The Navy Thread

Yeah, even if this thing hits a sea-skimming LRASM inside its effective range and somehow manages to stop the wreckage's momentum from careening into the ship, having 1,000 lb of Octol going off at that distance is still going to mess with your vibes. There's a reason why surface combatants are increasingly switching to missiles like the RIM-116 for point defence (the PLAN has its own HQ-10).

Also, consider that the threats that Chinese point defenses have to contend with may include hypersonic missiles such as the Standard, which the Navy confirmed a year or two back was capable of engaging surface targets (though I honestly don't know if the missile can engage targets while pushing Mach 3 or if it trades velocity for range).

An AEGIS ship equipped with such dual-purpose Standard batteries would be able to put out an impressive amount of missile spam depending on how concerned they are about saving ammo.

Edited by AFP on May 27th 2021 at 5:07:53 AM

(Cross-posted from the Sky-high aviation thread)

Just finished reading "An Honorable Place in American Air Power": Civil Air Patrol Coastal Patrol Operations, 1942–1943, by Colonel Frank Blazich, Jr., Ph D. The book is available as a free PDF download, though I was able to request a free paperback copy due to being in CAP (active/retired military, libraries, research centers, and DOD personnel can also request free paperback copies of Air University books).

The book goes into the Coastal Patrol, CAP's first big mission during WWII, performing aerial patrols in hopes of deterring German U-Boat attacks on merchant shipping. He talks about how CAP was formed and organized, its kind of complicated relationship with the Army and Navy and Office of Civil Defense, various hurdles they faced, and how it all fed into CAP's current status as a civilian auxiliary of the US Air Force and how CAP might serve in future conflicts.

Dr. Blazich, in addition to his day job working at the Smithsonian, is a Historian in the Civil Air Patrol, formerly the National Historian and currently the director of the Colonel Louisa S. Morse Center for Civil Air Patrol History.

Cross-posting from the Military Thread.

Okay, so I came across this video:

Now, while I already knew that there were MANY problems with the Mark 14 torpedo...I didn't know it was this bad. I certainly didn't know about the part where manuals were classified.

I listened to this vid while doing some housework and several times I found myself laughing so hard by the sheer black comedy of all this.

Adding to my tsundoku list: War in the Shallows: US Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, 1965-1968

The Iranian support ship Kharg has caught fire and sunk off the coast of Jask.

No casualties but nobody knows how either. Kharg is/was the largest vessel by tonnage in the entire Iranian navy.

So I was looking around at all the proposed conversions from the Iowa class in the 50s, from battle-carriers, to guided missile battleships... as people wanted to keep them but generaly did not know how to make them usefull... and something really stuck out to me.

Almost all the half conversions that kept the guns, IE: The battle carriers, or the Rear Only guided missile conversions.... They all drop the Middle Barrel from the front turrets as well, converting the guns from 3x3 to 2x2.

I can understand dropping the aft turret in those conversions, hell you kind of have too for the space, but why not keep a 2x3 layout in them, why did the designers hate the middle gun barrel so much that they would submit proposals where it was just... ripped out, like not even a new turret just taking the middle barrel out and armoring over the hole that it left behind.

Because you know what else had three parts? The word "Red". Checkmate, pinko.

My guess would be that, given the limited range of the guns compared to missiles and aircraft, they figured it was worth it to just save the weight by removing two additional guns. There may have been additional potential for weight savings by cutting down on magazine space reserved for the forward guns, freeing up tonnage to support whatever other things they wanted the B Bs to do (fuel for aircraft, additional missiles, ice cream machines, whatever)

I didnt know if just removing a gun barrel would save that much weight though, isnt most of it in the turret its self, as in the rotation systems and armor?

I personaly figured maybe it was related to loading? That removing the middle barrel would make loading the guns easier to manage, or the possibility of using the extra space to put in more advanced auto loading machinery and getting a higher fire rate at the end result.

What kinds of missiles are we talking about, again? Terriers?

There was a proposal for Polaris, and one for Regulus, backed up by an array of single arm Tartar, and double arm Talos.

I do think Terriers were on one of the earlier designs.

Edited by Imca on Jun 5th 2021 at 3:46:43 AM

Okay, I don't know a lot about the Regulus, but Polaris? I mean, sure, there were a lot of weird trial balloons floated in the '50s, but just because someone put an idea into drawing once doesn't mean that— OH MY GOD

This was the 50s, people were still operational under the assumption that nukes could be used as a theater based weapon rather then a world killer.

And a battleship with its excess of space makes a perfect launch platform.

Regulus was a v1 based derivative... also nuclear payload btw, the diffrence in practice was whether you preferred your launches vertical flavored, or to launch them off a catapult like an airplane.

Iowa regulus flavored had the missiles mounted astern with the former float plane hanger and launch systems being converted.

Polaris Flavored mounted them amidship.

Edited by Imca on Jun 7th 2021 at 4:03:06 AM

Want to see what 40,000 pounds of bang going off looks like from a carrier?

No comments section has ever made me want to troll more in my entire life.

Best response from the comments section: Iron sights for firing the main battery.

I mean IIRC you can't really fire directly over the bow any way, not without damaging the decks.

I never actually understood that to be a problem on dreadnought battleships or later, but then it was kind of like an aircraft carrier using its 5 inch guns to engage enemy surface warships. It was hypothetically possible, just hard to conceive of a practical situation where it would come up (IIRC, once ever, at the Battle off Samar). In any practical situation where the BB needs to fire the two forward turrets at an enemy, they're going to just crank the rudder over and let the aft turret join the party.

Edited by AFP on Jun 27th 2021 at 1:24:51 AM

Pretty sure HMS Formidable engaged with her 4.5" guns at one point during the Battle of Cape Matapan.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Jun 26th 2021 at 10:33:06 AM

Random question for my alternate history fic involving a naval pilot.

As a result of several butterfly effects starting from 1900s, the main character, a US naval pilot and one of the very first expert of aircrafts in general, ends up participating in the Battle of Jutland along with the Royal Navy.

Also, HMS Argus gets completed earlier, making Jutland the very first naval battle with aircrafts launched from carrier. So a couple of weeks before the battle, the main character suggests bombarding the German battleships with mustard gas bombs in a sick irony.

The question is, would bombarding a WW 1 battleship with chemical weapons have actually been effective, even if temporarily?

Considering Mustard gas wasn't used at all until a year after Jutland, and the British didn't develop it for themselves until 1918? Probably not.

Edited by Deadbeatloser22 on Jun 27th 2021 at 4:15:12 PM

And obviously US didn't enter the war until much later, nor was Argus actually used in Jutland: timing of particular weapons' invention and deployment are not particularly relevant here.

Edited by dRoy on Jun 28th 2021 at 12:38:04 AM

Probably not, sea winds be mighty and the gas will probably just get blown away by updrafts created by the ship, vented gas from the main guns, strong ocean air currents, or any other number of things.

Gah, sea winds. Good point there.