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Name That Plane
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USS Norfolk- A post war ASW dead end.
After suffering dreadful losses in the North Atlantic, Bay of Biscay, and Gulf of Mexico in 1942 and 1943, the U-Boat arm of the German Kreigsmarine sought to field a submarine that was technically much more advanced than the Type VIIc. Eventually this resulted in the Type XXI submarine, with much greater battery capacity, a hull optimized for speed underwater, and much improved sensors. Technical and production issues meant that Nazi Germany was able to build 118 before the war ended, yet only four were actually ready for service. After the surrender, under the terms of the Potsdam agreement, the US, France, Britain and the Soviet Union all received examples of the Type XXI.
The Type XXI would greatly influence the US conversion of its Gato-class fleet boats to GUPPY configuration. Even more importantly, it showed that the WWII approach to ASW would likely be ineffective in the future. The US Navy had to presume that any future Soviet submarine designs would benefit from the Type XXI design (and boy did they).
The slow escort carriers and destroyer escorts of the Battle of the Atlantic, able to cope with submarines with a submerged speed of 3-5 knots would be hard pressed to defeat submarines with a submerged speed of up to 20 knots. Where a plane or destroyer escort that forced a Type VIIc to submerge effectively removed it from the fight, a Type XXI based submarine might easily evade the short ranged sensors of the day, and continue to press its attack, and even submerged, outrun the destroyer escort.
The US Navy, seeing the threat fast submarines posed to carrier task forces, gave considerable thought to what would be needed to counter such a threat. Various technical and operational imperatives drove the design of a ship specifically intended to counter fast submarines. First, the range of the sonar needed to be greatly improved. Long range sonar means lower frequency sonar, which in turn means a much larger sonar transducer (and its associated sonar dome). Further, the deeper such a transducer is submerged, the better it performs. Both those considerations called for a significantly larger escort than the destroyer escorts, or even the fleet destroyers of World War II. The high speed of the Type XXI and its derivatives also called for a very fast escort, one that could maintain high speeds even in a high sea state. This again called for a larger ship.
While the primary mission of this hypothetical escort would be anti-submarine warfare, it would also need to be able to contribute to the air defense of the task force. Here though, it’s primary “weapon” would be its ability to act as a fighter director. This called for an extensive radar suite, and a spacious Combat Information Center. Again, that requirement argued for a larger ship. Since a task force’s primary anti-ship weapon was seen as the aircraft of the task force, the escort would not need a major caliber gun system. Instead, its guns would serve as its secondary anti-aircraft weapons. But it needed a high rate of fire, which meant several mounts of a high rate of fire gun, in this case, the 3”/70 twin mount. Again, multiple mounts drove the size up.
Given that the Navy had several hundred ships in reserve after World War II, finding the money to build new ones was very much a challenge. Still, the Navy begged enough money from Congress to lay down a prototype of the new anti-submarine hunter. Originally designated the CLK-1 (Cruiser, Hunter-Killer), while she was cruiser sized, she was built to destroyer standards for cost reasons, and was soon redesignated DL-1, for Destroyer Leader. Christened the USS Norfolk, and commissioned in 1953, she was less than a resounding success.
She was a big ship, some 540’ long, and displacing 5600 tons. Her 3”/70 mounts weren’t ready when she was commissioned, so her first battery was the regular 3”/50 guns. Later, when the 3”/70s were installed, they turned out to be maintenance nightmares, and not terribly effective at that. Other weapons included Weapon Alfa, with four mounts for the rocket thrown depth charge. Weapon Alfa likewise was a maintenance hog. Eventually in 1960, the excellent ASROC was added, finally giving the Norfolk an effective ASW standoff weapon able to capitalize on the excellent SQS-23 sonar.
USS Norfolk spent most of her career serving as a test bed for new weapons and systems, and as a laboratory for trying out new techniques and tactics. Her design was clearly far too expensive to build in numbers as a specialized ASW escort.
Nonetheless, she did inspire the follow-on Mitscher (DL-2, latter DDG-35) fast carrier task force escorts, and a series of other large destroyer leader types. Those classes had a primary focus on anti-air warfare, but still retained a significant ASW capability. The Navy was never able to afford as many of these large, fast escorts as it needed, but these later classes would serve as the linchpin of a task force screen until their replacement by the Ticonderoga class Aegis cruisers in the early 1980s.
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Troop Transport
A couple years ago, we discussed the difference between troopships and Attack Transports. Briefly, Attack Transports were designed to move a unit, typically a battalion, its vehicles and equipment, and an initial issue of supplies of ammunition, fuel, rations and such, directly to the site of an amphibious assault, and land them with the Attack Transport’s own embarked landing craft.
Designated APA, there were a couple hundred Attack Transports commissioned during World War II, of various classes. Many were civilian cargo vessels bought into the service and converted to the purpose. Indeed, when they were built, they were partially subsidized by the government with just that possibility in mind. Many others were purpose built from the keel up (though still based on standard commercial designs) to serve as APAs.
While the APAs were invaluable for the hundreds of amphibious assaults during World War II, they were a relatively inefficient means of moving people from the US to the overseas theaters of war. For their size, they carried a small number of troops (typically around 850 to 1100) and were generally fairly slow ships at around 15-18 knots.
Of about 16 million service members in World War II, about half served overseas during the war. And for the most part, they didn’t arrive via amphibious assault. The build up of Army Air Force ground support units in England, the staging of over a million troops in England prior to D-Day, and the huge numbers of logistic troops in England, and later France all called for moving the largest practical number of troops in the least amount of time. And to do that, troopships were used.
Unlike APAs, troopships were almost universally simply the high speed pre-war passenger liners, taken into service and outfitted to carry as many troops as possible. No provision was made for supporting amphibious landings, as they were intended to operate from port to port, embarking and debarking in friendly territory.
One such liner pressed into service as a troopship (designated AP) was the USS Wakefield. Launched as the SS Manhattan in 1931, she was among the first US built fast, large ocean liners. Just before the war, she was taken in hand by the Navy and with a minimal conversion, served as a troop transport. Her first real mission was actually to transport British troops. A mission to move British troops to Capetown, South Africa was diverted to Singapore to reinforce the British garrison there. War in the Pacific broke out before she arrived. While fueling for the return voyage, a Japanese raid on the harbor resulted in a bomb gutting her sickbay, but not otherwise compromising her ability to sail. She quickly fled to make repairs elsewhere, and begin the job of moving US troops.
Later in 1942, returning to New York after a voyage to England, she suffered an on board fire the gutted virtually the entire ship. It took 18 months to repair her and return her to service. In the process, she was almost completely rebuilt, with the entire ship above the main deck being newly built.
On fire, and as a gutted hulk grounded off Halifax.
Placed back into service in 1944, she would serve two more years, moving about 110,000 troops overseas, and eventually helping to return many of them as well before being decommissioned in 1946.
For many soldiers, the troopship experience was a rather miserable one. They were extremely crowded. As a liner, the SS Manhattan typically carried about 1200 passengers. As a troopship, USS Wakefield carried 6000-8000 troops. Galley services were limited, so troops were only fed twice a day (the crew, however, were still fed the normal three times a day). Water and space for washing was limited, though the Wakefield was far better than most. She had a supply of fresh water for troops. Most troopships only had saltwater for washing and laundry. Freshwater on those ships was strictly for drinking and cooking.
Fast ships such as the USS Wakefield often sailed without escort. With a sustained speed of over 20 knots, it was virtually impossible for any U-boat to intercept her. Submerged U-boats would be left far behind. Any surfaced U-boat would find itself outgunned by the Wakefield’s respectable armament of four 5”/38 guns and four 3”/50 guns.
The USS Wakefield and a great number of other transports, as well as amphibious shipping and innumerable landing craft, while US Navy ships and craft, were manned by the US Coast Guard. With the Coast Guard placed under the Department of the Navy during World War II, the Coasties, in addition to fulfilling their peacetime missions, provided tens of thousands of personnel to crew a huge number of ships, freeing US Navy sailors for other missions.
Grab a cup of coffee, and spend about 20 minutes aboard the Wakefield.
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Palm Springs Air Museum
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Iskandar-M
It’s interesting that the US and Russia, with very different defense requirements and threat scenarios, often end up fielding weapons that, while not mirror images, are at least quite analogous to one another.
When the Army fielded the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS), soon after fielded ATACMS*, in which instead of a pod of six rockets, one pod would carry one large long range Army Tactical Missile System guided semi-ballistic missile.
ATACMS (“Attack ‘ems!”) was first used in Desert Storm to neutralized an Iraqi surface to air missile site.
The Russians, never slouches in the artillery and tactical missile fields, have two different platforms. They field the Smerch as the counterpart to our MLRS. And they field the 9K720 Iskandar-M short range tactical ballistic missile in place of ATACMS.
Iskandar has a somewhat longer range, around 500km versus 300km for ATACMS. ATACMS has either a cluster bomblet warhead or a single 500lb warhead, where Iskandar has cluster bomblet, unitary or possibly a nuclear payload, and somewhat larger at that, at around 2000lb.
Both weapons, while flying a semi-ballistic path, are guided throughout the flight, rather than being true ballistic weapons. Inertial navigation with satellite updates (that’s GPS or its Russian cousin GLONASS) gives them excellent accuracy.
Typical targets would be air defense sites, airfields, command and control centers, logistics centers or other similar high value targets. There are unconfirmed reports that Russia employed Iskandar against a tank depot during its brief war with Georgia over South Ossetia in 2008. The Dutch government concluded that a Dutch national present as a reporter was killed by a fragment from one in the vicinity of Gori.
One reason the US and its NATO allies are concerned about Iskandar-M is that it can reach deep into Western European territories when launched from within Russia. When the US reached an agreement with Poland to install ground based ballistic missile defense on Polish territory, Russia responded by announcing it would station Iskandar launch brigades in the Kalinangrad district, within range of the proposed US installations. When the US dumped the proposal, the Russians decreed they would not deploy to Kaliningrad. Until eventually they did anyway.
But the real concern is that the Russians have used the launcher vehicle and associated control systems to test and field a new ground launched cruise missile. The missile in question, the R-500, has a reported range of 2000km. That puts Russia in direct violation of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987. Of course, in the face of a blatant violation of the treaty, the entirety of the Obama administration’s response was to send a mildly worded letter.
Deep strike missiles such as the ATACMS and Iskandar are a quick response, precise alternative to airstrikes. But they require significant intelligence collection and dissemination to support targeting, and very close coordination with air assets to deconflict airspace.
*After a very protracted development that saw several different names and configurations.
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Platypus
We’re busy visiting the Palm Springs Air Museum today with family, so here’s the Su-34 strike bomber.
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Tastes great. Less filling.
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Speaking of Frigate type missions
And juuuuuust after I posted that if you have frigate type missions, you end up having to use some sort of ship to perform them, CDR Salamander shows up in my feed with SecNav Ray Mabus waving his magic wand and suddenly taking a ship that Navy spend a decade shouting “it’s not a frigate!” and magically transforming it.
U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Thursday said the Navy would rename the modified Littoral Combat Ships it plans to build as frigates, given their enhanced capabilities.
Words have meaning, but mere words are not reality itself.
It. Is. To. Weep.
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ROK to be integrated in 2ID Headquarters
About 30 officers from the South Korean army will become part of the 2nd Infantry Division headquarters Thursday as part of a sweeping and unprecedented restructuring of the American headquarters.
The 30 officers, to include a brigadier general, will become part of what officials are calling a combined division stationed in the Republic of Korea. As the division builds its combined structure over the coming months, even more South Korean officers, as well as noncommissioned officers, could be added to the headquarters.
via .
Interesting. I’m not exactly sure how beneficial this is. If the 2ID hasn’t forged a close working relationship with the ROK in the last 60 years, I don’t know how much this will help.
The other interesting issue is 2ID itself. The division headquarters is there, but there is only one BCT of US troops there, and it will be replaced by a rotation of US based BCTs on 9 month tours. How sustainable that will be with other rotational requirements is an open question.
For instance, USARPAC has a new program where rather than sending one battalion to a training exercise with a partner nation, and a different battalion to the next partner nation exercise, instead, one unit will spend approximately 9 months deployed to a series of training events with several different host nations. I’m sure that will be terribly popular with the troops. It was one thing to deploy for a month to the third world and then return to home station. If soldiers wanted continuous 9 month deployments, they’d be sailors.
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The LCS and SSC Survivability Dilemma
Chief Pentagon Weapon Tester Dr. Michael Gilmore remains fundamentally dissatisfied with the survivability of the Navy’s littoral combatant ship (LCS) and its upgraded follow-on, the small surface combatant (SSC). In an emailed statement described in a January 8th Bloomberg article, Dr. Gilmore stated, “Notwithstanding reductions to its susceptibility” compared with the design of the first 32 ships, “the minor modifications to the LCS will not yield a ship that is significantly more survivable.” It remains to be seen, however, how the Navy can improve the other legs of the “survivability triangle” on a hull of 3000 tons displacement and less than 425 feet in length. Small ships have been historically unsurvivable. Modern small warships are not in any way the equivalent of the World War 2 predecessors. Every warship is a compromise in armament, endurance, speed, and survivability. This is especially true of the LCS, as its modular operational profile demands absolute adherence to weight limitations.
via The LCS and SSC Survivability Dilemma.
Rather obviously, small warships are not as survivable as larger warships.
Even worse, the LCS was never intended to be as survivable as previous combatants of similar size, and the upgrades to turn LCS into SSC will do little to ameliorate that fact.
One key difference between WWII small combatants and today’s smaller ships is that in WWII, it was understood that losing significant numbers of destroyers and other ships was simply the cost of doing business. Survivability measures were built in, significantly unit propulsion arrangements, very robust firefighting and dewatering equipment, and eventually extensive emergency electrical power distribution systems. Coupled with damage control training embedded throughout the ships company, these measures allowed many ships to continue to fight while damaged, or to retire from battle for later repair. The ships were not seen as disposable, but rather expendable. That is, reasonable measures were taken to make them as survivable as possible, but the recognition that losses would occur was always there.
Recent major combatant losses and damage are of a sort with previous experience. USS Stark was barely saved after being attacked by Iraqi Exocet missiles. While she was saved, she certainly was in no way capable of continuing her mission. Similarly, the USS Samuel B. Roberts was barely saved after striking a mine in the Persian Gulf. That she was saved at all is very much a testament to her crew. While her radars and missile launcher remained online, she was severely compromised in her ability to conduct her operations.
The USS Princeton, a somewhat larger vessel, was able to withstand the effects of two mines with considerable damage, though her Aegis weapon system was soon available.
The USS Tripoli (LPH-10) similarly struck a mine, but was able to remain on station. It was only fuel contamination for her embarked helicopters that prevented her from continuing operations. Within 30 days, she was able to resume operations. Size matters.
Interestingly, mines, that is, underwater weapons, which compromise the hull of a warship, in all three cases failed to sink their targets.
Contrast that with the British experience in the Falklands War, where bombs and missiles sank several major warships. The conventional thinking to some extent is that missile damage will render a ship a mission kill, but likely not sink it. The experience there suggests a lesson long ago learned- that is, that post impact fires are the greatest threat (see too the damage to Stark). Sheffield was gutted by fires, and the sinking of her hulk likely merely saved the Royal Navy from towing her all the way home only to be scrapped.
To return to the LCS, the concept of the ship was always that she would never be survivable in the face of a sophisticated threat. That’s not terribly shocking for a ship designed primarily as a mine countermeasure. But when you design a frigate sized ship while retiring your frigate fleet, and still facing frigate type missions, you’ll almost inevitably be forced to use LCS in those same missions, which the ship was not designed to survive.
That’s some sharp thinking there, Navy.
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