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Orion/Delta IV Launch, up close
Edited headline to replace SLS with the correct launch vehicle, Delta IV.
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One Hundred Years Ago, Royal Navy Revenge at the Falklands
On the morning of 8 December 1914 just before 0800, British Vice-Admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee received word that the German ships he had been searching for had appeared in the frigid South Atlantic waters off Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. The day before, Sturdee had arrived from England with reinforcements for the remnants of a British cruiser force that had been shattered in the first defeat the Royal Navy had suffered in a century.
Five weeks earlier, Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee’s Südsee-Geschwader, consisting of the powerful armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, along with cruisers Nürnberg, Leipzig, and Dresden, had routed Rear Admiral Cradock’s undergunned and outmanned cruiser squadron at Coronel, off the coast of Chile. Cradock went down with his flagship Good Hope (which sank with all hands) when, pounded to a wreck by Scharnhorst, her forward magazine exploded. Monmouth, Cradock’s other armored cruiser, was also lost with all hands under the fire of Gneisenau and Leipzig.
Sturdee’s reinforcements were battlecruisers Invincible and Inflexible, 20,0o0 ton vessels armed with eight 12-inch guns, capable of 26.5 knots, and the armored cruisers Kent and Cornwall. Along with Glasgow and the elderly pre-dreadnought Canopus, Sturdee held a decisive advantage in both gun power and speed over his adversary. Von Spee was entirely unaware of the presence of the British capital ships, which held a 6-knot speed advantage over Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, both of which were badly in need of overhaul and a hull-scraping. Spee’s sixteen 8.2-inch guns were more than a match for Cradock’s armored cruisers, but were entirely outmatched by the heavier British batteries of Inflexible and Invincible.
The opening salvoes were fired by Canopus, masked by the landmass of Sapper Hill. Unaware as of yet of the presence of two battlecruisers, Spee canceled the planned bombardment, still believing he could disengage and outrun the British cruisers and the elderly battleship. It was not until near mid-day that horrified German lookouts spotted the distinctive fighting tops of the British capital units. In a running fight that the German vessels had little chance of escaping, Scharnhorst succumbed to her wounds and rolled over at 1615. Gneisenau would fight gamely on until the last of her guns were destroyed, and at 1800 she was ordered scuttled by her captain. Admiral Graf von Spee was not among the 190 survivors plucked from the icy waters.
The battle had some final acts to play out. Kent sank Nürnberg at 1930, and in the darkening seas Glasgow and Cornwall hunted down and sank Leipzig. Only Dresden of Spee’s Südsee-Geshwader escaped, to be sunk in March of 1915. (Among Dresden’s officers was a young Oberleutnant-zur-see named Wilhelm Canaris, who would go on to famed service in the next war.)
The Battle of the Falklands cost the Imperial German Navy the lives of more than 1,800 sailors. British losses were ten killed and 19 wounded. While the victory of Sturdee’s squadron was complete, and avenged Cradock at Coronel, some unflattering issues revealed themselves. The primary was that British gunnery left much to be desired. The sinking of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau took more than five hours, and 1,174 rounds of 12-inch ammunition from the battlecruisers. Even considering Sturdee’s prudent tactics of fighting at or beyond the range of the guns of his opponent, his capital units expended more than half of their ammunition to score fewer than thirty hits on the two German cruisers. British gunnery shortcomings, the skill and bravery of their German opponents, and the toughness of the German ships, would manifest themselves at Jutland eighteen months later.
In one of history’s ironies, Admiral Graf von Spee’s namesake panzerschiff, KMS Graf Spee, would meet its end almost exactly 25 years later, in December of 1939 in the waters of the South Atlantic once again. She was scuttled because it was rumored that she was awaited outside Montevideo by British dreadnoughts.
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Hornet Ball-Down Under Edition
We’ve always known the Royal Australian Air Force has operated the F/A-18 Hornet and lately the SuperHornet. What we didn’t know was they emulated the US Navy’s tradition of hosting the Hornet Ball, complete to hooah video. Well, they do, and it’s awesome!
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Battleship!
I happened to stumble across this US Navy video from 1988 chronicling the reactivation of the USS Missouri and her Iowa class sister ships.
Shortly after Desert Storm, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and consequently the Soviet fleet, the manpower costs associated with the battleships led to their inactivation. The hazards and logistical issues with their bagged powder guns likely played a part as well.
Let’s back up a moment and discuss the role of the battleship in World War II. The common wisdom is that the defeat of the Pacific Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor sounded the death knell of the battleship, and heralded the rise of the carrier as the primary capital ship of the fleet. The battleship was relegated to shore bombardment. That’s only partly true.
The US battleship fleet in World War II consisted of two distinct types of ships. The older “standard” slower battleships built before the Washington Naval Treaty, and the later, post-treaty “fast battleships” of which the Iowa class was the third and final batch.
Some of the old battleships were used early in the war in the Atlantic to escort convoys, as the threat of German surface raiders was seen as potentially as devastating as the U-boat threat. As fast battleships became available, they too served in the Atlantic. As the threat of German surface raiders declined, the fast battleships were transferred to the Pacific Fleet where they were integrated with the then nebulous Fast Carrier Task Force. The slow battlewagons increasingly became the experts on shore bombardment.
The fast battleships, the North Carolinas (2 ships in class), the South Dakotas (4 ships in class) and the Iowas (4 ships in class) did tend to provide a massive anti-aircraft screen to the carrier task force.
But their role was more than that. It is important to remember that the carrier had only the most limited ability to attack at night or in foul weather. The battleships still maintained a critical anti-ship warfare mission, one that they would execute, perhaps not as often or as decisively as pre-war doctrine envisioned, but more than popular history seems to recall.
And while the reactivated Iowa class was used almost exclusively in the shore bombardment role (via either their guns or as Tomahawk missile launchers), the impetus for reactivating them was as the nucleus of powerful Surface Action Groups to face off against Soviet surface fleets.
The Iowas are now but museum pieces, and never again will we see their like upon the waves. But my, what a sight to see one with a bone in her teeth.
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Orion wasn’t the only major rocket launch this week.
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Have We Just Glimpsed China’s Vision of Future Aircraft Carrier Designs? | Andrew S. Erickson
A high-caliber model manufacturer may just have provided a unique glimpse into the Chinese vision of aircraft carriers to come. To stimulate discussion in China-watching circles, it is useful to assess the commercial enterprise’s three new indigenous carrier models critically and consider their possible significance before watching for other indicators of how things will ultimately unfold in reality. At very least, this offers a great solution for last-minute holiday gift shopping.
The dimensions and specifications of China’s first aircraft carrier CV16 (Liaoning) are well-known. Based on the Russian Project 11436 hull Varyag, it was long visible under refitting in Dalian Naval Shipyard before finally going to sea in 2011.
Now Jinshuai Model Crafts, based in Zhanjiang City, Jiashan District, is displaying models of putative hulls 17, 18, and 19 on its website and catalogs. These models provide clues to a vital question: what direction will China’s domestic aircraft carrier design and production take? In short, the models suggest: China will progress as quickly as possible to a large nuclear-powered design, similar to a Nimitz- or Ford-class hull with Chinese characteristics, and let deck aviation capabilities grow into the gargantuan new platform as they become able to do so.
via Have We Just Glimpsed China’s Vision of Future Aircraft Carrier Designs? | Andrew S. Erickson.
Divining just what the Chinese intend to do in terms of future shipbuilding is a challenging task, especially for me, as I can’t read the source materials.
China has a very robust shipbuilding industry. Actually building the hulls for a Ford sized ship should not pose an insurmountable problem for them.
But as Erickson notes, the real challenge will be in providing a suitable powerplant.
The twin A1B nuclear powerplants of our own Ford class carriers are the end product of well over sixty years of maritime nuclear powerplant design. The Chinese have some experience with building seagoing nuclear power, but nothing like our own.
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New Winter Gear Will Soon Be Issued To Soldiers, Banned
THE PENTAGON — Gore-Tex. Poly-Pro. Snivel Gear. These older systems will soon take a back seat to the Army’s newest cold-weather protection system, sources tell Duffel Blog.
The new kid on the block in terms of preserving soldiers’ body heat is known as PolarTec, which will be ready for mass fielding by the fall of 2015, ushering in a new age of comfort and defense from harsh weather conditions that will be immediately banned by every command sergeant major and field grade officer on the planet.
via New Winter Gear Will Soon Be Issued To Soldiers, Banned.
H/T: Craig
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Pearl Harbor
Just before Morning Colors aboard the ships of the US Pacific Fleet, a massive wave of Japanese carrier borne fighters, dive bombers, horizontal bombers, and torpedo bombers struck heart of the fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the airfields and other installations across the island of Oahu.
A spoiling attack to deny the US the ability to stop Japanese thrusts in the western Pacific, it was one of the most one sided victories in naval history.
- USS Arizona- sunk, with terrible loss of life
- USS Oklahoma- sunk
- USS West Virginia- sunk
- USS California- sunk
- USS Nevada- damaged and beached
- USS Tennessee- damaged
- USS Maryland- damaged
- USS Pennsylvania- damaged
- USS Utah- sunk
- USS Helena- damaged
- USS Raleigh- damaged
- USS Honolulu- damaged
- USS Cassin- effectively destroyed
- USS Downes- effectively destroyed
- USS Shaw- damaged
- USS Oglala- damaged
- USS Vestal- damaged
- USS Curtis- damaged
The US had a combined Army, Navy and Marine strength of approximately 390 aircraft on the island that day. Of these, 188 were destroyed, and a further 159 damaged.
Two thousand, four hundred and three Americans were killed the attack, and one thousand, one hundred seventy eight wounded.
The Japanese lost 29 planes, five midget subs, and 65 men.
It was a stunning tactical victory. It was a massive strategic blunder.
Nothing could be more guaranteed to cause the American people to shed their natural isolationist inclination, and steel themselves for the hard fighting ahead in the Pacific.
Rommel once said that the Americans knew less of war than anyone, but learned faster than everyone. Nowhere was that more true than in the US Navy in the Pacific.
The heart of the fleet lay bleeding black oil on the floor of the harbor. But of the ships lost that day, only USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, and USS Utah were total losses. The others would be refloated or repaired, refurbished, and all would fight their way west.
The fleet on December 7, 1941 was a sleepy peacetime force. But the survivors of that ghastly attack learned their lessons well. They would become the core of the professionals who would lead drafted landlubbers to form the mightiest host ever to sail the waves, leading to victory in Tokyo Bay.
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First Operational MQ-8C FireScout Delivered
The US Navy has been developing the MQ-8 series of Vertical Take-off Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for over a decade now. In fact, for years now, they’ve quietly been deploying them aboard frigates deployed overseas.
The original operational FireScout is based on the Schweitzer 330SP helicopter. It carries sensors that are datalinked back to the launching ship. The actual flying is done autonomously by the on board autopilot.
Getting rid of the human crew increases the available payload for the aircraft. And in the case of the MQ-8, much of that increased payload capability goes to carrying extra fuel, allowing it to stay on station for extended periods of time.
The hard part of the development program was the autonomous flight controls, the datalink, and developing shipboard handling, landing, and take off techniques. Soon after it became operational, it struck the Navy that a larger airframe would be relatively easy to develop, and would give even greater endurance and the ability to carry a more extensive sensor suite as well as potentially carry weapons. And so the Bell 407 was adapted, becoming the MQ-8C. Totally different airframe, and yet it still carries a designation that implies a minor change. In some ways, that’s a ruse to avoid too much Congressional curiosity, but in others, it is simply a recognition that the heart of the program isn’t the airframe, but the computers and software that enable the airframe to fly.
We were initially a little skeptical of the MQ-8C. But the ability to loiter on station for hours on end is nothing to sneeze at. You can monitor one item of interest for extended periods. Or you can sweep a goodly swath of ocean. The MQ-8C has an endurance of up to fourteen hours. That’s 10 or 11 hours longer than a manned equivalent.
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Airbus Formation Flying
I’m a Boeing fan, but I’m not an Airbus hater. And there’s no denying this is some pretty spectacular photography, as well as an interesting look into the making of the video.
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