A century ago, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the most destructive war history had ever seen came to an end.

For four years, Europe had torn itself apart. While popular memory is overwhelmingly dominated by the trenches and mud of the Western Front, the war was much wider than that. At sea, Britain and Germany battled to strangle each other, with Britain finally emerging victorious. Italy and Austria shed staggering quantities of blood in the Alps, in a war even more static than that in France, before Italy finally prevailed. In the east, Russia had collapsed a year earlier, after fighting a war in spaces too vast to allow the stalemate that had occurred in the west. In the Middle East, the British and French had finally defeated the Ottomans after a long and difficult campaign. They had taken the war to German colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, setting the stage for much of the Pacific War 30 years later.

1918 had been a tumultuous year. It had begun with great German victories, barely contained by the French and British, with the aid of the Americans now pouring into Europe. The three nations then went on the offensive, swiftly reclaiming the German gains and destroying their army. The writing was on the wall, and the Germans requested an armistice while the negotiations for a final peace took place.

The day a century ago when the war was brought to an end is commemorated as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day or Veterans Day. Approximately 10 million soldiers and 8 million civilians were killed between August of 1914 and November 1918, and millions more wounded. Remember them today.

And remember those who died later. The Allies never reached German soil, and many Germans believed that they had been betrayed instead of being defeated on the battlefield. Their desire for revenge would plunge Europe into another war 21 years later.

I've previously posted lists of museum ships in the US and Europe. This post completes the list of museum ships worldwide. As with the European one, it's sorted by country, then city, and comes from this list. I'd encourage you to go support the nearest one. If you'd like to review it for Naval Gazing, that's even better. Read more...

The 45th Infantry Division is an old and respected unit. Its subordinate regiments fought in WWI, and the division as a whole served with distinction across Sicily, Italy, France and Germany during WWII. It went to Korea, and its successor unit, the 45th Infantry Brigade, was deployed during Desert Storm and later to both Afghanistan and Iraq. The history of this unit, part of the Oklahoma National Guard, is chronicled in the excellent 45th Infantry Division Museum, located northeast of downtown Oklahoma City.

Me with an M48 tank

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It's time for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war.

First, our regular link. I'm going to call out the FY 19 National Defense Authorization Act. No, it's not a particularly good read, or even totally comprehensible outside the Beltway. But it is useful to get a better idea of how the military gets its money. Or if you need to cure insomnia.

Second, overhauled posts include A Brief History of the Battleship, Iowa Part 1 and Part 2 and Fire Control Part 1 and Part 2.

Third, remember to update your bookmarks from navalgazing.obormot.net to navalgazing.net. The CAPTCHA won't load on obormot.

While we've previously examined anti-submarine warfare in WWII in some detail, including forces, weapons, sensors, and how the British managed the Battle of the Atlantic, I haven't touched on what I find to be the most fascinating aspect. The war against the U-boats gave birth to a new science, Operations Research, which would find applications in almost every field of human endeavor.¹

U-426 sinking in the Bay of Biscay

In principle, Operations Research or OR is fairly simple. It's the use of quantitative methods to provide decision-makers with information. Good OR recognizes that there are unquantifiable factors which may override the best numerical solution, and is most concerned with the use of existing equipment instead of the development of new technology. It's closely tied to fields such as industrial engineering and management science, but applies more broadly than either of those. A simple example can be found in Methods of Operations Research. An OR analyst saw that there was often a long line for soldiers to wash and rinse their mess gear at his new duty station. He also noticed that on average it took a soldier three times as long to wash as it did to rinse, but that there were two tubs for washing and two for rinsing. He suggested that one of the rinse tubs be switched to washing, and when the change was implemented, the line didn't even form most days. Read more...

As a follow-up to my list of Museum Ships in the United States, I present a similar list of ships in Europe. A third list, covering the rest of the world, will follow soon. This is sorted by country, then city. They were derived from this list, and may not be completely accurate, but I'd still encourage you to see if there are any close enough to be worth a visit. If anyone who is in Europe wants to contribute a review of one of these, I'd be happy to have it. Read more...

While rebuilding the Baltic Fleet was uppermost in the minds of Russian naval planners in the aftermath of their disastrous war with Japan, and the first Russian dreadnoughts were built there, the growth of the Turkish navy in the Black Sea lead to increasing popular pressure for dreadnoughts on Russia's southern flank. Reports, subsequently proved to be false, of Turkish dreadnought purchases from British yards caused the Duma to order a trio of ships from the yards in the Crimea.

Imperatritsa Mariia

There was the usual array of design proposals, including duplicating the Gangut design in the interests of build time, using diesel propulsion, and fitting the ships with 14" guns to counter the 13.5" weapons expected to be used on the Turkish ships.² Ultimately, the design selected was similar to Gangut, with the same turret arrangement, 130mm secondary guns concentrated forward, and a speed of 21 kts instead of the 23 of the previous class. This allowed them to be more compact, with thicker armor: 10.3" of belt as opposed to 8.9" on their predecessors. Read more...

I'm going to step a bit out of my usual wheelhouse and talk about the proposals for a Space Force coming out of DC recently, and why I don't think they're a good idea. Don't worry, this will end up back at ships.

Naval capabilities like this Tomahawk strike are dependent on space-based support

First, let's get one thing clear. Space capabilities are tremendously important to the US military. The ability of satellites to gather intelligence and provide reliable communications and navigation anywhere in the world is absolutely critical to making them what they are. These capabilities are increasingly threatened by Chinese and Russian anti-satellite weapons of various kinds, and making space forces more visible and independent is probably not a bad idea. Read more...

Today is Navy Day, the traditional day when the United States celebrated the greatest Navy on Earth.³ Until 1949, it was traditionally a day of naval reviews and open houses for ships. That year, the Secretary of Defense, as part of his campaign against the Navy,⁴ ordered USN participation in Navy Day ended in favor of Armed Forces Day.

Iowa and Maryland in Seattle for Navy Day 1945

Today is also the first anniversary of Naval Gazing as an independent blog. It's been a great year. I've enjoyed writing, and reading the comments on the blog. And the degree of engagement has blown me away. Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting. It makes this worth it.

A few people deserve special thanks. Said Achmiz has hosted me and dealt with my requests for technical support. Dndnrsn, Nornagest, and LordNelson have proofread and offered suggestions for how to make my posts better. DismalPseudoscience graciously shared his experience at the Mikasa. And a surprising number of people were willing to meet some guy from the internet and follow him around a warship.

There are going to be some changes going forward. I started this to stay sane when I was new to Oklahoma and didn't have a lot going on. That's changed to some extent, and I'm planning to scale back my time commitment somewhat. I'm not going to promise to fill the Friday slot, and minor stuff that was in that slot might migrate to the Sunday and Wednesday ones. But if I come up with something I can write really fast (an hour or so) or if I get guest contributions, I'll put them there. I actually have stuff scheduled for it almost through the end of the year (including a repost of the stuff I did on commercial aviation last year), so the change won't be noticeable for a while.

But long-term, I'd like to open up that slot to my readers. A lot of you have good sea stories or have been to museums/airshows/whatever that I haven't. If you're interested, send me an email at battleshipbean at gmail. I won't totally rule out taking contributions on technical/historical topics either, although I'm going to be somewhat pickier about those.

Another thing I plan to do to partially make up for the gap is to overhaul older posts. I've done this on an ad hoc basis since the beginning, but every week or so I plan to go through the posts that are about a year old and update links (mostly to relevant articles written after the original), add any new tidbits I've picked up since I wrote them and maybe do a bit of general maintenance. I'll probably announce them in the OTs as I go.

A few minor things before I wrap this up. First, I've added a new and hopefully better index and a Top Posts page. Second, I've gotten a lot of good topic ideas from readers, many of which sadly are still languishing on my idea list. If anyone has anything they'd particularly like me to look at, this is a good place to let me known.

But to everyone, thanks for a great year, and I look forward to the next one.

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"I have discovered a marvelous proof of the difference between turrets and barbettes, the margin of which this book is too small to contain" - Scott Alexander

When I wrote about ironclads, pre-dreadnoughts, and the development of heavy guns, I made reference to a rather unusual theory about the development of heavy gun mountings in the 1885-1900 period. Now, I've finally gotten around to writing it up in full. I apologize if this is rather more boring and technical than usual, but I'm challenging the conventional view of the subject, rather than simply reporting it.

HMS Anson, an early British barbette ship

The conventional wisdom is that original-style turrets were heavy and had to be mounted low, while barbettes allowed guns to be mounted much higher and eventually replaced turrets. Gunhouses were then installed, resulting in mountings that look like turrets but fundamentally differ from the original versions used through the 1800s. I repeated this version in my SSC post on pre-dreadnought history, and several readers started asking probing questions on this. I began to dig, and I've since come to the conclusion that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that the real picture of how gun mountings developed is much more complicated. Read more...