Why are ships so slow? A typical trip to the store probably sees your car go faster than a typical merchant ship can, and even the fastest warship at full speed would be passed by a typical truck on the highway.¹ For that matter, ship speeds have stayed roughly the same for at least the past half-century, if not longer.

William Froude

The basic reason for all of this is that water is very dense and pushing through it is difficult. But to understand this, we'll need to look in more detail about the sources of ship resistance, and how all of this was figured out. Before the mid-19th century, nobody was quite sure how to predict a ship's performance. Understanding of fluid dynamics wasn't nearly advanced enough to pull it off from first principles (and still isn't today) and while many people had hit on the idea of using models, they had been flummoxed by their inability to correlate the results they got at scale with full-sized ships. The problem was eventually solved by an English engineer by the name of William Froude, who began as an associate of Brunel and did important work on ship rolling in connection with Great Eastern before turning his attention to the problems of hydrodynamics. He proved that most of that resistance could be broken down into two major components: frictional resistance and wavemaking.² Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want that isn't Culture War.

Next week, the first post in our Aurora game will go up, and you can start building ships. But before that can happen, there are a couple of details to sort out. Specifically, the name of our empire, the flag, and the naming themes for people and classes. (System theme is irrelevant because we're using real stars. Rank theme will be UK to avoid confusing everyone.) If you want lists of these, install Aurora 1.12 and take a look.

And if we want something more complicated than the default class naming themes, I'm fine with that. Something like "destroyers will be named with River names, Cruisers with Battle names, and transport ships after explorers" (all of which are separate lists in the database). I'm even willing to add custom lists to the database (just send the list as a text file, and it's trivial to load in). Flags have to come from the base game, though, because those aren't packaged in the database, and would need to be distributed separately.

We have now commenced the third round of overhauls. 2017 overhauls are A Brief History of the Battleship, the first part of my history of Iowa* and Fire Control Part 1. For 2018, we have firefighting, Underbottom Explosions, mission kills, The Last Days of the High Seas Fleet, Samar, Turret and Barbette and The Space Force and the FAA. And the 2019 overhauls are Riverine Warfare-Europe, Cluster Bombs and Leyte Gulf 75.

I recently moved to a new house, and took the chance to rearrange my library, and buy some desperately-needed new shelves. Now that I've got everything assembled, I thought it was time for a look at the reference material that forms the basis of this blog, and maybe some discussion of the process that turns it into finished posts for you to enjoy.

My desk and immediate-use bookshelves. The pictures on the wall are both from Lord Nelson. She gave me the one on the left as an anniversary present, and drew the one on the right.

And the rest of my bookshelves, at least for the library in my office. There are more books elsewhere in the house.

I did my best to set it up in a reasonably logical order, while keeping the most frequently-used stuff close to me. So the books that I can reach most easily are the Friedman warship design series. There's also some room to expand, because this is definitely not the final form of my library. But I'll walk you through the shelves as they stand in late September. Read more...

It's time once again for the traditional day when the US Navy is celebrated, chosen because it was Theodore Roosevelt's Birthday. Of course, official recognition ended in the late 40s under the perfidious influence of Louis Johnson. But I've already spent time complaining about him this year, so we'll move onto the blog anniversary.

First, I'm grateful to everyone who reads and comments. Your interest is what makes research and writing so much fun. Notable highlights include passing 100 comments on an Open Thread, the RTW2 game and the virtual meetups, which have been particularly enjoyable.

Second, there are some people I need to thank in particular. Lord Nelson, for putting up with a husband who occasionally launches on tangents about obscure naval trivia, then disappears to blog about it. Said Achmiz, for hosting and making sure I can concentrate on writing instead of having to deal with the technical stuff. Dndnrsn, for making sure what I say makes sense. And Mike Kozlowski and Suvorov, for guest-posting.

Overall, I'm not planning to change much about the blog going forward. Two posts a week seems very sustainable at my current schedule, along with the OTs and whatever Aurora stuff follows the RTW2 game. The virtual meetups are enough fun that I expect to continue them even after COVID ends, although probably at a reduced pace. COVID obviously explains the lack of in-person meetups, but I'm aching to get steel underfoot again, and I'll definitely try to do some when things get back towards normal.

Oh, and Falklands finally finished after 24 parts spread across 2.5 years. I'm quite happy with the result, and glad it's over. But we'll have to see what Year 4 brings. Thanks again for reading.

Today is the 76th anniversary of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and as such, it's worth looking at one of the most controversial elements of the battle. The Japanese plan to counter the American landings on Leyte in the Philippines was to distract the American carriers covering the landing with a carrier force of their own coming in from the North, and then pincer the amphibious landing with two battleship forces. One of these would approach from the south, while the other would come from the west, pass through the Philippine archipelago and fall on the landing force from the north. On October 24th, both the Southern Force and Center Force were located and attacked by aircraft. Center Force took the brunt of the attack, which sunk battleship Musashi, sister to Yamato, but left the other four battleships and most of their escorting cruisers intact. Admiral Kurita, in charge of Center Force, briefly turned to the west, but resumed his course for Leyte shortly before nightfall. The Japanese Southern Force never wavered, and was destroyed that night in the last clash of big-gun warships in history.

Iowa follows other battleships of Third Fleet to sea

Shortly before Kurita turned back towards San Bernadino Strait, the route he would take to reach Leyte, Admiral Halsey's planes finally located the Japanese carrier force well to the north under Admiral Ozawa. Northern Force's job in all of this had been to draw Halsey off, but Ozawa's attempts at producing radio traffic for the Americans to intercept had failed³ and his force, the one the Japanese wanted the Americans to find, was actually the last to be located. Halsey immediately jumped at the bait, sending all three carrier groups under his command tearing north, planning to attack Ozawa at dawn. Based on the reports of the pilots who had attacked Center Force, he believed that it was "beyond doubt that Center Force had been badly mauled with all of its battleships and most of its heavy cruisers tremendously reduced in fighting power and life."⁴ Read more...

Gentlemen, I am sad to inform you that your time in office has finally come to an end. Your work has remained exceptional, even to the very end, but after over three decades, the latest government has decided that it is time for a new team to take over at the Ministère de la Marine. When you came into office, France was a second-rate naval power. Today, we and our British allies inarguably rule the waves. We have defeated everyone we have fought against, expanding the French Empire and ensuring the security of the seas. In an extraordinary gesture, the government has approved promotions for all of you to the rank of Grand officier in the Légion d'honneur.

I am bringing the RTW2 game to an end. It's been fun, but I've gotten tired of writing stuff up, so here we are. I do plan to continue some form of gaming, probably with Aurora, because I can dodge the worst of the problems. At some point soon, I'll play through the existing game to 1950, and provide a report of that. Also, I can upload the save file as of March 1933 if anyone wants that. Thanks to everyone who participated. Read more...

Popular perception is that the battleship of WWII was useless, supplanted by the aircraft carrier and kept around merely because of hidebound admirals. The idea dates back to the 1920s, when Billy Mitchell began his PR campaign in favor of the air services. Some date its obsolescence back to that point, others cite the lessons of WWII to prove the malign influence of the "Gun Club" on naval procurement. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The battleship had a vital role to play in the fleets of WWII, and even for a few years thereafter, and the Allied Navies in particular did a good job of balancing their fleets for the threats they faced.

Missouri under air attack

The basic argument against the battleship is that it was far too vulnerable to air attack, and that resources would have been better spent on carriers. And on the face of it, there's some logic behind this. Aircraft were indeed the largest killer of battleships, despite not being a threat until WWII. But the carrier's use of aircraft was a double-edged sword. It could only be effective in conditions that allowed it to operate its aircraft, which pretty much ruled out operations at night⁵ or in bad weather. If a surface ship managed to get within gun range, either by taking advantage of one of these conditions or via sheer luck, the consequences for what was essentially a big box of fuel and ammunition could be catastrophic. Read more...

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper recently announced that not only would the US try to hit the 355-ship target by 2035 that the Trump Administration has pursued since entering office, but it would also seek to reach 500 ships by 2045. This is incredibly aggressive, although in makes sense given the rising power of China.

Secretary of Defense Espurr (Artist's Conception)

Esper began his talk by invoking Mahan and traditional US strategic thinking, which is incredibly promising. He also talks about the growing power of things like autonomous weapons and AI, which I'm less sure about and need to look into more. And apparently he wasn't happy with the Navy's modernization plan, which is why this particular plan is coming out of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and not the Department of the Navy. That's historically maybe not a great sign, as the only other case I can think of offhand of the OSD exercising this kind of control over shipbuilding was during the McNamara years, and pretty much everything that happened there was a disaster. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about anything you want that isn't culture war.

The RTW2 game has gotten to the point where writing it up and particularly pulling screenshots isn't really fun any more. I'm planning on posting March 1933 (already played) and then doing an epilogue where I play through 1950 and report what happened at a high level. After that, I'm considering doing something with Aurora, which nicely sidesteps the illustration problem because I can just upload the database and anyone who wants to check the game can install Aurora and open the database themselves.

But Aurora being free opens up other options. We could do a succession game, set in an unstable nation where the government is often replaced, and pass the database from player to player. I don't expect competent play from most people, but it will be amusing. Or we could try something else that I haven't thought of.

2018 overhauls are Secondary Armament Part 4, Going back to Iowa, The Washington Naval Treaty, Survivability - Flooding, my review of LA maritime sites and Falklands Part 7. 2019 overhauls are Riverine Warfare - China Parts two and three, my picture post on Iowa's officer quarters and JDAM.

Inspired by some conversation in the comments, I decided to compile a comprehensive list of sunk battleships. Criteria for inclusion on this list are: the vessel must be a pre-dreadnought or dreadnought battleship or battlecruiser,⁶ and have been lost due to either enemy action or accident. Ships that were scuttled do not count unless in sinking condition,⁷ nor do ships sunk as targets. I have attempted to include ships whose attempts to sink were interrupted by the harbor bottom, even when they were subsequently put back into service, but it is likely that I missed one or two of these. These ships are denoted by asterisks. All told, I managed to get 90 entries, although one ship is on here twice.

An explanation for some of the column headers: I've used date laid down as the best proxy I can for the age of the design, because launch date can vary greatly depending on how the building goes. Some of the ships were extensively refitted before their loss, but I wanted to keep my data relatively clean, so I ignored that. Main and Secondary Causes were things that, in my view, led to the ship being on the bottom. Main Cause is the best answer I can come up with for "why did the ship actually sink?". Secondary cause is either the reason the main cause happened (in the case of internal explosions) or something that contributed significantly to the ship's loss, either by setting up the conditions for the main cause⁸ or as a major source of additional damage.⁹ This is inherently somewhat subjective, but I wanted to have reasonably consistent data instead of a paragraph on each ship to capture all of the nuances. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result. Delivery is the source of the attack, particularly for torpedoes. Op? is to denote ships that were operational as warships at the time of loss, as opposed to battleships that were being used as barracks, targets, or some other non-warship function. Read more...