It's our usual Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want.
The highlight of this thread is the RTW2 game, which saw war break out between France (us) and Italy in March of 1902. I've put up an edit to the original post in the RTW2 thread.
Posts overhauled since last time include Second-generation battlecruisers, Auxiliaries Part 2, Rangefinding, The Great White Fleet Part 1, Did Iowa Move Sideways During a Broadside? and So You Want to Build a Modern Navy - Aviation Part 2.
Comments
Since RTW has me thinking about coastal batteries, here's something I hadn't thought of before: do they have a colossal survivability advantage? Shouldn't they be equivalent to a ship with invincible belt and deck armor, plus turret armor designed without a weight limit?
History would suggest they do. During WWII, battles between coastal batteries and ships tended to end with the ships doing a number on the landscape and suppressing the batteries, but neither side taking that much actual damage. I'm not really sure why said batteries weren't more effective. At a guess, the standards of a shore battery crew tend to be pretty low, and the bombardment probably disrupted the fire control, too.
One of the listed benefits of the MK57 VLS is the ability to place the launchers on the periphery of the equipped ship. Is this something that seems likely to have a major impact on hull designs? E.g., would a trimaran with VLS in the outriggers be interesting?
I don't have a good understanding of exactly how the Mk 57 differs from the Mk 41 in terms of "installation around the periphery". Beyond that it's 4x1 instead of 4x2, and thus is easier to find space for around the edges of the deck. I do know that a 4-round Mk 57 weighs as much as an 8-round Mk 41, although it does have advantages in terms of gas flow and missile capability.
For something like a military trimaran, if the hulls are big enough, using Mk 41s in each one should be fine, AFAIK. I can take a look at some books when I get home.
The advent of steam meant that ships could control their exposure to fixed guns ashore, so as bean notes the results are rarely decisive. During the American Civil War, there were numerous examples of wooden steamships "running" forts protecting critical chokepoints, surviving brief exposure to gunnery that would have wrecked sailing ships fighting wind and current. After which you had a fleet of mostly-functional warships anchored right outside someone's city and out of reach of the fixed guns, so surrender now please.
In WWII, as bean notes, the results were similarly inconclusive. You find lots of cases of "USS Whatever sustained moderate damage and X dozen casualties engaging shore batteries at Foo", glossing over the part where X is the threshold where the captain of the Whatever decides he's going to pull back. And also lots of cases where the navy showed up in enough force to make the enemy's gunners keep there heads down until, oops, there's someone right outside the gun emplacement with a flamethrower, so surrender now please.
Actually sinking ships is rare because the ships can retreat before that happens, and actually destroying the shore batteries by naval bombardment is rare because they're carved into solid rock.
That's why I'm very fond of underwater torpedo batteries instead of regular gun turrets. It completely avoids the problem of indecisiveness by waiting until whatever enemy ship sails straight into a killzone before taking a shot while being totally undetected. The Germans that went down with Blucher against a weapon 40 years older than their ship can attest to that.
Naively, I would guess that 1. You don't have turret armour designed without a weight limit, because they use the same turret designs. Shore batteries probably don't warrant a specialist turret, they just use the ones previously designed and built for ships. Indeed I seem to remember multiple descriptions where the turrets were actually taken from obsoleted or destroyed ships so they are actually the previous generation or so. 2. You have a battle between a mobile gun platform and a fixed platform. The mobile platform probably has a much easier job in targeting because they are not trying to hit a moving target. Today the shore battery positions can be, and probably are, pre-programmed into the aiming/guidance computers before the war even starts. 3. As Bean says, the crack gunners aren't assigned to a shore battery.
@Chris Bradshaw
You've just articulated why diesel-electric submarines are so dangerous in narrow waters....
@Cassander
Aye, I'm also fairly supportive of acquiring SSKs for those countries with naval geography appropriate for operating SSKs. I suppose shore torpedo batteries do have a couple advantages for the niche coastal defense role though. Shore batteries are definitely cheaper to build and operate, they don't put crews at risk of being eliminated by depth charges, and don't cause escalation in a naval arms race by being seen as an offensive weapon. Perfect for countries that don't intend on aggressive action IRL, although perhaps not ideal for France in the current RTW round.
@Chris
I'm not sure that those batteries are as effective as you think. Dobrak Sound is the only case I know of of shore-based torpedo batteries doing anything, and that was primarily because the Germans thought the Norwegians weren't going to fight back. Coastal guns and torpedoes are kind of like minefields on land (minefields at sea are, weirdly, more effective at killing things) in that they're OK at denying territory, but pretty bad at inflicting casualties.
Yeah, guns are only really good for temporary area denial, but I still think torpedo batteries have a niche for sinking unaware ships. The other Norwegian fort in the sector, Kvarven Fort was also equipped with a torpedo battery, but they couldn't launch any because their fish were all missing fuses. Whoops.
And of course, the Victorians deployed dozens of Brennan guided torpedo batteries, but they never got to use them. Even the Germans planned on reinforcing the Atlantic Wall with hundreds of submerged torpedo tubes, but D-Day got in the way of that scheme. Between 1900-1945, they seem very viable in comparison to much more visible and expensive shore based guns.
My problem with that theory is that making use of a torpedo battery requires unaware ships as targets. This means you need to either have them not suspect the battery is there (unlikely) or think that you won't use it (Drobak Sound). Neither of these is high-percentage, and in practice, torpedoes will have the same area-denial effects that guns do. A mobile torpedo battery could solve this problem, but the practical problems are likely to be pretty serious. You need a position with the launcher firing into deep enough water that the torpedo doesn't ground and break, and one that you can get to on the road. And it needs to be emplaced fast enough to avoid being picked up by spies.
Huh. Never heard of that, but I'd be interested in learning more.
Happy to oblige on the Atlantic Wall torpedo plans.
The torpedo that the Germans planned on using was the T10 Spinne, which was an electric wire-guided 30 knot, 6000 meter ranged weapon designed purely for coastal defense. The Germans cited Brest, Dunkirk Calais, Boulogne, Fecamp, Le Havre, Cherbourg, St-Nazaire, Zeebrugge, Ostend, and several dozen other sites as locations for Spinne batteries. Construction work started on many of them, but none ever became operational.
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=9lquBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=spinne+t10+torpedo&source=bl&ots=ZdZzCNMCu9&sig=ACfU3U1pYS34LaowGrewiL-Nf6hoK4fkqQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwidsbPezJvjAhXvs1kKHS0eCBcQ6AEwDHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=spinne%20t10%20torpedo&f=false
Don't modern naval mines like the CAPTOR fill the role of "sneaky torpedo battery" perfectly? They seem like they could be deployed fairly quickly and easily from relatively small boats or aircraft, the positioning would be relatively unpredictable, and firing one torpedo would not give away the position of the rest of them.
@Chris
I am frankly amazed that that book isn't either in my library or on my amazon list. And it's on sale from USNI. Seriously, their IT needs work, or I'd have bought it last year. I'm also surprised I hadn't heard of the T10.
And now that I know the torpedo was to be wire-guided, it makes sense. Without that, you're going to spend a huge amount of money firing torpedoes at empty water.
@Suvorov
The problem is sensors. An anti-submarine torpedo in particular doesn't have the sensors or the range to cover a huge area. And the CAPTOR itself isn't that much more sophisticated. It's intended primarily for choke points and the like, not covering a broad area, the way a torpedo battery theoretically could. Also, something like a Mk 46 has a very small warhead, and a short range. And a Mk 48 CAPTOR would be huge and thus difficult to deploy.
@Bean
Happy to help fill you in. I don't want to be known as the "Horse Cavalry in WW2" guy around here. Torpedo guy sounds a lot better. The T10 had some issues regarding regaining control after surfacing to provide line-of-sight with the operator on shore, but it was still a fairly advanced piece of kit for the era.
Hey, if you want to talk about horse cavalry in WWII at length, feel free. It's not that I'm not interested, just that I don't have time to run things down, particularly given how poorly-documented the more obscure corners of the Russian war are. (Specific problem is on their riverine forces, but it's a fairly general issue.)
As for the T10, I can see lots of potential problems with the guidance system. But wire-guidance takes it from "that's a great way to blow a bunch of money" to "OK, I guess that might work."
Weird news coming out of DC: CNO-elect Bill Moran will instead retire early after questions about a continuing professional relationship with an officer who resigned as a result of an investigation into misconduct, although no disciplinary action was taken in this case.
I'm really not sure what to make of this. All that's been said is that Moran kept in touch with a former subordinate who left during a scandal. If that's enough to make SecNav Spencer decide to kill the nomination of an officer who everyone agrees is highly qualified, then shame on him. I've generally been unimpressed by the man, although he is at least an improvement on his predecessor. (Then again, my fiancee's cat would be an improvement over Mabus.) And now we have more chaos at the highest levels of the navy at time when we need to be preparing to fight Russia and/or China.
The Russian navy has also been in the news lately. They recently had 14 sailors die in a fire aboard the secretive nuclear-powered research submarine Losharik. 6 of these were Captains 1st Rank (equivalent to a USN Captain), which implies that something deeply weird was going on. I'm not even prepared to speculate what that might have been.
What does it mean to "maintain a professional relationship" with someone who has left the service?
Just messaging your old friend would be called a "personal relationship" wouldn't it? So a "professional relationship" should mean something like giving him contracts? Or providing help with his new career?
We have a bit more info from a statement that CNO Richardson made. "Adm. Moran, as VCNO, had maintained an off-the-record collaboration on high-level official Navy business with an officer who had previously been held accountable for inappropriate behavior towards junior female officers."
Note that "held accountable" means that he was the subject of an investigation, and was reassigned, but no formal actions were taken. I don't know specifics of the case, but past actions stretching back to Tailhook don't leave me with a lot of confidence in the Navy's ability to handle such matters fairly. The whole situation seems mildly sketchy on all sides, and the Navy now has to get a new CNO replacement through the Senate in less than 30 working days.
Yeah, to my uneducated eyes off-the-record collaboration on high-level official Navy business looks like discussing classified stuff with someone who no longer has the clearance to hear it.
Which I'm sure happens with retired colleagues all the time, but if you're naive (not to say ignoring security) enough to do so on email then that's not a good thing.
Still a big mess, but doesn't sound anywhere as witch-hunty as my first impression.
I'm not sure that's what happened. Classified information is taken seriously, despite what some people would have you believe, and I suspect if they'd be in violation of those rules, the release would have said so. The guy Moran was talking to wasn't actually forced out/relieved, he was moved to a different job. So presumably he still had his clearance, just maybe not official need-to-know.
It seems that the reprimanded officer retired, and if he went over to the private sector then my guess would be that this was a contracting issue, where Moran was trying to throw some business towards an old colleague by giving him some inside info. I imagine that is something that the Navy would be very touchy about after Fat Leonard. The official line seems to be that Moran reached out for some public relations advice, which seems like a very petty thing to force someone out over.
Servello (the officer in question) didn't retire until earlier this year, and all the details I've seen have emphasized that the contents of the communication don't seem to have been the issue here. It's just that Moran was talking to someone that somebody thinks he shouldn't have been. My guess is that Servello was really good at his job, which would explain both Richardson's reluctance to transfer him (something that caused a minor scandal last year) and Moran's continued communication with him.
Gah. Pardon my cynicism here, but that kind of pointless face-saving crap is exactly what I'd expect from the Navy just now. The watchword seems to be "don't make Leadership(tm) look bad" - whether that means "hey SN Schmuckatelli, don't act the fool out in town and make IT1 Jones look like a bad LPO" or "hey ADM umpty-ump, don't talk to disgraced people and make the SECNAV look like an ineffectual squish". Either way, it leads to folks getting hammered for the equivalent of farting in a lift (uncouth, but harmless) while serious negligence and misdeeds get brushed under the rug.
Like I said, color me cynical. But, that was how it worked when I was in, and it looks like eight years have not really improved things, alas.
@bean I guess my question is who would the "somebody" be? As much as I'm sure the spin is trying to make this look like a case of "bad optics" and a worry about "media scrutiny" I feel like there is no way this would have been a story if Moran hadn't stepped aside. It seems like it would have to be a personal call by the SECNAV or someone above and the correspondence is a pretense.
The somebody has been confirmed to be Servello, which is a venal sin at most. I'm cynical enough about the senior leadership in the DoD right now to agree that it's quite possibly a pretext rather than the actual reason. No clue what said actual reason would be.
Also, we have the new CNO nominee, VADM Mike Gilday. Admiral Gilday currently is the director of operation for the Joint Staff, and has bypassed seven sitting four-star admirals, apparently because the SecDef and SecNav believe they need those men where they are. The last time a vice-admiral was selected for CNO was Elmo Zumwalt in 1970. I don't have a particularly high opinion of that choice, and I hope Gilday will work out better.
I just came across this story, which says that Malaysia is acquiring two Scorpene-class diesel-electric submarines.
The problem is that these are the only two submarines that Malaysia will have, and they have a lot of coastline to patrol (given that Malaysia is a peninsular country). So, my question for this group is: if you were the head of the Malaysian Navy, and someone handed you two Scorpenes, what would you use them for?
To answer my own question:
The first thing I would do is contact my counterpart in Singapore and try to work out some kind of joint operating procedure. Singapore has four submarines and is working on acquiring four more. Two submarines on their own may not be very effective, but a ten submarine fleet can probably deny a fair bit of area.
The most obvious answer is that two submarines gives you one to prowl the Straits of Malacca and one spare. That's not easy water to hunt subs in, and an absurd proportion of merchant traffic flows through it.
Wouldn't that leave Malaysia in the weird position of being able to use the subs to attack major powers (i.e. cut off shipping to Japan or China) but not be able to use them in defence?
Possibility 1: use them as a fleet in being to make sure China doesn't consider invading you without ASW assets. Or Japan, or the Phillipines. You don't necessarily have to win a war, just make it appear too expensive to be worth fighting.
Possibility 2: blockade some of the disputed South China sea islands in the event of war.
There's always the boring answer: figure out how to run logistics for a submarine force, train your staff, train submariners, build a cadre, figure out the design improvements you want, so that in ten years you have the option to have a 10-sub force.
@David W
That's something that the article points out, actually. It's not actually clear that Malaysia has enough trained submariners to even operate the two Scorpenes that it's acquiring, so it's likely that one of them will be used as a training vessel.
Point of interest: Malaysia isn't buying two Scorpenes. They have two Scorpenes, first bought in 2002 and delivered in 2009 and 2010. The question is what to do with them. And I'm not quite sure what the answer is, although there are several options which mean it isn't totally stupid.
@bean
Oh, you're right. I missed that bit in the article. The article is actually about a defense white-paper that attempts to answer the question I posed above: "Well, now that we have these submarines, what should we do with them?"