Rusty's Naval/Military History thread

[Rusty Edge]

American Gun by Chris Kyle

Actually, I like this one better than American Sniper. Chris wasn't laying on the Good 'Ol Boy/Redneck stuff as thick. He was just telling stories in conversational fashion, and I think his head and heart were in a good place when he wrote this.

Each of 10 chapters is devoted to a  particular American firearm and some historical heroic episodes with it -
1) American long rifle
2) Spencer repeater
3) Colt single-action army revolver
4) Winchester 1873 rifle
5) M1903 Springfield
6) M1911 pistol
7) Thompson submachine gun
8 ) M1 Garand
9) .38 Special police revolver
10) M16 rifle

One I found particularly interesting was chapter 9. It tells the tale of an assassination attempt against Harry Truman by a pair of Puerto Rican separatists, one armed with a Luger, the other a Walther. The White House was undergoing a remodel and the president was staying in a hotel across the street. It's the only time a Secret Service agent has died defending a president. Obviously, the Secret Service and the .38 special prevailed.

Strangely, one of the rebel assassins survived the attack and was sentenced to death. Truman chose to commute the sentence to life, rather than make a martyr of him. Carter released him.
I don't understand why. I'll look into it further.

He does stray into discussing other firearms, such as the Sharps carbine, the M-14, other revolvers, etc. That's the nature of a list. Some are left out. It generates discussion. For example, I would have chosen the Browning Automatic Rifle over the 1903 Springfield, myself. Still, it was an informative chapter.

The ten chapters are the strong part, if you decide to read the book, concentrate on that.

[Buster's Uncle]

New York explorers find 1862 shipwreck in Lake Ontario
Reuters  16 hours ago



NEW YORK (Reuters) - A team of shipwreck explorers has discovered a mid-19th century sunken steamship, believed to be the oldest of its kind ever found in Lake Ontario, one of its members said on Tuesday.

Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski found the wreck off the lake's southern shore in upstate New York in August after months of fruitless exploring using a sonar system.

"We were thrilled," said Kennard, a diver and lake shipwreck expert. "It had been a really bad season for us because of wind and waves and then long hours on the lake and finding nothing."

Kennard and his partner first spotted the ship when they passed over it in their own vessel while scanning the lake, which reaches depths of 800 feet (74 meters).

They measured the wreck using sonar and identified it using a database Kennard created of 600 ships that have sunk or been wrecked on Lake Ontario over the past 350 years.

The vessel, measuring 137 feet (42 meters) with a beam of 26 feet (8 meters), was known as the Bay State, according to the database, which used local newspaper articles published at the time.

It was near Oswego, New York in November 1862 during the U.S. Civil War when a violent storm hit, sinking the ship and killing as many as 18 people aboard.

General merchandise aboard and bits of the wooden vessel itself washed ashore in Oswego in the days following, according to the news articles. Locals helped themselves to the goods.

Some 6,000 to 8,000 ships have been wrecked in the Great Lakes, often by being driven ashore, burned in harbors or smashed to pieces. Today, about 200 ships remain in Lake Ontario, which borders Canada to the north.

Over the past four decades, Kennard has found more than 200 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, New York's Finger Lakes and in the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

Only one older propeller-driven steamship is known to have disappeared in Lake Ontario. It has never been found.

So little is known about the steamships that maritime researchers are eager to study the find, Kennard said.

"We're really bringing maritime history to the surface," he said.

The wreck itself, which is considered historic and belongs to the state of New York, will remain in place. Researchers will study images captured by Kennard and Pawlowski.


(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Eric Walsh)

http://news.yahoo.com/york-explorers-1862-shipwreck-lake-ontario-235246396.html?nf=1

[Rusty Edge]

I heard something about this on the radio yesterday, but the news bit was so reduced that I thought it was an anniversary story.

[Rusty Edge]

I've got some more trips scheduled this year, and my computer is acting up. If I should go off of the radar for a while, it doesn't mean anything in particular, but it's very likely.

[Buster's Uncle]

Sunken Treasure Ship Worth Billions Possibly Found After 300 Years

[Rusty Edge]

I saw a news bit about this yesterday. I figure it's a legitimate galleon, based on the glimpse of the guns. The relics appear to be in great shape. Everybody gets greedy. Being a Sid's Pirates! player, I'm particularly interested in a relic of the Spanish Treasure Fleet. Please keep us posted on anything else that comes of this particular wreck, Buncle.

[Rusty Edge]

Remember this? Well the USS Milwaukee had to be towed less than 3 weeks after launch. Engine failure. Not a lot is known at this time, only that a filter was full of metal fragments and it is supposed that these metal fragments were the cause.

I disagree. We used to use a mechanic on the farm who liked to smash old oil filters with a hammer and look inside for material. That would help him diagnose a problem. If metal fragments the type of metal ( chrome steel/brass/ copper/aluminum/ cast iron ) might give him a clue to a failed component. Metal fragments aren't necessarily the cause. Granted, in a new machine there could be contaminants from milling and drilling machines that didn't get cleaned up. Or there could be sabotage. But in a redesigned from scratch ship, there could easily be a an improperly designed part that failed, and the metal fragments are the remnants of it. Removing the fragments and repairing the engines won't keep the problem from repeating if there's an under-designed part.

All of that said, problems are to be expected from a new concept prototype. Not catastrophic engine failure, but problems.


 

Littoral Combat Vessel: The US Navy's Great Re-learning
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/littoral-combat-vessel-the-us-navys-great-relearning-13262

Littoral means close to shore.

This is about the navy trying to find a futuristic replacements for the Perry class frigates, largely used for Anti-Submarine Warfare, but usable as a supplement to the destroyer screens.  Given recent problems with piracy, and the terrorist attack against the USS Cole, and other asymmetrical warfare issues,  they came up with a revolutionary concept from scratch. A light, high speed, shallow draft, stealth vessel.
So, it would be protected from torpedoes and missile launched torpedoes by being mostly out of the water, and radar guided missiles by being stealthy.
It would be automated, with a small 40 man crew. It would be affordable- say 200 and some million $ each. It would be expendable, that is, if it were actually hit it could be abandoned or scrapped.

That makes a certain amount of sense. During WWII the USN used quantities of attack subs, PBY patrol bombers, Patrol Torpedo boats, and carrier based dive bomber much the same way. Quantities of small, expendable weapons working from an advanced island or tender ship. It worked!

Sounds like it's filling a niche, maybe not the ASW category of the ship class it's replacing, but it could have it's uses. Laying mines, landing marines, chasing pirates, drug traffickers  & terrorists, mine sweeping/mine countermeasures.

Well, they incorporated a module concept, to attach equipment to specialize it for a mission- air defense, RC vehicles, Ship to ship combat, carrying marines, etc. Even ASW!

But they were finding that the cost was increasing, and the speed was decreasing with added weight. Well, maybe it should be more durable for that price, and better protect the trained specialists and equipment...best make it more sturdy.  That crew is kind of bare-bones minimal, the loss of a single man, even to illness, could cause a mission to be aborted. Better beef it up from 40 to 50. Of course increasing crew size by 20% will affect those operating cost assumptions upon which the whole program concept was approved, so I doubt that they will be re-visited.

Somewhere along the way the new class became two similar designs of the same concept.
Also the rated sprint speed was reduced from 40 knots to 30.

Although as far as I know, they aren't designed to have tender ships or oiler ships stocked with tools, parts, and machinists the way subs and sea planes were in WWII. YET.



 "Has the U.S. Navy become the Haight-Ashbury of sea power? In a way. Service leaders, it appears, sometimes succumb to the urge to start from zero—dispensing with long-accepted verities. Exhibit A: the newfangled littoral combat ship, or LCS. Ever notice how often you hear about “new” innovations relating to these fledgling surface combatants? This week over at DOD Buzz, for instance, Kris Osborn reports on how USS Fort Worth is “launching a new expeditionary maintenance capability designed to improve the ship’s ability to conduct repairs in transit while on deployment in the Pacific theater.” The world is made new.

Except no. It turns out that Fort Worth is innovating by … carrying spare parts for its machinery. And tools to install those parts! Who’d ’ve thought the crew of a 3,400-ton ship—bigger than a World War II destroyer—could make routine repairs and conduct maintenance without putting into port?"






[/" wise conservatives—the guardians of fixed truths about human competition and war—should turn out in force when radicals maintain that the nature of war has changed, that high-tech wizardry can dispel the fog of war, or what have you. Devil’s advocates should do their damnedest when proponents of gee-whiz technology claim to have been liberated from fundamental principles that rule naval warfare. Naval warfare has not been made anew. No one can start out from zero. That’s the lesson from the littoral combat ship."b]

[vonbach]

The US  Navy would be better off stop spending money on high tech junk and actually build vessels that don't melt when they get hit
because the hulls are made of aluminum.

[Rusty Edge]

The US  Navy would be better off stop spending money on high tech junk and actually build vessels that don't melt when they get hit
because the hulls are made of aluminum.

I have to agree that I'm no fan of aluminum hulls, whether they're Humvees, Bradley protoypes, or ships simply because of the dangers they pose to their crews when hit.

Here's an article that ties this stuff together.
http://nation.time.com/2011/07/05/u-s-navys-brand-new-aluminum-ship-foiled-by-seawater/

The USS Milwaukee was a Wisconsin built ship, so I'm presuming it's steel.

[Lord Avalon]

LOL. Like the military-industrial complex and their congressional puppets are going push anything low tech like steel ships.

[vonbach]

The us military is actually in much much worse shape than it appears and not just because of equipment.
If we got into a real war we'd probably be annihilated. You cant just throw gobs of money at problems and
make them go away.

[Lord Avalon]

Annihilated by whom? Is there a military worth discussing that isn't in worse shape that it appears?

[vonbach]

Annihilated by whom?

The Russians for a start. The main reason we haven't started a war with Iran is point blank we'd lose even against them.

[Lord Avalon]

Yeah, right. 

[vonbach]

http://www.valuewalk.com/2015/11/russia-would-annihilate-us-army/

Russia and the U.S. have not indulged in a direct confrontation in decades. While NATO is conducting its biggest military drills in decades in Europe as a show of strength, Russia aims to hold 4,000 exercises this year. What if a direct war breaks out between Russia and the United States? The possibility is very high given the escalating tensions in Europe and Syria.

Russia vs US

US Army is not as strong as many think

In a direct confrontation, Russians would “annihilate” the US Army, says retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor. Pentagon may have the world’s largest defense budget, but the US Army is not as strong as many think, Macgregor told the Politico magazine. He said the deployment of the US Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment from Bavaria to Hungary was intended to assure NATO members that the US military was fully prepared to respond quickly to any threat from Russia.

But the movement of troops wouldn’t help in real-life fighting. Macgregor believes the Stryker parade “won’t fool anyone in Moscow.” The Russians may not do many things well, but they have been actively destabilizing, subverting, and invading their neighbors for decades. Vladimir Putin’s aggressively military moves in Syria and Ukraine have stunned the Western world.

US forces can’t face an equally strong army like that of Russia

Macgregor holds a Ph.D. in international relations. He is recognized for destroying an entire Iraqi Armored Brigade, including 70 armored vehicles, in just 23 minutes while suffering only one American casualty in 1991. However, he calculated that if his unit came in a direct confrontation with a better trained and armed enemy like the Russians, his army would have lost it.

Macgregor is a vocal advocate for reform of the US Army. He described the US defense spending as “wasteful,” US Army weapons as “obsolescent,” and its top leaders as “self-interested.” He said the US Army was poorly organized, and if it had to face another equally strong army like that of Russia or China on a conventional battlefield, the US forces would be “annihilated.”

The truth is the US military is more concerned with political correctness than actually winning wars. There are consequences to this.