Rusty's Naval/Military History thread

[E_T]

Also, you are assuming std loco's with both generating and electric drive motors as well as structurals that allow the torque transfer.  But let's say, a long high car carrier train car, stuffed full of just gas or diesel turbines, a couple of boxcars with just batteries, one to two with electronics and CIC, one with the gun(s), and a few tanker cars for fuel bunkerage and your fairly mobile.

Mount the guns on trucks and add some cables and you can dismount the guns and move them a short distance from the power generation, adding in additional counterfire survivability as well...

[Buster's Uncle]

Scientists explore sunken mini sub near Pearl Harbor
Associated Press
DAN JOLING  December 7, 2016



ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Ocean waters are taking a toll on a sunken mini submarine 5 miles off the entrance to Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese Imperial Navy vessel with a two-man crew — the first casualties of shots fired by U.S. forces in World War II — lies at 1,100 feet. The hull, a host for barnacles and coral, is coming apart in three places.

An underwater remote vehicle operated from the Okeanos Explorer, a ship of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, viewed the sub Wednesday 75 years to the minute after it was struck by a shell from a Navy destroyer, the USS Ward. The location is maintained as a gravesite, said Hans Van Tilburg, a historian with NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

Visiting the site and livestreaming images at the precise moment it was struck raises awareness of the attack on defenses at Oahu, Van Tilburg said.

"The science objectives are what we've been doing for a while now — monitoring the status of what is an extremely historic property," he said.

The Japanese mini subs were 78 feet long and 9 feet, 10 inches high. Batteries supplied power for single 600-horsepower electric motors. They could reach 20 knots. Their only armament was two torpedoes.

Five Japanese subs took part in the attack, according to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

They were transported on the decks of full-size "mother" submarines. They planned to enter the harbor by closely tailing other ships to avoid anti-submarine nets. They were to surface and fire torpedoes at Navy ships during the Japanese aerial attack, then dive and escape.

At least one submarine reached the harbor. The USS Monaghan, a destroyer, spotted the intruder, rammed it and dropped depth charges.

A second sub washed ashore at Bellows Beach on east Oahu. The sub was put on tour to promote the sale of war bonds.

A third mini sub, with torpedoes intact, was found east of Pearl Harbor at Keehi Lagoon. The Navy raised it in 1960. The section containing the torpedoes was dumped at sea. The other two sections were restored and put on display in Japan.

A fourth lies in three pieces several miles from the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The sub had been scuttled with an explosive charge inside the vessel. It could have sunk after firing torpedoes outside the harbor at the USS St. Louis, said James Delgado, director of maritime heritage for the National Marine Sanctuaries program.

It also could have entered Pearl Harbor, fired torpedoes and escaped to West Loch on the west side of Pearl Harbor, Van Tilburg said. An explosion and fire in 1944 in the loch destroyed multiple ships preparing for the invasion of the Mariana Islands. Remains of the mini sub were found where debris from the West Loch Tragedy was dumped, Van Tilburg said. The Navy later raised the mini sub and moved it farther out to sea.

The Ward destroyed the fifth mini sub.

The morning of the attack, just before 4 a.m., as the Ward patrolled outside Pearl Harbor, another Navy vessel spotted a periscope. The Ward began searching, and more than two hours later saw a periscope and part of a conning tower behind a cargo ship, the Antares.

The Ward attacked at 6:53 a.m. A gun crew manned by members of the Minnesota Naval Reserve fired a 4-inch, 50mm shell that penetrated the conning tower and exited through the hull. The submarine flooded and sank.

The skipper of the Ward sent a report of the attack to the Naval Command on Oahu. Roughly an hour later, the devastating Japanese aerial attack began.

Mini subs were built in three sections. Since NOAA's last visit to the site in 2014, the gaps have formed between the sections, cameras revealed Wednesday.

"It's slowly deteriorating over time," Van Tilburg said.

___

Online:

Okeanos Explorer live stream: http://bit.ly/1hSTyQt

https://www.yahoo.com/news/expedition-eyes-sunken-mini-sub-pearl-harbor-anniversary-211844330.html

[Rusty Edge]

I saw this film footage once, so I looked it up. Apparently one of these mini-subs participated in the attack on Battleship row. While it was redundant, it would have effectively put one wagon out of action on it's own.

"In 2009, a research team assembled by PBS Nova positively identified the remains of a midget sub found outside the Pearl Harbor entrance as being the last, No.16, of the 5 Ko-Hyoteki that participated in the December 7, 1941, attack. It was discovered in salvage from the wreckage of the West Loch Disaster of 1944, dumped three miles south of Pearl Harbor. Secret war records show that submarine crews had been ordered to scuttle their subs after the attack and provisions were made to recover stranded crews. It is believed the fifth sub successfully entered Pearl, fired on Battleship Row, and escaped to the relative quiet of neighboring West Loch, where it was scuttled by the crew. When a series of explosions sank an amphibious fleet being assembled in the Loch in 1944, the remains of the sub were collected and dumped in the subsequent salvage operation, which was kept classified as secret until 1960. The torpedo tubes in the bow section were empty, indicating that the fifth midget had fired its torpedoes prior to being scuttled. A photograph[8] taken from a Japanese plane during the Pearl Harbor attack appears to show a midget submarine inside the harbor firing torpedoes at Battleship Row. This new evidence suggests that the capsizing of the USS Oklahoma may have been accelerated by a torpedo hit from a submarine-launched torpedo, the warhead of which was roughly twice the power of that carried by the air-dropped torpedoes. In the photo, where the torpedoes' paths had supposedly started, were sprays that indicated a midget-submarine rocking up and down due to the force of the torpedo being launched, causing the propellers of the stern to be exposed, kicking up clouds of water spray. A war time report from Admiral Nimitz confirmed the recovery of dud torpedoes of the type employed by the midget submarines.[9] This discovery is covered in PBS Nova television program Killer Subs in Pearl Harbor[10] and companion website, I-16tou.com.[11] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_A_K%C5%8D-hy%C5%8Dteki-class_submarine#Pearl_Harbor_attack

[Buster's Uncle]

Wreck of 16th-Century Spanish Ship Found Off Florida Coast

[Rusty Edge]

Well, the way I remember it, Vera Cruz is in Mexico, which is on the North American plate, therefore part of North America. If an expedition is originating in Vera Cruz ( Vera Cruz must already be established ), starting a new settlement in Pensacola or St. Augustine would not be the first European settlement in North America.

Vera Cruz is where the Spanish loaded the silver from their Mexican mines onto the Treasure Fleet.

[Buster's Uncle]

They must be counting anything in Mexico as part of Central America...

[Rusty Edge]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a25009/chinas-second-aircraft-carrier-shandong/

Here Comes China's First Home-Built Aircraft Carrier
It is called Shandong.

A report in Defense News states China is making steady progress on its second aircraft carrier, the Shandong. Under construction near Shanghai, Shandong is set to be China's first domestically produced aircraft carrier and the first to be combat-ready.
Previously known as Type 001A, the carrier's official name was recently announced on Shandong province television and radio. Shandong is currently under construction at the Dalian shipyards, where the nation's first aircraft carrier, Lioaning, was converted from a rusting, unfinished ex-Soviet Navy hulk to active duty Chinese Navy ship.

In a rundown on Shandong's construction progress, Defense News says "the new carrier is broadly similar to the Liaoning and retains the ski jump for launching aircraft, but contains a revised flight deck arrangement." The article states the superstructure—the island overseeing the flight deck from where flight operations are controlled—has been mated to the hull and the ship should be launched later this year. "Launching" in warship construction is the floating of a partially constructed hull in water. The ship will still require several more years of fitting out before it can be commissioned into military service and considered ready for combat.

Like Liaoning, Shandong will also utilize a STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery) system. Under STOBAR, aircraft are launched taking off from a ramp on the ship's bow. Although China has constructed traditional steam-powered catapults at its naval aviation base, it apparently wants to leapfrog to the latest Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) technology, which is being fitted to the U.S. Navy's new Ford-class carriers.
The short take-off ramp method of launching planes is less than ideal. In order to take off in such a distance without a steam or electromagnetic-powered assist aircraft must keep their takeoff weight down. That, in turn, limits the amount of weapons and fuel they can carry, curtailing their range and combat effectiveness. It also rules out using larger and slower propeller-driven aircraft such as the U.S. Navy's E-2D Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft.
Unlike U.S. Navy carriers, Shandong will likely be limited to an all-fighter fixed wing aircraft force, with early warning and control provided by land-based aircraft. This will ultimately restrict how far the carrier can operate from land-based support.

Shandong will be China's first combat-ready carrier. The first, Liaoning, will probably remain a training ship for future carrier crews. According to Defense News, China's naval aviation base appears to have an EMALS catapult installed. The article also states that an aircraft mock-up with a large rotating rotodome over its fuselage, like the E-2D Hawkeye, has also been sighted. This suggests that the Chinese Navy's future carriers will have both new features, making them increasingly capable versus the U.S. Navy's Nimitz and Ford-class nuclear aircraft carriers.

[Rusty Edge]

http://dawlishchronicles.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/protected-cruisers-in-pre-dreadnought.html

Here's a piece about navies as they were completing the transition from sail to steam in the 1880s.  Mostly the author shares pieces of his research for his series of nautical novels. This one is a guest column.

[Geo]

Always nice to read an article from that age of innovation.
It hightlights how's actually nothing new under the sun with today's naval developments.

[Rusty Edge]

Remember the thread started off with some book reports about PBY Catalinas ?

I came across a newsreel about the black cats. It doesn't give away the tactics and technology, but it does point out that these obsolete aircraft were able to sink a ton of Japanese shipping for every pound of bombs they dropped. That sounds pretty effective to me.

! No longer available

[Geo]

Man, that lookout sure had a windy job. Sticking his head out from his post in front of the plane. Lucky the cats weren't that fast.

I wonder if in the latter days of the war the cats still made bombing runs. Anti-aircraft guns were way more plenty on surface ships then. And the Navy had way more control of the Pacific and better material then as well.

[Lord Avalon]

Remember the thread started off with some book reports about PBY Catalinas ?

I came across a newsreel about the black cats. It doesn't give away the tactics and technology, but it does point out that these obsolete aircraft were able to sink a ton of Japanese shipping for every pound of bombs they dropped. That sounds pretty effective to me.

As far as tactics, it seems they made dive bombing runs, though shallower than a purpose-built dive bomber, I'm sure. To evade & escape enemy fighters they'd fly low, where the black would blend in with the sea. As a long range patrol seaplane, it could undertake long missions, increasing the chances of finding targets.

[Rusty Edge]

Yes, that's right. This thread began with me writing about half a dozen books I'd read about PBYs. Get the details on the 1st page or two.

[Rusty Edge]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinas-frigate-design-looks-awfully-173749966.html

China was showing a new design that looks like an Independence class frigate knock-off at an arms show. If so, it wouldn't be the first Chinese knock-off. We shouldn't be surprised. The article questions why they would want such shallow water ships.  I suspect it indicates an intention to assert dominance over the Spratley islands.

[Geo]

With the current naval abilities of the other South Chinese Sea nations, such a frigate design might be overkill. At least for that area.
I just read a comment that this hull design was also on show last year at IDEX 2016.