I've decided to share my thoughts on a bunch of different naval fiction books I've read over the years. This is rather disordered, but it should be useful if anyone wants to read stirring tales of the sea, of whatever era.

Aubrey-Maturin Series by Patrick O'Brian

This is a series of 20.5 novels by Patrick O'Brian, covering the exploits of British captain (mostly) Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars. I've read the first 12, and they're excellent, if somewhat strange. O'Brian is a fantastic writer, with a knowledge of sailing ships and the Royal Navy that frightens even me. But they're also written in an early 19th-century style, which is a rather wrenching change from what I'm used to. I'd definitely suggest trying them, but they may not be everyone's cup of tea. Read more...

In 1898, tensions between the US and Spain finally boiled over after the battleship Maine blew up in Havana harbor. Both sides prepared for war, the US to secure independence for Cuba, Spain to preserve the remnants of its once-great empire. But while the bulk of attention was fixed on the Caribbean, where Cuba was blockaded on April 21st and war was declared 4 days later, the first clash would be on the other side of the globe.

In the Pacific, the Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey was assembled at Hong Kong to attack the Philippines. Dewey was instructed to keep his ships full of coal, and enlist all the men he could get. Reinforcements were rushed to back up his initial squadron, the protected cruisers Olympia and Boston and the gunboat Petrel. The cruisers Raleigh and Baltimore were dispatched from the European and Hawaiian stations, the gunboat Concord came from fishery protection duty in the Bering Sea, and the Revenue Service Cutter¹ McCulloch arrived from Singapore. In April, Dewey was instructed to purchase a pair of auxiliaries to support his drive on the Philippines, to land extra stores and woodwork, and to paint over the traditional peacetime white with wartime grey. Baltimore arrived on the 22nd, and the next day, as the blockade of Cuba was declared, the British governor asked the American squadron to leave.² They sailed on the 25th for a nearby bay, where they trained and waited for the American consul from Manila to arrive with the latest intelligence. On the 27th, the consul boarded Olympia, bringing reports of the Spanish defensive preparations. Three hours later, the squadron had weighed anchor and was putting to sea. Read more...

It's time once again for our biweekly open thread. Talk about whatever you wish.

I recently was pointed to a pair of NYT articles from 1982 about the reactivation of the Iowas. While both parts are pretty long, they're worth reading for an understanding of contemporary public thought on the reactivation, particularly the political side. They're not much good for naval history or practice, and I feel a strong compulsion to cover them in annotations, but I'm glad I found them.

Overhauled posts since last time include both parts of my ride on the America, Thoughts on Tour Guiding, The Early Battlecruisers, Why do we need so many ships? and Anti-Submarine Warfare in WWI.

Even as Roma and the invasion fleet off Salerno were attacked by the German guided bombs, the Allies began to desperately search for countermeasures. They had first learned of the project from the Oslo Report, sent in November 1939 by anti-Nazi physicist Hans Mayer, who passed the British a document containing information on a number of secret German military projects, including German radars, radio-navigation equipment, and the first hints of what ultimately became the V-2 rocket. The British, viewing the report as too good to be true, disregarded the contents.

An Hs 293

The next warnings came in mid-1943, courtesy of ULTRA, and were taken rather more seriously. Even better, some of the crew from the aircraft shot down over Salerno were captured, giving the Allies some insight into the operation of the system. Recording equipment intended to capture the control signals so countermeasures could be developed was fitted to a few escorts. Unfortunately, the Allies concluded that the Kehl-Strasbourg system worked on frequencies between 10 and 35 MHz, leaving the actual frequency of 48-50 MHz clear. Thus, the first jammers, developed by Howard Lorenzen at the Naval Research Laboratory were completely ineffective.³ However, Lorenzen's team also set to work creating a set of improved receivers to pick up the Kehl-Strasbourg signal. The whole package was installed on the new destroyer escorts Herbert C. Jones and Fredrick C. Davis, which were promptly dispatched to the Mediterranean. Read more...

I've discussed many facets of commercial aviation, ranging from how airlines set prices to their route networks to safety. But one of the more interesting aspects is the ways in which airlines work together, and why. These range from helping each other's passengers when things go wrong to combining their networks to provide service around the world.

The replica Dingyuan

The biggest issue is that no one airline can fly everywhere. Let's say I want to go to Weihai, China, to see the full-size replica they constructed of the ironclad Dingyuan, one of the ships that fought at Yalu River during the Sino-Japanese War. Obviously, nobody flies direct from Oklahoma City to Weihai, and because it's a fairly minor Chinese city, no American airline even flies there, nor does any international airline fly to OKC. So at some point, I'm going to have to change airlines. This might mean booking multiple tickets, having to schlep my luggage between the baggage claim and the check-in counter, and being in trouble if something goes wrong and I miss a flight. Read more...

The American campaign against Japan was fought in the vast reaches of the Pacific, and enabled largely by the efforts of auxiliary ships. The ability to refuel at sea gave the USN great reach, and a wide variety of ships were developed to allow deserted islands to become forward bases for the fleet. In the closing months of the war, improved techniques for underway replenishment allowed ships to stay in forward areas much longer, greatly reduced reliance on these bases and the need for their ships. But while many of the auxiliary types that were in service then have died out, others have been developed to take their place, and play vital roles on the oceans of the world today.

Salvage ship USNS⁴ Salvor

Some types have survived more or less unchanged. The USN still has a pair of submarine tenders based in Guam to provide support to the undersea vessels of the 5th and 7th Fleets. Two hospital ships, Mercy and Comfort, were converted from oil tankers in the 80s and today serve primarily to project soft power by bringing medical aid to those in need. Each has a 1,000 bed hospital, 12 operating theaters, and a staff capable of performing any medical procedure short of organ transplantation. Fleet tugs still tow ships, as well as backing up the salvage ships in their mission of recovering objects from the sea bottom, supporting divers, and operating underwater vehicles. Read more...

When US designers finished the North Carolina class, their first since battleship construction resumed, they weren't entirely happy with the result. It was a ship armored against 14" guns in a world where the escalator clause had just come into force, allowing future battleships to be built with 16" weapons. And while it would seem that the treaty limit of 35,000 tons would preclude substantial improvements over the North Carolina, the preliminary design team, lead by Captain A. J. Chantry, produced a class that was by far the best of the treaty battleships and arguably superior to any battleship ever built outside the US.

Massachusetts of the South Dakota class in 1944

When design work on what became the South Dakotas began, it looked like they would revert to the traditional American type, slow and heavily-armored. The initial requirement was for a speed of only 23 kts, based on the estimated speed of the Japanese battle line. However, in late 1936, US intelligence became aware that the reconstructed battleship Nagato had made 26 kts on trials, and a speed of 27 kts swiftly became the standard going forward. Read more...

In 2010, my family took a spring break road trip that culminated in Dayton, OH, home of the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The visit was somewhat spoiled when the Fatherly One and my brother got sick and had to spend all day in the hotel, but Sister Bean and I were able to spend the whole day at the museum.⁵ This was a while ago, and there have been some changes since then, most notably moving the R&D/Presidential Gallery from being on-base to a new hangar at the museum proper, but the place was so amazing I have to plug it here.

The Cold War Gallery⁶

Website

The WWII Gallery

Dayton has basically every plane ever flown by the US Air Force or its predecessor, the Army Air Force, as well as a fair number that were captured or otherwise fell into their hands. It's the largest military aviation museum on the planet, and there's a lot of stuff in their collection that you can't find in many other places. Highlights include the only surviving XB-70 Valkyrie, a B-36 Peacemaker⁷ and Bockscar, the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. There are fighters, including everything from the rare and very interesting F-82 Twin Mustang to the F-22 Raptor, as well as transports, trainers, and even oddities like a bunch of old presidential aircraft, including the first Air Force One. Read more...

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,⁸ 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 heave⁹ 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