Weather has always been of the first importance at sea. In the age of sail, the reasons for this were obvious, but while officers no longer have to worry about the weather gage,¹ they still must consider what wind and wave will do to their ships, and to aircraft they may be attempting to operate. And ships today must fight in conditions that would have had Nelson's captains looking to the survival of their vessels.

A Coast Guard Cutter battles heavy weather in the North Atlantic during WWII

The biggest effect of weather is on the motion of the ship. Besides the obvious motion of rolling, pitch and heave² are also important to the efficiency of the crew, although in different ways. Any physical activity, such as loading a gun, is made substantially more difficult in cases of high lateral acceleration. This is only loosely related to the actual angle of roll, as a ship with a large metacentric height might roll to angles nearly as great as a less stable ship, but the lateral accelerations will be substantially higher as it snaps back upright. High roll rates also produce serious problems for fire control, although this is difficult to decouple from the effects of acceleration. Even mechanical systems like modern power-worked guns lose efficiency rapidly in these conditions. Read more...

It's our regular open thread. Discuss anything you want, even if it's not related to naval matters.

In 1937, the BBC dispatched a retired naval officer by the name of Thomas Woodrooffe as a correspondent to the fleet review at Spithead. He was to describe the spectacle from high on the bridge of HMS Nelson, with his words relayed in real time to listeners all over the country. Even better, Nelson was his old ship, and the officers went out of their way to make him feel welcome.

And when I say "make him feel welcome", I mean "lit up by fairy lamps" that he got very drunk. Before he went on air. The result is truly hilarious:

The Fleet's Lit Up

Woodrooffe got off with only a week's suspension, and continued to work for the BBC for several years.

Overhauled posts include Engineering Part 3 and Part 4, The Bombardment of Alexandria, my discussion of military pricing, the last part on amphibious warfare and Jim Pobog's story of the Late Night Forward Pumproom Test

In early April, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a few desolate rocks in the South Atlantic, and 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. The next two weeks saw a siege of the islands while the British waited for their amphibious force to arrive.³

Fearless in San Carlos Water

Planning for the amphibious assault had begun while the task force was still on the way to Ascension, and Admiral Woodward's staff discussed a number of different options. The idea of a direct assault on the area around Port Stanley was quickly ruled out. While it was undoubtedly the most important location on the islands, this had led the Argentine garrison to concentrate most of its strength around the city. Amphibious operations are extremely difficult, and the British didn't think they had the strength to make a frontal attack. Another plan was to land on the lightly-held West Falkland and use it to either force a settlement or as a base for the recapture of East Falkland. This was also ruled out, as it would have placed the beachhead closer to the mainland air bases, raising the risk of air attack, and required a second landing on East Falkland later on. Besides the peril of the landing itself, this would have also pushed the end of operations back into late June, when severe winter weather would have made continued operations very difficult. Several different beaches on East Falkland were examined, and the planners eventually settled on San Carlos Water, a bay off Falkland Sound in the northwest corner of the island. Read more...

Neal Schier has returned with a sequel to his earlier post on why airline delays happen, looking at how delays get untangled.

Airline delays – how do they put it all back together?

Ah, airport delays — truly the Gordian Knot of the air transportation system. We all have experienced them and know how quickly they can grow into an unwieldy mess. What might start as a 30-minute departure delay for one flight, can sometimes end up in scores of cancellations—one of which, unfortunately, might be yours.

Now, if we were Alexander the Great, we could simply draw our sword and cut the knot in two. Instead, the airlines and the Air Traffic Control (ATC) authorities are left to unravel that knot thread by thread in order to “recover” scheduled air service.

Imagine you are at O’Hare airport and a winter storm starts to pound Chicago with heavy snow, ice, and strong winds. As you look out the terminal window it looks as if it is pouring snow it is coming down so fast. The giant snow plows are, of course, already at work and moving immense amounts of the snow, but there is a lot of ground to cover and progress is slow. Read more...

Even as the shattered hull of the Italian battleship Roma, sunk by German guided bombs, slipped beneath the waves, a vast armada of Allied warships was putting troops ashore to gain a foothold on the Italian mainland. The Germans, desperate to stop the invasion, turned their new weapons on the fleet.

Philadelphia off Salerno

The first sorties against the invasion fleet were flown at dawn on September 11th, two days after it arrived off the beaches. They were flown by aircraft carrying Fritz-Xs, intended to sink the cruisers providing vital fire support for the troops struggling to establish the beachhead. The first target was the Dutch gunboat Flores, which was badly damaged by several near-misses but not sunk. It is likely that they intended to target the nearby cruiser Philadelphia, who was targeted a few hours later by the second Fritz-X sortie. One missed by only 15m, but the ship emerged undamaged. Read more...

The longstanding tension between the US and Spain over the latter's actions in Cuba boiled over after the battleship Maine was destroyed in Havana harbor. There had long been at least some pressure for war from both sides, and despite the best efforts of President McKinley and the business community, who feared another recession, this pressure became irresistible.

New York, Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, Columbia and Iowa

On paper, the two sides were reasonably evenly matched. The United States had the edge in battleships, with Texas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon and Iowa to the lone Spanish vessel of that type, Pelayo, a ship roughly contemporary to Texas and much inferior to the American pre-dreadnoughts. The balance in cruisers was more even. The Spanish had seven armored cruisers to a pair of American ships, but the USN had the edge in modern protected cruisers, 14 to 3. The Spanish also had a number of older cruisers, although they were of negligible combat value, and a significant edge in terms of torpedo craft. The USN countered with a half-dozen monitors, vessels suitable primarily for coastal waters but powerfully armed. However, the apparent balance of forces was deceiving. The USN was a modern, professional force with high standards of training and readiness. The Armada Espanola, on the other hand, had serious issues on both fronts. Ships were undermanned and their crews were largely green, while many ships, most notably Pelayo and three of their armored cruisers, were unable to go to sea at the beginning of the war. Some of these ships were made ready for sea as the war went on, but others were still being completed, and there was no practical hope of bringing them into service in time to be of use. Even the operational ships had serious deficiencies. Some were slowed by engineering problems or foul bottoms, while others were crippled by defective guns. Despite this, Admiral Pascual Cervera received orders on April 22nd to take the bulk of the Spanish fleet to Cuba to resist the just-announced American blockade. Read more...

As a follow-up to my previous post with picture of Iowa's boiler room, I've put together a set of images from the engine room. I'm not going to spend a lot of time reviewing the actual mechanics of the ship's propulsion system, as I've discussed them at length elsewhere.

You step off Broadway, and into a tiny atrium, then go down one of the longest and steepest ladders in the ship. It's tricky even for me, and I'm pretty sure-footed around ships.

The ladder down to Engine 2. The yellow-and-black striped box is for lubricating oil.⁴

Read more...

The North Carolina class was the first of three battleship classes built during the treaty era by the United States. It was overshadowed by the more numerous and more powerful South Dakotas and the incomparable Iowas, but the second ship, Washington, compiled probably the best war record of the American fast battleships, and North Carolina also gave good service during the war.

Washington with Home Fleet, 1942

In 1935, with the negotiations for the Second London Naval Treaty looming, the Bureau of Construction and Repair, like its British counterpart, began planning for the ships it would build when the battleship holiday ended. From the first, the main thread of development for the North Carolinas was a radical departure in American capital ship design. All previous US battleships, with the exception of the abortive South Dakota class, had been limited to 21 kts. But the first series of sketch designs were designed to be capable of 30 kts, intended as a reply to the Japanese Kongo class battlecruisers/fast battleships. It was expected that later classes would revert to the American tradition of slow battleships, probably around 23 kts, as the basic logic behind a slow battle line remained sound in the eyes of American strategists. Read more...

It's time for our biweekly Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want.

Book Review: The Yard

The Yard profiles the construction of the USS Donald Cook at Bath Iron Works in Maine. It's slightly dated (Cook commissioned in 1998) but it's well-written, and I couldn't find more than a few minor technical details to take umbrage with, which is really good in a book of this type. The author, Michael Sanders, paints a good picture of not only the process of shipbuilding but also the people who do it. It's definitely written more on a popular level than a scholarly one, but I learned quite a bit from it, too. I'd say it should be easy to find in libraries (it certainly was 10 years ago), but I suspect that the reason it's so cheap at Amazon is that they're getting rid of their copies. Overall, highly recommended.

Overhauled posts since last time are Amphibious Warfare Part 4, Classes, my discussion of Dreadnought, Strike Warfare and the first two parts on battleship propulsion.

The term "cruiser", like "battleship", dates back to the age of sail. It initially referred more to a mission than a type of ship, the cruising missions of raiding, commerce protection, and scouting. These were usually carried out by frigates and sloops operating independently, although ships of the line could be and were used for these missions. The chance for captains to get out from under the eyes of senior officers and maybe earn some prize money made cruising missions very desirable.

USS Constitution, a sailing frigate⁵

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, cruising missions became even more important. As imperialism kicked into high gear, increasing numbers of ships were needed to police the growing network of colonies, protectorates, and commercial interests. These were mostly fairly small and slow, but had sufficient armament for service on the far-flung naval stations that dotted the globe.⁶ However, Britain's enemies had noted her dependence on seaborne commerce, and soon began to build large, fast frigates to raid her shipping, most notably the American Wampanoag class. The British responded by building similar ships to protect their commerce. All of these vessels were unarmored, as they had to combine big engines, lots of coal, and reasonable firepower into a single hull. Sails remained vital, thanks to the high fuel consumption of early steam engines and the lack of coaling stations in much of the world. Read more...