It's time for another open thread, which I officially intend to do biweekly until they stop working. Talk about anything you want, so long as it's not culture war. Yes, this includes things unrelated to defense or the sea.

Also, a reminder that I have trips to Boston and LA coming up later this year. I'll be in Boston towards the end of the month, touring every museum ship I can. If anyone wants to meet up, let me know. For LA, I have a tour of Iowa planned for blog readers for the afternoon of September 8th. This should give anyone who wants to do so a chance to do the Full Steam Ahead tour of the engines in the morning.

In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt's second term as President was drawing to a close. The massive battleship-building program of his first term was bearing fruit, with 10 ships commissioning between the start of 1906 and mid-1907. Tensions between the US and Japan were high due to Japanese immigration to the West Coast, culminating in race riots. The events of the Russo-Japanese War weighed heavily on the minds of US planners, particularly the disastrous voyage of the Russian Second Pacific Squadron to the Far East. Mahan's emphasis on concentration meant that the US fleet was entirely in the Atlantic, to guard against an assault into the New World by a European power.¹ Roosevelt decided to conduct an exercise, moving the majority of the US fleet from Hampton Roads to San Francisco, as a test of the fleet's strategic mobility and to send a message to the Japanese.

The Great White Fleet at sea, lead by Maine and Missouri

On December 16th, 1907, sixteen battleships² departed US waters, bound first for Trinidad. The coal-burning fleet consumed 1,500 tons each day, providing a serious challenge for the Navy Department. 30 foreign colliers were chartered to supplement the eight naval vessels available after no US company bid for the contract on the first leg of the journey. The ships themselves, in a long line, were painted a brilliant peacetime white, quickly giving the force the name Great White Fleet.³

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This is a continuation of our discussion of the elements necessary to build a modern navy, specifically what sort of naval aviation is required or desirable.

Davy Jones: It seems to me as if the decision between CATOBAR and STOBAR comes down to whether we want to be able to punch very hard in few places or punch decently in a lot of places. This comes down to a discussion of who our adversaries are likely to be, what we'll be fighting over, what forces they're likely to bring to the battle, and what losses would be acceptable to us.

Bean: Sort of. Keep in mind that even a STOBAR or STOVL carrier still needs combat systems, engines and escorts. While there's a reasonable extra cost for CATOBAR, it's not as much as you might think on a whole-fleet level. The bigger question is if we can afford CATOBAR.

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It's been too long since Naval Gazing covered fire control. As such, I'm going to start looking at the details of various portions of the fire-control process, starting with the rangefinders.

In the early days of naval fire control, many different solutions were proposed for the problem of finding range. All optical rangefinders operate on essentially the same principle, that you can construct a triangle, and knowing one side (the baseline) and some angles, use basic trigonometry to work out the other sides, one of which is the desired range.

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Last time, we talked about how, in the years leading up to World War I, the US Navy developed an array of auxiliary ships designed to support the fleet in the absence of permanent bases. Most prominent among these were the oilers, some of which were used to refuel ships at sea. During the 1920s, as the plans for the war against Japan developed, it became increasingly obvious that the USN would need the ability to reliably refuel ships at sea to carry it off. While the latest destroyers were longer-ranged than the ships Maumee had refueled in the mid-Atlantic, their range was still insufficient for the broad Pacific. As a result, the alongside method of refueling was developed and perfected, to the point that it had become almost routine for the smaller craft. In addition to the oilers, battleships and carriers were also equipped to refuel their escorts.

Sabine refueling Enterprise during the Doolittle Raid

But the destroyers were not the only ships with worryingly short legs. The pre-turboelectric battleships had inefficient engines, and a method of refueling them at sea was desired. However, the alongside method was considered far too dangerous for use with any ship larger than a destroyer. Instead, trials were made of refueling over the stern. This removed the threat of small helm errors causing disaster, but turned out to have intractable problems of its own. The fueled ship had to be far astern, which limited flow rate and required inordinate pumping power.⁴ Special equipment was required to keep the lines supporting the hose under tension. If the hose sagged into the sea, the oil would cool and thicken, interrupting the refueling.⁵ Ultimately, the problem was solved by refitting the battleships in question with more efficient geared powerplants, and the matter of refueling big ships rested for the next decade. Read more...

It's a common belief that battleships moved sideways when they fire. I've talked with people who were aboard at the time who swear to it. But I'm an engineer, and thus believe the question can and should be answered by doing math.

Seriously, what picture did you expect me to use for this?

Let's assume we're trying to get Iowa moving sideways as fast as possible by firing the guns. We'll take only a minimal load of fuel and ammo, and turn the ship into a hovercraft without adding any weight, so there's no water resistance to slow her down.⁶ Dulin & Garzke list Iowa's 1943 light displacement as 44,579 metric tons.⁷ This is definitely low, but I'm willing to use it as an analytic assumption. Now, about the momentum of the broadside. Each AP shell weighs 2700 lb or 1224.7 kg. The muzzle velocity is 2500 ft/s or 762 m/s. A full 9-shell broadside thus has a total momentum of 8.4*10^6 kg*m/s, for a hovercraft side velocity of .1884 m/s, or .3662 kts. Or about 7.5 inches per second for those who don't instinctively think in knots.

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The first battlecruisers were the product of Jackie Fisher's efforts to find a more cost-effective way to protect British trade. They were the size of contemporary battleships, trading armor for guns. The Germans answered with ships that were better-balanced, with lighter armament but battleship-scale armor.

Around 1909, the battlecruiser grew rapidly, much as contemporary battleships did. In Britain, this was spearheaded by HMS Lion and her sister ship, Princess Royal, both part of the "We want eight" 1909-1910 program. Lion was the first British ship armed with the 13.5" gun, a change from the slightly improved Indefatigable originally planned that was made possible because she was being built in the Royal Dockyards instead of a commercial yard. Making late changes to a design in a commercial yard would have meant serious penalties under the contract, but the Dockyards were under the navy's direct control.⁸

HMS Lion

Lion was a dramatic move away from the previous lightly-armored battlecruisers and into a ship that was more of a fast battleship, although not to the extent of the German battlecruisers. The 9" belt was 50% thicker than those of the previous classes, and a 6" upper belt was fitted, something completely absent from the previous classes. One of the major drivers for this was the increase in battle ranges, which meant that armor was now potentially useful against heavy shells. The four 13.5" twin turrets were finally all on the centerline, including a superfiring turret forward.⁹ Speed also increased from 25 to 28 kts, to match the German Moltke. Read more...

Because of the success of the last open thread, I'm inclined to try another one. Talk about anything you want except culture war.

Also, I'm going to be in Boston this summer, July 19th-24th. I expect to hit a lot of the museum ships up there, and want to do a meetup at one if there's interest.

John Arbuthnot "Jackie" Fisher was perhaps the most important naval officer of the 20th century, despite never commanding a fleet in battle. His career began on the deck of a wooden sailing ship and ended with a fleet of dreadnoughts, destroyers, submarines and even the first steps towards aircraft carriers. Even more astonishingly, he was the man most responsible for many of these developments, some of which continue to shape naval warfare today.¹⁰

Jackie Fisher

A brilliant, energetic, innovative, and ambitious man, he was also stubborn and prone to obsession. At his best, he saw the shape of things to come better than any of his contemporaries, and even better than many today. At his worst, he assumed that the future had already arrived, and tried to build ships that were simply not possible yet. He was a constant proponent of reform, ranging from improving conditions for enlisted seamen to the development of Dreadnought, but was uncompromising in his dealings with those he saw as his enemies. Read more...

Bean: I think it's probably time to look at our options for fixed-wing aviation at sea. As I see it, we have a couple ways to do this, and I'm not sure which one we should go for.

HMS Queen Elizabeth

First, we could buy full CATOBAR carriers like the US and France use. These would be smaller than the US carriers, ideally about the size of the British Queen Elizabeths, although we might be able to go a bit smaller. The advantage is that this gives us the best payload and the widest range of aircraft options. One of the highlights would be being able to fly E-2 Hawkeyes, giving us one of the best AWACS planes in the world. The problem is that ships that big are also expensive, and we'd have to develop a whole new set of skills. We do have aircraft options here, though. We could buy either Dassault Rafales or Boeing Super Hornets, and we'd probably get a pretty good deal on either one. Even better, we could fly the same plane from our land bases, giving us commonality between our sea and land based squadrons.

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