May 31st, 1916 saw the Battle of Jutland, the greatest clash of battleships in history and the only time the British and German main fleets fought each other. As befits such an interesting and pivotal battle, I've written a long series on it, but for the benefit of those who don't want to wade through all seven parts, I thought it appropriate to write a single-part summary.

In the runup to WWI, the British and the Germans had built huge fleets of battleships, spurred on by the Kaiser's love of shiny toys and the British understanding that the loss of maritime supremacy would be catastrophic. In 1914, the British, who had outbuilt their rivals, instituted a blockade of Germany, plugging up the exits to the North Sea with the Scotland-based Grand Fleet. The Germans, hoping to wear the larger fleet down, attempted to use raids to draw out detached elements and crush them with the High Seas Fleet. By mid-1916, the only result had been a few indecisive battlecruiser engagements, and both sides wanted action. Read more...

One of the great scandals to come out of the Battle of Jutland was the relative ineffectiveness of the British armor-piercing shells. For a variety of reasons, the British had been well behind the other European powers in shell design for at least a decade, and at Jutland, only one of the 17 heavy shells that struck thick German armor penetrated successfully.

Shells being loaded on HMS Lion, February 1917

But how did Britain, the world's leading maritime power, and an early proponent of most technological advances during this time, end up with ships full of shells that didn't work? The answer is a tangled mix of learning the wrong lessons from war and trials, problems with organizational structure, and the unusual way British procurement took place in the early years of the 20th century. Read more...

World War I had shown the importance of operating aircraft with the battlefleet, and all of the major navies continued to work on this integration in the postwar years. While the aircraft carrier was obviously the best way to take planes to sea, it wasn't seen as completely sufficient, and battleships continued to play host to aviation detachments, although the operating methods changed dramatically.

An OS2U Kingfisher is catapulted off of Iowa

There were two main problems with the methods used to take aircraft to sea in WWI. First, the flying-off platforms were limited to fairly light airplanes with a low stall speed, and it was obvious that the future of aviation was in heavier planes with higher speeds, including stall speeds. Second, ditching the airplane in the sea after every sortie was obviously impractical in peacetime, and dubious even in a war where the fleet might be operating far from its bases. The obvious solution to the second was the seaplane, an airplane fitted with floats so it could take off from and land on the water.¹ This was obviously not a novel idea, but attempts to use seaplanes during the war had been flummoxed by fragility, vulnerability to sea conditions and lack of performance compared to land planes. Improvements in aeronautical engineering had helped mitigate the first two problems, while the third was largely solved by changes in tactical doctrine. With the development of the aircraft carrier, the roles that required high performance could now be filled by carrier-based aircraft not penalized by floats, leaving seaplanes to fill a few specialized niches. The most important of these were scouting and spotting for the battle line. The airplane offered the fleet commander an opportunity to expand his view of the battlefield far beyond the horizon, and placing the scouts on the battleships freed up space on the carriers for fighters and bombers. The ability to deliver a man with a radio to arbitrary points was also seen as a useful way of overcoming the problems posed to fire control by increasing battle ranges. The spotter could call back corrections to the ship's fire, which might also allow ships to engage in conditions where visibility from the surface was poor, due to either weather or manmade smoke. Read more...

This is the last part in "So You Want to Build a Modern Navy". I have a bit more in the archives, but it's probably not worth publishing. The following is based on discussions in Aviation Part 2.

John Schilling: I hadn’t thought about my proposal as a recreation of the Light Fleet Carrier, but given the incredible success of the Light Fleet Carrier program over half a century or so, I’ll own it. I’m proposing the Light Fleet Carrier of the 21st century; how can you possibly refuse something with that winning track record. Read more...

Battleships were the pinnacle of warship engineering during WWII, and as a result, they took a very long time to build. So long, in fact, that almost all of the major powers had battleship classes that were stillborn on the slipway during the war. Battleships that were not already far along at the outbreak of the fighting were usually suspended to free men and material for other priorities - submarines, aircraft carriers, escorts, transports and landing craft. And then, when peace came, they were cancelled altogether, viewed as relics in the age of missiles and jets.

An artist's impression of Montana

But there are fascinating vessels among these last, unfinished chapters of the story of the battleship. Unhampered by the naval treaties, these vessels could grow to the constraints set by the physical infrastructure of drydocks, harbors and canals, or even a bit beyond. But we'll begin with one of the relatively moderate examples of the breed, the American Montana class, the last battleships ordered by the United States. Read more...

It's time for our regular open thread. Talk about anything you want, even if it's not naval/military-related.

Rule the Waves II was released on Saturday, much to my delight and Lord Nelson's chagrin. Much like the first game, it makes you Grand Admiral, in charge of building an entire fleet and leading it in war. Unlike the first game, which ran through about 1925 and pretty much ignored air power, this one goes through the dawn of the missile age. Early on, it's very similar to the first game, although a lot of the systems have been subtly tweaked. Overall, it's an improvement in terms of realism. The air operations system isn't documented all that well, so I'm still trying to figure that out, and my one game so far didn't make it past 1940 before I got tired of it and restarted.

My one serious criticism would be that the fiscal end of the game seems seriously out of wack. In my first game as the Americans I found myself unable to afford more than about one capital ship at a time. In my second game, playing as the British, I found myself blockaded by the Germans in 1910. Their budget was almost as big as mine, and their fleet might have been larger. This was seriously wrong for obvious reasons. Also, the tendency of the AI to design ships that can't be built is annoying, particularly when it then builds them for itself anyway. I can't tell you how many enemy ships I've encountered in ~1910 toting dual-purpose guns. Despite all that, it's a very enjoyable game, and I'd recommend at least downloading the demo.

We've reached the first anniversary of the Falklands War series, and the first part has been overhauled. I think we're past the halfway point, but I've been wrong on such things before. Other updates are to So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Strategy Part 2, the Super-Dreadnoughts, There Seems To Be Something Wrong With Our Bloody Ships Today, Millennium Challenge 2002 and Auxiliaries Part 1.

As the Falklands War series has now been going on for two years, I've put together a glossary, listing the ships, airplanes, weapons, and so on. I usually try to link to wiki when I introduce something new, but it's easy for me to forget that the last time I talked about something was 6 months ago. Hopefully this will close some of the gap. For those wanting to catch up on the series, the full list of posts is here.

• Ships
  • British Warships
  • British Auxiliaries
  • Argentinian Warships
  • Argentinian Auxiliaries
• Aircraft
  • British Aircraft
  • Argentinian Aircraft
• Weapons
  • British Weapons
  • Argentinian Weapons
• Other

Ships

I have only listed major weapons systems for the ships, primarily good surface-to-air missiles.² Almost all British ships had at least one 4.5" gun and a helicopter, but the presence of these should be obvious from context, and full lists are available in the relevant wiki articles. I've mentioned and linked to significant events regarding some ships, but only those that have come up in the narrative so far. Read more...

When I was at my parents' over Christmas, I took a chance to dig through the family photo archives, and got pictures from a couple museum ships I visited while growing up. These were long enough ago that I don't remember them clearly enough to write reviews, and in one case long enough ago that I don't remember it all.³

USS Texas

My family visited Texas in 2000. I don't really remember the visit, because I was seven and not that interested in ships yet, but I suppose Texas was my first battleship. She's currently in drydock, and I took the chance to pay her a visit.

Texas, with me in the lower left

Read more...

People are often surprised to learn that battleships carried fixed-wing airplanes. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Battleships don't have anywhere for airplanes to take off or land, and that totally leaves aside the thorny question of why. But battleships were deeply tied into the operation of aircraft at sea from the earliest days until the aircraft carrier was available in sufficient numbers towards the end of the Second World War.

Eugene Ely takes off from Birmingham

Surface warships, although admittedly not battleships, provided the stages for the first steps of shipboard aviation. American pilot Eugene Ely took off from a ramp built over the bow of the light cruiser Birmingham on November 14th, 1910, and landed safely ashore. The following January, he landed aboard the armored cruiser Pennsylvania, using a series of hooks on the underside of his airplane to catch ropes tied to sandbags and stretched across a specially-installed landing deck. However, impressive though these achievements were, coming less than a decade after the Wright Brother's first flight at Kitty Hawk, a great deal of work would have to be done to make operational use of aircraft from ships practical. Both flights had required large ramps that blocked the ship's guns, and the vessels had been at anchor, not underway. 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 Argentines 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 morning's score was mostly in favor of the British, with several warships strafed and a single bomb hit, which hadn't gone off,⁴ in exchange for four attackers shot down. But the worst attacks were yet to come.⁵

HMS Argonaut ablaze after the attack

The afternoon attacks opened at 1330, when a flight of six A-4s burst from around West Falkland and swept in on the frigate Argonaut, near Fanning Head at the entrance to San Carlos Water. The splashes of near-misses shrouded the vessel, and she was clearly on fire when the air cleared. Two bombs had hit, and although neither had detonated, they had done serious damage. One had hit forward, entering the Seacat magazine and setting off two of the missiles stored there. The other came to rest in the engine spaces, knocking out all power and steering. Argonaut was only saved from running into the cliffs of Fanning Head by a quick-thinking officer who got an anchor out, and officers on other ships thought she had actually run aground. Two of her men had been killed, but the crew fought back against both fire and flood, and ultimately saved the ship. Plymouth was dispatched to aid her, and towed her into San Carlos, where she would remain for the next week, while an access route was cut to allow the bomb in the forward magazine to be dumped overboard. Read more...