When Andrew Hunter came through Oklahoma City, I asked him if he'd been to Turner Joy, in Bremerton, near where he lived. He admitted to having never heard of it, so I decided to put together a list of museum ships in the US. It's sorted by state, then city, so it should be fairly easy to get an idea of where the nearest ones to you are. I apologize for not being able to provide links to the ships directly, but they can be found in the Wikipedia list I got the data from. The Historic Naval Ships Association is also an excellent resource.

Anyway, I highly encourage you to go and support these ships. A museum ship is also a fiscal black hole, and we should all try to preserve them for the future. I've put asterisks next to ships I've visited personally.

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We've previously looked at the process by which the first ironclads developed into the dreadnought, and further into the super-dreadnought with guns larger than 12". The next stage in British dreadnought development was driven by a man who later became one of the 20th century's greatest statesmen. In October 1911, as the Iron Dukes were being ordered, a young, ambitious politician named Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, 1916

Churchill, for all of his great virtues as Prime Minister during the Second World War, had serious vices as First Lord. He was greatly influenced by Jackie Fisher, now retired, who had never quite given up on the battleship/battlecruiser fusion designs first proposed as a direct follow-on to Dreadnought. He proposed¹ a ship with full battleship armor and a speed of 28 kts. Fisher also argued for an increase in gun caliber to 15", which Churchill agreed to.

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The first shots of the Second World War were fired by a battleship. The German pre-dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein signaled the start of the German assault on the Polish supply depot of Westerplatte by opening fire. Commandoes carried aboard the ship attempted to assault the base, but were repulsed, and the Poles held out for a full week in the face of heavy German attacks, including bombardment from Schleswig-Holstein.

A camera crew filming Schleswig-Holstein's bombardment of Westerplatte

A total of six German battleships served during WWII, the most diverse mix of ships of any of the major powers.² Two, Schleswig-Holstein and Schlesien, were veterans of Jutland, built to designs pre-dating Dreadnought. The next pair, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, were among the handful of interwar capital ships that didn't approach the 35,000 ton limit of the Washington Naval Treaty. Armed with 3 triple 11" turrets, they were designed to fight the French Dunkerque class, and proved quite effective during the war. Bismarck is probably the most famous battleship in history³ and her sister Tirpitz is also well-known. Possibly the most powerful battleships ever completed in Europe, mostly due to their designer's blatant disregard for treaty limits, these were essentially modernized versions of the WWI Bayern class, with 4 twin 15" turrets, a speed of about 30 kts, and an armor scheme of WWI vintage, instead of the all-or-nothing schemes used in the allied treaty battleships. Read more...

This is a guest post by DismalPseudoscience, who visited Mikasa in March 2018.⁴

Mikasa in March 2018. Statue of Admiral Togo in the foreground.⁵

Website

On May 27th, 1905, the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy utterly destroyed the Russian Second Pacific Squadron in the Battle of Tsushima, thus deciding the Russo-Japanese War. The commander of the Combined Fleet was Admiral Togo Heihachiro. At Tsushima, like at the earlier battles of Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea, his flagship was the battleship Mikasa.

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After their victory at Pungdo, the Japanese pursued the Chinese on land, defeating them at Seonghwan. The Chinese response had all the speed and decision that the late Qing Dynasty was famous for, and the Beiyang Fleet spent all of August sitting in port. The Japanese continued to pour troops into Korea, and the Chinese recognized the need to reinforce their garrison, which was only possible by sea. However, they were unable to gather their troops quickly enough to prevent a second defeat at Pyongyang, which drove their forces back to the Yalu River.

Ding Ruchang, commander of the Beiyang Fleet, had intended to fight the Japanese at sea and defeat their fleet before he took the troops to Korea, but the defeat at Pyongyang forced him to abandon this plan. Instead, he would convoy the troopships with his entire force, which was considerable. His flagship, the ironclad battleship Dingyuan, and her sister Zhenyuan formed the core of his force, supported by three smaller ironclads, five cruisers and four small vessels. The Japanese under Itō Sukeyuki had split their force into two squadrons of four protected cruisers⁶ each, along with a quartet of support vessels.⁷

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It's time for our biweekly open thread. Talk about anything you want, including things completely unrelated to the blog's subject matter, so long as it's not culture war.

And another reminder (flogging a dead horse, I know) about the meetup I have scheduled for the Salem on Sunday.

I'd also like to highlight a question Johan Larson asked on a recent SSC open thread, about how you would move the Iowa from LA to Denver. The resulting thread was very interesting.

I've mentioned the quick-firing or QF gun many times here, as one of the main ingredients that went into the pre-dreadnought. This was a gun, usually of 6" caliber, which fired much more quickly than the larger guns that formed the main armament. QF guns were capable of doing tremendous damage to unarmored sections of an enemy ship, and for a time rivaled the main guns of battleships in importance.

The first of the QF guns⁸ was the 6-pounder Hotchkiss of 1884, a 57mm weapon intended to protect larger ships against torpedo boats. Unlike previous naval guns, which first loaded a shell and then powder in bags behind it,⁹ the QF 6 pdr used fixed ammunition, where the powder was contained in a brass cartridge case attached to the shell, exactly like a very large round of small arms ammunition. Because the cartridge case sealed the breech adequately and prevented the propellant gas from escaping, the breech mechanism was a sliding block, only present to provide support to the cartridge. Another aspect was the recoil mechanism, which returned the gun to firing position automatically, instead of needing to be manually repositioned. All of this meant that a gun crew could pump out 20-25 rounds every minute, a significant advance over previous weapons.

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I finally got my schedule in Boston nailed down. The Salem meetup will happen Sunday afternoon, July 22nd, starting at 12:30. I expect to go aboard the ship around 1. I'll be wearing a USS Iowa hat, and probably an Iowa shirt, too. I'd appreciate having a rough headcount, but if you happen to find yourself available at the last minute, feel free to come.

I had a great time there. Thanks to Chris and Sam for coming, and I look forward to the next time I get to do this.

Bean: Do we have any more thoughts on the matter of the Coast Guard? I know we got cut short last time, but we need to figure it out sooner rather than later.

Davy Jones: Taking your idea one step further, would there be any advantage to contracting out all of the boat maintenance and operation to the private sector and only having the law enforcement officers be government employees?

Bean: That's an interesting idea. Anything that can and should be done pierside will be contracted out. There's been a lot of progress in reducing manning and even things like painting are usually done by contractors these days. But I'm not sure it works for the total package. Read more...

Continuing our look at the histories of interesting ships brings us to the third unit of the Iowa class, USS Missouri, BB-63. This one is going to take several parts, as Missouri had a particularly interesting career.

Missouri on trials

Missouri was ordered almost a year after Iowa, and built in the same shipyard, the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She was launched on January 29th, 1944, and commissioned on June 11th of the same year, the last of the Iowas to reach each milestone,¹⁰ and ultimately the last battleship to enter service with the US Navy.¹¹ The ship's sponsor was Margaret Truman, daughter of a powerful senator from Missouri, whose interest in the ship would pay off handsomely.¹² The launch itself didn't go that smoothly, as the bottle was prepared improperly,¹³ showering Margaret and one of the attending Admirals with champagne. The ship then refused to move when first released, and Margaret gave it a push, although it took another minute before she began to slide.

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