Today is Easter, and as is tradition around here, it's time to take a look at the actions of a military chaplain. This year's is Lieutenant Vincent Capodanno, USNR, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam.

Capodanno was ordained a priest in 1958, and chose to join the Maryknoll Society, a Catholic missionary society known for going into rough areas and living alongside the natives. His first assignment was to Taiwan, where he spent six years as a teacher and missionary. After a brief trip back to the US, he volunteered as a Chaplain in support of the growing US presence in Vietnam, and was quickly commissioned into the Navy.¹ In April 1966, he was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, and quickly gained a reputation for his focus on the "grunts", the junior enlisteds on the front lines. He ate and slept with them, and despite orders from his commander, he often slipped off on patrols with them. When asked why he was wearing a flack jacket, which didn't seem like "a good advertisment for his faith", he replied “I know it, but it’s protective coloration so I blend in with the men. In addition, I understand their trials better if I accept the same burdens they do. I want to be available in the event anything serious occurs; to learn firsthand the problems of the men, and to give them moral support, to comfort them with my presence. In addition, I feel I must personally witness how they react under fire—and experience it myself—to understand the fear they feel.”² Read more...

It's time once again for our usual open thread. Talk about whatever you want, even if it's not naval/military related.

I have no particular plans to write on the MV Ever Given incident specifically, although salvage in general remains on my list of topics to cover some day. I will say, however, that I am extremely happy at the fact that the importance of seaborne trade was at least briefly in the spotlight.

2018 overhauls are the Early Battlecruisers, Why do we need so many ships?, ASW in WWI, SYWTBABB - Design Part 1, The Pursuit of the Goeben and Breslau and Operation Staple Head. 2019 overhauls are Auxiliaries Part 5, Commercial Aviation Part 10, German Guided Bombs Part 4, The Spanish-American War Part 3, Naval Fiction, SYWTBABB Construction Part 2 and The Philadelphia Experiment. 2020 overhauls are Falklands Part 20, Southern Commerce Raiding Part 2, Merchant Ships - General Cargo and Lord Nelson's review of SS Anne.

Naval historians are still debating the nature of the catastrophe that wiped out the battleship. Some think it was a giant asteroid impact, but those people are stupid.

Others claim the battleship disappeared from the world's navies because it was discovered that they were too vulnerable to fire. Oilers would create large slicks, then set them alight with flares, burning the battleships alive.

Many battleships were named after leaders during European colonization of the Americas or for indigenous native tribes. The names became so widely recognized they were later co-opted as the names for the states.

A landlocked South American country once bought a battleship, but was unable to find a permanent port to keep it in, so it spent many years moving from place to place. Some say it still wanders the seas today, menacing passing merchants, while others claim it was sunk by mistake during WWII.

Japan once attempted to propel a battleship by towing it with torpedoes. It ran into Godzilla.

Donald Trump's promise to reactivate the battleships was made because he believed that the USS Iowa had an important role to play in the upcoming primary, and he was trying to win votes.

The German flying battleship program resulted in what is technically the heaviest aircraft ever to fly. However, it was only able to fly for a few seconds before the scuttling charges were accidentally activated as part of the abort procedure. German naval officers claimed that this made it a successful test.

Wet Combat historians often debate about the efficacy of battleships versus warships. The key difference obviously is that while battleships can participate in any one combat, warships must participate in every single combat of the war, which can be challenging in wars fought on multiple fronts. Until recent centuries the single use battleships were considered a waste of steel, but they've found renewed popularity with the invention of the "paint it a different color and hope the admiral doesn't notice" method.

I've previously looked at the boiler and engine rooms aboard Iowa, and it's now time to take a look at the third space, the aft auxiliary machinery room. I've only been down there once about two years ago, so this probably won't be as clear as the earlier posts.

Getting down to the auxiliary machinery room requires going down a very steep shaft

Read more...

In the late 50s, the US Navy began work on what was known as the Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM), going from program start to the first operational cruise of the USS George Washington carrying Polaris missiles in only four years. But the Polaris A1 missiles that Washington carried were essentially prototypes, and something better would be needed to arm the 40 SSBNs that would follow her into service.

Polaris A2 missile

Work on the follow-on Polaris A2 was well in hand even as George Washington began her first patrol. One major focus was improved reliability, to make the missile actually something that could be adequately maintained by a submarine's crew in operational service. Another upgrade was an improved second stage, stretched 30" to bring the range up to the 1,500 nm that was originally desired. This greatly increased the patrol area, bringing Moscow within range not only from boats in the Norwegian Sea, but also the Mediterranean and Aegean. Patrols in the Mediterranean began in 1963, essentially replacing the Jupiter missiles withdrawn from Turkey as part of the deal that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pacific patrols began the next year, with Polaris replacing the Regulus submarines on patrol off the Soviet Pacific coast. Read more...

1975 was a better year, with no losses among our survey ships. We discovered that both of our ships were destroyed by the same race, which was previously unknown to us, but surveys showed no connection between the systems we lost ships in. In fact, NN3659 was a dead end. Our xenology teams are still arguing over the implications of this. Beyond that, we have just finished developing a new commercial engine, which opens up options. We should probably consider a new tanker, as well as follow-on cargo and colony ships. We also need to figure out what action to take against this race, and what implications it has for our building plans.

Database for 1976.

In the fall of 1960, the ballistic missile submarine George Washington went to sea carrying the first Polaris missiles. The Navy's Special Projects Office had managed to take the entire system, submarine, missile and all, from paper to operational service in only four years. But just getting a submarine to sea with missiles in it wasn't enough.

An E-6 Mercury at the Tinker Air Show

One last hurdle to overcome was the problem of passing the launch order to the submarines. Water blocks most radio signals, and while previous submarines had been able to simply pick up messages intermittently, that was no longer good enough. One solution was to place a conventional antenna on a float, which would be towed behind the submarine. Another was to use low-frequency radio signals which could penetrate underwater. The standard method was to use Very Low Frequency (VLF) signals, which have wavelengths of 10 km or more. These transmitters are very large, and pass information at low rates (around 300 bits/sec), but the antenna can remain submerged, with the signals penetrating up to 50m underwater. Because of the size and vulnerability of the fixed transmitters, the USN developed another method of transmitting these signals, using an airplane to carry the antenna. The airplane, referred to by the term TAke Charge And Move Out (TACAMO), reels out a 10 km antenna, and flies in a tight circle, which results in 70% of the antenna being vertical and able to transmit a powerful VLF signal. This mission was originally performed by modified C-130s, but they were replaced in the late 80s with the E-6 Mercury, a derivative of the 707 airliner that also serves as backup command center for American land-based nuclear forces. Read more...

Last time, we discussed Semmes’ escapades in the Sumter, which was a domestically manufactured privateer. The South had little capacity to manufacture modern ships, but the Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, was a forward-thinking individual. On May 9th, 1861, Mallory dispatched James Bulloch to England, with instructions to purchase or have constructed six commerce raiders.

James Bulloch

Mallory had a good idea of what he wanted in these vessels: smaller, lightly-armed ships, “fast under both steam and canvas,” with the ability to operate for extended periods of time and to conduct operations without entering Confederate territory, if necessary. The Confederate Congress secretly approved this expedition (setting aside one million dollars for this end), along with approving the overseas construction of “one or two war steamers of the most modern and improved description, with a powerful armament and fully equipped for service.” Pursuant to that end, Mallory quickly sent Lieutenant James North to Europe to join Bulloch and procure ironclad vessels, suggesting six-gun frigates “that can receive without material injury the fire of the heaviest frigates…and whose guns, though few in number, with shell or hot shot, will enable them to destroy the wooden navy of our enemy.” Read more...

It's time once again for our usual open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it's not culture war.

One thing I would like to talk about is Proceedings, the Naval Institute's flagship publication. It doesn't work quite like it appears to, which results in a lot of confusion.

The United States Naval Institute was founded in 1873 as a location for independent debate and discussion of the future of the sea services - Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, and that remains its core mission to this day, with Proceedings as the main mechanism. As a result, most articles tend to be a discussion of where the Navy is and where the author thinks it should go. (There's also some other stuff of interest to the readership, like book reviews and short naval history stuff.) The majority are fairly boring inside baseball, calling for better mine-warfare capabilities or improved barracks or a greater focus on Russia. Yes, some of these are important, but if they are, the same theme is almost certainly being pushed by other outlets which are more accessible to the layperson. (This is why I personally don't usually read it.) But Proceedings also occasionally publishes weird stuff, like the article on privateering. This is entirely in keeping with its mission, and the main problem is that these weird articles tend to get picked up by the wider media, who assume that they are far more legitimate than they actually are because they're published in Proceedings.

This effect is so strong that when I see a reference to Proceedings from someone who isn't a specialist, I immediately assume that it's going to be one of the weird and wrong articles that will pop up. I'm very rarely mistaken, and I would urge everyone to remember that Proceedings isn't peer-reviewed if they encounter links to it in the wild, and that they're likely to be wrong.

None of this is meant to bash the USNI. They're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing by publishing this stuff, and they do a tremendous amount of good. If not for their publishing arm, naval history in the English-speaking world would be in a much worse state. That, more than anything, is why I'm proud to be a member. (The discount on books doesn't hurt, either.)

Also worth a read is Blackshoe's discussion of Rickover's effect on the USN's organizational culture.

2018 overhauls are the Bombardment of Alexandria, Military Procurement - Pricing, Amphibious Warfare Part 5, A Day on the America parts one and two and Thoughts on Tour Guiding. 2019 overhauls are German Guided Bombs Part 3, Commercial Aviation Part 9, Falklands Part 12, Weather at Sea, my review of Dayton and the South Dakota class. 2020 overhauls are Auxiliaries Part 0, Barb's raid on the train and Revolt of the Admirals Parts one and two.

In the mid-50s, the US Navy decided to enter the ballistic missile game. Initially, they were to cooperate with the Army on the Jupiter missile, but this was quickly abandoned in favor of a new missile, known as Polaris. The Special Projects Office, led by Admiral William Raborn, took Polaris from paper studies to deployment in only four years, with the submarine USS George Washington taking the first missiles to sea in November 1960.

Polaris A1 on the pad during a test

Lockheed was responsible for the Polaris A1 missiles that George Washington carried. Each was 28.5' long and weighed about 29,000 lb, with two solid-propellant stages to propel the warhead to the target. These were the beneficiaries of a great deal of work on solid rocket propellant, which drew on the expertise of the American plastics industry³ to provide binders for the ammonium perchlorate and aluminum that provided most of the energy. The A1 was in many ways a prototype rushed into operational service, and insiders expected that reliability wouldn't be particularly good if they had to actually fire them, particularly because of electrical problems. Its 1,200 nm range was also short of the desired 1,500 nm, but it was enough to reach Leningrad from the Norwegian Sea, even if Moscow would have required a more hazardous trip into a small slice of the Barents Sea.⁴ To ensure that it actually got to the target, each of the four nozzles on each stage was fitted with a device known as a jetevator, which was essentially a ring around the bottom of the nozzle that could be swiveled to divert the thrust. The second stage also had another serious problem to deal with. Unlike liquid-fueled rockets, solid rockets essentially can't be shut down after they're lit, which is less than ideal for a weapon that is designed to place a warhead on a very specific trajectory. The solution was a set of pyrotechnic plugs in the front wall of the second stage, which would be triggered right after the warhead separated, neutralizing the thrust from the nozzles. Read more...