Military Naval History: Lessons From the Battle of Jutland

May 31st marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland. There, off the Danish coast, British and German naval forces fought as the Royal Navy sought to bottle up the German battle fleet in the North Sea and the Germans aimed to cripple the Royal Navy. In The World Crisis, Winston Churchill’s eloquent and controversial account of the Great War, the future prime minister describes the transition of the Royal Navy from its peacetime bases in southern England to its war station in Scapa Flow, Orkney:

We may now picture this great fleet with its flotillas of cruisers steaming slowly out of Portland harbor, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought.

More importantly for the officers and men aboard Churchill’s “castles of steel,” the two greatest fleets ever assembled were unknowingly steaming toward the only fleet action between dreadnought battleships.

Over eight thousand men died, many entombed in ten or twenty thousand-ton sunken steel coffins. Both Imperial Germany and the United Kingdom immediately claimed victory in the clash, but the Battle of Jutland more closely resembled a draw. Recriminations flew between high-ranking British officers for decades afterwards, which, combined with the carnage of the continental war, obscured Jutland’s valuable lessons.

A century later, as the United States allows its power to wane while its rivals strengthen, this great naval clash provides insight in three areas: strategy, technology and fleet design, and command. Applying these insights to modern strategy will help the U.S. Navy navigate an environment that is not only volatile, but could easily create multiple high-level conflict situations.

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Military History: The Amazing Legacy of Military Aviation Legend Chuck Meyers

Chuck Myers Was a ‘Fighter Mafia’ Legend

He helped pioneer nimble air-superiority fighters, the A-10 Warthog and played a pivotol role in bringing back the battleship

Charles E. “Chuck” Myers, a valued and colorful member of the military reform movement and “Fighter Mafia” co-conspirator, died on May 9 at the age of 91. He devoted his life to serving his country, both in and out of uniform. He played an active role in developing many of the tactical aircraft that still serve as the backbone of the fleet: the F-16, F-18 and A-10.

Many of his innovative ideas will continue to be incorporated into future aircraft, guaranteeing his influence will endure for generations.

Chuck Myers was born on March 21, 1925 near Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia, foreshadowing a life devoted to aviation. He grew up in Philipsburg, New Jersey where he excelled at sports and dreamed of flying planes. In his senior year, he led his football team, the “Gridders,” as quarterback to an undefeated season.

His military service began shortly after he turned 18, when he joined the Army Air Forces during World War II. He became a B-25 pilot — at 19, one of the youngest during the war — and flew low-level attack missions to destroy Japanese shipping in the Pacific with the 345th Bomb Group as part of the Fifth Air Force.

Myers left the Army Air Forces in October 1945 to study engineering at Lafayette College. While in college, he continued to fly with an Air Force reserve unit based in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated in 1949 with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Because he viewed the prospect of an engineering career as boring, following graduation, he joined the Navy. Despite his extensive flying experience, he had to learn how to fly all over again, the Navy way.

He qualified as a jet pilot and served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bon Homme Richard, flying F9F Panther jets during the Korean War in missions designed to interdict supply routes.

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Military Defense News: New Boomer Submarine Set to go to Sea in 2030?

Wow…14 years is a LONG time to build ONE missile boat. Maybe we should pick up the pace a tad considering the state of affairs right now with Russia and China? Just Sayin…-SF

General Dynamics’ storied Electric Boat division is set to deliver its detailed design proposal for the new Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) ballistic missile submarine to the U.S. Navy this Friday. That will kick off a series of events, which will culminate with Electric Boat signing a contract to design and build the new “boomer” in the fall after a Milestone B review in August.

That’s assuming the Congress manages to pass the fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget.

With construction of the new ballistic missile submarine set to begin in fiscal year 2021, the goal is to deliver the first boat in time to conduct its first deterrence patrol in October 2030. Unlike with the Virginia-class attack submarine, Electric Boat will be the sole prime contractor and will be responsible for delivering all 12 ORP boats to the Navy.

However, while Electric Boat will be responsible for 80 percent of the work on the ORP, Huntington Ingalls Newport News — the only other shipyard capable of building a nuclear submarine — is heavily involved in the design and build phase. Newport News has a total responsibility for about 20 percent of the boat’s design and construction — about 300 of the company’s engineers are working with Electric Boat to design the new submarine.

Dividing up the work in this manner will help to preserve the nation’s critical nuclear submarine engineering and manufacturing skills. The Navy expects the new arrangement to drive down the learning curve for the new boomer and reduce costs by having only one prime contractor.

“The decision here was to facilitize Electric Boat and have EB do all 12 deliveries of the Ohio Replacement, put down one learning curve over 12 ships,” Capt. David Goggins, Naval Sea Systems Command program manager for the ORP, told an audience at the Navy League’s Sea, Air and Space symposium on May 17.

In an attempt to minimize costs, the Navy drew upon as much technology from the Virginia-class as possible. However, there are some major differences between the two designs — especially towards the stern of the vessel. The ORP is designed to have greatly improved survivability. The Navy emphasized stealth and survivability because of the boat’s critical nuclear deterrence mission — the ORP has to be survivable through 2080 in order to guarantee America’s nuclear deterrence, Goggins said.

Even though the detail design phase has yet to start, work on many critical aspects of the program have already started. Electric Boat will complete the submarine’s common missile compartment (CMC) arrangements before the end of this year. “We’ll start our prototyping of the missile compartment this year, this summer,” Goggins said.

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U.S Naval Military History: The First Submarine Ever Built

The Connecticut River Museum in Essex holds a fully-functional replica of the “Turtle,” the first American submarine ever built.

Little-known fact: the first submarine and underwater time bomb were created during the American Revolution–before electricity, and before Jules Verne.  

It was 100% human-operated (no engines just hand cranks and foot pedals) and used phosphorescent moss as the interior light source because a candle would use up too much of the available oxygen. Even though the “Turtle” failed to complete its few missions and its inventor always felt that he was a failure for it, he is often credited with being the Father of Submarine Warfare.

The son of a Connecticut farmer, David Bushnell was a brilliant man who had to delay going to college until he was 31 years old. While he was studying at Yale, he proved that gunpowder could be exploded underwater and also created a timing device to allow for delayed detonation–the first underwater time bomb.

His last year at Yale coincided with the beginnings of the American Revolution.  The university temporarily closed due to the impending crisis of war, but Bushnell knew he could use an underwater explosive to help his fellow patriots fight the superior British military power if only he could find a way to deliver it to the target.  He knew the machine had to be able to be completely submerged for at least a short amount of time to avoid detection and be maneuvered in the water.

His design is simple and efficient: a small barrel-like vessel, almost like two turtle shells glued together with simple pedal powered propellers. It had to be able to deliver the underwater time bomb, attach it to the target ship’s hull,  and then retreat before the bomb detonated, all before the pilot ran out of oxygen and had to surface.

The Connecticut River Museum has both a cut away display that you can sit in and feel what it was actually like to be inside the Turtle and a full scale replica that was hand made for the 1976 bicentennial. They tested the machine in a nearby harbor, and it is said to have worked beautifully.

Read the Original Article at Atlas Obscura

Military Naval History: The Last Battle of CPO 1st Class George Palmer Saunders

 

Offshore where sea and skyline blend
In rain, the daylight dies;
The sullen, shouldering swells attend
Night and our sacrifice

— The Destroyers, by Rudyard Kipling

In 1988 I was invited to give a lecture on AIDS and surgery in the city of Örebro, Sweden. I knew that my grandfather, Chief Petty Officer 1st Class George Palmer Saunders, had been buried in the Norwegian city of Egersund soon after his body washed ashore following the Battle of Jutland that raged between May 31 and June 1, 1916.

After the meeting, I took a few days off and flew to Norway to find his grave. I eventually landed in Stavenger on the southwest coast, rented a car and drove for about three hours through beautiful countryside to Egersund.

It was a Sunday morning. I made inquiries and was directed to a church. Fortunately, the deacon was working in the graveyard and spoke excellent English. When I explained the situation, he asked my grandfather’s name.

When I replied, “Saunders,” he lit up and said, “G.P.”

He took me straight to the grave. Standing with a skullcap, I found myself in the curious position of reciting Kaddish over a grave bearing a cross 72 years after his death in the frigid waters of the North Sea.

Who was he? No member of my generation seems to know much about him. He was born on Oct. 20, 1876 and lived in Wandsworth in southwest London. Information obtained by my cousin Peggy Adam indicates that he held the rank of “boy 2nd class” in the Royal Navy in 1892, at the age of 16.

My mother said he had been a hard-hat diver in the Royal Navy during the Boer War from 1899 to 1902. In fact, he held the rating of “diver” in 1897 and remained in the Royal Navy until 1906, when he was discharged as medically unfit.

He married my grandmother Jane Elizabeth Welsh in 1904 at the St. Thomas a Becket Catholic Church in Wandsworth.

My grandfather re-enlisted after the 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand by the Bosnian nationalist Gavrilo Principe in Sarajavo — the spark that ignited World War I.

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