On April 9th, 1940, Hitler unleashed his military machine on Norway, breaking that country's neutrality and overwhelming the unprepared defenders at cities including Oslo, Kristiansand, Stavangar and Bergen using troops carried aboard warships. Offshore, the British fleet was in the North Sea, but they had missed even the task forces headed for the northernmost cities, such as Trondheim and Narvik.

Narvik in the 1940s

Narvik, 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, was one of Norway's busiest ports, the terminus for a railroad bringing iron ore from Sweden. When the Baltic froze in the winter, it was the only link from the mines to the outside world, and the city had grown rapidly to support the shipping in the area. Because it had been a tiny village of a few hundred people in the 1890s, when Norway's coastal defenses were built, it had not made the list, and while work on fortifications had started in 1914, it had been shelved postwar and never restarted. In the early months of 1940, Narvik had been the center of a great deal of diplomatic maneuvering, as the Allies tried to cut iron ore exports to Germany and use the railroad to reinforce Finland, under assault from the Soviets. That plan had been abandoned, and the British didn't actually take action until April 8th, when they laid mines on the Norwegian coast in an attempt to interdict traffic to Narvik. Read more...

It's time once again for the regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, even if it's not military/naval related.

First, book update. I'm currently up to about 38,000 words revised, still mostly working through pre-dreadnought stuff.

Second, I'm going to designate this as the semi-regular suggestion OT. What sort of posts do you want to see more of? Obviously, no guarantees, but I'll definitely take it into account.

2018 overhauls are Russian Battleships Part 2, Carrier Doom Part 4, SYWTBABB-Strategic Background, Early US Battleships, Aegis and Amphibious Warfare Part 1. 2019 overhauls are The Mk 23 Katie, Commercial Aviation Part 6, The King George V Class, German Guided Bombs Part 1, The PHS Corps and my history of Wisconsin. 2020 overhauls are Cool Facilities - Bayview, Operation Crossroads and Battleship Torpedoes Parts one and two. 2021 overhauls are Merchant Ships - Fishing, Squalus, SYWTBABB Leftovers Part 3 and Naval Airshps Part 2.

On April 9th, 1940, Hitler unleashed his military machine on Norway, breaking that country's neutrality and overwhelming the unprepared defenders at cities including Oslo, Kristiansand, Stavangar and Bergen using troops carried aboard warships. Offshore, the British fleet was in the North Sea, but they had missed even the task forces headed for the northernmost cities, such as Trondheim.

The view from Hysnes Fort, guarding Trondheim

Trondheim was one of Norway's most strategic cities, where a number of roads from the south converged and the single road that led into the narrow coastal strip of northern Norway began. Three forts guarded the entrance to Trondheimsfjord, equipped with a total of 4 21 cm and 7 15 cm guns, although they were lightly manned, with only one of the 15 cm weapons crewed around the clock. The command at Trondheim was no more alert than their counterparts to the south, and the warnings passed to the commands further south on April 8th and into the early hours of the 9th were taken as confirmation that Trondheim was under no threat. Read more...

The battlecruiser did not spring fully-formed from the mind of Jackie Fisher. In fact, Invincible was very much in the mold of armored cruisers that had gone before her, although the incorporation of the logic of Dreadnought into her design has often obscured this.

Italia

It's worth taking a closer look at the predecessors to the battlecruiser, which we can broadly define as fast ships of battleship size, designed to be capable of standing in the line of battle and of raiding or protecting commerce. It could even be argued that Warrior herself meets this definition, designed for 13.5 kts at a time when 10 or 11 was standard, although the trends become more obvious after the demise of sails in the mid-1870s. The first vessels that are clearly in the battlecruiser mold are the Italian Italia and Lepanto, by far the largest (13,700 tons) and fastest (17.5 kts) ironclads of the day and armed with massive 17" guns, but protected only by an armored deck, as used on contemporary protected cruisers. This proved a major liability when the QF gun entered service a few years later, as their sides would easily be riddled by such weapons. Read more...

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

I am going to take the opportunity to announce that I'm working to turn the battleship post series into a book. I've currently got about 30,000 words revised, and am quite enjoying it when it isn't driving me crazy. The downside is that it's competing with blog posts for attention, and I'm reluctant to draw too heavily on the work I'm doing for what goes up here to make it easier to sell. (Unless I need to prototype an argument, and see if it works when other people look at it, hence the Coastal Attack post and the one I have going up Sunday.)

Also, I've asked a couple people to review the draft, and will reach out to more as I go. At some point, I may open it up a bit, but that time is not now.

Also, it's about time for another meetup, so we'll do our next one on Saturday the 29th at 1 PM US Central (GMT-6). Hope to see you there.

2018 overhauls are Bringing Back the Battleships, Why the Carriers are not Doomed Parts two and three, Stability, Pre-Dreadnoughts and Basics of Naval Strategy. 2019 overhauls are Interwar Naval Diplomacy, Commercial Aviation Part 5, Falklands Part 10, Spanish-American War Part 1, The NOAA Commissioned Corps and Ship Structure and Strength. 2020 overhauls are Billy Mitchell Part 4, Aerial Decoys, Pictures - Iowa Enlisted Quarters and Escorts. 2021 overhauls are The New Navy, Naval Airships Part 1, Merchant Ships - Whaling and Missile Guidance.

Possibly the most successful American naval procurement program of the post-Cold War era has been the Virginia class nuclear attack submarine. With 19 currently in service and another 15 either under construction or on order, it will soon eclipse the Los Angeles class as the backbone of the American submarine force. Even more impressive, current shipbuilding plans suggest that another 17 will be ordered before the basic design is replaced by the SSN(X) in the mid-2030s.

Virginia cruises on the surface

The USN's nuclear submarine force was built to fight the Cold War, facing down the massive fleet of nuclear submarines the Russians built for that conflict. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the USN was in the process of procuring the Seawolf class, designed as part of the Reagan Administration's Maritime Strategy, with the intention of drawing off the Soviet SSNs by threatening the bastions where they kept their missile submarines. This required a very capable submarine, which in turn meant that they were also very large and extremely expensive. This would obviously be unaffordable in the post-Cold War budgetary environment, and the program was ultimately terminated at three boats as the USN searched for an affordable successor. Read more...

An idea that comes up reasonably often on the internet is the suggestion that swarms of cheap drones are about to revolutionize warfare, rendering current systems hopelessly obsolete. After all, new technologies have repeatedly upended civilian life. Why shouldn't they do the same for the military?

The future of warfare?

There is a lot to be said for this view. Weapons that can guide themselves to the target have the potential to dramatically change how wars are fought, cutting the number of weapons required to achieve a result, and reducing collateral damage. Some types of ships might become essentially obsolete, unable to justify their cost in the face of the new threat, while new systems will have to be developed to counter the threat. In fact, this stands to be the biggest revolution in warfare in decades. Read more...

It is now time for our regular open thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

Now that 2021 is behind us, it's time for the year's William D. Brown Memorial Award, for the biggest naval screwup that didn't kill anyone. This year's winner is Iran, who took a cue from the USN and decided that the best way to win was to set one of their own ships on fire. They chose the replinishment ship Kharg back in June, which had been key to their plans to deploy globally. While this seems like it obviously would have been enough, they were committed enough to make a second effort in December, when they capsized a new frigate in drydock.

The USN was less dedicated, and its attempt to repeat its victory last year by running a submarine into an underwater mountain merely gave it runner-up status.

2017-2018 overhauls are Armor parts three and four, the Spotter's Guides to warships of the world wars and the modern era, Carrier Doom Part 1 and Reactivation. 2018-2019 overhauls are Great White Fleet Parts two and three, Commercial Aviation Part 4, Information, Communication and Naval Warfare Part 2, Auxiliaries Part 4 and my review of the Stafford Air and Space Museum. 2019-2020 overhauls are warships with Christmas lights, Anti-Radiation Missiles, New Years Logs and The Range of a Carrier Wing*. 2020-2021 overhauls are SYWTBABB Leftovers Part 2, Naval Bases from Space - Hawaii, NWAS - Cruise Missiles Part 2 and The Ticonderoga Class.

One thing I didn't bring up much in my discussions of the early battleships was their interaction with coastal defenses. This is largely because it is most prominent in John Beeler's Birth of the Battleship, which I hadn't read yet, and Friedman's British Battleships of the Victorian Era, which wasn't out yet when I wrote those. But as I've learned more about that, and coastal defenses in general, I think it plays an important part in the design history of the battleship in the period between 1860 and 1890.

The British bombard Sveaborg

Fundamentally, there are three ways to deal with an enemy battlefleet: defeat it on the open seas, blockade it into port, and destroy it in its base. During the age of sail, it was rare for the third option to be on the table, as coastal defenses were too strong for a fleet to have any real chance of defeating them.¹ But this began to change in the 1850s. During the Crimean War, the British showed that the greater maneuverability of steam-powered vessels opened up new options for attacking coastal fortifications, while the American Civil War confirmed the ineffectiveness of masonry fortifications in the face of fire from rifled guns. In both wars, the ironclad raised the minimum standard required of coastal guns. All of these combined to make existing fortifications obsolete, which was essentially a new problem for coastal defenses. Previously, even decades-old guns in hasty or antique positions could provide quite effective coastal defense, particularly if paired with heated shot or shells. But facing down an ironclad would require expensive modern guns, which were only available in limited numbers, and which were rapidly rendered obsolete. Read more...

Coming off my review of Ultimate Admiral - Dreadnoughts, I thought it was worth taking a look at the wider world of naval video games. All of these are things I've played, although a few are more broadly strategic or naval-adjacent, as I chose to cast a wide net.

Rule the Waves 2

RTW2 shouldn't be unfamiliar to long-time readers here, given that we had a group game running for over a year. It's a game set in the period 1900-1950 where you pick a country, design and build ships, and then fight them. The high point of the game is the ship designer, as it's quite versatile and does a good job of capturing the flavor of the sorts of decisions real designers have to deal with, without overwhelming you with detail. The other aspects are less satisfactory, with the ship combat being merely OK and the shallowness of the strategic aspects being at times deeply frustrating. There's an upcoming DLC which promises to fix some of that, and I will report back as soon as it's out. Despite the problems, the whole loop is amazing, and I highly recommend it. I will say that other games by the same developer (except RTW1, which was RTW2 but without airplanes and running 1900-1920) seem to be focused on recreating historical battles, and I don't like their ship combat engine enough to recommend them. They've also made a positive change by ditching their homegrown DRM, if you need one more reason to buy the game. Read more...