While visiting Sister Bean in Boston, we drove down to see the USS Nautilus and the attached Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut. It was a bit of a drive, but what we found when we arrived proved that we'd made the right decision. The entire complex joined the list of the great military museums I've been to, instead of the merely good.

Me at a mockup control panel¹

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The sail of NR-1

I suspect that many of you are surprised that I'm rating Nautilus above both Massachusetts and Midway. I am too, but they earned it. Even as we were walking towards the front doors, I was starting to see cool stuff I hadn't expected to run across. In that particular case, it was the sail and manipulator arm of NR-1, a nuclear-powered research submarine specializing in fine work deep underwater. It's impossible not to love a submarine that had wheels. Read more...

As you should expect by now, we're doing our biweekly open thread. Talk about anything you want that isn't culture war.

During the last OT, DirectrixGazer mentioned Neptunus Lex, who I had never heard of. I'm glad he did. Most of his writings can be found here, with the exception of his astonishing Rhythyms series, a portrait of a day aboard a carrier. Highly recommended.

In early April, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a tiny cluster of land in the South Atlantic. The British mobilized their fleet to retake them, staging out of Ascension Island. On the 25th, a force retook South Georgia, a small island that Argentina had also captured, while the main task force closed on the Falklands themselves.²

Avro Vulcan XH558³

Six days after South Georgia fell, the British launched their first strike on the Falklands. The carriers had finally reached the South Atlantic, and were about to begin the campaign for air and sea superiority within the 200-mile Total Exclusion Zone. However, the honor of the first strike fell not to the Navy but to the Royal Air Force.

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It's time to return to the basic strategy of our hypothetical navy, a subject we've discussed at some length.

Dndnrsn: I apologize for my lateness. In my role as Proofreader-General, I was occupied fighting a different war: the war against the use of "impact" as a verb. Then there was the business with an ensign who insisted on writing "utilize" in memos instead of "use." Anyway, here I am. Thinking about overall strategy and the fleet: It's been established we're a medium power with an island to ourselves. The navy should be a priority, but I think there's a good argument for having a smaller navy than the UK: we aren't playing to memories of past glory. They are, which probably leads them to have a navy larger than they strictly need. If there is a "big" war, either we're on the same side as the US, or something went terribly wrong and we're screwed. We still want to be able to do stuff on our own that's smaller. We should be able to do one small thing on our own, or contribute to multiple small things, or contribute to one small thing so as to wear down our navy less. This should be the general military strategy, not just the naval strategy. This argues for maybe one carrier and some destroyers, probably some submarines, and smaller craft. Read more...

While I was visiting Sister Bean in Boston, I decided to have the second Naval Gazing meetup at the USS Salem, a heavy cruiser preserved at the former Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. Two readers showed up (along with Sister Bean and a few of her friends) and we had a really good time.

sd, Chris Silvia, me, Sister Bean, and a friend of SB⁴

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In 1895, tensions between Japan and China over control of Korea had flared into all-out war when the Japanese attacked a Chinese troopship and its escorts. World opinion was that the Japanese were doomed by the much larger Chinese Beiyang Fleet, but when the two forces met at the Battle of the Yalu River, the Japanese emerged victorious thanks to better training and more modern ships. The Chinese ships fell back to their base at Lushunkou, better known in the west as Port Arthur.

A month after their victory at sea, the Japanese crossed the Yalu River itself only to find that the Chinese army had mostly fled. The same day, troops landed to begin the siege of Lushunkou itself. Admiral Ding, commander of the Beiyang Fleet, was ordered to withdraw to Weihaiwei, leaving behind the only drydock capable of holding his battleships. This proved to be disastrous when Zhenyuan ran onto a rock while entering Weihaiwei harbor and had to be beached due to the lack of repair facilities. In early November, the Japanese cut the last land links between Lushunkou and the outside world. However, the heavily fortified naval base was considered nearly impregnable, and it was expected the Japanese would have a long fight on their hands. Read more...

Ships and ship types are often talked about using a set of shorthand letters to designate types. DDG. CVN. LHA. SSBN. DLG. While there are some good guides to the system online, I figured I should explain them here as well.

These codes originate in a standard set by the USN in 1920, to overhaul the designations then in use. All ships were assigned a two-letter code, and numbered sequentially within the code for their type. Around the time of WWII, three-letter codes became necessary to designate the bewildering array of ship types developed for a global naval war. It's continued to evolve since that day, and many of the rules have changed at some point or another over the past century, but the bones of the system are still identifiable.

The most important information is the first letter or two. This will tell you the broad type at a glance, with later letters giving more information.

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While in Boston visiting Sister Bean, we drove down with a couple of friends to Fall River, home of the USS Massachusetts and an hour or so south of downtown. I'd been in touch with the crew on the ship, and ended up meeting up with one of the people there, who took the day from good to incredible.

The group at Massachusetts. James Koppel, me, Sister Bean, and one of her friends

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Battleship Cove. L-R: Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., Lionfish, Hiddensee and Massachusetts

Battleship Cove has four vessels. Besides Massachusetts, the only surviving US battleship to have fought another battleship,⁶ there was the destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., a Gearing class destroyer modernized in the 1960s for anti-submarine warfare, the submarine Lionfish, representing the fleet boats that strangled Japan, and the Hiddensee, a former East German missile corvette. There are also a pair of PT Boats on display nearby, PT-617 and PT-796. Read more...

It's time for our regular open thread. Talk about anything you want that isn't culture war.

For my readers in SoCal, two reminders. First, we have our meetup on Iowa coming up in slightly less than two weeks. Second, LA Fleet Week is this coming weekend, and that should be a lot of fun. I'd encourage you to go.

And for a bit of fun, I'd encourage you to check out Duffelblog, which is essentially the military equivalent of the Onion. It's mostly from a junior enlisted/veteran point of view, but there's some really good stuff.

While battleship designers had long tried to protect against underwater attack, the first months of World War One showed the full extent of the threat posed by torpedoes and mines. The existing underwater protection systems installed in pre-dreadnoughts proved totally inadequate, and numerous vessels were lost to these causes. Even the dreadnoughts were not immune, as shown most notably by the loss of Audacious in the first months of the war.

Bulge on monitor HMS Glatton

The British quickly began to look for ways to improve protection, finding one in the form of the bulge. In their simplest form, these were just expansion chambers mounted on the outside of an existing hull, with a free-flooding liquid layer behind the air chamber. This increased the depth of the TDS, and provided an effective air-liquid layer system. Bulges were first used on ships operating close inshore, a particularly good area for submarines and small torpedo craft, and proved very successful. Even the earliest bulged ships took torpedo hits with no damage. The only drawback was a slight reduction in speed,⁷ and even battleships were soon being fitted with bulges. Ramillies and later capital ships were fitted with them while under construction, while older ships gained them in refits. Read more...