Over the last month and a half, I've found that keeping up with writing for Naval Gazing has been increasingly difficult. Some of this is simply down to recent life events which have given me other things to do with my time. Some is that I've been feeling burned out. I've been blogging here for almost two years, and at this point, Naval Gazing has basically taken over my time looking into naval matters.

So at this point, I've decided to cut back. Going forward, I'm going to publish two main posts a week, one on Sunday and one on Wednesday. The current Monday OT/RTW2 game is going to move to Friday (except for the next update, which will be tomorrow). I hope this rate will be more sustainable going forward.

Just to be clear, I'm in no danger of shutting Naval Gazing down completely. I really enjoy researching, writing, and interacting with the commenters here. But I'd like more time for other things, too.

I've talked about HMS Warrior a lot, as befits the world's first seagoing iron-hulled ironclad, a ship that set the pattern for the next 80 years of capital ships. But this is mostly looking at her systems, not at the ship herself. This revolutionary vessel, preserved today at Portsmouth, deserves a closer look.

Warrior today

The rivalry between Britain and France goes back centuries, and despite the British victory in the Napoleonic Wars, the rivalry quickly resumed. The French, realizing that British command of the sea was critical to their victory, spent the first half of the century attempting to use one technological edge or another to wrest it away from them. They introduced both shell guns and steam power for capital ships, and found themselves outbuilt in both areas. Tensions lapsed during the Crimean War, and Napoleon III, inspired by the terrible effects of shells on wooden ships, asked for 10 floating batteries armored with iron plate. French industry could only make five, so the other five were built by the British. The French batteries saw action briefly, destroying Russian fortifications at the Battle of Kinburn. Read more...

Military aircraft have to operate in a huge range of environments, from the deserts of the Middle East to the heat and humidity of the tropics to the cold of the high arctic. The obvious way to test these capabilities is to simply send airplanes out to these environments and see what breaks, but this is expensive and uncertain. Maybe there's a warm spell in Alaska this year, and the temperature doesn't get down to the point we're interested in testing at. To avoid this problem, the US Air Force sends its planes to Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle, where a hangar waits that can simulate almost any weather conditions on Earth.

A B-1B undergoing cold-weather testing

The centerpiece of the McKinley Climatic Laboratory is the Main Test Chamber, a 55,000 square foot hangar capable of swallowing any aircraft in the US inventory and simulating virtually any weather conditions on Earth. The temperature can be set anywhere between -65°F and 165°F, and combined with high winds, torrential rains, fog, snow, and solar radiation. This is enough to reveal a wide range of problems in future aircraft, everything from landing gear that won't retract when very cold to poorly-designed access panels that leak when pounded with wind-blown rain. Read more...

China¹ has long fascinated the West. The source of tea, silk, porcelain, and other valuable commodities drew traders, but the Chinese were suspicious of the barbarians. By the time of large-scale European involvement in the Far East, they demanded payment in silver, and restricted trade to Canton. Due to the demand for tea, British silver reserves were dangerously low by the early 1800s, and the East India Company began to search for a new trade good. They quickly latched onto opium, extracted from poppies in Bengal, as an ideal choice. There was one slight hitch, though. Opium was illegal in China.

That didn't actually stop anyone, and by the 1830s, the opium trade was roaring, and addicts were becoming an increasing problem in China,² as was silver being drained from the economy to pay for all of the opium. In 1838, a Commissioner by the name of Lin Zexu ordered 1,000 tons of opium destroyed, infuriating British merchants, who petitioned their government for compensation. Parliament refused to pay for the opium, but after a successfully lobbying campaign, declared war on China instead.³ Read more...

It's our usual open thread. Talk about whatever you want.

Interesting thing this time is related to this blog's occasional sideline in commercial aviation. The NYT Magazine has an interesting article on the piloting problems involved in the MAX crashes. Fully endorsed, except for the characterization of Boeing as a generally awful company. Weapons are important, and if you don't like who they're selling arms to, take it up with the State Department.

Overhauled posts include my reviews of Nautilus and the Submarine Force Museum and Mystic Seaport, the Nimrod Saga, Auxiliaries Part 3, the first part of my series on secondary armament, and the Wartime Battlecruisers.

It was my third weekend in LA. The new job was going OK, although it was pretty much what I'd expected, and I knew I'd never love it. LA itself was still confusing, even baffling. But I was starting to get a handle on things. My apartment and general business was in good enough shape that I could take some time to go do something fun. And there was one thing that had topped my list since well before I'd moved. Iowa.

My first look at Iowa

So it was after church and lunch with new friends that I set off, heading for San Pedro and silently screaming the whole time I was on the freeway. The directions were baffling. Apparently, there was some construction that forced an alternate route to the ship.⁴ But I made it, despite the huge trucks, and realized that the online ticket I'd bought needed to be printed out, so I'd have to buy a second one. Oh, well. I'd probably use it eventually. After all, this was a battleship! I'd become increasingly interested in naval architecture and old warships since discovering Norman Friedman in college. I hadn't been on a museum ship since Blueback four years earlier. Read more...

I've previously covered the origins and structure of naval officer ranks. Now, it's time to turn our attention to those who lack commissions, the warrant officers, petty officers, and enlisted men. But first, we need to understand the organization of a late sailing warship, as the influence of said structure is still visible today.

A Boatswain

In the very early days, sailing warships had two sets of officers: the commissioned officers, the captain and his lieutenants, who were usually entirely ignorant of the sea and primarily there to command the troops the ships used to board each other; and the warrant officers,⁵ who were nautical specialists responsible for sailing the ship. These were usually former enlisted men who had worked their way up to their positions of Boatswain,⁶ Gunner, and Carpenter. All were required to be literate, as they had to keep an account of the stores under their control. Read more...

One of the less obvious problems of operating a warship (or any sort of ship, really) is fouling. The marine environment is an excellent one for all sorts of organisms to grow, and many of them find the outer hull of a ship a very congenial environment indeed. This is tremendously annoying to the operators of said ships, who would rather not haul around tens or hundreds of tons of barnacles, mussels, worms, plants, algae and various other organisms. They increase fuel consumption, reduce top speed, aid corrosion, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

HMS Formidable is careened

Because fouling has been a problem for as long as men have sailed the seas, it's not surprising that attempts to control it also date back thousands of years. So far as we can tell, none of these methods were particularly effective against fouling per se, although many of them, like fitting the ship with lead sheeting, were probably intended to control shipworms instead, and worked reasonably well for that purpose. After all, fouling merely slows you down, while shipworms actually destroy the wood of the hull. Fouling was dealt with by somehow gaining access to the ship's hull and simply scraping it off. Today, drydocks are used for this work, but in the past, ships were often careened, beached at high tide and then tilted over to give access to the lower hull. Read more...

Gentlemen,

While Europe remains at peace, international tensions have begun to rise. We recently commissioned Devastation, and two of her sisters will join her in service before the end of the year. This gives us the single most powerful warship in the world, and the only fleet we need really fear is Britain's. Meanwhile, Italy grows suspicious of us, and our budget has begun to increase. We've also begun work on a successor class, with the first ship to be laid down in only a month.

The new Bouvet class battleship design

At least one more ship is planned to follow her. The decision for a third will need to be taken by this council. If we don't, it will free up budget for more construction of some sort. Options from the staff include new destroyers or light cruisers or a new battlecruiser to overmatch the ships inspired by the Duquesne. Read more...

South America has the world's greatest river, the Amazon, as well as a number of other large rivers. As a result, despite the rather quiet military history of the region, it has seen extensive deployment and use of riverine forces.⁷ In fact, the largest ever naval battle between two South American nations took place on a river, about 400 nautical miles inland.

The Battle of Riachuelo

It was the decisive battle of the War of the Triple Alliance, probably the most brutal in South American history. It was triggered in part by tensions over Brazilian access to the Paraguay River, and began when Paraguay invaded first Brazil and then Argentina, using the rivers of the Plate basin for mobility. However, while both countries (and Uruguay, the third partner in the Triple Alliance) were outnumbered on land, the Brazilian Navy was by far the best in the region, particularly when they were able to pick up several ironclads that Paraguay had ordered and then defaulted on payments to the foreign shipyards that were building them. On July 11th, 1865, the Paraguayans attempted to sneak up on the anchored Brazilian fleet and board the ships, apparently hoping to capture them and run off. The plan failed, and the Brazilians sunk four gunboats and all of the Parguayan's towed gun barges, at a cost of only one gunboat stranded and burned. This secured control of the Plate for Brazil, ultimately leading to Paraguay's defeat. Read more...