Diplomacy & Crisis News

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

One of the most widely distributed export fighter aircraft in history, the MiG-21 remains active with many countries.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: Just like Korea, this war was a way for each global bloc to test each other's technologies. Here is what happened.

During the protracted air war in the skies over Vietnam, two fighter interceptor and air superiority planes emerged as the most prominent aircraft of their type. These were the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom and the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-21. When these supersonic fighters met in combat, the skills of the individual pilots and sometimes sheer luck were often the deciding factors, and more than 40 years after the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War debate continues as to the accuracy of kill ratios and claims made by both the sides.

Interestingly, though they were common adversaries, the appearances of the Phantom and the MiG-21 could scarcely have been more different. The big, burly Phantom weighed nearly 19 tons, while the MiG-21 weighed slightly less than 10 tons. The Phantom was 63 feet long with a wingspan of more than 38 feet. The MiG-21 with a much smaller profile and more nimble appearance stretched just under 48 feet in length, and its wingspan was just under 24 feet. Both aircraft were capable of speeds of at least Mach 2.

Relative Strengths & Weaknesses

The MiG-21 was typically armed with air-to-air missiles such as the AA-2 Atoll and a 23mm internal cannon. The Phantom was often armed with the AIM-7 Sparrow or AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Each was capable of carrying a bomb load as well. Early Phantoms deployed to Vietnam were armed only with missiles. Lacking a cannon, these fighters were often at a disadvantage in dogfights with the MiG-21 and other Soviet- and Chinese-manufactured fighter aircraft. Later models were equipped with an internal 20mm M61 Vulcan internal rotary cannon. The Phantom held the edge with multiple missiles, often up to eight, while the MiG-21 carried only two.

The performance of each aircraft demonstrated relative strengths and weaknesses. The agile MiG-21 was deadly in a turn, and its silhouette was difficult to acquire visually at any great distance. The heavy F-4 was known for jet engines that produced a great deal of smoke, adding to the ease of identification at a distance due to its large size. The MiG-21 was generally considered more maneuverable, while the Phantom was well-armed with missiles and more lethal with the addition of the cannon. The MiG-21 was designed as a short-range interceptor, and the Phantom was a long-range aircraft.

The Phantom Retires, but the MiG Still Soars the Skies

The Phantom was produced in multiple variants and became a primary component of the air superiority, fighter bomber, reconnaissance, and radar jamming air complements of the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. Developed during the 1950s, it entered service in 1960, and nearly 5,200 were produced during a 30-year run from 1958 to 1981. Its combat service included engagements from the Vietnam era through Operation Desert Storm and beyond. The Phantom has been operated by the air forces of at least a dozen nations, and many remain in service. The U.S. military retired the Phantom from combat use in 1996.

The MiG-21, identified as the Fishbed in NATO nomenclature, was a continuation of the MiG fighter series that originated in the late 1940s. The MiG-21 entered service in 1959, and more than 11,000 in various configurations were completed when production ended in 1985. One of the most widely distributed export fighter aircraft in history, the MiG-21 remains active with many countries.

This article by Michael Haskew originally appeared on Warfare History Network. This first appeared earlier in October 2019.

Image: Reuters

Lyle J. Goldstein

PLA Navy, Asia

Beijing has a lot of missiles and it especially has been doubling down on anti-ship missiles.

Key point: Washington tends to get nervous about China's new missiles, which Beijing rather likes. What have China actually revealed about this new weapon?

Entering the Second World War, the United States dramatically underestimated the effectiveness of certain Japanese naval systems and operations.  The tendency to look askance at Japanese naval prowess during the interwar period obviously impacted the failure to anticipate the Pearl Harbor attack.  But it is less widely understood that U.S. intelligence similarly underestimated the strength of Japan’s primary naval fighter aircraft (the Zero), the dramatic effectiveness of its long-range torpedoes, as well as its dedication to mastering difficult, but essential operations such as night combat.  Remarkably, these problems in assessment occurred despite a plethora of openly available information regarding Japanese naval development during that time.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

There are many reasons, of course, that contemporary China’s maritime ascendancy is starkly different from that of Imperial Japan almost a century ago.  In particular, there is hardly a shred of evidence (reef reclamation included) to suggest that Beijing is inclined to undertake a rampage of conquest similar to Japan’s effort to bring the whole of the Asia-Pacific to heel from 1931 to 1942.  Still, the complex maritime disputes in the Western Pacific require that American strategists keep a close eye on the evolving military balance.  In that spirit, this installment of the Dragon Eye series turns once again to focus a bright light on one of the newest elements of China’s missile arsenal: the YJ-18 anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM).

A test of the new Chinese YJ-18 supersonic ASCM from November 2014 is visible in this video clip, about one minute into this segment introducing China’s new nuclear submarine design. Even though we know that YJ-18 is part of a whole new generation of new and lethal Chinese ASCMs, it is curious that Chinese ASCMs generally go unmentioned in a recent TNI analysis of the “5 Most Deadly Anti-Ship Missiles of All Time.”  Clearly, Chinese naval analysts, who have labeled the YJ-18 in an early 2015 analysis “最完美的反舰导弹” [the most perfect ASCM] would not agree with that rendering.  A Chinese analysis of the YJ-18 appearing in the naval magazine 舰船知识 [Naval & Merchant Ships] published by the China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) in February 2015 is the main basis of this Dragon Eye discussion.

However, before turning to the insights from this recent Chinese analysis, let us return briefly to what has been revealed about this new missile from both the recent U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) report, as well as the annual Pentagon report on Chinese military power.  The ONI report is generally well done, but curiously the new YJ-18 only rates a mention in two spare sentences.  This report notes that the YJ-18 can be vertically-launched (generally from a surface combatant) or alternatively submarine-launched, but there is no discussion of its supersonic sprint vehicle.  Since the U.S. Navy (USN) lacks a supersonic ASCM and will not have one in the foreseeable future, this omission is troubling. Similarly puzzling is the decision not to discuss the recent appearance of another supersonic ASCM, YJ-12, in China’s arsenal. True, such capabilities did exist earlier in other forms, namely as imported Russian systems, but the indigenization (and likely upgrade) of these capabilities is hardly insignificant and will mean they are much more widespread and employed with greater confidence and proficiency.  

The 2015 Department of Defense report does offer a bit more detail and thus draws the proper attention to the YJ-18 threat, but again does not mention its supersonic sprint vehicle.  The YJ-18 ASCM is described as a “significant step” and subsequently as a “dramatic improvement” over current missiles in China’s inventory.  Perhaps most significantly, however, the DoD report puts the range of YJ-18 at 290 nautical miles – more than double that of its likely progenitor, the Russian SS-N-27 Klub ASCM (export version).  If correct, moreover, this new range will, in the near term, more or less quadruple the range of the standard ASCM fired from most PLA Navy submarines.

The February 2015 Chinese analysis of YJ-18 is somewhat cautious in tone and hardly purports to be a comprehensive analysis.  Perhaps fitting for an initial piece on a cutting edge system, the article’s introduction sports the rare caveat “…并不代表本刊观点” [does not represent the viewpoint of this magazine].  However, the title “‘鹰击’18 -- ‘俱乐部’导弹中国版?” [Is the Yingji-18 Simply a Chinese Version of the Klub?] asks the precise question that will be on the minds of many defense analysts examining the YJ-18.  A decent amount of the article just reviews the development of the Russian Klub system and its different variants. It is noted, moreover, that China has had ready access to the Klub missile system since it imported the Type 636 Kilo-class conventional subs about a decade ago.  Indeed, some had remarked that Beijing imported the submarine for the sole purpose of actually acquiring its superior missile system.  Interestingly, the article does not report the much extended range outlined in the new Pentagon report.

This Chinese description relates that the missile’s great strength is its “亚超结合的独特动力” [subsonic and supersonic combined unique propulsion].  Another term applied to this design is “双速制反舰导弹” [dual speed control ASCM].  As explained in the article, it is projected that YJ-18 would have an initial subsonic phase estimated at .8 Mach similar to the Klub of about 180km, but 20km from the target would unleash the supersonic sprint vehicle at speed of Mach 2.5 to 3.  The “dual speed” function allows the system to realize certain advantages of subsonic cruise missiles, such as their “relatively long range, light weight and universality …” but also takes the chief advantage of supersonic ASCMs as well, namely the ability to “大幅压缩敌方的反应时间” [radically compress the enemy’s reaction time].  

The Chinese article relates another advantage of the “dual speed” approach.  Just as the missile comes into contact with the ship’s defenses, it “sheds the medium stage …,” thus simultaneously and dramatically altering both its speed and also its radar reflection, “which would impact the fire control calculation.”  The likelihood that YJ-18 improves upon the Klub missile’s “digitization, automation, as well as providing more intelligent flight control and navigation technology” is attributed in the Chinese article to a recent Jane’s report. A final interesting issue raised in the Chinese article concerns the “hot launch” technique suggested in the test video clip mentioned at the outset of this article (and illustrated in photos accompanying the Chinese article). Indeed, a new vertical launch system for the new 052D destroyer is confirmed as a “共架混装” [common rack for mixed arms] system with a citation in the article to PLA Admiral Qiu Zhiming, director of the Naval Armaments Research Academy.  But it is not clear from the article that YJ-18 will rely on the hot launch versus the cold launch method--the latter being much more common for submarine launched missiles.

The article interestingly discusses recent Russian placement of additional Kilo-class submarines equipped with the Klub-missile systems into the Black Sea.  These new submarines “based on the Crimean Peninsula, operating in harmony with air and land-based missile forces [can] … limit the deployment of NATO fleets into the Black Sea …”  I have noted before in this column the seductive possibilities of the “Russian model” for Chinese strategists. This Chinese author concludes the piece, explaining that, “The YJ-18 will gradually replace the YJ-82 across the PLA Navy submarine fleet.  That development combined with surface ship and air-launched missiles will create a comprehensive attack system of even greater combat power.”  The implication seems to be that for China, in its various maritime disputes, the YJ-18 can play a role similar to the one that nearly identical Russian weapons have played in creating decisive local military superiority in the Black Sea area.

On the other hand, Beijing has been making noteworthy strides in military transparency of late, for example with the most recent white paper or the somewhat unusual discussion of the new Type 093G nuclear attack submarine in China Daily.  Nevertheless, the gap in transparency continues to be quite wide when it comes to some of the most lethal weapons in China’s arsenal, such as the new YJ-18.  Allowing the rumor mill to churn, spreading anxieties regarding Chinese capabilities hither and thither is really not in China’s interest and greater transparency, of course, is necessary.

For Washington, some additional attention seems warranted in future intelligence community studies with respect to Chinese ASCM development. The 2015 ONI study gave some attention to YJ-18, but omitted discussion of the supersonic YJ-12, the long-range subsonic YJ-100 or the CX-1 supersonic ASCM that are apparently now in development, according to Chinese sources.  Renewed attention will help muster the necessary focus for the U.S. going forward to prepare its forces adequately.  For all the ink spilled and Washington seminars convened to discuss China’s expanding coast guard fleet, it is obviously the ever-growing sophistication of the Chinese ASCM arsenal that poses the “clear and present danger” to American sailors.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. The opinions expressed in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. Government.

Editor’s Note: The following is part of a unique series we call Dragon Eye, which seeks insight and analysis from Chinese writings on world affairs. You can find all previous articles in the series here. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce

Health, Americas

Bad science is clouding the issue.

In June 2019, a paper by prominent US academics found that people who used e-cigarettes were at greater risk of a heart attack. The authors concluded that e-cigarettes were just as risky as tobacco in provoking heart attacks, and that using e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes at the same time was even riskier. Unsurprisingly, this caused a stir in the media – in the form of 35 news stories, to be exact. Also unsurprisingly, it provoked vigorous scientific debate. Eight months later, the paper was retracted.

When a paper is retracted it means we can’t trust its results. It’s like being unpublished. The problem is, the paper still exists – it’s in news stories, it’s on social media, it’s in documentaries. Smokers see these stories and increasingly think e-cigarettes are as harmful as smoking. That’s a problem because smoking is deadly.

In the study, the authors used a large set of information from adults in the US. In particular, they looked at people who smoked and people who used e-cigarettes and at whether those people had heart attacks.

A major problem with studies like this is which came first: if people who use e-cigarettes are also more likely to have heart attacks, what does this tell us? Does it mean that e-cigarettes cause heart attacks? Or that people who have heart attacks are more likely to try vaping? You can test for this by looking at which came first – the heart attack or the e-cigarette.

The journal states that the authors were asked to look at this during the peer-review process. In response, they provided some extra information, which doesn’t appear to be what the reviewers had asked for. This information was not confirmed by the journal, and the paper was published. Concerns were raised after publication, at which point the journal asked the authors to re-evaluate the information. The authors replied that they could no longer access the data. This means we can’t trust the paper.

We can try to learn from this, and it takes several forms. For researchers and the people who fund and publish research, it means not just doing more research, but doing good research, subject to rigorous, critical review. It also means doing open research; it is possible that if the initial data was publicly available, the flawed analysis may not have made it to publication in the first place.

It means being aware of “hot stuff bias” where topics that get a lot of media attention attract more bad science than those that are less on the radar. As readers, it means thinking about what we read and looking to trusted sources for information on health topics. As responsible scientists, it also means sticking to the evidence we have and sharing that information whenever we can.

What we know

There’s so much we don’t know about e-cigarettes, but there are some things we do know:

• We need more research. E-cigarettes are relatively new to the market and the devices are changing all the time.

• Expert consensus is that regulated, nicotine-containing e-cigarettes are considerably less risky than smoking traditional cigarettes.

• That said, e-cigarettes are not risk free. For people who don’t smoke, vaping will probably introduce health risks.

• Not all e-cigarettes are the same. The outbreaks of vaping-related illness in the US over the past year have been largely attributed to vaping cannabis. E-cigarettes that contain cannabis sometimes also contain an additive called vitamin E acetate, which is known to be harmful to lungs. Vitamin E acetate is banned from e-cigarettes in Europe.

• Nicotine is not the harmful ingredient in cigarettes, or in e-cigarettes. It is addictive, so it gets its bad name because it’s part of what makes people keep smoking. But it’s the other ingredients in cigarettes that cause the increased risk of death and disease.

Misinformation can be deadly

It is difficult to talk about retractions and their lasting impact without going back to the infamous – and since retracted – paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Though withdrawn in 2010, the impact of this long discredited article still looms large, with vaccine scepticism linked to recent outbreaks of diseases, such as measles.

We must all do better to make sure we don’t repeat history when it comes to e-cigarettes. That includes being open and critical about science and thinking twice when we read stories about hotly contested topics in healthcare. With topics that attract a lot of attention, journals may be more likely to publish research with inappropriate methods or conclusions, and investigators may take a less critical approach than they would have otherwise. Alarming headlines are catchy, but misinformation might actually kill us.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is a Senior Researcher, Health Behaviours, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

Image: Reuters 

Alex Hollings

Yemen War, Middle East

The drone shot down by the F-15 in the footage appears to be a Qasef-1, which is a suicide drone based on an Iranian design.

New video of a Saudi Arabian F-15 taking out a suicide drone launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen surfaced on social media this week. These sorts of intercepts are not uncommon, but getting to watch an F-15 in the wild taking down targets on video is pretty rare indeed.

The footage was first brought to our attention by Joseph Trevithick over at The Warzone.

The video, which appears to have been recorded on a smartphone, opens with a view of the suicide drone motoring along. Suddenly, an explosion tears through the frame–apparently detonating the vicinity of the drone, knocking it out of the sky. Shortly after the explosion, a Saudi F-15 can be seen prowling the area.

Saudi Arabia operates a purpose-built iteration of the famed American dogfighter known as the F-15SA. Although the U.S. stopped making new orders for F-15s nearly two decades ago, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular have kept their focus on the highly capable 4th generation fighter, funneling more than $5 billion into improvements over the years. Today, many of those improvements are being leveraged for the U.S. Air Force’s new and improved F-15EX that Boeing recently began delivering to the force.

The drone shot down by the F-15 in the footage appears to be a Qasef-1, which is a suicide drone based on an Iranian design. Houthi rebels in Yemen have been operating these and a number of other kinds of suicide drones for years now, thanks to their low cost and high-destructive capability. Over that time, the Saudis have become extremely proficient at intercepting these drones, but at a significant cost. While the suicide drones cost practically nothing, the surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles the Saudis shoot them down with can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece, not including the operational costs of highly capable fighters like the F-15SA.

Iran is believed to have outfitted Houthi rebels with a variety of drones, some with ranges in excess of 1,300 miles. The United States has provided the Saudis with varying degrees of support in their war against the Houthi rebel group currently engaged in a longstanding civil war with the Yemini government since before 2015. If you’re interested in reading an in-depth explanation into who the Houthi rebels are and what led to this conflict, this article by Bruce Riedel for Brookings is a must-read.

If you want to learn more about the F-15EX, check out our video on it below:

 

This article first appeared at Sandboxx.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Richard Douglas

Guns,

Easy to pick up quickly, the Ruger Police Carbine was designed to be the best for officers of all sizes and skill levels.

When it comes to choosing a long gun, police departments have to select a weapon that will be the best for officers of all sizes and skill levels and that’s quite a challenge. Ruger’s Police Carbine has been tailor-made to address the unique use for law enforcement. 

In all of my years, I have tracked the evolution of long gun choices in police departments. The quite long-standing choice of a pump-action shotgun was standard for decades. The shortcomings of the shotgun are relatively obvious. Wide spray patterns and heavier damage to target surroundings are combined with one heck of a kick. The introduction of the AR-15 was a welcome move for many police departments. Lower recoil was combined with accuracy on target. Paired up with quality red dot optics, maintaining optimum distance from a threat was more feasible.

However, officers tend to struggle with the use of the AR-15, especially novice shooters. So, Ruger took note and made some excellent choices when designing the Ruger Police Carbine. One of the most impactful choices for the Ruger PC is the 9-millimeter ammo used in this long gun. Thanks to an included Glock magazine well, the PC can use Glock magazines. Glock 17, 19, and the extended thirty-three-round mag all function in the Ruger PC. The sharing of ammo and mags from pistol to carbine can make an incredible difference for police officers. 

Easy to carry goes beyond the ammo advantage. The compact build of the Ruger PC packs all of the protection in this 34.5-inch long carbine. A sixteen-inch barrel is combined with a Picatinny top rail for optics and an under-barrel Picatinny for lights/lasers. Light, at six pounds and ten ounces, the Ruger Police Carbine is not a burden to carry for even the smallest framed officers. In use, the PC is weight balanced to the middle, thanks to integrated tungsten secured in the bolt. 

This good balance of weight reduces recoil and allows for an easier balance than the front-heavy ARs. Qualifying patterns at more than fifty yards no longer have the tell-tale diagonal pattern of the officers who struggle to control the AR-15. Even the best optics can’t help when the rifle is too much for the shooter. Easy to pick up quickly, the Ruger Police Carbine was designed to be effortless on target. Ruger PC is also built for use by left or right-handed officers. The ambidextrous cross-bolt safety is placed directly behind the trigger, and the mag release button is positioned on the left side of the receiver. For further tailoring to lefty’s, the department Armorer can change the mag release over to the right if needed. 

Empty brass ejects directly to the right, and not into the officer’s face. I can’t tell you how many right-handed command staff officers have never realized what a big impact this makes for the fifteen percent of left-handed officers. Even the price tag is well-suited for purchase by police departments on a limited budget. The $649 MSRP is quite affordable for a sticker price. In truth, that high of a dollar amount is rarely what police departments actually pay per carbine. 

So, for the police agencies working towards moving forward from the pump-action shotgun, the trendy AR-15 is a great rifle. However, the AR has proven it is not the best universal choice for police officers. The Ruger PC has taken the challenges of police department use for safe and effective law enforcement head-on. Excellent design, ease in carry, and intuitive use for police officers of all sizes and skill levels make the Ruger Police Carbine the best long gun for police departments.

Richard Douglas writes on firearms, defense and security issues. He is the founder and editor of Scopes Field, and a columnist at The National Interest, 1945, Daily Caller and other publications.

Image: Wikipedia.

Warfare History Network

P-38 Lightning, Americas

They were a stalwart part of the Pacific air campaign.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Photo reconnaissance Lightnings played important roles in both Europe and the Pacific. In fact, the first P-38s to fly combat missions in the Pacific Theater were converted reconnaissance planes that were sent to Australia early in 1942.

Due largely to their use in the postwar U.S. Army Air Forces and present proliferation among the air show community, the North American P-51 Mustang is thought of by many as the most important American fighter of World War II. In reality, however, the P-51 was a relative latecomer to the war, and even though it achieved a remarkable record during the last year of the war in Europe, it was not the fighter that first allowed Allied forces to gain air superiority over the Axis. By the time the redesigned Mustang made its appearance in the skies in Europe in the late winter of 1944, the Allied air forces were already clearing the skies in both Europe and the Pacific of German and Japanese aircraft and were in the process of gaining complete air superiority. This was all due to the twin-boomed, twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning and the single-engine Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. And in the Pacific Theater, the P-38 was the preferred fighter right up to the end of the war, even above the soon-to-be-famous Mustang.

Lockheed began developing the P-38 Lightning in 1937 as the company’s first venture into the military airplane market at a time when the U.S. military was modernizing its air forces in response to developments in Europe. Although the Army was somewhat skeptical of Lockheed’s promise of a 400 mph-plus airplane, the twin-engine fighter design was approved in mid-1937, and in January 1939 the prototype made its maiden flight. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had just ordered an increase in the production of new fighter designs, and the Army gave Lockheed an order for 13 test airplanes in April 1939. A followup order for 69 production aircraft was awarded by the Army in September. In spite of the company’s failure to deliver the first of the test airplanes, Lockheed was given a huge order for 607 P-38s in August 1940, as events in Europe indicated possible future U.S. involvement in the war that had increased in fury only a few weeks before. Production problems caused deliveries to lag. By December 7, 1941, only 69 Lockheed P-38s were in service with the U.S. Army Air Corps.

Because of the airplane’s value as a high-altitude interceptor, P-38s were held in the United States for homeland defense during the early months of American involvement in the war, except for a handful that were sent north to Alaska in the late spring of 1942. Consequently, it was in the Aleutians that the famous Lightning made its combat debut. Eleventh Air Force P-38s were assigned primarily as escorts for long-range Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers, but also served in ground attack and reconnaissance roles.

The First Lockheed P-38 Lightning Fighter Groups to Deploy Overseas

Plans were made to deploy several squadrons of P-38s to England, but the logistics of delivery were difficult. The 1st, 14th, and 82nd fighter groups were the first P-38 groups to go overseas, joining the Eighth Air Force in England. The 1st remained in Iceland for a time, then continued on to England where the three groups flew a few missions over France without engaging the Luftwaffe.

In the fall of 1942, all three groups were ordered to deploy to North Africa to join the newly organized Twelfth Air Force, which had been created to support American forces assigned to Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. A fourth group, the 78th Fighter Group, was held in “strategic” reserve in England. When the three groups deployed to Africa, none of them had engaged in air-to-air combat and there were no indications of how the P-38 was going to perform in that role.

The P-38 Lightning groups were plagued with problems—two were lost to enemy air attack on November 20, and on the night of November 21, six airplanes were lost when they tried to land at an advance base after dark. Three days later the P-38s had their first successes, as they shot down several German and Italian transports near Gabes in Tunisia. The P-38s were used in a variety of roles in North Africa. In addition to their normal fighter duties of intercepting enemy formations and escorting friendly bombers, they were also used in a ground attack role, strafing enemy vehicles and troop concentrations. Their longer range and endurance made the P-38s the only fighters in the theater capable of the longest missions.

By early 1943, the P-38 groups in North Africa were desperately short of airplanes, forcing Twelfth Air Force commander General James H. Doolittle to scour the United Kingdom for more Lightnings. When Army Air Forces commander General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold came to Casablanca for a high-level conference, he recognized the seriousness of the situation. He ordered that all remaining P-38s in England be sent to North Africa and that additional P-38s should be sent directly to North Africa by ship from the United States. His order also brought the 78th Fighter Group’s planes and pilots down from England to reinforce the three Twelfth Air Force groups; other group personnel remained in England to re-equip with P-47s.

Due to British naval control of the Mediterranean, the German Army in North Africa depended heavily on air resupply and reinforcement. In the early spring of 1943, the Allied air forces elected to make the German transports a major target. P-38 Lightning sweeps over the Mediterranean became the order of the day.

“Palm Sunday Massacre”

On the morning of April 5, a group of 26 Lockheed P-38s intercepted a German formation of 50 to 70 Junkers Ju-52 transports escorted by about 30 other aircraft, including Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters and Junkers Ju-87 dive-bombers. The action resulted in claims of 11 of the transports and four other German aircraft shot down for a loss of two P-38s.

Another P-38 formation escorting North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers on a low-altitude attack on shipping claimed 15 German fighters. Over the next week the P-38s claimed scores of German transports and dozens of fighters. The successes of the P-38s set the stage for the “Palm Sunday Massacre,” when Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk and Supermarine Spitfire fighters intercepted a large formation of German transports and claimed one hundred, effectively cutting the German supply lines to the Afrika Korps, which was battling for its life in North Africa.

The diversion of the P-38s to North Africa left American fighter forces in England at a very low level—in fact, the P-47-equipped 4th Fighter Group was the only U.S. fighter unit in England in the spring of 1943. Plans for Torch called for the original P-38 groups to be replaced by P-47 groups in England, but the heavy single-engine P-47 lacked the range for long-range escort. New fighter groups were organized in the United States and equipped with P-38s, then moved to England for escort duty with the Eighth Fighter Command. Their longer range made the P-38s the only fighters capable of staying with the bombers on the deep-penetration raids into Germany, and P-38s were the first Allied fighters over Berlin.

The versatility of the P-38 made it a suitable airplane for many missions, one of which was a daring low-level attack that was a repeat of the Operation Tidal Wave mission against the oil fields and refineries of Ploesti, Romania, made by B-24s on August 1, 1943. On June 10, 1944, a formation of 36 P-38s carrying 1,000-pound bombs was sent to Ploesti, escorted by 39 other P-38s not carrying bombs. Twenty-three Lightnings were lost on this disastrous mission, many to the deadly flak that made Ploesti second only to Berlin as the most heavily defended target in Europe.

The P-38 was also badly needed in the Pacific War, but the low priority of the theater kept the twin-engine fighter out of the region until late in 1942. The first American fighter squadrons in the Pacific were equipped with the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the P-40, both of which were decidedly inferior to the best Japanese fighters.

When General George C. Kenney received his orders to report to Australia to assume command of air units in the Southwest Pacific Area of Operations, he asked General Henry H. Arnold for P-38s to replace the older designs. Kenney also asked for a particularly aggressive young lieutenant named Richard Ira Bong who he had called on the carpet for unauthorized low-altitude aerobatics in a P-38, including looping the loop around the Golden Gate Bridge. Bong would later become the U.S. ace of aces with 40 confirmed kills in a P-38.

When the first P-38s arrived in Australia, they were discovered to have some design problems, and their combat debut was delayed. But by late 1942, P-38s had replaced some of the P-39s in the 35th Fighter Group and were soon to make their presence known to the Japanese in the skies over New Guinea. The 49th Fighter Group was still equipped with P-40s but would soon transition to the Lightning as well.

Victory by Accident: Lockheed P-38s in the Pacific Theater

The first P-38 victory in the Pacific came about as more of an accident than a deliberate attack. For several weeks the P-38 pilots had little success at encountering Japanese aircraft; the Japanese pilots seemed to be avoiding the twin-boomed fighters. In late November, a flight of P-38s was patrolling over the Lae Airdrome and issuing taunts to the Japanese over the radio when one of the Japanese fighter pilots decided to take off. A young P-38 pilot from New Orleans named Ferrault went down to attack the Japanese fighter, then remembered he was carrying bombs and quickly jettisoned them. His plan was to come around and attack the Japanese fighter as soon as its wheels were retracted. The bombs fell in the water off the end of the runway. The unfortunate Japanese pilot flew into the water that had been tossed skyward by the explosions and crashed into the bay. General Kenney kidded the young Cajun that he did not deserve the promised Air Medal that was to go to the first P-38 pilot to achieve a victory since he had not shot the Japanese plane down, but later that evening he went over to the squadron and gave him the medal.

December 27, 1942, was the day the P-38 began to take over the skies of the Southwest Pacific. A flight of 12 Lightnings was sitting strip alert at Laloki Aerodrome at Port Moresby when they got word that a large Japanese formation was headed their way. Captain Thomas J. Lynch, who had already achieved some success in P-39s, led the P-38s off the ground and climbed to intercept the formation of 25 Japanese fighters and dive-bombers.

When the battle ended, 15 of the Japanese formation had been claimed (the official history of the Army Air Forces in WWII lists nine Japanese fighters and two dive-bombers destroyed). Lynch himself claimed two, as did Bong. Lieutenant Kenneth Sparks also claimed a pair of Japanese fighters.

Reportedly, Bong’s two victories came about as a result of his aggressiveness. Although he had innocent good looks—Kenney referred to him as a “cherub”—Bong was very aggressive on the inside. He was not a particularly good shot, but he was an exceptional pilot and he achieved most of his earlier victories by pulling in as close as possible to his quarry and “putting the guns right in the cockpit.”

In his first action Bong reportedly was separated from the rest of the formation and found himself surrounded by several Japanese planes. He promptly shot two down and escaped unscathed. Bong achieved all 40 of his aerial victories in P-38s, but died at the end of the war while testing a new jet fighter.

The twin engines and longer range of the P-38s made them the ideal fighter for the South Pacific Area of Operations, and General Millard Harmon constantly pressed General Arnold for P-38s for his theater. In the late fall and winter of 1942, Allied forces struggled to wrest control of Guadalcanal from the Japanese. Henderson Field had been the major objective of the Marines who initially landed on the island, and a major struggle took place for control of it.

Japanese aircraft staged constant raids on American-held Henderson Field, which was defended by obsolete Marine Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters and U.S. Army P-39s and P-400s; the P-400 was an export version of the P-39 Airacobra. Both the F4Fs and the P-39/P-400s were lacking in performance and were unable to meet the Japanese fighters on their own terms.

In November 1942, General Douglas MacArthur ordered the temporary assignment of some P-38s to Guadalcanal due to the uncertain nature of the situation. A flight of eight P-38s from the 39th Fighter Squadron left Milne Bay on New Guinea on November 13 and flew directly to Henderson Field, where they remained for a week. A major air and naval action against the Japanese Navy began on November 14 and prevented the Japanese from resupplying their troops on Guadalcanal, thus deciding the final outcome of the campaign, though the island would not be clear of Japanese until February.

Which Lockheed P-38 Pilot “Got” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto?

In early 1943, Headquarters, Army Air Forces finally began releasing a few P-38s for assignment to the Pacific to replace the performance-limited P-39s and P-40s. Once Guadalcanal was secure, the South Pacific Area of Operations began making plans to move northward through the Solomon Islands. In March the 18th Fighter Group moved to the South Pacific from Hawaii and joined the 347th Fighter Group, which was in the process of converting from P-40s to Lightnings. Shortly after their arrival at Henderson Field, pilots from the 18th joined with others from the veteran 347th for one of the most famous missions of World War II.

In early April, Allied code-breakers learned that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s leading naval strategist and the architect of the air attacks on Pearl Harbor and Midway, would be flying on an inspection visit of Japanese installations in the South Pacific. American cryptoanalysts had determined Yamamoto’s exact itinerary, including the information that he was due to arrive at the airfield at Ballale on the island of Bougainville at 0945 on April 18.

No doubt still chafing over the humiliation of the Japanese victory over the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor nearly a year and a half before, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Ernest J. King ordered Admiral William Halsey, commander of U.S. forces in and around Guadalcanal, to “Get Yamamoto.” Halsey relayed the order to the new Commander for Air, Solomons, a naval officer, Admiral Marc Mitscher.

Since the only Allied fighters in the theater capable of making the interception were P-38s, the order went to the Army. Eight pilots were chosen from the 18th Fighter Group’s 12th Fighter Squadron, two were chosen from the 70th Fighter Squadron, and eight more came from the 347th Group’s 339th Fighter Squadron. Captain Thomas Lanphier of the 70th Fighter Squadron was chosen to lead the four P-38s of the attack section. Major John Mitchell was in command of the operation and led the other 14 P-38s in the cover role.

The 18-airplane formation took off from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal at 0725 hours on the morning of the 18th and flew at wave-top height for more than two hours. As they neared the coast of Bougainville, the formation of P-38s sighted Admiral Yamamoto’s entourage. The two Mitsubishi G4M Betty bombers carrying the admiral and his staff tried to escape while six Zeros attempted to intercept the attack force. Captain Lanphier shot down one Zero then attacked one of the Bettys and sent it into the jungle in flames. Lieutenant Rex Barber shot down the other Betty.

Lanphier was credited with shooting down Yamamoto, but a controversy erupted between him and Barber over who “got Yamamoto” that continued for more than half a century. Regardless of who shot down whom, the flight of P-38s shot down Yamamoto and killed him and most of his staff. The Navy Cross was awarded to flight leader Major Mitchell and to each of the four pilots in the attack section.

In May 1943, the 475th Fighter Group was activated in Australia and planned to become the first group in the Southwest Pacific to be equipped solely with P-38s. At this time other groups were operating mixed bags of aircraft, including P-39s, P-40s, and P-47s as well as P-38s. Pilots and other personnel were drawn from other groups already fighting in New Guinea and sent back to Australia to form a nucleus around which the group would be built. Additional personnel arrived from the States to fill out the squadron while new airplanes were delivered by boat. By July 118 P-38s had arrived in Australia and were going through the modification program at Eagle Farms to bring them up to combat standards. By mid-August, the group was ready for combat and moved back up north to Dobodura, to join the 49th Fighter Group, which was operating P-38s and P-40s.

Range was one of the major problems facing the fighter commanders of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces. Unlike the war in Europe, which was waged over a comparatively confined area and mostly over land, the war in the Pacific Theater was fought over great distances that required long flights over water. The twin engines of the P-38 made it the ideal candidate for over-water flying. With a single-engine fighter, an engine failure meant that the airplane was coming out of the sky. A twin-engine fighter or light/medium bomber could lose one engine and still continue back to base.

Charles Lindbergh’s History with the P-38

General Kenney and his fighter commanders pondered the problems of their theater and constantly thought of new ways to extend the range of the combat squadrons. Extended-range fuel tanks afforded increased range, but in the summer of 1944 a godsend came to the theater, a man who would significantly increase the range and combat radius of the P-38.

In the spring of 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh singlehandedly extended the barriers of aviation when he flew the Spirit of St. Louis, a single-engine Ryan monoplane that he had helped design, across the Atlantic from New York to Paris. After the epic flight, Lindbergh, who was a trained fighter pilot and a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, continued making very long-range flights, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Anne.

Although he held a colonel’s rank in the Army Reserve, Lindbergh had resigned his commission in order to take a leadership role in the American isolationist movement. Having lived for several years in Europe, during which he visited with the air forces and flew the top fighters of many European nations, Lindbergh was strongly opposed to American involvement in the war. Lindbergh’s isolationism irked many prominent members of the Roosevelt administration, and when he applied to return to active duty after the Pearl Harbor attacks, his application was turned down by President Franklin Roosevelt, who commented to his staff, “I have clipped the wings of the Lone Eagle.”

A Lockheed P-38 Lightning carrying two 1,000 lb bombs in March 1944.

Even though he was not allowed to return to the military, Lindbergh nevertheless contributed greatly to the American war effort, first as a consultant with Ford Motor Company helping to work out the bugs of their contract production of Consolidated Liberator bombers and transports, then with United Aircraft, particularly in the F4U Corsair program. Lindbergh went to the South Pacific as a civilian technical representative for United Aircraft, assigned to the Marine F4U Corsair program, but he had not been in the region long before he became associated with the P-38.

Lindbergh was in the Pacific on U.S. Navy orders, but one of his personal missions was to make a comparison of the single- and twin-engine fighters in combat, so he obtained orders allowing him to go to New Guinea. When he got there, he went to General Whitehead and gave him a copy of his orders; he was told to join the 475th Fighter Group. Somehow, word of his arrival failed to reach General Kenney’s headquarters until after he had flown several missions.

When he learned that Lindbergh was in his theater—and flying combat missions in P-38s—Kenney invited the famous aviator down to Brisbane. When Lindbergh arrived in Australia, Kenney took him in to see General Douglas MacArthur, telling his boss that he had “an important job” for Lindbergh. MacArthur authorized Lindbergh to work for Kenney, who promptly sent the Lone Eagle back to New Guinea to teach the young fighter pilots how to get more range out of their airplanes.

Lindbergh’s solution to the problem was fairly simple. The Army pilots—and Marine pilots flying F4Us who also profited from his instruction—had been taught to fly their airplanes at high propeller rpm and high manifold pressure, which allows maximum power from a turbo-charged engine. Lindbergh told them to continue to fly at high manifold pressure, but to reduce propeller rpm, a technique that significantly reduces fuel consumption while allowing high power from the engines. The Army pilots thought such a technique would “burn up” their engines, but Lindbergh convinced them that this was not so. Kenney had authorized Lindbergh to fly combat missions on the condition that he not participate in the fighter escort missions against the most heavily defended Japanese targets. Soon Lindbergh was flying and teaching Army pilots to fly missions that previously had been far beyond the published range of the P-38.

Lindbergh’s time with the P-38s in the Southwest Pacific came to an end after he did, in fact, become involved in a fight with Japanese fighters and was credited with shooting down a Sophie, a Japanese float-plane fighter. A second aerial combat a few days later found Lindbergh with a Zeke on his tail and several others getting ready to gang up on him. Fortunately, Lindbergh was in the company of a trio of experienced fighter pilots, and they quickly broke up the fight and saved Lindbergh’s bacon.

When news of the aerial combat reached Kenney, he ordered Lindbergh grounded. Lindbergh went back to fly with the Marines on a few more missions, then returned to the United States with approximately 50 combat missions under his belt and one Japanese airplane to his credit. But he had left the fighter commanders in the Pacific with a priceless gift—the ability to greatly increase the range of their airplanes. On July 27, while Lindbergh was still flying with the 8th and 475th Fighter Groups, a P-38 formation had flown an unprecedented 1,280-mile mission escorting B-24s attacking Japanese positions in the Halmehera Islands northwest of New Guinea. Without Lindbergh’s instructions, such a mission would have been impossible.

It was among the P-38 pilots of the Fifth and Thirteenth Air Forces that the number of aces was growing. Their longer range, especially after their effective combat radius was increased thanks to Lindbergh, allowed the P-38s to venture well into Japanese territory where the likelihood of encountering enemy aircraft was greatest. The P-38 groups were blessed with some highly skilled and aggressive fighter pilots, including Tommy Lynch, Tom McGuire, and Dick Bong. Lynch was the most experienced of the lot, having started his combat career against the Japanese in the under-performing Bell P-39 Airacobra. He and Bong became close friends shortly after Bong arrived in the theater in 1942, and the two teamed up.

Lynch, Kearby, and Bong: Who Shot Down More Enemy Fighters? 

Another top-scoring fighter pilot in the theater was Colonel Neel Kearby, a P-47 pilot and commander of the 348th Fighter Group. Until March 1944, Lynch, Kearby, and Bong were in a neck-and-neck race for the top ace slot. Kearby and Lynch died within days of each other, Kearby on March 4 and Lynch on the 8th. Kearby was shot down by a Japanese fighter, while Lynch was hit by ground fire during a strafing run. Bong, alone, remained of the three top scorers. Kenney allowed him to continue to fly combat until April 10 when he broke World War I ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s score of 26 enemy aircraft. A second enemy aircraft shot down the same day brought Bong’s official score to 27. Kenney promoted the young pilot to major and promptly sent him back to the United States to attend a gunnery school.

In mid-October, Major Dick Bong returned to the Far East Air Forces. During his absence, Major Thomas McGuire had been racking up a pretty good score and was within eight kills of tying Bong.

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning was a Mainstay of U.S. Fighter Squadrons in Europe and the South Pacific.

Bong told Kenney he had learned a lot in the gunnery school and wanted to put the knowledge to use. Ironically, Bong was not a very good shot and had never attended gunnery training prior to coming to the Southwest Pacific. Now that he had learned the tactics of aerial gunnery, he wanted to put it to the test. Kenney denied his request to return to a squadron but put him on his staff and assigned Bong to go around to the various squadrons and teach them what he had learned in the States.

Bong was allowed to fly missions and continued shooting down Japanese planes until he reached 40, at which point Kenney decided that he was too valuable to lose and sent him back to the States permanently. By this time, McGuire was within two kills of Bong’s score. On January 7, 1945, McGuire was killed when he stalled and spun into the ground while trying to get in position to help a fellow pilot who was under attack by an especially aggressive Japanese fighter pilot.

What Made the P-38 an Ideal Reconnaissance Aircraft

Because of its long range and twin engines, the P-38 was the favored airplane in the Far East Air Forces. When General Arnold notified Kenney that P-38 production was scheduled to cease in favor of P-51s, Kenney sent word back that he did not want or need any more P-51s, but that he wanted more P-38s. Kenney told former General Motors president General William Knudsen that the reasons he had given for wanting P-38s in September 1943 still held. Knudsen promised Kenney that P-38 production would continue. By war’s end, more than 10,000 Japanese aircraft had fallen to the guns of P-38s.

While the fighter version of the Lightning was taking on the Japanese and German Air Forces, the photo reconnaissance version of the airplane was also playing an important role. Early in the war, Army maintenance depots began converting P-38s into F-4 photo reconnaissance aircraft by removing the guns from the nose and replacing them with cameras. A production model of the Lightning reconnaissance aircraft was designated as the F-5.

Steve Hinton flies “Glacier Girl,” a Lockheed P-38 Lightning dug out from 268 feet of ice in eastern Greenland in 1992. The aircraft was part of a heritage flight during an air show at Langley Air Force Base, Va., on May 21. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Ben Bloker)

Photo reconnaissance Lightnings played important roles in both Europe and the Pacific. In fact, the first P-38s to fly combat missions in the Pacific Theater were converted reconnaissance planes that were sent to Australia early in 1942. In early 1944, the modified P-51 Mustang was introduced to the European theater. The inclusion of additional fuel tanks in the wings and fuselage greatly extended the airplane’s range, and the P-51 soon became the favored fighter in Europe. Not so, however, in the Pacific, where the P-38 continued its reign right up to V-J day.

This article was first published by the Warfare History Network. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.  

Image: Wikipedia.

The aim of the UN-backed COVAX scheme is to get two billion vaccine doses into the arms of around a quarter of the population of poorer countries by the end of 2021. What are the main challenges that need to be overcome, if this historic global effort is to be achieved?

Thanks to the bravery and hard work of deminers such as Fezeh Rezaye, the Afghan province of Bamyan has been declared free from mines. On International Mine Awareness Day, she shares her story.

Lyle J. Goldstein

Russian Navy, Americas

U.S. aircraft carriers are the envy of the world, but they are also very costly and might be too easy to take out in battle.

Key point: Moscow has an incentive to play down the might of the American navy. However, that does not mean that they are completely wrong or that Russia would not love to get some of its own super aircraft carrriers.

The 2019 iteration of the naval exercise Sea Breeze, which brought together nineteen nations (mostly from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and thirty-two ships, ended in the Ukrainian port of Odesa on July 12. The exercise was apparently conducted without incident. The Black Sea has indeed become fraught with tension since the November 2018 Kerch Strait skirmish, which witnessed Russia’s violent seizure of three Ukrainian vessels, whose crews remain in Russian captivity.

If some nationalists in Kyiv thought that crisis would cause Ukrainians to “rally round the flag” and support Petro Poroshenko’s continuing hard line regarding Russia and the fate of the Donbas, they were utterly mistaken. Now, if Moscow is serious about dealing constructively with the new administration in Kyiv, then Kremlin needs to cut the gamesmanship and release the captive crews and vessels as a gesture of goodwill.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Washington has not helped matters by “upping the ante” with Sea Breeze and such demonstrations of force on Russia’s doorstep. In the best case, such measures could be viewed as helping to give Kyiv the confidence to negotiate with Moscow. Yet, the risks of such maneuvers have not been adequately realized in Washington. To take but one example, it is asserted that no less than 18,000 mines left over from WWII still exist in the waters of the Sea of Azov and also along the Black Sea coasts. “They lie somewhere on the bottom and await their moment [Они где-то лежат на дне и ждут своего часа.].” It is actually not hard to imagine a U.S.-Russia war initiated by the accidental sinking of a NATO vessel participating in the Sea Breeze exercise with an unexploded mine in such hazardous waters. Remember the USS Maine?

In such a conflict, of course, NATO forces (excluding Turkey) in the Black Sea would constitute a mere “tripwire”—military parlance for a force with some political value at “phase zero,” but with little actual military significance. They would be wiped out in the first few hours of a war. Perhaps, it is fortunate, therefore, that the U.S. is forbidden to bring aircraft carriers through the Turkish Straits by the Montreux Convention. In a hypothetical situation in which they were allowed to transit the Straits, they would likely be rapidly destroyed by a robust combination of diesel submarines, shore-based mobile missile forces, and small but lethal Russian missile boats. All of this, of course, does not even mention land-based aircraft equipped with hypersonic anti-ship missiles, such as the new Kinzhal system.

If aircraft carriers have limited utility in a regrettably conceivable war over the future of Ukraine, what are the U.S. Navy’s capital ships actually good for in a conflict against Russia? It is true that many decades ago, America’s flattops faced off against the Soviet Navy in a significant naval stare down in the Eastern Mediterranean. Back in 1973, however, some U.S. Navy officers had serious misgivings about employing U.S. aircraft carriers against the Soviet Union’s so-called “Fifth Eskadra,” which even then was bristling with lethal anti-ship missiles.

A mid-July 2019 study in the Russian military newspaper Military Review [Военное Обозрение] takes up the following question in the headline “The future U.S. Navy: nuclear ‘super’ or light aircraft carriers [Будущее ВМС США: атомные ‘суперы’ или лёгкие авианосцы?]?” The piece is historically grounded and the Russian author understands that the value of aircraft carriers has been questioned since the dawn of the Atomic Age. Yet, it is explained that “American admirals categorically disagreed” with that skepticism. In U.S. military doctrine, it is assessed that airpower “always played first violin … and that command of the air has been viewed as an essential precondition for victory in war [всегда играли первую скрипку … господство в воздухе почиталось ими абсолютно необходимой предпосылкой для победы в войне.].”

A certain degree of envy is apparent in this analysis. A clear contrast is visible when this Russian analyst talks about the “rich experience” that the U.S. Navy gained in the Pacific War in the employment of aircraft carriers. Thus, even as the size and cost of aircraft carriers have increased precipitously, the Russian author maintains that American strategists “believed it to be criminal to economize on this critical system of naval armament [полагали преступным экономить на ключевой системе морских вооружений].” One can sense more than a little jealousy when the author reminds his readers that, after all, “America is a rich country.”

The U.S. Navy’s newest aircraft carrier is briefly assessed. It is noted that the Gerald D. Ford aircraft carrier has electromagnetic catapults, an expanded aircraft capacity, and a smaller crew due to automation. Moreover, the Russian analysis notes both new nuclear reactor technology, as well as enhanced stealth. At the same time, it is realized that the vessel, as a first in its class, may suffer from certain “childhood illnesses [детскими болезнями],” and it remains unclear if these kinks can be resolved or are of a chronic character. What is beyond dispute, the author writes, is that the ship is “expensive. Very expensive.” Coming in at a cool $13 billion without counting the costs of the air wing or the escorts for the behemoth, “it makes sense in these conditions” that some in the U.S. are calling for smaller aircraft carriers that are less costly, according to the Russian analysis. 

Much of the second half of the Russian article explores a RAND report on “Future Carrier Options.” It is explained that this study evaluated building either 70,000-ton, 40,000-ton, or 20,000-ton alternatives to the 100,000-ton supercarriers. For these smaller and cheaper ships, the Russian analyst notes, of course, that they would have “significantly limited combat potential [боевой потенциал существенно ограничен],” of course. Ultimately, it is concluded that the Americans are unlikely to sacrifice combat power in order to save money due to the admirals’ objections. The Russian analysis ends with a joke, wishing the Americans good luck with developing smaller carriers. It is explained that recent American experience shows that the U.S. Navy is likely “to receive ships 1.5 times smaller, two times less effective and three times more expensive as a result of efforts to make the carrier fleet less expensive.” [что в результате попытки удешевления авианосного флота ВМС США получат корабли в полтора раза меньше, в два раза хуже и втрое дороже существующих].

One could even be inclined to agree with the Russian strategist’s wry humor, and perhaps to even sympathize with the predicament of a Russian fleet that has seen some ups and perhaps more than its share of downs in recent decades. No doubt many Russian leaders still dream wistfully about gazing upon a shiny Ford-type supercarrier bearing the Russian naval ensign—the blue-cross flag of St. Andrew. Apparently, the idea is not quite dead, moreover, and may live on within a China-Russia partnership, although that “bilateral option” still seems rather far-fetched.

Nevertheless, the envy of other navies does not necessarily make the supercarrier the ideal capital ship for the U.S. Navy going forward. More than a few American naval strategists have pronounced the aircraft carrier to be obsolete for modern naval warfare. While reasonably useful in conflicts from the Korean War to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, it must be said that these conflicts were notable in that they featured opponents lacking the means to contest the seas. It’s sad to say, but unfortunately even the smaller and more backward militaries of Iran or North Korea could have a chance of putting a flattop down these days. Never mind the determined efforts of both China and Russia, which have both been working energetically to solve this problem for now more than half a century. 

Carrier advocates will often make the dubious claim that a couple of missiles or even a torpedo could not actually sink these hulking ships. Perhaps not, but please try to imagine the armada that would have to be assembled to rescue a disabled ship of this stature. To continue logically in this nightmare, now imagine the immense and vulnerable target that such a rescue operation would represent for an adversary. Such a scenario could result in the loss of a significant portion of the U.S. Navy. Regrettably, sometimes one must imagine a tragedy in order to prevent it.

Indeed, it is well past time to shelve the pervasive big deck culture that has persisted against all evidence and common sense within the U.S. Navy and Congress too. Let us instead act decisively to pursue a more rational naval force structure that strongly emphasizes undersea capabilities, along with unmanned and highly distributed networks of sensors.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Research Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport, RI. In addition to Chinese, he also speaks Russian and he is also an affiliate of the new Russia Maritime Studies Institute (RMSI) at Naval War College. You can reach him at goldstel@usnwc.edu. The opinions in his columns are entirely his own and do not reflect the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. government. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

George Patton’s unique upbringing was the correct formula for bringing out the best in a dyslexic person. It provided the only way for him to become a historic figure of his stature.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: General George S. Patton, Jr., was one of the most flamboyant and controversial figures of World War II. His career was also one of the most thoroughly documented of any of the war’s great commanders. Historians have had a treasury of material at their disposal as Patton was a prolific writer, kept personal diaries, and saved virtually every scrap of paper he ever handled. Additionally, his family and heirs have gone to great lengths to preserve the artifacts of his existence. Even with such voluminous, detailed, and often extremely personal material available on Patton, it was not until the 1980s that historians began to form a clear picture of the hidden elements that made up the man.

“A Genius of War”

Historians will inevitably examine the past through the lens of their own time; likewise, historical figures present themselves to their contemporaries according to the knowledge and prejudices of their epoch. Patton, who was always concerned about shaping his public image according to his own lights, did not care to call attention to his dyslexia; nor did those who wrote about his swashbuckling exploits as a tank commander in the aftermath of World War II care to investigate the subject, despite such red flags as the frequent symptomatic idiosyncrasies in his spelling and punctuation. Given the state of medical science in the 1940s and the postwar era, Patton could not have been aware that he may have also suffered from an affliction known today as attention deficit disorder (ADD), which afflicts many dyslexics; nor could historians have identified the condition until recently. Even the importance of Patton’s early family life, which led him to valorize war and model himself as the heir of his heroic Confederate ancestors, was neglected until recently.

Martin Blumenson brought the general’s dyslexia to attention in his 1985 biography Patton: The Man Behind the Legend. Historian Carlo D’Este enlarged upon Blumenson’s pathfinding work in his 1995 study Patton: A Genius for War, painting more clearly a picture of an oddly functioning Patton family that had shaped Patton’s entire life and ultimately enabled him to overcome, or a least deal with, his dyslexia and embark on a storied military career.

In trying to understand Patton’s career, we cannot afford to discount those aspects of his life that had long been hidden behind his martial bluster. Patton’s dyslexia and perhaps ADD, his immediate forebears, his unusual upbringing, and his early socialization developed the young Patton into what D’Este called “a genius for war.”

Evidence of Patton’s Conditions

The fact that Patton had dyslexia is supported by his family and documented by both Blumenson and D’Este. That Patton also had ADD will probably remain a matter of conjecture and speculation, although in his public life he exhibited many of the disorder’s behavioral symptoms: his flexibility and willingness to shift strategy, such as the quick deal he cut in Casablanca permitting the formerly Vichy forces to continue governing Morocco under Allied auspices in November 1942; his tirelessness when in pursuit of a tangible goal, as when he took command of the moribund II Corps in Tunisia in February 1943 and rapidly transformed it into a formidable fighting force; his boredom with mundane tasks, expressed in a 1916 letter during the garrisoning of the Mexican town of Dublan when he wrote his father, “We are all rapidly going crazy from lack of occupation and there is no help in sight”; and his startling ability to visualize and make ideas concrete.

Other ADD symptoms include poor impulse control, extreme mood swings in response to events, and short excessive tempers, all of which Patton displayed as a commanding officer, sometimes notoriously, as with his infamous slapping incidents during World War II in which he was accused of abusing enlisted men. The frustrations experienced by a person dealing with either dyslexia or ADD can be overwhelming and can often lead to serious self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy, bouts of uncontrollable anger, and emotional hypersensitivity.

Dyslexia, which is often characterized by difficulty reading and by the transposition of letters or numbers, is considered to be a learning disorder. Having dyslexia, however, does not mean that a person lacks intelligence. Quite the contrary, many dyslexics are extremely intelligent and struggle mightily with the symptoms of the disorder. The dyslexic often has a different or unique mind-set, is often gifted and productive, but learns and perceives in a way different from others.

Both dyslexia and ADD have a genetic component. They are hereditary and run in families. In this light, perhaps George Patton’s genealogy is more important that even he imagined.

Growing up in Lake Vineyard

Patton was born on November 11, 1885, in San Gabriel, California, near Los Angeles, to doting parents from a financially comfortable background. His father spent several terms as district attorney of Los Angeles and ran unsuccessful campaigns for other public offices, including one as a Democratic candidate for Congress. In 1885, the year of George’s birth, he gave up the practice of law to take over the affairs of his deceased father-in-law’s business empire in an attempt to save it from the mismanagement of another relative. By 1899, the business was in foreclosure and new owner retianed the elder Patton as manager for many years. Despite all difficulties, no effort was spared by Patton’s father in providing a “proper” and, indeed, aristocratic upbringing for his children.

During George’s youth, the Patton family lived both in Los Angeles and at Lake Vineyard, the estate of his late grandfather, Benjamin “Don Benito” Wilson, an early American pioneer in California before the territory became part of the United States.

Blumenson credits Don Benito with some of the genetic makeup of the future general, including looks, driv, and tenacity. D’Este’s work reveals Don Benito as an extremely eccentric and physically rugged individualist. His exploits included lassoing and killing grizzly bears, surviving the poison-tipped arrow of an American Indian, and delivering the heads of rebellious Indians in a wicker basket to California’s governor. Patton would replicate that feat when he presented General Pershing with the bodies of three of Pancho Villa’s men during the Punitive Expedition of 1916. Like his ancestor, George Patton enjoyed and displayed a zest for combat, which contrasted sharply with his more low-key superior in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Don Benito was a man of frightful temper who did not suffer fools and finally gave up carrying a gun lest he do something rash. There is more than just a suggestion that George S. Patton, Jr., owed a great deal genetically to Don Benito.

His environment shaped the young Patton as much as his heredity. The atmosphere of his childhood included the continual repetition of family lore that glorified participation in lost causes such as the Confederacy and the struggle for Scottish independence among his more distant forebears and emphasized the Pattons’ ties to the Southern planter aristocracy. There was also an ongoing exposure to the great military leaders of history and literature, of whom George learned while being read to by his family from Walter Scott, Rudyard Kipling, Homer, and other authors. In addition, a parade of famous martial figures visited his home as guests of his parents.

The building blocks of the general’s personality were laid out in Lake Vineyard, a place of open spaces, horses, and outdoor action.An expert horseman at an early age, George established himself as an accident-prone risk taker in his riding and childhood war games. He remained a magnet for accidents through his military career, from a tent fire that singed his face during the 1916 Mexican Expedition to auto accidents in the waning months of World War II. Patton’s military proclivity became evident at an early age. His father carved him a wooden sword, and the boy played continually with his sister and an abundance of cousins and friends who visited the Vineyard estate. Patton once said, “I must be the happiest boy in the world.”

Aunt Nannie

One of the more eccentric fixtures in the Patton household was George’s Aunt Nannie. When Ruth Wilson married the boy’s father, George Patton II, her sister, Annie, was devastated. Annie had fallen deeply in love with George II. Her sanity not quite intact and her love unrequited, Aunt Nannie, as she was known, nevertheless attached herself to the newly married couple and never left them. D’Este tells us that she shared everything in their marriage except the bed.

While his parents doted on George, Aunt Nannie was obsessed with him. She became a surrogate mother who shamelessly spoiled him. Nannie was the uncontested, often tyrannical ruler of the Patton household, often trying the Pattons’ patience with her refusal to allow George to be punished.

While George’s father amused him by reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, Aunt Nannie, having decided that George was “delicate,” began reading aloud to him classics such as Plutarch’s Lives and The March of Xenophon and stories about Alexander the Great and Napoleon. D’Este asserts that it was Nannie who deeply influenced his early education. George was a willing participant who listened attentively and absorbed deeply. The most influential work Nannie presented to George was the Bible, which she read him three or four hours a day. Jesus emerged from her exegesis as the quintessential example of human courage.

Nannie was never certain if her efforts were having any effect on her nephew and even came sadly to the conclusion that he was dim-witted. Until he started school at the age of 11, he was unable to read or write. Surprisingly, he could quote from memory not only lengthy Bible passages, but also entire volumes of poetry and long passages of history. Nannie’s unrelenting Bible readings caused the book to become the foundation on which George’s life was built. God dominated Patton’s speeches and his writings throughout his life and especially during the peaks and valleys of his career.

The Pattons’ Civil War Prestige

Where Aunt Nannie left off, Papa took over with vivid, lavish, and probably exaggerated tales of Confederate heroes of the Civil War. The dead colonels, George and Waller “Taz” Tazewell Patton, came back to life as Papa told and retold the stories of their heroic lives given willingly, tragically, in the cause of the South. The Pattons might now live in California, but emotionally they never left the Virginia plantations. It was Papa who taught George of his family heritage through the lives of Patton military men from the Revolution through the Civil War.

As assiduously as Aunt Nannie thumped the Bible and force-fed the classics, so with military history and family lore did Papa stoke George’s all-consuming fires. Papa was vicariously living his own truncated military career through his son. Sometimes he produced actual heroes for his son to emulate. Colonel John Singleton Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla who by the 1890s was a lawyer for the Southern Pacific Railroad, was a frequent visitor to the Patton home. He regaled the young boy with tales of the Civil War and the bravery of the Confederate Pattons.

Also among the living touchstones was George’s own beloved step-grandfather, Colonel George Hugh Smith, whose quiet counsel and tales of the Civil War instilled a profound sense of destiny in the boy. Blumenson and D’Este have noted that Smith may have been the greatest influence on Patton’s decision to become a soldier and continue the family’s martial legacy.

Papa was also willing to get down and play soldier with George. On occasion, the boy would wield his wooden sword against Papa, who would match his own father’s sword against his son’s. Papa also made sure that George learned to ride a horse sitting in the saddle from which Colonel George S. Patton had fallen fatally wounded during the Civil War. All told, the relationship between father and son was such that minor transgressions were willingly admitted and just as readily forgiven by the indulgent parent.

Learning with Dyslexia

George’s childhood prepared him to become a secure adult who knew what he owed the world and what he wanted from it. His place was securely at the top of respectable society, and although flawed and tormented, he never doubted his status. Blumenson writes that Patton’s position brought him a sense of superiority, a tinge of snobbery and racism. Patton was determined to realize his exalted, noble heritage. All his life, he honed his mannerisms—the profanity, arrogance, aristocratic bearing, the scowl, and the ruthlessness. And Blumenson says, “… the process killed his sensitivity and warmth and turned a sweet-tempered child into a seemingly hard-eyed and choleric adult.”

George’s early education was not unusual in his time, when children of privilege often were tutored at home until a relatively advanced age. Early on, however, his parents discovered their child had a learning disability that hampered his ability to read. Today that disability is recognized as dyslexia, a malady first identified in 1896, one year before the 11-year-old George entered the Classical School for Boys in Pasadena, unable to read or write. Dyslexia did not become widely recognized in the United States until the 1920s, well into Patton’s career as a military officer.

Dyslexia is not simply a matter of reversing letters or numbers but is a complicated disorder whose symptoms include hyperactivity, obsessiveness, mood swings, difficulty in concentrating, impulsiveness, and compulsiveness. Because of their effort to overcome difficulty in reading and writing, dyslexics can be driven by a compulsion to succeed. Yet, they often harbor feelings of inferiority. Virtually every common symptom of dyslexia can be found in the adult Patton. “I am either very lazy or very stupid or both for it is beastly hard for me to learn,” he told his future wife, Beatrice Banning Ayer, while still a cadet at West Point. This was despite his prodigious intellectual powers and ability to recall enormous bodies of text and information.

The Classical School for Boys, where Patton spent six years getting his first formal education, catered to children of the Southern California gentry. Patton was a diligent student who nevertheless struggled and faltered with algebra, geometry, and arithmetic because of his dyslexia. Drawing from his family-tutored knowledge, his marks in ancient and modern history were consistently high.

Patton at the Virginia Military Institute

His family was hardly surprised when George announced in 1902 that he would become an Army officer. Given so many years of indoctrination in the family heritage, his father surely would have been shocked if George had chosen any other profession. The family encouraged George to seek admission to West Point rather than Virginia Military Institute, the alma mater for three generations of Pattons. VMI remained an alternative, however, as entry into West Point was hardly guaranteed. Given the Patton presence at VMI since its founding, admission there was a certainty despite George’s mediocre school record.

Although his father attempted to pull every political string within reach, George was unable to secure a spot at West Point, and in September 1903 he started classes at VMI. This would give Papa another year to line up the political assistance he would need to crack the West Point barrier.

The trip to VMI was by train, and the strange and obsessed Aunt Nannie was part of the entourage, along with his parents. She set up housekeeping near VMI for the entire school year. The ritual of Aunt Nannie following her “son” from place to place was to become one of the more bizarre aspects of Patton’s family life.

VMI and George Patton suited each other well, partly because his father had prepared him impeccably, but also because George applied himself with a vengeance. His military work rose above that of his classmates, and his academic marks were good, even if he was struggling. Knowing that his dream of West Point could slip away, he redoubled his efforts, and his grades steadily improved. He was aided by the dyslexic’s need to strive hard to overcome all impediments.

Meanwhile, Papa worked tirelessly to win George’s appointment to West Point, and on March 4, 1904, he received a telegram informing him of success. Upon tendering his resignation from VMI, Patton learned that he would have been appointed first corporal at VMI had he returned. This signal honor was conferred on the outstanding plebe. By the time he entered West Point, Patton had taken a passable performance at the Classical School and forged it into an impressive one at VMI. The first real and significant challenge of Patton’s life had been conquered by dint of hard work and perseverance.

Pompous Patton

As at VMI, Aunt Nannie remained for the duration in close proximity to West Point and her beloved George. George believed that most of his fellow cadets at the academy were socially inferior to his classmates at VMI. He never lost his aversion to those of alleged inferior social status, a snobbish trait his grandson Robert ascribes to Patton’s father, who “considered himself to be of better stock, therefore of better character than most other men.” Patton himself wrote to his father that most “were nice fellows but very few indeed are born gentlemen…. The only ones of that type are Southerners.”

Patton’s caste consciousness was exceeded only by his bouts of mood swings, self-doubt, and self-aggrandizement. In numerous letters and conversations with his father, George alternately berated and then praised himself for one deed or another. All the while, Papa gave patient, judicious, and loving counsel to his son and provided support, advice, and reassurance whenever asked. Never judgmental, always analytical, he was the lens that allowed George to see his problems clearly. The only other people who could fulfill this need were Beatrice Ayer, the future Mrs. Patton, and the doting Aunt Nannie, whose odd presence George did not seem to mind at all. She provided a more immediate springboard for his emotions, doubts, and rages than the letters of Papa or Bea.

D’Este concluded that Patton was torn between an ability to see future greatness for himself and the possible effects of his dyslexia, which served unceasingly to implant the notion that he was both ordinary and stupid.

Patton’s classmates perceived him as pompous and overambitious. His penchant for self-promotion, honed razor sharp at West Point, lasted intact for a lifetime. His goal was glory, and any means to that end was fair. He aspired to become the first general from his class, an admirable goal but a tactless gaff when announced. His first command at West Point, as first corporal, was short lived. He was busted back to sixth corporal when he made himself foolish by putting more men on report than any other corporal. He could not understand why his over-the-top military style would be punished and vowed that he would never allow any slack under his command. Yet, in doing so he moderated his behavior so that the same fate would not befall him again. Throughout his career, he cultivated friendships and unabashedly called in markers, using his social status and whatever tools he could muster to promote himself.

Thriving with his Dyslexia

There were setbacks. Failing math, a typical hurdle for dyslexics, Patton was forced to repeat his plebe year, something he desperately wanted to avoid. This served two purposes: first to reinforce his feelings of inadequacy, and second to drive him to new heights of perseverance. It was at about this time that Patton began keeping a diary. He and his family had a habit of saving virtually every scrap of paper, every souvenir, and every trophy he ever acquired. The diary carried this a step further. When combined with volumes of his letters, pamphlets, poetry, and other communications, it has left historians with detailed indicators of the man. Even this was not without design on Patton’s part. The first diary carried a note from Patton that it would be important to a biographer some day. Prescience or arrogance? Perhaps both.

In his final year, Patton was named to West Point’s second highest rank, corporal adjutant. He was now in his element. In the class of 1909, Patton would graduate 46th out of 103 cadets. Upon graduation, he would marry Beatrice, the daughter of a Boston Brahmin and textile magnate, thereby validating his own aristocratic upbringing and instantly making him the wealthiest officer in the U.S. Army. Patton had survived into adulthood and, if he had not overcome his dyslexia, he had at least learned to thrive in his dyslexic world.

George Patton’s unique upbringing was the correct formula for bringing out the best in a dyslexic person. It provided the only way for him to become a historic figure of his stature. It would have been far more likely, given the extent of his disability, that Patton would become anonymous and marginal. Each person in George’s life played a vital role in his development, and the absence of any one of them could have left him unfavorably equipped for any meaningful career in a society that misunderstood his condition. Each of them, no matter how eccentric, outrageous, perfect, or flawed, provided a learning environment tailored for the combination of brilliance and disability that was George Patton.

This article by Glen Jeansonne, Frank C. Haney, and David Luhrssen first appeared in the Warfare History Network several years ago.

Image: Wikimedia

Warfare History Network

World War II Tank, Europe

The weird and less than martial names assigned to this 68-ton fighting vehicle were oddly fitting.

Here's What You Need to Remember: While the United States and the Soviet Union settled early on basic, proven, armored fighting vehicles (the Sherman and the T-34 respectively, along with families of supporting tank destroyers), Nazi Germany produced an ultimately bewildering and industrially wasteful variety of machines.

World War II tanks usually had aggressive- or ferocious-sounding names, such as Hellcat, Panther, or Tiger. Yet the tendency was not universal, as with British Cruisers or the American M-3 Honey. But perhaps there was never a more unfortunately named beast than the German assault gun Sd Kfz 184, first known as the Ferdinand and later modified, as if it was an improvement, to the Elefant.

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The weird and less than martial names assigned to this 68-ton fighting vehicle were oddly fitting. Technically a member of the formidable Tiger family, the Ferdinand’s history is rather strange. To know the Ferdinand, one has to begin with the history of its better-known cousin, the Tiger, Germany’s first successful World War II heavy tank.

Germany entered World War II without a true heavy tank, relying on a mixture of light and medium vehicles and the superb and revolutionary military doctrine of the blitzkrieg. Nonetheless, German interest in a heavy “breakthrough tank” predated the invasion of Poland, and as early as 1937 the Reich authorized the Henschel Company to begin work on a prototype. This project does not seem to have been a high priority; the success of the panzer divisions obviated the need to do more than buy additional Mark III and Mark IV medium tanks. By May 1941, however, a design order had been issued to Henschel for the heavy tank designated VK4501 (H) and another to Porsche, VK4501 (P). Any German complacency was banished dramatically when, during Operation Barbarrosa, the invasion of Russia in June 1941, Hitler’s elite panzer units confronted superior Soviet T-34 medium tanks and KV-1 heavy tanks.

Tigers, Hellcats and Elefants

By April 1942, both the Henschel and Porsche heavy tank prototypes were ready for trials, with initial production planned for July. Evidently the Henschel design proved superior to Porsche’s and was selected for production. This tank became the excellent Tiger I, 1,354 of which were built by the end of the war. But Dr. Porsche did not wait for the completion of the trials before beginning production of his own heavy tank, with the result that 91 Porsche hulls had been completed by the time Henschel was awarded the contract.

In Nazi Germany, private defense contractors flourished, provided they produced a decent product and had the right political connections. This was true in the democracies as well, but under the Nazis a convoluted web of ideological intrigue and corruption further muddled the process. Ultimately, gaining favor with the top contracting official, Hitler, trumped all else. Hitler took a personal interest in the development and trials of the Tiger, as well as many other weapons. Did Dr. Porsche think the heavy tank contract was his, based on his favored relationship with Hitler? Or was Porsche instructed to start production of the Tiger as a hedge against an unsuccessful debut by the Henschel model?

Some sources presume the latter, despite the wasteful logic of producing a castoff design, both from the manufacturer’s and the regime’s standpoint. Porsche’s turning out Tiger hulls well after Henschel won the contract and had entered full production seems unlikely. Rather, Porsche plausibly gambled that his complex but innovative design, coupled with good connections, would secure the contract. When the gamble failed, Porsche and the Reich were left with 91 heavy-tank hulls and no contract to fill. Hitler decided to make use of the rejected tank hulls by converting them into assault guns. But this was not the simple solution it appeared to be. Nazi assault guns had their own peculiar politics.

Weaponry Upgrades Begin a Tank Arms Race

Germany pioneered the assault gun as a weapon type and was its chief exponent during the war. Originally assault guns, such as the ubiquitous Stug III, were intended to support the infantry detachments of panzer divisions. The Stug was a Mark III tank with its turret removed, enabling it to accept a larger 75mm gun, more powerful than the 37mm or 50mm guns in the turreted tank. This insight, that a turretless vehicle could carry a much larger gun, allowed the Germans to keep otherwise obsolescent designs, such as panzer Marks I through IV, in action throughout the war.

All manner of armaments and designs were utilized to build the vehicles, including captured weaponry such as the Russian 76.2mm guns used on the successful Marder assault vehicles. As the war progressed, the role of the assault gun changed from infantry support to mobile tank destroyer. Throughout the war the terms were used interchangeably, which is not to say that every assault gun was an effective tank destroyer, or vice versa.

The Henschel Tiger (Tiger I) entered service in the autumn of 1942, armed with the powerful 88mm L/56 gun, and eventually earned a formidable reputation as one of the war’s great tanks. But Hitler still sought a vehicle that could carry the longer and more powerful 88mm L/71. The bigger gun did not fit into the Tiger I’s turret. A solution availed itself in the Porsche hulls, which could be converted to build a turretless tank destroyer to accommodate the bigger gun. The result was the Ferdinand, named in honor of Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. Orders were placed in September 1942, and 90 Ferdinands were completed by May 1943, in time for the German summer offensive in the East.

Enter the ‘Ferdinand’

The Ferdinand was a powerful and technically impressive weapon. Atop the rear half of its hull sat a high, fully enclosed armored superstructure containing the big 88mm gun. Like all German assault guns, the forward-facing weapon had only a limited traverse.

Overall, the Ferdinand looked like a modern self-propelled gun, but was more heavily armored. Designers bolted an additional 100mm of armor to the hull, giving the Ferdinand twice the frontal armor of the Tiger I. With the larger gun and extra armor, the Ferdinand topped the scales at a massive 68 tons, which was 11 tons heavier than the Tiger I. Moving the machine required mounting a pair of Maybach HL 120 engines in the central hull. These replaced original Porsche air-cooled engines that, while innovative, proved unreliable in the Tiger trials.

Despite the tandem engines, the Ferdinand was still ponderous and had an inferior power-to-weight ratio than either the Tiger I or the later and heavier Tiger II. The Ferdinand required a crew of six, one more than usual in a German tank, and the vehicle lacked any mounted secondary armament, such as a bow machine gun.

The Ferdinand’s designers, with Hitler’s apparent blessing, intended the assault gun to serve as a heavy-tank destroyer capable of using its gun to hit Soviet tanks at safe ranges, and well-armored enough to absorb the heaviest counterfire. Its great weight limited its mobility and thus restricted its effective use to tactical defense, but the operational and political demands of the German 1943 summer offensive, Citadel, would demand an additional role.

Operation Citadel, on the Eastern Front, was conceived amid ambivalence and controversy within the German High Command. Hitler, for once, was unenthusiastic, reeling under the triple blows of Stalingrad, defeat in North Africa, and the increasingly deadly Allied bomber offensive. Citadel was not to be a grand strategic throw of the dice, but rather an operation in which the Germans planned to “pinch off” a huge Russian salient centered on the city of Kursk. Some German commanders wanted to launch the attack in May, but the army was exhausted, and Hitler and elements within the High Command favored an offensive only after units could be increased in strength and reinforced with new weapons, among them the Ferdinand.

The Iron Willed General’s Tank Army

Marshaling and organizing the German tank arm was the responsibility of General Heinz Guderian, in many ways the father of the panzer forces. Guderian had fallen from Hitler’s grace in 1941, but by 1943 the Führer needed Guderian and reinstated the strong-willed general. Guderian faced the difficult task of gathering sufficient German armor to launch a successful summer offensive. He wanted authority over both tanks and assault guns, the latter now making up about a third of German tank production. But assault guns were technically the province of the artillery, and the artillerists were loath to surrender authority over these prized weapons, the only means, they claimed, by which an artillery officer might win the Knight’s Cross. The parties struck a compromise, placing only the heavy assault guns under Guderian. This meant that the Ferdinand, the heaviest assault gun, was a “tank” again.

While the Germans assembled their armies, the Soviets developed their defenses around Kursk in depth. Multiple defensive lines featured thick belts of trenches, minefields, and antitank gun batteries, plus local, operational, and strategic armored reserves. A great mass of mortars and heavy artillery supported the defenses at every level. The Soviet positions were designed to defeat the classic German blitzkrieg by first savaging the German “breakthrough” infantry divisions then wearing down the follow-on panzer divisions. Ultimately, mobile reserves would exploit the depleted German attackers.

The southern arm of the German pincer, Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf, contained the cream of the German Army. Both forces fell under the command of Army Group South, led by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Fourth Panzer Army was particularly strong. Its strike force included units of the SS Panzer Corps, consisting of three SS panzer divisions, and the Army’s elite Grossdeutschland panzer division. These troops were equipped with most of Germany’s operational Tiger Is (about 120 vehicles) and all of the new but unproven Panther tanks (about 300). In addition to these, the Fourth Army panzer units had large numbers of older but upgraded Mark IV tanks. Manstein planned to take advantage of his troops and equipment by throwing the panzer divisions directly at the tough Russian lines, counting on their mobility, determination, and firepower to force a breakthrough—using his infantry to “mop up” rather than lead the attack.

The Ninth Army Begins Its Offensive

The northern pincer fell under the command of Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, Manstein’s rival. Kluge’s strike force, Ninth Army, commanded by General Walther Model, consisted of ordinary divisions and contained more infantry and less armor than Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf. Unlike the SS divisions and Grossdeutschland, Model’s panzer units were almost uniformly understrength. They lacked modern equipment and first-rate troops. Most panzer regiments contained a mix of Mark IV tanks and obsolete Mark III tanks. The divisions lacked half-tracked personnel carriers and mobile artillery. To make up for this shortfall, about 30 Tigers and all available Ferdinands were assigned to Ninth Army.

The infantry-heavy Ninth Army, unlike Fourth Panzer, would attack in classic blitzkrieg fashion, sending its infantry straight into the maw of the Soviet defenses. Model planned to use the Ferdinands and his few Tigers as assault guns, advancing with the infantry divisions into the Soviet defensive belts to pry them open for the panzer divisions in reserve.

The offensive began on July 5, 1943, with heavy artillery bombardments by both sides. The Ferdinands, organized as Tank Destroyer Regiment 656, led the German attack on the northern front, advancing with engineers and infantry into the Soviet mine belts. These cheap but effective weapons destroyed many of the big assault guns. For the infantry, the conditions were similar to the Western Front during World War I, as dug-in machine guns and artillery ripped into the gray-clad ranks.

“Quail Shooting With Cannons.”

Without personnel carriers, the infantry fell behind the slow but heavily armored Ferdinands. Yet, as the Ferdinands and their crews advanced their difficulties increased. Some machines broke down crossing the scarred and rugged terrain; others, separated from the German infantry and without secondary weapons, became easy prey for Soviet infantry. Many were destroyed by placed magnetic shaped charges on their rear or sides. Without machine guns, the Ferdinands could hardly defend themselves or each other against the infantrymen. Guderian later remarked that the Ferdinands had gone “quail shooting with cannons.” And the guns, which had to carry the larger L/71 shell, quickly ran low on ammunition.

The Ferdinands, however, were successful in places. Ferdinands of the 653rd Battalion, supporting the 292nd Infantry Division, quickly pushed several miles into the Soviet line, reaching their initial designated objective. The second Ferdinand battalion, the 654th, effectively supported the 78th Infantry Division in its attack, though this attack stalled inside the Soviet defensive system. Where Ferdinands encountered Soviet tanks, they destroyed them with aplomb. Their big guns were able to shred the lighter Soviet T-34 at long ranges, with slight fear of riposte. Some accounts credit the Ferdinands with the destruction of over 800 Soviet vehicles. Such claims are surely exaggerations, but both the Tigers Is and Ferdinands dominated Soviet tanks at all but the shortest ranges.

When Hitler finally called off Operation Citadel on July 12, Model’s Ninth Army had advanced a mere 12 miles at its deepest penetration, barely a third of the way toward its objective at Kursk. In the south, Fourth Panzer Army’s tank-heavy assault had more success, but not enough to justify further bloodletting in the offensive. About half the Ferdinands were lost in the battle and during the subsequent retreat. The surviving Ferdinands were ordered back to Germany in the fall of 1943 for modifications and redeployment. The modifications involved adding a bow machine gun, a new commander’s cupola, and applying Zimmermit antimine paste on the front and sides of the vehicles.

A Sophomore Slump for the Elefant?

The giant Ferdinands had long been called Elefants by their crews and were now formally renamed after the pachyderm. In February 1944, the refurbished and redesignated tank destroyer went to Italy and joined German forces attempting to repel the Allied attack at Anzio.

Although better armed and protected, the Elefants appear to have had little success in the muddy and mountainous conditions of Italy. They fought at Anzio and Nettuno without notable success. Challenging terrain, mechanical difficulties, and mobility problems seem to have doomed most of the Elefants, much the way Hannibal’s elephants finally floundered after successfully crossing the Alps. Most Elefants were lost in combat or abandoned by their crews during the German retreat. Little is reported about the fate of the surviving Elefants. Tank Destroyer Regiment 656 itself was broken up and its crews reassigned to other units. A few Ferdinands apparently survived and were grouped in a single company that returned to the Eastern Front, where they fought in dwindling numbers to the end of the war.

It is reasonable to assume that if Nazi Germany had possessed a rational arms procurement policy, the Ferdinand would not have been built. Germany’s tank designs displayed both creativity and effectiveness, and no other major combatant produced such a wide variety of vehicles. While the United States and the Soviet Union settled early on basic, proven, armored fighting vehicles (the Sherman and the T-34 respectively, along with families of supporting tank destroyers), Nazi Germany produced an ultimately bewildering and industrially wasteful variety of machines.

The German leadership’s fascination with weapons and close involvement in procurement matters better left to experts, along with the Byzantine internal politics of the murderous regime itself, were direct causes of this aimless policy. There was no reason but politics for Porsche to produce 90 expensive tank hulls for a machine doomed to fail in trials. But then again, the essence of the Nazi regime was its fickle and irrational favoritism and prejudices, which extended into all areas of endeavor.

The Ferdinand Earns Its Place In Military History

The effectiveness of the Ferdinand depended upon its optimum deployment, and politics intruded to ensure its ultimate failure in combat. The Ferdinand probably would have had a successful and relatively long-lived career on the Eastern Front if it had simply been deployed as a long-range tank destroyer. Instead, because Nazi politics dictated that SS troops would receive virtually all new German tank production in 1943, and the artillery branch wanted its share of glory, the Ferdinand was foolishly deployed in the first rank of the assault on the Kursk salient.

The big machines alone could not reverse the calamity that befell Model’s Ninth Army in the north. The transfer of the surviving Elefants to Italy again placed them in an inappropriate tactical setting, requiring the large, awkward vehicles to traverse difficult roads and terrain in hopes of acquiring a dominating position from which to finally shoot.

Yet, for one year the Ferdinand was the most powerful mobile land weapon ever fielded. Armed with the world’s best tank gun and protected by the thickest armor, it held this distinction until the arrival of the Tiger II and related tank destroyers in mid-1944. Despite its flaws, the Ferdinand was an impressive weapon in a world where the immobile stalemated trenches were less than 20 years in the past. This was no mean accomplishment and has ensured the Ferdinand its place in military history.

Originally Published September 30, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia

WarIsBoring

Vietnam War, Asia

This iconic weapon has been used across the world, including during the Vietnam War.

Key point: The AK-47 is one heck of a reliable rifle, able to function well in a variety of harsh conditions. Given the problems with some of America's weapons, some U.S. servicemembers picked up the enemy's rifle for use in the field.

While the Soviet Avtomat Kalashnikova has become the iconic weapon of bad guys in Hollywood blockbusters and big-budget video games, U.S. commandos made good use of the rugged rifles in Vietnam.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

By the end of the conflict, the American military had reissued captured Ak-47s, made new ammunition for them and came up with a few other surprises.

It’s often because the commandos hated their own U.S.-made guns.

“Initially, the AK-47 was available in only small numbers to the Viet Cong fighting in South Vietnam,” historian Kevin Dockery explained in his book Special Warfare Special Weapons. “This resulted in the AK-47 being something of a prestige weapon.”

This extended to the Americans.

The practice of taking enemy weapons from the battlefield as trophies was hardly new in the 1960s. But captured weapons—especially AK variants—quickly became important parts of U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Navy SEAL Teams’ combat arsenals. These new additions offered a number of practical and psychological benefits.

For one, the American M-16 rifle was pretty crappy. The early design was a maintenance nightmare, and the guns often jammed in battle. The AK-47 was far more dependable, and had a larger 30-round magazine to boot.

An American soldier might confuse his enemies by using their own guns against them, especially in the dead of night. The AKs had a distinctive report and their tracer rounds glowed green instead of red — the standard color in Western armies.

“With the few men we had, we just didn’t have the firepower to take on an enemy unit,” Dockery wrote, quoting an unnamed SEAL officer. “An M-16 … would stand out to the VC or NVA, telling them where and possibly who we were.”

And the Pentagon’s battle plans called for American troops to scour the Vietnamese countryside for insurgents and their supplies. So there was no shortage of these foreign firearms or ammunition to go with them.

Commandos and regular forces both seized contraband—from food stores to heavy weapons—on a regular basis. With the stroke of a pen, senior officials redirect the captured AKs and their 7.62-millimeter bullets to troops in the field.

For instance, one SEAL report of captured items simply stated “7,400 rounds of AK-47 [ammunition] retained for SEAL Team Two,” according to Dockery. “The most common source of supply for … ammunition was from the original people who made it.”

The Pentagon also began developing its own secret supply chain for the seized weapons. Government contractors made cartridges devoid of any identifying markings. The foreign weapons and “sanitized” rounds were perfect for commando missions in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Washington was not officially involved in the fighting in any of these countries.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s top secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group—a.k.a., MACV-SOG—and their South Vietnamese counterparts routinely crossed these borders to hunt North Vietnamese supply convoys, gather intelligence and sabotage enemy infrastructure.

MACV-SOG’s personnel became among the most notable users of captured gear. In September 1970, the group even asked the Army’s Land Warfare Laboratory to modify six of its captured AKs.

Less than a year later, the technicians returned the guns with silencers and modified sights, according to official progress reports. The weaponeers also created 10 silenced Walther PPKS pistols — the famed sidearm of fictional super-spy James Bond — as part of the project.

MACV-SOG distributed AKs to special units of North Vietnamese defectors and South Vietnamese special operators. With faked enemy uniforms and captured weapons, American commanders figured Hanoi’s forces would be less likely to uncover these teams, codenamed Earth Angels.

“As proposed, recruitment of these personnel would be of a highly selective nature amongst NVA officers and NCOs who had surrendered their units or turned in caches of arms and equipment,” a now declassified study of MACV-SOG’s operations noted.

“Once selected, they were to be trained in intelligence collection techniques, observation, reporting, radio communication, demolition [and] prisoner capture,” the report added.

As American forces captured even more enemy ordnance, the Pentagon approved more … creative tactics. In 1967, the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on plans—initially dubbed Eldest Son, but later nicknamed Pole Bean—to sneak booby-trapped ammunition into Viet Cong supply dumps.

“The object of the program was to cause incidents and casualties among the enemy, thus instigating doubt, fear and lack of confidence in the reliability of Soviet and CHICOM weaponry,” the MACV-SOG review explained, using the acronym for Chinese communists.

The near indestructible AKs were one of the primary targets of this psychological campaign. A year after the project got under way, American commanders even warned reconnaissance teams not to pick up the rifles while in the field, except in emergencies.

Pole Bean became one covert program the Pentagon was perfectly happy for the press to hear about. “A news item in The New York Times … indicated that the contaminated ammunition program was having considerable success,” the MACV-SOG report noted.

Even as Washington’s involvement in Southeast Asia waned, the Pentagon still made use of its captured stockpiles.

After a coup deposed Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihanouk in 1970, the Pentagon turned over more than 27,000 AKs and three million bullets to Phnom Penh, which had previously received military aid from Moscow.

When Pres. Richard Nixon agreed to a “peace with honor” two years later, American forces brought a number of the captured weapons home with them. While some of the Kalashnikovs ended up in museums, a number of them remained in U.S. special operations arsenals for training purposes.

But America’s affair with AK-47s on the battlefield didn’t end. Today, with the Cold War over and the rifle still in widespread service around the globe, the Pentagon is once again buying the guns on the open market to ship to Washington’s allies — particularly in the Middle East.

This first appeared in WarIsBoring here. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Security, Europe

The states occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war remain deeply suspicious of Russian intentions.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: The war between Germany and the Soviet Union officially began in late June 1941, although the threat of conflict had loomed since the early 1930s. Germany and the USSR launched a joint war against Poland in September of 1939, which the Soviets followed up with invasions of Finland, Romania, and the Baltic states across the following year.

After Germany crushed France and determined that it could not easily drive Great Britain from the war, the Wehrmacht turned its attention back to the East. Following the conquests of Greece and Yugoslavia in the spring of 1941, Berlin prepared its most ambitious campaign; the destruction of Soviet Russia. The ensuing war would result in a staggering loss of human life, and in the final destruction of the Nazi regime.

The Fight on Land: 

On June 22, 1941, the German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe struck Soviet forces across a wide front along the German-Soviet frontier. Romanian forces attacked into Soviet-occupied Bessarabia on the same day. The Finnish armed forces joined the fight later that week, with Hungarian troops and aircraft entering combat at the beginning of July. By that time, a significant contribution of Italian troops was on its way to the Eastern Front. A Spanish volunteer division would eventually join the fight, along with large formations recruited from Soviet prisoners of war and from the local civilian population of occupied Soviet territories.

The course of the war is far too complicated to describe, Suffice to say that the German enjoyed overwhelming success for the first five months of the war, before weather and stiffening Red Army resistance led to a Soviet victory in the Battle of Moscow. Germany resumed the offensive in 1942, only to suffer a major defeat at Stalingrad. The Battle of Kursk, in 1943, ended the Wehrmacht’s offensive ambitions. 1943, 1944, and 1945 saw the pace of Soviet conquest gradually accelerate, with the monumental offensives of late 1944 shattering the German armed forces. The war turned the Wehrmacht and the Red Army into finely honed fighting machines, while also draining both of equipment and manpower. The Soviets enjoyed the support of Western industry, while the Germans relied on the resources of occupied Europe.

The Fight in the Air: 

Mercifully, the nature of the war did not offer many opportunities for strategic bombing. Russia launched a few sorties against German cities in the first days of the war, usually suffering catastrophic casualties. For their part, the German Luftwaffe concentrated on the tactical support of the Wehrmacht. Germany did launch a few large air raids against Russian cities but did not maintain anything approaching a strategic campaign.

Notwithstanding the improvement of the Soviet Air Force across the war, and the effectiveness in particular of attack aircraft, in general, the Luftwaffe mauled its Soviet foe. This remained the case even as the Soviet aviation industry far outstripped the German, and as the Combined Bomber Offensive drew the attention of the Luftwaffe to the west.

The Fight at Sea: 

Naval combat does not normally loom large in histories of the War in the East. Nevertheless, Soviet and Axis forces fought in the Arctic, the Baltic, and the Black Sea for most of the conflict. In the north, Soviet air and naval forces supported convoys from the Western allies to Murmansk and harassed German positions in Norway. In the Black Sea, German and Romanian ships struggled against the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, winning important victories until the tide of the land battle turned. In the Baltic, Russian submarines and small craft fought a guerilla conflict against Germany and Finland for the first three years, although the Germans successfully leveraged their surface naval superiority in support of retreats in the final year of the war.

The Fight Against Civilians: 

The Holocaust is perhaps the most remembered legacy of the War in the East. The invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union brought the bulk of Eastern Europe’s Jewish population under Nazi control, facilitating a German policy of extermination. For non-Jews, German occupation policies were nearly as brutal, although populations sympathetic to the anti-Soviet crusade were sometimes spared.

Towards the end of the war, the Soviets did their best to return the favor. Soviet depredations against the German civilian population of East and Central Europe do not generally receive the same degree of attention as German actions, in no small part because of an enduring (if problematic) sense that the German deserved what they got. Other Eastern European populations were caught in the crossfire, suffering starvation and other depredations from both sides. Nevertheless, there is no question that the Soviets (and the peoples of Eastern Europe) suffered far more deeply from the war than the Germans.

The Costs

The raw statistics of the war are nothing short of stunning. On the Soviet side, some seven million soldiers died in action, with another 3.6 million dying in German POW camps. The Germans lost four million soldiers in action and another 370000 to the Soviet camp system. Some 600000 soldiers from other participants (mostly Eastern European) died as well. These numbers do not include soldiers lost on either side of the German-Polish War, or the Russo-Finnish War.

The civilian population of the territory in conflict suffered terribly from the war, in part because of the horrific occupation policies of the German (and the Soviets), and in part because of a lack of food and other necessities of life. Around 15 million Soviet civilians are thought to have been killed. Some three million ethnic Poles died (some before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, but many after) along with around three million Jews of Polish and another two million of Soviet citizenship (included in the Soviet statistics). Somewhere between 500000 and 2 million German civilians died in the expulsions that followed the war.

Statistics of this magnitude are inevitably imprecise, and scholars on all sides of the war continue to debate the size of military and civilian losses. There is little question, however, that the War in the East was the most brutal conflict ever endured by humankind. There is also little question that the Red Army provided the most decisive blows against Nazi Germany, causing the vast majority of German casualties during World War II as a whole.

Postwar:

The end of the War in the East left the Soviet Union in control of a vast portion of the Eurasian continent. Red Army forces occupied Germany, Poland, Czechosolvakia, parts of the Balkans, the Baltic states, and parts of Finland. The Western allies remained in control of Greece and much of western Germany, while Joseph Tito established an independent communist regime in Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union redrew the map of Eastern Europe, annexing large chunks of Poland, Germany, and the Baltics, and ceding much of Germany to Polish control. Russian domination over the region would last into the early 1990s when the layers of the Soviet Empire began to peel away.

The scars of the war remain, not least in the absence of the populations exterminated during the conflict. The states occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of the war (including Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine) remain deeply suspicious of Russian intentions. For its part, memory of the war in Russia continues to condition Russian foreign policy, and Russia’s broader response to Europe.

Robert Farley is a frequent contributor to TNI, is the author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat.

This article was first published in October 2015.

Image: 

Lyle J. Goldstein

Chinese Navy, Asia

U.S. submarines may well be extremely quiet, yet still vulnerable to detection by active pinging from dipping sonars deployed by helicopters.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The above brief survey of recent Chinese writings on ASW force development provides additional evidence to support the apparently growing notion that U.S. undersea superiority could be a gradually, but steadily, fleeting advantage. An obvious policy recommendation may follow that the U.S. submarine force must be large enough that it can sustain losses in battle against improving adversary ASW capabilities. 

In January 2011, the cover of the Chinese naval magazine 现代舰船  [Modern Ships], which is published by giant state-owned shipbuilding conglomerate CSIC, carried a simple and elegant headline: “056来了” [The 056 has arrived]. In an impressive display of shipbuilding muscle, Beijing has proceeded in the 4.5 years that followed in building nearly 20 of this new type of light frigate or corvette. 

For an interesting comparison, the U.S. Navy has launched less than half that number of its own small surface combatant, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) over a longer span of time.  Never mind that LCS still lacks for an anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM), so it is quite clearly “out-sticked” by the Chinese variant. But what is really impressive about the Type 056 is its ability to fill in a much needed niche-capability in China’s naval arsenal:  the requirement for a small, cheap, versatile, rugged and well-armed patrol ship to show the flag in proximate maritime disputes.  One obvious lesson from the conspicuous buildup described above is to watch the cover of现代舰船  [Modern Ships] carefully.

Last year, two covers of that magazine were dedicated to “coming attractions” in naval aviation:  new anti-submarine warfare (ASW) helicopters are in the pipeline and may well even enjoy prioritized development.  One cover (4A) showed a modernized, ASW-optimized version, likely called “Z-18F,” of a large workhorse of Chinese naval aviation, the Z-8.  Another somewhat more shocking design gracing the cover of Modern Ships last year (2A) was designated as “Z-20,” and seemed to be a near carbon copy of the SH-60 Sea Hawk, the frontline naval helicopter operated by the U.S. Navy in a variety of roles, including ASW. 

This edition of Dragon Eye will survey some recent developments in Chinese ASW development, emphasizing the surprisingly noteworthy future roles of the two new helicopter variants mentioned above.

But returning momentarily to our theme of Modern Ships magazine covers, yet another issue (3B) from early 2014 shows an illustration of a Type 056 from the stern quarter deploying a prominent variable depth sonar (VDS) as it hunts a nearby adversary submarine.  A variety of sources took note of this major design adjustment for the Type 056 with the first of these ASW-optimized light frigates, featuring the much larger aperture in its stern for the VDS, appearing in late 2013. 

It is true that Beijing has been experimenting with towed arrays since the 1980s.  But most new surface vessels have deployed with long linear-type passive towed arrays.  The new VDS will give the 056 additional active sonar capabilities (along with the bow array) that can “ping” more effectively from within or below thermal layers.  According to the Modern Ships rendering, surface ships that “用主动模式工作，让潜艇无所遁形” [employ active sonar methods of operation will render submarines unable to hide].  Coupled with the possibility of new weapons, such as “火箭自导弹”[homing depth bombs] or even “新型反潜导弹”[a new type of ASW missiles], these forces promise a much more formidable challenge.  Let’s not forget, moreover, that even as the Chinese Navy has been upgrading the sonars and ASW weaponry in its surface fleet, it has also been pushing ahead with an ambitious program to set up fixed sonar arrays on the sea bed in its proximate waters as well.

Undoubtedly, a Chinese move toward more regularized “far seas operations”—quite visible in a variety of realms—will require a renewed emphasis on airborne ASW.  Quite simply, fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft make for highly potent ASW platforms because of their speed, range, search rate and near invulnerability to submarine-launched weapons.  Despite these advantages, aerial ASW has long been an Achilles heel of the Chinese Navy—a fact widely acknowledged in Chinese naval circles.

A decade ago, the PLA Navy may have had as few as a couple of dozen large Z-8 helicopters, progenitor of the new Z-18F.  However, production was radically increased in the 2004-07 time frame, according to the 2014 covers story in Modern Ships, indicative of a new priority for naval aviation.  The same article highlights the much more prominent surface search radar on the new helicopter’s chin.  This radar is said to be capable of picking up submarine masts and periscopes at ranges of at least 40-70 km.  A rather detailed article on the Z-18F appeared in another prominent defense magazine, 航空知识 [Aerospace Knowledge] in late 2014.  This report seems to confirm a graphic that accompanied the Modern Ships report, which had previously suggested that the Z-18F could heft up to four ASW torpedoes—a significant improvement over its predecessor, the Z-8.  Perhaps some skepticism is warranted on this point given perennial difficulties with Chinese helicopter engines. The same report also suggests that the Z-18F will likely have more sonobuoy dispensers than the U.S. Navy’s SH-60 Sea Hawk.  The author says its size may imply that only the European EH-101 has comparable range and capabilities.  According to this report, the Liaoning aircraft carrier is planned to have a complement of six Z-18Fs.  More interesting still is the suggestion that each new Type 055 cruiser will carry two Z-18Fs.  That may partially explain that vessel’s expected large displacement.

Even if the Z-18F can shoulder much of the ASW burden for China’s emerging carrier task groups, there still arises a definite need for a sturdy all-purpose helicopter than can fly off the decks of China’s expanding fleet of modern frigates and medium-sized destroyers (Type 052 variants).  The 2014 cover article on the Z-20 confirms that the current standard bearer, the Z-9C, has proved disappointing, since it apparently is not capable of carrying all the requisite sensors and weapons.  While Chinese analysts do note certain superior characteristics of the Russian Ka-28 even versus the American SH-60—for example, with respect to range—they maintain that its electronics and sensors are outdated.  Thus, the claimed detection range of the Russian dipping sonar (6-8 km) is said to be half of what the Chinese Navy seeks at this point.   In general, the Modern Ships cover story on the Z-20 cites the difficulty of continuously upgrading and also integrating an imported Russian helicopter into the evolving Chinese ASW system.  This article is not shy about the close connection between China’s Z-20 and the American Blackhawk, which after all was exported to China back in the 1980s. 

The Z-20 is said to have first flown back in late 2013, but the available photograph of the prototype does not clarify whether the naval variant has reached the testing stage.  Curiously, neither the Z-20, nor the Z-18F, are discussed in the spring 2015 report by the Office of Naval Intelligence on “The PLA Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century.”

The initiatives described above should be sufficient to convince any analyst that the PLA Navy is poised to make a major push to improve its heretofore weak ASW capabilities.  But there are other major fixed-wing programs including a large ASW-optimized maritime patrol aircraft called “Gaoxin-6” that was recently profiled on the front page of the major Chinese newspaper 国际先驱导报[International Herald Leader].  Another Chinese fixed-wing program that surely has an ASW component is an on-going Chinese effort to produce the world’s largest seaplanes. It is, moreover, highly likely that China will follow the American lead in preparing to deploy drones of all types in the ASW fight.

The above brief survey of recent Chinese writings on ASW force development provides additional evidence to support the apparently growing notion that U.S. undersea superiority could be a gradually, but steadily, fleeting advantage. An obvious policy recommendation may follow that the U.S. submarine force must be large enough that it can sustain losses in battle against improving adversary ASW capabilities.  After all, U.S. submarines may well be extremely quiet, yet still vulnerable to detection by active pinging from dipping sonars deployed by helicopters.  As Chinese aerial ASW improves, moreover, US submarines should perhaps be equipped with weaponry to strike back against the rapidly growing force of adversary aerial targets.  For now, the United States still retains a significant advantage in undersea warfare, but Washington cannot permit superiority to result in complacency.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, RI. The opinions expressed in this analysis are his own and do not represent the official assessments of the U.S. Navy or any other agency of the U.S. Government. This article first appeared several years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Editor’s Note: The following is part ten of a new occasional series called Dragon Eye, which seeks insight and analysis from Chinese writings on world affairs. You can find all back articles in the series here.

Image: Flickr.

Adam Lammon

Jordan, Middle East

Jordan has weathered a series of dire challenges in recent years, including the hosting of millions of refugees and new stresses brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

On Saturday, Jordanian authorities arrested nearly twenty people and placed the kingdom’s former crown prince under house arrest. As first reported by the Washington Post, Jordanian officials moved swiftly to quash a “well-organized” and “far-reaching” alleged coup attempt against King Abdullah II, who has ruled Jordan since 1999 and is a close U.S. and Israeli ally. In a noteworthy statement, Petra, the official Jordanian news agency, further said that the purported plot is known to have unspecified “foreign” backing. The apparent coup attempt comes at a moment when the Hashemite kingdom confronts a welter of problems, at home and abroad.

Although security officials have stressed that Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the kingdom’s former crown prince and the eldest son of the late King Hussein, had not been arrested, he has reportedly been “asked to cease all movements or activities that could be employed to target Jordan’s security and stability.” In a video provided to the BBC, Prince Hamzah stated that the chief of the general staff of the Jordanian Armed Forces had informed him that he was not allowed to leave his home, communicate with others, or access social media because of his connections to “meetings” and “criticisms” against the country’s political leadership. The prince, whose phone lines have been cut, denied any wrongdoing and further stated that some of his friends, whom the Guardian revealed as Sharif Hassan bin Zaid (a member of the Jordanian royal family and a former envoy to Saudi Arabia) and Bassem Ibrahim Awadallah (a former head of the royal court who is said to be close to King Abdullah), had been arrested.

Despite that investigations are ongoing and additional arrests are expected, governments near and far wasted no time in expressing support for Jordan’s government and King Abdullah II. Not long after reports surfaced, Ned Price, spokesman for the U.S. State Department in Washington, stated that “We are closely following the reports and in touch with Jordanian officials. King Abdullah is a key partner of the United States, and he has our full support.” Responses from regional Arab states followed suit. According to Reuters, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Lebanon, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Yemen, Palestine, and the Gulf Cooperation Council and Arab League all issued statements in support of Jordanian sovereignty, security, and stability. Officials in Israel have not commented on the alleged coup plot as of the time of writing but were reportedly briefed by the Jordanians on the security situation.

Stability in Jordan is certainly of interest to the wider Middle East and the international community at large. Jordan, which has maintained a peace treaty with Israel since 1994 and is considered a crucial U.S. regional ally, has weathered a series of dire challenges in recent years, including the hosting of millions of refugees and new stresses brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. A small country of just over ten million people, Jordan is currently home to over 1.3 million Syrian refugees and the world’s second-largest refugee camp, where conditions are poor and underfunded, and people lack access to healthcare and employment opportunities. This responsibility has strained Jordan’s finances, overburdened its schools, and taxed its infrastructure, Jordan’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation told the Associated Press in 2019.

The coronavirus pandemic, too, has heightened tensions in the kingdom. Although Jordan was previously regarded as an international success story following its quick decisions to close its borders and enact restrictive lockdowns, the country experienced a sharp increase in cases last fall, before seeing another wave of cases spike in March. Now counting over 622,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 7,000 related deaths, the kingdom is hoping that vaccines can be its way out of a prolonged crisis that is overwhelming hospital wards and cemeteries alike.

Protests against the government over seemingly endless lockdowns, perceived political corruption, and economic problems have also become more commonplace. For instance, Amman’s efforts to secure International Monetary Fund loans by implementing austerity reforms have provoked sustained public opposition and assertions that the government is selling out its politics to foreign donors. Moreover, following widespread demonstrations in response to the government’s repression of a teacher’s strike and anti-lockdown protests, the deaths of nine coronavirus patients who ran out of oxygen in a government hospital have resulted in increased demands for the government’s resignation.

These internal problems also follow a slew of external political challenges for the kingdom. It is well known that Amman was not a fan of former President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plans; King Abdullah warned Trump against moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and rejected Trump’s Middle East “peace to prosperity” plan while having to contend with the protests that the U.S. president regularly instigated. The adoption of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain further shifted the ground beneath the kingdom’s feet. Until recently, Jordan had been one of only two Arab countries that maintained close relations with Israel. The accords, and speculation that Saudi Arabia may be next to normalize relations with Israel, have changed this dynamic; Amman may not be considered the vital interlocutor it once was—especially now that Arab capitals are moving closer to Israel despite a lack of Israeli-Palestinian peace. If this trend continues, Jordan will have to make tough decisions about its place in this emerging regional order, regarding both the Palestinian refugees that live within its borders and the funding from Gulf capitals on which its survival continues to depend.

Adam Lammon is assistant managing editor at The National Interest. Follow him on Twitter @AdamLammon.

Image: Reuters.

The Conversation

Health, Americas

Cocaine is a dangerous substance on its own, but becomes particuarly deadly when combined with alcohol. 

When anyone under the age of 40 is admitted to a hospital emergency department complaining of chest pain, the doctor is likely to ask if the patient has taken cocaine. Cocaine use is a risk factor for heart attacks, but that risk is magnified when combined with alcohol.

According to EU data, around 2.3m young adults (aged 15-34) in Europe used cocaine in the last year. And cocaine use in the UK has been increasing rapidly, with Bristol and London leading the way.

Londoners consume twice the amount of any other European city – roughly 23kg of the class A drug every day. This works out at more than half a million doses of cocaine, with an estimated street value of £2.75m.

What makes this data more striking is that while the cost of a gram of cocaine has historically remained the same, the purity has increased dramatically, from 20% in 2009 to 50% in 2016, with some reports of super-strength (100%) cocaine being sold.

How cocaine works

Cocaine has many effects on the body but has several target organs: the brain, heart and liver. Cocaine affects the brain by increasing the amount of a chemical called dopamine in the brain, which causes a person to feel euphoric, have more energy and feel more confident. Cocaine stimulates the reward centre of the brain within seconds to minutes. But the effects are short-lived, lasting between five and 30 minutes, which partly depends on how it is taken. Injecting or smoking cocaine results in a shorter-lasting high (five to ten minutes) than snorting (15 to 30 minutes).

The short-lasting effects cause a user to repeat taking cocaine for the rewarding stimulus, which can result in a person eventually becoming addicted. The consequences of long-term use include an increased risk of stroke, heart attack and depression.

Dangerous by-product

Many people who take cocaine drink alcohol at the same time. This is in part because of the opposing physiological effects of each drug. Cocaine can increase anxiety, whereas alcohol acts as a depressant, which relieves anxiety. The combination can also enhance the euphoric effect, fuelling the brain’s reward system. Despite this, an unknown consequence to many regular or even recreational users is that combining alcohol with cocaine is cardiotoxic.

The liver is the major organ where cocaine is metabolised (broken down). But when cocaine is taken with alcohol, the liver produces a new byproduct called cocaethylene. It is thought that about 20% of the cocaine that is consumed is turned into this new chemical. Cocaethylene also remains in the blood circulation three to five times longer than cocaine.

Cocaethylene has considerably greater potency than cocaine, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure, which can lead to increased risk of stroke, arrhythmia and heart attack. Some studies suggest a 20-fold increased risk of a heart attack when cocaine and alcohol are used together. Alcohol’s toxic products can also directly affect the heart, lowering blood pressure and causing an increase in heart rate. Our group has shown that binge drinking can increase the risk of a heart attack.

As cocaethylene blocks the reabsorption of dopamine in the brain, it produces higher euphoric effects for both cocaine and alcohol, which can create a vicious cycle of taking more of each drug. A person is also more likely to engage in risky and violent behaviour.

Both alcohol and cocaine alone can cause inflammation (hepatitis) to the liver, however, when taken together where cocaethylene is produced, studies have reported greater liver injury.

As cocaine is more readily available in many cities across the world, it is important for users to be fully aware of the short- and long-term health risks of using cocaine and alcohol because the consequences can be fatal.

Vinood Patel is a Reader in Clinical Biochemistry, University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. 

Image: Reuters 

Richard Douglas

Guns,

Though its price slightly above average, the Ruger SP101 is very durable and an excellent choice for anyone who needs a solid revolver for personal defense.

Ruger’s SP101 is a small, durable, and elegant-looking revolver that’s great for concealed carry, personal defense, or even home defense. It’s available in a variety of calibers, including .357 Magnum, .38 Special, .327 Federal, and .22 LR. Throughout my years of owning this little revolver, I’ve never had any failures whatsoever. It’s incredibly reliable and built for years of consistent service.

The SP101 features a triple-locking cylinder, locked into the front, bottom, and rear of the frame to ensure dependability and positive alignment. There’s also a transfer bar safety, which will prevent any accidental discharges during concealed carry. The SP101 is very easy to take down for cleaning or maintenance, and requires no special tools to do so.

It comes with a sleek, brushed stainless steel finish for extra aesthetic appeal. While it’s not quite as nice as what you might find on a Smith & Wesson revolver, it’s still very high-quality. The SP101 also features a cushioned rubber grip with either a black synthetic or hardwood insert, depending on which model you choose. It feels nice in your hand, and there’s no exposed metal in the backstrap to further ensure a secure, comfortable grip. It’s great for me, but if the grip doesn’t quite meet your standards, the frame easily accommodates custom grips as well.

Most SP101 models come with a five-round capacity, apart from the .22 LR model (which comes with an eight-round capacity) and the .327 Federal (six-round capacity). You can shoot the revolver in double-action or single-action by manually cocking the hammer. I’d recommend shooting in single-action for a quick, light pull that breaks around 4 lbs, as the double-action pull can be long, gritty, and quite heavy, breaking around ten to eleven pounds.

This revolver comes in several different barrel lengths, including 2.25-inch, 3-inch, and 4.2-inch. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket and designed for ultimate concealability and easy storage. Weighing in at around twenty-five ounces, it is a bit heavy for its size. However, this heft does help to mitigate some of the recoil.

Just like the Taurus 380, it’s relatively soft shooting despite its small size. The .357 loads are much more snappy than .38 loads, but the combination of the revolver’s heavier weight, solidity, and cushioned grip make the recoil much more manageable than most snubnose revolvers.

As far as accuracy goes, you’ll have the best chance at hitting your target from short distances. Shooting in single-action helps with accuracy, as well. In fact, when I switched from double-action, I was able to cut my five-shot groups in half! My average grouping in single-action was just 1.5 inches from twenty-five yards, using various .38 Special loads. Getting small groupings from close distances (up to thirty yards) is easy, but anything further requires a bit of practice.

It comes standard with some basic sights, lowered to reduce the chances of snagging on your clothes when you draw the revolver from the concealed carry position. Both are adjustable for windage and elevation and set within the frame.

The MSRP of the Ruger SP101 is between $719–$769, depending on which model you choose, but you can usually find them online for around $550. It is a higher-than-average price, but extremely durable, soft shooting, and an excellent choice for anyone who needs an easy-to-conceal revolver for personal or home defense.

Richard Douglas writes on firearms, defense and security issues. He is the founder and editor of Scopes Field, and a columnist at The National Interest, 1945, Daily Caller and other publications.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Stealth Bomber,

The YB-49 prototypes suffered an unusual run of bad luck.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The B-2 Spirit, while utilizing radically different technology, bears a strong visual resemblance to its distant cousin. Indeed, the two aircraft share exactly the same wingspan. Northrop adopted the flying wing shape for the B-2 because it offers the advantage of a low radar cross-section.

As the United States approached World War II, it enjoyed the luxury of many innovative aircraft companies, and a ton of money to spend.  Part of this bounty went to pursuit aircraft, part to tactical attack planes, and part to long-range bombers. This last generated one of the most interesting failures ever to emerge from the U.S. aviation industry; the Northrop YB-49 “flying wing” bomber.

The Flying Wing

Early aviation engineers appreciated the potential for a “flying wing” design. A flying wing, which minimizes fuselage and usually eliminates the tail, reduces many of the aerodynamic compromises associated with a normal fuselage, reducing overall drag. However, many of these features enhance stability, meaning that a flying wing often lacks the stability of a traditional airframe. This makes the aircraft more difficult to fly, especially before the advent of fly-by-wire technology. A flying wing can also struggle with creating space for crew, payload, and defensive armament, as any of these can reduce the aerodynamic advantages than the shape offers.

Nevertheless, engineers (especially in Germany and the Soviet Union) tried repeatedly in the interwar period to develop a viable flying wing, either for transport or for military purposes. While these efforts yielded useful data, they rarely resulted in practical airframes. Near the end of World War II, the German successfully developed a jet fighter flying wing, although it did not enter mass production.

From XB-35 to YB-49

In the early years of World War II, U.S. strategists realized that it might become necessary to bomb Germany directly from the United States, especially if Great Britain left the war. A U.S. Army Air Corps request triggered proposals from a Boeing-Consolidated alliance (eventually Convair) and from Northrop. The former resulted in the Convair B-36 Peacemaker, the latter in the XB-35. The B-36 had a relatively conventional design; it looked more or less like a bigger version of the extant bombers of the time, although it had innovative features. The XB-35, on the other hand, was something new to U.S. military aviation; a flying wing. It was smaller than the B-36, but comparable in many performance features.

By 1944, the XB-35 had fallen behind the B-36 (although both suffered significant technological problems), and in any case the immediate strategic necessity for a trans-continental bomber had waned. The Air Force, which acknowledged that both the B-36 and the XB-35 were largely obsolete, canceled the latter instead of the former because it believed that the problems of the B-36 were easier to solve. However, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) found the flying wing concept sufficiently intriguing that it proposed redesigning the XB-35 airframe around a jet, rather than piston, engines. Northrop developed a plan to re-engine a number of incomplete XB-35 frames with jets, eventually completing three such conversions and preparing several more.

The jet engines improved the top speed of the bomber to 493 miles per hour, an improvement of about 20% over its antecedent. The service ceiling of the YB-49 also increased, an important consideration for escaping Soviet interceptors.  However, the fuel-hungry engines shrank the YB-49s combat radius, making it more comparable to a medium bomber than to the long-range B-36. Unfortunately, while the YB-49 could outrun the B-36, it lacked the speed of Boeing’s new B-47 Stratojet medium bomber.

Sabotage?

The YB-49 prototypes suffered an unusual run of bad luck. One prototype was lost with five crew members in June 1948, when the aircraft broke up in midflight. Another was lost during taxi when the nosewheel collapsed, leading to a fire that destroyed the entire aircraft. The Air Force cancelled the contract for the YB-49 in May 1950, shortly after this second accident. The last prototype, a recon variant, flew until 1951 and was scrapped in 1953.

Advocates of the YB-49 long nursed the belief that the Air Force had deliberately sabotaged the program in preference for the B-36 and other, later bombers. Jack Northrop, founder of the company, believed that the Air Force canceled the YB-49 because he would not agree to a merger with Convair. A few dark rumors implied that the accidents suffered by the YB-49 prototypes had not been accidental at all, but rather the result of sabotage. No meaningful evidence has ever emerged to substantiate these allegations.

B-2

Northrop would not realize success in an all-wing airframe until decades later. The B-2 Spirit, while utilizing radically different technology, bears a strong visual resemblance to its distant cousin. Indeed, the two aircraft share exactly the same wingspan. Northrop adopted the flying wing shape for the B-2 because it offers the advantage of a low radar cross-section. Advances in fly-by-wire technology have made the B-2 much easier to fly than the YB-49 (or the YB-35). All indications suggest that Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber will have a similar configuration, as will the Xian H-20 strategic bomber and the Tupolev PAK DA. 

Although the YB-49 never reached full production, experience with the frame helped validate the concept which now dominates international thinking on strategic bomber design.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. This article first appeared several years ago.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

Security, Americas

Instead of an easy victory, the British handed the Americans a devastating defeat.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: 

American military failures have undoubtedly had an impact on the country’s strategic position, but have yet to fundamentally undercut national power. The United States recovered quickly from Operation Drumbeat, Antietam, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the defeat in Korea.

National greatness depends on more than simply victory in battle, as the persistence of U.S. power suggests. Nevertheless, each of these avoidable defeats proved costly to the United States—in blood, treasure and time.

Nations often linger on their military defeats as long as, or longer than, they do on their successes. The Battle of Kosovo remains the key event of the Serbian story, and devastating military defeats adorn the national narratives of France, Russia and the American South. What are the biggest disasters in American military history, and what effect have they had on the United States?

In this article, I concentrate on specific operational and strategic decisions, leaving aside broader, grand-strategic judgments that may have led the United States into ill-considered conflicts. The United States may well have erred politically in engaging in the War of 1812, World War I, the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, but here I consider how specific failures worsened America’s military and strategic position.

Invasion of Canada

At the opening of the War of 1812, U.S. forces invaded Upper and Lower Canada. Americans expected a relatively easy going; the notion that Canada represented the soft underbelly of the British empire had been popular among American statesmen for some time. Civilian and military leaders alike expected a quick capitulation, forced in part by the support of the local population. But Americans overestimated their support among Canadians, overestimated their military capabilities, and underestimated British power. Instead of an easy victory, the British handed the Americans a devastating defeat.

American forces (largely consisting of recently mobilized militias) prepared to invade Canada on three axes of advance, but did not attack simultaneously and could not support one another. American forces were inexperienced at fighting against a professional army and lacked good logistics. This limited their ability to concentrate forces against British weak points. The Americans also lacked a good backup plan for the reverses that the British soon handed them. None of the American commanders (led by William Hull, veteran of the Revolutionary War) displayed any enthusiasm for the fight, or any willingness to take the risks necessary to press advantages.

The real disaster of the campaign became apparent at Detroit in August, when a combined British and Native American army forced Hull to surrender, despite superior numbers. The British followed up their victory by seizing and burning several American frontier outposts, although they lacked the numbers and logistical tail to probe very deeply into American territory. The other two prongs of the invasion failed to march much beyond their jumping-off points. American forces won several notable successes later in the war, restoring their position along the border, but never effectively threatened British Canada.

The failure of the invasion turned what Americans had imagined as an easy, lucrative offensive war into a defensive struggle. It dealt a major setback to the vision, cherished by Americans, of a North America completely under the domination of the United States. Britain would hold its position on the continent, eventually ensuring the independence of Canada from Washington.

Battle of Antietam

In September 1862, Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland with the Army of Northern Virginia. Lee’s objectives were to take advantage of foraging opportunities (the movement of armies across Virginia had left the terrain devastated), support a revolt in Maryland and potentially inflict a serious defeat on Union forces. Unfortunately for Lee, information about his battle disposition fell into the hands of General George McClellan, who moved to intercept with the much larger Army of the Potomac. President Lincoln saw this as an opportunity to either destroy or badly maul Lee’s army.

The Battle of Antietam resulted in 22,000 casualties, making it the bloodiest day in the history of the Americas. Despite massive numbers, a good working knowledge of Lee’s dispositions and a positional advantage, McClellan failed to inflict a serious defeat on the Confederates. Lee was able to withdraw in good order, suffering higher proportional casualties, but maintaining the integrity of his force and its ability to retreat safely into Confederate territory.

McClellan probably could not have destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia at Antietam (19th-century armies were devilishly difficult to annihilate, given the technology available), but he could have dealt it a far more serious setback. He vastly overestimated the size of Lee’s force, moved slowly to take advantage of clear opportunities and maintained poor communications with his subcommanders. A greater success at Antietam might have spared the Army of the Potomac the devastation of Fredericksburg, where Union forces launched a pointless direct assault against prepared Confederate positions.

Antietam was not a complete failure; the Army of Northern Virginia was hurt, and McClellan forced Lee out of Maryland. President Lincoln felt confident enough following the battle to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, promising to free slaves in rebellious states. Nevertheless, Antietam represented the best opportunity that the Union would have to catch and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia, which remained one of the Confederacy’s centers of gravity until 1865.

Operation Drumbeat

On December 11, 1941, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Germany’s treaty obligations to Japan did not require action in case of Japanese attack, but Germany nevertheless decided to make formal the informal war that it had been fighting with the United States in the Atlantic. Historically, this has been regarded as one of Hitler’s major blunders. At the time, however, it gave German submariners their first opportunity to feast upon American coastal shipping.

In the first six months of 1942, the U-boat force commanded by Admiral Doenitz deployed into the littoral of the eastern seaboard. The Germans had observed some restraint prior to Pearl Harbor in order to avoid incurring outright U.S. intervention. This ended with the Japanese attack. The German U-boats enjoyed tremendous success, as none of the U.S. Army Air Force, the U.S. Navy, or American civil defense authorities were well prepared for submarine defense. Coastal cities remained illuminated, making it easy for U-boat commanders to pick targets. Fearing a lack of escorts (as well as irritation on the part of the U.S. business community), the U.S. Navy (USN) declined to organize coastal shipping into convoys. The USN and U.S. Army Air Force, having fought bitterly for years, had not prepared the cooperative procedures necessary for fighting submarines.

The results were devastating. Allied shipping losses doubled from the previous year, and remained high throughout 1942. German successes deeply worried the British, such that they quickly dispatched advisors to the United States to help develop a concerted anti-submarine doctrine. Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) was (and is) immensely complicated, requiring a great deal of coordination and experience to pull off correctly. The United States had neither worked diligently on the problem prior to the war, nor taken the time to learn from the British. However, the USN would make good its mistake later in the war, developing into a very effective ASW force, and deploying its own submarines to great effect against the Japanese.

Across the Partition, 1950

Following the successful defense of Pusan, and the stunning victory on the beaches of Inchon, the United States Army and Marine Corps, with support of Republic of Korea forces, marched deep into North Korea in an effort to destroy the Pyongyang regime and turn over full control of the Korean Peninsula to Seoul. The United States saw a counteroffensive as an opportunity to roll back Communist gains in the wake of the Chinese Revolution, and punish the Communist world for aggression on the Korean Peninsula.

This was an operational and strategic disaster. As American forces approached the Chinese border on two widely divergent (and mutually unsupportable) axes, Chinese forces massed in the mountains of North Korea. Beijing’s diplomatic warnings became increasingly shrill, but fresh off the victory at Inchon, few in the United States paid any attention. China was impoverished and militarily weak, while the Soviet Union had displayed no taste for direct intervention.

When the Chinese counterattacked in November 1950, they threw back U.S. Army and Marine Corps forces with huge loss of life on both sides. For a time, it appeared that the People’s Liberation Army’s counteroffensive might completely rout United Nation forces. Eventually, however, the lines stabilized around what is now the Demilitarized Zone.

This failure had many fathers. While General Douglas MacArthur pushed most aggressively for a decisive offensive, he had many friends and supporters in Congress. President Truman made no effort to restrain MacArthur until the magnitude of the disaster became apparent. U.S. intelligence lacked a good understanding of either Chinese aims or Chinese capabilities. The invasion resulted in two more years of war, in which neither China, nor the United States could budge the other very far from the 38th parallel. It also poisoned U.S.-Chinese relations for a generation.

Disbanding the Iraqi Army

On May 23, 2003, Paul Bremer (chief administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority) ordered the Iraqi Army to disband. It is difficult to overstate the unwise nature of this decision. We don’t need hindsight; it was, as many recognized, a terrible decision at the time. In a moment, swept aside was the entirety of Iraqi military history, including the traditions and communal spirit of the finest Iraqi military formations. Eradicated was the best means for managing the sectors of Iraqi society most likely to engage in insurgent activity.

It’s not hard to see the logic of the decision. The Iraqi Army was deeply implicated in the Baathist power structure that had dominated Iraq for decades. Many of its officers had committed war crimes, often against other Iraqis. It was heavily tilted towards the Sunnis, with few Shia or Kurds in positions of responsibility. Finally, it had, from the American perspective, a recent history of appallingly poor military performance. As Bremer argued, it had largely dissolved in response to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But this was not how many Iraqis viewed the army. The Royal Iraqi Army had come into existence in the early 1920s, when Iraq remained a protectorate of the British Empire. It had revolted in 1941, but the British made the wise decision to keep the force together so as to maintain order. In 1948, its units fought against Israeli forces during the wars of Israeli independence, and it participated in the 1967 war, if briefly. In the 1980s, it waged an eight-year struggle against Iran. While its legacy was complex, for many Iraqis, service in the Army (and in particular its performance against Iran) remained a source of personal and national pride. Eradicated was eighty years of institutional history.

It’s impossible to say how the reconstruction of the Iraqi Army might have played out differently, but then it’s difficult to imagine how it could have been worse. The Iraqi Army has consistently failed in the most elementary of military tasks when not directly supported by American forces. It remains unpopular in broad sectors of Iraqi society, and its performance against lightly armed ISIS fighters has made it the laughingstock of the region.

Conclusion

American military failures have undoubtedly had an impact on the country’s strategic position, but have yet to fundamentally undercut national power. The United States recovered quickly from Operation Drumbeat, Antietam, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and the defeat in Korea.

National greatness depends on more than simply victory in battle, as the persistence of U.S. power suggests. Nevertheless, each of these avoidable defeats proved costly to the United States—in blood, treasure and time.

This article was first published in 2014.

Daniel Khalessi

U.S. Democracy, Americas

An old adage warns us that people who stand for nothing fall for anything. March 27, 2021, marked the passing of a great Cold War diplomat and professor who stood for something: Charles Hill.

An old adage warns us that people who stand for nothing fall for anything. March 27, 2021, marked the passing of a great Cold War diplomat and professor who stood for something: Charles Hill. From his time as a young China watcher during the Sino-Soviet split to his experiences as a career diplomat and trusted adviser to former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, President Ronald Reagan, and U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Hill committed his life and teaching to the cause of upholding world order.

As a Yale professor, he co-founded the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy with John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy and pushed his students to think critically about the competing forces of world history. In his book Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, he argued that effective leaders made sound strategic decisions because they could “sense the course of history.” He called this a strategist’s “sixth sense”—the ability to “size up the situation at one glance and decide how to incorporate it, or not, into your grand strategy.” 

To this end, Hill pushed his students to study oratory, geography, literature, classics, and philosophy. He viewed these disciplines as integral to leadership, diplomacy, and strategy—despite the fact that the many universities and public policy schools had long abandoned them. To Hill, the idea that policy schools would purport to teach “diplomacy” but fail to introduce students to the time-honored arts of great diplomats was irrational. For Hill, strategy was not political science; it was more of a philosophy of history.  

The central theme in Hill’s philosophy of history was that the international state system is under siege by modern-day empires and revisionist powers. A rising China, revanchist Russia, revolutionary Iran, and resurgent right-wing extremism in America threaten the international state system. In Hill’s view, America is the only nation with the creed, capacity, and coalitions congruent with establishing a balance of power that preserves world order.

To be sure, America cannot and should not extinguish any and every threat to the international state system. Prudent strategy requires an ecological view of tectonic shifts, prioritizing objectives, building coalitions, balancing opposing forces, and not losing sight of America’s highest national interest: preventing threats to order and liberty at home.

Hill would often point to Alexander Hamilton as an American strategist who understood well that the demands of statecraft must trump soulcraft. As the Jeffersonians pushed for America to support the French Revolution, Hamilton argued that American involvement would lead to a war “with greater dangers and disasters than that by which we established our existence as an independent nation.” The survival of the fledgling American republic was more important than the rigid pursuit of ideology through military adventurism.

At the same time, American leaders must not become paralyzed by the fear of war. The first rule of strategy, Hill noted, is to “never tell your opponent what you are not going to do.” Today, the word diplomacy has lost meaning. For too many, its practice has become synonymous with accommodation, concession, détente, or even appeasement. But historically, the purpose of diplomacy has been much more: to extract concessions, forge coalitions, and construct international rules and procedures. Accommodation was not its sole purpose. In the Cold War, Paul Nitze argued that American diplomacy was analogous to Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity. As Hill explained, America would need to be “adversarial and accommodating at the same time.”

Absent meaningful diplomacy and strategic foresight, world order can collapse in three different ways. First, America surrenders its leadership role out of a fear of war. Second, America sleepwalks into a nuclear war through miscalculation. This war, Reagan famously noted, that “cannot be won and must never be fought.” And third, despotism emerges in America.

The remedy to the first is American economic, diplomatic, scientific, and military strength. The remedy to the second is the marriage of prudence with deterrence. The third, however, will require nothing short of a societal renewal of America’s commitment to law, national service, and civic engagement.

If despotism were to “spring up amongst us,” as Lincoln argued in his Lyceum Address, then “we must ourselves be its author and finisher.” The collapse of American democracy would pose the greatest threat to world order in a trial of a thousand years, and thus America must stand for something, so it falls for nothing.

Daniel Khalessi is a J.D. Candidate at Stanford Law School and a former student of Professor Hill’s in the Yale Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.  

Image: Reuters