A C-1 Trader

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

The Hercules aboard Forrestal

But while only three aircraft have actually served in the COD role since the mid-50s, there have been numerous other proposals, often for larger and longer-ranged aircraft. In 1963, looking for an emergency option that could better the C-1 Trader's range, the Navy carried out tests aboard Forrestal using a barely-modified KC-130F Hercules borrowed from the Marines. A pair of experienced carrier aviators were checked out on the Hercules and sent to conduct the tests about 500 miles out in the Atlantic. They were able to successfully conduct 29 touch-and-go landings, 21 full stop landings and 21 takeoffs, all without the assistance of the carrier's catapults and arresting gear. Famously, one test saw the Hercules stop opposite the ship's island with "Look Ma, No Hook" painted on the side, and it set a record for the heaviest aircraft operated from a carrier that stands to this day. But there were also problems. The biggest is that while it was technically possible, getting the necessary stopping distances required reversing their engines 3-4' off the deck, a maneuver that is generally frowned upon. The second was that the C-130 is a very big airplane by carrier standards, and landed straight down the deck instead of using the angle, which required the deck to be almost entirely clear of other aircraft. Since the days of Langley, the USN has kept a lot of planes on deck, so even landing a C-130 for five minutes would be extremely disruptive to normal operations, and it was way too large to park out of the way if something went wrong or they needed to wait. As a result of all this, despite the success of the tests, the procedure has never been repeated.

A C-2 lands aboard Lincoln

The Navy was still interested in the idea of a COD plane with more range and capacity than the C-2, and conducted a number of studies over the years. Because it was likely to be a small fleet, and the available funds were limited, very few of these were designed from scratch. Some were intended, like the C-2, to share commonality with other carrier aircraft,³ while others were based on whatever sub-C-130 transport was on the drawing board at the time. But the most interesting were a few proposals to use airliners as the basis for COD planes.

A 737-200 in gray with "United" on the side, so it's basically a USN jet

When I first heard this, I assumed it was a joke, or possibly the result of a gross violation of General Order 99. And while much of me still has a hard time believing it's real, and the former airline structures guy is still running around in terror,⁴ the math is just plausible enough to warrant investigation. The first round of proposals came in the early 70s, with a DC-9-10⁵ and a 737 variant of some sort⁶ put forward as candidates. I'm going to focus on the DC-9, as I have a spec sheet for the military version of the DC-9-30 and I don't have anything equivalent for the 737-200Adv.⁷ Both would have been big for carrier operations, but they were significantly smaller than the later members of their family, and just might have squeezed aboard.

A C-9 flies past a carrier, though not to land on it

Now, to be clear, neither would have fit aboard very well, but the biggest problem the C-130 had was its 132' wingspan, while the DC-9-10's was 89' and the 737Adv was about 93'. While this was still significantly wider than anything regularly flown from a carrier (at this point, that was probably the A-3 Skywarrior at 72.5') the extra 40' and the fact that they were planning to use arresting gear and catapults meant that they could slot (probably fairly awkwardly) into the existing flight deck ops instead of having to kick everyone off. Obviously, sticking around might be a problem but COD birds were generally expected to fly aboard, unload, get refueled and then leave again. Of course, other modifications would be required, and McDonnell Douglas planned to fit not only a tailhook, but also a new nosewheel that incorporated catapult fittings and could be extended to give a higher angle of attack for takeoff, an in-flight refueling probe, and strengthened structure to take the loads of carrier operations. Folding wings were even proposed, though don't seem to have been accepted as part of the initial study.

But all of this assumes that it's physically possible to land and take off in the appropriate distances. Sure, you can do it with a C-130, a plane deliberately designed for short-field operations, provided you have enough wind over deck, but these are airliners designed to operate from relatively big runways. They may not chew up tarmac like the first generation of jets, but would they really be small and slow enough to be compatible with the equipment on a carrier?

An F-111B lands on Coral Sea

Let's start by looking at the problem of landing. Per the SAC, for the design mission (10,000 lb of cargo), the C-9B should be landing at around 73,000 lb, with a power-off stall speed of 85 kts. If we assume 40 knots wind-over-deck, then it's going into the arresting gear at something like 45 kts, but it's also going to be landing at a similar weight to the weight the A-3 Skywarrior, the heaviest plane to regularly operate from a carrier, took off. But weight is only half the story. Speed is the other half, and it's here that I found something surprising. Looking through possible comparison aircraft, I found the F-111B, the result of an extremely dumb attempt to turn an Air Force light bomber into a Navy missile-slinger. It was cancelled before entering service, but it was definitely carrier-capable and even flew a few carrier tests. And at the maximum listed landing weight of 57,000 lb, it was stalling at about 100 kts, for a speed relative to the deck of 60 kts. If we assume that the arresting gear is basically limited by the kinetic energy of the landing aircraft⁸ then the total kinetic energy of the F-111B is 102.6⁹ while the C-9B comes in at only 74.1, a value lower enough that I'm actually reasonably confident that this could have worked, structural issues aside.

A Skywarrior prepares to launch, also from Coral Sea

But what about launch? Here, we're going to use the A-3B, the heaviest plane regularly to take off from a carrier,¹⁰ as our exemplar. It took off at 73,000 lb and a power-off stall speed of 124 kts. The C-9B's numbers are a takeoff at 99,700 lb and a power-off stall speed of 100 kts. If we again assume 40 kt wind over deck, we see the A-3 needing to get 257.5 from a combination of its engines and the catapult, while the C-9B needs only 179.5. Weirdly, it looks like the C-9 actually has a slightly higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the A-3, so again, we pass a plausibility check for this scheme.¹¹

An F-28 from a carrier navy on final approach, sadly sans tailhook

Despite the fairly impressive performance (10,000 lb of cargo for 2,200 nm) the plans for the C-9 COD went nowhere. But it was far from the only airliner proposed for conversion, either in the early 70s or later. I've already mentioned the Boeing alternative, but at the same time, Hawker-Siddley proposed a version of their HS 748 turboprop airliner, with folding wings and the usual structural modifications, but it seems to have gone even less far than the jet alternatives. Later, in the 80s, when the Navy was looking at a new COD plane to replace the C-2, they seriously investigated the Fokker F28, a somewhat smaller airliner than the DC-9 and 737, but ultimately decided to build more C-2s instead. And it looks like we'll probably never see such proposals again. Modern airliners are less rugged, because structural weight costs money to haul around, and there's just not much demand for a long-range high-capacity COD, particularly now that the CMV-22 has aerial refueling capability. But it's an interesting rabbit hole of history to go down.

The path of CripDiv 1¹

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

Houston after the catapult was jettisoned

The men aboard Houston were too busy to think much about that. First, there was still the matter of flooding. They had done a good job stopping the spread of water through the ship, but there were still 6,400 tons of extra water aboard a ship that normally displaced 13,900 tons fully loaded, and a 12° list to starboard. Normally, this might have been evened out by pumping fluids around, but concerns about the ship's structural integrity and the fact that all of the pumps were busy trying to dewater flooded compartments meant that they would need to jettison weight on the starboard side instead. Over the side went the starboard catapult and float plane, searchlights, one of the ship's boats and even some armored doors. The lack of power meant there was no ventilation down below, and crews worked to dewater compartments on the 3rd Deck in conditions so humid that electrical fires spontaneously broke out. There was little fresh water, and the only noise besides that of the damage control efforts was the creaking of the ship's hull. But they were clearly winning their battle, and during the 15th managed to seal off and drain most of the flooded compartments on the 3rd Deck, lightening the ship by 1,900 tons and reducing the list to a mere 8°.

The Japanese hadn't given up on sinking the "remnants of the American fleet", although their efforts on the 15th were less than successful. Three air attacks were launched, although the first failed to locate them, the second ran into the buzzsaw of the one carrier group providing a distant screen for CripDiv 1, and the third turned back after the flight leader developed engine trouble. The 16th dawned inauspiciously aboard Houston, with a major electrical fire breaking out in the emergency steering space. It was brought under control fairly quickly, although it disrupted the power supply from the main emergency generator aft. But the forward generator was still operational, although power available was limited because of contaminated fuel, and it provided power to haul in the anchor chain as the crew prepared to transfer the tow from Boston to tug Pawnee, which had finally arrived to release the heavy cruiser for duty as flagship of CripDiv 1.

Pawnee

Passing the tow was difficult, as there was still a heavy swell, and the fire had disabled Houston's rudder control. As Pawnee came alongside, a wave slammed her into the cruiser's side, where the bigger ship's anchor became entangled on the tug's bulwark. When the seas reversed and the two ships parted, the anchor tore loose and went crashing through the tug's deck. Aboard Houston, the anchor chain went whipping across the deck, threatening the legs of any man who didn't jump over it. Fortunately, there were no actual injuries, and the rest of the process proceeded smoothly. An hour and a half after they started, Pawnee was pulling Houston into position a mile from Canberra, and took over as the guide ship for the group, as the jammed rudder made Houston the more difficult ship to tow.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the Japanese weren't quite done with the group. On the 15th, they had dispatched the Second Striking Force, a pair of heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and a destroyer screen, to annihilate the "remnants" of the fleet. This was exactly what Halsey had wanted, a chance at more of the Japanese surface fleet, but it obviously made the men of CripDiv 1 rather nervous. Another threat came from the other string on Japan's bow, the air attacks they were still sending against the force. For some reason the first strike, 99 planes flying from southern Japan, was recalled before it found the target. The same happened to the Second Striking Force shortly thereafter, when it came under attack by a few planes from Bunker Hill, and the decision to withdraw was confirmed a few hours later when Japanese scouts spotted some of the waiting carriers. They would survive to take a rather inglorious part at Surigao Strait later in the month.

But the second airstrike, 107 planes from Formosa, was more successful, arriving overhead around 1300. The outnumbered fighters from Cabot and Cowpens did excellent work, shooting down many of the attackers² and scattering most of the rest, but a trio of land-based torpedo bombers penetrated the screen around the crippled cruisers. Houston, without power, had to rely on her 20mm guns and what her 40mms could do in manual mode. It wasn't enough, and one of the bombers, a Fran, dropped a torpedo dead astern before crashing a few moments later, riddled by AA fire from the cruiser. The 20mm gunners switched their fire to the torpedo, but their efforts were in vain, and the weapon struck on the starboard side of the stern, underneath the floatplane hangar that took up a lot of the stern and, more importantly, underneath the supply of aviation gasoline for the floatplanes. The hangar hatch was blown into the sky, slicing the crane in two as it went, and most of the men who had been manning the aft pair of 20 mm guns were blown overboard. A massive fire erupted from the volatile avgas, soon spreading to the oil slick that Houston had been trailing, and endangering the men in the water.³ Forward of Houston, Pawnee was also in a tricky situation. She, like Houston, had weathered an air attack at only 4 kts, unable to dodge, and she was shackled to a now-burning cruiser of unknown structural integrity. Her captain ordered the message "WE'LL STAND BY YOU" transmitted to Houston, but also stationed a sailor with an acetylene torch to cut the towing cable in case the cruiser sank.

The diagram from the damage report. Click to enlarge.

But the men still aboard Houston had bigger things on their minds. After the initial shock of the torpedo hit, they rallied, laying out the fire hoses (previously kept rolled up for fear they would be cut by shrapnel during an attack) and rigging pumps. Foam quickly brought the fire, already dwindling as the avgas burned itself out, under control, and within 20 minutes, the crew could turn their attention to the other effects of the hit. The most obvious was that the hangar was now flooded, adding a thousand tons or so to the ship and basically undoing all of the pumping and jettisoning the crew had done so far. To make matters worse, the water in the hangar was sloshing back and forth, not only adding significant free surface to the problems facing the ship, but also threatening to smash through the bulkheads. We'll pick up the story with their attempts to deal with this threat next time.

The canal boat at Port Byron

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

Afterwards, on the way up to the Canadian border, I visited the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum Museum, covering both the Army's activities in northern New York, and the history of the 10th Mountain Division, which is based there, in an area chosen back during WWII for its suitability for training armored forces and general lack of mountains.

A Kiowa Warrior on display outside the museum

The 10th Mountain Division was activated during WWII to give the US expertise in cold-weather and mountain warfare, and the initial population was heavily drawn from members of the Ski Patrol and other expert mountaineers and skiers. One battalion was used to spearhead the "recapture" of Kiska, but other than that, they didn't get overseas until 1945, taking part in the last stages of fighting in northern Italy. After the war the division was disbanded, although veterans went on to found more than half of all ski resorts in the US. It was briefly reactivated as the 10th Infantry Division in the 50s, then shut down again until the mid-80s, when it was reactivated once again as a light, deployable infantry division in the last-ever major expansion of the US Army. Since then, it has been deployed all over, from natural disasters in the US to Somalia and Haiti to dozens of tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite the name, it has no particular expertise in mountain warfare today, although it might be the premier cold-weather force in the US given how cold the area gets.

An M29 Weasel and sled at the museum

The museum itself is pretty small, and I was able to read basically every sign there in about an hour. But it was well-done and quite informative about an area of military activity I'm not particularly familiar with. One section covered the history of the area, from military activities before Europeans arrived through its use as a maneuver area in WWII, where, among other units, the 45th Infantry Division did training. Then it was the history of the 10th Mountain, which trained in Colorado during the war. This is split up between a big WWII room, including an M29 Weasel, and another section about the activation and activities of the modern division. Which comes up basically to the present, because the museum was opened in 2022, so even the Afghanistan War is past rather than present.

A sign in the bathroom

The only real downside is that Fort Drum is kind of in the middle of nowhere, and the museum isn't big enough to be worth going very far out of your way for. But if you happen to be passing through Watertown, it's worth taking some time to visit. It's an interesting and competent museum, and they also took advantage of their bathrooms to deliver a bit more information, something I really like when museums do.

The view down onto the Hudson. Also, it's a really pretty area.

Lastly, we flew out of Albany, and on our way south, we stopped by the Saratoga battlefield. There's a nice visitor center, including a lovely room about the wider global context of the Revolutionary War, and a driving tour of the battlefield, which is managed to keep it looking approximately like it did during the battle itself. It's an interesting chance to get out and study the terrain of a historic battle more or less intact. Looking down on the Hudson from the bluffs makes it abundantly clear why the battle was fought where it was, although we were shorter on time than I would have liked. Still, it was a nice day, and worth a visit if you happen to be in the Albany area. The other thing potentially worth doing in the Albany area is the destroyer escort Slater, which would have had priority except that, like in Buffalo, we were through on a day she was closed.

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

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

Stark next to flagship La Salle in Bahrain

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

There was controversy over the management of the escort operation even before it started. Central Command (CENTCOM), which controlled forces inside the Gulf, had been set up only four years earlier, and many in the Navy believed that the convoy operation, named Earnest Will, should be run by Pacific Command (PACOM), which was vastly more experienced and controlled everything up to the Strait of Hormuz. Ultimately, though, the existing command structure would be respected, which meant that while the actual convoy would be under CENTCOM control, the bulk of the air support would be provided by the PACOM-owned carrier Constellation in the Arabian Sea. Unfortunately, this was the only air support available, as both Kuwait and Saudi Arabia refused to let the US use their bases, which meant that north of Bahrain, the convoy would be more or less on its own in the face of potential Iranian threats.² The biggest concern was the Chinese-made Silkworm missile, primarily positioned to cover the strait of Hormuz. Elsewhere along the route, the main threat came from the armed speedboats known as "Boghammars".

A Boghammar at sea

Unfortunately, the USN didn't have a great answer to either threat with the available forces. Aegis was not in wide service yet, and while shooting down a Silkworm wasn't impossible, it also wasn't something they could count on. The Boghammars were an even more serious problem, as American training and doctrine had emphasized open-ocean warfare against the Soviets, not fighting speedboats in the confined waters of the Gulf. One thing not well-addressed by this plan was mines, which both Iraq and Iran had laid in considerable quantities. The USN hadn't commissioned a new minesweeper since 1958,³ preferring to rely on NATO allies for the job, but that was obviously impossible here. They did provide some aid to the Saudis and Kuwaitis in clearing a minefield laid by the Iranians near the shipping channel, but mine protection for the convoy would come solely from sailors in the bows with binoculars and rifles, a tactic mostly effective against mines that had come loose and were drifting. The only real solution they had to this was deterrence, threatening severe retaliation against Iran for any attack on the convoys.

Bridgeton

The first convoy would include only two merchant ships, supertanker Bridgeton and LNG carrier Gas Prince, protected by cruiser Fox, destroyer Kidd⁴ and frigate Crommelin. Things didn't get off to a good start when House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin told reporters about the convoy's July 22nd departure date a week before it sailed, but that morning, Fox led the other ships into the Strait of Hormuz. Fighters from Constellation prowled overhead, and radars probed for Silkworms. In the heart of the missile envelope, the escorts moved in close, hoping that if a Silkworm leaked through, it would head for the larger and less vulnerable merchantman. Other merchant ships generally steered clear of the area, with traffic falling to a third of its normal level, but the only opposition was a trio of Iranian Phantoms, quickly scared off by the fire control radars of the escorts.

The next challenge was the Iranian Boghammar base on Abu Musa Island, just outside the western entrance to the Strait, and they passed it shortly after darkness fell. To make things more nerve-wracking, the area near the island was teeming with fishing boats and dhows, and it was impossible to tell on a radar screen if a small boat that refused to get out of the way was attempting to attack or just a sailor who was going on as his ancestors had for centuries. But no Iranians appeared, and the daytime passage past Bahrain went smoothly, even as the Iranians declared it was carrying "prohibited goods of some sort". The only remaining obstacle was a second Boghammar base on Farsi Island, smack in the middle of the Gulf about halfway between Qatar and Kuwait. The original schedule also had the convoy passing Farsi at 3 AM, at least until AWACS covering the area picked up Iranian speedboats operating in the area. Nobody was particularly interested in a night battle with the Boghammars, so the convoy was ordered to stop for a few hours and make the passage after daybreak.

Bridgeton as seen from Kidd

The Iranians had gone home by the time the sun rose, and Fox led the convoy past Farsi Island, with Bridgeton a thousand yards behind her. A few minutes before 7, the temperature had just hit 100°F, and breakfast was being served aboard Bridgeton when an enormous shock struck the ship near the bow, sending objects flying on the bridge a thousand feet aft and knocking a sleeping crewman out of his bunk. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured, but it soon became clear that the tanker had hit a mine, laid by the Iranians the previous night. Fortunately, being enormous meant that despite taking on 20,000 tons of water, more than the combined displacement of the escorts, Bridgeton was still basically intact and able to continue to Kuwait. Bridgeton's captain, a retired USN officer, suggested that the other vessels get in behind her, using his ship as a "deep-draft minesweeper". The suggestion was accepted with alacrity, although the convoy commander chose to press on, assuming that the Iranians had laid only a single line of mines across the shipping channel. Sentries were stationed in the bow with rifles, but no further mines were encountered⁵ and the convoy reached Kuwait without further incident.

Mine damage to Bridgeton, from a Proceedings article by the ship's captain

But while the damage to Bridgeton was ultimately pretty minor, the damage to the USN's reputation was not. The first convoy had been the subject of considerable media attention, with a number of journalists aboard both Fox and Kidd, and they quite reasonably pointed out the USN's complete lack of preparation for what was in retrospect a pretty obvious threat. The Reagan Administration tried to downplay the whole thing, refusing to retaliate due to the lack of American casualties, while the Iranians blamed it on "the Hand of God" and avoided too obviously gloating about their victory. But it was apparent that if the convoy operation was to continue, the US would need not only better minesweeping capabilities, but also new tactics to deal with the Boghammars. We'll take a look at those next time.

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

Obviously, Britain has some infrastructure to get messages to the Continuous At Sea Deterrent. The system is centered at Northwood in the suburbs of London, which in the late 60s was linked to Downing Street by a two-way closed-circuit television system, tested daily. Unlike the US, Britain didn't have a clear constitutional line of succession, so the Prime Minister designated a pair of "nuclear deputies" that would be empowered to make decisions in an emergency. But by the early 70s, the threat of a Soviet "bolt from the blue" taking out the entire command and control infrastructure was simply too great, and a uniquely British solution was found.

Each submarine would be issued with a sealed letter from the Prime Minister, with instructions that it be opened if it appeared to the crew that Britain had been the victim of a nuclear attack and the country was effectively destroyed. A number of indicators have been given for this, the most famous (and most curious) being the absence of the long-wave broadcast of the BBC's Radio 4.¹ If it looks like Britain is gone, then the letter will be opened, revealing which of the four potential options the Prime Minister has taken: 1. Retaliate 2. Don't retaliate 3. Don't do anything yet, but see if you can find a surviving friendly government (the US and Australia are frequently mentioned) and place yourself under their control 4. Use your own judgement

Whichever option is taken would probably be the last official act of His Majesty's Government, and might not even have been by the current Prime Minister. Switching out the letters while a boat is on patrol is obviously impossible, and Tony Blair was rather irritated that one submarine that departed shortly before he took office in 1997 would carry John Major's letter, but the deployment and political schedules don't always align.² As the use of the letters has thankfully been unnecessary and retired PMs are understandably reluctant to speak on the matter, the only man whose letters we have any insight into is Jim Callaghan, Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979, who hinted in an interview that he would have ordered retaliation.

Jim Callaghan

But all of this requires that the British think about nuclear weapons in a fundamentally different way from the United States. The United States makes extensive use of "Permissive Action Links", devices that block the use of nuclear weapons unless a code, known only to higher headquarters, is passed to the unit with the bombs. This was set up to relieve Kennedy/Johnson/McNamaraite fears of some unit in the field flying off the handle and starting WWIII, but means that an extensive and robust communications infrastructure is required to make sure America's nuclear arsenal isn't suddenly rendered useless by a nuclear strike.³ The British have instead chosen to place their trust in the officers and men of the Royal Navy. In theory, if the entire crew of one of the Vanguards went crazy together, they could launch their missiles, but in practice, this threat is minuscule. The launch procedure requires several officers to work together, and even if they were to form a conspiracy to do so without being noticed,⁴ it's almost certain that other members of the crew would interfere if they hadn't gotten proper orders or the confirmation that the Letter of Last Resort was necessary.

As this goes out, Keir Starmer's letters are about to be recalled and destroyed, and Andy Burnham will sit down to write his version. I hope and pray we never find out what is in them, or any of those written by his successors.

Houston underway earlier in 1944

As such, it was TG 38.1 that caught the bulk of the Japanese dusk attack, again in the form of torpedo bombers. 11 to 16 Frans appeared, and while most were shot down or driven off by AA fire, a few got through to drop their torpedoes. This time, their target was light cruiser Houston, transferred from TG 38.2 the previous day to take over Canberra's station. She found herself facing three torpedoes in the water, two to port and one to starboard. Only the one from starboard got through, but it hit in the worst possible spot. The ship had been turning to evade, rolling heavily to port, so the torpedo detonated against the ship's bottom, halfway between the centerline and the bilge keel, and directly under the turbines for shaft 1 in the forward engine room. The space flooded almost instantly, and the explosion damaged the bulkheads forward and aft, flooding both boiler rooms over the next few minutes.

The damage from the torpedo

Even if that had been the extent of the damage, it would have been catastrophic. The ship's boilers provided steam not only for propulsion but also for the turbogenerators that powered the ship, so Houston fell dark and silent, except for the noises of water rushing in and the ship's damaged hull creaking and groaning as it worked in the waves. But the destruction of the turbines had other consequences. One was that, with the reduction gear blown to bits, shaft 1 was dragged aft about 5' by the propeller, damaging the stuffing glands where the shaft passed through the aft engine room, which soon had to be evacuated.¹ And the low-pressure turbine itself was thrown upward with enough force to drive the 2" plates of the armored deck about 6" upward under the ship's machine shop, which also opened the way for a jet of high-temperature steam to kill everyone inside. A bigger long-term problem was that the explosion had warped doors and started seams, making it difficult to control flooding on the 3rd deck above the machinery. And the shock violently shook the ship, toppling the air-search radar, although it caused remarkably few injuries to ankles or legs, as sailors belowdecks had been trained to sit or lie down whenever possible.

But in the first few minutes, the biggest threat was to the cruiser's stability. She was running fairly light on fuel, leaving her somewhat top-heavy even before thousands of tons of floodwater began to slosh back and forth across the engineering spaces. This free-surface effect had the cruiser rolling up to 37°, perilously close to the 41° that her crew thought would be enough to turn her over and far enough that the edge of the main deck occasionally dipped below the sea, before the spaces filled and the roll stabilized at 20° or so. But 5,000 tons of water posed still more problems. With the extra weight concentrated amidships and the ship held up by buoyancy in the bow and stern, the hull girder began to sag and buckle. Ominous creaks rang through the hull, rivets sprang out of their holes and the bow and stern began to move a bit relative to each other. The ship's Captain, worried that his ship was about to break up and receiving reports of progressive flooding on 3rd deck, gave the order to abandon ship about two hours after the torpedo hit.

A destroyer stands by Houston, ready to take men off, as seen from Boston

Even this was complicated by Houston's situation. The ship was rolling too much in the heavy swell for destroyers to safely come alongside, and many men went into the water, relying on lifejackets and rafts for flotation. The lucky ones were quickly found and rescued, with destroyer Boyd recovering 380 men from Houston, outnumbering her own crew. The unlucky ones remained adrift throughout the night, as Japanese planes prowling overhead pounced on ships which switched on their searchlights, and the really unlucky ones were never seen again.

But many of Houston's crew were unwilling to abandon their ship, which wasn't obviously going down, and the engineering team soon convinced the Captain to rescind the order and allow them to fight to save the ship. The first order of business was getting a tow from heavy cruiser Boston, standing by to assist, but even this was complicated. Most of the deckhands who would normally have done the job of rigging the tow were among the two thirds of the crew that had already gone over the side, and a scratch crew had to be formed to do the hazardous work of rigging the tow. One early complication was that Boston was riding much higher than Houston, so the normal practice of the towing ship approaching from windward would see her drift down onto the light cruiser. Instead, she had to make her approach from the downwind side, on a night so dark that the bridge had to be guided by messages relayed from the stern, while aboard Houston, the crew worked to pull the lines over by hand. Another complication came when they attempted to attach the towing rope to the ship's anchor chain. The shackle required was held by a bolt that required a small retaining pin, and in the chaos aboard Houston, the retaining pin couldn't be found. Eventually, the crew decided to substitute rope for the pin, hoping that it would hold. If it didn't, they'd have to haul the 270' of anchor chain they planned to let out as part of the towing process back aboard before a second tow could be rigged. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but with all power out, the work would have to be done by hand.²

A buckled deck aboard Houston

Eventually, the work was done, and the crew began to pay out the anchor chain as Boston started to move off. One problem that was immediately apparent was that the towing cable wasn't long enough. Normal practice was to make sure the tow line was partially submerged, so that the water dampened shocks and reduced the chance of a sudden surge snapping the tow, which required getting another 270' of chain out. And while this was going on, the crews belowdecks set to work shoring bulkheads and plugging the numerous leaks that still threatened Houston's buoyancy. Cables leaked, hatches didn't seal properly, rivets had sprung and welds had cracked. But all were eventually fixed with whatever materials were to hand, and the process of pumping out these spaces, occasionally via bucket brigade, began. By daybreak, the list had been reduced to 12° and it was pretty obvious that Houston had some life left in her. But she was still days away from being safely out of range of Japanese air attack, and her path to getting there was far from smooth. We'll pick up the story there next time.

This line from the Declaration of Independence, which we have just celebrated the 250th anniversary of, comes from the practice of trying certain cases relating to navigation, smuggling and the Stamp Act of 1765 in Vice-Admiralty Courts. These operated under a completely different legal system from that of the standard Common Law, and as you can guess from the quote, didn't have juries. From the perspective of actually getting the law enforced, this made a great deal of sense. In the nascent United States, the Stamp Act was wildly unpopular, as it imposed taxes on various kinds of goods to support British troops stationed in North America after the Seven Years War. Local juries would simply refuse to convict even obvious violations, so the Vice-Admiralty courts where judges from England could deliver verdicts directly were the obvious place to turn. And also an obvious instrument of repressive tyranny that fully justified the Revolution.

But how did it get to the point that there was this entirely separate system of laws that the British could turn to when they needed to bypass local juries? The idea of there being a separate Admiralty law, common among nations, is so old that nobody is quite sure how old it is. Nineteenth-century legal scholars often traced its origins to a code dating to 900 BC on the island of Rhodes, although there's not a ton of evidence that there was a coherent law code dating back quite that far. However, we do have references to a "Rhodian law" in a Roman law text from the third century AD, the idea that if some part of a vessel's cargo has to be jettisoned in an emergency, the loss will be shared among everyone who had cargo aboard. Astonishingly, this principle, known as General Average, continues to be part of maritime law today.

Even as the Roman Empire collapsed and the Mediterranean littoral fragmented, the law of trade and shipping remained surprisingly unified, with specialized courts set up by merchants operating in many ports and attempting to enforce judgements based on what was customary among merchants in the area. Whoever was running the port was generally content to let the merchants deal with their own disputes, at least so long as they paid their taxes, producing a genuinely international set of laws. This principle extended as maritime trade began to flourish in the waters of Northwestern Europe in the late Middle Ages, an important source being the Rolls of Oleron, traditionally ascribed to Eleanor of Aquitaine. In practice, she was probably not personally involved in regulation of the wine trade, but despite this, they became the basis of maritime law in every country in the area, and continue to form part of the foundation of the field to this day.

The Lord High Admiral

In England, maritime law came under the jurisdiction of the Lord High Admiral, the senior naval official of the country, and thus became known as Admiralty Law. But it was still an attempt to implement the international law being developed, and thus moved in step with developments in the rest of Europe, where Roman-inspired Civil Law used judges to deliver verdicts without the need for a jury. This caused obvious tension between the admiralty courts and the rest of the country, and in 1389, Parliament limited admiralty jurisdiction by statute to "a thing done upon the sea" to stop those courts intruding into land-based matters. Other courts interpreted this extremely narrowly, claiming that a contract for shipping signed on land was not "a thing done upon the sea". This more or less moved the traditional "law merchant" functions of the admiralty courts to the common-law courts, and limited them to dealing with prizes, salvage, seaman's wages and similar matters. As a result, the Admiralty courts in England¹ shrank as a specialized branch, and eventually ended up combined, rather oddly, with the Probate and Divorce division of the High Court.² Today, the only remaining dedicated admiralty court is that for the Cinque Ports, a truly baffling English oddity that looks to be entirely ceremonial today.

Americans deal with oppressive British officials

With the growth of Britain's North American colonies, it was obvious that admiralty courts would need to follow, and by 1763, there were nine Vice-Admiralty courts throughout the colonies, unbounded by the statute that limited their English counterparts. But they were never particularly popular, as they were the chief enforcers of British trade policy. Some of this was clearly absurd, like the belief that the colonists should pay taxes on imported goods, while in other cases, there were genuine abuses, such as when naval officers realized they could line their pockets by requesting papers from small coastal trading vessels that Parliament hadn't intended to include in the requirements for stricter documentation, then sending them to be condemned by the admiralty courts. In normal courts, the use of a jury would temper the implementation of London's policy, but that obviously wasn't the case in the admiralty courts.³ Things were made worse when the Stamp Act of 1765 deliberately gave jurisdiction over cases, which were not particularly maritime-related, to the admiralty courts. There was actually some basis for this. Britain had specialized courts for everything, including cases involving revenue, but there was no Court of Exchequer in America,⁴ and given colonial feelings, the admiralty courts were much more likely to actually enforce the law.

The highest admiralty court, 2022

The tension continued until the outbreak of open hostilities in 1775, when the Americans suddenly realized that they might need admiralty courts of their own if they wanted to be able to seize British ships as prizes without being considered pirates under international law. Massachusetts was among the first to set up such a court, although their version used a jury, at least for a few years, before it was decided that admiralty law was simply too complicated for "good and lawful men". Things were made even more complicated a few years later, when the Articles of Confederation assigned some parts of admiralty law, most notably dealing with prizes, to the Continental Congress. After those failed, the Constitution adopted in 1787 fully gave admiralty jurisdiction to the new Federal government, and it has become part of the normal powers of the Federal court system. In some areas, it forms a significant portion of the docket, but it's really only of interest to specialists and weirdos with absurd theories about the meaning of a fringe on a flag.

Overhauls are Jackie Fisher, Auxiliaries Part 2, Impressment, The 3T Missiles - Introduction and for 2025, my reviews of Fort Point and Nike Site SF88, Thoughts on the Israel-Iranian War and The Tanker War Part 1.

Canberra with 3rd Fleet a few days before being torpedoed

But the bigger problem was that the explosion was directly under one of the bearings for shaft 1, which was ripped from the reduction gearing forward and thrown upwards and inboard, tearing holes in the bulkheads of both the fore and aft engine rooms. Water began pouring into both, filling the aft engine room in 4 minutes and the forward one in 10. Although the boilers in the forward two rooms remained intact and continued to generate power, Canberra was dead in the water. Her rudder was also jammed over, the result of a last-minute attempt to dodge the torpedo, and while the emergency diesel generator would normally have provided power to the steering gear, breakers kept tripping. Eventually, the rudder was put amidships using the ship's roll, opening the hydraulic valves on the steering gear to allow it to swing amidships, then closing them to stop it swinging back. The electrical problems were not helped by numerous leaks in spaces fore and aft of the flooded machinery spaces, as the stuffing glands for electrical cables proved to be less watertight than expected. The leaks were all controlled fairly quickly, thanks to the cruiser's highly-trained damage control team, and only a few spaces saw more than a couple inches of water.

The bent shaft, looking aft

But although there was no particular danger of her sinking, Canberra was still stranded 90 miles off an enemy-held coast, and she was unlikely to move under her own power without a stint in drydock. Normal procedure would have been to simply take off the crew and scuttle the ship, but the strength of the American carrier force prompted Admiral Halsey to take a chance and order another day of air strikes on Formosa while Canberra was towed clear, allowing the ship to be repaired to fight another day. Fellow heavy cruiser Wichita was ordered to take the stricken ship under tow, and within 20 minutes, her crew had the necessary lines rigged out on deck. But the winds were high and a heavy swell was running, and while the initial messenger lines were passed successfully, at one point the two ships yawed apart so violently that a 4.5" manila line crushed three sailors,³ then knocked a fire hydrant loose, sending water spewing high into the air. The line then snapped, but Wichita’s quick-thinking crew passed another line and managed to get the towing wire across on their second attempt. Unfortunately, they hadn't sent their towing shackle, and Canberra’s was too big to fit into the eye on the rope. It took about two hours, but Canberra’s crew managed to attach the wire to the port anchor chain with a couple of spares and Wichita set off, slowly turning towards the southeast.

The diagram from the damage report. Click to enlarge.

The night was spent shoring up bulkheads, plugging leaks and dewatering spaces outside the machinery. Emergency power cables had already been strung before the attack, allowing quick restoration of power through most of the aft portion of the ship. Communication was harder to restore, as many of the relevant circuits had shorted out in the flooded spaces. And because all of the evaporators⁴ were inaccessible, extreme measures to conserve fresh water began immediately.

Canberra and Houston under tow

Things were made more complicated when light cruiser Houston, detailed to take over Canberra's spot, was torpedoed the next day,⁵ and again the decision was made to tow her clear. The two cruisers were assigned to what was known as "CripDiv (Cripple Division) 1" and provided with air cover from a pair of CVLs and some light cruisers and destroyers as escorts, while they were slowly towed out of the range of enemy aircraft. On the morning of the 15th, tugs Munsee and Pawnee arrived, with Munsee taking over the tow from Wichita. Aboard Canberra, the crew continued the slow work of dealing with the problems of a ship with the middle full of water, which occasionally meant things like manually rebuilding pipes to keep salt water out of the boilers.

Canberra in drydock at Manaus, with destroyers Claxton and Killen

On the 20th, a week after she was torpedoed and halfway to the forward base at Ulithi, salvage ship Current came alongside, transferring extra pumps and divers who were able to go in and salvage several pump motors from the forward engine room, as well as doing preliminary work on a patch for the hole in that space. A first attempt while at sea failed, but the second, made the day after reaching Ulithi, succeeded, and then it was a simple matter of pumping out the space and shoring up the bulkhead, the main complication being that asbestos insulation in the water kept plugging up the pumps. The motors were used to put one of the evaporators back in operation, giving the ship fresh water for the week's tow to Manaus, where she was finally drydocked. The extent of the damage could finally be fully understood, the holes were patched, any salvageable equipment was preserved to make it easier to restore to operation, all three surviving shafts were put back in operation, and in January, she departed for Boston Navy Yard under her own power. Repairs would ultimately stretch past the end of the war, and Canberra would go on to serve as one of the first platforms for the Terrier missile.

Canberra in the 50s, showing her missiles aft

But Canberra's was not the most dramatic survival story that played out in the eastern reaches of the Philippine Sea in October 1944. Houston was hit not once but twice, and lost not only her propulsion but also all boilers. We'll look at her story next time.