In mid-1921, interservice relations were at an all-time low. Many advocates of the airplane, led by Billy Mitchell, claimed that the battleship was now obsolete. Their campaign had gained tremendous popular support, and the decision was made to test the effectiveness of aerial bombing on several German ships which had been turned over to the US as war prizes. The initial tests on destroyer G-102 and cruiser Frankfort had given some information, but the main event was still to come, with the bombing of the former German dreadnought Ostfriesland.

Ostfriesland in 1920

The test would be conducted on July 20th and 21st, and was to be observed by dignitaries including Secretary of War John Weeks and new Army Chief of Staff John Pershing. Because it was officially a weapons test, a schedule had been set to make sure that all sizes of bombs were tested, and to allow observers to board the ship safely to evaluate their effects. This would be coordinated from the minelayer Shawmut, serving as the control ship. Both Navy orders and Mitchell's own operational order were very specific. The "All Clear" had to be shown from Shawmut before bombing could commence, and if it was withdrawn, the bombing was to stop immediately. Read more...

Gentlemen,

The past year has gone well for us. We were able to continue our construction program, commissioning 4 DDs and 2 CLs, as well as making substantial progress on our BCs and BBs. We remain just ahead of the Germans in terms of budget, and renewed international tensions have allowed us to break even financially. We have also made several important technological advances, most notably the development of depth charges. As a result, we have begun refits to all of our 600-ton destroyers to convert them into ASW escorts.

We are only a few months away from completion of Nancy and Nantes, so now is the time to think about replacements for them on the slipway. Read more...

As was the case in many places, WWII comprehensively overturned the established order in Southeast Asia. The defeat of France in 1940 left the Vichy government with a precarious hold on its colonies, particularly those in the Far East. The British were not particularly interested in allowing the French to send reinforcements, while the Japanese, allies of Germany, wanted the colonies as a base for their campaign against the British in Malaya. They swiftly moved in, keeping the French administrators as a puppet government. To oppose them, a communist revolutionary named Ho Chi Minh founded a group known as the Viet Minh as an umbrella group for those dedicated to Vietnam's independence. When the Japanese surrendered, he announced the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

French assault boats in Vietnam

This came as an unpleasant surprise to the French, who were intent on reclaiming their prewar colonial empire, and had secured the agreement of the other allied powers for such a move. A joint Franco-British force disarmed the Japanese in Indochina and returned the French to power, which obviously didn't sit well with the Viet Minh. An insurgency broke out almost immediately, and the French soon found that the march of technology hadn't changed the fact that the best way to move troops around was via the extensive river systems in both the north and south of Vietnam. Read more...

Traditionally, the most dangerous place for a strike aircraft is directly over the target. Things that need to be blown up are usually also worth protecting, and short-range SAMs and automatic AA guns are cheap enough to use in great quantity. The obvious answer is a weapon capable of attacking the target while the launching airplane stays at a distance. If short-range defenses are the only concern, probably because the area defenses have been thoroughly suppressed, then laser-guided bombs or JDAMs dropped from high altitude are a good choice. If the target is stationary, then long-range weapons like cruise missiles can do the job. But there are some cases in which neither is appropriate. For instance, a Soviet armored column if the Cold War had ever turned hot. High-altitude air defenses would have forced the attacking aircraft to fly low, so an unpowered bomb wouldn't give enough standoff. But any missile needed to be small, because the targets were numerous and each would generally need a missile to finish it off. The US built a number of missiles to fill this niche, some of which are among the most successful missiles ever created.

AGM-12B Bullpup

The first of the modern short-range air-to-surface missiles was the AGM-12 Bullpup, designed by the Navy in the late 1950s to let aircraft avoid point defenses, particularly when hitting point targets like bridges that were difficult to attack with dumb bombs. Bullpup used manual command guidance, with the operator looking out the canopy and attempting to steer it in with a joystick. This required the aircraft to fly in a straight line, which tended to be hazardous for the crew, and accuracy wasn't particularly good. The early versions were also limited by their 250 lb warhead, although an enlarged "variant", the AGM-12C, had a 1,000 lb warhead.¹ Read more...

It's once again time for our open thread. Talk about anything you want, so long as it's not culture war. And props to everyone for keeping the discussion in the last OT professional and focused on the issues at hand.

Also, a reminder of the necro policy. Necros are encouraged. The stuff I talk about generally doesn't go stale, and I have absolutely no problem with discussions on stuff I wrote two years ago.

The only football (American) game that I'm interested in is on Saturday. Yes, it's the Army-Navy Game, where we hope that the Midshipmen emerge victorious. Beat Army!

Reminder that today is the last day for purchases from the USNI Christmas Sale.

Overhauls since last time are Mine Warfare Part 2*, Iowa Part 8, Ironclads, The Loss of HMS Victoria*, The Death of Repulse and Prince of Wales, and Huascar Part 1 for 2017 and Commercial Aviation Part 2, Japanese Battleships in WWII, A Brief History of the Aircraft Carrier, Falkands Part 9 and the 1920s South Dakota class for 2018. The posts marked with an asterisk have seen more extensive overhauls than the usual link updates and grammar cleanup.

In early 1921, Billy Mitchell seemed to be winning his war on the US Navy. He had convinced the press and thus the public that aircraft could easily sink a battleship, a claim he intended to demonstrate during the upcoming trials on the former German battleship Ostfriesland. This would allow him to wrest naval aviation from the USN and create a separate Air Force, which he would be the logical choice to lead. It would be a masterstroke in the political battles over service supremacy.

Ostfriesland flying the US flag

Mitchell suffered a major defeat in April, when President-Elect Harding backed a proposal to create a separate Bureau of Aeronautics within the Navy. At the end of WWI, the Director of Naval Aviation had been demoted to a position within the CNO's² office, greatly reducing its prestige within the Navy.³ The creation of a separate bureau would ensure naval aviation's independent existence, as it placed it on the same footing as such fields as ordnance and engineering. This was a major blow to the campaign for unification, as the Navy's aviators now had the backing they felt they needed, and the example of the absorption of the Royal Naval Air Service into the newly-formed Royal Air Force made the USN's aviation community wary of wedding itself to the Army Air Service. Read more...

While on my way from LA to Oklahoma, there was only one museum I wanted to see. Albuquerque is home to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, formerly known as the National Atomic Museum, and I was exceedingly glad that I took the time to visit.

Me with the Mk 23 Katie shell

Website

The thing I most wanted to see was their Mk 23 "Katie" shell, which unifies my passions for battleships and nuclear weapons. But while this would probably be enough to qualify the museum for a 4.0 on its own, the rest of the collection was incredible. I basically spent the whole time racing from one artifact to the next, pausing only to talk briefly about how cool the thing I was looking at was. Read more...

Gentlemen,

The war with Italy drags on. We continue to blockade their coast, but they are so far defiant. The good news is that we have recently commissioned the Rouens and laid down the new Saint Louis class battleships, as well as receiving the first seaplane carriers anywhere in the world. We have also begun to build a land-based air force, which will help our forces find and destroy the Italian fleet soon enough.

Tensions with Germany remain very high, but we have done what we can to avoid war, so far successfully. The Italian fleet has refused to come out, but we have sunk several of their raiders. We are considering threatening Sicily in the hopes that the Mafia will intervene and force the Italian government to come to terms. Read more...

The early 50s saw a crisis in the USN's air defenses. Jet aircraft had completely overwhelmed the manual CIC⁴ techniques used during WWII. The obvious solution was automation, and the British and Canadians had made some early strides in the area, but neither was sufficient for the USN's needs. On land, the USAF had created SAGE, a computerized system to track incoming Soviet bombers, but the 250-ton computers that drove it were much too large to take to sea. Something better would be needed.

The prototype NTDS CIC ashore

Fortunately, the invention of the transistor allowed such a system to be built, and for computers to go to sea on a grand scale for the first time. The architects of this system, known as the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS), took the bold step of using general-purpose (programmable) computers even though many thought that only a special-purpose computer would be fast enough. This had a number of advantages. The system, both software and hardware, would be easy to upgrade, and making it more powerful would just involve adding more computers, giving useful commonality between large ship and small ship systems. Read more...

Southeast Asia has long been one of the world's maritime crossroads. The Strait of Malacca, connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans, has been important to sailors carrying goods between East Asia, India and Europe since Antiquity, and continues to be vital to international trade today. Southeast Asia is also dotted with islands, which has long incentivized its inhabitants to participate in maritime commerce. Unfortunately, all too many of them decided the best way to participate was as pirates, a problem that troubles the region even today.

A battle with pirates off Borneo

Many of these pirates chose to base themselves up rivers, making it exceptionally difficult for official naval forces to track them down and destroy them. The novel Flashman's Lady contains a meticulously-researched account of one such expedition in Borneo, led by James Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak.⁵ But while fighting piracy on rivers continues to this day, Southeast Asia is far better known for the French and American riverine campaigns in Indochina, particularly the Mekong River and its delta.⁶ Read more...