One subject that comes up a lot in discussions of modern naval warfare is missile defense, and I decided to try to get some reasonably hard data on the subject by using the amazing Command: Modern Operations game/simulation tool. This is a piece of software sold as a game, but also used by professional analysts. It's a fantastic resource for answering these kind of questions, and I used it to look at the period 1975-present.

The basics of the test were simple. I set up two bunkers, each armed with eight P-15 Styx (SS-N-2) anti-ship missiles in the Palos Verdes peninsula, near San Pedro, and stationed the target near Catalina Island, about 22 nm away. The bunkers would detect and engage the target immediately, firing off all of their missiles, while the target ship would shoot down as many as it could.

The first target was a 1972-spec Charles F Adams class destroyer, which I fired 16 missiles at. The Adams had a twin Mk 11 launcher for RIM-66A SM-1MR missiles, with 2 illuminators. Began engagement at around 10 nm, Ph 0.35.

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Gentlemen,

We are victorious in our war with Germany! They have decided to end the war on reasonably favorable terms due to their inability to challenge the Allied blockade. Unfortunately, we didn't have the leverage to extract major concessions, but the war indemnity will be nice. Fortunately, the budget cuts will be compensated for nicely by ships commissioning over the coming months, so we won't even have to halt our building programs. We should even be able to lay down some new construction late in the year.

The question, as usual, is what form that construction should take. We have two CVLs and a CV finishing this year, and another CV might work quite well to boost the fleet's striking power, potentially allowing us to replace Duquesne with something more compatible with our other carriers. Another option would be CAs or BBs to counter the German BC fleet. Read more...

NTDS, the Naval Tactical Data System, revolutionized fleet air defense when it arrived on the scene in the early 60s. Now, ships could automatically share their tactical pictures, updated by computers, which allowed the fleet to keep up with the speed of jet aircraft. However, NTDS was limited to the larger ships, carriers and cruisers, by its cost and size, and cheaper systems would be needed for smaller ships or cash-strapped navies. Several nations developed their own systems, but the US Navy was never able to modernize the existing fleet, as systems foundered due to the cost of the war in Vietnam and the postwar budget crash.

Iowa's Flag Plot, which would hook into NTDS

By the early 70s, NTDS itself was in trouble. Its software was modular, which made it easy to add new capabilities as they became necessary, even at the behest of the ship's own crew. However, the result was a system ever more overloaded, particularly as the NTDS architecture focused on one task at a time, giving the illusion of multi-tasking by flipping through modules. As more software was written, the interval between repeats rose, and the system soon became unusable. The system could only accept operator inputs in certain timeslots, which meant that the time to move the cursor across the screen rose from 3 seconds to 16 seconds, and in a few cases response lag to button pushes rose to over a minute. This meant that NTDS had serious problems tracking targets, with 15 to 25% of tracks during testing being 5 or more miles from their actual location, and a lag of 3.2 minutes from a new one showing up on radar to being entered into the system. Read more...

Until the late 1930s, flying boats were the vehicle of choice for long-range aviation. Using runways provided by God instead of man, they could economically operate from remote locations and had proved instrumental in the formation of most of the early international airline networks, most notably Juan Trippe's bridging of both the Atlantic and Pacific with Pan Am.

A Pan Am Boeing 314 Clipper

Nor were navies blind to the possibilities of flying boats, capable of operating from forward areas with only the aid of a tender and with greater performance than anything that could be flown off of a carrier. Besides the obvious role of long-range reconnaissance, there was also the possibility of using them as bombers against both enemy ships and land bases. This was particularly attractive to the US Navy, who couldn't be sure of control of land-based bombers, and as a result, their patrol designation was replaced in the mid-30s with that of patrol bomber, the first result of which was the famous PBY Catalina. Unfortunately, improvements in aerodynamics and landplane performance were increasingly hard to reconcile with the demands of taking off from and landing on water, and by the outbreak of WWII, the PBY and flying boats in general were no longer on the cutting edge. Read more...

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

This weekend would have been LA Fleet Week, and thanks to coronavirus, it's gone virtual this year, so we can all participate. After a significant amount of digging, I was able to find their actual plans, which "include active Navy ship tours, Navy band concerts, and speakers showing their support for this incredible event." This sounds at least potentially interesting, although I don't know what a virtual ship tour looks like. Also, this is all being restricted to their social media. But I'll keep an eye on it and let you know if anything cool pops up.

Also, Data Secrets Lox (a forum spinoff of the blog that spawned Naval Gazing) is holding an effortpost contest to find the best long-form writing there. Some of the entries are excellent. And some were written by me in a fit of ADD. I am definitely not asking you to vote for that one.

2018 overhauls are my reviews of Constitution and Battleship Cove, The Battleship of the Future?, Underwater Protection Part 2, Understanding Hull Symbols and Lushunkou and Weihaiwei. 2019 overhauls are my pictures of Iowa's medical spaces, A Brief Overview of the United States Fleet, the David Taylor Model Basin, the last part of the Spanish-American War series and riverine warfare in North America and Africa.

On board all naval vessels at sea and in port, and at our many island bases in the Pacific, there is rejoicing and thanksgiving. The long and bitter struggle, which Japan started so treacherously on the seventh of December, 1941, is at an end.

I take great pride in the American forces which have helped to win this victory. America can be proud of them. The officers and men of the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine who fought in the Pacific have written heroic new chapters in this nation’s military history. I have infinite respect for their courage, resourcefulness and devotion to duty. We also acknowledge the great contribution to this victory made by our valiant Allies. United we fought and united we prevail. Read more...

The only truly novel variety of merchant ship to arrive in the years after WWII was the offshore service vessel, designed to cater to the increasing needs of the offshore oil and gas industry. Until WWII, offshore drilling was done with the rig on a permanant platform, often a pier extending from shore, or a barge that was simply submerged, with the limiting depth that of the barge's freeboard. But after the war, improved technology allowed drillers to work much further out at sea, and making it harder to supply them with everything they needed, from drill pipes and tools to food, fuel and fresh water. Initially, converted landing craft were used for this purpose, but they were unsatisfactory, and something better was needed.

Ramla Bay, the earliest supply vessel I could find a picture of

Alden 'Doc' LaBorde, president of a Louisiana company specializing in offshore drilling, came up with the solution, starting from a blank sheet of paper. The resulting vessel, Ebb Tide, was extremely odd-looking, with a bridge salvaged from a tugboat far forward and a low-freeboard open deck aft that took up 90 of the vessel's 119-foot length. In operation, it would come alongside the rig, where a crane would lift off the cargo on the deck, and hoses could be rigged for the water and fuel stored in tanks within the ship. The whole thing was deliberately kept very simple, allowing the ship to operate from whatever bayou happened to be closest to the drill site, and proved a tremendous success in operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Sisters of Ebb Tide, dating back to the 50s, remained in service for forty years. Read more...

In early April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a few desolate rocks in the South Atlantic. The British mobilized their fleet in response. After a fierce battle in the air and at sea, the British gained the upper hand, and began landing troops on May 21st at San Carlos Water on the west coast of East Falkland. The Argentinians attempted to defeat the invasion with air attacks, but the British eventually gained the upper hand. On the 28th, the British, despite some setbacks, began the ground campaign, defeating the Argentinian garrison at Goose Green and opening the way to lay siege to the main enemy positions near Stanley. The first days of June saw the islands shrouded in clouds, but that didn't prevent the British from leapfrogging forward to Fitzroy and Bluff Cove, just to the south of Stanley. There, tragedy struck on June 8th, when an air attack caught several ships unloading.¹

An artillery battery in the Falklands

Despite the losses at Bluff Cove, the British continued their buildup for the assault on Stanley. All of the helicopters and crews had finally arrived, giving a total of 40 during the day and 4 at night, most employed bringing up artillery ammunition to the British forward batteries. The 9th was quiet, with only a couple of air raid warnings and no actual attacks. Survivors from Bluff Cove were evacuated to the hospital ship Uganda, while there was the usual shuffle of ships between San Carlos, the carrier group, and the logistics area. Read more...

Gentlemen,

We are at war again. Germany and Britain decided to have a fight, and we are backing Britain under the terms of our alliance. The initial clash between our destroyers in the North Sea resulted in a significant fraction of the German's modern destroyers resting on the bottom, while we escaped without losses.

In other news, things are going pretty well. We've laid down a pair of new CAs, a new CL and a bunch of new minesweepers, as well as finally getting dive bombers into service and developing the capability to design our own torpedo bombers. Our aviation capabilities have grown in other ways, and we are expanding air bases near the North Sea. Read more...

Tugs are ancient. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians used oared vessels to pull barges on the Nile. Until the invention of the steam engine, any vessel which needed to be moved against wind or tide would be pulled, usually by boats but potentially from ashore or by an anchor. The first operational steamships were tugs. Particularly in the early days, when steam engines were far too fuel-hungry to be practical on their own on any but the shortest routes, steam tugs were prized for their greater power and economy relative to rowing. Some were even used in the open sea, most notably in the runup to the Battle of Cape St. Vincent during the Portuguese Liberal Wars. Charles Napier, commanding the Liberal fleet, planned to use his tugs to bring his fleet into position, but the tugs either refused or were contractually forbidden from doing so depending on which account you believe.²

Many of these early tugs were incredibly primitive. An example is 1833's Monarch, featured in Turner's famous painting The Fighting Temeraire. Her engine provided only 20 hp to her paddle wheels, which were fixed to act in unison. This made her difficult to turn, and the process involved shifting iron ballast from side to side on rails to immerse one or the other wheel more deeply.³ Later paddle tugs could turn their paddles in different directions, giving excellent maneuverability, although developments in the design of screw propellers meant that most operators began to abandon them around 1900. A few operators, such as the Royal Navy, continued to use them, and the last RN paddle tug, Forceful, wasn't retired until 1980. Read more...