June 1st and 2nd was the Tinker AFB airshow, and Lord Nelson and I of course went for the first day. Tinker's airshow runs every other year, as do most base airshows since sequestration. As it was, it was fun, particularly as the Blue Angels performed this year.

Lord Nelson and me with a B-52¹

The one caveat I should get out of the way is this. The last airshow I went to was Miramar in 2016, probably the best military airshows in the country. She hadn't been to one in close to 20 years. My one-sentence summary is "decent, but not as good as Miramar". It reminded me of the Spokane airshow I attended in 2014, and both are probably fairly typical of normal base airshows across the country. Read more...

Moving things over water has always been easier than moving them overland, whether those things are people or cargo and whether that water is the salty or fresh variety. Particularly before railroads and cars arrived, rivers were the superhighways of commerce. And commerce is almost always followed by military force. I've previously discussed the history of riverine warfare in North America, but its use was hardly isolated to that continent.

The ships of the 1841 Niger Expedition

Africa was a particularly fertile ground for riverine seapower. Its history on that continent goes back to the days when man was first learning to use rafts, and the Nile has a long history of military uses, but these fall outside the scope of this post.² The initial European colonization of the continent was almost entirely restricted to the coast, and rivers provided the only natural arteries for penetrating into the interior. The first major example of this was the 1841 Niger River expedition, which included three iron-hulled paddle steamers, some of the first vessels of that type in RN service. Britain and France each built a few gunboats for the river systems of West Africa, some of which had such shallow hulls that they had trusses built above the deck. Many of these vessels had drafts of only 1-2', and when they got stuck, the locals would be hired to pull the ship off. Read more...

Gentlemen,

Europe has been at its most peaceful for at least a decade over the last year. This is probably good for us, but it's been bad for our budget. We have only been able to resume construction on the cruiser Forbin, and propose to resume work on Brennus and suspend Charles Martel to ensure that all three ships of the Devastation class finish while still reasonably modern. The upside is that other nations have also been forced to suspend ships, and we are a clear second in the race for the new vessels.

Beyond that, things have been quiet. We've refitted most of our battleships and armored cruisers with improved fire control, and research continues to go well, with the development of main battery wing turrets, cross-deck firing, and improved 14" guns. Read more...

In 1898, tensions between the US and Spain over the remains of Spain's Caribbean empire boiled over after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor. The US declared war and blockaded Cuba, while the Asiatic Fleet under George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in the Philippines at Manila Bay. The Spanish dispatched a fleet under Admiral Cervera to break the blockade, but it ended up trapped in Santiago on Cuba's south coast. The Americans landed troops and tightened their blockade, and on Sunday, July 3rd, Cervera finally sortied. Three of his cruisers were destroyed almost immediately, while the last one survived less than four hours. Santiago itself surrendered two weeks later, the last major action of the war in Cuba.

Armed tug Wompatuck, one of the vessels that attacked Manzanillo

However, the end of major actions didn't mean that the waters around Cuba were entirely peaceful. The primitive state of land transportation meant that there was a thriving coastal trade which needed to be cut. Large warships couldn't venture close enough to shore to do so, and the USN had to bring in armed yachts and tugs to do the job. One notable node of this trade was the port of Manzanillo, which American vessels first attacked on June 30th. They managed to destroy a small gunboat, but then ran into a flotilla of armed vessels, the largest Spanish naval force still in Cuba, guarding Manzanillo itself. Their fire ruptured the main steam pipe of the armed yacht Hornet, badly scalding three men, one of who later died. The Spanish suffered only light casualties, and eventually the Americans had to retreat, towing Hornet clear. Read more...

Developing the technology required to keep the military of the US and our allies on the cutting edge isn't easy. It requires billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people, all working to push the equipment available forward. A lot of this work isn't particularly glamorous or exciting, but occasionally, it requires some truly incredible facilities.

The David Taylor Model Basin

My favorite of these is the David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, Maryland.³ This is "Where the Fleet Begins", the place where the Navy does the basic research that ultimately feeds into operational warships. Even today, computers are not capable of the accuracy needed when simulating the flow of water around a ship. To make sure that our next vessels will be as fast and as seaworthy as they need to be, physical models must be tested. And the best way to do that is to create a giant tank and tow a model through it. Of course, it's not nearly as easy as it sounds,⁴ and DTMB is one of the world's premier facilities for such research. Read more...

Riverine warfare is an oft-overlooked part of naval operations, eclipsed by the bigger ships that operate on blue water. But the so-called brown-water navies have played an important part in military operations for millennia, almost always in close concert with land forces. A force that controls rivers and lakes can use them as a highway for troops and supplies while turning them into barriers for the enemy.

A ship of the Classis Germanica

The first naval operations were almost certainly on lakes and rivers instead of the open sea, but these are long lost. The navy of ancient Egypt operated on the Nile, although details are sparse. We have better records of the Roman Navy, which operated a very large fleet, the Classis Germanica, on the Rhine and other rivers of what is now France, Germany, and the Low Countries. Particularly after the Romans gave up their attempts to conquer the Germanic tribes on the east side of the Rhine, it served not only to provide supplies and communications to the Roman garrisons, but also as the first line of defense against barbarian incursions. Similar fleets operated on the Empire's other major rivers, including the Danube, the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. But available information on these fleets is limited, so we'll start our look at modern riverine warfare with North America, the first major example of which was the British ascent of the St. Lawrence during the Seven Years War, culminating in the capture of Quebec City. Read more...

It's our regular open thread. Talk about anything you want.

No special thing this time. I've been busy.

Posts overhauled since last time include Underwater Protection Part 1 and Part 2, my post on The Standard Type Battleships, my reviews of the International Museum of WWII and Constitution and Cassin Young, and my analysis of a silly battleship article from a 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics.

I'm going to branch out a bit and talk about the USN as it exists today. It's a large and complex organization, made up of both uniformed servicemembers and civilians. The USN has, broadly speaking, four major combatant branches: surface warfare, aviation, submarines, and, in concert with the Marine Corps, amphibious warfare. Of course, these branches require a great deal of support, ranging from auxiliary ships to construction units to security personnel to medical teams to the command and intelligence services that tie it all together.

Ultimately, everything can be traced back to the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Authority flows down from him through the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of the Navy, who is the head of the Department of the Navy, which includes both the Navy and the Marine Corps. The uniformed head of the Navy is the Chief of Naval Operations, while the Marine Corps is lead by the Commandant. However, neither of these men have any direct command authority over forces in the field. Their responsibility is to create and train forces, not to use them. Since the 1980s, that has been the job of the Unified Combatant Commanders, four-star generals or admirals who control all US military forces in a specific geographic area, known as a Unified Combatant Command (UCC)⁵ and who report directly to the Secretary of Defense. Ships, aircraft, and other military assets are assigned to each UCC as dictated by operational needs. Each geographic UCC has one or more numbered fleets, which provides command of all naval forces afloat in the region. Read more...

One aspect of the Iowa that I haven't discussed much is the medical and dental departments. These were not large groups,⁶ but they were vital to the functioning of the "city at sea". Everything from dealing with cavities and cuts to major surgery could be done aboard.

The door to the sickbay. Sickbay is just aft of Turret II on third deck, inside the citadel.

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. The carriers arrived off the Falklands on May 1st, swiftly defeating the Argentine Air Force. The Argentine Navy tried to interfere the next day, but withdrew after the cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by a submarine. Two days later, the Argentinians struck back, sinking the frigate Sheffield with an Exocet missile. Two weeks later, on May 21st, British troops landed at San Carlos Water on the west coast of East Falkland. The Argentine Air Force quickly got wind of this, and launched numerous sorties against the invasion fleet. The first three days were brutal for both sides, with the British losing two frigates and suffering several others damaged, while a third of the Argentine jets were shot down. May 24th saw the only serious attack on the amphibious shipping, followed by a last strike on the 25th.⁷

Coventry

In an attempt to stem the tide of air attacks, the destroyer Coventry and frigate Broadsword had been stationed to the north of Falkland Sound, serving as a "missile trap" and directing the Sea Harrier Combat Air Patrol (CAP). On the 24th, they had vectored in Sea Harriers that had shot down three aircraft from a four-plane raid, while the morning of the 25th saw two Skyhawks fall to Coventry's Sea Dart missiles. The Argentinians were well aware of their presence, and at 1300 on the 25th, they sent a flight of six Skyhawks after the ships. Two had refueling problems and had to return to base, but the other four bored in. They came to the south of West Falkland, and the British assumed that they were headed for San Carlos from the south. Instead, they turned north to cross West Falkland, dodging the CAP dispatched on the assumption they would keep heading east. Read more...