It is time, once again, for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it's not culture war. Also, a reminder to everyone that our May virtual meetup is tomorrow, 5/16, at 1 PM Central (GMT-5).

2018 overhauls are Main Guns Part 4, my review of Midway, Russian Battleships Part 3, Falklands Part 1, So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Strategy Part 2 and the Super-Dreadnoughts. 2019 overhauls are Shells parts three and four, my review of Fort Sill, The Spanish-American War Part 4, Falklands Part 14, Pictures - Mikasa Part 1 and Battleship Aviation Part 1. 2020 overhauls are Coastal Defenses Part 2, Oil Tankers, Nuclear Weapons at Sea - Heavy Attack and my post on the 2004 UFO incident, although that last is less certain thanks to information I've dug up since I wrote it.

It's also the first anniversary of the start of my Aurora tutorial, which coincides with the recent release of C# Aurora V1.13.

After WWI, the US Navy was by far the world leader in naval lighter-than-air aviation. It first attempted to buy airships from Europe, but these plans fell through, and its first rigid airship was the American-built Shenandoah, the first airship to fly from coast to coast. She was joined by the German-built Los Angeles, but broke up in a storm over Ohio in October 1925.

Los Angeles over Manhattan

Despite the disaster, the Navy's lighter-than-air program survived, although it remained on a fiscal shoestring for the rest of its life. Because Shenandoah's loss resulted in most of the program's helium escaping, Los Angeles was grounded until March 1926. But her return to flight, under the command of Charles Rosendahl, the senior survivor of the Shenandoah crash, allowed the USN to begin the practical work of learning how to operate rigid airships. Rosendahl, an aggressive and charismatic officer with a boundless faith in the possibilities of lighter-than-air flight, was the perfect choice for the job. In the early days, the techniques for handling the ship on the ground had been limited to the use of hundreds of men to walk the airships in and out of hangar. Occasionally, things would go wrong, and the airship would lift too early, carrying some of the ground crew with it. They were under strict orders not to let go if this happened, as it would make the problem worse. Later, a rail-mounted stub mast was developed, which would hold the airship at the nose and tail. It would be pulled out of the hangar to a "mooring-out circle", where the nose would be pointed into the wind, and the tail released, allowing it to take to the air gracefully. Read more...

The Littoral Combat Ship was originally developed from proposals in the late 90s for a small, semi-disposable coastal combatant that would allow the USN to access coastal waters that would otherwise be denied to it, relying on high speed and various buzzwords to fulfill its mission. It turned into one of the worst procurement disasters in US history, producing two classes of very fast and rather underarmed ships that don't have any of the modules they were intended to carry. Despite this, a total of 35 ships have been ordered.

Independence, Manchester and Tulsa operate together

This is a particular problem because nobody is quite sure what to do with them. While the idea of a ship specializing in access to waters where enemies would rather we didn't go seems appealing in today's confrontation with China, the original plan was rather short on details of how this would be done. To some extent, its proponents seemed to advocate simply accepting that some of the ships would be lost, a controversial position in the USN, which has never been particularly accepting of disposable warships. Worse, the actual ships currently in service are far too large and expensive to be considered disposable. That means any ship deployed in disputed waters has to be capable of surviving an attack, a task for which the LCS is extremely poorly suited. Both variants are armed only with a handful of RAM point-defense missiles, which are perfectly adequate for self-defense in lower-threat environments¹ but would require cover from something like a Burke if operating near China. In theory, the modular nature of the LCS should allow this to be solved, but any serious air-defense capability would probably require a new radar, which seems to have been a deal-breaker.² Read more...

1976 was a reasonably smooth year. We began construction of the new AKX Mk II, as well as retooling yards on the new railgun destroyer escorts. Next year, we plan to start construction on the monitors proposed a couple of years ago, or possibly on minelayers if the consensus is to go with those instead. Beyond that, it was just the normal business of moving equipment to our colonies. The other news was that Opinuchus Primere passed the 10 million mark, and we dispatched a frigate to cover it.

Database is here.

The Littoral Combat Ship did not have a smooth birth. Initially conceived as a sort of coastal corvette, it was adopted by Donald Rumsfeld in his attempt to transform how the US military did business, and soon morphed into a quite large and very fast ship that was supposed to carry modular systems to allow it to fulfill a variety of missions in dangerous coastal waters. Cost overruns drew Congressional ire, but the program survived, and 35 ships are either in service or under contract.

An unmanned MQ-8B Fire Scout comes in to land aboard Coronado (Independence class)

But what sort of ships are they? Two different variants have been procured, the LCS-1/Freedom class, built by Lockheed Martin and Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin, and the LCS-2/Independence class built by Austal USA at their yard in Mobile, Alabama.³ Despite being built to the same specifications, they are radically different designs. The Lockheed ship is a semi-planing monohull made of steel, while Austal's is a striking aluminum trimaran, both forms driven by the requirement for a speed of around 45 kts, which isn't really practical with a conventional hull.⁴ Read more...

The largest new addition to the American fleet over the last decade has been the two classes of Littoral Combat Ship. The LCS was trumpeted as a revolutionary new platform that would greatly enhance American capability in coastal waters, but which has proved intensely controversial both during development and in service.

LCS-1 Freedom (top) and LCS-2 Independence

The LCS originated in the 1990s, as the USN struggled to find missions in the aftermath of the Cold War. The first result was a destroyer dedicated to the land-attack mission, which eventually became the Zumwalt class destroyers. But this was obviously going to be a large and expensive ship, and various officers were quick to propose a smaller, cheaper alternative. The most prominent was Arthur Cebrowski, president of the Naval War College, who proposed a concept called Streetfighter in a 1999 Proceedings article. Streetfighter would be small, fast, and thanks to a complex of buzzwords would be able to enter the enemy's coastal waters, which were too dangerous for bigger ships. Exactly how this would be done was not entirely clear, nor was what "Streetfighter" itself would look like. Read more...

I have a couple of housekeeping things. First, apologies for the lack of Aurora last week. I've been distracted, and just didn't get around to it. Second, I'm planning to scale back the virtual meetups to about once a month, now that the lockdown is winding down. Third, I'm going to designate this the semi-regular thread for ideas on what to write about. As usual, I make no promises, but anything good will go on my idea list.

2018 overhauls are British Battleships in WWII*, Sea Stories - The Swimming Pool and the Fuzes, Main Guns parts one, two and three, Life Aboard Iowa and So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Strategy Part 1. 2019 overhauls are Shells Part 2, the Four Chaplains, Continuous At Sea Deterrent, Megasilverfist's review of Polly Woodside and So You Want to Build a Battleship - Construction Part 3*. 2020 overhauls are my review of Historic Flight Spokane, Falklands Part 21 and Merchant Ships - Bulk Carriers.

While I've previously written about the process by which ship are kept running during normal operations, warships in particular often operate in ways that are far from normal. This involves a set of what are known as "Conditions", which apply to both the crew and the ship itself, and which are worth looking into.⁵

Sailors man the bridge of Gerald R. Ford during a General Quarters drill

The most famous of these is General Quarters, more popularly known as Battle Stations (or Action Stations for the Brits) and also called Condition I. As the name implies, this is what the ship does when action is imminent, or in any other circumstances when the ship needs to be ready to deal with problems on a moment's notice. This is typically announced with a klaxon and a call of "General Quarters, General Quarters. All hands man your battle stations. Forward and up to starboard, down and aft to port. Set material condition 'Zebra' throughout the ship." Every member of the crew is to drop whatever they're doing⁶ and head for their assigned station, following the "forward and up to starboard, down and aft to port" directions to avoid major traffic jams. Read more...

In the aftermath of WWI, navies worldwide looked to the rigid airship to augment the light cruisers traditionally used for scouting. Despite the failures of the German airship force in the North Sea, the allure of a fast, long-range scout with a great view was strong, particularly in the United States. Some of this was the American fascination with new technology, but it probably owed much to the chronic USN shortage of light cruisers due to a decade of Congressional preference for buying battleships and destroyers.

R34 lands on Long Island

Initially, the plan was to build the force around a pair of German Zeppelins that the US was slated to receive as war reparations, with later units built in the US. However, the German crews, in the finest traditions of their navy, chose instead to sabotage them. To replace those as its nucleus, the USN turned to the British. The Air Ministry had decided to shut down the British military airship program due to the financial crisis facing Britain and repurpose the existing airships for commercial use. Despite the successes of the commercial program, most notably the first round-trip crossing of the Atlantic by air in July 1919 with R34, the existing airships under construction were to be scrapped, at least until the USN agreed to buy R38 from them. Read more...

Today, the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China controls the world's second most powerful navy. A quarter-century ago, it was essentially a coastal-defense force, focused on keeping China's maritime frontiers safe from outside interference. Today, it is a true blue-water force with global capabilities, and it continues to develop into a true rival for the US Navy. This progress has been the deliberate result of strategic choices to emphasize Chinese maritime power in the face of increasing reliance on the oceans for trade and resources, as well as concern about Taiwan and the threat of US naval power. Now, it is focused on operations past the "first island chain", stretching from Japan to Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Liaoning, symbol of China's new naval power

Serious operations past the first island chain began in the mid-90s, when the People's Liberation Army Navy began annual visits to other countries, including a 1997 cruise to Hawaii, San Diego, and Latin America. Over the next decade, the tempo of deployments increased, and Chinese ships showed the flag on every continent except Antarctica. But the real sea change took place in 2008, when China joined the UN-sponsored antipiracy patrols off Somalia. Since then, they have kept two surface combatants and a replenishment ship continually deployed, and the mission has served as a crash course in the lessons necessary to operate as a true blue-water navy. Issues faced and overcome ranged from logistics and personnel issues to communications and command structures to the heat and sand of the Gulf of Aden. Today, these deployments usually involve about 4 months of antipiracy duties,⁷ followed by two months of port visits and exercises with other navies. Read more...