.
@Kit @Bean I know Bean has things to say about Hornfischer's style, but Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors has some pre-Leyte background sections following the Johnston that give a good narrative feel for the effectiveness of late-war 5"/38 fire control for amphibious fire support. Earlier on, destroyer guns were shockingly effective against battleship and cruiser superstructures in the Guadalcanal campaign, though at closer range and mostly at night, and then at Samar the Johnston, Hoel, and Heerman were able to do a great deal of damage to the Chikuma and the other cruisers at ranges of 5-10Kyds while maneuvering hard at full speed in rain squalls and surrounded by 18" shell splashes.
The directors were really good.
Well, either this is a really good fake, or jet-suits have arrived.
Here's a video of Royal Marines practicing boarding a ship using a jet-suit.
Welcome to the future?
@Johan
Now that was downright impressive. Seriously impressive...
"You'll have no cover, and no ability to return fire until you land, at which point you'll be carrying around a rucksack full of fuel and have weights strapped to your wrists."
"Yes, yes, those are all very good points, but consider this: I get to fly around like Iron Man"
Still very cool Ü
Now we just need to invent the chainsword and bolt pistol. ;-)
They've also tested it for simulated mountain rescue situations. I think it'll be sucesful for some purpose iff it can find one niche that helicopter rope suspension technique isn't suitable for. If it's cheaper (including pilot training costs) or it can operate in certain weather conditions that a helicopter can't or you can land more precisely in a small area.
Petrochemical industry firefighting strikes me as an area where there's enough money to fund this sort of niche technology. Jet packs are no more impractical than stuff the Russians did using old MiG engines or nukes.
Now they need to get to work on the shoulder-mounted gun with a helmet-mounted laser aiming system. Easy-peasy!
Alexander basically stole my thoughts on this. Neat trick, but I wouldn't want to try it under fire.
How hard would it be to switch the wrist jets to a wide-angle, fuel-rich anti-personnel mode?
I wasn't so much trying to rubbish the idea, as to set up the Mark Watney line. Mind you, it wasn't hard to think of a few objections to the concept Ü
Climbing up a ladder, or sliding down a rope from a helicopter doesn't make it easy to react to gunfire either, and you are very reliant on suprise and (if required) covering fire. I can imagine some scenarios where boarding via jetpack would be practical, though perhaps not enough to make up for their various deficiencies, or to justify the investment.
There's also the advantage that you can operate a jet pack from a boat too small for a helicopter.
The version I've read of the ground Gulf War is that the Iraqis couldn't hit the Abrams because the export T-72 had intentionally downgraded fire control, but I don't actually know whether the few they did hit were all mission-killed.
Missouri and/or Wisconsin did fire at Iraqi tanks three times. I don't know more than that.
The Iraqi side had 210mm land artillery, but I don't know if it was used (on anything). They were experimenting with 350mm.
My understanding was that the big problem the Iraqis had in 1991 was that they'd bought the cheapest ammunition they could find, which was intended for training, not operational use. I believe at least one of the Abrams that was abandoned was because it was stuck, not damaged in any way by the Iraqis.
In terms of stories, I've mentioned ground tackle/anchoring before.
Also, would you be interested in doing or receiving submissions on book reviews of naval-related stuff, like ACX does? There's probably some room for naval-y book reviews to generate content. Where's quanticle when we need him or her?
I suspect that's one you'd be better able to do than I am. I've looked at it a couple times, but haven't figured out a narrative line to explain it well, probably because I don't understand it that well. You actually have experience with the subject.
As for book reviews, absolutely. I'm considering doing other things with the non-OT Friday, and that would be a good option.
The Allied (there were Brits on the ground there) advantages in fire control were absolutely one of the reasons they beat the Iraqis like a rented mule. The Allies were shooting up Iraqi tanks at 2-3 km, on the move, while the Iraqis couldn't land hits at that range while stationary.
The other big thing was our GPS - not being limited to roads for land nav (and, apparently, at least some of 2ACR not even knowing there WERE roads in the area because they didn't need to)
But looking at what I have lying around specific to 73 Easting, it looks like the tank battles there got up close and personal at times, and the Abrams either took negligible losses or none at all. (Several Bradleys were lost, some to "friendly" fire), despite being in close contact with Iraqi armor in prepared positions.
Wiki says they used the original 1960s APFSDS type, which while not actually a made-for-training round, had around half the penetration of the then-current type. They don't say whether the reason was cost or export restrictions.
I don't know if their HEAT rounds, thought but not certain to have destroyed 4 Abrams, were any more recent.
A very belated reply to ike on ideas: Russo-Japanese War has been on my list a while, but I've decided that my next campaign narrative is going to be in Europe, starting in 1940. It will get done eventually. I'll definitely add the Second Schleswig War to my list, although I'm not sure what sources look like for that. And Master and Commander is a good suggestion, too. Not sure about Apollo 13.
So apparently Malcom Gladwell just wrote a book about the firebombing of Tokyo. I am somewhat curious about this, but at the same time, strongly suspect it will just make me angry. ("Most military strategists considered the airplane an afterthought"? I know a lot about interwar strategy, and this is simply not true.) And I'm a big fan of Curtis LeMay, who looks like he may be set up as the villain.
@bean
I share your apprehension on the Gladwell Book. "Area" bombing is very un-PC, so I doubt the topic will be handled responsibly.
I put in for library-loan on a book on the Schleswig War, I will let you know how it is when it comes in.
Back in mid-2020, there was a brief flurry of articles about Irish plans to purchase fighter aircraft for the Irish Air Corps, which currently does not have any such aircraft. It's now nearly a year later. Has there been any progress on that front?
If it merely notes that the nuclear bombings weren't really any more destructive than large scale conventional bombing that would probably make it better than average.
@Ian
Also don't forget thermal imaging, which let the coalition vehicles fight unimpeded at night and in all visibility conditions.
For one of those workout/errand running/walking the dog podcasts, I listened this week past to Dan Carlin (he of Hardcore History and other podcasts) interview Gladwell abut this book.
I will leave judgment to each listener, but I found them to be pretty accurate (no pun intended) on a number of points--one of them being the belief at the time that aerial bombing would actually be a more efficient and less destructive path to victory than land warfare. The idea being you could more readily target the opponent's centers of gravity.
Also a decent sketch of LeMay's attitude of concentrated and extremely heavy effort being the up-front better option as otherwise the conflict is merely going to be drawn out. They did not linger on this point too long as it is one that is obviously laden with lots of other considerations as one ascends the escalation of force ladder.
My takeaway was that Gladwell was describing LeMay's bombing concepts being ahead of technology. It is only in the past thirty years that we have the precision that the early bomber strategists were considering. Again, this is only my takeaway from the interview and YMMV.
I wish I could remember the quote in the little Tokyo museum from LeMay regarding that it is best the U.S. won lest they be questioned about the fire bombings. Not advocating for/against that action in this post other than Gladwell did question if LeMay's attitude of attritional bombing would have had a limit if the Japanese had not surrendered when they did.
I also need to revisit LeMay's role in what he was advocating during the Cuban missile crisis. Didn't Kennedy basically have to remind him who the ultimate decision maker was and who was supposed to be providing options? LeMay was really in his face as I recall.
The reason I ask is that it was discussed at some point (AWC if I remember correctly) in AF PME about how vigorously the military leaders should advocate certain actions.
Overall I didn't find Gladwell to have taken a hatchet to LeMay. Gladwell was I quite complementary as to how today's mil strategists are aware of history and its lessons.
@bean:
You're dead to me.
Crossthreading a small bit, but in other LCS news: LCS, now with more maintenance problems!
(dead to me is sarcasm, if that's not clear)
I'd say that was less LeMay and more people like Mitchell, who had no idea about the limitations of air power in their day.
That probably depends on what you think of Kennedy's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I tend towards the view that he invited it by vacillating and then mismanaged it from a position of strength, so LeMay was probably doing the world a service by reminding him that the Soviets weren't actually equal. The biography I have of him more or less backs this up.
@Blackshoe
The man did a lot for US security in the early days of the Cold War, and was supremely effective as an operator. I know that he's on the other team, but I can't help but admire him.
Also, congratulations to everyone for breaking 100 comments on the OT for the second time ever.
Western land artillery still uses them, which at least suggests they managed to fix the "scarily likely to kill the user" problem, but rate of fire would still be an issue.
(More-humour-than-serious speculation: maybe Zumwalts can't use Army ammunition because "the point was to finally get rid of those deathtraps, we are NOT going back".)
T-72 ammunition is split with powder in both sections (i.e. not a "semi-fixed" single charge + separate shell), but looks to be in a more rigid case than a traditional bag.
Fair point about Mitchell, but the conversation, and thus I assume the book (although I could be wrong), started off around the mid 1930s in which Gladwell described the theory bombers working and thinking at Maxwell.
He, inappropriately called this staff the "bomber mafia" which really is unwitting for a number of reasons. There was no proof or even claim that they were being grossly irrational in pushing their doctrine. Strongly advocating yes, but to me there appereared to be far more deeply entrenched elements across the Army in other branches that were far slower on the uptake of change.
Either way, Gladwell did well thereafter in juxtaposing the doctrine shop fliers with true strategists AND operators like LeMay. LeMay did not like the doctrine of a smaller footprint and he, with his operations talents and organizational skill knew how to ramp this up in force. Afford him the newer aircraft that had range and bomb loads and he was the man meeting the hour to make large scale raiding happen.
He did effect change. He windowed out those officers who were not aligned with his vision and plans to make it happen.
LeMay later received Japan's highest award to go to a foreign service member for his getting the JSDAF up and running. It was a marker that everyone wanted to put the ferocity of the hostilities in the past.
LeMay moved on though SAC and to the JCS. One can argue all day, but he didn't just get things "done," but rather he made them happen. A big difference imho.
Gladwell then discussed the intellectual framework of today's senior AF Strategic Command officers. He was impressed that there is deep corporate knowledge and appreciation as to where the force stands and for the progenitors of those practices and doctrines--ones they would gladly change if needed.. Also what blindspots might be out there...the famous Rumsfeldean unknowns. Snarky yes, but it isn't just Buck Turgidson barking what comes to mind.
I am still split over the LeMay vs. Kennedy interactions. Only Jack and Bobby Kennedy knew the conversations were being recorded. Thus the Kennedys would, or could, appear to be masters of the situation with an ice chest full of sang froid. The other players/principles were doing what they were tasked to do:speak openly and frankly in describing the situation and providing options. Some, like LeMay were quite vigorously in executing that task....
I found it worthwhile as a workout/walk the dog podcasts.
I much more look forward to Serhii Plokhy' recent 2021 book on the Cuban military crisis. Much updated scholarship. Closely run thing. A Russian sailor getting delayed going down the hatch. Sees the U.S. ship signaling. Close call. Very close call.
Apparently, my grandfather was with the Essex enforcing the blockade.
@Muddywaters: If a land-based artillery gun has an ammunition explosion in handling, they have 1 gun and crew mission-killed, maybe the entire battery if they haven't been maintaining their spacing properly.
If one gun in a naval turret has an ammo explosion in handling, at a minimum the entire turret is mission-killed, and if someone's screwed up their anti-blast precautions, well, "there seems to be something wrong with our bloody battlecruisers today."