This is a guest post by DismalPseudoscience, who visited Mikasa in March 2018.¹

Mikasa in March 2018. Statue of Admiral Togo in the foreground.²

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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 cruisers³ each, along with a quartet of support vessels.⁴

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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 guns⁵ 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,⁶ 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,⁷ and ultimately the last battleship to enter service with the US Navy.⁸ The ship's sponsor was Margaret Truman, daughter of a powerful senator from Missouri, whose interest in the ship would pay off handsomely.⁹ The launch itself didn't go that smoothly, as the bottle was prepared improperly,¹⁰ 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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In early April, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, isolated specks of rock in the South Atlantic. Their sovereignty had been disputed between Argentina and Britain for a century and a half, and Argentina expected Britain to simply accept their conquest. They were sorely disappointed, as the British instead mobilized their fleet, sending men and ships south. On April 20th, while the majority of the amphibious group was still frantically sorting itself out at Ascension, the British finally abandoned efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the Argentine forces on South Georgia, and decided to eject them by force. There were several reasons for this decision. First, unlike the Falklands, Argentina's claim to South Georgia was basically nonexistent under international law. Second, it would give the British a sheltered anchorage much closer to the Falklands than Ascension was. Third, it was lightly defended and out of range of Argentine air attack.¹¹

HMS Antrim off South Georgia

Operation Paraquet, as it was known, was conducted on a shoestring. The landing force was made up of 42 Commando,¹² D Squadron 22 SAS,¹³ and 2 Troop SBS.¹⁴ As all the proper amphibious warfare ships were still around Ascension, they were carried by the destroyer Antrim, our old friend Endurance and the tanker Tidespring.

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I visited Batfish with Andrew Hunter, who is familiar here, and Ryan Holbrook of SSC. We drove out from Oklahoma City to Muskogee, about 2 hours away, and toured the submarine and accompanying military paraphernalia.

Ryan, me, and Andrew at Batfish¹⁵

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Overall, I thought Batfish was OK, but not great. The submarine itself was a fairly typical fleet boat, with a walkthrough from the forward torpedo room to the aft torpedo room, covering the officers' quarters, lower control room (but not the conning tower), the enlisted berthing and mess, the two engine rooms, and the maneuvering room.

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The US Navy's expansion, beginning in the mid-1880s in response to Mahan's new strategic thinking, was conducted largely without seagoing experience. Long build times, rapid technological progress and a focus on getting as much firepower into as small a hull as possible meant that the resulting ships were slightly cramped and not particularly suited for prolonged operations on the high seas.

Wyoming at the 1912 Naval Review

That changed when Theodore Roosevelt sent most of the US fleet around the world, in a cruise designed to emphasize the growing power of the US Navy and test the ability of the ships resulting from the build-up to operate over the long distances that would be necessary in a war with Japan. The white paint schemes of the cruising ships meant they were universally known as the Great White Fleet. Read more...