Robert Lundgren, working off data found by Bob Ballard’s exploration of the wreck of the IJN battlecruiser Kirishima, has reinterpreted the official reports to rewrite what happened during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The accepted story is that the Kirishima which entered the scene in company with destroyers, fired on and disabled the shorted-out USS South Dakota. In the meantime, the USS Washington fired a series of accurate salvos which inflicted 9 16 inch and 40 5 inch hits on the battlecruiser, causing it to lose control and eventually scuttle itself.
The real story, according to Lundgren is that Kirishima took 20 x 16″ and 17 x 5″ in the five minute battle. At the 8,400 range of the engagement, Washington’s 16″ battery was firing with only a 7 degree elevation and the shell dispersions were so narrow at these ranges that the splashes literally merged.
Ikeda’s sketch of her damage is probably the most important new piece of evidence as to Kirishima ’s damage. The 20 major caliber and 17 secondary caliber hits is far more consistent with what may be expected by the number of major caliber shells and secondary shells fired at their respected ranges. In addition all the hits that struck the ship below the waterline would have been observed by Washington as a miss due to the shell throwing up a splash. Some hits so close together may have been observed as single hits so the 8-9 hits viewed optically becomes a realistic estimate but falls short of actual damage.
The damage caused by the 20 x 16″ hits explains why the Kirishima’s list changed alternately from port to starboard and back, Lundgren says. The huge shells had destroyed the watertight integrity of the middle decks so completely that the seawater simply sloshed from side of the doomed battlecruiser to the other until she capsized on the unengaged side. Her center of gravity simply went to pieces as the Japanese officers applied standard damage control procedures to a situation in which all the standard assumptions didn’t hold.
The decks normally above the waterline have huge compartments which allow the crew to move through the ship. By 1942 advances in shell technology allow projectiles to have deep penetration capability before they detonate. Her exterior armor too thin to stop penetration only ensures proper fuze action. … When the XO Commander Koro One ordered port voids flooded to correct the starboard list it only settled the ship lower in the water bringing her entire middle deck below the waterline and allowed the beginning of progressive flooding of the middle deck. When more progressive flooding occurred she will flip over to a port list and the XO ordered more starboard voids flooded which again simply settles the ship lower and allows more water onto her upper decks and she flops back to starboard. Eventually, flooding the port voids will not correct the starboard list but only increase the rate of flooding from starboard and the starboard list steadily grew.
If true, it’s a fascinating account of how complex systems can betray their managers. A ship built for World War 1 combat encounters a vessel with more modern radar fire control at unbelievably close range. The Washington causes damage whose profile is nothing like what the Kirishima is designed to absorb. All its protection faces the wrong way in a systems sense. But the Japanese officers have no way of knowing this and apply the book, which dooms them. Of course, after taking 20 x 16″ hits maybe they were doomed anyway.
In my opinion her officers followed a script when it came to damage control automatically giving orders to counter flood each time she took a list. It is documented she suffered considerable flooding but also her main machinery was completely intact. This damage analysis is a bit more than speculation because this is the only area of the ship which can produce the type of flooding, free surface effect, and for her to develop a negative GM. This level of damage must occur to match the officer testimony of how she sank.
The great battlecruiser turned turtle and its huge turrets fell out. She plunged by the stern nearly vertically and hit the bottom so fast that her compartments didn’t even have time to even completely flood. Sometime later huge underwater explosions are observed by the US destroyer Preston. Lundren believes that the remaining air compressed itself at over 1,600 psi into the area containing her secondary magazine. Perhaps it was enough to set the shells off. Deep underwater, already a tomb, Kirishima blew herself apart in an act of posthumous immolation punctuating the five minutes of 16 inch shellfire that had sent her to a watery grave.
Today, the modified Aegis class destroyer JDS Kirishima (DDG 174) carries the battlecruiser’s name. She is the sister ship of JDS Kongo. “Kirishima is under going modification at Nagasaki to add the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMD) capability to its weapons suite.” We rely on our systems for safety, but the unstated assumption is that they will face the threats they were designed to handle.
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Wretchard,
Not to be pedantic, but in the interest of clarity, did you mean to say something like the below modification?
“Deep underwater, already a tomb, Kirishima blew herself [apart] in an act of posthumous immolation punctuating the five minutes of 16 inch shellfire that had sent her to a watery grave.”
Excellent tale, BTW!
mac,
Thank you. Correction applied. The Naval Battles of Guadalcanal are interesting because they were fought when the USN and IJN were materially equal, although the balance was already shifting. In consequence, the sacrifices on both sides were enormous and from the historical viewpoint, it was when both sides psychologically came to respect each other professionally, though that did not diminish in the slightest their enmity.
For the USN, the Japanese night fighting and torpedo attack capabilities came as a revelation. The Japanese, for their part, found that the US sailors would go to their deaths night after night with a willingness, or at least a resignation that shocked them. No longer did anyone talk about Japanese who couldn’t see. No longer did the Japanese believe the Americans would run. Guadalcanal was when the Japanese understood that the strategic assumption on which their campaign had been implicitly based — that they could break the morale of a decadent foe — was simple fantasy. Like the Germans at Stalingrad, once they knew their enemy had the unbreakable will to resist, the calculus changed.
Partisans often make assumptions about their foes which are, quite frankly, ludicrous on the face of things. Osama bin Laden believed, extrapolating wrongly from Mogadishu, that Americans were weak and effete. One hard blow and they would go over. It seemed crazy he should think it; and maybe it was also crazy to think that one show of resolution would convey to the terrorist enemy America’s resolve. History is a long road with many twists and turns; but of this I am fairly certain: all nations and races have their share of knaves and heroes; of fools and cowards; of geniuses and morons. The first side to realize how completely equal warfare is at the human level has a huge advantage. Get every edge you can because you may need it. Nobody is destined to win, at least, not without the effort.
Free surface effect and free communication effect are deadly.
I think that the American people are like most they want to be left alone. The Antiwar left who are committed to ending the terror war short of convincing the enemy of the futility of its campaign know this and have capitalized on it before.
Leadership is required to set forth the reasons and rationale for continuing. Absent that leadership our people will come home and remain quiet until we lose a city or three.
WRT the article, I doubt that the XO could have done very much. KIRISHIMA was getting a 16″ incoming every 20 sec., plus her own batteries were firing at some rate. The whole thing happened between 0100 and 0107. She acted like she was counterflooding because her middle deck was flooded and the wallowing was from the free surface effect of that water. (Free surface magnifies the rolling of a vessel because the water sloshes behind the rolling and independent of the hull) Rounds 6 and 7 would have done her. (IMHO)
XO was probably in the dark about the status of the vessel because the information couldn’t get to him. The 16″ round to the pagoda (which decapitated the ship) likely would take 10 or 15 minutes to begin to digest even if that was the only round.
The design approach used for ships for that era sounds strange but makes a lot of sense.
The ship’s armor was designed under the assumption that it would be fired at by guns of the exact same type as it’s own. This was because the best way to fight the ship would be at the optimum ranges of its guns and so that was where the greatest armor was needed.
This approach recognized that at very short ranges the shells would be coming in horizontally, and at very high velocity, and no effective armor protection was feasible. At very long ranges the shells would be descending vertically and would penetrate the thinnest armor of the ship – the deck – and so effective armor would be equally hard to achieve. It was possible to be too close to your enemy for your armor to help you, but it was also possible to be too far away.
You wanted to be at the best range for your guns and for your armor to match that. Tactics and damage control techniques were no doubt built around this same assumption.
Ballard’s book “The Lost Ships of Guadalcanal” is the best thing I have seen to show the overall sweep of the battles. Not just a book of pictures of underwater sunken ships, it explains things very well. His book on Midway is equally good.
given it’s devistating efectivness, you have to wonder why the current USN does not include naval artillery of this sorty.
The last few new ship designs (Littoral, etc) have a single 5″ apparently for nastalgia’s sake.
Lundgren explains his source documentation and narrates events far more clearly in the discussion board posts, where, free of academese his prose becomes eminently more readable.
Actually when I read that paragraph I got to thinking about the stimulus, of all things, and this idea that governments could borrow their way out of debt. Does financial counterflooding work? Could it possibly be true that by acquiring programs that cost ever more, we would somehow right the ship of state in the long run? It occurred to me that a lot of the hatred socialists have for the market is that it allows a kind of free surface effect which allows terrorized money to dysfunctionally slosh around in the system. You can see why they might prefer to keep resources where they are compelled to do “the right things”. Maybe command economies last longer if they are purely command economies where the entire vessel inexorably settles by slow degrees into entropy as opposed to half-socialisms where disastrous decisions have their consequences magnified by a degree of public freedom. Look at North Korea. It’s been sinking for decades, way past any notion of recession or depression. It’s gone past starvation and freezing into the depths. Satellite photos show it dark after sundown. And it’s still sinking; been sinking so long its actually normal state of affairs. It still represents the Worker’s Paradise for the true believers, which it is; for those to whom paradise is measured in power over the public, the sick gratification of petty minds.
Western economies, on the other hands, are like proud battleships on whom the damage is more evident. Maybe hybrid systems have greater contrasts than a monotonically declining socialist system. Just thinking, not seriously really, and not particularly well.
In this battle the Washington was accompanied by the battleship South Dakota and four destroyers. The Japanese force consisted of the Kirishima, two heavy and two light cruisers and ten destroyers—six ships against fifteen. The U.S.N lost three destroyers while the I.J.N. lost the Kirishima and one destroyer.
The Naval Battles of Guadalcanal (November 12-15) involved ships, planes and ground fighting. Overall, the U.S.N. lost two light cruisers* and seven destroyers while the I.J.N. lost two battleships, a heavy cruiser, three dstroyers and eleven transports.
It was a costly victory that ended Japanese attempts to re-take Guadalcanal. It was “the end of the begining” as Churchill said.
*One of the cruisers lost was the Juneau remmebered for the five Sullivan brothers, crew members who died when the Juneau was torpedoed and blew up. Of the crew of 700 only ten survived.
“Osama bin Laden believed, extrapolating wrongly from Mogadishu, that Americans were weak and effete.”
Shock and awe? I cannot believe still what was said about shock and awe, and what expectation people had. I still today cannot wrap my brain around the display, Elimination of Command and control I understand, but shock and awe sounds like a fireworks show.
Wadeusaf
wretchard @7,
I believe your characterization of the stimulus as “financial counterflooding” is off because it assumes the proponents actually want to right the economy; I don’t think they do. I believe they intend for the stimulus, cap and tax, and health care “reform” to be the coup de grace to sink it.
Shock and awe did work: the regular Iraqi Army put down its weapons; only the fanatics defended Saddam.
Further, major commanders — it has been alleged — refused to initiate poison gas attacks as directed by Saddam. One cannot know just how solid the allegation is since every aspect of it begs for official secrecy.
Where it didn’t work was with Saddam’s core of support for whom tyranny was economically addictive.
That Bremer was foolish enough to cashier the entire military and not expect brigandage….
It is the ethos of Central Planning that is doing us in.
Like an over-medicated patient the economy is roundly abused by all the love Congress has for it.
The Harding way: massive cuts in government and taxes — unthinkable.
We’d have breadlines all over but for the Federalization of food aid.
My favorite local charity is the SHARE food closet: prompt free groceries no questions asked. It’s distressing to see so many plainly living out of their cars. It’s a rising trend.
///
What really irks me is tossing renters out on the street with no notice when their landlord loses the property to the sheriff. Shockingly, renters ARE NOT normally notified when their rental property is in proceedings. So you have paid-up renters being tossed out in minutes — losing the bulk of their personal possessions. Instant street people headed straight for Obamaville.
I’m not sold on the relationship between S&W and regular IA capitulation. I may be all wet here, but I don’t think the fireworks had as much to do with it as the storied memory of the tank Column killed in the 1990 engagement.
The condition of the military on the whole was more than suspect. And the means of control included practices that lend themselves to mutiny not cohesion. I tend to agree with the expectations of peace being a bit off, but I am not certain how much could have been expected of such a rabble. Better than nothing I suppose and perhaps a good place to start to rebuild a martial force.
mariner at # 10, I like the metaphore, for in the middle decks of the economy, the engine has been flooded with debt, the counter flooding and other measures, as applied by Geithner’s book, are simply ensuring that the ship will sink more rapidly. This guy earned his reputation developing a unique approach to economic conditions, which only required a recession to test.
I believe the result thus far is a big fail.
Wadeusaf
mariner @ 7 – Interesting point. What would Obama do differently if he wanted to destroy America?
wretcjard @ 7 – Good question. Which type of command economy lasts longer?
Socialism where all capital is owned by the state or Fascism where capital is owned by individuals but controlled by the state?
The former has the Knowledge Problem – no real feedback about the value of its products to individuals (shortages and surpluses result).
The latter does have feedback but the customer is not the individual. The state is the one that is “always right.”
I would bet on Fascism lasting longer. I would compare America from 1913 to the present vs. the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1990 to support my contention.
wretchard, if we’re looking for naval metaphors for the economy … the consensus (and apparently meme of the day) on the ABC show this morning is that *uncertainty* in the economy prevents faster recovery – may even explain why the New Deal did not end the Depression. The very exercise of (arbitrary) command functions freezes business initiatives.
Sounds reasonable to me, if hard to quantify.
Naval metaphor? Sea monsters, singing sirens, mermaids, dasn’t dare leave sight of land.
#6 Visitor
There are a number of reasons. Part of it is inter-service politics of two sorts. Up until the “Brown Shoe Navy” [aviators who wore brown shoes instead of black with their khaki uniforms] came into the ascendent during WW II, what we now call Surface Warfare Officers [the battleship navy] ran the Navy. Carrier command is reserved now for aviators, and to reach carrier command, you have to command a major surface vessel first. Thus, most of the command slots go to aviators now. The return of vessels with sufficient gun power for effective naval gunfire support would mean that they would have to be commanded by specialists in naval gunfire and not flying. That attacks the primacy of the aviation union.
Secondly, with the Navy dominated by aviators, they have minimal interest in supporting troops ashore with Close Air Support. It is kind of like the Air Force and the similar mission. They want absolute control of everything that flys, but if it does not fly fast and high, they don’t want to do it. Flying a “mudfighter” is not cool.
Fortunately for the Marines, they have their own organic squadrons, and believe me Marine fliers will do anything to support their brothers on the ground.
Naval gunnery has evolved in our fleet where the most common gun is a 76 mm automatic [3"-er]. There are a few 127 mm’s around [5"-ers]. Keep in mind that long range interdiction with enough weight on target generally requires 6″-ers [155 mm] or 8″-ers [208 mm]. You need a certain size ship to carry the weapon, its ammunition handling and storage areas, and to take the shock of its firing. Basically, you need a cruiser sized hull. That carries design implications as far as machinery, fuel storage, etc. And for crew size, although modern automation can reduce the last considerably.
While our now scrapped [we scrapped them early, with decades left in their life cycles to save money to operate the Carriers after 9/11 without asking for more appropriations] SPRUANCE class destroyers, our TICONDEROGA class [CG-47] AEGIS cruisers [ Too many of them scrapped early for the same reason. Especially since we now need the ships for the seaborne STANDARD 3 ABM system], and the current ARLEIGH BURKE class destroyers whose production run is about over, and once again we need them for the ABM system] are pretty close in tonnage, and are the size of WW II cruisers; the designations now refer more to role than size. For the forseeable future, we are not going to build any new ships big enough to handle a battery of good sized naval guns. If we did, they might resemble the WW-1/WW-II monitors which had one battleship turret. But they were slow, clumsy, and not really good seakeeping vessels.
Before we decommissioned our last battleships, they were more than sufficient for the job, carrying 9 16″ guns. Some have called their gunfire “Shooting Chevy’s” because the round weighs about as much as a car. They could be accurately placed 20-25 miles away. Using laser guided 8″ discarding sabot rounds out of the 16″ tube, they can hit targets 60 or so miles away.
Two things about naval gunfire. Within its range, it can respond far more quickly and accurately place a heavy weight of ordnance on suddenly emergent targets. Secondly, a naval gun round does not always pose the same domestic or international political risks as a manned aircraft mission. When we were in Lebanon, and launched an airstrike at PLO artillery firing on us, we lost a plane, a pilot, and had the RIO captured. Now, the PLO held the country hostage, and Jesse Jackson [who intervened to negotiate a release because the RIO was black] functionally tried to hold the US government hostage. After the prisoner situation was resolved, the Navy was allowed to solve the artillery problem its own way. 16″ shells as counterbattery fire took care of things. And incidentally took out the PLO’s Army Artillery commander who made an ill-timed inspection tour of the batteries firing on our side.
There is another factor about battleships. They were downright impressive. I know of a captain of a Russian AGI who decided that discretion was a Marxist-Leninist virtue when looking up wrong end of the barrels of 3 seagoing versions of the Holland Tunnel.
Subotai Bahadur
Sb @ 17: The later battleships were gorgeous works of art, but is a 16 inch gun really preferable to even a subsonic cruise missile carrying roughly the same payload? Copying the Russians we are now also developing supersonic cruise missiles – which of course have much longer ranges. Not sure what the naval weapon of choice is these days for shorter range, say ten miles and in. Torpedo, I guess, including the supercritical version (where again we are copying the Russians).
In engineering there is a phenomenon called “lag induced oscillation.” When a supposedly negative correcting response is sufficiently time delayed it can become positively reinforcing. Run away oscillation usually results. Many, if not most, so called “pilot error” accidents are actually the result of faulty design where there is a significant lag in the response to a command signal. It would appear that such is the phenomenon being discussed here.
There is a political aspect to this, as well. Centralized planning inherently has significant time lags. In order to maintain stability it is necessary for the central authority to eliminate high frequency driving signals. The effort to clamp down on ordinary fluctuating activity is called “totalitarian tyranny.” Free markets, because of their much shorter lag times (in some cases minutes, or even seconds) tend to avoid lag induced oscillations for most activity.
In short, freedom REQUIRES free markets.
(P.S. I am not Chet W. Richards. I’m the other guy.)
Subotai, I find it hard to understand why one would risk such a large platform to fire such a small projectile when, for instance, in navy vs navy battles a torpedo will now kill a ship from over the horizon.
And what if, for instance, the Iranians managed to install tubes for such devices anywhere on their coast?
They could afford to lose those tubes, could we afford to lose ships big enough to fire guns at those tubes?
If you can’t afford to lose it, you can’t afford to use it in war.
It would be interesting to hear Old Salt’s views on this whole thread.
19. Chet Richards
lag induced oscillation is called resonance roll in road transport engineering and has been the cause of tanker trucks rolling over at not much faster than walking pace.
It’s a sobering occurrence and the parallels with government attempts to control the economy are sure valid.
I’ve seen the aftermath, Kirishima turning turtle (I’m surprised she didn’t roll back over after dropping her turrets, perhaps the amount of water in her lower hull prevented that), and big trucks lying on their side (usually after negotiating a traffic circle with a negative camber).
Now I’m waiting to see what happens to the US economy with baited breath.
No matter what happens there will be opportunities if we keep our powder dry and our vision clear.
The US Army’s MRLS unguided rocket launcher is a very impressive system. I studied the development of it while at Ft. Belvoir. It has an 18 mile range and drops 844 bomblets per rocket. I believe there are guided versions of it now and other warhead options.
Given the lack of recoil, a number of these could be located on a rather small ship. You would need a crane to reload the launcher the Army way, but a faster method for naval use probably could be devised without too much trouble.
MRLS would be ideal for dealing with swarms of small boats – pick a Line of Death and put up a steel wall.
One of the problems with using the 16 inch guns of the Iowa Class was that by the 80′s the available stocks of powder had changed composition and no longer gave predictable performance. They ended up putting a chemist on board each BB to constantly test the powder and revise the artillery tables.
When the USS Vincennes shot down that Iranian airliner, it had been in a running GUN battle with Iranian surface ships. It had shot over 100 5″ shells in the preceding hour or two.
At what, exactly, I don’t know.
But that does argue for use of gun fire in surface naval engagements.
We also shouldn’t forget the use of 5″ shells on the Iranian oil platforms that had been taken over by their warriors.
Plus the cost per gun round is much lower than for a missile that can do comparable tasks. The platform costs are higher but the packaging allows more loads.
Naval ships have a Captain who has authority over all. However a micro manager Captain can come to grief as easily as an indifferent one. With the authority comes responsibility. Peace time damage to a naval ship is often a career ender for a Captain.
He can’t blame the the previous Captain, blaming subordinates is not accepted. The Captain is responsible for the performance of the subordinates.
It will not happen, but I wonder what a battle ship could be if you started the design from scratch. If you have effective gps terminal guidance on the shells you could use Bul or tank type smooth bore guns.(Electromag guns are not quite ready yet IMHO). Have a nuclear or diesel/electric power plant. Instead of passive armor reactive defense. Explosive plates, Phlanax, and etc. UAV launchers and recovery systems in addition to cruise missiles. Passive detection for incoming threats: infra red, thermal, even acustic. But most of all don’t let any of the current Union controlled ship yard build it. Have it built in Korea if you have to.
I’m a bit surprised no one has picked up on what seems to me to be the main lesson, here–that various items but esp. military hardware and systems can become functionally obsolete before they are physically non-functional. Kirishima’s design was simply no longer effective by the time it had to face battleships designed and equipped with the benefit of later experience and technology. It had been modernized to a degree, but anything less than a total rebuild was not going to address these problems, and such a rebuild would probably have been as expensive and time-consuming as building a new ship.
Which leads me back to the questionable wisdom of cancelling the F-22 (to force F-35 sales) and pretending the F-15, a world-beater in its day, can overwhelm Sukhoi-30s, or that a 1960-vintage B-52 can survive in a high-intensity environment in 2015.
The US has not fought without at least local air superiority since mid-1942. US tactical doctrine seems to me to depend to a very great degree on command of the air and, if not space superiority, at least unrestricted use of space and the electromagnetic spectrum. I see a near obsession with COIN, important as it is, leaving us under-investing in what would be needed to counter truly existential hi-intensity threats. We may be developing the technologies, but we certainly aren’t deploying them to the extent they would be needed.
And, in the end, since we are in the grand strategic sense a satisfied power playing defense, our opponents will try to impose on us the war we are least prepared for. If full-spectrum dominance is too expensive, aa it may be, what is the geo-strategy to bring our commitments in line with our capabilities?
Does anyone else see this, or am I crazy?
25. Marty
I guess you could draw a parallel between the USS Washington-Kirishima battle and the Bismarck-HMS Hood battle.
In both instances the sunk ships were battle cruisers which sacrificed protection for speed and were up against more modern battleships.
And I think you also need to add dominance of the sea to dominance of the air as assumptions of US military tactics and technology.
I think full spectrum dominance can come at an acceptable price only for a non socialist, hyper productive republic, that produces the necessary net wealth (after deducting social welfare costs). Obamacare might really prove that point if it gets up.
The cost of vulnerability must surely exceed the cost of military power in our situation.
And I think we are going to be reminded of that fact soon the way Obama is going.
This battle, and the one two nights earlier were the end of Japan’s chances. This was part of a plan to deliver eleven transports full of soldiers to the island. Because the U.S. navy kept the battleships too busy to bombard the airfield, the U.S. planes sank all eleven with all their supplies. That was an even more crushing blow than the loss of the old slow battleships.
Of 10,000 soldiers on those transports, only 2,000 rescued by destroyers made it to shore, with no supplies.
A book called “Derailing the Tokyo Express” by Jack Coombe quotes Japanese admiral Tanaka on reasons why Japan lost:
1. Confusion in command, i.e. conflicting orders.
2. Hastily gathered forces, that had not practiced together.
3. No consistent operational plans.
4. Poor communications.
5. Lack of coordination between army and navy.
6.Underestimation of the enemy.
“We stumbled along from one error to another, while the enemy grew wise.”
Does this remind anyone of our efforts in the Stan?
Perhaps the economic metaphor for the failure of the counter flooding is the disappearance of commericial capital, and the increasing amount of debt service that will come to dominate the Federal Budget in years to come. We won’t be swamped in 15 minutes like the Kirishima, but it is an unavoidable conclusion based on the currently established trend, that the economy will be swamped.
Osama was not wrong about the elites who run this country. Had Al Gore been President, Osama would have won his bet. A few minor missile strikes at sand dunes, and then “negotiations.” Obama himself wants negotiations with AQ. He’d love to have a “summit” at the White House for bin Laden.
Osama bin Laden WAS correct about the West’s elite. They WILL surrender with one big shock. They’ve been looking to surrender for decades. It is the people, who have nowhere to run to, and nowhere else to go, who will fight. Who will, eventually, if pressed hard enough with “one big shock after another” (i.e. nuking of NYC and DC, the current Jihadist dream) would respond in the way Curtis Le May did.
This has always been the case.
Josh: Delta co$t of about 800% per round. Thats why.
Noting of course there is a delta accuracy acceptable for the delta cost.
Also noting our role is to end the fight not to pick it.
We draw on the miscreant. The consequences are their problem.
Most people live near the ocean. All trade is dependent on the ocean. Ordnance delivered from the sea (NGFS) has been repeatedly been demonstrated to be deadly and effective. The Gun Navy is necessary. The Air Navy is necessary. Boots on the ground (USMC) are necessary. None is sufficient. The three are representations of the concept of Force Projection. Force Projection is the mission and the animus of a Navy.
We had wars ashore in VietNam and in Iraq and in Afghanistan. We seem committed to fighting the last (land) war. The next will be littoral and within 20NM of a beach. Or it will be Global with the majority within 20NM of the beach.
Well, shit.
Systems of red tape that are designed to deter corruption can actually be used to facilitate corruption. For example, if one is supposed to deliver 1000 pencils to an Afghan village school, it is unlikely that anybody is going to notice if they only receive 900 pencils. They will notice if no pencils come, or even if only 100 pencils come.
Sure, corruption could be found if an auditor looked through the manifest that claimed that 1000 pencils were delivered and while noting a letter from the school principal expressing thanks for the 900 pencils that were received. How often are such audits likely to happen? Chances are, some historian two centuries later would discover the discrepancy and chalk it down to petty corruption. Meanwhile, the thief gets away with his crimes.
Ideals matter. Without basic ideals, bureaucratic systems dissolve into intrigue and corruption. Systems are designed for one set of problems and they fail when they confront problems they weren’t designed for. It is possible to redesign a system if one understands what it is supposed to do, but when people lose sight of why a technology or bureaucracy exists in the first place (beyond giving jobs to friends), the system crashes.
Subotai,
“most of the command slots go to aviators now”
Far from most. Probably less than 20% of the total.
Presbypoet:
And in the Pacific and in Europe and in the Potomac and the Somme and any where else? Is is not in the nature of things that war, the most brutal of things, be misbegotten in the most of its own things?
Bob Murph @ 26
HMS Hood, almost certainly, keel laid the day of Jutland and proven obsolete with repect to plunging fire by that night, but not realized until about a year later at which point the Admiralty recognized she was already obsolete tho not yet launched, and decided to finish her because of the sunk (hah!) cost.
Sea control, sure, you’re right, and again, also haven’t fought without at least daytime sea control since mid-1942. I hope we know what we’re doing putting all our eggs into a dozen carrier groups, of which only about 8 can be usable at any one time. I appreciate the scale efficiencis of 1 90,000 ton hull over 2 x 45,000, but having your sea control rest on 8 surface hulls plus about 30 or so operational subs… well… I sure hope so.
From the rest of your comment I take it you share my fears. As I share yours expressed about Obamacare (as well as any number of other things).
Alexis:
Understanding of a system is a necessary and sufficient predicate to the control of a system.
“Necessary and sufficient” is a mathematical phrase that means all the data that one needs is in the predicate.
The problem is that no one in govt has enuf sense to unnerstan that none them got nuf sense to do whut needs doin.
I once had the pleasure of serving as First Lieutenant Afloat when my cruiser refueled from the battleship New Jersey. It is my hope to one day meet a woman who looks that good. She had guns and guns are good. The work both psychologically and they are cost effective at delivering ordnance on target. Missiles use most of their mass in their guidance and propulsion systems. For their cost they deliver a small very expensive conventional warhead. With a gun the bullet that leaves the tube is almost all explosive. Guns are divided into 3 classes, small medium and large, depending on their bullet sizes.
Small caliber guns are 20, 30, 40 or 76 mm, the 76ers are the same as 3″. While they have some capability against a small boat attack and most are called DP for dual purpose, meaning they can be used for air defense, they have limited use against a modern stand off airborne attack. For defense against an anti-ship missile specialized guns like the Phalanx can turn 500 pounds of incoming missile into 500 pounds of shrapnel, that still hits your ship. Hopefully though it explodes offboard which limits the damage. Remember modern ships have almost no armor protection. When the brand spanking new USS New York visited for Fleet Week I took a look at her and was shocked to discover that she had no gun larger than 40mm. That means that she can give no Naval Gun Fire Support to the marines. All she can do is launch the LCAC, a big hovercraft, from over the horizon. Fire support would have to come from either an aircraft carrier based FA-18/F-35, (there are exactly how many of those CVs available now?) or an LHD based Harrier, an old platform.
Medium class guns are in the 4″ to 6″ range. The UK uses 100 mm (4″) guns and the US uses 5″. While a 5′/54 mark 45 is a good gun, made more reliable by having a slower fire rate than earlier models, it lacks the firepower to destroy a hardened shore target. Special ammunition may give it some capacity against a modern tank but most old HE shells would just ruin the paint job. As was pointed out above by Subotai Bahadur the Navy has no guns larger than 5″ and the numbers of those are declining. In a role similar to that of the horse holder mentioned on an earlier thread when my ship fired it’s 5″ guns in training I did the safety checks and then I was stationed outside by the gun turret as the safety observe. That made me the man inserted into the loop of the theoretically unmanned gun turret. That was needed because the Filipinos would come out in their bonka boats to catch the falling brass shell casings. For over 30 years there have been plans to deploy 6″ (155mm) systems, such as the Vertical Load Gun, that would use the common ammunition used by all US land forces artillery. The Army and Marine Corps no longer field guns larger than the 155. BTW I heard the BBs referred to as “Shooting Volkswagens.”
Anything larger than a 6″ gun is a Major Caliber gun. The Navy no longer has any major caliber gun systems since the retirement of the BBs. 30 years ago a Major Caliber Light Weight Gun System (MCLWGS) was installed on the USS Hull for testing. I saw the ship after the gun was removed and she was decommissioned and she sure looked like she was ridden hard and put away wet. One officer told me the test was sabotaged by putting the gun on to small a platform so that the vibration would be excessive. There are powerful interests opposed to naval gunnery. Over 80% of humanity would live within range of modern large caliber NGFS but we refuse to build them. The Arsenal Ship never happened and with current budget climate projections we could easily end up with a Navy about the size and functionality of what the British have now. What the British have is rapidly becoming a less significant naval presence than the US Coast Guard.
No weapon is better than the Command system behind it. When I was on the USS England, which was a double ended Terrier shooter Cruiser with no guns, we learned that a Naval ship had accidentally launched a Harpoon missile and destroyed a truck in Denmark. That was a non-career enhancing move for the CO of the responsible ship. My Commanding Officer responded to this information by ordering the power supplies to our Harpoon missiles disconnected while the ship transited the South China Sea past the coast of a hostile Vietnam.
to expand on my #6
For the Marines ashore, Naval Artilary is like the postman: through rain and snow and dark of night…
it is not detered by low cloud cover or sandstorms or shoulder fired SAMs. It doesnt break contact to re-arm and re-fuel. (not a criticism of the zoomies, just hard truths)
and Red Tape notwithstanding it arrives on target in minutes.
“Anything larger than a 6″ gun is a Major Caliber gun. The Navy no longer has any major caliber gun systems since the retirement of the BBs. ”
since I view the Navy’s role as delivering Marines to the fight, the lack of naval guns seems stupid to me.
herb @ 29: I’ve said I generally like a little collateral damage, but more than that I like taking out the intended target and for that there is nothing like modern precision guided munitions. As I understand it, even at 800% cost difference, the effective cost to take out that target is better with the new stuff.
I can see artillery, naval or land, up to about 8 inches, eg the Crusader. Especially if the shells can be terminally guided.
I’d love to find an excuse for a new technology battleship, not much help in Afghanistan, Iraq, or even Iran, tho.
29:
Are they elites or are they elitists?
There is a difference. When you call them elites, you implicitly acknowledge your inferiority to them. If you want to acknowledge their superiority, that is your choice. However, it is not mine.
The ruling class of this country is not necessarily its elite. America’s elite is its natural aristocracy, which ought not to be confused with the owners of mere tokens of status. It is the fictional Harrison Bergeron who is a member of America’s natural aristocracy, not the Handicapper General.
The pretensions of the New York Times, CBS, CNN, BBC, Harvard, Columbia, Georgetown, Oxford, Cambridge, et cetera are pretensions. Their pretensions are no more an indicator of elite status than the machinations of the Wizard of Oz.
When Andrew Jackson accepted an honorary doctorate from Harvard, he acknowledged the cultural power of Harvard to confer such an honor upon him. It was much like Charlemagne accepting a crown from the Pope.
If America’s ruling class has truly become decadent and defeatist, that’s all the more reason not to acknowledge such people as America’s true elite. I, for one, would rather not confirm elitist pretensions by acknowledging the “elite” status of pretenders.
I claim the distinction of having seen the USS Washington abuilding. 1940, age 10, aboard a Delaware river excursion boat with my parents, when a voice on the loudspeaker said, “And on your right is the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. That nearly completed ship on the ways is the USS Washington.” That vivid picture has remained with me ever since, and I remember the thrill it gave me to read, years later, Samuel Eliot Morison’s account of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, where Admiral Lee and the USS Washington, alone due to South Dakota being out of the fight, took on the IJN and won.
OT
Has everyone seen this? Is the bottom dropping out?
RasmussenPoll
Obama: Strongly Approve 23% Strongly Disapprove 42%.. Approval Index:-19, lowest yet… total approval 46%… http://tinyurl.com/preztrack
#18 Josh
I was discussing gunfire support for the troops, and not naval combat. Cruise missiles of all sorts can be used to support troops, however, the cost is horrendous and we do not have, and cannot have, enough of them for the tempo of land combat. For example, an old cruise missile such as the Harpoon costs well over $500,000. A 155mm [6"] HE round costs between 500-$1000, where in that range I believe depending on whether we are buying it or if we are selling it and to who.
You are not going to use the cruise missile for a Harassing and Interdiction fire mission, nor are you going to use it to provide cover for a unit being over-run. It just would cost too much and you would run out of missiles rather quickly.
#20 Bob Murphy
If I understand what you are referring to, these are rocket boosted torpedoes, which would be dealt with in the flight phase over the horizon. Emplacing missiles and the like on the coast of an area we are about to attack probably [nothing is sure in war] would be noticed and they would be attritted or destroyed by our preliminary strikes. As far as the most common coastal missiles, variants of the STYX, including the Chinese variants used by the Iranians; we know how hard they hit. We have seen it. If any ship was able to endure multiple hits, it was the battleships we had in commission. If we develop a ship to take over the NGFS mission, it will not be battleship sized, but rather cruiser sized.
#22 RWE
I have great respect for the MRLS, and indeed such has been suggested for naval use. I am not privy to the reasons why it has not been adopted, but while it may be something technical, it just as likely could be political ['not invented here' syndrome].
I know that the logistics train for the battleships [parts and spares, etc.] was getting horrendous. Barrel liners for the 16″-ers was another critical problem. But like many other problems today, when we run up against one, we refuse to do anything about it. Knowing that the original composition of the powder was known; I am sure that there would be more than a few companies who would be willing to either make more to the old formula, or a new formula using the advances since WW-II that gave the same results. But no one wanted to try.
#23 Whitehall
You’re right.
For most modern purely naval combat situations, a 5″-er will fill the bill, or even the 76 mm’s. Anything at sea outside its range will be either an aircraft or missile and dealt with by either another missile or the CIWS.
#24 toad
The original WW-I/II monitors were done something like that, built by shipyards more experienced with ocean liners. IF we do get some sort of craft to take up the NGFS mission, it will have to be done as you suggest. We are not going to be building many warships, or authorizing any new ones, for a while for two sets of obvious reasons however, so the net result is almost surely to pretend that there is no problem until it costs us big time.
#25 Marty, #26 Bob Murph, and #31 Herb:
Agreed to all three.
Subotai Bahadur
Were there any WW2 battleships that took 20 16in hits and kept firing? I know the Bismark had to be sunk by torpedo, but it ceased to be a threat long before that.
Marty,
You are not crazy.
Wadeusaf
No.
Virtually all were done in by torpedoes and bombs.
The Germans’ biggest ships had 15″ guns, Yamato and her sister ship had 18″ guns but never got close enough to use them before they were sunk by planes.
All three navies that used capital ships offensively to any significant degree relied on their carrier based aircraft to deal with opposing navies in the first instance. The combat radius of naval aircraft gave them an unassailable advantage.
And we not only knackered Japan’s carrier fleet in a few short years after Pearl Harbor (they lacked the industrial capacity to replace them) but shot down all their competent naval pilots so the remaining carriers were useless and could not carry out effective aerial operations. That is probably why the IJN put an old battlecruiser forward without air cover as their best remaining shot, and it was as futile as the Yamato’s last sortie.
I’m rather surprised that USS Washington didn’t get in more 5.38″ shell hits at that range. They had five twin 5.38″ turrets on each side and that’s a lot of firepower. Perhaps they were trying to engage Kirishima’s escorts.
Bob @ 46…
I prefer the format: 5″ 38 caliber ( Dual Purpose ) guns as against 5.38″.
I’d rather expect that the Captain might not fire rounds deemed immaterial to a capital ship duel. In fact, were these guns even slaved to the main gun directory or did they have anti-air and independent targeting?
Both the Bismark and the Yamato took far more damage than Kirishima… Yamato even used her main batteries against aircraft…. Bismark lasted longer but was swiss cheese from British 16″ rifles as Dr. Ballard’s expedition revealed. The Yamato went down even more quickly under a horrific pounding beyond all other capital ships. IIRC there is some footage of her last moments on U-Tube.
////
Developments in rail-guns must necessarily be classified. But it is reasonable to assume that the next generation of projectile tossing capital ships will use them.
Remember just how fast steam turbines and big guns came together to create HMS Dreadnought when the challenge was there.
I rather expect that such a leap in capital ship/ fire support ship design might be closer than we think.
If Dreadnought is not example enough then think upon USN George Washington.
////
Weirdly the US Navy’s biggest threats rarely sail: the PLAN steams but little, and the US Army and US Air Force, never.
I understand that the PLAN has come up with terminal-homing medium range ballistic missiles. Is the CCP unaware of how America feels about strategic strikes against our fleet at sea?
Plainly, any such gambit equals total nuclear war right there — a Pearl Harbor on the open ocean. Are they that mad?
Can they not be aware of the retaliation by SSBN, of which they cannot cope?
Why develop weapons that cannot be used to positive effect?
Does the Chinese leadership realize that they are making themselves hostage to PLAN impulses?
BTW the dodge of ‘only targeting Taiwan’ with their semi-strategic build-up — give me a break.
ALL of the missiles currently aimed at Taiwan are very suitable for use against Okinawa, Japan, and ROK. Strange, don’t you think?
You mean Obama is going to sink us faster than the perforated battle ship Kirishima by flooding us with waves of debt? Who would have thought?
Obama is a blithering idiot. He should be relieved of command before we drown in our own debt.
Larry Summers reports everyone knows North Korea has pulled out of it’s recession, and this spring we will see robust growth.
“everybody agrees that the recession is over,”
…but he did not say when the unemployment rate could be expected to drop further.
How many knew of these monsters?
Two Japanese Subs Sunk in 1946 Found
U.S. researchers said Thursday that they have located the remains of two high-tech Japanese submarines that were scuttled by the U.S. Navy off Hawaii in 1946 to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War.
One of the craft was the largest non-nuclear sub ever built and had the ability to circle the globe 1 1/2 times without refueling. Called the I-14, the behemoth was 400 feet long and 40 feet high and carried a crew of 144. It was designed to launch two folding-wing bombers on kamikaze missions against U.S. cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., although changes in tactics, and the end of the war, prevented such attacks.
The second, which also never entered the war, was an attack submarine called the I-201 whose design foreshadowed the sleek submarines of today. It was thought to be more than twice as fast as any U.S. subs used in the war.
Photo – 5 Subs tied up @ Pearl.
MORE JAPANESE SUBS FOUND IN HAWAII WATERS
Kerby said the search for the I-14 and I-201 was aided by veterans after the discovery of the I-401 became public in 2005.
Joe Gould, who was assigned to be the executive officer of the I-14 while it was at Pearl Harbor, shot 16mm film of the sinking of the sub off of Pearl Harbor.
HURL used Gould’s WWII-era film to help pinpoint the search area.
“As the (camera) panned from Ka’ena Point to Diamond Head, we were able to pick out landmarks and triangulate a rough position,” Kerby said.
blert,
Does the Chinese leadership realize that they are making themselves hostage to PLAN impulses?
My belief is that the the CCP is very aware of the risk of military leadership becoming its own faction. Not only is maintaining effective control over the armed forces a basic tenet of Leninist government, relying on methods that were originally devised by Trotsky during the Russian Civil War, but they have the additional historical example of Japan in the last century to consider. Finally they have the chinese case of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who rose from head of the Whampoa Military Academy to leader of the KMT. Both the KMT and the CCP viewed each other as renegade military factions. So a concern with the phenomenon of self serving military factions is a formative part of CCP ideology. Control of the military in a Leninist system is maintained through three methods;
1) A system of political officers modeled on the russian zampolits with dual controls
2) Rotating commanders to prevent their getting to close to their officers and rotating the units to
prevent their getting local, as opposed to national, loyalty
3) Encouraging rivalries and factions with multiple chains of command and redundant organizations.
You note that an attack by the Chinese on the US 7th Fleet using terminal homing warheads launched by IRBM would expose them to the risk of retaliation from the US Navy’s SLBM force. That makes it imperative for the Chinese to politically neutralize the ability of the US to respond to an attack to make such a threat credible. With the installation of BHO the strategic capacity of the United States has dramatically declined in credibility. That vastly increases the probability of Chinese pressure to isolate Taiwan and India and assert dominance over resources, such as in the South China Sea. This is an example of how Obama’s conduct in the National Command Authority (NCA) has increased the risk of war.
To be blogged under the title “Red Dragon Ships and Missiles”
14. Langley:
What you’ll generally hear people say is that the repeal of the Banking Act of 1933 (Glass-Steagall Act) back in 1999 is what caused the banking side of the meltdown last year. That act prohibited banks from doing investment banking;
The goals of banking regulation are tied to the problems any fractional reserve system faces. This was true in the 1830s, in the 1930s, and it is still true.
Former Fed Head Volker has been railing of late that all the complex banking instruments added in the last decade or two have not made the US grow more than in the 60′s or 50′s.
Charles,
We then figured the damage that wreaked was not sufficient, and decided taxpayers should ante up the banks bets, and suffer any losses incurred!
IMHO the US military procurement system has become very close to inoperative. It has, like everything else, become to politicized and corrupt, but I repeat myself.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/bae-producing-scaleddown-rail-gun-naval-weapon-01986/
They have been researching the rail gun for three decades as far as I know. One of the bigger problems seems to have been getting the gun to hold together for a decent number of shots. As I get older and more paranoid I sometimes suspect someone on the civy side of the program has been spoking the wheels.
One of my officer codes was naval gunfire spotter, so I’m pretty familiar with the arguments both ways on naval gunfire.
The Marines absolutely did not want the battleships to be retired. When USS New Jersey appeared off Beirut there was a great collective breath holding. The wrong Labonese knew there was no arguing with Volkswagens (I never heard Chevies) flying through the air. There would be collateral damage, but that was the beauty of such brute force. The fear of collateral damage has only increased since then.
The Navy no longer wanted battleships for several reasons, expense being one. Naval air saw no reason for battleships, they felt the money could be better spent on carriers. Planes could hit the same targets, albeit without the same weight of ordnance, and planes had a greater range. The submariners thought the money could be better spent on nuke subs that had scarey missiles that could land anywhere.
Technology existed that would have allowed battleships to fire hybrid “smart rounds” that could hit painted targets and even approximate the best traits of cruise missiles, but the battleships were already on the way out as far as the Navy was concerned. Cheaper smart rounds competed with the naval air mission. Already the Navy had lost some of its practical knowledge and memory on big guns, see USS Iowa fiasco.
Getting back to naval gunfire spotting, I was in the Pentagon in 1987 when it became clear the Cold War was truly over. The nuclear submarine community was frantic. They needed a mission. I heard a great powerpoint presentation by a hot runner sub admiral in which he pointed out the various places in the world where a nuclear submarine could lie at periscope depth spotting for a naval gunfire platform. All these places had to have very steep shore gradients indeed. These locations were a very small percentage of the world’s coastline.
By then of course there were virtually no naval guns worth spotting for.
Watch closely. The naval littoral ship has been proposed in several iterations, but never, never seems to get off the ground. The Navy does not want the mission. All service like their strategic missions, few like tactical missions…in support of another service. If a service is going to spend money, it prefers a purchase that whose use isn’t too limited.
SB @ 43: I was discussing gunfire support for the troops, and not naval combat.
I still can’t imagine what mission you have in mind. Was it the New Jersey that shelled the Bekka Valley in Lebanon twenty years ago? That’s the equivalent of carpet bombing at best, except today the bad guys have shaped charge missiles from RPGs to “exocet” style and would take out any battleship in sight of shore. I guess similarly ground artillery is subject to small-scale counterattacks. Against irregulars, our presenting any target of value on the ground is a problem.
A couple of things:
Wretchard’s blog post about the fate of the IJN battleship KIRISHIMA makes that much more extraordinary the survival and the fight that was put up by the USS JOHNSTON and the other destroyer escorts of TAFFY 3 northeast of Leyte Gulf in October of 1944.
Secondly, the PLANs investment in capital ships and cruisers is designed to wrest dominance of the Western Pacific away from the US Navy. The new Administration’s shortsighted naval plans threaten to make Chinese plans much easier to fulfill, and make war more, not less, likely.
OT: health care
All the talking heads are echoing the Obama talk of “bending the curve”. WTF does that mean? Does it relate to the curve of what an individual pays, or of the aggregate cost of the program? Two very different curves.
How can we have any hope that government will do anything right, when they can’t even get these simple arithmetic issues straight?
There has been a vigorous technical battle between anti-ship missiles vs anti-anti-ship defense. Everybody and there dog has a computer/radar directed rapid fire anti-missile gun system. I was just reading about the PLN 30mm set up. Then there are a bunch of missiles in a box set ups to to take out super-sonic anti-ship missiles. The old Battle Ships non reactive metal armor was pretty effective. It takes a big war head to do more than scratch the paint. I think it was the New Jersey that took a hit from a shore based gun during the Korean War, and that was all that happened, scratched paint.
There is a growing pressure against the Air Force and the Navy to get with supporting ground forces or start seeing their budgets cut. If the Air Force isn’t careful they are going to lose their “ownership” of fixed wing aircraft. The Army would love to have direct control of some A-10s, C-17s, and C-130s. The desire for a true combined arms force is growing outside the military establishment.
I’m not aware of the real effectiveness of anti-anti missiles, other than the old phalanx, or the Israeli attempt to shoot down the primitive pali kassams (is that anything like “shazzam”?). Point defense isn’t going to work against a serious attack by modern weapons.
As for nonreactive armor – it’s like so much butter when hit by a shaped charge, a $200 RPG, if it hits just right, can go through the thickest armor on an A-1 tank, which I believe is on the order of 18 inches. It’s very depressing.
I’m sure the Army will have its own UCAV robot A-10 equivalents in a few years, maybe C-130 gunships. C-17 transport, I dunno. We’d better build a whole bunch more C-17s, we’re going to wear out the ones we have at this rate. Friend of mine used to carry on about how we ought to have C-17 full of smart munitions just orbiting battle areas waiting for calls, but able to land with unexpended munitions. Could happen.
Back when, every CVA/N driver was an airdale. They were detailed to deep draft vessels on their way. Our ship was always commanded by potential carrier captains. Some were good, and some were … politely, wound too tight.
The Santana quote about those who forget history beeing doomed to repeat it applies:
Read “The influence of seapower upon history” by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Those who served in the USN likely have already done so. Those who pretend to serve in the Oval Office have likely not, to their detriment. The country that controls the sea lanes [shipping] controls the world.
I think the USMC has it right, as far as they are allowed do their air support. They get by, barely, on worn out castoffs in a lot of cases. IMO, the Army has their helos, but need the Warthog. [aside: howinhell did they wear out the A10 airframes w/o putting them into combat???] The Army likely should be tasking its own assets for troop and materiel movement[C17 C130]. What benefit does having the Air Force in the command and control loop add?
The “Gator Navy” in Little Creek is its own little community, and as such, has little in common with the surface and [anti]/submarine warfare groups. Perhaps they should be under USMC, along with any littoral craft.
Is this some of the stuff Rummy was tasking in the Pentagon?
tom
I missed this post…had seen the Kirishima article a bit back and recommend it to anybody with even a passing interest in WWII at sea, or the Guadalcanal campaign. I’d also put in a plug for Richard Frank’s fine book on the campaign.
Kirishima was a Kongo class battleship. These four battleships (battlecruisers before modified somewhat in the 30′s) were probably the most useful, overall, of all the Japanese battleships — at max speed of 30.5 knots they were the only ships that could keep up with the carriers on a speed run (even the slowest big carrier, Kaga, made 28 knots max — just slightly outstepping Yamato’s best speed of 27.5. (The great defect of Yamato was her relative lack of speed, especially as compared to, say, the Iowas).
Kongo (the class leader) was built in the UK, by Vickers, and was apparently a great embarassment to the British, for she far outclassed the latest Admiralty design (the Lion class which, pound for pound, were probably the worst warships the British ever built). The Japanese were smart enough to retain a Vickers designer — Sir George Thurston, rather than using copying British Admiralty designs. The British responded by building Tiger — very similar in design and layout to the Kongos.
Kongo’s sister Hiei (sunk the night before Kirishima) had some percentage of British components — the other two ships were completely Japanese built.
Anyway, the class is a fascinating group of ships.
“The Santana quote about those who forget history beeing doomed to repeat it applies:”
Sorry, the only (Carlos) Santana quote I know is “You got to mend your evil ways.” The part about repeating history, I believe, is attributable to George Santayana.
…North Korea. It’s been sinking for decades, way past any notion of recession or depression. It’s gone past starvation and freezing into the depths. Satellite photos show it dark after sundown.
Starvation and freezing? Dark after sundown? They’re so socially conscious that they lead the world in minimizing carbon footprint.
Even if counter-flooding increased the (unknown) overall risk of sinking, a ship listing significantly to port or starbord would have had difficulty in reloading and aiming return fire. Some effort at stabilizing the ship had to be done, just to allow the fight to continue.
Actually, for well over 20 years we have had the option of developing technology that would make any big artillery obsolete.
Kinetic energy kill vehicles delivered from orbit (Rods from God and some other names that I am not supposed to know about) could take out anything from a hardened ICBM silo to a capital ship to a tank to a jet at 50,000 ft.
But that supposed a robust and fairly low cost space launch capability. And the manned space and the airplane and the missile people that have so throughly sabotaged our space launch development have seen to that.
OT I just did a big blog post on Obama’s sinking in the Rasmussen Poll titled “The Full Meltdown.”
Every CV Captain has to be an aviator. Before they are given the keys to the aircraft carrier they have to do a tour as CO of another deep draft ship. That means that about half of the amphibious transport ships in the Navy are commanded by aviators. That is one reason that the moral in the Surface Line (ship driving) community is so poor. If Marine officers were allowed to command Naval units, which might otherwise make sense, then there would be almost no command or promotion opportunities for traditional Surface Warfare officers.
Insufficiently Sensitive,
North Korea could make $Billions$ from this. They must be salivating at the opportunities for fraud.
Limpet6,
The LCS has only a measly 57mm gun. That would be of limited use for the NGFS mission. The Arsenal Ship/DD (X)/DD 1000 ships were going to be built around a real 155mm gun but that has faced the death of a million cuts. That would have been a step into real war-fighting capability as originally proposed. Instead it got sidetracked into debates over the “tumbledown hull” design.
Every argument I’ve seen for the latest navy ships operate on the premises of:
1. Air supremacy
2. Inability of ships to penetrate the frigate/destroyer/cruiser/sub screen to get to the capitals (CVNs, these days)
3. Not getting hit by pretty much anything harmful (5″ or larger shell, equivalent torpedo or missile)
Somehow, operating on these assumptions seems like a very bad case of complacency and is just asking for at least a disaster or two.
I worry about that a carrier, or LHA/LHN is taken out in the first naval engagement because they’re huge targets with weak armor operating under the premise that “they won’t be able to get to us.”
Plenty of American carriers have been sunk. American battleships? None since Pearl Harbor, if I recall correctly.
#58 Josh
About the only way an RPG is going to hit a naval gunfire support ship [either one of the old BB's or a notational new design with 8"-ers, or rail guns, or whatever], is if it is tied up to the dock. Any NGFS vessel is going to be operating with the fleet during an assault, not independently. Just as the LPD that carries and launches the Marines in their LCAC’s is going to be at risk of missile attack; the NGFS will be. And will be protected by the same layered defense as the rest of the fleet. Aside from radar and IR indications, they cannot launch what you describe without external targeting and guidance systems. When you fire up the targeting radar for say the Chinese version of the STYX called the Silkworm or Seersucker; it sticks out like a sore thumb. Incidentally, absent that radar for initial guidance and target acquisition, the missiles launched are about as useful as the SAMS launched by Libya when we hit them in the 1980′s. There is a story there. The most effective response in a time urgent fashion, to being painted by that radar [and we can tell what kind of system is painting us], would be a salvo of shells from the NGFS on the emitting antenna. Even if it is not co-located, it has to be close to the launch control and the launch control would have just marked itself for some severe personal attention in their immediate vicinity after the first salvo.
Any they do launch will have to get through the layered defense of the fleet. I’m not promising that they won’t get some through, but they would be firing at the fleet anyway, with or without a NGFS vessel present. It would just give us a means to reply quickly and effectively.
Part of the NGFS mission is the same as shore based counter-battery fire, which this would be. Once the ground forces have landed their own organic artillery and it is operational, they take over the mission. It is the first couple of days that are critical to any forced entry from the sea, until the ground forces land their own equipment and move inland out of NGFS range.
As far as the RPG shaped charge, we have enough of them in our possession that our troops train with them, and TRADOC uses the results of our own tests. The standard RPG-7′s [leaving aside the fragmentation and thermobaric warheads], even the relatively uncommon variant with the tandem charge to defeat reactive armor, have a max penetration of around 20″ of RHA [Rolled Homegeneous Armor]. If they can hit at all; which at 500 meters on a target 5 meters high and 2.5 meters wide moving at 4 meters/second is less than a 5% chance, let alone perpendicular to the slope.
RHA, however, is used now primarily as a technical term of comparative measurement and not one reflecting current operational realities, assuming a 90 degree impact to a solid, one piece, armor surface. This is because modern tanks including the M-1A1 and A2 have had sloped, composite layered armor over the RHA layer in addition to the reactive outer layer for decades. The composite armor breaks up the shaped charge jet and prevents penetration. I may be wrong, but I do not believe that any of our Abrams’ or similarly armored Brit Chieftains have been penetrated by shaped charges of any kind. The Brits did lose two Chieftains during Iraq; one to a round that went through an open hatch, and one “friendly fire” [no such thing, really] that used a depleted uranium penetrator. I am quite willing to be corrected if you have other data.
I will happily agree that a large shaped charge will tear the [expletive deleted] out of almost all post WW-II ships if it hits. We build them light. Pretty much any ship that has been hit by a cruise missile, especially the Russian designs which emphasize large warheads, has been taken out. That is why we try to take out the missiles before launch [preferably] or before impact.
#62 Josh
I’m sure the Army will have its own UCAV robot A-10 equivalents in a few years, maybe C-130 gunships. C-17 transport, I dunno. We’d better build a whole bunch more C-17s, we’re going to wear out the ones we have at this rate. Friend of mine used to carry on about how we ought to have C-17 full of smart munitions just orbiting battle areas waiting for calls, but able to land with unexpended munitions. Could happen.
I won’t argue a bit here either. Especially the C-17′s. Our airlift capacity is in fact worn out. We just downchecked a whole bunch of our C-5′s because of wear and tear, and the C-17′s are not far behind. The aerial tankers are in the same condition. And because we are NOT replacing them, our capabilities are being degraded by the day, and this regime is … do you know the Yiddish word Kvelling? …. about the situation.
#55 Limpet6
I got the “shooting Chevies” from a Marine captain who flew SeaCobras in Beirut, not long afterwards. He was showing me around his bird, and telling about his deployment there. That is also where I got the Russian AGI story, because the SeaCobras were involved. Volkswagens will do, too.
Subotai Bahadur
53. Doug:
The curious thing is that the banks are paying most of the money that was laid out.
Right now it looking like all but 42 billion of the original +-800 billion TARP loans will be paid back. A lot of that number has already been returned. Now its also the case that Obama wants to pour that money down the toilet asap.
Subotai:
I do recall an incident at the beginning of the Iraq war where an Abrams got hit by something that got thru the armor. Saw pics on one of the war blogs. There was speculation that it was Russian and an experiment. Dont recall the disposition of the tank.
A large combatant is really threatened only by either a missile or another LC. SB dealt with the missiles and Pax America has dealt with the other.
70 pel. “plenty of american carriers have been sunk” NOT. We lost very few pre war units in the pacific to air launched torpedoes, i.e. letting water in the bottom instead of air out the top.
I was in the gulf when Tripoli hit a mine. A big hole to be sure. No casualties and she could have continued her mission. When Forrestal had the big fire on Yankee Station, even after a horrible loss of life, she was at full power quickly and could have been back in business very quickly, if needed. See Yorktown at Midway.
Damage control is much more than armor. First, of couse, is to kill the shooter, followed by killing/ fooling the arrow, then absorbing the hit. It would take pages and pages to detail how a modern capital ship absorbs hits, including the judicious use of armor.
I visited USS Stark upon her return to Mayport, Fla. She was hit by one exocet. 20 or so killed (1/10th of crew). Large hole. She was still afloat and were she in a larger action she would have continued to fight.
Subotai Bahadur,
In fairness there is some risk from shore based systems in restricted waters. Specifically the Straits of Hormuz are a nightmare with potentially a layered series of surface, subsurface and ground based threats. Clearing it in the event of hostilities will mean placing boots on the ground along the littoral and seizing the islands. Fortunately it is in a distant corner of the country with desert regions between it and the populated interior. That reduces the logistical disadvantage that we will face, once the initial threats from prepositioned forces and systems are destroyed. No sea based platform should get close enough to be hit by an ATGW but in a target rich environment for the Iranians, like a Naval Task Force in the Gulf would offer, something will get hit by the shore based missiles.
The mine threat will stop merchant commerce, again. Clearing mines is a slow unglamorous process and the limited number of minesweepers are vulnerable to shore based attack in a place as narrow as the Straits. This would be a case where Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
Of course the BBs had armor that no current ship can equal. You have I am sure heard the story of the eager Ensign off Vietnam who saw a large vessel on his radar repeater. He grabbed his crypto key and issued his challenge, “Unidentified ship off my starboard bow this is the United States warship Umptysquat, authenticate Whiskey Tango (or some such.)” After a short pause a voice came back in the clear, “Umptysquat this is the Battleship New Jersey. You may fire when ready.” The slopped hull proposed for the Arsenal Ship and follow on designs may offer some greater protection than current designs.
“apparently a great embarassment to the British” El Jefe Maximo@64
which reminded me of what may, or may not, only be a legend:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_F.5/34
There was an M1A1 knocked out by a Kornet AT missile
@ 74 hoskins
Ok, so, we lost ten carriers in WW2 and zero battleships. Granted, we don’t anticipate having an opponent like a modern IJN, but losing even a fraction of that number of our existing capital ships would be devastating.
Especially since it doesn’t take much to mission kill a carrier.
Especially since Chinese subs apparently don’t have much difficulty surfacing within torpedo-launching distance of a carrier battle group undetected. (cf: 2007 Kitty Hawk incident)
I’m just sayin’
Many battleships were lost after Pearl Harbor, just not ours. ( Japan, Germany, France… )
Battleships lost at anchor: Britain, America, Italy.
///
It is reasonable to expect that USN battle groups will not be the main strike force in any capital ship action.
Submarines are the strike arm, period.
The only thing that can shut down oceanic trade quicker than an attack sub is a radio: USN broadcast of hostilities is going to have the world’s commercial carriers sailing to a new beat.
That’s true of Battleships and Heavy Cruisers, but Kirishima was a Battlecruiser. Well, technically, the Japanese re-rated her in the 30’s as a Battleship, but she was built as a Battlecruiser and carried the guns, armor, and power plant of a BC. At any rate, Battlecruisers were hybrids, intended as scouts (in the days before Aircraft Carriers). They had the guns of a Battleship but the armor and speed of a Heavy Cruiser. So her armor wasn’t able to stand up to her own guns, let alone the slightly larger, slightly newer, more powerful ones of the USS Washington. Her class was meant to lead the scouting detachment, able to fend off enemy Cruisers but not to engage Battleships.
Inadequate armor doomed several BCs when they went up against BB sized guns. Hood and 3 of Beatty’s BCs at Jutland all were sunk quite easily. The four BCs of the IJNs’ Kongo class were all lost during WWII. Kirishimato Washington’sguns, Kongo to a submarine, Hiei to a pack of US Cruisers and Destroyers (finished off by aircraft) and Haruna to aircraft alone. Ultimately I’m not sure the class can be considered a success. They were fast and generally good looking, but never delivered much of an account of themselves in combat.
With the gift of hindsight, the design philosophy is questionable, not just in relation to more advanced ships, but even in relation to contemporary designs. Beattys’ ships were of the same vintage as those who sank them. When Scouting, BCs covered the same amount of ocean as a Heavy Cruiser, but at twice (or more) the cost, so for the same cost, you could cover twice the search area with 2 CAs. In combat, they were about as survivable as a CA, again at twice the cost. Two CAs could take down a BC (e.g. Hiei and Kirishima with a CL and 11 DDs went up against 2 CAs, 3 CLs and 8 DDs the night before Washington scuppered Kirishima and came out with Hiei and 2 DDs crippled). In theory, they might have had a better chance than a CA if going up against a BB, but in reality they were just bigger targets with no better odds. CAs could perform every mission that a BC realistically could, at less than half the cost. Even shore bombardment was a bit questionable, with DDs firing more accurate 5” guns close to shore at specific targets being more effective than area bombardment with 14”+ shells from BBs farther offshore. But the big guns probably gave a bigger morale boost to the troops. Notable that Kirishima and Hiei were attempted to bombard Henderson Field on Guadalcanal when they were sunk. Several nighttime bombardments, some with the big guns from those BCs , failed to keep Henderson Field out of action.
Call Battlecruisers Jackie Fisher’s Folly. Speed did not equal defense. But they were the result of one very persuasive, persistent individual driving an idea with no real-world testing until it was cast in hardened steel and tied up with the fates of thousands of sailors. When the real-world test came, the Battlecruisers failed. Beware large, expensive, cool looking projects that aren’t any more resilient than the existing smaller, cheaper, less sexy alternatives.
For the modern navy, I think the lesson is survivability. You can gain it by either making your ships hard to kill (in the age of ship-killing missiles, that’s the Aegis system), or by building lots and lots of cheap ones (a single non-nuke missile can only kill one ship).
With reference to blert and previous poster regarding PLAN forces:
I think the Chinese leadership is keenly aware of how quickly a handful of USN fast attack boats could ruin their commercial and industrial base. If incoming VLB carriers were sunk, China would be out of oil and gasoline in a matter of weeks, and the whole country would grind to a halt.
They like to talk tough, but I don’t think they are as aggressive and foolish as we may think. They are and will remain extremely vulnerable to naval interdiction of their surface traffic.
The whole Taiwan issue is a very nationalistic concept with the mainland Chinese. Re-unification is a big deal to their pride, but it is also a very clever wedge issue to be used against the West, and the US in particular. As long as we keep it defused, the animosity levels are low.
In my humble opinion as a simple civilian, that is.
Also, the British lost the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off of Singapore to Japanese air attacks, after Pearl Harbor. No air cover.
Yeah, Prince of Wales and Repulse were, I think, the first capital ships to be sunk by airpower.
JMH…
Your critique is just as valid vs the German pocket battleships.
The Graf Spee would have been better off with high performance 8″ guns as against the 11″ guns. Her counter-trade mission would have been much better served with more range and speed; the idea being to sail away from combatants.
The 150mm and 105mm guns should have been omitted. 88mm dual purpose guns is what she needed.
Over gunning cruisers seems to have been a multi-generational folly.
JMH @ 80: Presume the navy, too, will be developing unmanned ships for surveillance, attack, and defense. That disposes the balance to lots of cheap and expendables, by the time the manned ships arrive, which may be as hard to kill as possible as well, the enemy is defeated by hordes of drones.
This often pisses me off when reading science fiction, btw. The obvious way that advanced humans or aliens will deal with things, is with swarms of scouts. Hey DARPA has only been fooling with this kind of thing for forty years, it follows quickly from the same concepts that lead to the development of the Internet. But it has taken us rather longer than expected to get the robotic, or even remotely controlled, aspects working. We’re getting close, and of course we’re there for simple stuff like the Predators.
I suppose as long as we are addressing the killing of battleships, I should point out that in addition to battleships succumbing to aircraft, surface ships, and submarines, two British battleships, Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, were sunk by frogmen.
Now bear with me, I’m recalling this off the top of my head:
Though there are many jokes about Italians as warriors in WWII, the frogmen of the Decima Flottiglia MAS were the best of the war.
They were led by Count Junio Valerio Borghese, son of the winner of the Peking to Paris motorcar race (but that is another story).
Four frogmen locked out of an Italian submarine in Alexandria Harbor. They proceeded to navigate through the harbor riding steerable torpedoes (“miale”) –two frogmen to a miale — and carrying amatol charges as I recall.
They planted their charges, and, with no where else to go, at least one pair climbed up onto their target ship’s mooring buoy. They were discovered by British sailors, superficially interrogated, and when that proved unfruitful placed in their target ships bilges until they’d fess up as to what they’d been doing. They were allowed to keep their diving watches (who knew much about frogmen even after the war).
As the time for their charges approached they asked to speak to the officer of the deck. They were brought to the officer of the deck, the charges detonated, and both battleships sank.
The problem was Alexandria Harbor wasn’t that deep, so Queen Elizabeth and Valiant settled to the bottom but their maindecks and superstructures were left high and dry.
Perhaps apocryphally, it is said Churchill ordered that the two British battleships hold band concerts on their decks the following day. In any event, Mussolini sent planes out to do a follow-up battle damage assessment. No one believed the battleships had been sunk, so the Italian fleet did not sortie.
The mission was a success, but the victory was not exploited. Who can believe anything frogmen say?
Borghese became a dark character after the war. As war reparations the Italians gave the Russians gave a battlecruiser or battleship at the end of the war. It was sunk at its mooring. Some suspected Borghese who spent much of the rest of his life in Spain under Franco’s protection. Eric Ambler couldn’t have imagined a better villain.
One of the stranger sea battle victories of WWII occurred when the IJN engaged the USN escort carrier force Taffy 32 off Samar.
The DD’s and a lone DE from Taffy 3 went after the IJN forces like tigers – but a IJN cruiser was sunk by one of the jeep carriers, firing its lone artillery piece from the fantail. They got a lucky hit on the cruiser’s torpedo store and that was all she wrote.
83. Blert
But the fatal flaw for Graf Spee, in the end, is that she had only two main gun turrets and there were three cruisers pursuing her.
She couldn’t concentrate her fire on one of them long enough to kill or damage it.
84. Josh
“…the enemy is defeated by hordes of drones.”
That is my greatest concern with China and the Taiwan Strait. China now has hordes of sea skimming, ship hunting stealth missiles as I understand it.
If they have enough of them they will swarm our defences and we will lose carriers.
They also have higher trajectory ship hunting missiles. Subotai and some other correspondents here probably have the goods on that.
Strategically, it is in our best interests to keep China dependent on foreign fuel because we control the sea lanes no matter what happens with Taiwan. We can choke off their oil.
And to maintain that vulnerability we have to help the Philippines and other countries in the South China Sea area defend their possessions which may be in waters above oil fields.
They are also dependent on coal from Australia and Brazil for their steel mills because their own coal tends to be poorer quality and is far inland and too hard to ship by rail (compared with overseas shipments).
Alexis @ 40
try, “establishment” instead of “elite”
It never ceases to amaze me about China’s lack of understanding that it and the US have many common interests including keeping the Middle East as stable as possible, fighting Islamic Jihad etc.
They would go further, better, operating in a more co-operative vein.
But perhaps they are even more focused on domestic issues than the US and that is saying something.
It is our job to make it easier for them to be peaceful than warlike and I don’t think we were doing a very good job of it at the moment.
Obama’s foreign strategic policy idiocy and its concomitant weakness is setting us up for big trouble.
Graf Spee (and Admiral Scheer and Deutschland/Lutzow) were “unbalanced” designs—armament too heavy in proportion to armor, and poorly arranged.
Also the problem with Fisher’s battlecruisers. And on land, tank destoyers.
A ship with 11″ or 12″ guns is going to have to hold it’s own against opposing capital units to justify its cost, manpower and prestige, and designs that are heavy on big-caliber guns and machinery for speed, but light on protection are disasters waiting to happen.
In addition to Graf Spee being outnumbered, it’s armor was too light to deal with Exeter’s 8″ shells, and even the 6″ from Ajax and Achilles were doing significant damage to her upper works. On 11,700 tons, she could have managed 4×2 8″ and enough armor to shrug off the 6″ and greatly limit the effectiveness of the 8″.
But she was built as a prestige item, not really a well-balanced warship or a specialized raider.
Bob @ 88: I don’t see China as being motivated to any military adventures any time soon. Too bad, I wish they would join us on a little middle-east stabilization efforts (harumph). But sure, if they decided to take us on, even defensively, it would be very nasty.
For those who may be interested, a good account of the last mission of the Yamato is “A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945″ by Russell Spurr.
91. Marty
“But she was built as a prestige item.”
That happened many times in Germany. They had a quite amazing “me too” cultural cringe thing in international terms and it came out in their priorities for technology.
The Zeppelins and the big Dornier flying boats are two more examples. They stayed locked into developing those commercial flops for status reasons and both were heavily subsidised by the Nazi government, the Propaganda Ministry in the case of the Zeppelins. They were flogging dead horses.
I just got back from a month long bicycle trip in Germany including a run around the Bodensee where I went to the Zeppelin museums and the Dornier Museum.
The themes in those museums still reek of status seeking and great man fantasies not much different from the Saddam or Stalin or Hitler cults. The Dorniers and Count von Zeppelin were public heroes with government finance and public subscriptions.
The much vaunted Dornier flying boat that flew to NYC in the 30s actually had to have its engines rebuilt there before it could fly back home again. Idiot stuff by American standards.
The Zeppelins-well one of the reasons the Graf Zeppelin burned so spectacularly was that it was covered with aluminum powder over acetate over cloth skin to better show of its swastikas. It wasn’t the hydrogen that burned. So much for status.
My generation of German still isn’t quite finished with that but the many 20 and 30 somethings I met over there are thoroughly done with it. They are over it and the traditional angst and dourness seems to be all but gone.
#50 Doug
Forgot to add this earlier. Yeah, I knew about the I-400′s, being kind of a specialist on the war in the Pacific. Some time ago I ran across this, which you might be interested in. After the Japanese surrender, those subs became prizes of war. Here is an article by the XO and navigator of the prize crew that brought I-400 to Hawaii:
http://www.pacerfarm.org/i-400/i-400.htm
#73 Herb, #77 exhelodrvr:
Thanks for the information. The Kornet missile was new at the time, and there was some suspicion that they were shipped by the Russians just before the war so that they could be tested against the Americans. It is a wire guided line of sight missile [with all the drawbacks to that] with a very large, tandem warhead. Reports are that 3 man Iraqi SpecOps crews in civilian clothes, with the Kornets mounted on the back of small pickup trucks, attacked the flanks of a 3rd Infantry tank column. Two Abrams and one Bradley were taken out, although one of the Abrams may have been disabled by damage to the tracks and not by penetration. I stand corrected, but note it took one hell of a warhead to do it.
#91 Marty
I agree, but the German designers of the time really had no choice. At the time, Germany was still covered by the highly notational 10,000 ton limit of the Versailles Treaty, and the Panzerschiffen were built as capital ships to take the place of battleships, and not designed specifically as commerce raiders. The choice of the 11″ guns was rational on that basis as the German 11″ naval rifle was actually a proven, very long range, and accurate weapon that was used in German battleships in WW-I. After Germany dumped the Treaty restrictions and built the Scharnhorst and the Bismark classes, the Panzerschiffen ["Armored Ships", the actual designation, although for a while they were rated as Heavy Cruisers. "Pocket Battleship" was not a German term.] were no longer really capital ships. Their range made them good for commerce raiding, but if they had been designed as such your design priorities would have made far more sense.
Subotai Bahadur
“With the gift of hindsight, the design philosophy is questionable, not just in relation to more advanced ships, but even in relation to contemporary designs.”
It strikes me that happens a lot in naval warfare. It’s especially evident when you look at the different philosophies as expressed in the design of aircraft carriers in WWII. But then, no one had ever used aircraft carriers in war before, no onne knew precisely how they would operate with the rest of the fleet.
I would say that the Japanese learned at Midway that the design of their carriers, as well as their damage control procedures, had a few shortcomings.
The Taiho was supposed to correct some of those shortcomings, but it didn’t live through its shakedown cruise.
I don’t know if the problem with battle cruisers was really a problem with the design or their employment. As one naval historian put it, the ships were designed to run from a superior enemy; their skippers and crew weren’t.
It’s decades between major naval battles. I don’t believe the USN had, prior to the outbreak of the second world war, fought a fleet on fleet action since the Spanish American War. Not that other navies were any more experienced. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t recall a major naval battle other than Tsushima and Jutland before the outbreak of WWII.
It seems to me that, as new untested weapons systems are incorporated into the fleet in the intervening years between combat, questionable design philosophies are almost inevitable.
But it also seems to me that we are designing flawed ships these days for reasons that are entirely foreseeable. I’m thinking primarily of the LCS. The crew is too small. And it isn’t multi-mission.
I think of the IDS Hanit off of Lebanon. It was doing a mission it wasn’t designed to do. It just didn’t have the endurance. It had systems that could have dealt with a C-802 but they weren’t operating.
I think it’s understandable; there were Israeli jets in the air.
I see several similarities between it and the LCS. The size of the LCS crew was reduced for reasons of economy. Putting them in a hostile environment and they’re going to get worn out in short order. Just like the crew of the Saar V off Beirut. Damage Control? Fuggedaboutit! And it’s modular systems approach, interchangeable mission packages, means the ship isn’t going to have the system you need your people to train on much of the time.
We’re doing it for entirely different reasons, but we seem to be following the Japanese path of building a Navy that can’t sustain combat. They did it because they sacrificed everything at the altar of offensive power. We seem to be doing it because we can’t really seriously consider the possibility it could happen.
Steve, perhaps the small LCS combat crew helps make the ship expendable and cost effective, and it needs to be.
One of the reasons the old battlewagons were mothballed was the huge crew it took to keep them operational.
Not a lot of bang for the buck, even with 9 16″ guns and some retrofitted modern weapons.
If I wanted to comission a design:
16″ & 8″ guns
armor and damage control sufficient to withstand shore threats
able to loiter for extended periods
how big would this “Fire Support Ship” need to be?
(I really enjoy and apreciate the depth and breadth of knowledge found in the Belmont Club posts and comments)
Take a look at the 8 inch /55 Mk 16 guns in the Des Moines class of heavy cruisers. The Newport News did considerable NGFS work in Vietnam. 10 rounds per minute per gun, shooting 260 lb HE projectiles up to 30,000 yards.
As I recall (From S. E. Morison, etc), the Japanese got in a very effective torpedo attack on the US destroyers in this battle, which resulted in the three of them being in a burning and sinking condition. Fortunately, the battleships which were following the destroyers were not struck by torpedoes.
Unfortunately for the South Dakota, in the process of dodging the flaming wreckage, she came between the burning destroyers and the Japanese fleet, and was the target of some concentrated fire.
On the other hand, the Washington dodged in the other direction,and from the darkness behind the burning ships was able to unleash devastation on the Kirishima.
(With the result that when the SoDak went home for repairs, her captain took credit for the victory…)
As for the Japanese CC’s, they were great ships, for 1914. Unfortunately, in 1942 they were not up to taking 16″ shells at close range.
An interesting comparison to these, the Hood, and other Brit CC’s is the German battlecruisers.
In the Hun’s case, they decided that rather than compromise protection for speed, they would carry a lighter armament of 11″ guns (vs. British 12/13.5/15″).
The result was a series of reasonably quick, very duable ships. At Jutland, while the British battlecruisers were exploding with regularity (Lion only being saved by an alert sailor flooding his magazine), the Seydlitz survived a horrific pounding and was still able to limp home.
In terms of today’s warfare, I would love to see a modern battleship, but those days are long past, much like the age of sail. While very effective, the range limitation of naval artillery is difficult to overcome. And frankly, I doubt our steel/shipbuilding industries are up to making something as massive and specialized, especially at today’s prices.
Even if they did, I doubt that any politician would allow such a valuable asset to come anywhere near a hostile and dangerous shorline.
Never mind that the pilot’s union would resent the infringement on their territory…