In the aftermath of World War I, the torpedo, carried aboard battleships almost since its invention, was removed from the ships of most nations. It was seen as obsolete as improvements in fire control drove up battle ranges, and as the danger posed to the ships by the underwater torpedo flats became more apparent.

Rodney's torpedo room in 1940

The one exception to this trend was Britain. The last battleships built with torpedoes were Nelson and Rodney, and they had several unique features that deserve close scrutiny. First, their torpedoes were a new design, 24.5" in diameter, the largest ever fitted aboard a battleship. The British, still believing that torpedoes could form an important part of a fleet action, thought that the 21" torpedo had been pushed as far as it could go, and wanted a new design with more room to grow. This growth in size was to be coupled to another technology which offered potentially revolutionary performance. Torpedo propulsion was based around burning fuel and compressed air together, with the compressed air taking up the lion's share of the space and weight due to the need for the air flask. But only 20% of the air was the oxygen needed to support combustion, while the other 80% was inert gasses. The British built specialized plants aboard the ships capable of enriching the air pumped into the torpedoes with extra oxygen,¹ offering a significant improvement in performance. During the war, this plant was disabled to keep maintenance burden down, reducing range by about 50%. Read more...

While battleships had carried torpedoes since the earliest days of underwater weaponry, it wasn't until the world wars that they were properly tested in battle, and even then, they were only used on a handful of occasions.²

SMS Lutzow

At Jutland, both sides fired only a handful of torpedoes from their capital ships. The British battleships used 5, with the battlecruisers firing 8, while the German battleship Konig fired one, and their battlecruisers fired a total of 7.³ None of these appear to have hit, as most were fired at extreme range. The battlecruiser Lutzow did provide a graphic demonstration of the vulnerability of the torpedo flat to damage when hers was opened to the sea by a pair of 12" shells. It flooded almost instantly, and poor watertight design and maintenance quickly spread water throughout most of the forward part of the ship, ultimately leading to Lutzow’s loss. Read more...

Gentlemen,

We have arrived at a crucial juncture. Our current building programs are about to come to an end, and the past year has been extraordinarily fruitful in terms of setting up our future fleet. Specifically, we have made a deal with the British to guarantee our supply of oil, and our researchers have discovered a number of technologies that will aid future ships.

With Ocean just commissioning, and two more battleships about to enter service in the next year, we have many options in terms of what to lay down. The design staff is hard at work producing new sketches for all types, and they will be made available next week. Read more...

Almost from the day it was invented, the torpedo was seen as the counter to the battleship. Suddenly, the smallest craft could carry and use a weapon capable of sinking a battleship, a task that had previously required another vessel of the same type. But despite this apparent dichotomy, many battleships did carry torpedoes, and it's worth taking a look at these weapons.

Early Whitehead torpedoes

The British first began to fit their ironclads with torpedoes in 1879, when HMS Devastation was fitted with a torpedo-launching carriage on each side, firing through a port cut in the breastwork armor. At the time, torpedoes were only capable of ranges of a few hundred yards, and speeds of maybe 20 kts, but this wasn't a huge problem. Many officers still thought that the ram would be a major weapon, which meant that their ships would be very close to those of the enemy. The torpedo was seen as an adjunct to the ram, capable of extending its reach to the sides or compensating for a miss. How well the launching gear would have worked in combat is dubious at best. At the time, launching a torpedo from above the water was a tricky business, and the carriages were unlikely to work well at high speeds. To make matters worse, in some cases they were on the exposed decks, which would have made them exciting to use in combat. Read more...

In late 1945, the US Navy was in peril. The threat came not from a foreign power, but from within. The atomic bomb was poised to radically change warfare, and just as they had after WWI, advocates of air power were quick to pounce. The surface ship, they said, was now obsolete, an easy target for the new weapon. Both sides vividly remembered Billy Mitchell's attack on the USN in the wake of WWI, and the effectiveness of his bombing of the Ostfriesland in swaying public opinion. A new set of tests was thus sought, to establish the vulnerability or survivability of the warship under atomic attack, depending on the taste of the advocate.

The iconic image of the Baker shot at Bikini

The Navy won a critical early battle when Vice Admiral William Blandy was selected to head the tests instead of the Army's choice, Leslie Groves, who had run the Manhattan Project. The targets would be some of the massive fleet of obsolete or captured ships left over from the war, everything from battleships to submarines and transports. Three tests were planned: Able, an airburst test; Baker, a shallow underwater burst; and Charlie, a deep underwater test to investigate the efficacy of nuclear depth charges. They would have to be carried out quickly, before the men required returned to civilian life. The site had to be somewhere controlled by the United States, far away from any major population centers and possessed of predictable weather patterns to minimize the danger of radioactive contamination to the men of the Task Force. The location chosen was Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands.⁴ Read more...

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

A recent news story of interest is the decision to name CVN-81 after Dorie Miller, the first African-American to win the Navy Cross for his actions during the Attack on Pearl Harbor. I'm of two minds on this one. On one hand, Miller is far more deserving than most recent recipients of warships, particularly the carriers. On the other, I'd really rather we used the traditional carrier names for carriers. Right now, Lexington, Yorktown, Saratoga and Ranger are all unused. Still, this is one of the better naming decisions to come out of the Navy Department in recent years.

Overhauls for 2018 are Why the Carriers aren't doomed Parts two and three, Stability, Pre-Dreadnoughts, Basics of Naval Strategy and Russian Battleships Part 2. 2019 overhauls are Commercial Aviation Part 5, Falkands Part 10, the Spanish-American War Part 1, The NOAA Commissioned Corps, Ship Structure and Strength and The Mk 23 Katie.

The Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division is primarily known for managing the David Taylor Model Basin, but it has other facilities scattered throughout the country. The most interesting of these is the Acoustic Research Detachment located at Bayview, Idaho. The ARD is the world's leading facility for studying surface ship and submarine acoustics, a surprising thing to find several hundred miles inland. But Lake Pend Oreille,⁵ deep in the mountains of the Idaho panhandle, is the perfect place for such studies. It's over a thousand feet deep, very cold⁶ and very calm thanks to its isolation and the mild weather of the region, all factors that contribute to a low level of background noise.⁷

LSV-2 Cutthroat alongside the support tug

Bayview's most impressive systems are a trio of large-scale ship models, two submerged and one surfaced, each about a quarter of the size of the vessels they represent. The submarines, LSV-1 Kokanee and LSV-2 Cutthroat, represent the Seawolf and Virginia class submarines respectively, and are capable of autonomous operations, removing the need for noise-inducing tethers as the vessels pass the hydrophone arrays the Navy has placed in the southern end of the lake. Cutthroat, at 110' long, is the largest unmanned submarine on the planet, and her electric motor is capable of delivering 6000 horsepower. The surface ship model, formally the Advanced Electric Ship Demonstrator but more often known as the Sea Jet, is a scale version of the Zumwalt. All three vessels are primarily intended for development of quieter propulsion systems for submarines and surface ships, although they are also used for flow noise studies, handling tests, and investigations into other aspects of the signature. Read more...

The battlegroup is at the core of the modern navy. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the image of sea power has been a capital ship or group of such ships, surrounded by smaller vessels to protect against attack, first by torpedo boats and destroyers, and later by submarines, aircraft and missiles. But the battlegroup and the escort are surprisingly recent innovations, products of a major shift in the nature of naval warfare about 150 years ago.

Before the invention of the torpedo, naval warfare was fundamentally symmetrical. The gun was the only weapon of any importance from at least 1700 onward, and larger ships mounted more and heavier guns. As a result, combat power correlated directly with size,⁸ and it was rare for much smaller ships to overwhelm larger ones.⁹ Smaller ships were useful for missions that prioritized numbers over firepower, such as scouting, patrols, escorting convoys, or commerce raiding. The Line of Battle didn't need frigates to screen it against attack, because anything the frigates could handle, the Ships of the Line could handle more effectively. Frigates accompanying the battlefleet were there to scout and pass signals, not to fight. None of the 13 light ships (6 British and 7 French) present at Trafalgar suffered a single casualty. Read more...

Gentlemen,

So far, the war is going very well. Despite continued trouble from Austrian submarines and raiders, our policy of pursuing big, powerful battlecruisers has been amply justified by recent victories off Syracuse and Sirte, each of which resulted in the destruction of an Austrian battlecruiser. Only three vessels of that type remain in their service now. Moreover, our recent foray into the Adriatic has gravely damaged their military resources and relieved pressure on the British in Dalmatia.

Currently, our biggest challenge is the threat to our commerce. We have recently commissioned a number of anti-submarine trawlers, and have more under construction. The raider threat is harder to handle, as we continue to need modern CLs for fleet duties as well as trade protection. Losses in that category to mines and submarines have not made the problem easier. But we remain optimistic, and hope to bring Austria to the peace table as soon as possible. Read more...

It's been a while since I did a selection from my pictures of the greatest ship ever built. This time, it's pictures of the enlisted quarters aboard ship. Unfortunately, these are all of Iowa in her 80s fit, as the WWII spaces have all been renovated. Restoring one may be on the agenda, but it hasn't happened yet.

Me in one of the bunks. They can be tricky to get in and out of, particularly for first-timers. Note the "coffin rack" on the bottom, open to show one of the major storage spaces for a sailor's gear.¹⁰

A section of berths deep in the ship. Many of these compartments can be rather labyrinthine. This is a part of the ship where the deckhead is rather low, so only the bottom rack has the "coffin" storage, while the other two have extra lockers elsewhere to compensate for the lack of storage space. In areas with higher decks, all three will have coffins.

Read more...