The National Interest

James Holmes, Robert Farley

Weapons, Americas

Here's a long list of modern military marvels.

Here's What You Need to Know: These weapons are not to be trifled with.

(This is a series of 5 pieces combined for your reading pleasure that have ranked as some of our most popular ever.)

5 Best Battleships:

Ranking the greatest battleships of all time is a tad easier than ranking naval battles. Both involve comparing apples with oranges. But at least taking the measure of individual men-of-war involves comparing one apple with one orange. That's a compact endeavor relative to sorting through history to discern how seesaw interactions shaped the destinies of peoples and civilizations.

Still, we need some standard for distinguishing between battlewagons. What makes a ship great? It makes sense, first of all, to exclude any ship before the reign of Henry VIII. There was no line-of-battle ship in the modern sense before England's "great sea-king" founded the sail-driven Royal Navy in the 16th century. Galley warfare was quite a different affair from lining up capital ships and pounding away with naval gunnery.

One inescapable chore is to compare ships' technical characteristics. A recent piece over at War Is Boring revisits an old debate among battleship and World War II enthusiasts. Namely, who would've prevailed in a tilt between a U.S. Navy Iowa-class dreadnought and the Imperial Japanese Navy's Yamato? Author Michael Peck restates the common wisdom from when I served in mighty Wisconsin, last of the battleships: it depends on who landed the first blow. Iowas commanded edges in speed and fire control, while Yamato and her sister Musashi outranged us and boasted heavier weight of shot. We would've made out fine had we closed the range before the enemy scored a lucky hit from afar. If not, things may have turned ugly.

Though not in so many words, Peck walks through the basic design features that help qualify a battleship for history's elite -- namely guns, armor, and speed. Makes sense, doesn't it? Offensive punch, defensive resiliency, and speed remain the hallmarks of any surface combatant even in this missile age. Note, however, that asymmetries among combat vessels result in large part from the tradeoffs naval architects must make among desirable attributes.

Only sci-fi lets shipwrights escape such choices. A Death Star of the sea would sport irresistible weaponry, impenetrable armor, and engines able to drive the vessel at breakneck speed. But again, you can't have everything in the real world. Weight is a huge challenge. A battleship loaded down with the biggest guns and thickest armor would waddle from place to place. It would make itself an easy target for nimbler opponents or let them run away. On the other hand, assigning guns and speed top priority works against rugged sides. A ship that's fleet of foot but lightly armored exposes its innards and crew to enemy gunfire. And so forth. Different navies have different philosophies about tradeoffs. Hence the mismatches between Yamato and Iowa along certain parameters. Thus has it always been when fighting ships square off.

But a battleship is more than a machine. Machines neither rule the waves nor lose out in contests for mastery. People do. People ply the seas, and ideas about shiphandling and tactics guide their combat endeavors. Great Britain's Royal Navy triumphed repeatedly during the age of sail. Its success owed less to superior materiel -- adversaries such as France and the United States sometimes fielded better ships -- than to prolonged voyages that raised seamanship and gunnery to a high art. Indeed, a friend likes to joke that the 18th century's finest warship was a French 74-gun ship captured -- and crewed -- by Royal Navy mariners. The best hardware meets the best software.

That's why in the end, debating Jane's Fighting Ships entries -- lists of statistics -- for Iowa, Yamato, and their brethren from other times and places fails to satisfy. What looks like the best ship on paper may not win. A ship need not outmatch its opponents by every technical measure. It needs to be good enough. That is, it must match up well enough to give an entrepreneurial crew, mindful of the tactical surroundings, a reasonable chance to win. The greatest battleship thus numbers among the foremost vessels of its age by material measures, and is handled by masterful seamen.

But adding the human factor to the mix still isn't enough. There's an element of opportunity, of sheer chance. True greatness comes when ship and crew find themselves in the right place at the right time to make history. A battleship's name becomes legend if it helps win a grand victory, loses in dramatic fashion, or perhaps accomplishes some landmark diplomatic feat. A vessel favored (or damned) by fortune, furthermore, becomes a strategic compass rose. It becomes part of the intellectual fund on which future generations draw when making maritime strategy. It's an artifact of history that helps make history.

So we arrive at one guy's gauge for a vessel's worth: strong ship, iron men, historical consequence. In effect, then, I define greatest as most iconic. Herewith, my list of history's five most iconic battleships, in ascending order:

Bismarck:

The German Navy's Bismarck lived a short life that supplies the stuff of literature to this day. Widely considered the most capable battleship in the Atlantic during World War II, Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood, pride of the Royal Navy, with a single round from her main battery. On the other hand, the leadership's martial spirit proved brittle when the going got tough. In fact, it shattered at the first sharp rap. As commanders' resolve went, so went the crew's.

Notes Bernard Brodie, the dreadnought underwent an "extreme oscillation" in mood. Exaltation stoked by the encounter with Hood gave way to despair following a minor torpedo strike from a British warplane. Admiral Günther Lütjens, the senior officer on board, gathered Bismarck crewmen after the air attack and "implored them to meet death in a fashion becoming to good Nazis." A great coach Lütjens was not. The result? An "abysmally poor showing" in the final showdown with HMS Rodney, King George V, and their entourage. One turret crew fled their guns. Turret officers reportedly kept another on station only at gunpoint. Marksmanship and the guns' rate of fire -- key determinants of victory in gunnery duels -- suffered badly.

In short, Bismarck turned out to be a bologna flask (hat tip: Clausewitz), an outwardly tough vessel that shatters at the slightest tap from within. In 1939 Grand Admiral Erich Raeder lamented that the German surface fleet, flung into battle long before it matured, could do little more than "die with honor." Raeder was righter than he knew. Bismarck's death furnishes a parable that captivates navalists decades hence. How would things have turned out had the battlewagon's human factor proved less fragile? We'll never know. Doubtless her measure of honor would be bigger.

Yamato:

As noted at the outset, Yamato was an imposing craft by any standard. She displaced more than any battleship in history, as much as an early supercarrier, and bore the heaviest armament. Her mammoth 18-inch guns could sling 3,200-lb. projectiles some 25 nautical miles. Armor was over two feet thick in places. Among the three attributes of warship design, then, Yamato's designers clearly prized offensive and defensive strength over speed. The dreadnought could steam at 27 knots, not bad for a vessel of her proportions. But that was markedly slower than the 33 knots attainable by U.S. fast battleships.

Like Bismarck, Yamato is remembered mainly for falling short of her promise. She provides another cautionary tale about human fallibility. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944, a task force centered on Yamato bore down on the transports that had ferried General Douglas MacArthur's landing force ashore on Leyte, and on the sparse force of light aircraft carriers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts guarding the transports from seaward assault.

Next ensued the immortal charge of the tin-can sailors. The outclassed American ships charged Yamato and her retinue. Like Lütjens, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the task-force commander, appeared to wilt under less-than-dire circumstances. Historians still argue about whether he mistook Taffy 3, the U.S. Navy contingent, for a far stronger force; lost his nerve; or simply saw little point in sacrificing his ships and men. Whatever the case, Kurita ordered his fleet to turn back -- leaving MacArthur's expeditionary force mostly unmolested from the sea.

Yamato met a quixotic fate, though less ignominious than Bismarck's. In April 1945 the superbattleship was ordered to steam toward Okinawain company with remnants of the surface fleet, there to contest the Allied landings. The vessel would deliberately beach itself offshore, becoming an unsinkable gun emplacement until it was destroyed or its ammunition was exhausted. U.S. naval intelligence got wind of the scheme, however, and aerial bombardment dispatched Yamato before she could reach her destination. A lackluster end for history's most fearsome battlewagon.

Missouri:

Iowa and New Jersey were the first of the Iowa class and compiled the most enviable fighting records in the class, mostly in the Pacific War. Missouri was no slouch as a warrior, but -- alone on this list -- she's celebrated mainly for diplomatic achievements rather than feats of arms. General MacArthur accepted Japan's surrender on her weatherdecks in Tokyo Bay, leaving behind some of the most enduring images from 20th-century warfare. Missouri has been a metaphor for how to terminate big, open-ended conflicts ever since. For instance, President Bush the Elder invoked the surrender in his memoir. Missouri supplied a measuring stick for how Desert Storm might unfold. (And as it happens, a modernized Missouri was in Desert Storm.)

Missouri remained a diplomatic emissary after World War II. The battlewagon cruised to Turkey in the early months after the war, as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and communist insurgencies menaced Greece and Turkey. Observers interpreted the voyage as a token of President Harry Truman's, and America's, commitment to keeping the Soviet bloc from subverting friendly countries. Message: the United States was in Europe to stay. Missouri thus played a part in the development of containment strategy while easing anxieties about American abandonment. Naval diplomacy doesn't get much better than that.

Mikasa:

Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's flagship is an emblem for maritime command. The British-built Mikasa was arguably the finest battleship afloat during the fin de siècle years, striking the best balance among speed, protection, and armament. The human factor was strong as well. Imperial Japanese Navy seamen were known for their proficiency and élan, while Tōgō was renowned for combining shrewdness with derring-do. Mikasa was central to fleet actions in the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the Tsushima Strait in 1905 -- battles that left the wreckage of two Russian fleets strewn across the seafloor. The likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan considered Tsushima a near-perfect fleet encounter.

Like the other battleships listed here, Mikasa molded how subsequent generations thought about diplomacy and warfare. IJN commanders of the interwar years planned to replicate Tsushima Strait should Japan fall out with the United States. More broadly, Mikasa and the rest of the IJN electrified peoples throughout Asia and beyond. Japan, that is, proved that Western imperial powers could be beaten in battle and ultimately expelled from lands they had subjugated. Figures ranging from Sun Yat-sen to Mohandas Gandhi to W. E. B. Du Bois paid homage to Tsushima, crediting Japan with firing their enthusiasm for overthrowing colonial rule.

Mikasa, then, was more than the victor in a sea fight of modest scope. And her reputation outlived her strange fate. The vessel returned home in triumph following the Russo-Japanese War, only to suffer a magazine explosion and sink. For the Japanese people, the disaster confirmed that they had gotten a raw deal at the Portsmouth Peace Conference. Nevertheless, it did little to dim foreign observers' enthusiasm for Japan's accomplishments.Mikasa remained a talisman.

Victory:

Topping this list is the only battleship from the age of sail. HMS Victory was a formidable first-rate man-of-war, cannon bristling from its three gun decks. But her fame comes mainly from her association with Lord Horatio Nelson, whom Mahan styles "the embodiment of the sea power of Great Britain." In 1805 Nelson led his outnumbered fleet into combat against a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar, near Gibraltar. Nelson and right-hand man Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood led columns of ships that punctured the enemy line of battle. The Royal Navy crushed its opponent in the ensuing melee, putting paid to Napoleon's dreams of invading the British Isles.

Felled on board his flagship that day, Nelson remains a synonym for decisive battle. Indeed, replicating Trafalgar became a Holy Grail for naval strategists across the globe. Permanently drydocked at Portsmouth, Victory is a shrine to Nelson and his exploits -- and the standard of excellence for seafarers everywhere. That entitles her to the laurels of history's greatest battleship.

Surveying this list of icons, two battleships made the cut because of defeats stemming from slipshod leadership, two for triumphs owing to good leadership, and one for becoming a diplomatic paragon. That's not a bad reminder that human virtues and frailties -- not wood, or metal, or shot -- are what make the difference in nautical enterprises.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

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5 Best Aircraft Carriers:

Anyone who's tried to compare one piece of kit—ships, aircraft, weaponry of various types—to another will testify to how hard this chore is. Ranking aircraft carriers is no exception. Consulting the pages of Jane's Fighting Ships or Combat Fleets of the World sheds some light on the problem. For instance, a flattop whose innards house a nuclear propulsion plant boasts virtually unlimited cruising range, whereas a carrier powered by fossil fuels is tethered to its fuel source. As Alfred Thayer Mahan puts it, a conventional warship bereft of bases or a coterie of logistics ships is a "land bird" unable to fly far from home.

Or, size matters. The air wing—the complement of interceptors, attack planes and support aircraft that populate a carrier's decks—comprise its main battery or primary armament. The bigger the ship, the bigger the hangar and flight decks that accommodate the air wing.

Nor, as U.S. Navy carrier proponents like to point out, is the relationship between a carrier's tonnage and number of aircraft it can carry strictly linear. Consider two carriers that dominate headlines in Asia. Liaoning, the Chinese navy's refitted Soviet flattop, displaces about sixty-five thousand tons and sports twenty-six fixed-wing combat aircraft and twenty-four helicopters. Not bad. USS George Washington, however, tips the scales at around one hundred thousand tons but can operate some eighty-five to ninety aircraft.

And the disparity involves more than raw numbers of airframes. George Washington's warplanes are not just more numerous but generally more capable than their Chinese counterparts. U.S. flattops boast steam catapults to vault larger, heavier-laden aircraft into the wild blue. Less robust carriers use ski jumps to launch aircraft. That limits the size, fuel capacity, and weapons load—and thus the range, flight times and firepower—of their air wings. Larger, more capable carriers, then, can accommodate a larger, more capable, and changing mixes of aircraft with greater ease than their lesser brethren. Aircraft carriers' main batteries were modular before modular was cool.

And yet straight-up comparisons can mislead. The real litmus test for any man-of-war is its capacity to fulfill the missions for which it was built. In that sense George Washington, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, may not be "superior" to USS America, the U.S. Navy's latest amphibious helicopter carrier, or to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force "helicopter destroyers"—a.k.a. light aircraft carriers—despite a far more lethal air wing and other material attributes. Nor do carriers meant to operate within range of shore-based fire support—tactical aircraft, anti-ship missiles—necessarily need to measure up to a Washington on a one-to-one basis. Land-based implements of sea power can be the great equalizer. Like any weapon system, then, a great carrier does the job for which it was designed superbly.

And lastly, there's no separating the weapon from its user. A fighting ship isn't just a hunk of steel but a symbiosis of crewmen and materiel. The finest aircraft carrier is one that's both well-suited to its missions and handled with skill and derring-do when and where it matters most. Those three indices—brute material capability, fitness for assigned missions, a zealous crew—are the indices for this utterly objective, completely indisputable list of the Top Five Aircraft Carriers of All Time.

5. USS Midway (CV-41):

Now a museum ship on the San Diego waterfront, Midway qualifies for this list less for great feats of arms than for longevity, and for being arguably history's most versatile warship. In all likelihood she was the most modified. Laid down during World War II, the flattop entered service just after the war. During the Cold War she received an angled flight deck, steam catapults, and other trappings befitting a supercarrier. Indeed, Midway's service spanned the entire Cold War, winding down after combat action against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991. Sheer endurance and flexibility entitles the old warhorse to a spot on this list.

4. USS Franklin (CV-13):

If Midway deserves a place mainly for technical reasons, the Essex-class carrier Franklin earns laurels for the resiliency of her hull and fortitude of her crew in battle. She was damaged in heavy fighting at Leyte Gulf in 1944. After refitting at Puget Sound Navy Yard, the flattop returned to the Western Pacific combat theater. In March 1945, having ventured closer to the Japanese home islands than any carrier to date, she fell under surprise assault by a single enemy dive bomber. Two semi-armor-piercing bombs penetrated her decks. The ensuing conflagration killed 724 and wounded 265, detonated ammunition below decks, and left the ship listing 13 degrees to starboard. One hundred six officers and 604 enlisted men remained on board voluntarily, bringing Franklin safely back to Pearl Harbor and thence to Brooklyn Navy Yard. Her gallantry in surviving such a pounding and returning to harbor merits the fourth position on this list.

3. Akagi:

Admiral Chūichi Nagumo's flagship serves as proxy for the whole Pearl Harbor strike force, a body composed of all six Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) frontline carriers and their escorts. Nagumo's was the most formidable such force of its day. Commanders and crewmen, moreover, displayed the audacity to do what appeared unthinkable—strike at the U.S. Pacific Fleet at its moorings thousands of miles away. Extraordinary measures were necessary to pull off such a feat. For example, freshwater tanks were filled with fuel to extend the ships' range and make a transpacific journey possible—barely.

The Pearl Harbor expedition exposed logistical problems that plagued the IJN throughout World War II. Indeed, Japan's navy never fully mastered the art of underway replenishment or built enough logistics ships to sustain operations far from home. As a result, Nagumo's force had too little time on station off Oahu to wreck the infrastructure the Pacific Fleet needed to wage war. And, admittedly, Akagi was lost at the Battle of Midway, not many months after it scaled the heights of operational excellence. Still, you have to give Akagi and the rest of the IJN task force their due. However deplorable Tokyo's purposes in the Pacific, her aircraft-carrier force ranks among the greatest of all time for sheer boldness and vision.

2. HMS Hermes (now the Indian Navy's Viraat):

It's hard to steam thousands of miles into an enemy's environs, fight a war on his ground, and win. And yet the Centaur-class flattop Hermes, flagship of a hurriedly assembled Royal Navy task force, pulled it off during the Falklands War of 1982. Like Midway, the British carrier saw repeated modifications, most recently for service as an anti-submarine vessel in the North Atlantic. Slated for decommissioning, her air wing was reconfigured for strike and fleet-air-defense missions when war broke out in the South Atlantic. For flexibility, and for successfully defying the Argentine contested zone, Hermes rates second billing here.

1. USS Enterprise (CV-6):

Having joined the Pacific Fleet in 1939, the Yorktown-class carrier was fortunate to be at sea on December 7, 1941, and thus to evade Nagumo's bolt from the blue. Enterprise went on to become the most decorated U.S. Navy ship of World War II, taking part in eighteen of twenty major engagements of the Pacific War. She sank, or helped sink, three IJN carriers and a cruiser at the Battle of Midway in 1942; suffered grave damage in the Solomons campaign, yet managed to send her air wing to help win the climatic Naval Battle of Guadalcanal; and went on to fight in such engagements as the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. That's the stuff of legend. For compiling such a combat record, Enterprise deserves to be known as history's greatest aircraft carrier.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College

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5 Best Submarines: 

There have been three great submarine campaigns in history, and one prolonged duel. The First and Second Battles of the Atlantic pitted German U-boats against the escorts and aircraft of the United Kingdom and the United States. The Germans very nearly won World War I with the first campaign, and badly drained Allied resources in the second. In the third great campaign, the submarines of the US Navy destroyed virtually the entire commercial fleet of Japan, bringing the Japanese economy to its knees. US subs also devastated the Imperial Japanese Navy, sinking several of Tokyo’s most important capital ships.

But the period most evocative of our modern sense of submarine warfare was surely the forty year duel between the submarines of the USSR and the boats of the various NATO navies. Over the course of the Cold War, the strategic nature of the submarine changed; it moved from being a cheap, effective killer of capital ships to a capital ship in its own right. This was especially the case with the boomers, submarines that carried enough nuclear weapons to kill millions in a few minutes.

As with previous “5 Greatest” lists, the answers depend on the parameters; different sets of metrics will generate different lists. Our metrics concentrate on the strategic utility of specific submarine classes, rather than solely on their technical capabilities.

• Was the submarine a cost-effective solution to a national strategic problem?

• Did the submarine compare favorably with its contemporaries?

• Was the submarine’s design innovative?

And with that, the five best submarines of all time:

U-31:

The eleven boats of the U-31 class were constructed between 1912 and 1915. They operated in both of the periods of heavy action for German U-boats, early in the war before the suspension of unrestricted warfare, and again in 1917 when Germany decided to go for broke and cut the British Empire off at the knees. Four of these eleven boats (U-35, U-39, U-38, and U-34) were the four top killers of World War I; indeed, they were four of the five top submarines of all time in terms of tonnage sunk (the Type VII boat U-48 sneaks in at number 3). U-35, the top killer, sank 224 ships amounting to over half a million tons.

The U-31 boats were evolutionary, rather than revolutionary; they represented the latest in German submarine technology for the time, but did not differ dramatically from their immediate predecessors or successors. These boats had good range, a deck gun for destroying small shipping, and faster speeds surfaced than submerged. These characteristics allowed the U-31 class and their peers to wreak havoc while avoiding faster, more powerful surface units. They did offer a secure, stealthy platform for carrying out a campaign that nearly forced Great Britain from the war. Only the entry of the United States, combined with the development of innovative convoy tactics by the Royal Navy, would stifle the submarine offensive. Three of the eleven boats survived the war, and were eventually surrendered to the Allies.

Balao:

The potential for a submarine campaign against the Japanese Empire was clear from early in the war. Japanese industry depended for survival on access to the natural resources of Southeast Asia. Separating Japan from those resources could win the war. However, the pre-war USN submarine arm was relatively small, and operated with poor doctrine and bad torpedoes. Boats built during the war, including primarily the Gato and Balao class, would eventually destroy virtually the entire Japanese merchant marine.

The Balao class represented very nearly the zenith of the pre-streamline submarine type. War in the Pacific demanded longer ranges and more habitability than the relatively snug Atlantic. Like their predecessors the Gato, the Balaos were less maneuverable than the German Type VII subs, but they made up for this in strength of hull and quality of construction. Compared with the Type VII, the Balaos had longer range, a larger gun, more torpedo tubes, and a higher speed. Of course, the Balaos operated in a much different environment, and against an opponent less skilled in anti-submarine warfare. The greatest victory of a Balao was the sinking of the 58000 ton HIJMS Shinano by Archerfish.

Eleven of 120 boats were lost, two in post-war accidents. After the war Balao class subs were transferred to several friendly navies, and continued to serve for decades. One, the former USS Tusk, remains in partial commission in Taiwan as Hai Pao.

Type XXI:

In some ways akin to the Me 262, the Type XXI was a potentially war-winning weapon that arrived too late to have serious effect. The Type XXI was the first mass produced, ocean-going streamlined or “true” submarine, capable of better performance submerged than on the surface. It gave up its deck gun in return for speed and stealth, and set the terms of design for generations of submarines.

Allied anti-submarine efforts focused on identifying boats on the surface (usually in transit to their patrol areas) then vectoring killers (including ships and aircraft) to those areas. In 1944 the Allies began developing techniques for fighting “schnorkel” U-boats that did not need to surface, but remained unprepared for combat against a submarine that could move at 20 knots submerged.

In effect, the Type XXI had the stealth to avoid detection prior to an attack, and the speed to escape afterward. Germany completed 118 of these boats, but because of a variety of industrial problems could only put four into service, none of which sank an enemy ship. All of the Allies seized surviving examples of the Type XXI, using them both as models for their own designs and in order to develop more advanced anti-submarine technologies and techniques. For example, the Type XXI was the model for the Soviet “Whiskey” class, and eventually for a large flotilla of Chinese submarines.

George Washington:

We take for granted the most common form of today’s nuclear deterrent; a nuclear submarine, bristling with missiles, capable of destroying a dozen cities a continent away. These submarines provide the most secure leg of the deterrent triad, as no foe could reasonably expect to destroy the entire submarine fleet before the missiles fly.

The secure submarine deterrent began in 1960, with the USS George Washington. An enlarged version of the Skipjack class nuclear attack sub, George Washington’s design incorporated space for sixteen Polaris ballistic missiles. When the Polaris became operational, USS George Washington had the capability from striking targets up to 1000 miles distant with 600 KT warheads. The boats would eventually upgrade to the Polaris A3, with three warheads and a 2500 mile range. Slow relative to attack subs but extremely quiet, the George Washington class pioneered the “go away and hide” form of nuclear deterrence that is still practiced by five of the world’s nine nuclear powers.

And until 1967, the George Washington and her sisters were the only modern boomers. Their clunky Soviet counterparts carried only three missiles each, and usually had to surface in order to fire. This made them of limited deterrent value. But soon, virtually every nuclear power copied the George Washington class. The first “Yankee” class SSBN entered service in 1967, the first Resolution boat in 1968, and the first of the French Redoutables in 1971. China would eventually follow suit, although the PLAN’s first genuinely modern SSBNs have only entered service recently. The Indian Navy’s INS Arihant will likely enter service in the next year or so.

The five boats of the George Washington class conducted deterrent patrols until 1982, when the SALT II Treaty forced their retirement. Three of the five (including George Washington) continued in service as nuclear attack submarines for several more years.

Los Angeles:

Immortalized in the Tom Clancy novels Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising, the U.S. Los Angeles class is the longest production line of nuclear submarines in history, constituting sixty-two boats and first entering service in 1976. Forty-one subs remain in commission today, continuing to form the backbone of the USN’s submarine fleet.

The Los Angeles (or 688) class are outstanding examples of Cold War submarines, equally capable of conducting anti-surface or anti-submarine warfare. In wartime, they would have been used to penetrate Soviet base areas, where Russian boomers were protected by rings of subs, surface ships, and aircraft, and to protect American carrier battle groups.

In 1991, two Los Angeles class attack boats launched the first ever salvo of cruise missiles against land targets, ushering in an entirely new vision of how submarines could impact warfare. While cruise missile armed submarines had long been part of the Cold War duel between the United States and the Soviet Union, most attention focused either on nuclear delivery or anti-ship attacks. Submarine launched Tomahawks gave the United States a new means for kicking in the doors of anti-access/area denial systems. The concept has proven so successful that four Ohio class boomers were refitted as cruise missile submarines, with the USS Florida delivering the initial strikes of the Libya intervention.

The last Los Angeles class submarine is expected to leave service in at some point in the 2020s, although outside factors may delay that date. By that time, new designs will undoubtedly have exceeded the 688 in terms of striking land targets, and in capacity for conducting anti-submarine warfare. Nevertheless, the Los Angeles class will have carved out a space as the sub-surface mainstay of the world’s most powerful Navy for five decades.

Conclusion

Fortunately, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct conflict during the Cold War, meaning that many of the technologies and practices of advanced submarine warfare were never employed in anger. However, every country in the world that pretends to serious maritime power is building or acquiring advanced submarines. The next submarine war will look very different from the last, and it’s difficult to predict how it will play out. We can be certain, however, that the fight will be conducted in silence.

Honorable Mention: Ohio, 260O-21, Akula, Alfa, Seawolf, Swiftsure, I-201, Kilo, S class, Type VII

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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5 Best Bombers:

Bombers are the essence of strategic airpower. While fighters have often been important to air forces, it was the promise of the heavy bomber than won and kept independence for the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force. At different points in time, air forces in the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Italy have treated bomber design and construction as a virtually all-consuming obsession, setting fighter and attack aviation aside.

However, even the best bombers are effective over only limited timespans. The unlucky state-of-the-art bombers of the early 1930s met disaster when put into service against the pursuit aircraft of the late 1930s. The B-29s that ruled the skies over Japan in 1945 were cut to pieces above North Korea in 1950. The B-36 Peacemaker, obsolete before it was even built, left service in a decade. Most of the early Cold War bombers were expensive failures, eventually to be superseded by ICBMs and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

States procure bombers, like all weapons, to serve strategic purposes. This list employs the following metrics of evaluation:

• Did the bomber serve the strategic purpose envisioned by its developers?

• Was the bomber a sufficiently flexible platform to perform other missions, and to persist in service?

• How did the bomber compare with its contemporaries in terms of price, capability, and effectiveness?

And with that, the five best bombers of all time:

Handley Page Type O 400:

The first strategic bombing raids of World War I were carried out by German zeppelins, enormous lighter than aircraft that could travel at higher altitudes than the interceptors of the day, and deliver payloads against London and other targets. Over time, the capabilities of interceptors and anti-aircraft artillery grew, driving the Zeppelins to other missions. Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and others began working on bombers capable of delivering heavy loads over long distance, a trail blazed (oddly enough) by the Russian Sikorsky Ilya Muromets.

Even the modest capabilities of the early bombers excited the airpower theorists of the day, who imagined the idea of fleets of bombers striking enemy cities and enemy industry. The Italians developed the Caproni family of bombers, which operated in the service of most Allied countries at one time or another. German Gotha bombers would eventually terrorize London again, catalyzing the Smuts Report and the creation of the world’s first air force.

Faster and capable of carrying more bombs than either the Gotha IVs or the Caproni Ca.3, the Type O 400 had a wingspan nearly as large as the Avro Lancaster. With a maximum speed of 97 miles per hour with a payload of up to 2000 lbs, O 400s were the mainstay of Hugh Trenchard’s Independent Air Force near the end of the war, a unit which struck German airfields and logistics concentration well behind German lines. These raids helped lay the foundation of interwar airpower theory, which (at least in the US and the UK) envisioned self-protecting bombers striking enemy targets en masse.

Roughly 600 Type O bombers were produced during World War I, with the last retiring in 1922. Small numbers served in the Chinese, Australian, and American armed forces.

Junkers Ju 88:

The Junkers Ju-88 was one of the most versatile aircraft of World War II. Although it spent most of its career as a medium bomber, it moonlighted as a close attack aircraft, a naval attack aircraft, a reconnaissance plane, and a night fighter. Effective and relatively cheap, the Luftwaffe used the Ju 88 to good effect in most theaters of war, but especially on the Eastern Front and in the Mediterranean.

Designed with dive bomber capability, the Ju 88 served in relatively small numbers in the invasion of Poland, the invasion of Norway, and the Battle of France. The Ju-88 was not well suited to the strategic bombing role into which it was forced during the Battle of Britain, especially in its early variants. It lacked the armament to sufficiently defend itself, and the payload to cause much destruction to British industry and infrastructure. The measure of an excellent bomber, however, goes well beyond its effectiveness at any particular mission. Ju 88s were devastating in Operation Barbarossa, tearing apart Soviet tank formations and destroying much of the Soviet Air Forces on the ground. Later variants were built as or converted into night fighters, attacking Royal Air Force bomber formations on the way to their targets.

In spite of heavy Allied bombing of the German aviation industry, Germany built over 15,000 Ju 88s between 1939 and 1945. They operated in several Axis air forces.

De Havilland Mosquito:

The de Havilland Mosquito was a remarkable little aircraft, capable of a wide variety of different missions. Not unlike the Ju 88, the Mosquito operated in bomber, fighter, night fighter, attack, and reconnaissance roles. The RAF was better positioned than the Luftwaffe to utilized the specific qualities of the Mosquito, and avoid forcing it into missions in could not perform.

Relatively lightly armed and constructed entirely of wood, the Mosquito was quite unlike the rest of the RAF bomber fleet. Barely escaping design committee, the Mosquito was regarded as easy to fly, and featured a pressurized cockpit with a high service ceiling. Most of all, however, the Mosquito was fast. With advanced Merlin engines, a Mosquito could outpace the German Bf109 and most other Axis fighters.

Although the bomb load of the Mosquito was limited, its great speed, combined with sophisticated instrumentation, allowed it to deliver ordnance with more precision than most other bombers. During the war, the RAF used Mosquitoes for various precision attacks against high value targets, including German government installations and V weapon launching sites. As pathfinders, Mosquitoes flew point on bomber formations, leading night time bombing raids that might otherwise have missed their targets. Mosquitos also served in a diversionary role, distracting German night fighters from the streams of Halifaxes and Lancasters striking urban areas.

De Havilland produced over 7000 Mosquitoes for the RAF and other allied air forces. Examples persisted in post-war service with countries as varied as Israel, the Republic of China, Yugoslavia, and the Dominican Republic

Avro Lancaster:

The workhorse of the RAF in World War II, the Lancaster carried out the greater part of the British portion of the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Led by Arthur Harris, Bomber Command believed that area bombing raids, targeted against German civilians, conducted at night, would destroy German morale and economic capacity and bring the war to a close. Accordingly, the Lancaster was less heavily armed than its American contemporaries, as it depended less on self-defense in order to carry out its mission.

The first Lancasters entered service in 1942. The Lancaster could carry a much heavier bomb load than the B-17 or the B-24, while operating at similar speeds and at a slightly longer range. The Lancaster also enjoyed a payload advantage over the Handley Page Halifax. From 1942 until 1945, the Lancaster would anchor the British half of the CBO, eventually resulting in the destruction of most of urban Germany and the death of several hundred thousand German civilians.

There are reasons to be skeptical of the inclusion of the Lancaster. The Combined Bomber Offensive was a strategic dead-end, serving up expensive four-engine bombers as a feast for smaller, cheaper German fighters. Battles were fought under conditions deeply advantageous to the Germans, as damaged German planes could land, and shot down German pilots rescued and returned to service. Overall, the enormous Western investment in strategic bombing was probably one of the greatest grand strategic miscalculations of the Second World War. Nevertheless, this list needs a bomber from the most identifiable bomber offensive in history, and the Lancaster was the best of the bunch.

Over 7000 Lancasters were built, with the last retiring in the early 1960s after Canadian service as recon and maritime patrol aircraft.

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress:

The disastrous experience of B-29 Superfortresses over North Korea in 1950 demonstrated that the United States would require a new strategic bomber, and soon. Unfortunately, the first two generations of bombers chosen by the USAF were almost uniformly duds; the hopeless B-36, the short-legged B-47, the dangerous-to-its-own-pilots B-58, and the obsolete-before-it-flew XB-70. The vast bulk of these bombers quickly went from wastes of taxpayer money to wastes of space at the Boneyard. None of the over 2500 early Cold War bombers ever dropped a bomb in anger.

The exception was the B-52.The BUFF was originally intended for high altitude penetration bombing into the Soviet Union. It replaced the B-36 and the B-47, the former too slow and vulnerable to continue in the nuclear strike mission, and the latter too short-legged to reach the USSR from U.S. bases. Slated for replacement by the B-58 and the B-70, the B-52 survived because it was versatile enough to shift to low altitude penetration after the increasing sophistication of Soviet SAMs made the high altitude mission suicidal.

And this versatility has been the real story of the B-52. The BUFF was first committed to conventional strike missions in service of Operation Arc Light during the Vietnam War. In Operation Linebacker II, the vulnerability of the B-52 to air defenses was made manifest when nine Stratofortresses were lost in the first days of the campaign. But the B-52 persisted. In the Gulf War, B-52s carried out saturation bombing campaigns against the forward positions of the Iraqi Army, softening and demoralizing the Iraqis for the eventual ground campaign. In the War on Terror, the B-52 has acted in a close air support role, delivering precision-guided ordnance against small concentrations of Iraqi and Taliban insurgents.

Most recently, the B-52 showed its diplomatic chops when two BUFFs were dispatched to violate China’s newly declared Air Defense Zone. The BUFF was perfect for this mission; the Chinese could not pretend not to notice two enormous bombers travelling at slow speed through the ADIZ.

742 B-52s were delivered between 1954 and 1963. Seventy-eight remain in service, having undergone multiple upgrades over the decades that promise to extend their lives into the 2030s, or potentially beyond. In a family of short-lived airframes, the B-52 has demonstrated remarkable endurance and longevity.

Conclusion

Over the last century, nations have invested tremendous resources in bomber aircraft. More often than not, this investment has failed to bear strategic fruit. The very best aircraft have been those that could not only conduct their primary mission effectively, but that were also sufficiently flexible to perform other tasks that might be asked of them. Current air forces have, with some exceptions, effectively done away with the distinctions between fighters and bombers, instead relying on multi-role fighter-bombers for both missions. The last big, manned bomber may be the American LRS-B, assuming that project ever gets off the ground.

Honorable Mention

Grumman A-6 Intruder, MQ-1 Predator, Caproni Ca.3, Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear,” Avro Vulcan, Tupolev Tu-22M “Backfire.”

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

*****

What are the five greatest fighter aircraft of all time?

Like the same question asked of tanks, cars, or rock and roll guitarists, the answer invariably depends on parameters. For example, there are few sets of consistent parameters that would include both the T-34 and the King Tiger among the greatest of all tanks. I know which one I’d like to be driving in a fight, but I also appreciate that this isn’t the most appropriate way to approach the question. Similarly, while I’d love to drive a Porsche 959 to work every morning, I’d be hesitant to list it ahead of the Toyota Corolla on a “best of” compilation.

Nations buy fighter aircraft to resolve national strategic problems, and the aircraft should accordingly be evaluated on their ability to solve or ameliorate these problems. Thus, the motivating question is this: how well did this aircraft help solve the strategic problems of the nations that built or bought it? This question leads to the following points of evaluation:

Fighting characteristics: How did this plane stack up against the competition, including not just other fighters but also bombers and ground installations?

Reliability: Could people count on this aircraft to fight when it needed to, or did it spend more time under repair than in the air?

Cost: What did the organization and the nation have to pay in terms of blood and treasure to make this aircraft fly?

These are the parameters; here are my answers:

Spad S.XIII:

In the early era of military aviation, technological innovation moved at such speed that state of the art aircraft became obsolete deathtraps within a year. Engineers in France, Britain, Germany and Italy worked constantly to outpace their competitors, producing new aircraft every year to throw into the fight. The development of operational tactics trailed technology, although the input of the best flyers played an important role in how designers put new aircraft together.

In this context, picking a dominant fighter from the era is difficult. Nevertheless, the Spad S.XIII stands out in terms of its fighting characteristics and ease of production. Based in significant part on the advice of French aviators such as Georges Guynemer, the XIII lacked the maneuverability of some of its contemporaries, but could outpace most of them and performed very well in either a climb or a dive. It was simple enough to produce that nearly 8,500 such aircraft eventually entered service. Significant early reliability problems were worked out by the end of the war, and in any case were overwhelmed by the XIII’s fighting ability.

The S.XIII filled out not only French fighter squadrons, but also the air services of Allied countries. American ace Eddie Rickenbacker scored twenty of his kills flying an XIII, many over the most advanced German fighters of the day, including the Fokker D.VII.

The Spad XIII helped the Allies hold the line during the Ludendorff Offensive, and controlled the skies above France during the counter-offensive. After the war, it remained in service in France, the United States, and a dozen other countries for several years. In an important sense, the Spad XIII set the post-war standard for what a pursuit aircraft needed to do.

Grumman F6F Hellcat:

Of course, it is not only air forces that fly fighter aircraft. The F6F Hellcat can’t compare with the Spitfire, the P-51, or the Bf 109 on many basic flight characteristics, although its ability to climb was first-rate. What the F6F could do, however, was reliably fly from aircraft carriers, and it rode point on the great, decisive U.S. Navy carrier offensive of World War II. Entering the war in September 1943, it won 75% of USN aerial victories in the Pacific. USN ace David McCampbell shot down nine Japanese aircraft in one day flying a Hellcat .The F6F was heavily armed, and could take considerably more battle damage than its contemporaries. Overall, the F6F claimed nearly 5,200 kills at a loss of 270 aircraft in aerial combat, including a 13:1 ratio against the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

The USN carrier offensive of the latter part of World War II is probably the greatest single example of the use of decisive airpower in world history. Hellcats and their kin (the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber) destroyed the fighting power of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), cracked open Japan’s island empire, and exposed the Japanese homeland to devastating air attack and the threat of invasion.

In 1943, the United States needed a fighter robust enough to endure a campaign fought distant from most bases, yet fast and agile enough to defeat the best that the IJN could offer. Tough and reliable as a brick, the Hellcat fit that role. Put simply, the Honda Accord is, in its own way, a great car; the Honda Accords of the fighter world also deserve their day.

Messerschmitt Me-262 Swallow:

The Me 262 Schwalbe (Swallow, in English) failed to win the war for Germany, and couldn’t stop the Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO). Had German military authorities made the right decisions, however, it might at least have accomplished the second.

Known as the world’s first operational jet fighter, full-scale production of the Me 262 was delayed by resistance within the German government and the Luftwaffe to devoting resources to an experimental aircraft without a clear role. Early efforts to turn it into a fighter-bomber fell flat. As the need for a superlative interceptor become apparent, however, the Me 262 found its place. The Swallow proved devastating against American bomber formations, and could outrun American pursuit aircraft.

The Me 262 was hardly a perfect fighter: it lacked the maneuverability of the best American interceptors, and both American and British pilots developed tactics for managing the Swallow. Although production suffered from some early problems with engines, by the later stages of the conflict, manufacturing was sufficiently easy that the plane could be mass-produced in dispersed, underground facilities.

But had it come on line a bit earlier, the Me 262 might have torn the heart out of the CBO. The CBO in 1943 was a touch and go affair; dramatically higher bomber losses in 1943 could well have led Churchill and Roosevelt to scale back the production of four engine bombers in favor of additional tactical aircraft. Without the advantage of long-range escorts, American bombers would have proven easy prey for the German jet. Moreover, the Me 262 would have been far more effective without the constant worry of P-47s and P-51s strafing its airfields and tracking its landings.

Nazi Germany needed a game changer, a plane capable of making the price too high for the Allies to keep up the CBO. The Me 262 came onto the scene too late to solve that problem, but it’s hard to imagine any aircraft that could have come closer. Ironically, this might have accelerated Allied victory, as the Combined Bomber Offensive resulted in not only the destruction of urban Germany, but in the waste of substantial Allied resources. Win-win.

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 “Fishbed”: 

An odd choice for this list? The MiG-21 is known largely as fodder for the other great fighters of the Cold War, and for having an abysmal kill ratio. The Fishbed (in NATO terminology) has served as a convenient victim in Vietnam and in a variety of Middle Eastern wars, some of which it fought on both sides.

But… the MiG-21 is cheap, fast, maneuverable, has low maintenance requirements. It’s relatively easy to learn to fly, although not necessarily easy to learn how to fly well. Air forces continued to buy the MiG-21 for a long time. Counting the Chengdu J-7 variant, perhaps 13,000 MiG-21s have entered service around the world. In some sense, the Fishbed is the AK-47 (or the T-34, if you prefer) of the fighter world. Fifty countries have flown the MiG-21, and it has flown for fifty-five years. It continues to fly as a key part of twenty-six different air forces, including the Indian Air Force, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, the Vietnamese People’s Air Force, and the Romanian Air Force. Would anyone be surprised if the Fishbed and its variants are still flying in 2034?

The MiG-21 won plaudits from American aggressor pilots at Red Flag, who celebrated its speed and maneuverability, and played (through the contribution of North Vietnamese aces such as Nguyễn Văn Cốc ) an important role in redefining the requirements of air superiority in the United States. When flown well, it remains a dangerous foe.

Most of life is about just showing up, and since 1960 no fighter has shown up as consistently, and in as many places, as has the MiG-21. For countries needing a cheap option for claiming control of their national airspace, the MiG-21 has long solved problems, and will likely continue to serve in this role.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle: 

What to say about the F-15 Eagle? When it came into service in 1976, it was immediately recognized as the best fighter in the world. Today, it is arguably still the best all-around, cost-adjusted fighter, even if the Su-27 and F-22 have surpassed it in some ways. If one fighter in American history could take the name of the national symbol of the United States, how could it be anything other than the F-15?

The Eagle symbolizes the era of American hegemony, from the Vietnam hangover to the post-Cold War period of dominance. Designed in light of the lessons of Vietnam, at a time where tactical aviation was taking control of the US Air Force, the F-15 outperformed existing fighters and set a new standard for a modern air superiority aircraft. Despite repeated tests in combat, no F-15 has ever been lost to an aerial foe. The production line for the F-15 will run until at least 2019, and longer if Boeing can manage to sell anyone on the Silent Eagle.

In the wake of Vietnam, the United States needed an air superiority platform that could consistently defeat the best that the Soviet Union had to offer. The F-15 (eventually complemented by the F-16) provided this platform, and then some. After the end of the Cold War, the United States needed an airframe versatile enough to carry out the air superiority mission while also becoming an effective strike aircraft. Again, the F-15 solved the problem.

And it’s a plane that can land with one wing. Hard to beat that.

A Contest Based on Parameters:

Again, this exercise depends entirely on decisions about the parameters. A different set of criteria of effectiveness would generate an entirely different list (although the F-15 would probably still be here; it’s invulnerable). Nevertheless, the basic elements of the argument are sound: weapons should be evaluated in terms of how they help achieve national objectives.

Honorable mentions include the North American Aviation F-86 Sabre, the Fokker D.VII, the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190, the Supermarine Spitfire, the North American Aviation P-51 Mustang, the McDonnell Douglas EA-18 Growler, the English Electric Lightning, the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, the Sukhoi Su-27 “Flanker,” and the General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, is a Visiting Professor at the United States Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article first appeared in 2019.

Image: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Scott Taylor

Robert Farley

North Korea, Asia

North Korea’s best hope for success in peace hinges, as it has for the past seventy years, on the potential collapse of the global capitalist system.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Even the much-vaunted artillery along the border will likely see quick attrition at the hands of hyper-accurate counter-battery attacks and other precision guided munitions. Once KPA forces are defeated in the field, there is little doubt that the ROK and the United States would take advantage of the opportunity to end the regime once and for all.

The most intense period of fighting in Korea ended some 60-plus years ago, but the divide across the Peninsula remains the world’s most visible legacy of the Cold War.  While the Republic of Korea (ROK) has become economically successful and democratic, North Korea has become a punchline. 

Nevertheless, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has continued to increase the sophistication of its ballistic missiles, has developed nuclear weapons, and maintains the world’s largest garrison state.  Pyongyang has also made clear that it isn’t afraid to provoke Seoul (and Seoul’s biggest supporter, the United States) with aggressive moves such as the sinking of the corvette Cheonan, and the bombardment of South Korean islands.

The general peace on the peninsula has more or less held since the 1950s. Still, while North Korea’s power has declined substantially relative to that of South Korea, the idea that Pyongyang might come to the conclusion that war could solve its problems still worries U.S. and South Korean planners. 

If North Korea faced a situation in which it determined that war was the only solution, how might it seek to crush the ROK, and deter the United States and Japan?

Timing is Everything…

North Korea’s best hope for success in peace hinges, as it has for the past seventy years, on the potential collapse of the global capitalist system. This sounds… optimistic, but consider that South Korea suffered badly during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, that the capitalist world continues to suffer from the fallout from the 2008 Financial Crisis, and that Japan faces what appear to be insurmountable economic difficulties.

Even if a world economic collapse does not bring capitalism to its knees, another such crisis could put stress on the relationship between South Korea, Japan, and the United States. 

North Korean prospects in the war depend utterly on sidelining the United States in some fashion, either through the presentation of a fait accompli, or through high stakes deterrence.

The situation with Japan is more complex, but Tokyo views North Korea as sufficiently threatening that a war would almost certainly incur some kind of intervention, if not necessarily in direct support of RoK forces.

The other scenario under which DPRK might decide to attack would come in anticipation of a major U.S.-ROK attack against the North.  In such a situation, the North Korean leadership might decide that it has little to lose.  The military balance would, in such a context, strongly favor pre-emptive action on North Korea’s part.

In War…

The clearest path to North Korean victory in war depends on a quick defeat of South Korean forces, providing the United States and Japan with a fait accompli that Pyongyang will expect Beijing to back.

The North Korean attack would likely involve a classic 20th century combined arms assault, using artillery to disrupt RoK defenses and soften up positions (as well as create civilian panic), infantry to break holes in the South Korean lines, and mechanized forces to exploit those gaps.  The North Koreans could well add special forces (potentially deployed to South Korea before the initiation of hostilities) and regular forces deployed by tunnel to South Korean rear areas.

The Korean People’s Air Force is ancient, and has received no significant infusion of Russian or Chinese technology in years.  The force has very little counter-air capability relative to the Republic of Korea Air Force, and its fighters would find themselves easy prey for well-trained South Korean pilots flying sophisticated aircraft.  The KPA can expect very little ground support, either on the tactical or operational scales, and would likely struggle under South Korean air attacks. 

To remedy these problems, North Korea would likely reserve a large proportion of its land-attack cruise missiles and short-range ballistic missiles for attacks on South Korean air bases, in the hopes of destroying fighters on the ground and rendering facilities useless.

The Korean People’s Navy would play a dual role in the operation. Offensively, it would try to attack Republic of Korea Navy (ROKN) capital ships (including the Dokdo-class amphibs, and the Sejong the Great-class destroyers, the latter of which have anti-ballistic missile capabilities) with submarines and cruise missiles, while also attempting to disrupt port operations.  Defensively, the KPN would try to protect North Korea’s coastline from bombardment and amphibious assault, both of which had a great impact on the 1950 war.

Any North Korean invasion would also include attacks on South Korean ports, both to disrupt trade and to complicate the arrival of large-scale reinforcements.  These attacks would likely involve conventionally-armed ballistic missiles, although the DPRK might resort to nuclear or chem-bio weapons for some particularly lucrative targets (such as Busan). 

With luck (and the North Koreans would need tremendous amounts of luck) the Korean People’s Army (KPA) could disrupt U.S. and RoK forces sufficiently to seize control of the major entry and exit points to Seoul, at which point it could consider either trying to roll up the rest of the peninsula, or hold for a negotiated peace that would leave the DPRK in a stronger position.  This decision would hinge both on the tactical situation, as well as an assessment of whether North Korea’s national goals lie mainly in reunification, or in regime survival.

But Diplomacy Has a Role…

The longer the war continues, the grimmer North Korea’s prospects look. Consequently, Pyongyang needs the support of Beijing to end the war and secure its gains quickly.

Why would Beijing concede to act as guarantor of the fruits of North Korean aggression? 

Not because of any lingering affinity with the North Korean regime, but rather out of a desire to prevent further disruption and instability along its border.  Similarly, its frustrations with North Korea aside, China has little interest in the establishment of a U.S. or Japanese client across the whole of the Korean Peninsula.

In this situation, North Korea would hope that the prospect of war against China (and perhaps Russia) would deter the United States from pursuing the liberation of South Korea. This calculus is remarkably similar to that of Kim il-Sung in 1950, although in this case North Korea’s own nuclear arsenal (presumably directed at Japan) would provide some deterrent.

In Keeping the Peace...

This is the best case for North Korea, but it is important to recall that most analysts judge North Korea’s military as insufficient to defeat the forces of the RoK.  The static defenses along the DMZ, combined with the mobility and sophistication of RoK forces, mean that any offensive into South Korea is likely to bog down into a logistical disaster before it can capture Seoul.  At that point, attacks along the depth of the North Korean position, combined with a concerted assault on regime targets and the KPA’s command and control network, will likely isolate advance forces and leave them ripe for destruction.  

The North Korean air defense network is immense and robust, but not particularly sophisticated.  Even the much-vaunted artillery along the border will likely see quick attrition at the hands of hyper-accurate counter-battery attacks and other precision guided munitions. Once KPA forces are defeated in the field, there is little doubt that the ROK and the United States would take advantage of the opportunity to end the regime once and for all.

North Korean military officers know all of this, and surely appreciate the exceedingly low probability that an attack would see any kind of success, either short or long-term. But we can hardly rule out that political circumstances might shift such that North Korea becomes desperate enough to launch an attack, or that it imagines itself as having “one last great opportunity.”  At the very least, preparation rarely hurts.

Robert Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs.He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls. This first appeared several years ago. 

Image: Reuters. 

Kris Osborn

F-35, Americas

The system helps identify enemy threats in key regions around the globe.

Here's What You Need to Know: Upgrades include a portable memory device which can quickly be transferred from a ground station to the F-35 cockpit.

(This article first appeared in October 2018.)

The Pentagon's F-35 is conducting attacks, surveillance operations and combat missions with an updated on-board “threat library” of Mission Data Files engineered to identify enemy threats in key regions around the globe.

“The AORs (Areas of Responsibility) for current operations where our forces are -- currently have adequate Mission Data Files,” Vice Adm. Mat Winter, Program Executive Officer for the F-35 program, told a group of reporters.

Described as the brains of the airplane, the "mission data files" are extensive on-board data systems compiling information on geography, air space and potential threats-- such as enemy fighter jets -- in areas where the F-35 might be expected to perform combat operations, Air Force officials explained.

Despite some delays with development, involving software engineering and technical development at Eglin AFB, Fla., the process is now fully on track to finish by 2019, Winter said.

Naturally, Air Force senior weapons developers do not comment on specific threats in specific areas around the globe, developers do acknowledge the threat library will include all known and future threat aircraft -- which of course includes advanced Chinese and Russian 5th-generation fighters. For security reasons, Air Force officials do not wish to confirm this or specify any kind of time frame for their inclusion.

Overall, there are 12 geographical regions being identified to comprise the library, service developers say.

“We have not fully verified all Mission Data Files for all of the regions where we will operate, but we are slated to be ready by 2019,” Winter said.

The mission data files are designed to work with the aircraft's Radar Warning Receiver engineered to find and identify approaching enemy threats and incoming hostile fire. The concept is to use the F-35s long range sensors to detect threats - and then compare the information against the existing library of enemy threats in real time while in flight. If this can happen at a favorable standoff range for the F-35, it will be able to identify and destroy enemy air-to-air targets before being vulnerable itself to enemy fire. For example, the mission data system may be able to quickly identify a Russian MiG-29 if it were detected by the F-35’s sensors.

“There is continued collaboration between intelligence and acquisition teams,” Winter said.

The Mission Data Files are intended to support the F-35’s sensor fusion so that information from disparate sensor systems can be combined on a single screen for pilots to lower the cognitive burden and quicken the decision-making process. New modules for mission systems will integrate into the F-35s Distributed Aperture System sensors and Electro-optical Targeting System.

The threat warnings generated by the F-35s Mission Data Files are designed to integrate with other on-board electronics such as targeting sensors, Much of this draws upon computer algorithms increasingly supported by AI, Winter said.

“Our fusion engine gets advanced sensors technology to rapidly identify and track targets without the pilot having to do all the work. This fusion is enabled by Mission Data Files,” Winter explained.

This concept regarding integrated threat warnings and the Missile Data Files is further reinforced in a Lockheed Martin engineering paper from early this year called “F-35 Mission Systems Design, Development and Verification.”

The paper provides technical detail on a number of F-35 technologies, including analysis of a system called AN/ASQ-242 Communications, Navigation and Identification system, or CNI. CNI provides beyond-visual-range target identification, anti-jam technology, radio navigation and, of great significance to Mission Data Files -- “warning messaging” and “pilot audio alerts.” Part of its function includes “connectivity with off-board sources of information,” a function which bears great relevance to identifying specific enemy aircraft at great distances.

While many developers cite significant challenges when it comes to software development and integration for the F-35, the fighter is widely regarded as a “flying computer.” The “fusion” or technical integration on board the aircraft is engineered to access and leverage a wide range of data points and condense them for the pilot. In essence, surveillance, computer processing and targeting data are fused, as opposed to being stovepiped or separate sources. As a result, the technology also incorporates Identification Friend Foe (IFF) surveillance systems designed to quickly distinguish friendly from enemy aircraft.

The Pentagon is improving Mission Data File technology, in part, through an ongoing mission systems avionics upgrade, industry and military developers said.

It is part of a tech refresh effort for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that improves memory, storage, processing speed, display video and aircraft parametric data, industry developers said.

Lockheed Martin has been working with Harris Corporation to provide the computing infrastructure for new panoramic cockpit displays, advanced memory systems and navigation technology, senior Harris officials said in written statements.

The new hardware and software technology, to be operational on the F-35 by 2021, includes seven racks per aircraft consisting of 1,500 module components, including new antennas and weapons release systems.

Some of the components include an Advanced Memory System (AMS) engineered to improve data storage and generate higher resolution imagery to help pilots with navigational and targeting information.

Faster processors will also improve F-35 delivery of weapons enabled by the latest 3F software drop, such as the AIM-9X air-to-air missile. Improved radar warning receiver technology will more quickly identify enemy aircraft and integrate with the aircraft’s mission data files, or threat library.

The data processing increase is exponential, developers explain, as it enable measurements to take place in terabytes instead of megabits or megabytes.

The upgrades include a portable memory device which can quickly be transferred from a ground station to the F-35 cockpit.

While Air Force officials said that Mission Data File information on particular enemy platforms and specific global threat areas was naturally not available for security reasons, she did say the technology is now supporting the latest F-35 software configuration - called 3f.

"Mission data has been fielded in support of version 2B, 3i, and 3f," Air Force spokeswoman Emily Grabowski told Warrior earlier this year.

As the most recently implemented software upgrade, Block 3f increases the weapons delivery capacity of the JSF, giving it the ability to drop a Small Diameter Bomb, 500-pound JDAM and AIM 9X short-range air-to-air missile, service officials explained.

The Air Force is already working on a 4th drop to be ready by 2020 or 2021. Following this initial drop, the aircraft will incorporate new software drops in two year increments in order to stay ahead of the threat. The service is also working to massively quicken the pace of software upgrades as a way to respond quickly to new threats.

Block IV will include some unique partner weapons including British weapons, Turkish weapons and some of the other European country weapons that they want to get on their own plane, service officials explained.

Block IV will also increase the weapons envelope for the U.S. variant of the fighter jet. A big part of the developmental calculus for Block 4 is to work on the kinds of enemy air defense systems and weaponry the aircraft may face from the 2020’s through the 2040’s and beyond.

​In terms of weapons, Block IV will eventually enable the F-35 to fire cutting edge weapons systems such as the Small Diameter Bomb II and GBU-54 – both air dropped bombs able to destroy targets on the move.

The Small Diameter Bomb II uses a technology called a “tri-mode” seeker, drawing from infrared, millimeter wave and laser-guidance. The combination of these sensors allows the weapon to track and eliminate moving targets in all kinds of weather conditions.

The emerging 4th software drop will build upon prior iterations of the software for the aircraft.

Block 2B builds upon the enhanced simulated weapons, data link capabilities and early fused sensor integration of the earlier Block 2A software drop. Block 2B will enable the JSF to provide basic close air support and fire an AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile), JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) or GBU-12 (laser-guided aerial bomb) JSF program officials said.

Following Block 2B, Block 3i increases the combat capability even further and the now operational 3F brings a vastly increased ability to suppress enemy air defenses.

Kris Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army - Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at CNN and CNN Headline News. 

This article first appeared in Warrior Maven in October 2018.

Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Todd Cromar

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

More than 2,000 men had died. Nearly half as many were wounded. Eighteen ships were damaged or sunk. But Pearl Harbor mobilized a sleeping superpower. 

Here’s What You Need to Remember: It was hard going, but the Navy tried to salvage what damaged ships it could so they could be repaired for action. Here's how they did it.

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The Pearl Harbor disaster presented the U.S. Navy with a sobering question: how to recover? More than 2,000 men had died. Nearly half as many were wounded. Eighteen ships were damaged or sunk.

“… None Of the Ships Sunk Would Ever Fight Again.”

“The scene to the newcomer was foreboding indeed. There was a general feeling of depression throughout the Pearl Harbor area when it was seen and firmly believed that none of the ships sunk would ever fight again.” This was a haunting sentiment from Captain Homer Wallin, the man who would lead the salvage effort.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, named Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC) days after the attack, flew to Hawaii to take command. He landed in Pearl Harbor on Christmas Day. His briefings had prepared him, or so he thought. Awestruck, he remarked, “This is terrible seeing all these ships down.” The ceremony installing Nimitz as CINCPAC was held on the deck of the Grayling, a submarine he had once commanded. Cynics commented that it was the only deck fit for the ceremony.

The days of the Battleship Navy were over. The Japanese made the point again on December 10, sinking the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse off Singapore. Nimitz’s aircraft carriers were now the heart of his strategy. Yet with proper escort, the battleships could still be effective weapons. If they could be saved, Nimitz would give them work.

No Time Wasted For Salvage Effort

The salvage effort began on December 7 when crews manned hoses to fight the fires while the attack was still under way. These firefighters were aided by boats, tugs, and even a garbage hauler. Men from the fleet’s base force brought pumps to battle the flooding. Rescue teams searched for sailors trapped in the capsized battleships Oklahoma and Utah.

On January 9, 1942, Captain Wallin took charge of the Salvage Division, itself a new branch of the Navy Yard. A native of Washburn, ND, Homer Wallin had spent half his life training for this. Like many men raised far from the sea, he sought a naval career. He went to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1913, then served aboard the battleship New Jersey during World War I. He joined the Navy’s Construction Corps in 1918, and studied naval architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After completing his master of science degree in 1921, he spent the next 20 years in the New York, Philadelphia, and Mare Island Navy Yards, as well as at the Bureau of Construction and Repair in Washington, DC.

Salvage Triage

Wallin’s Salvage Division had three clear goals: Rescue the men who were trapped aboard the ships, assess the damage to each ship, and repair as many as possible. The task was to fix each enough to be able to travel to the larger yards on the West Coast for complete restoration.

The Japanese would come to regret leaving two vital areas of the harbor intact. The first was the fleet’s fuel supply—over 4.5 million gallons. The other was the Navy Yard, whose shops had a vast capacity to fix or build almost anything. “They built liberty boats, 25-foot motor whaleboats, any kind of harbor craft,” recalled Walter Bayer. “They could overhaul a 14- or 16-inch gun. Just pull them around on those big cranes, and handle them like they were toothpicks in those big buildings. They were enormous buildings. They still are.”

Bayer grew up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. In 1940, he became a civil service employee and went to work in the compressed gases plant in the Navy Yard. He was an assistant supervisor by December 1941. After the attack, demand for his services soared. “When they organized to cut through the bottom of the Oklahoma—she had a double hull—the welders came to us to get acetylene and oxygen for their cutting torches. And they’d use it like water. It would just go in no time.”

Admiral Without Flag Ship Made Yard Commandant

The new commandant of the yard was Admiral William Furlong. He and Nimitz were in the same class at Annapolis. Until December 25, 1941, Furlong had been Commander Minecraft, Battle Force. His flagship, the mine layer Oglala, had been sunk off the yard’s main pier, 1010 Dock. Furlong gave Wallin everything he needed: personnel, equipment, and waterfront work space. With a fleet of small vessels roaming the harbor, Wallin could send men and machinery wherever he needed them. He had experts to remove ammunition and ordnance materiel. He had divers trained to operate inside sunken ships. Plus he had the Pacific Bridge Company, whose men were contracted to build Navy facilities across the Pacific.

One Navy diver was Metalsmith First Class Edward Raymer. He had joined the service to escape the quiet life in Riverside, Calif. In 1940, he trained at the diving school in San Diego. His work clothes were rubberized coveralls with gloves, a lead-weighted belt (84 pounds), lead-weighted shoes (36 pounds each), and a copper Helmet attached to a breastplate. Above water, the suit was awkward. Submerged, the weights counteracted the suit’s buoyancy, permitting the diver to move fairly easily. An air hose ran from the Helmet to a compressor monitored by men on the surface. The diver carefully moved the hose with him while working within sunken ships. He often worked in total darkness. He took directions from the surface via telephone cable and needed heightened senses of touch and balance to work with welding torches and suction hoses.

“Welcome To the Salvage Unit.”

On December 8, 1941, Raymer’s team flew to Pearl. “Welcome to the Salvage Unit,” a tired warrant officer told them. “You will be attached to this command on temporary additional duty, which may not be temporary from the amount of diving work you see before you.”

The team’s first assignment was to determine if men were trapped below the water level in the battleship Nevada. “To accomplish this,” Raymer remembered, “we lowered a diver from the sampan to a depth of 20 feet. Swinging a five-pound hammer, he rapped on the hull three times, then stopped and listened for an answering signal. We took turns for hours. No answering signal was ever heard.” Frustrating as this was, other search parties successfully freed men from the Oklahoma and Utah. The last of them were brought out by December 10.

“Lesser damaged” was the term applied to the condition of the battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland,and Tennessee; the cruisers Honolulu, Helena, and Raleigh; the repair ship Vestal; the seaplane tender Curtiss; and the destroyer Helm.

USS Pennsylvania Returned To Duty

Pennsylvania was in Dry Dock Number One during the attack, behind the destroyers Downes and Cassin. One bomb hit the battleship, damaging a 5-inch gun and passing through two decks before exploding. The blast wrecked bulkheads, hatches, pipes, and wiring. Her hull and power plant were sound, though. On December 12, she went to the Navy Yard. The damaged gun was replaced with one from the West Virginia, whose decks were awash after she settled into the mud on the bottom of Battleship Row, the victim of several Japanese torpedoes. On December 20, the Pennsylvania sailed for Puget Sound, Wash.

A bomb had struck the pier beside Honolulu. The blast bent in 40 feet of hull on the port side, causing shrapnel damage and flooding. Yard workers began patching the hull, while Honolulu’s crew worked within.

With them was Seaman First Class Stephen Young from Methuen, Mass. Young had just transferred from the Oklahoma. He had endured 25 hours trapped in the battleship. Having survived that, he was impressed by his new job, helping to remove damaged powder cases from the cruiser’s magazine. Shrapnel had punctured many of them, spilling explosive powder on the decks. “Why they never went off, I don’t know,” Young recalled.

USS Honolulu and Helena Next Up

Honolulu moved to Dry Dock Number One on December 13. On January 2, she went to the yard for further work. Ten days later, she returned to service.

USS Helena took a torpedo on her starboard side, flooding an engine room and a boiler room. On December 10, she entered Dry Dock Number Two, which was still under construction. Pacific Bridge personnel borrowed wooden blocks from the yard for the ship to rest upon. After 11 days, she moved to the yard. On January 5, Helena left for the Mare Island Navy Yard in San Francisco.

Maryland was moored inboard of Oklahoma and had escaped torpedoes, but one bomb hit her forecastle. Another struck her port side at water level. No dry dock was available, so repairs were performed at the quays. ­The yard’s workshops built a wood and metal patch for the rupture in the hull. A barge-mounted crane lowered the patch into the water, and divers fitted it in place. The water was pumped away, and repairs continued inside the ship. On December 20, she left for Puget Sound. Her final repairs were completed there on February 26, 1942.

Stricken Arizona Inflicts Damage On Sisters

USS Tennessee was inboard of West Virginia Multiple torpedo hits had sunk the outer ship, trapping Tennessee against the concrete mooring quays. A direct hit to the battleship USS Arizona’s magazines had sunk that vessel and thrown burning debris on the Tennessee’s decks. Arizona’s burning oil spread across the water, engulfing Tennessee’s stern. Crewmen fought with hoses to keep the fires away. Her forward magazines were flooded to keep them from exploding. The ship’s propellers were turned at speeds up to 10 knots in an effort to keep flaming oil away. The crew was forced to abandon her.

Men from the yard and the repair ship USS Medusa welded Tennessee’s heat-warped stern plates. A total of 650,000 gallons of oil was pumped from the ship. Divers placed explosive charges on the quays. These were detonated on December 16, finally freeing Tennessee from her trap. She spent two months at Puget Sound and eventually returned to duty on February 29, 1942.

Outboard of Arizona was Vestal. Two bombs found her, falling from a thousand feet or higher, smashing straight through her, and exploding underwater. The flooding made her list to port and settle heavily at the stern. To escape the burning Arizona, the Vestal’s captain backed his ship away. Vestalwas 33 years old, and her watertight integrity was not enough to keep her afloat. Two tugboats guided her east to shallow water, beaching her at Aiea Shoal.

Vestal Gets Second Lease On Life

Being a repair ship, USS Vestal had the resources for crew to begin mending her, but she had to wait her turn for dry-docking. It came two months later. Vestal returned to duty on February 18.

A torpedo flooded Raleigh’s engine room. A bomb ripped through three decks and out her side. It exploded uncomfortably close to a compartment storing aviation fuel. When the cruiser’s captain ordered counterflooding to balance the ship, several doors failed. The tugboat Sunnadin and a barge were tied to her port side to save her from sinking.

Men from repair vessels helped the crew rebuild the decks and transfer fuel and water from the Raleigh. She went into Dry Dock Number One on January 3. Running on one engine, she sailed for Mare Island on February 14. After receiving a new engine and electrical parts, she returned to duty on July 23.

Pacific Fleet Slowly Resurrected

Curtiss had no armor and suffered for it. One bomb hit. Three missed, but not by enough. A damaged Japanese plane struck her starboard crane and exploded. Smoke from burning cork insulation made it more difficult for the crew to fight the fires.

Dry-docked from December 19 to 27, USS Curtiss had to vacate early, making way for higher priority jobs. She could not return until April 26, and was substantially repaired by May 28.

Helm had escaped the harbor, but while searching for submarines she was bracketed by two bombs. The shock caused flooding forward and tripped circuit breakers. With the dry docks full, Helm went to the yard’s marine railway on January 15. There she was hauled out of the water for welding and patching. At the end of the month, she left for San Diego.

Each accomplishment brought another part of the Pacific Fleet to life. But these successes were modest compared to what lay ahead. Six battleships, one cruiser, three destroyers, and a mine-laying ship had received severe attention from the Japanese.

Much Work Still Left To Be Done

Destroyers were desperately needed to protect Allied merchant shipping from enemy submarines. Commander John Alden, himself a submariner, wrote, “In addition to the mere urgency of obtaining ASW [antisubmarine warfare] vessels, other factors added weight to the balance. One was the fact that of all the material needed to build new destroyers, most critical and hard to obtain were main propulsion plants. In the effort to break the bottleneck, DE’s [destroyer escorts] and frigates were designed around every conceivable type of power plant … but there was no substitute for the steam turbine in destroyers.”

In addition to the catastrophic loss of the Arizona, one of the most spectacular of the December 7 victims was the destroyer Shaw. She had been on blocks in Floating Dry Dock Number Two. Three bombs struck the ship, rupturing fuel tanks. Fire swept through the ship to her magazines. A tremendous blast wrecked her entire forward section. Twenty-five men died, and 15 more were injured. Five bombs hit the dry dock. To protect it, workers submerged the dock, and the tugboat Sotoyomo sank with it.

Shaw a Total Loss?

To casual observers, Shaw seemed a total loss. Her bridge was destroyed, and her bow was literally gone. But her engineering machinery was intact. She was towed to the marine railway on December 19. Hull repair experts took measurements and set to building a temporary bow.

Navy divers sealed over 150 holes in the hull of the dock. It was raised on January 9, and ready for service on January 25. Six months later, so was Sotoyomo. Shaw was the first ship back into the dry dock. The next day, her new bow was attached along with a new mast and a temporary bridge. This made her look more like an overgrown PT boat than a destroyer, but it worked. On February 4, Shawleft the harbor for power trials. Five days later, with cheers shouted from all over Pearl, she left for Mare Island. A permanent bow awaited her there. Of the badly wounded ships, Shaw was the first to return to sea.

The destroyers Helm and Henley escorted Shaw eastward. Seaman First Class Arthur Schreier from Watertown, Conn., was on Henley’s No. 4 gun mount. He spent many hours watching Shaw plow through the waves. “I felt so sorry for those guys,” Schreier recalled, “because without a bow, you know—they had this little stubby thing welded on. Boom. Boom. Boom. Every wave, for six days.”

A Makeshift Bow for the USS Shaw

Fireman First Class Alfred Bulpitt from Centerdale, RI, was aboard the Shaw. Manning the port engine throttle, he knew she was traveling at only a third of her top speed. “It took us quite a while. We only had one fire room and one screw working. And we had a reduced crew. But I don’t remember anyone saying we wouldn’t make it.”

They did make it, arriving at Mare Island on February 15. Waiting for Shaw was another dry dock and her new bow. She was ready by July, returning to duty as an escort for convoys to Pearl. By the fall, she headed west to join the fight for Guadalcanal.

Destroyers Downes and Cassin had similar troubles. “They had gone through every kind of ordeal which ships could be subjected to,” Wallin wrote. “From bomb hits to severe fires, to explosions, to fragmentation damage, etc. These vessels were the only ones of the Pearl Harbor group that suffered all the kinds of damage enumerated.”

Every Type Of Damage That Could Be Done

A bomb had ripped through the USS Cassin to explode on the floor of Dry Dock Number One. Two more hit the dock, one on each side of the ships. A fourth blasted Cassin again. A fifth destroyed Downes’ bridge. Fragments punctured fuel tanks on both ships. Fire spread through the dock, detonating fuel and ammunition on Downes. Part of a torpedo landed 75 feet away.

Without power or water, no one could fight the fires, which now threatened the neighboring Pennsylvania. Her captain ordered the dock flooded, but as the water rose, so did the flames. Cassincame afloat at her stern and finally collapsed onto Downes.

Both destroyers remained in the dock for two months. Other ships came in for repairs. Each flooding and draining made the destroyers sway and roll, hurting them more. On February 5, Cassin was carefully reset on her blocks. The next day, Downes was towed to the Navy Yard. Cassin followed 20 days later.

The destroyers’ hulls were ruined, but their propulsion machinery was sound. Nimitz, the Bureau of Ships, and the Chief of Naval Operations debated the question: repair them or scrap them? On May 7, the Bureau of Ships found the solution. “Recommend new hulls be built at Mare Island. The Bureau considers that sufficient of the original Cassin and Downes material can be worked into the [new] hulls to thoroughly justify the retention of the original names for the new ships.”

Like a Bride Being Led Down the Aisle a Second Time

Through the spring and summer, nearly 1,000 tons of useful equipment was removed, carefully catalogued, and shipped to Mare Island. By August, what remained of Downes was scrapped. The Cassin followed suit by October, but the hearts of both vessels, including the 37-ton stern sections bearing their names, were saved. On May 20, 1943, Downes was “relaunched.” So was Cassin on June 21. There was no precedent for this in Navy history. Never had a ship been launched twice. “In both cases there was a minimum of fanfare,” Alden wrote. “Like a quiet ceremony with discreet minimized publicity for a bride being led to the altar for the second time.”

Of the battleships, only Nevada had been able to run for the sea. However, she took hits from a torpedo and at least seven bombs. One smashed her forecastle, blowing a 25-foot triangular hole on the port side. Another crashed through the ship—including a gasoline tank without igniting it—and detonated beneath her. Flooding was too heavy to be stopped.

Nevada Beached At Harbor Entrance During Attack

Watching from Oglala, Admiral Furlong ordered two tugboats to move the USS Nevada to the shallows at Waipio Point above the harbor entrance, where she was beached. Her bow settled until the deck was nearly awash.

Admiral Nimitz’s inspection of Nevada was a grim one. The ship had been wrecked by blasts and fire and fouled with oil and polluted water, but her men were determined to win. Nimitz consented.

Using measurements from Nevada’s sister ship, Oklahoma, yard shipwrights built a patch to cover the holes. It was a huge piece of craftsmanship, 55 feet long, 32 feet deep, and curved to fit the ship’s bilge.

The divers had a frustrating time securing the patch. The explosions had warped the hull, and it was impossible to seal the patch completely. It had to be discarded. The alternative was to gamble on the strength of Nevada’s bulkheads. Divers tightened every door and hatch in the ruptured compartments and bolted patches over smaller holes in the hull.

The Battle To Drain Nevada

Removing water from the ship was a headache, too, given the number and types of pumps available. The strongest could pump 4,000 gallons a minute, but there were not enough of them. Some could draw water up about 15 feet, but no higher. To compensate, engineers arranged them so that the smaller ones brought water to areas where the stronger pumps could move the water up and out of the ship. This was done with care. If one section drained much faster than others, Nevada could list or capsize. Although the pumps gradually moved water out faster than it came in, the ship remained in danger until dry-docked.

The drying compartments sobered the most hardened men. The filth was appalling. A mixture of oil, mud, paper, clothes, and rotting food filled every part of the ship. And there were the bodies of men who had died in the attack. They were taken to the naval hospital for identification and burial. Then work parties brought in hoses and sprayed every object and surface with sea water, followed with Tectyl, a cleaning chemical that absorbed water from anything it touched.

To increase buoyancy, Nevada’s crew transferred the remaining stored oil from the ship. Wreckage was cleaned away. Guns, ammunition, electric motors, and auxiliary equipment were brought out. Much of it was salvable, despite being submerged for nearly three months.

Deadly Gas Slows Salvage Effort

The optimism of the salvage crew was tempered by the discovery of hydrogen sulfide, an odorless toxic gas created when oil and polluted sea water are mixed under pressure. On February 7, one man opened a gas-filled compartment and collapsed from a fatal dose. While trying to rescue him, five more sailors were also overcome. Only four recovered. Increased ventilation became top priority. No man was permitted on the ship without a gas mask and a litmus paper badge to indicate if the gas was present.

One week later, Nevada was afloat. A last inspection was made of every bulkhead and hatch. Any serious leak would send the battered battleship to the bottom. On February 14, two tugs brought the Nevada to Dry Dock Number Two. Nimitz and Furlong were with the cheering crowd that welcomed her. On April 22, 1942, she left Pearl Harbor for Puget Sound Navy Yard for final repairs and modernization.

California posed greater problems. She had been hit by two torpedoes and one bomb and jarred by several near misses. Arizona’s burning oil had forced California’s crew to abandon her. She took three days to sink to the bottom, settling with a list to port. Her main deck was 17 feet beneath the surface.

Complex Plan Devised To Raise the USS California

The Yard Design Section feared that patching and pumping out the ship would fail. As she regained buoyancy, the weight of the water above her decks might collapse them. One option was to build a cofferdam around the ship. A barrier of pilings driven into the harbor bottom would permit men to drain the water within and effect repairs. It was a good plan, but expensive and complicated.

An alternative was found: build two cofferdams attached to the ship to enclose her forecastle and quarterdeck. Barge cranes lowered huge wooden planks along the ship’s sides. Pacific Bridge divers bolted them to the hull and sealed them with lengths of hose filled with sawdust and oakum (hemp mixed with tar). The planks were 30 feet high and varied in width and thickness. They were weighted down with sandbags and reinforced to endure external water pressure as the interior was pumped out.

The divers plugged more holes. One needed a 15-by-15-foot patch. As with Nevada, the pumps eventually caught up to the leaks, then passed them. Oil was skimmed from the surface and transferred from the bunkers to a barge alongside. Eventually, over 200,000 gallons were recovered.

Heroic Effort By Welders Save California After Gas Explosion

By the end of March, California had risen to a nearly even keel, but on April 5 an explosion blew out the hull patch. She began settling at the bow. Gasoline vapors had leaked from a fuel tank and ignited. The patch was ruined, and there was no time to build another. Another battleship was coming in for repairs, and California had to meet the tight schedule for dry dock time. Raymer’s team contained the flooding on the ship’s third deck. The men took turns welding a warped hatch shut. After 12 hours, it was secured and the flooding stopped. Four days later, California entered Dry Dock Number Two. She was on time.

California’s electric drive engines had suffered heavily from the saltwater. The job of rewrapping miles of wire called for specialists not available at Pearl. A team of engineers flew in from the General Electric Company in Schenectady, NY. Through the summer they concentrated their efforts on one alternator and two motors—just enough to get the ship to Puget Sound. They finished in the autumn. California headed for Puget Sound on October 10, 1942.

Raising West Virginia Tests Salvage Team To Limit

West Virginia’s problems were even worse. Two bombs and at least seven torpedoes sank her, killing over a hundred men. She, too, had electric drive. Her steering system was ruined, and her rudder was blown off. Over 200 feet of her port hull was wrecked. Raymer wrote, “Raising West Virginia would be far more difficult than either the Nevada or the California had been. It would test the ingenuity and salvage expertise of every faction involved in the operation.”

Yard craftsmen came through again, building 14 hull patches in sections 13 feet long and over 50 feet wide. Curved at the bottom to fit the ship’s bilge, they straightened to climb the sides to high above the surface. Like the walls of a fortress, each was made of metal beams and 12-by-14-inch timbers, with four-inch planking beneath. Several had access doors so divers could enter the hull. To counteract its buoyancy, each was weighted with lead. After each section was fitted in place, the lead was removed. Divers filled the seams with 650 tons of underwater concrete. Since this added more weight than the hull could endure after dry-docking, the divers finished by welding steel reinforcing rods to the hull.

Plugging Every Last Hole

After the patches were secured, the pumps lowered the water within by a few feet, but no more. “No further headway was made in dewatering,” Raymer recalled. “Most of the leakage was found to occur in the areas contiguous to the patches from leaking seams, shrapnel holes, and loose rivets.” Every hole mattered. Raymer’s men sealed all they could find with smaller patches or wooden plugs.

Salvage crews moved deeper into the ship, mindful of the hydrogen sulfide threat. A medical officer worked with them, maintaining a bulletin board showing which compartments were safe. They brought out more oil, ammunition, and machinery along with the bodies of 66 men who had died in December.

The bodies of three sailors were found in a dry storeroom. With them was a calendar. The days from December 7 to December 23 were crossed off. The men had food and drinking water, but their oxygen had run out. “The discovery of these three men in an unflooded compartment caused a profound sense of anguish among our divers,” Raymer said. “Especially shaken were Moon and Tony, who had sounded the West Virginia’s hull on December 12 and reported no response from within the ship.” The men had been in the starboard side, hard against Tennessee’s port side. It had been impossible for divers to reach that area.

Chipping Away Years Of Paint

Recalling his part in the salvage, Electrician’s Mate Second Class Claude Miller wrote, “This consisted mainly of endless days of chipping the years of paint coats from the bulkheads. This paint was in many places a full one inch thick or more, and shattered like cement when chiseled by air-driven chipping hammers.” A native of Trenton, Mo., Miller had traveled far with the Navy, with no shortage of work. He had been with the aircraft carrier Yorktown at the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway. After his carrier was sunk, he and many of his friends were reassigned to Pearl to assist with the recovery work there.

“We worked in very hot and sometimes toxic spaces in half-hour shifts,” he added. “Then we would go up to topside for about half an hour, for fresh air and pineapple juice. Later on I was assigned to clean, rewind, and restore small electric motors, and also manage the engineers’ tool room.”

On May 17, West Virginia rose from the bottom. Work continued over the next three weeks to reduce her draft. Finally, it was down to the required minimum, 33 feet. She just fit into Dry Dock Number One on June 9. She went to the yard a few days later and stayed for 11 months. In April 1943, as Miller put it, “The old warrior finally was made ready to move on her own, and we sailed to Bremerton Navy Yard for the balance of the restoration.”

”When Helena Got Hit, Oglala Died Of Fright.”

The USS Oglala came last. On December 7, a torpedo had passed beneath her to strike the inboard Helena. Since the ships were tied together, the explosion ruptured Oglala’s bilge. Two hours later she capsized to port. Only her starboard side amidships remained above water. This led to the cynical joke that when she saw Helena get hit, Oglala died of fright.

Originally a coastal steamer, Oglala had joined the Navy in World War I. She was 34 years old, and her compartments were not designed to endure battle damage. The merits of raising her seemed thin. She was blocking valuable pier space, and scrapping seemed the best option. However, since demolition experts and equipment were unavailable, men from the yard and the repair ship Ortolan set out to rescue her, employing three elements.

The first was a set of 10 submarine salvage pontoons. Each was a giant metal cylinder that could be flooded and sunk, then attached to massive chains placed under the hull by divers. When pumped out, each pontoon would exert nearly 100 tons of lifting power. Second was a barge with winches to haul cables attached to Oglala. The third was compressed air, pumped into the hull to displace some of the water within. This required extreme care, given the hull’s weakened condition.

Oglala Stubbornly Resists All Efforts To Salvage Her

On April 11, bridles linking the chains to the pontoons broke. The pontoons floated free. They were resunk and new bridles were attached. Another attempt was made on April 23. Oglala rolled up to rest on her bottom with a 20-degree port list. Further work reduced this to 7 degrees, but her bow remained 6 feet below the surface and the stern was 19 feet deeper.

Cofferdamming came next, using wood and steel from the California salvage. Divers secured the sections and patched the port bilge, where the worst shock damage was. They cut free the wooden deck house, and a barge crane hoisted it away.

The cofferdam was completed in June, and pumping began. After the water had dropped seven feet, a section of the dam failed. Captain Wallin dryly noted, “This was not a design failure, but resulted from the action of some ‘practical men.’” The men in question had substituted 12-inch-square timbers for the steel H-beams specified in the designs. The wood was replaced with steel. Pumping above and from within the ship resumed. On June 23, Oglala floated.

The “Jonah Ship”

On the night of June 25, several pumps became fouled with debris, and Oglala’s bow sank. Her stern followed. The pumps were cleared, and the vessel was refloated once more on June 27. She sank a third time on June 29 when the cofferdam failed again. By then Oglala had earned the nickname “the Jonah ship.” She was returned to the surface again by July 1.

Fire broke out aboard Oglala that night when a technician spilled gasoline on a pump’s exhaust manifold. He then dropped the burning gas can into the water, igniting the oil on the water’s surface. It took 20 minutes for men from Ortolan and the Navy Yard Fire Department to extinguish the blaze. To their weary relief, the salvage men found that damage to the cofferdam was superficial.

On July 3, Oglala entered Dry Dock Number Two. To Wallin, the ship looked like Noah’s Ark without a roof. Despite her troubles, her hull was in better shape than expected. She eventually returned to service as a repair ship, aiding many other vessels throughout the war.

The Vessels Beyond Saving

The remaining victims of December 7 were beyond saving. Arizona had suffered several bomb hits. She had sunk with the loss of more than 1,100 men. One bomb hit had detonated her forward magazines and broken her back. Her armament and fuel were taken ashore, and Arizona was left where she sank. More than 20 years passed before the famed memorial was built above her.

Many torpedoes had struck Oklahoma. “I can vouch for five,” Young recalled. The blasts disintegrated much of her port hull. Fifteen minutes after the attack began, she capsized. She stayed that way for nearly six months. When men and resources were finally available, the most spectacular chapter of the Fleet salvage began.

Months Spent Devising Plan To Raise Oklahoma

The man responsible for leading the staggering effort to raise the Oklahoma was Commander F.H. Whitaker. Born and raised in Tyler, Tex., Whitaker was a naval construction expert who, like Wallin, had graduated from Annapolis and M.I.T. Whitaker and his staff spent months running tests to determine the most effective method to raise the ship. Experiments with a 1/96 scale model of the battleship in Pacific Bridge’s laboratory in San Francisco demonstrated that the Oklahoma could be gradually rolled into an upright position.

Divers placed pontoons at key points where the superstructure was buried in the mud. They also tested the strength of the mud. It had to be hard enough, or the ship might drag along the bottom as the winches turned. Fortunately, it was. The divers placed an additional 4,500 cubic yards of coral soil along the inshore side of the ship’s bow. Twenty-one concrete foundations were poured near the water’s edge on Ford Island. Seated in them were electric winches. With a system of hauling blocks and pulleys, the winches’ combined strength could exert a titanic 345,000 tons of pulling force. Forty-two miles of one-inch wire ran from the winches, through the blocks, out over a row of 40-foot A-frame towers built on Oklahoma’s hull, and finally to pads welded to the ship.

”Like Something From Gulliver’s Travels.”

It looked like something from Gulliver’s Travels, but the objective was to free a giant, not restrain it. The righting began on March 8, 1943. “With a lurch and a groan the Oklahoma started her slow but steady rotation,” Raymer wrote. “Everyone was jubilant. They cheered lustily as they observed the ship’s movements, drowning out for the moment the sounds of metal being crushed and torn.” Inexorably, almost invisibly, the ship began her roll to starboard. Turning at a snail’s pace, the winches reeled in cable for more than three months. Finally, on June 16, the battleship reached an upright position, listing only 3 degrees to port.

Pacific Bridge divers placed cofferdam patches over 200 feet of the Oklahoma’s hull. They sealed them with 2,000 tons of underwater concrete and added four more pontoons to offset the weight. Tragically, this led to the deaths of two men. Rusting inside one pontoon had removed the oxygen from the air. While working alone inside it, a Navy chief collapsed and died. A Pacific Bridge diver drowned when the wake from a passing boat drove another pontoon against Oklahoma, severing his air hose.

Dewatering revealed the remains of the sailors who had died a year and a half earlier. Identifying them was impossible. Bringing out what remained of over 400 men was unquestionably the salvage team’s hardest job.

Salvage Of Oklahoma Symbolized America’s Recovery From Attack

Oklahoma was refloated on November 3, 1943. On December 28, she entered Dry Dock Number Two. After moving to the yard, she was stripped of every useful piece of equipment.

Whitaker later wrote a detailed study of the project for The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Outlining in detail the full extent of this fantastic achievement, he concluded with what it meant for America. “All of us felt, I believe, that aside from the practical aspects, the salvage of the Oklahoma was symbolic of the Navy’s and the country’s recovery from the treacherous Japanese attack.”

On September 1, 1944, the Oklahoma was decommissioned. The hull was sold for scrap a year later. On May 10, 1947, two tugboats brought her out of Pearl, heading for the West Coast. She sank in a storm the following week. The men who had served in her were pleased. It was a better end than being cut to pieces for scrap.

Utah Left In Place

The USS Utah fared no better. She had capsized at her berth on the west side of Ford Island, and 58 men had perished. Over 30 years old, she had been converted to a training vessel for gunnery and aircraft exercises. The Navy deemed her a nonessential ship occupying nonessential space. The effort to right her was delayed until November 1943. The result was a shadow of the work done for the Oklahoma. By March 1944, the Utah had been partly righted, listing 47 degrees to port and almost completely submerged. Further work being too costly, the Navy left her as she was. Utah remains there today, a training site for divers.

During their time in the West Coast yards, each ship received not only final repairs but modernization. They emerged with sleek superstructures, better armor and armament, especially antiaircraft guns. Some underwent more than one refit and upgrade of their armament and other systems. They had the latest radar and radio equipment. Their power plants were greatly improved. They went on to exact a measure of revenge against the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Revitalized Ships Went On To Serve With Distinction

The revitalized ships distinguished themselves in countless ways. Cassin, for instance, earned six battle stars for carrier escort and invasion support duty in the Philippines and at Iwo Jima. Shaw won 11 stars, fighting from the Santa Cruz Islands to the Philippines. On January 7, 1945, Shaw and the destroyers Ausburne, Russell, and Braine sank a Japanese destroyer off Luzon. “It was the last surface action of the war,” Bulpitt noted. “We were there at the beginning, and we were there at the end.”

Vestal repaired ships in the Solomons. This was incalculably important. By contributing to the repair of other vessels when the future of the Pacific War was still in doubt, she paid many times over for the effort to save her at Pearl.

Nevada, Tennessee, and Raleigh joined the Aleutian Islands operation of 1943, reclaiming Attu and Kiska from the Japanese. Nevada went east to join the Atlantic Fleet, supporting the invasions of Normandy in June 1944, and then southern France in August.

Salvage Sisters Turn Tide Of War During Battle For Philippines

Tennessee joined West Virginia, California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania to participate in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. The Japanese had summoned the majority of their dwindling naval forces to attempt to disrupt the American landings at Leyte in the Philippines. It was the largest naval campaign in history and marked the end of the Japanese Navy as an effective fighting force.

In a series of torpedo attacks, American destroyers ambushed a Japanese battleship force on the evening of October 25 at Surigao Strait. Using their new fire-control radar, Tennessee, West Virginia, and California followed up, firing more than 220 rounds from their main batteries. Maryland’s older radar system could track where the rounds fell, and with that she added 48 shots of her own.

By dawn, two Japanese battleships, Fuso and Yamashiro, had been sunk, along with three destroyers. The badly damaged cruiser Mogami was finished off by American torpedo planes. Surigao Strait was the last surface action fought between opposing battleships. Having waited almost three years for it, the veterans of Pearl Harbor savored the victory to the fullest. “It was a matter of great satisfaction to many Americans,” Wallin wrote. “And it must have been a bitter pill for the Japanese.”

Helena Fights Gallantly

Helena fought in the battles of Cape Esperance and Guadalcanal. During a night action, she fought off Japanese warships that were shelling Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. On September 15, 1942, she rescued survivors when the aircraft carrier Wasp was sunk, but her luck did not last. Helena was torpedoed during the Battle of Kula Gulf on July 6, 1943. She broke apart and sank. Approximately 170 men died with her.

The other ships served to the end of the war. Following the Japanese surrender, California, West Virginia, and Tennessee remained on station in Japan. But by the autumn of 1945, the U.S. Navy was the largest in the world, and the most expensive. Peace meant shrinking military budgets. All but one of the ships that rose from ruin at Pearl Harbor were decommissioned and consigned for scrapping by 1947. Only Curtiss endured. She served in the Korean War. As a science vessel, she took part in nuclear weapons tests in the Central Pacific and research work off Antarctica. She was decommissioned in 1957 and finally broken up in 1972.

Cruel But Necessary Retirement For Old Warriors

It all seemed heartless, and still does, to the men who lived and fought on these ships. Still, financial considerations aside, the ships were old. Despite their upgrading, it was becoming difficult for them to keep pace with newer ships coming into service, let alone those on the drawing boards. They had done their work.

Over 30 years after the Pearl Harbor attack, Ed Raymer retired from the Navy. Looking back, he readily acknowledged that he was part of a tremendous accomplishment. In 1996, Commander Raymer wrote, “Navy divers and Pacific Bridge civilian divers formed one leg of a salvage triad; salvage engineers and the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard comprised the other two. One leg needed the assistance and support of the other two to be effective.”

“We Keep Them Fit To Fight”

Vice Admiral Homer Wallin retired in 1955, finishing a career spanning 40 years. He had left Hawaii in July 1942 for a new assignment. During an awards ceremony on the deck of the aircraft carrier Enterprise, Admiral Nimitz presented Wallin with the Distinguished Service Medal. As Wallin wrote, “Admiral Nimitz read the citation for the work performed by the Salvage Organization and ended by adding, ‘for being an undying optimist.’ The Medal was accepted by me in the name of the organization which I had the honor to head.”

Wallin meant it. He knew the value of every man who helped him. “Enough cannot be said in praise of the salvage crew,” he asserted. “They worked hard and earnestly. They soon saw that the results of their efforts exceeded the fondest hopes of their supporters and they were urged on by their successful achievements.”

Without question, the Pearl Harbor salvage operation was the largest in naval history. The men behind it lived up to their creed: “We keep them fit to fight.”

This first appeared in Warfare History Network here. This article appeared last year.

Image: Wikipedia.

Robert Farley

World War III, Asia

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The 1984 wargame played out much differently. Instead of sitting on its hands, the Soviets opened the war with a massive air and missile assault against Japan. This assault destroyed most Japanese air assets on the ground, along with those of the US. special operators delivered by submarine and by clandestine civilian ship-launched unconventional attacks against U.S. bases across the Pacific, including Guam and Pearl Harbor.

Nearly every analyst during the Cold War agreed that, if Moscow and Washington could keep the nukes from flying, the Central Front in Europe would prove decisive in war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The NATO alliance protected the Western European allies of the United States from Soviet aggression, while the Warsaw Pact provided the USSR with its own buffer against Germany.

But when the Cold War really went hot, the fighting took place in Asia. In Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union waged proxy struggles against the United States, and both sides used every tool available to control the destiny of China. However, while few believed that the Pacific theater would determine the victor of World War III, both the United States and Soviet Union needed to prepare for the eventuality of war there.

Scholars have devoted far less attention to the planning of World War III in East Asia than to the European theater. The two classic novels of the Third World War (Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising and John Hackett’s The Third World War) rarely touched on developments in Asia. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Naval War College traced the potential course of war in East Asia as part of a series of global war games. These games lend a great deal of insight into the key actors in the conflict, and how the decisive battles of a Second Pacific War might have played out.

The Players:

China

How would China have reacted to the onset of a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact? Beijing certainly regarded the survival of NATO as critical to its security from the 1970s on. The existence of NATO prevented the USSR from concentrating the bulk of the Red Army and of Soviet strategic aviation against China; a Soviet victory in the West would have put China in great peril. By the 1980s, China stood at a massive technological disadvantage against the USSR. Moreover, Beijing worried (perhaps rightly) that even if the USSR held its nuclear fire against NATO, it would view a strategic exchange with China as less risky. Thus, there was no guarantee that China would open a second front against the USSR.

Japan

Japan combined extraordinary economic strength with significant military power and a crucial geographic position. A Japan committed to the United States could effectively prevent the sortie of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, while enabling attacks against the Soviet Far East. A neutral Japan limited these options, but still provided the NATO alliance with a strong economic foundation in case of a protracted war. Washington had the advantage; it only depended on how and how much.

Korea

Would North Korea have joined a general Soviet war against NATO by invading South Korea? Such a move would have put extraordinary pressure on U.S. forces, although by the 1980s South Korea could probably survive with only measured U.S. assistance. However, Pyongyang answered to two masters; it required the support of both Beijing and Moscow. Given the unlikelihood that China would support a Soviet war against NATO, the prospect of Beijing’s acquiescence in a second Korean War would have been extremely sketchy.

Southeast Asia

The Soviets had an ally in Hanoi, but no means to support that ally against either China or the United States. Moreover, the Vietnamese had little to gain from joining a conflict; they were substantially controlled by Laos and Cambodia, and could do little more than harass shipping lanes in the South China Sea. However, given the bloody nose that Vietnam had inflicted on both countries in 1975 and 1980, neither Washington nor Beijing would have had much interest in reopening the conflict, especially with far more pressing issues at hand. That said, Vietnam could still make some mischief with U.S. allies in the region, and the PRC still had scores to settle.

The Chess Pieces:

Soviet Pacific Fleet

The Soviets took the Pacific seriously. By the 1980s, the fleet included two Kiev class aircraft carriers, and one Kirov class battlecruiser. In peacetime, the ships of the fleet sailed widely, regularly visiting Southeast Asia and even the Indian Ocean. Wartime, however, would have tightly constrained their operations. The Sea of Okhotsk served as a bastion for the SSBNs of the fleet, and naturally as a target for U.S. attack. Soviet objectives would have included the neutralization or defeat of Japan, the defense of the Russian Far East and potentially the penetration of the Pacific in order to attack maritime supply networks and distract U.S. attention from Europe.

U.S. Pacific Fleet

The United States Pacific Fleet commanded the balance of power in the region. With several carrier battlegroups supported by a variety of amphibious assault ships, battleships, nuclear attack submarines and a large array of land-based aircraft, the U.S. Navy could have undertaken both offensive and defensive operations to control the pace and course of the war. Moreover, the Japanese Maritime Self Defense force and the Royal Australian Navy could have both offered extensive support to the Americans. The central objectives for Allied naval forces would first have been to detect and defeat any Soviet efforts to penetrate attack submarines into the Pacific or Southeast Asian shipping lanes. Second, the U.S. Navy had taken upon itself a mission of attacking the periphery of the USSR directly, in order to distract the Red Army from the Central Front in Europe. At a minimum, this would have involved missile and airstrikes against Soviet installations throughout the Far East. At a maximum, it could have involved amphibious assaults against lightly defended Soviet targets.

The War Games

The Naval War College examined the potential for World War III in Asia as part of its global war game exercises in the 1970s and 1980s. Played annually between 1979 and 1988, each of the games explored alternative strategic and technological aspects of a confrontation between the superpowers. Although generally focused on Europe, the games always included an East Asian component. While the early wargames saw some variance (informed to some degree by the Sino-Vietnamese War), they held to a basic pattern; the Soviets hunkered down, while U.S. and allied naval forces chipped away at the bastions and tried to distract the Russians from Europe.

The 1984 wargame played out much differently. Instead of sitting on its hands, the Soviets opened the war with a massive air and missile assault against Japan. This assault destroyed most Japanese air assets on the ground, along with those of the US. special operators delivered by submarine and by clandestine civilian ship-launched unconventional attacks against U.S. bases across the Pacific, including Guam and Pearl Harbor.

The Soviets unleashed Pyongyang early in the conflict, redirecting U.S. attention towards the Korean Peninsula. Washington had effective answers; it quickly undertook offensive anti-submarine operations in the Sea of Japan, decimating Soviet SSN and SSBN forces. Soviet surface ships also came under attack. Nevertheless, in a daring move the Soviets launched a successful amphibious assault against Hokkaido. Although the operation suffered heavy losses, it succeeded in establishing a beachhead in Japan (though this was later withdrawn under fire).

The United States took a more aggressive stance in the 1988 wargame. Instead of waiting for a Soviet attack, Washington immediately began air and unconventional offensives against installations in the Soviet Far East, designed to decimate Soviet air defenses and threaten the survival of military-industrial installations. For their part, the Soviets hoped that a reticent military stance and a diplomatic offensive could keep Japan out of the war. This gambit succeeded to a point, as the Japanese suspended active military cooperation with the United States. American pressure eventually forced Tokyo to yield, and the Soviet opened offensive operations against the archipelago. By this time, however, the U.S. Navy had devastated Soviet naval forces, confining the Pacific fleet to its bastion in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Late in the war, the Soviets gave Pyongyang the green light to invade South Korea. However, this operation backfired, as the North Koreans failed to make substantial progress against combined U.S. and South Korean forces. Moreover, the Soviet move confirmed the U.S.-Japanese alliance, and helped drive Beijing into a much more hostile disposition towards the Soviets.

Both the Soviets and the Americans had options in Asia. The strategic environment was far more fluid than in Europe, allowing a variety of different choices to disrupt and destabilize the opponent. This made the course of war far less predictable. At its (nonnuclear) worst, war could have raged across Asia on multiple fronts, from Korea to Japan to the Sino-Soviet border. At its best, the combatants might have observed an uneasy quiet, at least until it became necessary to outflank a stalemate in the West. But as was the case in Europe, everyone concerned is fortunate that tensions never led to open combat.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, 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, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.

This first appeared in April 2016 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

History, Americas

The SeaMaster had a pressurized cabin and a crew of four: pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer. Its sole defensive armament was a pair of 20mm cannons mounted in a remote-controlled tail turret.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: In retrospect, while the SSF concept had its ardent and articulate advocates, it was probably never going to perform a primary role in the Navy’s nuclear strike mission. Jet aircraft and carrier advancements obviated the four aircraft conceived to implement the program, but it was also overtaken by extraneous worldwide events.

The first few years after World War II were challenging ones for the U.S. Navy. Massive demobilization of personnel and rapid scrapping or retirement of ships created internal disruptions. Formation of a new Defense Department, combined with sharp reductions in defense spending, led to bitter rivalries among the American military services, each seeking its proper share of increasingly limited resources. Birth of an independent Air Force eager to gain control over all airpower accelerated an internecine struggle with the Navy, leading to the sudden 1949 cancellation of a proposed new aircraft carrier, USS United States.

In this milieu, the Navy faced a concurrent operational challenge: the adaptation of larger, heavier, and faster jet-powered aircraft to existing carriers that had supplanted battleships as primary projectors of naval power during the war. Senior naval aviators were concerned that the new supersonic jet aircraft, with their greater weight and higher takeoff and landing speeds, might not be able to operate safely from available carriers—or even new ones of any reasonable size. One theoretical solution was the Seaplane Striking Force (SSF), in which newly developed seaplanes and vertically launched and recovered aircraft would be unshackled from the need for land-based runways or large aircraft carriers.

As envisioned by Navy planners circa 1950, the SSF included as its primary strike weapons high-performance, four-engine, jet-powered seaplanes. These would be supported by a system of technologically advanced, water-based, or short takeoff and landing aircraft in defensive roles, large long-range flying boats for resupply, and relatively inexpensive surface ships and diesel-powered submarines as supporting tenders and refueling and maintenance stations. The centerpiece of the 1950s concept was the P6M SeaMaster flying boat, designed by the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore. In support of the SeaMasters’ conventional or nuclear long-range attack mission were three aircraft proposed by Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation of San Diego (Convair). These included the vertical takeoff and landing XFY-1 Pogo tail-sitter defensive fighter aircraft; the F2Y-1 Sea Dart, an innovative delta-winged jet fighter that could take off and land from water; and the R3Y Tradewind, a sleek, large, four-engine turboprop flying boat.

The Convair XFY-1 Pogo

The Convair XFY-1 Pogo was perhaps the least significant among the aircraft elements of the proposed SSF. Designed as a vertical takeoff and landing fighter that could operate from a relatively small platform ashore or on a ship, the Pogo would be a fighter liberated from the need for a land runway or aircraft carrier flight decks. It would ostensibly be used to  flight decks. It would ostensibly be used to defend SSF forward operating bases and strike aircraft or convoys at sea. As originally designed by Convair, Pogo was an innovative tail-sitter with stubby delta wings and fins above and below the fuselage. Four small landing wheels were affixed to hydraulic pegs at the ends of the wing and vertical stabilizers.

The Pogo had three major flaws. First, the XFY-1 was powered by a huge turboprop engine in an era when American manufacturers were experiencing seemingly insoluble problems developing such engines with satisfactory power and reliability. The Pogo mounted the Allison YT40-A-16, which consisted of two coupled Allison T38 engines producing 5,500 estimated shaft horsepower driving two three-bladed, contra-rotating propellers. The propellers were intended to operate as helicopter rotors while the aircraft was in or near vertical mode during landings and takeoffs. Second, the vertical takeoffs and landings were foreign to pilots who were used to landing on runways or ships while flying forward with full view of the landing area and its periphery. Landings in particular were challenging and hazardous for fledgling pilots because a Pogo aviator had to land by looking over his shoulder or into rearview mirrors while descending to the pad. Third, even if the engine problems were resolved, maximum flight speeds for Pogo would barely exceed 550 miles per hour, far less than the speed of the new jet fighters deployed by the most probable enemy, Soviet MiGs. In addition, the relatively slow but lightweight Pogo lacked spoilers and air brakes and could not slow down efficiently after flying at high speeds.

Initial flight tests for the radical Pogo, perhaps unsurprisingly, were conducted indoors and tethered at Naval Air Station Moffett Field, California, in early 1954. Convair engineering test pilot and Marine reserve Lt. Col. James F. “Skeets” Coleman made the first untethered test flight at Lindbergh Field, San Diego, in August, reaching an altitude of 40 feet. Coleman continued takeoff and landing practice at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Brown Field, California, logging nearly 60 flight hours in 70 such drills, one of which attained an altitude of about 150 feet. In November, he became the first American pilot to finish a complete flight in the aircraft. He executed a vertical takeoff in Pogo, transitioned to horizontal flight over San Diego for about 20 minutes, then landed vertically within a square measuring 50 feet on each side. Attesting to the difficulty of flying the aircraft, Coleman was awarded the 1954 Harmon trophy, given annually to the world’s outstanding aviator.

During its brief career, the sole experimental Pogo logged only about 80 flights. By late 1954, it had become obvious that the aircraft would never overcome its three major problems. The XFY-1 program was terminated by the Navy in August 1955. Convair continued briefly with limited testing of the aircraft, which was grounded for good in November 1956. The single prototype of the unsuccessful Pogo was later transferred to the National Air and Space Museum at Suitland, Maryland, where it currently remains.

The XF2Y-1 Sea Dart

In early 1948, the Navy initiated a design contest for a high-performance, supersonic seaplane fighter that could operate from forward areas without the need of either carriers or land air bases. Convair entered the contest in October 1948 via its proposal for a delta-winged design with streamlined hull that rested on the water and rose up on a pair of retractable hydro-skis for takeoffs and landings. After two years of extensive testing and empirical revisions of seaplane designs, Convair was awarded a contract  in January 1951 for two prototypes, which were assigned the designation XF2Y-1, Sea Dart, and became an essential element of the SSF concept. The Sea Dart was to be powered by two afterburning Westinghouse J46 jet engines, providing 6,000 pounds of thrust each, fed by a pair of air intakes mounted high on the sides of the fuselage above the wing and behind the cockpit. This configuration was chosen to prevent water spray from entering the intakes during takeoffs and landings. The plane was fitted with a set of dive brakes on the lower rear fuselage, which also doubled as water brakes and rudder while taxiing on the surface.

Sea Darts took off and landed on a pair of retractable hydro-skis that extended outward on hydraulic legs from recesses cut into the lower hull, one ski on each side of the hull. The Navy had such confidence in the design that it ordered 12 production F2Y-1 aircraft in August 1952. Pending the availability of the J46 jets, the first prototype XF2Y-1 was fitted with two non-afterburning Westinghouse J34 engines providing only 3,400 pounds of thrust each. Initial flight tests in April 1953 revealed that the aircraft was severely underpowered for its weight. In addition, the hydro-skis vibrated so much during takeoffs and landings that the aircraft was extremely difficult to control. To cure the vibration problem, the skis were redesigned and their hydraulic legs improved. But inadequate thrust and seemingly insoluble vibration problems with the hydro-skis continued to plague the Sea Dart. In October 1953, the Navy canceled the remaining XF2Y-ls.

The first of four contracted YF2Y-1 service test aircraft joined the program in early 1954. It was powered by a pair of afterburning Westinghouse J46 turbojets. In overall appearance, the YF2Y-1 was similar to the XF2Y-1 except for the revised nacelles housing more powerful J46 engines. Convair test pilot Charles E. Richbourg made the initial flight tests of this Sea Dart. In August 1954, at an altitude of 34,000 feet, he took the first YF2Y-1 through the sound barrier while in a shallow dive, making the Sea Dart the first and to date the only seaplane to go supersonic. Since the Sea Dart had been designed before the application of the fuselage area rule, the aircraft experienced high transonic drag and remained unable to exceed the speed of sound in level flight.

The Fatal End of the Sea Dart Program

By the fall of 1954, both the Navy and the manufacturer were confident that all three aircraft being developed by Convair were ready for a public demonstration of their capabilities. In November 1954 the Navy scheduled a daring but, in retrospect, premature flight demonstration in San Diego for all three aircraft. Invited for the performance were high-ranking Navy officers and Defense Department officials, Convair management and engineering personnel, and a large press contingent. The first act was performed by the XFY-1 at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Brown Field, where the experimental Pogo made a successful vertical takeoff, conversion to level flight, and safe vertical descent on its quadruple landing wheels. Following this performance, guests were transported to Convair’s seaplane ramp on San Diego Bay, where they were treated to an impressive flyby from the R3Y Tradewind.

The last scheduled activity on the public demonstration was a takeoff, flyby, and landing by the Convair YF2Y-l Sea Dart by veteran test pilot Richbourg. The Sea Dart made a spectacular takeoff run from the bay, and Richbourg retracted its skis immediately after liftoff. He then flew east of San Diego and turned back to perform a westerly flyby over the bay. The Sea Dart had reached about 500 knots over San Diego city hall when Richbourg fired the after- burners. The aircraft suddenly disintegrated, enveloped by a huge fireball, and plunged inverted into the bay near Convair rescue boats. Richbourg was killed by the impact and his body immediately recovered by frogmen. As a result of the disaster, all Sea Dart operations were temporarily suspended until a Navy accident board completed its investigation. In December 1954, the board concluded that the accident had been caused by pilot-induced longitudinal pitch oscillations and not any unique design deficiencies in the Sea Dart itself.

Even before the public fiasco at the YF2Y-1 flight demonstration, the Navy had been gradually losing interest in the Sea Dart project. Even with more powerful engines, the aircraft could not achieve supersonic speeds. Continuing problems with saltwater intrusion plagued the jet engines, and excessively vibrating water skis could not be corrected. As a consequence, the Navy canceled 10 of the 16 production aircraft in December 1953. All remaining six production F2Y-1s were canceled in March 1954. The fatal crash by Richbourg later that year, with the attendant bad publicity, put the quietus on further development, and the Sea Dart program was relegated to test status only. Operational testing of all Sea Darts ended in 1957.

Flying Boats: The Tradewinds and the SeaMaster

The SSF featured the innovative Martin P6M SeaMaster flying boat as its principal strike weapon, one designed to operate from forward, mobile bases at sea, free of costly airfields or aircraft carriers. Two additional aircraft types were required to support the SeaMaster in the new weapons system. They included protective defensive fighters, as epitomized by the Convair XFY-1 Pogo and F2Y-1 Sea Dart. In addition, large, fast seaplanes acting as transport, supply, and refueling aircraft would be vital to support the SeaMaster strike element and mobile base components. The Convair R3Y Tradewind was developed to meet this demanding requirement.

R3Y Tradewinds were a derivative of the postwar XP5Y patrol flying boat, two of which were built by Convair in San Diego for the Navy. The XP5Ys featured a high-aspect-ratio wing and four complex turboprop engines driving six-bladed contra-rotating propellers. Delivered in 1950, these predecessor aircraft included a laminar flow wing mounted high on a sleek fuselage with a single-step hull. One of the two experimental test models crashed at sea in July 1953 from presumed engine failure. Shortly after this incident, the Navy terminated XP5Y tasking for maritime patrol and switched its mission to cargo and troop transport for the SSF.

The first of five sleek R3Y-1 Tradewinds, successors to the XP5Y flying boat, made its initial flight in February 1954. All armament and tail-plane dihedrals were deleted from the predecessor design. The new cargo and transport version had a cargo hatch 10 feet wide on the port side of the hull aft of the wing, and its engine nacelles were reconfigured for new Allison T-40-A-10 turboprop motors. These complex engines, driving two contra-rotating propellers through a gearbox, proved to be an Achilles heel for the R3Ys. The Tradewinds had a conventional two-step flying boat hull, without bulkheads above the cargo deck, thus opening up a vast interior storage space that could be configured in various ways. The R3Y-1 could seat 80 combat-equipped troops in rear-facing seats, carry 72 litter patients plus 12 attendants, or haul 24 tons of cargo—all in air-conditioned, pressurized comfort. In February 1955, one of the five R3Y-1s set a seaplane record that still stands; it flew from the West to the East Coast at an average speed of 403 miles per hour.

“Flying LSTs”

Over the next two years, six improved R3Y-2 aircraft were delivered to the Navy; they featured a clamshell cargo door on the front of the fuselage. This earned them the appellation of “Flying LSTs” because they included the same high-speed roll-on, roll-off cargo-handling capability employed by the Navy’s Landing Ship Tank. A serious operational problem arose with the clamshell front door version of the R3Y-2 aircraft. Pilots reported that it was almost impossible to hold the aircraft steady with only engine power while it was loaded and unloaded. This was a crucial shortcoming, as failure to hold steady might cause the aircraft to broach catastrophically in the surf. Three of the R3Y-1s and one R3Y-2 were later modified to become aerial tankers, essential for the fighter aircraft incorporated in the SSF. The converted R3Y-2 achieved fame in August 1956 by refueling four F9F Cougar fighter jets simultaneously, the first time such a feat had been accomplished.

In March 1956, all the R3Y-ls and R3Y-2s were placed under operational control of Navy transport squadron VR-2 at Naval Air Station Alameda, California. Apparently insoluble problems with the Allison turboprop engines continued. In-flight separations of the gearbox and propeller afflicted two different R3Y aircraft during test flights in May 1957 and January 1958. Financial constraints and repeated failures of the Allison turboprop engines resulted in the aircraft’s termination after only 11 had been delivered to the Navy. Transport squadron VR-2 was disbanded in April 1958. All remaining P5Y and R3Y aircraft were grounded later that year.

By the late 1950s, only the centerpiece of the SSF, the Martin P6M SeaMaster, remained under development. It too was experiencing severe problems with test-flight accidents, cost overruns, and seemingly interminable delays. The key to the SSF would be its own nuclearbomb-carrying strike aircraft, a jet-powered, fast, technologically advanced seaplane. Accordingly, it issued specifications for such an aircraft in April 1951. Design requirements for the new flying boat were stringent. To achieve them, a seaplane would require a performance equal to that of a land-based jet. The aircraft would need a bomb capacity of 14 tons, be able to attack targets 1,500 miles from its mobile base, and achieve speeds of 650 miles per hour during low-level attacks. The Navy selected Martin to build two prototype aircraft to these rigid specifications in October 1952, to be identified as XP6M-1s.

The two XP6M-1 prototypes were fitted with four Allison J71-A-4 turbojet engines mounted in pairs within four nacelles above the wing near its roots. Known as SeaMasters, the two aircraft had anhedral drooped wings, featuring 40 degrees of sweepback that ended in wingtip fuel tanks that also served as floats. The wingtip floats contained equipment that helped dock the aircraft. The SeaMaster had a pressurized cabin and a crew of four: pilot, copilot, navigator, and flight engineer. Its sole defensive armament was a pair of 20mm cannons mounted in a remote-controlled tail turret.

Testing the SeaMaster

During flight testing in 1955, the initial prototype SeaMaster quickly revealed one obvious weakness. Its jet engines had been oriented parallel to the hull so that exhaust gases exited over the rear fuselage, thus scorching it in that area and limiting use of afterburners. Corrective action was taken on later P6M-1 and P6M-2 models, which mounted their four turbine nacelles in a toed-in manner so that jet exhausts were directed outboard of the rear fuselage. Other problems encountered by the first experimental XP6M-1 were unexplained vibrations throughout the hull, plus rear turret and rotary bomb rack malfunctions.

By late 1955, most problems with the XP6M-1 were determined to be curable, and the Navy assigned an evaluation team from its nearby Naval Air Test Center in Maryland to work with Martin during further development. In December 1955, a mixed crew of Martin and Navy personnel took one XP6M-1 up for a routine test flight. While descending at full power from 8,700 feet, the test aircraft suddenly exploded and disintegrated in the air, killing all four occupants.

The Navy immediately instituted an exhaustive accident investigation into the loss of the XP6M-1, concluding that the plane had experienced longitudinal divergence that tore the engines loose and caused the wings to fold entirely under the airplane before they broke away. The investigation could not ascertain the cause of the divergence but suggested that it might have been the result of a failure in the activator for the horizontal stabilizer. The Navy’s continued confidence in the SeaMaster program drove further development of the aircraft, and there was no cancellation of the contracted six YP6M-1 service evaluation planes. With surprisingly little delay, the remaining XP6M-1 resumed testing in May 1956. It was modified to include new flight instrumentation, plus ejection seats for all four crew members. During a flight test in November 1956, the aircraft again broke up in the air, although this time all crew members ejected safely. An investigation traced the cause to an error in the design calculation for the tail control system.

Throughout 1958, the YP6M-1s tested their mine-laying, bombing, navigation, and reconnaissance systems. The Navy proceeded with 24 production versions of the P6M-2s, the first of which was delivered by Martin early in 1959. These aircraft were powered by more powerful non-afterburning Pratt & Whitney J75-P-2 turbojet engines that permitted a substantial increase in gross weight for the aircraft. Since this meant the SeaMasters sat lower in the water, their wing anhedral was eliminated. The P6M-2s were also fitted with improved navigation and bombing systems, plus midair refueling probes. In this production version, the SeaMaster was an impressive weapon. It achieved the specified 650 miles per hour for on-the-deck attacks. But the aircraft also evidenced some unpleasant flight characteristics, such as rapid changes in directional trim, severe buffeting, and wing drop requiring high control inputs to counter. These defects were traced to larger engine nacelles required by the J75 engines. Other problems also became evident as testing continued, such as tip floats digging into the water during choppy seas and engine surges.

In August 1959, the Navy canceled further operational development of the SeaMaster program. By then, the modern equivalent of $2.5 billion had been spent on the SeaMasters, which had ballooned in cost and suffered numerous, still unsolved technological problems. The Martin P6M SeaMaster development joined the Convair Pogo, Sea Dart, and Tradewind programs as failed elements of the SSF.

The Carrier Wins Over the Seaplane Striking Force

In retrospect, while the SSF concept had its ardent and articulate advocates, it was probably never going to perform a primary role in the Navy’s nuclear strike mission. Jet aircraft and carrier advancements obviated the four aircraft conceived to implement the program, but it was also overtaken by extraneous worldwide events. Seaplane advocates in the Navy were far outweighed by senior carrier aviators, whose influence became dominant during the 1950s. Perhaps most important, the rapid development of ballistic missiles dramatically reduced the need for manned aircraft as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons. The Seaplane Striking Force was a costly concept whose time never arrived.

Originally Published November 25, 2018.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikipedia

Stratfor Worldview

Russian Military, Europe

The decline in Russia's defense output raises concerns about the competitive strength of Russia's defense industry in general.

Here's What You Need to Remember: As a great power, Russia has lofty ambitions for the modernization of its military. Budget constraints, more competition from elsewhere and other issues, however, mean many of the army's most ostentatious projects never make it past the showroom.

Russia's defense industry is face to face with a major foe, but it's not a foreign military power. The Kremlin has been striving to modernize all branches of the Russian military, but the country's defense industry is struggling thanks to decreasing volumes of orders, difficulties in attracting high-skilled talent and limits to its technological capabilities. According to recent figures, the performance of Russia's aerospace sector is declining precipitously. In 2018, for instance, Russian aircraft and spacecraft makers produced 13.5 percent less than in 2017. And there's been no letup in 2019 either: In the first two months of the year, aerospace output plummeted 48 percent year on year.

The decline in Russia's defense output raises concerns about the competitive strength of Russia's defense industry in general, whose health is critical if the country is to project itself as a military power in the longer term. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov attributed the reduction in output to a slowdown of orders for military systems, but projections suggest the slowdown is not just a short-term fluctuation; in fact, it's expected to become even worse in the future. The downturn in oil prices has taken a bite out of Russia's bottom line, squeezing spending for the military — all at a time when the country's arms manufacturers have lost their competitive edge in the global arms market. Together, these factors ensure that Russia's defense industry will struggle to get out of its funk.

Suffering From a Dearth of Funds

This dire picture stands in stark contrast to Russia's frequent presentation of sensational new platforms. In reality, however, just a few of the big-ticket weapon systems — such as the T-14 main battle tank or the Su-57 fighter aircraft — find buyers, as the rest remain mere prototypes. Russia has prioritized some hardware, such as the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, due to their strategic relevance to the country's overall military posture, but Moscow has failed to fully develop other programs or only introduced them on a limited scale.

Under pressure from a limited government budget, the Kremlin even started reducing its military spending in 2017 — a strong indicator that, despite the modernization push, Russia's financial challenges are taking a toll on the country ambitions. Economically, the plunge in oil prices at the end of 2014 hurt Russia's bottom line, depriving the country of essential revenue and forcing it to dip into its reserves to bridge the gap. Today, more than four years on, Russian oil revenues are rising, yet the country is continuing to deal with the consequences of the lean years. Beyond that, low revenues from taxes, which have forced Russia to raise taxes and the retirement age, and Western sanctions over Moscow's activities in Ukraine and elsewhere, have shrunk the financial pool available to military planners.

But the Kremlin's problems don't end there. In the past, Russia has benefited from its position as a major global arms exporter to fuel further military development. During the 1990s, for example, such sales were critical to the country as it faced severe economic hardship. While Russia remains the world's second-largest arms exporter (only the United States sells more), the actual value of those exports has been decreasing significantly. Between 2014 and 2018, their total value dropped by as much as 17 percent. Again, budgetary limits are somewhat to blame: In the past, Russia frequently used arms exports as a political tool, offering weapons at a heavy discount, if not entirely free. But with Russia no longer able to offer customers a good deal on its fighter jets and other defense products, the country is losing business.

And Russia's arms industry faces an even greater problem in the years to come: reduced competitiveness. Russia has long dominated some of the market by offering affordable military equipment without attaching any conditions regarding human rights, but the rise of China's military industry, as well as several smaller producers around the world, has made it much more difficult to compete for contracts.

Ultimately, the loss of export opportunities not only complicates Russia's efforts to finance its defense industry, it also reduces the scale at which the defense industry produces, which, in turn, decreases scale-dependent savings that accompany higher levels of production. In effect, this means that the more Russia fails to find foreign customers for specific weapon systems, the more it will become burdened with a higher relative cost per unit as it seeks to meet its own needs. The conundrum, in turn, will further limit Russia's ability to competitively price weapons systems for export, thereby perpetuating the effect.

This is why, for example, India's withdrawal from the joint development and production of the Su-57 fighter aircraft last year has cast doubt on Russia's ability to sustain the program in a meaningful way or at an acceptable cost. As a result, Russia has sought — albeit unsuccessfully so far — to export the Su-57 more widely in an effort to find a partnership that would make the aircraft viable.

The Search for Solutions

Russia, accordingly, has been considering other solutions to safeguard its defense sector and improve its overall industrial performance. One possible remedy centers on what amounts to burden sharing across sectors. In this, the country is looking to harness the defense industry's strengths for civilian production, similar to the way Western enterprises such as Boeing or Airbus operate. By producing non-military products for domestic and foreign civilian markets, Russian defense manufacturers could sustain themselves even if their military goods are earning less revenue.

Unfortunately for Russia, the chances that such a gambit will succeed are low — even for domestic consumption. Although Moscow has been pushing an import substitution program amid the West's sanctions, Russian firms continue to privilege foreign, instead of domestic, components. In 2018, 38 percent of Russian industrial enterprises purchased equipment from abroad; two years before, the figure was just 6 percent. Ultimately, if Russian arms producers are failing to find sales for defense customers at home, they're unlikely to find any more of a domestic civilian market for their wares.

As a great power, Russia has lofty ambitions for the modernization of its military. Budget constraints, more competition from elsewhere and other issues, however, mean many of the army's most ostentatious projects never make it past the showroom. And moving forward, the Russian defense industry's plight is unlikely to improve as it faces a vicious circle that is leaving it worse for wear.

Russia's Defense Industry Finds Itself in a Tailspin is republished with the permission of Stratfor Worldview, a geopolitical intelligence and advisory firm. This article first appeared several years ago and is being republished due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters

Andrew Davies

Submarine Warfare, World

It is true that there could be new technologies to discover submarines underwater, but given the vastness of the oceans submarines are still likely to stay relevant in future wars.

Key point: Let's say a new technology tomorrow lets you see all enemy submarines from a vast distance. Even if that were true, it would be very difficult to see all submarines across the entire globe at once.

As a member of the Australian Defense Minister’s White Paper panel, I’ve had many discussions about issues that paper will wrestle with (and a few that it certainly won’t, but that’s a post for another time). With the obvious disclaimer that I’m not about to divulge any white paper content, I thought it was worth addressing some of the questions that have come up repeatedly.

Naturally, questions about Australia’s future submarine plans are near the top of the list. Many topics are predictable enough. Where will they be built? How many do we need?

(This first appeared several years ago.)

I’m surprised at how often I’ve been asked whether we’re wasting our money because submarines are about to become passé. That question is based on one of two premises: that the oceans are about to become ‘transparent’ due to new detection technologies, or that submarines will be replaced by unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

Both propositions have a reasonable pedigree, and neither can be dismissed out of hand. And both technologies will have a significant impact on the future conduct of submarine operations. But when examined closely, they actually point towards an increased relevance for submarines.

Let’s start with the detection issue. The attribute that most contributes to the effectiveness of submarines is their stealth. An adversary faces significant uncertainty even with just the possibility of a submarine being present. A great deal of effort has to be put into anti-submarine warfare to have even a reasonable chance of nullifying their effect. Having a capable submarine somewhere in a theatre of maritime operations complicates planning everywhere—or at least within a large circle of possible locations that grows steadily with time.

The ability to quickly and reliably find submarines would certainly change their cost benefit calculus, and the notion of making the ocean ‘transparent’ isn’t a new one. The Cold War U.S. Navy (USN) put a great deal of effort into being able to track Soviet nuclear missile-carrying boats, building an array of networked underwater sensors under the Long Range Acoustic Propagation Project. Their effort met with considerable success and the USN often had a pretty good hold on Soviet submarine movements.

But there are two important caveats. First, those were earlier generation nuclear submarines, which were noisier than their current counterparts. Second, even when Soviet submarines were detected, precise localization wasn’t always possible. The arrays were heavily supplemented by other techniques, not least of which was the ‘tailing’ of Soviet boats by American submarines. (See the ‘ripping yarn’ bestseller Blind Man’s Bluff for a popular account). In fact, when the arrays picked up the sounds of the destruction of its own USS Scorpion, the USN still took four months to locate the wreckage. The simple fact is that reliable localization of sound sources in large ocean basins is a formidably difficult task that gets progressively harder as the difference between the source and background noise gets smaller—as is the case with modern submarines.

Of course, detection technologies and the ability to analyze collected data have also improved. I wrote about the effect of Moore’s Law on submarine detectability here, and it’s true that future submarines will face challenges in remaining hidden. They’ll also have to worry about techniques other than acoustics, such as wake detection, thermal signatures or even the light given off by sea creatures disturbed by their passage. Given enough data and enough signal processing power, even very subtle signs could be giveaways—potentially even from orbit.

Nonetheless, the real world is a noisy and untidy place. Covering very wide areas with sufficiently sensitive sensors with high bandwidth to link them together and having the ability to respond quickly and effectively to a detection—especially given a likely high ‘false positive’ rate—will be beyond even the best resourced forces. Much more likely is that high performance ASW capabilities will be concentrated on key focal areas, such as around task groups, near naval bases, and chokepoints such as critical sea lanes through straits and narrows. The old model of submarines getting ‘up close and personal’ in their adversary’s strongholds probably doesn’t have much future.

But in terms of avoiding detection, being under the water will always be preferable to being on top of it. And if the submarine can carry out its mission from a reasonable distance, there’ll still be ocean enough to hide in. To remain viable, future submarines will have to be even stealthier. They will need be able to stand off and deploy medium to long-range sensors and weapons—in a sense perhaps becoming ‘underwater motherships’ for sensor and weapon packages. In fact, as life gets harder on the surface, that ability will become more relevant, not less.

And that’s a neat segue to UUVs. In the next post I’ll discuss their strengths and weaknesses and explain how the complementary package of manned submarine and unmanned subsystems could come together to help defeat improved sensors.

This piece first appeared in ASPI’s The Strategist here. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

World War II History, Europe

Invading Russia is a foolish thing to do, but Hitler did it anyway and in doing so he lost everything.

Key Point: The Nazis wanted a new world order for their evil ends, but they could find their match in the Soviet Union. Losing the Battle of Leningrad was a huge blow that was one of several Berlin could not recover from.

The latter half of 1943 had German forces in the east staggering under a series of hammer blows that saw the Soviet Red Army advance hundreds of kilometers westward on the central and southern sectors of the Eastern Front. After the massive battle in the Kursk salient, the Soviets launched their first great summer offensive late in July.

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

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In a month and a half, Smolensk, Bryansk, and Kirov had been liberated in the central sector, with German forces retreating to the Sozh River and beyond. By September 30, Soviet troops had taken most of the northern shore of the Sea of Azov in the southern sector and had recaptured key cities that included Kharkov, Stalino, and Poltava while pushing the Germans back almost to the Dnieper River.

Luckily for the Germans, the Soviets outran their supply lines and had to call a halt to operations while men and material were brought forward. Both sides had suffered horrendous losses since July 1, and although the Russians could replace theirs with conscripts from newly liberated territory, it would take time to outfit them and give them the basics of command and combat.

While German forces battled the Soviets in a fighting retreat, thousands of forced laborers and German engineers were tasked with building a massive defensive line. On August 11, Hitler signed an order calling for the construction of the so-called “Eastern Wall.” Although it went against his propensity to fight for every foot of conquered land, Hitler had to face reality for once after the post-Kursk Soviet offensive.

The Wotan Line and the Panther Line

The line was to run from the Black Sea to the Baltic States. In the south, the majority of the defenses would be along the western bank of the Dnieper. North of Kiev it would run along the Desna River to Chernihiv and then continue northward in a line east of Gomel, Orsha, Nevel, and Pskov, ending on the southern tip of Lake Pskov. Continuing north along the western shore of Lake Pskov, it would then follow the Narva River north to the Gulf of Finland.

Toward the end of August, OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres—the German Army High Command) adopted two code names for the northern and southern sectors of the line. The part of the Eastern Wall that would eventually be manned by Army Groups A and South would be the “Wotan Line,” while the area occupied by Army Croups Center and North was code named the “Panther Line.”

Once it was fully constructed and manned, Hitler hoped his Eastern Wall would be such a formidable barrier that the Red Army would bleed itself dry trying to penetrate it. In essence, it would be a throwback to the trench warfare and the battles of attrition that Hitler himself had experienced in World War I.

 

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There were three basic problems with the line. The first was the time it would take to construct. Soviet advances had already pushed German troops dangerously close to the proposed line, with some already occupying the half-built defenses. The second was manpower. Once the position was finally reached, some German units were so depleted that there was only one soldier to every 50 meters of front.

The third problem concerned the extreme southern sector of the Wall. Since the Dnieper curved west around Zaporizhzya to empty into the Black Sea west of the Crimean Peninsula, the line stretching from Melitopol to Zaporizhzya was constructed on land totally unsuited for its purpose since there was no river barrier to use as an additional plus for defensive positions. The Germans were forced to hold that area to protect the 17th Army, which occupied the Crimea.

The Collapse of the Wotan Line

Once reinforcements and supplies arrived, the Russians continued to batter the Germans. Kiev fell to the Red Army in November, and the 4th Ukrainian Front broke the lines of the German Sixth Army, which was holding the Melitopol area. Farther north, Soviet troops were able to establish bridgeheads across the Dnieper, taking several key positions in the half-completed Wotan Line. By the end of the year, most of the vaunted line had been overrun in the central and southern sectors of the Eastern Front.

While the situation was deteriorating in the center and the south during the summer, the sector occupied by Field Marshal Georg von Küchler’s Army Group North remained eerily quiet. The army group had been besieging Leningrad since 1941, and the front in that sector had been the object of several heavy Soviet attacks throughout the next two years, but the lines remained relatively stable.

In August, von Küchler received intelligence indicating a Soviet buildup in the Oranienbaum bridgehead—an area on the coast of the Gulf of Finland west of Leningrad that was held by the 2nd Shock Army. Farther south, in the sector held by General Christian Hansen’s Sixteenth Army, reports showed that a buildup was also occurring at the boundary of Army Group Center and Army Group North opposite the key rail junction city of Nevel.

Von Küchler responded to the possible threats by pulling five divisions out of the line to form a ready reserve to counter any Soviet attacks. Two of those divisions were lost almost immediately as Hitler, over the objections of the army group commander, sent them south to prop up other sectors of the front.

As Army Group Center withdrew to the Panther Line, Army Group North acquired General Karl von Oven’s XLIII Army Corps, which had occupied the northern flank of the retreating army group. This gave von Küchler three more divisions, but it also made him responsible for another 77 kilometers and the towns of Nevel and Novosokol’niki, which were the key communications centers between Army Group Center and Army Group North.

Making Gaps in the German Line

During the first week of October, a heavy overcast prevented further German aerial reconnaissance from taking place. This gave an opportunity for General Andrei Ivanovich Eremenko’s Kalinin Front (renamed the 1st Baltic Front on October 12) to move into attack positions without fear of German discovery.

On October 6, Lt. Gen. Kuzma Nikitovich Galitskii hit the 2nd Luftwaffe Field Division, which was occupying the northernmost sector of Army Group Center, with four rifle divisions and two tank brigades from his 3rd Shock Army. The 21st Guards Division and 78th Tank Brigade sliced through the German division, scattering its forces. Following units of the attack force poured through the lines of the disintegrating division and swung northeast toward Nevel. The poor showing of the 2nd Luftwaffe and other Luftwaffe field divisions prompted Hitler to approve the transfer of most of them to the Army, where they were known as feld (L) divisions. The neighboring 4th Shock Army also pushed forward, and by mid-afternoon the town was in Soviet hands.

Trying to restore the situation, von Küchler ordered his three remaining reserve divisions to attack the Russians around the town. Those units arrived piecemeal and had little effect in stopping the superior Soviet force, which had opened a gap of 24 kilometers between Army Groups North and Center.

Elements of only one reserve division were in the fight. Movement of the other two divisions had been disrupted by partisans, who had blown up the rail lines running directly to the town. With the resulting delay, von Küchler ordered German forces around Nevel to go into a defensive posture.

At the same time, the Soviet commanders called a halt to their offensive. The success of the initial assault had surprised the Russians, who had expected heavier enemy resistance. They now started to fortify their flanks, having learned bitter lessons in the past about the German tendency to let a salient develop before launching counterattacks that could, and in many cases did, trap and destroy the foremost elements of Soviet assault forces.

The impasse continued until November 2. Advancing under the cover of heavy fog, the 3rd and 4th Shock Armies hit Army Group Center’s Third Panzer Army, causing a 16 kilometer gap in the line. This allowed the 3rd Shock Army to turn northeast and hit Hansen’s Sixteenth Army flank. Von Küchler reacted by sending six battalions from General Georg Lindemann’s Eighteenth Army to Hansen, who used them to bolster his right flank. With the arrival of those troops the flank bent but did not break.

A Weak German Counterattack

By now, Hitler was livid. Not only had the Nevel salient remained intact—the new Soviet assault threatened to unhinge the entire front in the northern sector. He demanded that a counterattack eliminate the new bulge with a concentrated action by both Army Groups North and Center beginning on November 8.

Von Küchler objected in the strongest terms. He pointed out that the only way he could attack was to further weaken the Nineteenth Army, which was still in a static mode around Leningrad and Oranienbaum. He also pointed to German intelligence concerning a Soviet buildup in those areas. With the onset of winter, he was worried that a new enemy attack would occur in those areas since a Soviet offensive had occurred every winter since the war in the East had begun.

Hitler remained unmoved. He ordered that Army Group Center begin its attack on November 8, with von Küchler joining in on the 9th. An infantry and panzer division opened the attack on the 8th, making surprisingly good progress and advancing eight kilometers. The following day von Küchler postponed his own attack, saying no units could be spared for the assault. Furious, Hitler demanded that Army Group North begin its attack no later than November 10.

On the 10th, von Küchler made a halfhearted attempt to follow Hitler’s order by throwing just seven battalions against the Soviet northern flank. Russian artillery fire, followed by a counterattack, threw the Germans back with heavy losses. Once again, the debate over priorities raged between Hitler and his commander.

The Eighteenth Army Stretched Thin

While the two argued, the Soviets pressed forward. Their new salient was extended to a depth of 80 kilometers. A new threat appeared when the Russians started to turn east at the tip of the salient, threatening the right flank of the Sixteenth Army and bringing Red Army troops dangerously close to Novosokol’niki.

Von Küchler was summoned to Hitler’s headquarters, where the two heatedly discussed the new threat. Although obsessed with the Nevel bridgehead, Hitler finally agreed that Soviet forces threatening the flank should be dealt with before continuing to try and stabilize things at Nevel.

Once again it was Lindemann who paid the price with the loss of another division from his Eighteenth Army. Although his front still remained quiet, the gradual transfer of one division after another to the south stretched his defenses dangerously thin. The feld (L) divisions under his command held purely defensive positions and were of questionable combat worthiness, while regular army divisions were rarely up to strength.

Before von Küchler, who was waiting for the transferred division to arrive in the south, could attack, an assault by the 11th Guards Army hit Army Group Center on November 21. The two divisions that had attacked the Soviet bulge on November 8 were withdrawn to meet the new threat, further weakening Army Group North’s plan to reduce the salient. A sudden thaw in the last week of November further disrupted the German plan as the ground turned into a quagmire, forcing a postponement of the attack until December 1.

When the attack finally did get under way, the German divisions advanced a mere five kilometers into the Soviet bulge. Mechanized vehicles became stuck in the mud, and each step for the infantry became a struggle with nature. Even Hitler recognized the futility of continuing the attack on the Soviet western flank, so he ordered a halt to the assault and ordered von Küchler to resume plans to pinch off the Nevel salient.

Pulling Back From the Nevel Bulge

For the rest of December the Soviets in the western bulge took time to refit and regroup. They could be happy with the results of the previous month, as they had managed to make a considerable advance that endangered both Army Group Center and Army Group North. However, they had outrun their supply lines, and reinforcements to replace casualties that had been taken were being held in reserve for the general winter offensive that was being planned in Moscow.

Hitler finally realized that the Nevel salient could not be destroyed on December 16. Enemy pressure on the Third Panzer Army had forced the German line in that sector even farther back, endangering the communications hub at Vitebsk. For the next 10 days he kept a close eye on developments in the Vitebsk area while leaving the affairs of Army Group North to von Küchler.

On December 27, Hitler accepted von Küchler’s request to shorten his lines. The withdrawal took troops out of the Nevel bulge and pulled them back to a line running from just south of Novosokol’niki west toward Pusloshka. The pullback gave Hansen more troops to man the line and reinforce positions along the front in the west.

It should be noted that Army Group North was the only army group that had not yet retreated to the Eastern Wall’s Panther Line. Since September, a force of some 50,000 civilians and engineers had worked on the line in the north, building about 6,000 bunkers and laying 200 kilometers of barbed wire. Another 40 kilometers of trenches and antitank ditches were also dug. In addition, a series of secondary positions were also constructed, with strongpoints being built at Narva, Chudovo, Kingisepp, Luga, Krasnobvardeisk, and Novgorod.

Operation Blue: The German Retreat

The plan for retreating to the Panther Line started in September. It was codenamed Operation Blue. One of the main concerns that Army Group North planners had was the 900,000 civilians living in the area that was to be evacuated. It would be impossible to move them all, so security forces in the rear areas singled out adult males that would either be conscripted by the advancing Red Army or be used as workers for the Soviet war effort. In total, some 250,000 men had been forcibly transported to Latvia and Lithuania by the end of the year. Hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and potatoes were also scheduled to be sent to safe areas along with half a million cattle and sheep.

Planning for the retreat envisioned a staggered withdrawal that would start in mid-January and continue for the next couple of months until the spring thaw. However, on December 22 Hitler decided that he would not approve the implementation of Operation Blue unless the Soviets began a general offensive against the army group.

Toward the end of the month, the Eighteenth Army lost one of its best divisions, the 1st Infantry, which was sent south to shore up the front. Two more divisions were also transferred during the first days of January. With each loss, von Küchler protested directly to Hitler with no results. In return for these losses, Hitler sent SS Lt. Gen. Felix Steiner’s III SS Panzer Corps to bolster the Oranienbaum sector.

German Order of Battle At the Line

At the beginning of 1944, the units of Lindemann’s Eighteenth Army around Leningrad and the Oranienbaum bridgehead were stretched to the limit. The line surrounding Lt. Gen. Ivan Ivanovich Fediuninskii’s 2nd Shock Army was manned by Steiner’s Corps (SS Police Division, SS Nordland Division and 9th and 10th Feld (L) Divisions). The SS Nederland Brigade was also in transport to the corps.

A half circle ring on the southern sector of Leningrad ran from the Gulf of Finland about 30 kilometers southwest of the city through Pushkin and ended at the Neva River. General Wilhelm Wegner’s L Army Corps (126th, 170th, and 215th Infantry Divisions) and General Otto Sponheimer’s LIV Army Corps (11th, 24th, and 225th Infantry Divisions) occupied the sector. Facing Soviet units around the Siniavino Heights and the Pogos’te pocket was General Martin Grase’s XXVI Army Corps (61st, 121st, 212th, 227th, 254th Infantry and 12th Feld (L) Infantry Divisions and the Spanish Legion, composed of Spanish volunteers who had served in the withdrawn 250th “Blue” Division).

The final sector held by the Eighteenth Army was an area on the Volkhov River running from Kirishi to Novgorod. Along the river line were General Herbert Loch’s XXVIII Army Corps (21st, 96th, and 13th Feld (L) Infantry Divisions) and General Kurt Herzog’s XXXVIII Army Corps (2nd Latvian SS Brigade, 28th Jäger (Light) Division, and 1st Feld (L) Infantry Division).

South of Lake Ilmen, Hansen’s Sixteenth Army still maintained contact with Army Group Center. General Thomas Wickede’s X Army Corps (8th Jäger Division and 30th and 21st Feld (L) Infantry Divisions) held a line from Lake Ilmen to Kholm. On Wickede’s right flank, General Paul Laux’s II Army Corps (218th and 93rd Infantry Divisions) and SS Lt. Gen. Karl von Pfeffer-Wildenbruch’s VI SS Army Corps (331st and 205th Infantry Divisions) front ran from Kholm to the Novosokol’niki Heights. Holding the Nevel area were General Karl von Oven’s XLIII Army Corps (15th Latvian SS Division and the 83rd and 263 Infantry Divisions) and General Carl Hilpert’s I Army Corps (58th, 69th, 23rd, 122nd, and 290th Infantry Divisions). The final sector, running from Putoshka to Lake Nezherda was occupied by General Gustav Hoehne’s VIII Army Corps (81st and 329th Infantry Divisions and SS Combat Group Jeckeln).

The Soviets Prepare Their Grand Offensive

While the Germans were planning Operation Blue, general planning for a grand offensive against Army Group North began as early as September when Volkhov Front commander General Kirill Anfansevich Meretskov and Leningrad Front commander General Leonid Aleksandrovich Govorov presented almost identical ideas to Stavka (Soviet High Command). The plans called for offensives by both Fronts designed to cut off and destroy the Eighteenth Army before it could withdraw to the Panther Line.

On October 12, Stavka approved the initial plan and set about refining it. Included in the final operational plan was a two-pronged attack with the 2nd Shock Army bursting out of the Oranienbaum bridgehead and Col. Gen. Ivan Ivanovich Maslennikov’s 42nd Army attacking to the southwest from Leningrad.

The two armies were to link up at Ropsha about 25 kilometers southwest of Leningrad, trapping the German divisions that occupied the corridor between Leningrad and Oranienbaum. While the pincer attack was under way, Govorov would use Lt. Gen. Vladimir Petrovich Sviridov’s 67th Army to tie down German forces south of Leningrad. Once the first phase was accomplished, the three armies were to move westward and southwestward, overcoming other German divisions that were trying to reach the Panther Line.

On the Volkhov Front, Meretskov would use Lt. Gen. Ivan Teretevich Korovnikov’s 59th Army as his battering ram. Korovnikov would hit Herzog’s XXXVIII Army Corps with a force of nine divisions north of Novgorod while a smaller force would attack across the frozen Lake Ilmen. The two forces would then converge west of Novgorod, surrounding the city and eliminating German units trapped inside that pocket.

Farther south, General Markian Mikhail-ovich Popov’s 2nd Baltic Front would attack the Sixteenth Army, tying down its forces and preventing any reinforcements being sent to the Eighteenth Army. All three Fronts would be assisted by partisan brigades that occupied areas in the German rear. Those brigades were tasked with disrupting supplies and communications throughout the region.

105,000 Soviet Shells

Under cover of darkness, Soviet units moved into their well-camouflaged jump-off points on January 12 and 13. Massive piles of shells lay beside the artillery battalions of all three Fronts as the gunners zeroed in on preplotted enemy positions. Heavy snow began to fall as the clock ticked down to midnight, further concealing Russian assault units’ movements.

The snow added a surreal picture to the landscape as German soldiers in outposts strained to see into the area before them. Visibility was almost zero, and it was eerily quiet. Suddenly, the stillness was broken by the hum of motors overhead.

With the help of the partisans and aerial reconnaissance, the Soviets had pinpointed the weakest points in the German line. In the sector of Steiner’s Corps those points were in the positions of Colonel Ernst Michaels’ 9th Feld (L) and Brig. Gen. Hermann von Wedel’s 10th Feld (L) Divisions, which ran from the Gulf of Finland at Peterhof southwest to Zaostrovye. Although these former Luftwaffe divisions had been transferred to the Army, their personnel still lacked the basic ground combat skills of their Army comrades.

The noise grew louder as more than 100 Soviet night bombers approached. Even though the snow prevented visibly identifying targets, the Russians dropped their loads with credible accuracy. The German positions erupted in flames and explosions as the bombers passed overhead. For the rest of the night the troops of the two divisions frantically worked on rebuilding their shattered defenses and gathered their dead and wounded while worrying what would come after the raid.

At 0935 on the 14th, they found out. As the snow abated, the sky in the distance turned yellow and red as the Leningrad Front unleashed hell on the two divisions and other units of Steiner’s corps. In a 65-minute bombardment the Soviet artillery, assisted by guns of the Red Navy, fired almost 105,000 shells, obliterating the enemy defenses. The bombardment ended in a screaming crescendo as battery after battery of Katyusha rockets plunged into the German positions.

The Russian Advance Begins

As the artillery fire ended, Maj. Gen. Anatoli Iosiforovich Andreev’s 43rd Rifle Corps (48th, 90th, and 98th Rifle Divisions) and Maj. Gen. Pantelemon Aleksandrovich Zaitsev’s 122nd Rifle Corps (11th and 131st Rifle Divisions) hit the two former Luftwaffe divisions. They were supported by the 122nd and 43rd Tank Brigades. As they penetrated the shattered German lines, pockets of resistance desperately tried to stem the Russian advance to no avail.

The assault units were followed by the 43rd, 168th, and 186th Rifle Divisions and the 152nd Tank Brigade, which wiped out or captured any Germans that had survived the initial attack. By nightfall the Russians had overrun most of the primary German defensive positions, and Michaels and von Wedel’s divisions had virtually disintegrated.

Survivors of the divisions were rounded up by officers to form hedgehog positions in villages south and west of the breakthrough points. While Michaels formed combat groups in his sector he ordered a Lt. Col. Lassman to set up an all-around defense at the road junction at Ropsha. Lassmann sent out patrols to pick up stragglers from the front line and slowly formed his defense force.

The Russians continued to advance overnight, with Colonel Nikolai Georgovich Liashenko’s 90th Rifle and Colonel Petr Loginovich Romanko’s 131st Rifle Divisions, supported by Col. A.Z. Oskotskii’s 152nd Tank Brigade and the 2nd and 204th Tank Regiments, gaining an additional four kilometers of ground in the German’s secondary defense line. Additional reinforcements and heavy Soviet artillery fire prevented any threat of a counterattack to close the gap.

Attack Near the Pulkovo Heights

January 15 saw Maslennikov’s 42nd Army join the assault. The preliminary artillery barrage was even more impressive than the one the day before. About 2,300 guns, mortars, and rocket launchers hit a 17-kilometer section of the German line from Uritsk to Pushkin with more than 220,000 shells. At 1100, Maj. Gen. Nikolai Pavlovich Simoniak’s 30th Guards Rifle Corps attacked the center of the mangled enemy line west of the Pulkovo Heights with his 45th, 63rd, and 65th Guards Rifle Divisions, which were supported by Lt. Col. I.V. Protsenko’s 220th Tank Brigade.

The sector was held by the seasoned troops of Wegner’s L Army Corps, who had fared better through the bombardment than their comrades had the previous day. Strong primary and secondary positions had been built, and bitter fighting took place for every meter of ground. Bearing the brunt of Simoniak’s attack, Brig. Gen. Walther Krause’s 170th Infantry Division was forced to give up about five kilometers of ground to the well-trained and well-disciplined Guards divisions.

The 170th gave ground grudgingly, but not without cost. In Lt. Col. Johannes Arndt’s 131st Infantry Regiment, two battalion commanders, Captain Moeller and Captain Meyer, were killed while directing the defense. Their men held their positions and withdrew only when Russian troops threatened Arndt’s command post.

On Siamoniak’s right flank, Maj. Gen. Ivan Prokofevich Alferov’s 109th Rifle Corps had a tougher time as they tried to breach the defenses of Maj. Gen. Gotthard Fischer’s 126th Infantry Division. Alferov’s three rifle divisions (72nd, 189th, and 125th) only managed to advance about 1.5 kilometers against the determined German resistance.

It was the same on the left flank where Maj. Gen. Stepan Mikhailovich Bun’kov’s 56th, Colonel Konstantin Vladmirovich Vvedenskii’s 85th, and Colonel Sergei Petrovich Demidov’s 86th Rifle Divisions of the 110th Rifle Corps (Maj. Gen. Ivan Vasilevich Khozov) hit Maj. Gen. Bruno Frankewitz’s 215th Infantry Division. The costly advance through Frankewitz’s primary positions only gained as much ground as Alferov had.

The Nordland Division Counterattack

Almost 20 kilometers to the west in the III SS Panzer Corps sector, von Wedel and Michaels’ divisions were still holding out in some pockets. Meanwhile, Fediuninskii committed more forces into the expanding wedge in the German line. With the additional manpower the Russians were able to thrust forward to Sokuli, which fell after heavy fighting. With the capture of the town, the 2nd Shock Army was only a few kilometers from Ropsha.

Watching his lines crumble, Steiner ordered SS Brig. Gen. Fritz von Scholz’s Edler von Barancze’s 11th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Nordland” to counterattack. The Nordland Division was composed of Scandinavian volunteers (10 percent), native Germans (30 percent), and ethnic Germans from Romania. Among its members was Norwegian John Sandstadt, a member of the 1st Company of Nordland’s 23rd Panzergrenadier Regiment, who described the action:

“The counterattack collapsed completely under Soviet crossfire. We immediately lost 13 dead and many wounded. It was the same for the 2nd and 3rd companies. All the same, we were finally able to hold our [old] positions for some 10 days, with our three companies being reduced to the strength of one company.”

For the next two days the Soviet juggernaut pushed forward. On the 16th, the Volkhov Front’s 54th Army (Lt. Gen. Sergei Vasilevich Roginskii) attacked Loch’s SS VII Army Corps with the city of Lyuban as its objective. The attack faltered almost immediately as it ran into the prepared positions of Brig. Gen. Hellmuth Preiss’s 121st, Colonel Gottfried Weber’s 12th Feld (L), Brig. Gen. Johann-Albrecht von Blücher’s 96th, and Maj. Gen. Gerhard Matzky’s 21st Infantry Divisions.

A Soviet report stated: “The direction of the attack is toward Lyuban. However, the enemy’s resistance still has not been overcome. He is continuing to cling fiercely to every clump of ground and launching counterattacks. It is requiring bravery and selflessness to overcome him.”

The Battle For Krasnoye Selo

On the 18th, Lindemann demanded that his frontline forces be allowed to withdraw. The 126th and remnants of the 9th Feld (L) were threatened with encirclement. The battle for Krasnoye Selo was beginning, and the pincers of Fediuninskii’s and Maslennikov’s armies were moving forward south of Ropsha, threatening further encirclements when they met.

At Ropsha itself, Lt. Col. Lassmann received a final radio message from Colonel Michaels, who was still holding out with some of his men at Tuganty, about 15 kilometers south of Lassman’s position. His combat group was fighting against the advance elements of Fediuninskii’s assault forces, trying to prevent them from linking up with the 42nd Army. After giving Lassmann a report on the situation, he signed off by saying, “In this life, we will never see each other again.” Four days later Michaels was killed while defending his position.

While Lindemann, Hitler, and von Küchler were still discussing a pullback, Maslennikov pushed more units to the front to exploit the gains being made by Simoniak. Lindemann had no reserves left, as he had already committed Maj. Gen. Günther Krappe’s 61st Infantry Division to the fight. Events overtook the debate as Ropsha fell to Zaitsev’s 122nd Rifle Corps. On January 19, lead elements of the 2nd Shock and 42nd Armies met south of the town, while Krasnoye Selo fell to Simoniak’s forces.

During the evening of the 19th, Lindemann ordered the 126th and 9th Feld (L) Divisions to break through the tightening Soviet ring and make their way south. Maj. Gen. Fisher regrouped his division and started out at midnight with his 424th Infantry Regiment in the lead. Assault guns guarded the division’s flanks as the men moved through the darkness. Since the Soviets still had only forward elements of the 42nd and 2nd Shock Armies occupying the area of the breakout, the 126th and remnants of the 9th Feld (L) managed to break through during the early hours of the 20th.

A 20-Kilometer Gap

While the battle for the Oranienbaum corridor was taking place, the Volkhov Front’s 59th Army hit Herzog’s XXXVIII Army Corps with three rifle corps. The objective was to take Novgorod and dislodge the right flank of the Eighteenth Army. More than 130,000 artillery shells heralded the opening of Korvnikov’s offensive on the 14th. At 1050 the Soviets launched their attack from a bridgehead on the western bank of the Volkhov, expecting little resistance from the artillery-riddled German positions.

As the three divisions of Maj. Gen. Semyon Petrovich Mikulskii’s 6th Guards Rifle Corps advanced, they were met with devastating fire from the Silesians of Maj. Gen. Hans Speth’s 28th Jäger Division. Mikulskii’s divisions were supposed to be supported by Colonel K.O. Urvanov’s 167th Tank Brigade, but the swampy terrain and craters created by the initial artillery bombardment prevented the tanks from arriving in time to help. As a result, the Soviets were able to advance little more than a kilometer.

Farther south, an operational group under the command of Maj. Gen. Teodor Andreevich Sviklin, the army’s assistant commanding officer, had more luck. Sviklin’s men were able to cross frozen Lake Ilmen south of Novgorod, catching the troops of Luftwaffe Brig. Gen. Rudolf Petrauschke’s 1st Feld (L) Division flat footed. Overcoming light resistance, Sviklin secured a six-kilometer-deep by four-kilometer-wide bridgehead on the eastern shore of the lake, threatening the communications line between Novgorod and Shimsk.

January 15 saw Mikulskii, now reinforced with a rifle division and a tank brigade, advance seven kilometers. His forces were able to cut the rail line, defended by elements of Maj. Gen. Kurt Versock’s 24th Infantry Division, between Chudovo and Novgorod. Supported by the three rifle divisions of Maj. Gen. Pavel Alekseevich Artiushenko’s 14th Rifle Corps, Mikulski was able to advance into the main German defensive line and create a 20-kilometer gap in the enemy defenses.

Breaking Out of Novgorod

At Novgorod, Colonel Lothar Freutel’s 503rd Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. Conrad-Oskar Heinrichs’ 290th Infantry Division, which had been rushed forward to bolster Petrauschke’s division, formed a defensive barrier in the ruins of the city. The defenders also included elements of Petrauschke’s and Speth’s divisions and were supported by the 290th Artillery Regiment.

Enveloped from the north and south, Novgorod held out until January 19, when a breakout order was given. A member of the combat group defending the city recalled:

“On the night of January 19, those troops of the 28th Jäger Division in Novgorod received the order to break out. The seriously wounded had to be abandoned in the ruins, the medical staff volunteering to remain behind with them, and all who could carry weapons, including the walking wounded, tried to withdraw under cover of darkness.”

The combat group broke down into smaller sections, which were constantly attacked by the Red Air Force and Soviet artillery. In Freutel’s regiment, only three officers and 100 men came through alive. It was the same for the other units that participated in the breakout. On the morning of January 20, Maj. Gen. Ivan Nikolayevich Burakovskii’s 191st, Colonel Petr Ivanovich Olkhovshii’s 225th, and Maj. Gen. Petr Nikolaevich Chernyshev’s 382nd Rifle Divisions entered the city, encountering no resistance.

Retreat to the Rollbahn Line

With the fall of Novgorod, von Küchler realized that his army group was being outflanked. He once again requested that Hitler allow him to retreat. Engaging in a back and forth argument about just how far back the troops would withdraw, Hitler grudgingly gave permission to retreat to the so-called Rollbahn Line, which was one of the secondary defensive positions that had been built earlier. The subsequent shortening of the line meant that three divisions could now be used as a reserve. Hitler also agreed to move Brig. Gen. Erpo von Bodenhausen’s 12th Panzer Division into Sixteenth Army’s area.

Popov’s 2nd Baltic Front, operating south of Meretskov, was also causing trouble for the Sixteenth Army, but its early assaults met with little success. By mid-January it had carved out a small bridgehead that had severed the Nevel-Leningrad rail line, but little else was achieved. Counterattacks from Laux’s II Army Corps and Wickede’s X Army Corps forced Popov to go onto the defensive on January 20, but the danger of a renewed Russian attack prevented any transfer of German troops in the area to other endangered sectors.

Stavka gave its Front commanders little time to consolidate their gains. With urging from Moscow, Govorov resumed his offensive on the 21st. Masslennikov’s 42nd Army was given a number of missions. His troops were ordered to take Slutsk, Pushkin, and Tosno and then drive on to capture the important road junction at Gatchina. The capture of that town would enable him to continue advancing to the Luga River, where the Germans had set up another line of defense.

Meretskov was also ordered to head for the Luga. He charged Korovnikkov’s 59th Army with that task. In conjunction with Korovnikkov’s attack, Roginskii’s 54th Army was to take Lyuban and encircle and destroy Loch’s XXVIII Corps.

The attacks were supported by partisan units, which totally disrupted the interior German lines of supply and communication. During the month of January partisans destroyed several stretches of railroad tracks, blew up more than 300 bridges, and derailed 133 trains. The attacks were devastating to German morale. The history of the 11th Infantry Division describes the effect on troops who did not receive much needed food or clothing:

“Often the troops go for days in the icy cold without warm food, with wet clothing that would freeze stiff, with merely crumbs of frozen bread to eat and frozen tea in their canteens to drink. They would catch a few minutes of sleep when they could.…”

“I am Against All Withdrawals”

On the 21st, Mga fell to Soviet forces after German troops in the city made an orderly retreat. Lt. Gen. Filipp Nikanorovich Starikov was ordered to use his 8th Army to pursue and destroy the garrison, but the pursuing forces were overly cautious and the Germans were able to make good their retreat.

Meanwhile, Wegner’s L Army Corps was fighting a desperate battle around Gatchina against the spearhead of the 42nd Army. Once again, von Küchler flew to Hitler’s headquarters to demand freedom of action. He wanted to shore up his line as much as possible, and he argued that German forces holding Pushkin and Slutsk would be destroyed if they were not allowed to retreat.

“I am against all withdrawals,” Hitler replied. He said that he wanted the Soviets to bleed and incur as many casualties as possible before they descended on the Panther Line. Von Küchler argued, to no avail, that when the army group would finally be allowed to retreat to the line, it might not have the troops to man it.

A frustrated von Küchler returned to his headquarters having received little from Hitler. His lines were tenuous at best, and one decisive Soviet breakthrough could mean disaster for the entire army group.

Soviets Repulsed at Gatchina

On January 23, Meretskov launched what he hoped would be a final assault on the German forces at Gatchina. The defenders now consisted of a hodgepodge of units centered around the L Army Corps (170th and part of the 215th Divisions). Other units manning defenses in the area were the remnants of Maj. Gen. Ernst Risse’s 225th and Krappe’s 61st Infantry Divisions. Arriving in the area were Major Willy Jähde’s Tiger Detachment 502 and elements of the 12th Panzer Division.

To help Maslennikov accomplish his mission, Govorov released Maj. Gen. Vasilii Alekseevich Trubachev’s 117th Rifle Corps and Maj. Gen. Georgii Ivanovich Anisimov’s 123rd Rifle Corps from the Front reserve. Maslennikov ordered his two new corps to make a frontal attack on the German defenses. Farther south, Maj. Gen. Ivan Vasilevich Khazov’s 110th Rifle Corps would encircle German forces at Pushkin and Slutsk.

After a short artillery barrage, Trubachev and Anisimov moved forward. The Germans met the attacking Russians with a wall of fire that decimated the first ranks, but more kept coming. Fighting continued throughout the day and into the night, but the German line held. Although two of his corps had failed in their initial mission to take Gatchina, Maslennikov was able to report that the Germans had been pushed out of Pushkin by Khazov on the 24th, and that Khazov was pursuing the retreating enemy.

Von Küchler Replaced by Model

The next few days saw the Soviet advance move at a steady, if slow, pace. The rail line between Gatchina and Kingisepp was cut on the 27th, and Fediuninskii’s 2nd Shock Army was pushing Grase’s XXVI Army Corps toward Kingisepp itself. As the German lines continued to deteriorate, Hitler ordered von Küchler to attend a National Socialist leadership conference in Königsberg on the 27th.

At the meeting, von Küchler once again confronted Hitler. He told the Führer that the Eighteenth Army had already lost 40,000 men and that retreat was the only way to save it. Hitler gave him little time to continue. He said that he expected the Eighteenth Army and Army Group North to continue to hold. Nothing was said of reinforcements being sent to help fulfill the order.

Unbeknownst to von Küchler, his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Eberhard Kinzel, had already started the ball rolling. While von Küchler was gone, Kinzel informed Colonel Friedrich Foertsch, chief of staff of the Eighteenth Army, that the army must retreat no matter what. Knowing that Berlin would never approve, Kinzel issued the order verbally rather that in writing.

The plan was put into action even as von Küchler was arguing with Hitler. Strong rear guards were left behind at critical junctions to slow the Soviets while the main body of troops headed for the Luga River line. Presented with a fait accompli, von Küchler had no choice but to go along with the withdrawal.

Hitler was furious when informed of the withdrawal. Von Küchler was relieved, and General (soon to be Field Marshal) Walther Model was sent to take his place. Model was a favorite of Hitler’s and was known as “The Führer’s Fireman.” He was one of the few German generals who could make decisions contrary to Hitler’s orders and get away with it.

Even before taking off for his new assignment, Model issued his first order to Army Group North. “Not a single step backward will be taken without my express permission,” he telegraphed to his army group headquarters. “I am flying to Eighteenth Army this afternoon. Tell General Lindemann that I beg his old trust in me. We have worked together before.”

Caspar Sporck’s Iron Cross

Things were going from bad to worse for the Germans, and not even Model could stop the Soviets with his call to stand fast. The Luga River line had already been breached by the Russians, who had established several bridgeheads on the western bank. Only lack of supplies prevented the Soviets from exploiting their gains immediately.

In Steiner’s sector, the remnants of his shattered divisions fell back toward Narva and Kinigsepp under heavy Soviet pressure. The men were exhausted from the constant combat. Nordland’s John Sandstadt recalled:

“When we had some rest on January 27 our company consisted of one 1st lieutenant, five NCOs, and some 35 men. Our battalion commander, Fritz Vogt, appeared and handed several soldiers, including me, the Iron Cross 2nd Class. [It was] less as recognition for brave deeds than as a ‘premium’ for having survived the last 12 days.”

Although their ranks had been whittled down by the Russians, the men of the Nordland Division made the Soviets pay for their gains. An example can be found in the exploits of 21-year-old SS Corporal Caspar Sporck, a Dutch volunteer in Nordland’s 11th Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. Sporck was the commander of an armored personnel carrier that mounted a 75mm gun and was attached to the battalion’s 5th (Heavy) Company.

When Soviet tanks broke through the German line and entered the village of Gubanizy, Sporck moved his vehicle forward into the village. Playing a deadly game of hide and seek, Sporck drove among the houses catching tank after tank in the sights of his low-velocity cannon. The sharp crack of the 75mm was followed by an explosion that marked another victim. In all, Sporck destroyed 11 enemy tanks and sent the survivors fleeing from the village.

A few days later, Sporck guarded the flank of the division as it disengaged and made its way across the Narva River. He directed stragglers to the crossing point while fending off enemy armored vehicles attempting to overrun the division’s rear guard. His vehicle was one of the last to cross over into the German positions.

Sporck was awarded the Knight’s Cross for his actions. He survived the battle for Narva, but his luck ran out a few months later when he was severely wounded at the Stettin bridgehead. He died of his wounds on April 8, 1945, just a month short of the end of the war.

Actions such as Sporcks’s might have slowed the Russians down a bit, but nothing could stop the Red Army steamroller. By the end of January the survivors of the German corps on Army Group North’s left flank were mostly across the Narva River. Sponheimer’s LIV Army Corps was in the process of reforming as Army Abteilung Narva, which would eventually consist of Steiner’s corps and the LIV and XXVI Army Corps. Elements of the Panzergrenadier Division “Feldherrnhalle” and the 58th Infantry Division were also on their way to strengthen the Narva front. An Estonian SS Division along with Jähde’s Tiger tank detachment would also be available to stop the Russians.

Those German units were the first of Army Group North to occupy its part of the Panther Line. The Narva River position would be the scene of several bloody battles, but the Germans would continue to hold for months to come. Now it was up to the German divisions south of Lake Pskov to beat the Russian advance to their portion of the line.

Push to the Luga River

The forced retreat of the Germans to the Narva was not the only thing Model had to deal with. On January 25 the Red Air Force bombed German defenses at Gatchina. Minutes later, Maj. Gen. Mikhail Fedorovich Tikhonov’s 18th Rifle Corps (196th, 224th, and 314th Rifle Divisions), supported by Lt. Col. V.I. Protsenko’s 220th Tank Brigade, hit the mixed bag of German forces defending the town. Combat groups of the 11th, 126th, 215th, and 225th Infantry Divisions and the 9th Feld (L) Division fought the Russians at every turn. The battle raged well into the night before Tikhonov called off the attack to regroup.

The next day the attack continued. This time elements of Trubachev’s 117th Rifle Corps joined in the assault. By noon, Colonel Aleksei Vasilevich Batluk’s 20th Rifle Division and Colonel F.A. Burmitstrov’s 224th Rifle Division had reached the center of the town, forcing the Germans to withdraw to prevent encirclement. Tosno fell on the same day.

During the next few days the Eighteenth Army conducted a fighting withdrawal to the Luga, which, as mentioned earlier, had already been crossed by advance elements of the Red Army. Under increasing pressure, the XXVIII and XXXVIII Army Corps were pushed back even more. Their escape route would be cut off if the bulk of the Soviets reached the Luga ahead of them.

To force a wholesale breach of the Luga Line in the retreating Germans’ sector, Mikulski’s 6th Guards Rifle Corps was given the task of taking the town of Luga. He would be supported by Maj. Gen. Filipp Iakovlevich Solovev’s 112th Rifle Corps. Meanwhile, Artuishenko’s 14th Rifle Corps would strike south toward Shimsk.

What was thought to be a relatively easy operation became a plodding nightmare for the Russians. Mikulskii’s troops, struggling through the uneven terrain, ran into stronger than expected German positions before finally reaching the Luga River. The steadfast German defense gave the XXVIII and XXXVIII Army Corps time to make good their escape, pulling back to new positions that prevented their destruction.

“Schild und Schwert”

In the Sixteenth Army’s sector, Popov was planning another attack with his 2nd Baltic Front that was designed to support Meretskov’s efforts in the north. Luckily for the Germans, their intelligence detected signs of the coming assault and Hansen ordered a withdrawal to new positions farther west on January 30. When the attack came it stalled as soon as the new German line was reached. The resulting shortening of the line allowed Hansen to send reinforcements to Lindemann to help him in his struggle.

As he looked at Eighteenth Army’s situation, Model knew his “not one step backwards” order was impossible to implement. As a remedy he introduced the “Schild und Schwert” (Shield and Sword) maneuver. Historian Earl Ziemke credits Hitler himself with the idea in which withdrawals were permissible “if one intended later to strike back in the same or different direction in a kind of parry and thrust sequence.”

Using Shild und Schwert, Model authorized Lindemann to move west to a shorter line north and east of Luga. He then planned to use von Bodenhausen’s 12th Panzer Division, Brig. Gen. Kurt Siewert’s 58th Infantry Division, and any other divisions that could be spared to attack along the Luga River and line up with the units on the Narva.

The Russians, however, had their plans too. After a reshuffling of forces, Govorov and Meretskov were ready to continue their assaults. The 2nd Shock Army had been reinforced for its attack on the Narva Line. Although Fediuninskii was able to make some gains south of the city of Narva, his continued assaults would develop into bloody brawls where attack was met with counterattack. Little would be accomplished except the shedding of blood by both sides.

Maslennikov had more success than his neighbor to the north. His 42nd Army was able to cross the frozen Luga River on January 31, pushing Wegner’s L Army Corps to the south and southwest. The battered German divisions could do little but retreat while Russian forces remained in hot pursuit and were able to advance as much as 15-20 kilometers a day.

Slow Moving For the 12th Panzer

Stavka now set its sights on finally taking Luga. German intelligence reported that two strong Russian forces, one southwest of Novgorod and the other east of Lane Samro, were massing and that an attack on Luga was imminent. To accomplish the mission, part of the 42nd Army was to advance on Luga’s northwestern sector. Roginskii’s 54th Army would attack the city’s outlying defenses from the east. Sviridov’s reinforced 67th Army would support Masslenikov’s forces.

Model had no choice but to act quickly. He ordered Lindemann to form a line stretching west of Luga to the southern shore of Lake Peipus. The 11th, 212th, and 215th Infantry Divisions, which had barely escaped encirclement days earlier, were charged with defending Luga with what was left of their forces. Brig. Gen. Hellmuth Reymann’s 13th Feld (L) Division was to move up on the left flank and take positions from west of the city to the Plyusa River.

West of the Plyusa, the 58th and 21st Infantry Divisions occupied the line. The two divisions had been ground down to about four understrength battalions. The history of the 21st reports that by the first days of February all the officers of the III/Grenadier Regiment 24 had been killed or wounded and that its companies were now commanded by sergeants.

Farther west the 12th Panzer and 126th Infantry Divisions would prepare for a counterattack from their positions east of Lake Peipus. Moving into their assigned positions proved extremely difficult for the German divisions. The 12th Panzer, fighting poor road conditions, was also hampered by roadblocks constructed by the many partisan units in the area.

58th Division Encircled

To the west, the Schleswig-Holstein troops of Siewert’s 58th Division met with disaster on February 9. As the 58th moved toward its positions on the flank of Reymann’s division it ran into Demidov’s 86th Guards Rifle and Burmistrov’s 224th Rifle Divisions, which were also moving up to take new positions. The Russians reacted quickly, engaging the Germans and splitting the division in two. By the next day the 58th had one of its regiments surrounded with the rest of the division trying to fight off the same fate. The 21st and 24th Divisions, which were supposed to occupy Siewert’s flanks, had not yet reached their positions, which left the 58th on its own. A German report stated:

“Russian forces filtered past [the 58th] on both sides…. The 24th Infantry Division got nowhere and for most of the day had trouble holding the Luga-Pskov railroad line.”

The 12th Panzer finally made it to its jump-off positions on February 10, but its attack stalled almost immediately as it ran into three Soviet rifle divisions (128th, 168th, and 196th). Although the 12th was able to escape encirclement, its attack was stopped dead in its tracks.

Things went from bad to worse for Model on the 11th. The entire 58th Division was now surrounded while the 24th and 21st Infantry Divisions were fighting for their lives as more Soviet units poured through gaps in the German line. Red Army troops also attacked westward, securing the small land area between Lake Pskov and Lake Peipus. A Schild und Schwert action was now impossible as the Eighteenth Army tottered on the brink of collapse.

Retreat From the Panther Line

During the evening of the 11th, Lindemann met with Model. He told his commander that the only way his army could survive was to further shorten the line, which would once again provide divisions to fill gaps in his defenses. Although Model initially balked at the suggestion, he reluctantly agreed to it. When he submitted the plan to OKH he was met with a stony silence that indicated Berlin would not even consider it.

At Narva the Soviets made another push that threatened the city, but the Germans held on. Hitler was worried that a Russian incursion into the Baltic States would result in Finland suing for peace. He promised reinforcements for the Narva sector, ordering the recently activated 20th SS Division, composed mostly of Estonians, into the line. To save the Narva sector, Lindemann was forced to send some units to help in Narva’s defense, which further weakened his own line. They included the battered 58th, which had managed to fight its way out of the encircling Russians, losing one third of its men in the process.

Even Berlin could not now ignore the calamitous situation that was occurring in Army Group North. Hitler finally understood that the army group could not possibly keep fighting the war of attrition that he had hoped would stop the Russians. Luga had already been abandoned on February 12, and several other important towns and cities were on the verge of falling. With German forces being forced to pull back all along the Eighteenth Army’s front, he gave approval for OKH to let Model give the order for a general retreat to the Panther Line on February 17.

Merging the Volkhov and Leningrad Fronts

Just days before, the Soviet command structure facing Army Group North had undergone a sweeping change when Stalin dissolved the Volkhov Front, giving its armies to Govorov’s Leningrad Front. Meretskov, over his objections to Stalin, was given command of the Karelia Front, which ran from the north shore of Lake Ladoga to the arctic coast west of Murmansk. The front had basically been static for almost two years—mostly due to the fact that the Finns had already regained the land lost after the 1939-1940 Winter War with the Soviets and had no wish to obtain any Russian territory.

It is interesting to note that it was Meretskov who presided over the disastrous 1939 winter campaign against the Finns that cost the Red Army more than 300,000 dead, wounded, and missing. For his failure Stalin downgraded him and put him in command of an army. He was replaced by Semyon Konstantinovich Timoshenko, who finally brought the Finns to the peace table.

Putting Govorov in charge of all armies facing most of Army Group North stretched Leningrad Front’s command and control to the limit. The vast forces under Govorov were fighting on a front stretching from Lake Ilmen to Narva. There was a great deal of staff work to be done to coordinate attacks by the various armies he commanded, and maintaining tight control on operations would continue to plague the Front.

The Sixteenth Army’s Fighting Retreat

As the Eighteenth Army was about to begin its withdrawal, the Sixteenth Army had to plan to lengthen its line to protect its left flank. The 2nd Baltic Front had been quiet for the past few days, but German aerial reconnaissance had discovered truck convoys of 2,000-3,000 vehicles each heading to the north and northeast. The 2nd Baltic Front was once more on the move.

On February 18, Popov’s 1st Shock Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Gennadi Petrovich Korotokov, hit German forces around Staraya Russa and forced the town’s evacuation. A combat group of Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Hasse’s 30th Infantry Division fought a desperate delaying action that slowed the Russian advance. Centered around Colonel Georg Kossmala’s Grenadier Regiment 6, the combat group exacted a heavy toll on the enemy in its fighting retreat. Kossmala was awarded the oak leaves to the Knight’s Cross for his actions in the battle, as well as for previous actions.

Hansen knew his right flank was also in danger due to the intelligence reports concerning the spotted convoys. It was time for him to withdraw the entire Sixteenth Army to the Panther Line, meaning some units, especially those on his left flank, would have to march as much as 300 kilometers to reach the position.

Kholm, which had been an important bulwark on the Lovat River, fell on February 21. On February 23, the city of Dno, the longtime headquarter site of the Sixteenth Army, came under attack by a joint assault from Maj. Gen. Pavel Anfinogenovich Stepanankov’s 14th Guards Rifle Corps (1st Shock Army) and Maj. Gen. Boris Aleksandrovich Rozhdestyenskii’s 111th Rifle Corps of the 54th Army. The first attack occurred late in the day and was repulsed by energetic counterattacks from Maj. Gen. Friederich Volcaker von Kirchensittenbach’s 8th Jäger Division, two security regiments, and a regiment from the 21st Feld (L) Division.

During the night several supply warehouses were blown up, and the city’s important rail hub was destroyed. The following day Colonel Vasilii Mitrofanovich Shatilov’s 182nd, Maj. Gen. Grigorii Semyonovich Kolchanov’s 288th, and Colonel I. A. Vorob’ev’s 44th Rifle Divisions took the city with the help of the 137th Rifle and the 16th and 37th Tank Brigades.

Completing the Withdrawal

As the Germans retreated, Kortokov was joined in the pursuit by Lt. Gen. Vasilii Nikitovich Iushkevich’s 22nd Army, which put even more pressure on the enemy. The 22nd was met by Laux’s II Army Corps, which put up a spirited defense while protecting X Army Corps’ southern flank. By using skillful delaying actions at various strongpoints, the Germans were able to prevent the Soviets from splitting Army Group North in two.

Model was further put to the test when Maj. Gen. Fedor Andreevich Zuev’s 79th Rifle Corps of Col. Gen. Nikandr Evlampievich Chibisov’s 3rd Shock Army appeared on the scene. Zuev was expected to exploit any gains made against Hoehne’s VIII Army Corps but was dramatically slowed by the stiff resistance displayed by Maj. Gen. Johannes Mayer’s 329th Infantry Division. Nevertheless, by February 26 Popov’s Front had pushed the Germans back from positions along the Dno-Novosokol’niki rail line.

Looking at the threats to Pskov and the Sixteenth Army’s right flank, Hitler ordered Model to speed up the withdrawal. The German forces still west of the Panther Line retreated skillfully. The race that began in January was finished by March 1, when the line was totally occupied. Although fighting along the Narva River continued, the Russians made little progress in that area. Along the rest of the Panther Line, both sides had shot their bolts, and by early March they were both in a defensive mode.

The Liberation of Leningrad

The Red Army had liberated the southern Leningrad region and had finally broken the blockade of the city. It had pushed the Germans back 200 kilometers or more in most places and had badly mauled Army Group North, but it had failed to encircle and destroy the Eighteenth Army. It also lost the race to the Panther Line. Had it succeeded, the road to the Baltic States would have been open, and German defensive lines farther south would have become worthless.

Assaults were always costly, especially at this stage of the war. The three Soviet Fronts involved from January 14 to March 1 suffered 76,886 killed, captured, or missing, and 237,267 sick or wounded out of the 822,000 troops taking part in the operation. Later attempts to pierce the Panther Line in March and April cost thousands more casualties.

The Germans would hold their positions in the north until the summer, when the Soviets attacked and decimated Army Group Center. The wholesale retreat of Army Group Center finally unhinged the Panther Line in the north, paving the way to a Russian advance through the Baltic States and into East Prussia.

This article by Pat Mctaggart originally appeared on Warfare History Network. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Warfare History Network

military, Asia

The terrible storm actually did take out a few ships and would cause an uproar when the fleet returned to port.

Key point: Despite some warnings, and some confusion, the fleet did not manage to avoid the huge storm. In fact, the entire affair would result in an official investigation.

After two grueling months of action in the Pacific, Vice Admiral John S. “Slew” McCain’s powerful Task Force 38 retired in late November 1944 to the big Caroline Islands base of Ulithi Atoll for a 10-day breather.

No one needed a break more than Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, the feisty, hard-drinking commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, who had come under fire for leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded during the great Battle of Leyte Gulf on October 23-26, 1944. Pacing while “blue with rage,” Admiral Ernest J. King, chief of naval operations, had told Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, that Halsey should be given a “rest.” General Douglas A. MacArthur, supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, called for Halsey’s relief.

On the tiny northernmost island of Mogmog, Ulithi’s recreation center, McCain’s bluejackets joyfully swam, played baseball and basketball, pitched horseshoes, and swigged soft drinks and beer. Halsey, meanwhile, visited wounded sailors. He joked and shook hands with them, but it was an ordeal because he was torn by the suffering of his men. He tried to console himself at a wardroom party attended by hospital ship nurses. The event became well oiled and rowdy, climaxing when an officer doused a wastebasket fire with a bottle of carbon dioxide and then squirted a nurse between the legs. She screamed as the dry ice burned.

The Ulithi respite was soon over, and by Thanksgiving Day Halsey and Task Force 38 were dodging Japanese kamikaze assaults off the Philippines. Three aircraft carriers were damaged, including the veteran USS Intrepid. The volatile “Patton of the Pacific” had initially dismissed the suicide planes as “a sort of token terror, a tissue-paper dragon.” But his disdain gave way to anxiety as he watched his flattops burn. Halsey’s fortunes worsened by mid-December, but his next ordeal was not to come at the hands of the Japanese.

“Tropical Storm, Very Weak.”

Task Force 38 embarked from Ulithi on December 11, 1944. The fast carrier fleet had replenished, and its defensive tactics had been revised because of the increasing kamikaze threat. The armada comprised Task Group 38.1 commanded by Rear Admiral Alfred E. Montgomery, Task Group 38.2 led by Rear Admiral Gerald F. “Jerry” Bogan, and Task Group 38.3 commanded by Rear Admiral Forrest C. Sherman. Ninety ships set sail, including 13 carriers, eight battleships, three heavy cruisers, seven light cruisers, three antiaircraft cruisers, and 56 destroyers. McCain was aboard the carrier USS Hancock, and Halsey was in his flagship, the 45,000-ton battleship New Jersey. Both vessels were part of Task Group 38.2.

Plans called for the flattops to hit Luzon to support General MacArthur’s imminent invasion of Mindoro and then to make an unprecedented foray into the South China Sea to sever Japan’s remaining shipping lanes to the East Indies. The latter operation had long been sought by Halsey, but it was delayed because of the need for air support in the invasion of Leyte.

On December 13, the fast carriers topped off from their shadowing oilers and headed in toward the Luzon coast. Fighter sweeps started at dawn on the 14th and continued for three days. When the flattops withdrew on December 16, their fighters and dive bombers had destroyed 269 Japanese aircraft, sunk merchant ships, and blasted airfields and railroads. Twenty-seven American planes were lost. Enemy air opposition to the Mindoro landings was minimal, and none of the fast carriers were attacked.

Admiral Halsey planned to refuel his ships at sea on Sunday, December 17, and commence another three-day fighter strike on the 19th. Early on the morning of the 17th, TF-38 rendezvoused with 12 fleet oilers escorted by destroyers, destroyer escorts, and five escort carriers about 500 miles east of Luzon. Three days of high-speed operations had left many of the task force’s ships critically low on fuel.

The vessels began refueling on schedule at 10 am on the 17th, but a 20-30-knot wind and a cross swell made the operation difficult. “The wind,” said Admiral Robert B. “Mick” Carney, Halsey’s chief of staff, “was across the sea and it was impossible to find a course which would prevent yawing and surging.” On the previous day, Commander George F. Kosco, the Third Fleet aerologist, had received reports from Ulithi and Pearl Harbor of a “tropical storm, very weak,” and had informed Halsey and Carney. Kosco could not pinpoint the storm, but he did not think it would be anything serious.

An Erratic Storm

At 11:07 am on December 17, the destroyer USS Spence eased alongside the New Jersey to start fueling. When Halsey and his staff sat for lunch in the flag mess, they were alarmed to see the Spence rolling excessively on the starboard side, and it seemed that she might be slammed against the flagship. “She was riding up ahead,” reported Halsey later, “and she’d drop well astern and charge ahead and drop astern…. She was pitching and rolling heavily.”

Commander Kosco calculated that the “tropical storm” was coming closer to the fleet than he had estimated and was increasing in intensity. The swells mounted, and at 11:27 am the fueling hoses parted on the Spence. Disturbing reports came in from task group commanders. The destroyers Healy and The Sullivans experienced steering problems, and hoses parted aboard the Collett, Stephen Potter, L.K. Swenson, Preston, Thatcher, and Manatee. A seaman on the Caperton fractured his leg when seas smashed over the forecastle.

At 12:51 pm, when the storm’s center was 120 miles southeast of the task force’s position, Halsey ordered a halt to the fueling operations, planning to resume them at 6 the next morning. “No warning of the typhoon was received up to this point from any outside source,” he said later. “The storm followed an erratic course, different … and contrary to available history of December typhoons.”

Halsey called a conference in the flag mess, where lunch dishes were cleared and maps and charts spread out. Kosco placed in front of the admiral his morning’s weather map, which indicated a storm center 400 miles southeast of the task force and moving toward it. He expected that the “tropical disturbance” would merge with a weak cold front and veer off to the northeast. Aboard the carrier Lexington, however, Admiral Bogan was sure that a severe storm was approaching, while Captain Jasper T. Acuff, commander of the TF-38 replenishment group, was the first to make the correct guess as to the storm’s position and course. He and two escort carrier skippers agreed that the fueling rendezvous set for 6 am on December 18 would be directly in the storm’s path. Captain Michael H. Kernodle of the carrier San Jacinto had received storm warnings for 24 hours, but the information was not passed on to Kosco.

The weather continued to worsen as Halsey and his aides pored tensely over their maps, struggling to make a course toward calmer water. The assignment to support MacArthur on the 19th meant that TF-38 must refuel no later than the morning of the 18th. During the evening of December 17, the task force and its oilers butted steadily westward through mounting seas. At midnight, Halsey ordered a change of course from due west to due south, hoping to reach smoother water. Unwittingly, he was taking the armada directly into the path of the approaching typhoon.

“We Were Completely Cornered”

At dawn on Monday, December 18, Halsey realized that fueling would be even more difficult than on the previous day. But it had to be attempted because of the Luzon combat commitment and for the safety of the smaller vessels in the task force. With their fuel tanks almost empty, the destroyers were riding higher in the water and becoming unseaworthy. But prevailing conditions made the operation impossible. Halsey had no choice but to halt the fueling just after 8 am and send a dispatch to General MacArthur saying that TF-38 would not be able to support him the next day.

The storm soon assailed the task force and its support ships with howling winds and blinding rain. The fleet was by then 180 miles northeast of Samar in the eastern Philippines. The sea heaved, foam sloshed across decks, and vessels canted sickeningly, wallowing under tons of water. Some ships lost steering control, and sailors were reported washed overboard. Few men in the fleet had seen anything like the storm’s fury.

The fleet and “jeep” carriers rolled heavily. Planes were swept from the flight decks, while others broke loose in their hangar decks, slamming against bulkheads and catching fire. Efficient firefighting was impossible. The carrier Monterey lost steerage way, the carrier Independence lost two men overboard, and the escort carrier Kwajalein temporarily lost steering control. The carrier Cowpens lost seven planes, the Monterey 18, and the San Jacinto eight. Nineteen floatplanes were blown off the battleships and cruisers, and a total of 146 aircraft were lost during the storm.

“We were completely cornered,” Halsey reported. “The consideration then was the fastest way to get out of the dangerous semicircle and to get to a position where our destroyers could be fueled.” He sent a warning to all ships and weather stations at 9:14 am. “We didn’t think that we were dealing with a storm as severe as a typhoon until we were within 100 miles of it,” said Commander Kosco. Admiral McCain ordered changes in course and advised ships to disregard formation keeping and take the best courses and speeds for security.

As the barometer fell rapidly, the wind velocity rose sharply to 73 knots while 70-foot waves battered the ships from all sides. Some destroyers heeled over on their beam ends with their funnels almost horizontal. Water surged into their intakes and ventilators, shorting circuits, killing power, and leaving them adrift.

The ships rose and fell in the mountainous seas. The mighty New Jersey hung in the troughs and then slowly righted herself, lurching and laboring to the tops of swells. “No one who has not been through a typhoon can conceive its fury,” reported Halsey. “The 70-foot seas smash you from all sides. The rain and the scud are blinding; they drive you flat-out, until you can’t tell the ocean from the air…. At broad noon, I couldn’t see the bow of my ship, 350 feet from the bridge…. This typhoon tossed our enormous ship as if she were a canoe…. We ourselves were buffeted from one bulkhead to another; we could not hear our own voices above the uproar.” Admiral Carney voiced “grave doubts” that the battlewagon would survive, while Halsey feared for the fate of the destroyers. “What it was like on a destroyer one-twentieth the New Jersey’s size I can only imagine,” he said.

He was right. The smaller ships were the worst hit, and the destroyer crews underwent a nightmare as the rising winds and seas tossed their craft around like toys. Caught near the storm center, the Hull, Spence, and Monaghan capsized and sank with practically all hands.

Surviving the Sinking Ships

Water Tender Second Class Joseph C. McCrane was one of only six survivors of the USS Monaghan, which had rammed and sunk a Japanese midget submarine at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and fought in the Aleutians. He reported, “The storm broke in all its fury. We started to roll, heaving to the starboard, and everyone was holding on to something and praying as hard as he could. We knew that we had lost our power and were dead in the water…. We must have taken about seven or eight rolls to the starboard before she went over on her side.”

It was later believed that the three destroyers went down because their oil and ballast were out of trim as a result of the interrupted refueling operation. Though damaged, the destroyer escort Tabberer managed to rescue 41 Hull survivors and 14 from the Spence.

The typhoon raged on, with the ships—now strewn across about 2,500 square miles—tossing, heeling over, and drifting with no way to escape. The storm reached its height between noon and 2 pm. The wind increased to 83 knots with gusts reaching 93 knots.

Many of the Third Fleet ships suffered varying degrees of damage. They included the carriers Cowpens, Monterey, San Jacinto, Kwajalein, Cabot, Altamaha, Nehenta Bay, and Cape Esperance; the light cruiser Miami; the destroyers Dewey, Aylwin, Buchanan, Dyson, Hickox, Maddox, and Benham; the destroyer escorts Tabberer, Melvin R. Nawman, and Waterman; the oiler Nantahala, and the fleet tug Jicarilla.

An estimated 790 officers and men were lost or killed, and scores of others injured. Task Force 38 was as severely battered as if it had been in a major battle.

Thankfully, the winds abated and the skies cleared late in the afternoon of that harrowing Monday. Halsey promptly dispatched ships and planes to search for survivors, and the operation lasted for three days. Lone swimmers were picked up, and sometimes raft loads. Destroyers rescued 54 men who had been aboard the Hull, 24 from the Spence, and 16 from the Monaghan. The search, said Halsey, was “the most exhaustive in naval history.”

The shaken Third Fleet regrouped and finally fueled on December 19, and then steamed westward toward Luzon the following day. Predawn air strikes in support of MacArthur’s invasion were planned on the 21st, but the seas became increasingly heavy and the typhoon was then passing over Luzon. Halsey and his staff agreed that the operation could not be conducted successfully, so MacArthur and Nimitz were notified. Early on December 24, the ships entered Ulithi harbor. The weary crews were allowed some much needed rest while a service squadron started repairing the damaged vessels.

Investigating the Loss of Halsey’s Ships

Nimitz, who had been promoted to fleet admiral 10 days before, was hosted by Halsey at a festive Christmas Eve dinner aboard the New Jersey. The admirals and their staffs then spent much of Christmas Day in conference. Nimitz, meanwhile, had appointed a court of inquiry to investigate the loss of the Hull, Spence, and Monaghan, and to find out why Halsey’s fleet had been caught by the typhoon.

Comprising Vice Admirals John H. Hoover and George D. Murray and Rear Admiral Glenn B. Davis, the court of inquiry convened aboard the destroyer tender USS Cascade, anchored in Ulithi harbor, in the last week of December 1944. The witnesses included Halsey, McCain, Bogan, Sherman, and Kosco, and the testimony was lengthy and complex. Halsey was blamed for the damage and ship losses, but no negligence was found, only the “stress of war operations” and “a commendable desire to meet military commitments.”

Halsey stressed that he had received no “timely warning” of the typhoon and strongly criticized the Pacific Fleet’s meteorological system. The court put the “preponderance of responsibility” on Halsey and cited his “large errors” made in predicting the location and path of the storm, but it concluded that the “aerological talent” assisting him was “inadequate in practical experience and service background in view of the importance of the services to be expected and required.”

The court of inquiry recommended action to “impress upon all commanders the necessity of giving full consideration to adverse weather likely to be met in the Western Pacific, especially the … formation and movements of typhoons.” Nimitz promptly approved the court’s findings, and Admiral King concurred. At the court’s suggestion, Nimitz called for three weather ships to be stationed in the Western Pacific, the deployment of weather reconnaissance planes, and for the Bureau of Naval Personnel to make more experienced aerological officers available to the Pacific Fleet. The Navy improved its weather service.

Admiral Nimitz also sent a letter to his fleet stressing the need for safety at sea, with much advice for dealing with severe weather conditions. “The time for taking all measures for a ship’s safety is while still able to do so,” he wrote. “Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary. Safety at sea for a thousand years has depended on exactly the opposite philosophy.”

The typhoon was to provide the climactic sequence in Herman Wouk’s blockbuster 1951 novel, The Caine Mutiny, and the 1954 film masterpiece directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Humphrey Bogart, Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson, Robert Francis, Jose Ferrer, E.G. Marshall, and Arthur Franz.

Typhoon Connie: Halsey’s Second Storm

Halsey characteristically wasted no time in December 1944 commiserating over the tarnishing of his outstanding service record and got busy with the plans for air strikes against Formosa, Okinawa, and Luzon in support of MacArthur’s invasion at Lingayen Gulf on January 9, 1945. The admiral did not mention the court of inquiry to his staff except in a series of proposals for improving the weather reporting service and did not refer to it in his 1947 autobiography, although he recounted the typhoon. To him it was just “water over the dam.”

Hewing to his motto, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often,” Halsey led his mighty Third Fleet in harm’s way during the first half of 1945 as Allied naval, ground, and air forces relentlessly pushed the Japanese back toward their home islands. After supporting MacArthur’s operations on Leyte, Luzon, and throughout the Philippine area, the fleet made a broad sweep through the South China Sea on January 10-20 and destroyed huge amounts of enemy shipping. In May, Halsey began planning operations against the Japanese homeland. His hatred of the enemy had not dimmed. “Before we’re through with them,” he had remarked, “the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”

But, in his last campaign of the war, the costly April 1-June 22, 1945, battle to capture Okinawa, Halsey would again fall victim ironically to the fearsome enemy he had faced six months before—another typhoon. After hoisting his flag in the 45,000-ton battleship USS Missouri at Guam on May 18, Halsey headed for Okinawa to relieve Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s Fifth Fleet. On the barren, 60-mile-long island, soldiers and Marines of Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner’s U.S. Tenth Army were struggling to overcome fierce Japanese resistance while naval units offshore withstood many kamikaze attacks. Aerial support was provided by McCain’s Task Force 38, which comprised Task Group 38.1 commanded by Rear Admiral Joseph J. Clark; Sherman’s Task Group 38.3, and Task Group 38.4 led by Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford. McCain flew his flag in the carrier Shangri-La.

After sending Sherman’s group to Leyte for a rest period, Halsey ordered Radford’s force northward on June 2 to strike the airfields on Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese main island. Halsey and McCain remained with Clark’s group off Okinawa. When Radford returned on the afternoon of June 3, Halsey sent Task Group 38.1 southeast to rendezvous with Rear Admiral Donald B. Beary’s Service Squadron 6. Ships and search planes, meanwhile, reported a tropical storm moving up from the south.

The Missouri and Shangri-La headed southeast with Radford’s group, and Halsey ordered the amphibious command ship Ancon to monitor the storm. On the evening of June 4, Task Group 38.4 joined Clark’s force and Beary’s fueling squadron, and they all headed east-southeast. At this time, radar operators aboard the Ancon sighted the typhoon, but the ship’s report did not reach Halsey until 1 the next morning. Later reports indicated that the typhoon was heading rapidly northeast, almost directly toward the Third Fleet.

Course changes were made, and there was much feverish plotting aboard the Missouri and other ships through the night and into the early hours of Tuesday, June 5. Halsey did not want his fleet scattered as before, and he hoped to find better weather so that his flattops could fend off kamikaze attacks. But the barometer was falling, and the howling typhoon closed in. While Radford’s group steamed through fairly calm seas 15 miles to the north, Task Group 38.1 was sucked into a maelstrom of high winds and mountainous waves. Clark ordered his ships to stop their engines and heave to.

Beary’s fueling group, meanwhile, struggled against 75-foot waves and wind gusts up to 127 knots as it passed through the eye of the typhoon. His 48 ships were “riding very heavily,” he reported, yet only four—two jeep carriers, a tanker, and a destroyer escort—received serious damage. Clark’s group passed through the eye half an hour after Beary’s, and almost all of his 33 ships suffered some damage. But none were sunk. The cruiser Pittsburgh had 110 feet of her bow section torn off, and Clark’s four carriers—the San Jacinto, Hornet, Bennington, and Belleau Wood—were battered. Clark and Beary lost six men killed or swept overboard and four seriously injured. Seventy-six planes were lost.

The other TF-38 ships damaged in the typhoon included the battleships Missouri, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Alabama; the escort carriers Windham Bay, Salamaua, Bougainville, and Attu; the cruisers Baltimore, Quincy, Detroit, San Juan, Duluth, and Atlanta; 11 destroyers; three destroyer escorts; two oilers, and an ammunition ship.

Challenging Halsey’s “Extremely Ill Advised” Change of Course

Aware that he would have to face another court of inquiry, Halsey took the offensive. In an angry message to Admiral Nimitz, he complained that early-warning messages were garbled, that weather estimates conflicted, and that coding regulations critically delayed the Ancon’s message. The Third Fleet, meanwhile, soon went back into action. On June 6, 1945, Clark’s and Radford’s groups again provided air support off Okinawa, and Radford’s carriers resumed strikes against Kyushu on the 8th. U.S. troops gained the upper hand on Okinawa, the kamikaze attacks tapered off, and TF-38 retired to Leyte Gulf on June 13 after 92 wearying days at sea.

Admirals Halsey, McCain, Clark, and Beary were ordered to appear before a court of inquiry aboard the aging battleship USS New Mexico anchored in San Pedro Bay, a Leyte Gulf inlet. Presided over again by the harsh Admiral Hoover, the tribunal convened on June 15 and deliberated for eight days. Blame was placed squarely on Halsey and McCain, with the court concluding that the main cause of the Third Fleet’s damage was Halsey’s “extremely ill advised” change of course from 110 to 300 degrees at 1:34 am on June 5. McCain, Clark, and Beary were indicted because “they continued on courses and at speeds which eventually led their task groups into dangerous weather, although their better judgment dictated a course of action which would have taken them fairly clear of the typhoon path.”

Hoover recommended the reassignment of Halsey and McCain, and Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal was reportedly ready to retire Halsey. When the court’s finding reached the Navy Department, Admiral King agreed that the two officers had been inept and, with the weather data available to them, should have avoided the typhoon. But Halsey was a national hero, and King had no wish to humiliate him. It would tarnish the Navy’s triumph in the Pacific. King decided to take no action, and Forrestal agreed.

McCain, however, received no such consideration. Nimitz had long doubted his competence, and it was decided that it was time for him to go. He was ordered by the Navy Department on July 15 to hand over command of Task Force 38 to Admiral John H. Towers and, after a furlough, become deputy head of the Veterans Administration. But McCain, worn out and emaciated, died of a heart attack on the day after he returned to his Coronado, California, home.

Halsey, meanwhile, sailed back to America and was greeted in San Francisco and Los Angeles by blaring bands, sirens, whistles, and cheering thousands. His reputation had been tarnished, yet he emerged from the war as a fighting admiral revered by the men who served under him.

Originally Published January 21, 2019.

This article originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

World War III,

Both countries’ militaries are prepared to fight in different parts of the world.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The United States cannot maintain this level of dominance indefinitely, and in the long-term will have to choose its commitments carefully. At the same time, the United States has created an international order that benefits many of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world; it can count on their support, for a while.

The United States discarded its oft-misunderstood “two war” doctrine, intended as a template for providing the means to fight two regional wars simultaneously, late last decade. Designed to deter North Korea from launching a war while the United States was involved in fighting against Iran or Iraq (or vice versa,) the idea helped give form to the Department of Defense’s procurement, logistical and basing strategies in the post–Cold War, when the United States no longer needed to face down the Soviet threat. The United States backed away from the doctrine because of changes in the international system, including the rising power of China and the proliferation of highly effective terrorist networks.

But what if the United States had to fight two wars today, and not against states like North Korea and Iran? What if China and Russia sufficiently coordinated with one another to engage in simultaneous hostilities in the Pacific and in Europe?

Political Coordination

Could Beijing and Moscow coordinate a pair of crises that would drive two separate U.S. military responses? Maybe, but probably not. Each country has its own goals, and works on its own timeline. More likely, one of the two would opportunistically take advantage of an existing crisis to further its regional claims. For example, Moscow might well decide to push the Baltic States if the United States became involved in a major skirmish in the South China Sea.

In any case, the war would start on the initiative of either Moscow or Beijing. The United States enjoys the benefits of the status quo in both areas, and generally (at least where great powers are concerned) prefers to use diplomatic and economic means to pursue its political ends. While the U.S. might create the conditions for war, Russia or China would pull the trigger.

Flexibility

On the upside, only some of the requirements for fighting in Europe and the Pacific overlap. As was the case in World War II, the U.S. Army would bear the brunt of defending Europe, while the Navy would concentrate on the Pacific. The U.S. Air Force (USAF) would play a supporting role in both theaters.

Russia lacks the ability to fight NATO in the North Atlantic, and probably has no political interest in trying. This means that while the United States and its NATO allies can allocate some resources to threatening Russia’s maritime space (and providing insurance against a Russian naval sortie,) the U.S. Navy (USN) can concentrate its forces in the Pacific. Depending on the length of the conflict and the degree of warning provided, the United States could transport considerable U.S. Army assets to Europe to assist with any serious fighting.

The bulk of American carriers, submarines and surface vessels would concentrate in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans, fighting directly against China’s A2/AD system and sitting astride China’s maritime transit lanes. Long range aviation, including stealth bombers and similar assets, would operate in both theaters as needed.

The U.S. military would be under strong pressure to deliver decisive victory in at least one theater as quickly as possible. This might push the United States to lean heavily in one direction with air, space and cyber assets, hoping to achieve a strategic and political victory that would allow the remainder of its weight to shift to the other theater. Given the strength of U.S. allies in Europe, the United States might initially focus on the conflict in the Pacific.

Alliance Structure

U.S. alliance structure in the Pacific differs dramatically from that of Europe. Notwithstanding concern over the commitment of specific U.S. allies in Europe, the United States has no reason to fight Russia apart from maintaining the integrity of the NATO alliance. If the United States fights, then Germany, France, Poland and the United Kingdom will follow. In most conventional scenarios, even the European allies alone would give NATO a tremendous medium term advantage over the Russians; Russia might take parts of the Baltics, but it would suffer heavily under NATO airpower, and likely couldn’t hold stolen territory for long. In this context, the USN and USAF would largely play support and coordinative roles, giving the NATO allies the advantage they needed to soundly defeat the Russians. The U.S. nuclear force would provide insurance against a Russian decision to employ tactical or strategic nuclear weapons.

The United States faces more difficult problems in the Pacific. Japan or India might have an interest in the South China Sea, but this hardly guarantees their participation in a war (or even the degree of benevolence of their neutrality.) The alliance structure of any given conflict would depend on the particulars of that conflict; any of the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan or Taiwan could become China’s primary target. The rest, U.S. pressure aside, might well prefer to sit on the sidelines. This would put extra pressure on the United States to establish dominance in the Western Pacific with its own assets.

Parting Shots

The United States can still fight and win two major wars at the same time, or at least come near enough to winning that neither Russia nor China would see much hope in the gamble. The United States can do this because it continues to maintain the world’s most formidable military, and because it stands at the head of an extremely powerful military alliance. Moreover, Russia and China conveniently pose very different military problems, allowing the United States to allocate some of its assets to one, and the rest to the other.

However, it bears emphasis that this situation will not last forever. The United States cannot maintain this level of dominance indefinitely, and in the long-term will have to choose its commitments carefully. At the same time, the United States has created an international order that benefits many of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world; it can count on their support, for a while.

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, 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, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.

This piece is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Flickr.

Kris Osborn

Submarines,

Complete with new upgrades, the Block V is the Navy's best. 

Here's What You Need To Remember: With improved SOF and surveillance capacity, the Navy is naturally expanding its attack submarine strategy to further emphasize enhanced “spy” like intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance missions to quietly patrol shallow waters near enemy coastline - scanning for enemy submarines, surface ships and coastal threats.

The U.S. Navy is making progress in the early phases of building a new Block V variant of Virginia-class attack submarines which massively increase firepower, incorporate advanced new sonar technologies and leverage the latest advances in automation and AI.

The development deal took a large step forward last December through a $22-Billion contract between the Navy and General Dynamics Electric Boat. Eight of the new Block V deal are being engineered with a new 80-foot weapons section in the boat, enabling the submarine to increase its attack missile capacity from 12 to 40 on-board Tomahawks.

While many of the technical specifics regarding emerging attack submarines are naturally not available for security reasons, new innovations will build upon cutting-edge systems now deployed on the most advanced attack submarine ever to deploy—the USS South Dakota. The South Dakota, which is now operational, began as a prototype, test-bed platform to evolve new technologies.What all of these USS South Dakota innovations amount to is that, Navy officials say, they are informing current engineering regarding Block V as well as early conceptual discussions for a new Block VI submarine to begin in 2024. While many details are not available, generally speaking the USS South Dakota is engineered with additional engine-oriented quieting technology, advanced antennas for reconnaissance and less-detectable external “coating” for the submarine, Navy developers explain.

Looking at the multi-year trajectory of Virginia-class development; each Block has incorporated several impactful new technologies not yet present when the previous boats were built. For example, unlike Blocks I and II, Virginia-class Block III boats significantly increase firepower with the introduction of what’s called Virginia Payload Tubes, adding new missile tubes able to fire 6 Tomahawks each. Block III also includes a new Large Aperture Bow “horseshoe-shaped” sonar, which switches from an “air-backed’ spherical sonar to a “water-backed” array, making it easier to maintain pressure, according to a 2014 report in “NavSource Online.”

The LAB sonar, which is both more precise and longer range than its predecessor, also advances the curve in that it introduces both a passive and “active” sonar system. Passive systems are used to essential track or “listen” for acoustic pings to identify enemy movements. This can help conceal a submarines position by not emitting a signal, yet can lack the specificity of an “active” sonar system which sends an acoustic “ping” forward. The submarine’s technology then analyzes the return signal to deliver a “rendering” of an enemy object to include its contours, speed and distance. In concept, sonar works similar to radar except that it sends acoustic signals instead of electronic ones.

Yet another area of innovation informing Block V includes Block IIIs “Fly-by-Wire” navigational controls; instead of using mechanically operated hydraulic controls, the Fly-by-Wire system uses a joystick, digital moving maps and various adaptations of computer automation to navigate the boat. This means that computer systems can control the depth and speed of the submarine, while a human remains in a command and control role.

This technology, using upgradable software and fast-growing AI applications, widens the mission envelope for the attack submarines by vastly expanding their ISR potential. Using real-time analytics and an instant ability to draw upon an organize vast data-bases of information and sensor input, computer algorithms can now perform a range of procedural functions historically performed by humans. This can increase the speed of maneuverability and an attack submarine's ability to quickly shift course, change speed or alter depth positioning when faced with attacks.

The technical elements of undersea command and control, quite naturally, are also being engineered with a mind to an expected increased use of underwater drones. The Navy is now moving quickly with efforts to build an entire new fleet of UUVs able to destroy mines, conduct lower risk forward surveillance, deliver supplies or even fire weapons with a “human-in-the-loop.”

Newer Virginia-class attack boats are also tailored to optimize Special Operations Mission. Elements of Block IIIs “Lock Out Trunk” were built-upon or expanded for Block V; the Lock Out Trunk introduces a new specialized area which fills up with water for departure, enabling SOF forces to more easily and quietly exit the submarine while remaining submerged.

With improved SOF and surveillance capacity, the Navy is naturally expanding its attack submarine strategy to further emphasize enhanced “spy” like intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance missions to quietly patrol shallow waters near enemy coastline - scanning for enemy submarines, surface ships and coastal threats.

Improved undersea navigation and detection technology, using new sonar, increased computer automation and artificial intelligence, enable quieter, faster movements in littoral waters where enemy mines, small boats and other threatening assets often operate.

A closer-in or littoral undersea advantage can increase “ashore attack” mission potential along with ISR-empowered anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare operations.

Kris Osborn is the new Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

Image: Reuters

Lyle J. Goldstein

History, Asia

The People’s Liberation Army Navy has labored to study America’s past naval battles, whether wins or losses.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Japanese admirals are criticized here for their attachment to “traditional methods” in the manner they organized their forces prior to the Midway battle. Thus, it is explained that the “designated main force of battleships” (称为主队的战列舰部队) was placed behind the carrier force, so that after the initial contact, the battleship force could “then enter the fray to launch the decisive blow” (再投入主队展开决战).

China’s aircraft carrier program is maturing. The first photos have now emerged that show Liaoning operating with a decent clutch of J-15 fighters, as well as helicopters on deck. The aircraft are now painted in telltale battle gray, rather than the yellow used with the initial prototype aircraft. It is difficult to tell for sure, but one may assume that the testing and training regimen has been intense. True enough, the Liaoning was bought from Ukraine and it is, unlike American “big decks,” conventionally powered rather than relying on nuclear power. It also has a ski-jump bow to assist with take-off rather than catapults, which are one of the most critical technologies for efficient carrier operations since they allow aircraft to extend their range with increased weapons payloads.

On the other hand, the J-15 (a knockoff of a Russian design) appears to be a rather formidable fighter and attack aircraft.  Additionally, nuclear-powered carriers are still encumbered by logistics: high-tempo aircraft operations—not to mention the battle group escorts—still require enormous amounts of fuel. The convincing for the argument that the PLA Navy aspires to go beyond a modest flirtation with the aircraft carrier concept is the news that construction of Beijing’s second carrier is now well underway.  

For the last five years, the Chinese naval press has produced reams of analysis on carrier operations. One example of this is the detailed reports examining U.S. Navy accidents related to flying off carriers. There is no substitute for experience, of course, but it should be recalled that the U.S. Navy has not employed aircraft carriers in combat against another significant naval force since World War Two.

On the 74th anniversary of the greatest of all carrier battles, Midway, this edition of Dragon Eye will peruse some recent Chinese writings concerning the epic battle that turned the tide in the Pacific War during June 4th and 5th 1942. One such article was published by a researcher of the Academy of Military Sciences (军事科学院) in Beijing in the prestigious Chinese military journal Military History (军事历史).  Although not comprehensive, the article does draw on both American and Japanese sources, and could offer some insights into evolving Chinese thinking about aircraft carrier doctrine in contemporary and future naval warfare. Not surprisingly, the analysis establishes at the outset the decisive role of U.S. codebreakers in revealing “all the planning details of the Japanese combined fleet” (日军联合舰队的所有计划细节). Similarly, the United States were also believed to have had superior battlefield surveillance efficiency. However, intelligence failures are not the central thrust of the essay that focuses more on military leadership culture and, in particular, the perverse role of “battleship-ism” (大炮巨舰主义) within the Japanese naval leadership. Japanese admirals are criticized here for their attachment to “traditional methods” in the manner they organized their forces prior to the Midway battle. Thus, it is explained that the “designated main force of battleships” (称为主队的战列舰部队) was placed behind the carrier force, so that after the initial contact, the battleship force could “then enter the fray to launch the decisive blow” (再投入主队展开决战). But that approach, according to this PLA analysis, left the large Japanese aircraft carrier force substantially exposed to American attack. Moreover, it is noted that the four Japanese aircraft carriers were protected by a dedicated force of two battleships, three cruisers and twelve destroyers, but such a force “certainly could not provide an effective screen for four aircraft carriers” against air and submarine attack from multiple vectors.

Other factors in the Japanese defeat at Midway identified by this Chinese military analyst include the ineffective employment of the Japanese submarine force. Here it is noted that out of a total force of twenty-one boats, just one single Japanese submarine was deployed proximate to Midway Island during the campaign. Another mistake pointed out in this piece is that the Japanese carrier strike force had two contradictory missions at Midway, both supporting the invasion of the island and also destroying the U.S. Navy forces in the area, so that at a critical juncture, the Japanese Navy was “chasing two rabbits at the same time” (同时追两只兔子). Finally, a variety of specific command decisions are also criticized. Thus Admiral Nagumo, Commander of the Japanese carrier strike group, is faulted for not sending out enough scout planes and especially for conducting simultaneous sorties from all four decks. To the latter point, it is explained that if Nagumo had timed his strike waves (keeping two decks in reserve) more prudently, than the disaster would not have befallen the Japanese fleet.

Another Chinese naval analysis is also worth consulting regarding the Midway battle. This piece, part of a series that examined all aspects of Japanese naval strategy in the Pacific War, appeared in 2015 in the magazine 现代舰船 (Modern Ships), published by the giant Chinese warship building conglomerate CSIC. An earlier Dragon Eye took a close look at Chinese thinking about Japanese submarine strategy from this same series of articles. One of these papers focuses on Tokyo’s strategic options during the crucial period of 1942 to 1943. While not much detail is offered regarding the Midway Battle itself, the analysis notes that it was the uncomfortable shock that followed the Doolittle Raid (杜利特空袭) that prompted the Japanese to undertake the “high risk” battle for Midway. Indeed, it is noted that Midway was well outside the range of Japanese land-based airpower and that the island had little strategic significance. A major theme of this assessment is that a significant cause of Japan’s defeat was its inability (after Midway) to supply sufficient numbers of well-trained pilots in the context of severe attrition on both sides. In the end, the conclusion is that Japan might have succeeded in bringing about a negotiated settlement with the US if only it had more cautiously sought out battles that were advantageous in time and space to the Japanese Navy. In such circumstances, it could have “caused the Americans to bleed heavily.” (使美军大出血)

On this solemn anniversary of the Midway Battle, Americans must first and foremost remember the extraordinary heroes of those dark days. On June 4th 1942, several entire squadrons of intrepid US Navy pilots were sacrificed. For example, every single one of the fifteen aircraft from Torpedo-8 flying off of USS Hornet was lost in the battle—cruelly yielding up just one lone survivor from the original 30 aviators. The discussion above may offer some limited insights into the contours of China’s future employment of aircraft carriers. However, US leaders surveying numerous flashpoints across the Asia-Pacific would do well to reflect on this solemn anniversary regarding the terrible sacrifices made at Midway so many years ago. Our leaders must eschew the shallow jingoism that is so prevalent in our political discourse and seek energetically to resolve differences among the great powers through creative diplomacy.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Associate Professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. 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.

Image: Wikipedia. 

Robert Farley

Russian Navy, Europe

These warships are large and impressive, but they are not the same as an aircraft carrier.

Key point: Refitting and upgrading old Soviet warships is a decent, affordable option for Moscow. These ships may not be the finest, but they are powerful and do make a point wherever Russia sends them.

A second Russian battlecruiser may be on the cusp of returning to service for the first time since the 1990s. 

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

The Admiral Nakhimov, one of four Kirov class nuclear cruisers built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, appears finally to be nearing the final stages of a long-planned refit that will return her to service with a suite of lethal new weapons. If her reconstruction remains on schedule, she will re-enter service as one of the world’s largest and most powerful surface combatants.

Like her sisters, Admiral Nakhimov (named after a nineteenth-century Russian admiral who participated in the Crimean War) displaced some 28,000 tons full load and could make some 32 knots on a combined diesel and nuclear propulsion system. She was equipped with the most advanced surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and anti-submarine weapons of the day. The Kirovs were initially expected to provide the core of independent surface groups that could threaten US and NATO carrier battle groups. To this end, they carried the P-700 Granite SSM, which relied on a sophisticated set of communications technologies that enabled missiles to communicate in flight, with the hope that at least one missile would reach a carrier and inflict enough damage to prevent it from completing its mission. 

Like other late period Soviet naval projects, the Kirovs differed significantly from one another in configuration, as well as in service history. The Admiral Nakhimov mostly closely resembled Pyotr Velikiy, but had a considerably different anti-aircraft missile suite. Despite her age, the Admiral Nakhimov has enjoyed only a very short service career. She entered service in 1989, but the economic crisis that ensued at the end of the Soviet Union sharply reduced her tempo of operations. By 1999 she had entered what amounted to reserve status, a purgatory that included the bulk of the former Soviet surface fleet. Plans for refurbishing the Nakhimov began to emerge around 2006, with confusing and contradictory reports about the progress of the refit flying for more than a decade. This kind of confusion was typical of the Russian Navy in the 1990s and 2000s, as ambitions often exceeded the means of Russia’s chaotic economy. 

Post-refit, the Nakhimov will carry the 3M22 Zircon surface-to-surface missile, a smaller but more sophisticated weapon than the Granite. The hypersonic Zircon can reportedly reach Mach 8 or higher, maneuver during flight, and strike targets at a range of over 200 miles. It is much smaller than the Granite, enabling the ship to carry up to three times as many weapons. The Zircon appears to be interchangeable with Russian land-attack cruise missiles, meaning that the Nakhimov (and eventually the Pyotr Velikiy, assuming she is brought up to the same standard) will have a much more effective land-attack capability than their architects originally intended. The Nakhimov will also receive a substantially upgraded anti-air missile system (the naval version of the S-300), and various other upgrades. 

The plan now is for Admiral Nakhimov to re-enter service in 2022 with a series of significant upgrades. The Pytor Velikiy will likely begin her own (less substantial) refit around the same time. The primary contribution of Pyotr Velikiy has been as a visual manifestation of Russian naval power. While submarines continue to represent the core of Russia’s naval strength, we can expect that the refurbished Admiral Nakhimov will take on much of that role, especially with the future of Russia’s aircraft carrier (the perpetually troubled Admiral Kuznetsov) in deep question. Even with its more advanced missile systems, the Nakhimov would have little hope of inflicting serious damage on an alert U.S. carrier battle group. 

It is thus not difficult to imagine Nakhimov anchoring a Russian surface battle group off the coast of Syria, Libya, or another crisis hotspot. She could offer effective surface and air protection to Russian naval assets, while also demonstrating the political commitment of the Russian state. In more tangible terms, Nakhimov could play the role that so many U.S. cruisers and destroyers have undertaken over the last three decades, launching precision-guided cruise missiles against land targets either in support of Russia or allied land forces, or to inflict enough harm to coerce a foe into submission. This is a genuine improvement over Pytor Velikiy, at considerably less expense than refurbishing and operating the Admiral Kuznetsov. 

Nevertheless, we should keep the refit of the Nakhimov in context. Her refit is entirely opportunistic on the part of the Russian Navy, in the sense that no navy has given much consideration to building a ship of her size and capabilities since the 1980s. If the hull were not readily available and in decent shape, returning the ship to service would make little strategic sense (indeed, two Kirovs in somewhat worse shape will not be returned to service). Her refit does not seem to portend a return to the construction of large, ocean-going vessels on the part of Russia’s shipbuilding industry, but rather reflects the inability of that industry to economically build new large warships. In great power conflict, the Nakhimov undoubtedly represents a threat to Western naval forces, but also an extremely attractive target, especially for submarines. 

The addition of a second modernized battlecruiser undoubtedly fills gaps in Russian naval and strategic capabilities. However, it does not portend a transformation in Russian naval affairs, or a fundamental shift in naval power between Russia, NATO, and the United States. Indeed, if the refit of both battlecruisers allows Russia to give up on the Admiral Kuznetsov, it may represent the choice of a more moderate, sustainable direction for Russia’s surface fleet. 

Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, 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, Information Dissemination and the Diplomat. This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Reuters.

Robert Farley

Battleships Aircraft Carrers,

No single weapon could have saved the Soviet Union, but several might have shifted the contours of its collapse.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Had the USSR pursued the T-4, it would have had to give up on large portion of its tactical air fleet. However, it would also have had a high-level, supersonic bomber designed (in part) to deliver anti-ship missiles. This would have complicated the defense of US carrier groups even more than the arrival of the Tu-22M, a smaller, shorter ranged bomber.

For nearly seven decades, the defense-industrial complex of the Soviet Union went toe-to-toe with the best firms that the West had to offer. In some cases, it surprised the West with cheap, innovative, effective systems. In others, it could barely manage to put together aircraft that could remain in the air, and ships that could stay at sea.

No single weapon could have saved the Soviet Union, but several might have shifted the contours of its collapse. The relationship between technology and the “human” elements of war, including doctrine and organization, is complex. Decisions about isolated systems can have far reaching implications for how a nation defends itself.

As with prior list, weapons are often cancelled for good reason. Events intercede in ways that focus a nation’s attention on its true interests and needs, rather than on the pursuit of glory and prestige. In the Soviet case, many of the “wonder weapons” remained safely in the realm of imagination, both for the enemies of the USSR, and the USSR itself. 

Sovetsky Soyuz class battleship:

During the interwar period, the Soviet Union explored a variety of options for revitalizing its decrepit fleet. Until the first decade of the twentieth century, the czars had maintained a relatively modern, powerful navy. After the Russo-Japanese War, however, Russian shipbuilding fell steadily behind the West, and the Revolution disrupted both the industry and the Navy itself.

By the late 1930s, the Soviet economy had recovered to the point that Stalin could seriously consider a program of naval construction. The Sovetsky Soyuz class battleships spearheaded an ambitious acquisition plan, which also included battlecruisers and aircraft carriers. Based loosely on the Italian Littorio class, the Sovetsky Soyuzs would displace approximately 60,000 tons, carry 9 16” guns, and make 28 knots. This made them competitive in size with the most powerful battleships in the world, although inexperience and shoddy Soviet construction practice would likely have rendered them troublesome in battle.

The Soviet Union laid down four of the intended sixteen battleships between 1938 and 1940, parceling out construction between Leningrad, Nikolayev (on the Black Sea), and Molotovsk (on the White Sea). One was cancelled in 1940 because of poor workmanship. The other three were suspended on the arrival of war, although plans proceeded to complete one (in Leningrad) even after World War II ended. Wiser heads eventually prevailed, and the ships were broken up in place.

Construction of the ships required an enormous investment of Soviet state resources. Had construction begun earlier, the USSR would have wasted a fair chunk of national income on three ships that could not escape the Baltic and the Black Sea, respectively, and one that would have been limited to convoy escort in the Arctic. Literally any use of materials and industrial capacity would have served the USSR better in war than these four ships.

The Orel and Ulyanovsk class aircraft carriers: 

The Soviet Union began to study aircraft carrier construction shortly after the Revolution, but as with battleships the disordered economy, the backward state of Soviet industry, and the Second World War disrupted planning. After the war, and after a briefly ambitious effort under Stalin, Soviet authorities undertook more modest, sequential efforts at carrier construction. The Moskva class helicopter carriers entered service in the mid-1960s, followed by the Kiev class VSTOL carriers in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The next step was complicated. Some favored another sequential step, while others argued for pushing forward to a full supercarrier (what would have been the Orel project). The Soviet Navy took the gradual path, working out improvements to the Kiev class and initiating what would become the Kuznetsovs, conventionally powered medium-large ski-jump carriers.

The Soviet Navy expected the Ulyanovsk class to succeed the Kuznetsov. Displacing over 80000 tons, with a nuclear power plant, the Ulyanovsk were the first real Soviet competitors to the American supercarriers. Although Ulyanovsk would retain a ski-jump, it would have had sufficient catapult capacity to launch strike-laden fighters and early warning aircraft, make it more or less equal to its American contemporaries. For the first time, the Soviet Navy would have possessed a carrier capable of long-range offensive operations around the globe. 

However, as with so many Soviet weapon systems, catastrophe intervened. The end of the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, made completing the Ulyanovsk a dicey proposition, and the only hulk was broken up. In hindsight, the gradual approach had much to say for itself, as it resulted in a force of sea control ships and a cadre of naval aviators. The decision to forego the full supercarrier, however, meant that the Soviet Navy could never offer friends (or enemies) the same kind of reassurance as the U.S. Navy. It meant adherence to a reactive naval strategy rather than a proactive effort to offer an alternative to the Western maritime system. But then the Soviets may not have had much to offer, in any case.

Interwar Heavy Bomber

Although the Soviet Air Forces never developed a reputation for strategic bombing during World War II, in the interwar period the Soviets experimented heavily with long-range, four engine bombers. Indeed, at the outbreak of war the Soviet Union fielded more of this type than any other country, although most of these were antiquated TB-3s.

By the time the war started, the Soviets had settled on the Pe-8, a bomber very roughly comparable to the Avro Lancaster and the Boeing B-17. The Pe-8 never achieved the same level of success as those two aircraft, largely because of construction and supply problems. However, during the process of development, the Soviet Air Forces had experimented with some truly grandiose projects, including the K-7 heavy bomber, which looked like a Junkers fever dream and crashed on its eighth test-flight, killing 14 aboard.

The most promising line of development revolved around the TB-3/ANT-20/TB-6 family, which were all monstrous aircraft of six engines or more. The concept sacrificed speed and maneuverability for heavy armament, based on the theory that bombers flying in formation could defend themselves from pursuit aircraft. The ANT-20 transport  had eight engines and could carry 72 passengers, at least before the prototype plowed into a Moscow neighborhood, killing 45 people. The ANT-26, a potential bomber variant of the ANT-20, would have had twelve engines and a bomb load exceeding 33,000 pounds, considerably greater than a B-29. 

Only prototypes of these beasts ever got off the ground, and usually not for long. Had the Soviet Union decided to go this direction, it likely would have severely retarded the development of Soviet tactical aviation, as well as draw resources away from the ground forces of the Red Army. Giant ANT-26s would likely have proven easy pickings for German interceptors, although at least they could have flown from bases beyond the range of the Luftwaffe. Unlike the Western Allies, the Soviet Union didn’t have the luxury of wasting resources on an extended, expensive strategic bombing campaign; it needed to defeat the Wehrmacht on the field of battle. Had the USSR chosen the strategic bombing route, it might have been unable to resist the German advance.

Tu-42 Super-heavy tank:

German and Soviet tank designs converged somewhat in the 1930s because of the shared experience of the Kazan Tank School. Both international pariahs, Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union began a fruitful collaboration in the late 1920s on air, armor, and chemical weapons. By the time the rise of the Nazis ended the collaboration, both the Soviets and the Germans possessed innovative new ideas for armor technology and employment.

During the interwar period several countries contemplated the construction of “super-heavy” tanks, vehicles that would weigh three, or even four times as much as a standard battle tank. One German designer in particular, Edward Grotte, worked on super-heavy designs for both Germany and the Soviet Union. The most interesting of the several designs presented to the Soviet General Staff was the T-42, a 100 ton beast with three turrets, a speed of 17 MPH, and a crew of 14-15.

The T-42 never made it to prototype stage, but did earn some serious consideration in Soviet military circles. Other, somewhat more realistic projects included the T-35, T-100, SMK, KV-4, and the KV-5. Only the T-35, a 45-ton tank with 5 turrets, made it to production. Nearly all of the 61 vehicles were lost in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, usually to mechanical defect and crew abandonment.

Like most of its super-heavy kin, the Tu-42 was too heavy, too costly, and too slow to put into serious production. Had the Red Army determined to acquire the beast, however, it would likely have proven a disastrous liability in battles against Japan, Finland, and Germany, potentially distorting Soviet armored doctrine in addition to proving tactically useless.

Sukhoi T-4:

Many of the Soviet bombers of the post-war era were direct analogues to US types. The Tu-4, in fact, was a direct copy of captured American B-29s. The Sukhoi T-4 was the USSR’s answer to the B-70 Valkyrie. A massive, incredibly fast bomber capable of high altitude flight, the T-4 tested (and in many ways exceeded), the limits of the Soviet Union’s defense industry.

Designed to hit Mach 3, with a service ceiling of around 70,000’, the T-4 resembled the B-70 visually, and in capability. However, because the organization of airpower in the Soviet Union differed from that of the United States, T-4s were also considered for tactical missions, such as reconnaissance and the delivery of anti-ship missiles. The idea of a T-4 carrying Kh-22 anti-ship missiles is very scary indeed. 

However, the demands of the technology proved too great for the USSR to move to production. The tolerances required for such high speeds and altitudes were probably beyond the capacity of the Soviet aviation industry to reliably produce. Moreover, the T-4 suffered from many of the same intercept and SAM issues as the B-70. Much as the case with the B-70, the T-4 spawned its successor, the swing-wing Tu-160. Only 35 of the latter were built, arriving roughly a decade after the projected service date of T-4.

Had the USSR pursued the T-4, it would have had to give up on large portion of its tactical air fleet. However, it would also have had a high-level, supersonic bomber designed (in part) to deliver anti-ship missiles. This would have complicated the defense of US carrier groups even more than the arrival of the Tu-22M, a smaller, shorter ranged bomber. Production of the T-4 might also have wrought changes in US procurement, with potentially greater focus on the B-1A, and on the strategic interceptor force. Although extremely expensive to maintain, at least some of the T-4 force would likely have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union to serve in the Russian Air Force.

Conclusion:

The Soviet military combined grandiose vision and global aspiration with a defense-industrial base that had severe limitations. In some cases, these limitations produced remarkable weapons, such as the T-34 and the MiG-21. In other cases, the limitations precluded disastrous decisions, such as the giant heavy bombers, the huge battleships, and the giant tanks of the interwar period. The true lesson, however, is that while decisions about weapon systems often reverberate across an entire defense-industrial base, they only rarely change the fates of nations.

Robert Farley is a senior lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and The Diplomat. Follow him on Twitter:@drfarls.

This first appeared in 2014 and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Image: Wikipedia.

John Rossomando

Taiwan, Asia

Beijing may be deterred if it is clear that moving its naval and air force assets to attack Taiwan puts them at risk of humiliating losses.

“If China is going to start a war, they are going to do it on their terms. All of our wonderful stuff won’t get there in time. You need to get your stuff there on Day Zero of the fight,” Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me last fall.

China has escalated “gray-zone” attacks against Taiwan in recent months. “Gray-zone” activity advances a state’s objectives outside the realm of accepted diplomacy, but below full military conflict. This can include disinformation campaigns, political or economic coercion, cyberattacks, or using proxies.

The United States, Japan, Australia, and other regional allies should counter Chinese gray-zone provocations with ones of their own. They need to have military assets at sea, in the air, and on the ground on Day Zero, or Taiwan would be quickly seized in the event of a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invasion.

Beijing may be deterred if it is clear that moving its naval and air force assets to attack Taiwan puts them at risk of humiliating losses. Placing equal and opposite pressure against the Chinese regime is the only way to keep its aggression at bay. The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t respect weakness.

The United States and Japan can play a key role in the area of deterrence. Taiwan has one of the freest democracies in East Asia. Its government has been a friend to the United States since World War II when American fliers signed up with the Flying Tigers to help it resist the Japanese occupation. Allowing the Chinese Communist Party to occupy the island and jail its democratically elected leaders would leave an indelible global blot on U.S. credibility. It would tell our allies including Japan, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and the Baltic States that U.S. mutual defense commitments are worthless.

The Chinese Communist Party-linked Global Times noted that the PLA counts on air supremacy to keep aid from reaching Taiwan in time; consequently, it’s essential for the United States and its allies to quickly gain the upper hand in Taiwanese airspace.

If an invasion were to occur, it would likely happen on the Western side of the island. Taiwanese forces would be spread across that side, and the PLA could use a flanking maneuver to strike the less defended eastern side of the island.

Recent People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) exercises in this area with fighters, anti-submarine warfare aircraft, KJ-500 early-warning aircraft, and H-6K bombers suggest this could be part of its strategy.

Japan could help prevent this. The Japanese island Yonaguni, located approximately 120 miles off the east coast of Taiwan, already has a long-range radar station. The island could act as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, closing off Taiwan’s east coast from naval assaults or a blockade. The U.S. military could consider deploying a ground-based version of its Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) to deter Beijing’s surface combatants.

The United States should also consider developing longer-range anti-aircraft missiles that could saturate Taiwan’s airspace from Yonaguni, not unlike Russia’s S-400 missile defense system that has a 250-mile range. Its current Patriot anti-aircraft missile has a mere forty-six-mile range, which is inadequate for deterrence. The uprated system would help the U.S. Air Force in areas where it faces peer-level competition from either Russia or China. A longer-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) could deny access to aircraft flying in Taiwan’s airspace and over international waters off Taiwan’s coast.

To test this theory, I ran a simulation in Command: Modern Operations, a war game used by defense professionals and the Department of Defense. I placed an S-400 on Yonaguni due to the lack of a comparable U.S. or Japanese surface-to-air missile system, and it knocked out PLAAF H-6 bombers and other PLAAF early warning aircraft over waters to the West of Taiwan.

Fighters launched from Yonaguni would be minutes from Taiwan’s airspace and would threaten the PLAAF’s effort to gain air supremacy. If Yonaguni’s airstrip was upgraded for use by allied F-35 stealth fighters, F-16s fighter jets, and airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft, it would force PLAAF to face better-trained American pilots.

A few of the northernmost islands in the Philippines have a similar strategic position vis-à-vis Taiwan. The Filipino island of Itbayat is a mere ninety-seven miles from Taiwan and could be also used as a base for long-range anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to deny the PLA access to the southernmost approach to Taiwan.

It would also require improving missile defenses, however. If the Navy and PLAAF were not enough, the PLA would likely target the island with intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) such as the DF-21 and DF-26.

Japan and the United States should counter Chinese drills near Taiwan with ones of their own to send the message that any attempt to seize Taiwan by force would go badly for China.

The United States, Japan, Australia, and possibly the British Royal Navy, Indonesia, and Malaysia should consider having a major naval exercise in Japanese waters near Taiwan and sink a target ship to show Beijing that its fleet would be putting itself in peril. Considering that Beijing has invested considerable capital in its new aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, perhaps the U.S. Navy should consider towing the USS Bonhomme Richard to the area and sinking it as a target.

The U.S. Navy also needs to have regular submarine patrols through the deep waters of the Taiwan Strait and in the waters surrounding Taiwan, not unlike during the Cold War when U.S. attack submarines operated off Russia’s northern coast.

The threat of a vicious response to aggression on the part of Beijing must be real, imminent, and immediate. Otherwise, Beijing will take Taiwan and U.S. military dominance in the region will permanently end.

John Rossomando is a Senior Analyst for Defense Policy and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.

Image: Reuters.

Joseph Trevithick

Russian Navy,

The U.S. Navy has little to fear.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The carrier is barely capable of doing what carriers are supposed to do: launch fighters. When she does, she uses a bow ramp instead of steam catapults, which forces reductions in the planes’ takeoff weight and patrol time.

In December 2011, the Russian navy’s aging, poorly-maintained aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov departed from its northern base on the troubled vessel’s fourth deployment to the Mediterranean Sea.

True, the full-size carrier—which displaces 55,000 tons fully loaded—has a history of mechanical troubles since she entered service in 1991. But her operational tempo had increased, the result of a renewed push by Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin to get the fleet out into the oceans for training and patrols.

To that end, Admiral Kuznetsov has undergone some limited retrofits in recent years and participated in several missions to the Med, so the old vessel had done this kind of thing before.

But as the Kuznetsov rounded Europe and headed towards the Syrian coast, the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet kept close by in case the carrier … sank.

It might be hard to believe, but it’s just one bizarre detail noted by journalist Michael Weiss in a essay on Russia’s military expansion.

Admiral Kuznetsov has a problematic history. One seaman died when the carrier caught fire during a 2009 deployment to the Med. During the same cruise, the flattop spilled hundreds of tons of fuel into the sea while refueling. Her steam turbines are so bad the ship has to be escorted by tugs in case she breaks down.

Not to mention the carrier is barely capable of doing what carriers are supposed to do: launch fighters. When she does, she uses a bow ramp instead of steam catapults, which forces reductions in the planes’ takeoff weight and patrol time.

Anyways, in 2011 despite the Americans’ concerns, Admiral Kuznetsov made it home to her home port at Severomorsk near Murmansk. But she’s headed back to the Mediterranean by year’s end—without, apparently, a long-planned retrofit to her engines and flight deck. No word from the U.S. Navy as to whether it fears the decrepit flattop again might sink.

Image: Wikipedia.

Jarrett Stepman

Second Amendment, Americas

Entrenched opposition to gun control laws, even following mass shootings, doesn’t come from the power of the NRA. It comes from the foundational worldview of Americans who not only look at gun control measures as unlikely to stop violence, a curtailment of their own means to personal safety, but also fear that they will ultimately be used to undermine liberty.

Many liberals are often incredulous that shooting incidents don’t provoke larger calls for gun control among Americans.

This was certainly the case after recent mass shootings in Atlanta and Colorado. 

President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress immediately called for more extensive background checks and a revival of the 1994 “assault weapons” ban. 

But if the history of the last few decades is any guide, this move is unlikely to dissuade Americans from their attachment to firearms. If anything, then it will likely have the opposite effect. 

“Before the 1994 ban, Americans owned approximately 400,000 AR-15s, according to government estimates; today, there are approximately 20 million AR-15 style rifles or similar weapons in private hands,” according to The Wall Street Journal. 

While Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, they own nearly half of the world’s privately held firearms, according to a recent Vox article. This is a remarkable statistic.

Longstanding American attachment to firearms is explained away in various ways. The answers usually revolve around blaming the trend on the power of the National Rifle Association, or more commonly these days, “racism.” 

The second suggestion is particularly ridiculous. More often than not, gun control has historically been used to disarm black Americans in particular and make it less possible for them to defend themselves.

One historian, Michael Bellesiles, even tried to claim that mass American private gun ownership is an entirely modern phenomenon and has little grounding in the founding era. His book, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, won many awards but was ultimately debunked and proven to be based on fraudulent statistics. 

In general, these theories wildly miss the mark of why Americans have little desire for strict gun control.

Many discussions around gun control in America focus on background checks and the limitation of specific types of guns. However, if one follows the logic that something must be done until almost every single shooting is stopped, then it’s hard not to see the end goal as Australian-style gun confiscation, which former President Barack Obama called for in 2015. 

Evidence for the “success” of Australia’s law is mixed at best and would be an undertaking on a much, much larger scale than what happened in Australia. 

In a time of rapidly increasing violence—in part due to the “defund the police” movement—law-abiding Americans are less likely to want to give up their means of self-defense. Politicians, corporate CEOs, and various members of the country’s elite will no doubt have little problem employing government resources and private security for their protection under a regime of stringent gun control. But the average citizen will not. 

It must be noted that while firearm ownership has gone up, trust in government—and fellow Americans—has been on the decline for decades. And this gets to perhaps the biggest reason Americans are unlikely to accept strict gun control parameters or even more limited gun control any time soon.

Baked into the ethos of the United States is the belief that liberty and the rights of the people can only truly remain secure as long as the right to bear arms remains secure. There is a good reason for Americans to have this outlook. 

History is full of examples of governments using weapons confiscation, gun registry, and mass disarmament of the population as a precursor to tyranny. The American Revolution even began with failed British attempts to disarm the American colonies. 

Perhaps one of the most illustrative examples is the great “sword hunt” that took place in Japan in the late sixteenth century. Toyotomi Hideyoshi came to power as second of the three great unifiers of Japan during a century of internal conflict and civil war. His story was particularly exceptional since he rose from the peasant rather than the noble samurai class. 

Alas, upon achieving victory, it was clear that Hideyoshi would be no George Washington. 

Like most great men in history who’ve achieved absolute power, Hideyoshi became a tyrant who committed a variety of atrocities. He even enacted an edict in 1588 calling for the confiscation of all arms—guns, swords, and pretty much every kind of weapon—from everyone below the ranks of the thin upper crust of Japanese society.  

It was justified as a means to control violence and uprisings in the country. The weapons, according to the edict, were to be melted down and used to create a statue of Buddha. A seemingly noble goal with obvious self-interested intent. The truth was the edict was primarily used to suppress any potential opposition to Hideyoshi’s rule and to solidify class lines in the country. An ironic move given Hideyoshi’s humble origin. 

The edict did have the practical effect of reducing a certain amount of violence in the country, but it also ensured that there could be no resistance to tax collectors or the arbitrary whims of the powerful few who ruled. This mass disarmament was the Japanese peasantry’s “first step towards enforced serfdom,” according to Danny Chaplin, who wrote Sengoku Jidai. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Ieyasu: Three Unifiers of Japan.

A Jesuit missionary observer of the event, Luis Frois, described how this once well-armed populace became “disarmed” while Hideyoshi became “more secure in his arbitrary dominion.” 

The disarmament edict was followed by more repressive laws all meant to control the population and eliminate resistance to the ruling powers. Very soon thereafter, under Hideyoshi’s successors in the Tokugawa Shogunate, religious liberty was curtailed as well.  

Christianity was eventually outlawed, and missionaries were expelled from the country. The reforms of this era brought a certain amount of peace but also tyranny, religious repression, and social ossification.

The United States, on the other hand, was founded to be a nation of self-rule, on the idea that all men are created equal, and none have the arbitrary right to lord over others. The Second Amendment and the country’s gun culture flow from these ideas. Fortunately, under the Constitution, Americans have many checks on government power. Protection of the right to bear arms makes it unlikely the government will ever even attempt to suppress liberty as authoritarian regimes have done throughout history. 

This is no “fringe” theory, but a direct result of the founding generation’s understanding of human nature, history, and their commitment to creating a free society that could endure for ages to come. Support of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms is not a call for violence or general resistance to government. In some ways, it’s just the opposite. It provides a more secure guarantee that any mass violence between the state and citizens won’t happen at all. Americans are unlikely to abandon this commitment any time soon. 

Entrenched opposition to gun control laws, even following mass shootings, doesn’t come from the power of the NRA. It comes from the foundational worldview of Americans who not only look at gun control measures as unlikely to stop violence, a curtailment of their own means to personal safety, but also fear that they will ultimately be used to undermine liberty. 

Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast.

Image: Reuters

WarIsBoring

Korean War,

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea.

Here's What You Need to Remember: North Korea’s arsenal isn’t anywhere nearly as advanced as that of the United States, but it is massive. Some analysts have suggested that the regime’s huge stockpile of traditional artillery and rockets would “flatten Seoul in the first half-hour of any confrontation.”

It’s difficult to try to keep up with developments in the latest round of saber rattling between the United States and North Korea. U.S. President Donald Trump and Korean “supreme leader” Kim Jong-un have repeatedly traded verbal barbs via Twitter and more formal avenues amid news of naval redeployments, massive live-fire artillery exercises, United Nations condemnations and rumors of troop movements by regional powers.

The United States would have an obvious and distinct advantage over North Korea in a direct military engagement. That doesn’t mean that a war wouldn’t be a grueling and costly endeavor. North Korea’s military is dilapidated and antiquated, but it’s still one of the largest militaries in the world. When the two countries clashed before, from 1950 to 1953, the conflict ended in a virtual draw along the 38th parallel.

Of course, the hundreds of thousands of soldiers China sent to save its North Korean ally played a decisive role in that outcome, but the Korean People’s Army itself put up a formidable fight against the much more powerful United States and its allies. The KPA inflicted considerable casualties in a blitzkrieg-like assault through the south and quickly seized huge swaths of territory, compelling the United States to implement a scorched-earth policy that inflicted a tremendous death toll.

On a per-capita basis, the Korean War was one of the deadliest wars in modern history, especially for the civilian population of North Korea. The scale of the devastation shocked and disgusted the American military personnel who witnessed it, including some who had fought in the most horrific battles of World War II.

World War II was by far the bloodiest war in history. Estimates of the death toll range from 60 million to more than 85 million, with some suggesting that the number is actually even higher and that 50 million civilians may have perished in China alone. Even the lower estimates would account for roughly three percent of the world’s estimated population of 2.3 billion in 1940.

These are staggering numbers, and the death rate during the Korean War was comparable to what occurred in the hardest hit countries of World War II.

Several factors contributed to the high casualty ratios. The Korean Peninsula is densely populated. Rapidly shifting front lines often left civilians trapped in combat zones. Both sides committed numerous massacres and carried out mass executions of political prisoners. Modern aircraft carried out a vast bombing campaign, dropping massive loads of napalm along with standard bombs.

In fact, by the end of the war, the United States and its allies had dropped more bombs on the Korean Peninsula, the overwhelming majority of them on North Korea, than they had in the entire Pacific Theater of World War II.

“The physical destruction and loss of life on both sides was almost beyond comprehension, but the North suffered the greater damage, due to American saturation bombing and the scorched-earth policy of the retreating U.N. forces,” historian Charles K. Armstrong wrote in an essay for the Asia-Pacific Journal.

“The U.S. Air Force estimated that North Korea’s destruction was proportionately greater than that of Japan in the Second World War, where the U.S. had turned 64 major cities to rubble and used the atomic bomb to destroy two others. American planes dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea—that is, essentially on North Korea—including 32,557 tons of napalm, compared to 503,000 tons of bombs dropped in the entire Pacific theatre of World War II.”

As Armstrong explains, this resulted in almost unparalleled devastation.

“The number of Korean dead, injured or missing by war’s end approached three million, ten percent of the overall population. The majority of those killed were in the North, which had half of the population of the South; although the DPRK does not have official figures, possibly twelve to fifteen percent of the population was killed in the war, a figure close to or surpassing the proportion of Soviet citizens killed in World War II.”

U.S. officers and soldiers who surveyed the results of the air campaign in Korea were both awestruck and revolted. In his controversial book Soldier, Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert collects reflections on the carnage from America’s most prominent generals of the day.

“We burned down just about every city in North Korea and South Korea both,” recalled Gen. Curtis LeMay. “We killed off over a million civilian Koreans and drove several million more from their homes, with the inevitable additional tragedies bound to ensue.”

LeMay was no newcomer to the horrors of war. He led several B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raids deep into German territory before going on to command the strategic bombing campaign against Japan, including the firebombings of Tokyo.

Another decorated veteran of World War II, Air Force four-star Gen. Emmett E. “Rosie” O’Donnell, Jr., who later served as Commander in Chief of Pacific Air Forces from 1959 to 1963, collaborated LeMay’s and Armstrong’s assessments.

“I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed,” O’Donnell said. “There is nothing left standing worthy of the name.”

Perhaps the most scathing account of the destruction came from Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

MacArthur had become a national hero for his exploits as commander of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East during the Philippines campaign of World War II, and as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers during the occupation of Japan before he was named Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Command at the onset of the Korean Conflict.

Despite his long and storied career as an officer, he began butting heads with Pres. Harry Truman over how the war in Korea was being conducted. This led to Truman relieving him of his command on April 11, 1951. MacArthur subsequently testified at joint hearings before the Senate’s Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Foreign Relations to discuss his dismissal and the “Military Situation in the Far East.”

“I shrink—I shrink with a horror that I cannot express in words—at this continuous slaughter of men in Korea,” MacArthur lamented during the hearings.

“The war in Korea has already almost destroyed that nation of 20,000,000 people. I have never seen such devastation. I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man, and it just curdled my stomach the last time I was there. After I looked at the wreckage and those thousands of women and children and everything, I vomited … If you go on indefinitely, you are perpetuating a slaughter such as I have never heard of in the history of mankind.”

Neither North Korea nor the United States has ever been able to truly come to terms with the havoc wrought during the conflict.

In North Korea, the war is often referred to as the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War, with the Korean People’s Army being cast as the valiant protector of the virtuous Korean people in the face of American imperialism. North Korean casualties and atrocities—as well as the U.S. strategic bombing campaign—are downplayed or ignored while victories are often exaggerated. This revisionist history falls in line with the “Great Leader” cult of personality promulgated by Kim Il-sung and his heirs who have led the country since the end of the war.

In the United States, the war is somewhat lost in the shadows of World War II and the Vietnam War. It came as Americans were still recovering from the former and was, by comparison, a much smaller and shorter conflict. It lacked the media coverage and cultural impact of the prolonged war in Vietnam. Its legacy was also marred by a preponderance of atrocities—some of them carried out by the United States and its allies—and what in the minds of many Americans ultimately amounted to a defeat by a smaller and weaker enemy.

It wasn’t until 1999 that the United States acknowledged—after a lengthy investigation by the Associated Press—that a 1950 letter from U.S. Ambassador John J. Muccio authorized commanders in the field to adopt a policy of openly massacring civilians.

The policy led to massacres in No Gun Ri and Pohang, among others, in which U.S. soldiers and seamen knowingly fired on civilians. Refugees fleeing North Korea were particularly susceptible to attacks from the U.S. and South Korean militaries under the pretense that North Korean soldiers had infiltrated their numbers in order to orchestrate sneak strikes. Hundreds at a time were killed, many of them women and children.

”We just annihilated them,” Norman Tinkler, a former machine gunner, later told the Associated Press of the massacre at No Gun Ri.

Edward L. Daily, another soldier present at the No Gun Ri, was still haunted by what he witnessed there decades later.

”On summer nights when the breeze is blowing, I can still hear their cries, the little kids screaming,” Daily confessed. ”The command looked at it as getting rid of the problem in the easiest way. That was to shoot them in a group.”

In a follow-up interview with The New York Times, Daily said he could not confirm how many Koreans they killed that day—up to 400 is a common estimate—but added, “[W]e ended up shooting into there until all the bodies we saw were lifeless.”

Daily later earned a battlefield commission for his service in Korea.

A South Korean government commission investigating massacres and mass executions of political prisoners by the militaries of both sides claims to have documented “hundreds of sets of remains” from massacres and estimates that up to 100,000 people died in such incidents.

Any new conflict in Korea is likely to be just as vicious and deadly as the last, if not even more so. The destructive potential of the weaponry possessed by both sides has increased exponentially in the intervening decades. The United States’ nuclear arsenal has greatly expanded, and North Korea has developed its own limited nuclear capabilities.

Even without the use of nuclear weapons, the traditional weapons that would be used are far more powerful today than they were 75 years ago. The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb the United States used in Afghanistan for the first time in April 2017 is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever deployed. Upon impact, the 30-foot long, 22,000 pound, GPS-guided bomb emits a mushroom cloud that can be seen for 20 miles.  It boasts a blast radius of one square mile, demolishing everything within that range.

The Air Force currently has only around 15 MOABs, and they are not capable of penetrating the numerous hardened underground tunnels, bunkers and bases the North Koreans have built. To address that problem, the Pentagon has developed a special bomb designed specifically for underground facilities of the kind built by North Korea and Iran. The 15-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator can supposedly blast through 200 feet of concrete to take out the most hardened subterranean lair.

North Korea’s arsenal isn’t anywhere nearly as advanced as that of the United States, but it is massive. Some analysts have suggested that the regime’s huge stockpile of traditional artillery and rockets would “flatten Seoul in the first half-hour of any confrontation.” That’s probably giving North Korea far too much credit, but its artillery and rocket stockpiles could definitely inflict serious casualties and structural damage to Seoul and its 10 million inhabitants.

Likewise, the bases housing the 29,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in South Korea are also within range of North Korea’s arsenal. History contains a warning—another war would be unpredictable, chaotic and exceedingly brutal.

(This article by Darien Cavanaugh originally appeared at War is Boring in 2017.)

Image: Reuters.

Kris Osborn

Tanks,

APS, as they are called, have been developed, tested, refined, and built into vehicles for many years now to introduce new levels of survivability in armored warfare, something likely to increasingly be characterized by more and more advanced, long-range, and highly precise enemy anti-armor weapons being possessed by enemy forces. 

Is there an Active Protection System that is fast enough--while also effective enough--against a wide sphere of incoming enemy attacks, and lightweight enough to integrate into a heavily armored vehicle that can succeed in addressing the Army’s evolving requirements for future mechanized combat? 

APS, as they are called, have been developed, tested, refined, and built into vehicles for many years now to introduce new levels of survivability in armored warfare, something likely to increasingly be characterized by more and more advanced, long-range, and highly precise enemy anti-armor weapons being possessed by enemy forces. 

The technology, some elements of which date back as far as 20 years, involves the use of highly sensitive sensors to detect incoming RPG or Anti-Tank Guided Missile fire, identify the location, trajectory and expected impact point with computer-enabled fire control algorithms and then fire out an “interceptor” projectile to intercept, explode or simply “knock out” the incoming round before it impacts a vehicle.

Over the years, many interactions and applications of these kinds of systems have been demonstrated with great degrees of success, some of them such as Raytheon’s Quick Kill hemispheric interceptor system dating back as far as the Army’s Future Combat Systems program. The promise of APS, as part of an integrated suite of sensors called a “survivability onion” at the time, in large measure inspired the conceptual basis for engineering lightweight, deployable 27-ton Manned Ground Vehicles. While those vehicles did not come to fruition, the fundamental mission persists with great vigor today. 

This phenomenon, which could even be called a predicament of sorts, informs current Army efforts to architect a new generation of APS architecture called Modular Active Protection Systems. The intent is to engineer the technical infrastructure needed to build and integrate new, lightweight, adaptable APS systems sufficient to propel armored warfare into the future. 

Some recent APS technologies, which have in recent years been tested on armored vehicles such as Bradley infantry carriers and Abrams tanks include The Trophy System, Iron Fist, and Iron Curtain, however, while many assessments show great promise and effectiveness, the Army is still seeking new technical paradigms for APS. 

“We still have a ways to go with APS. It is about the architecture, right? A technical “brain” which will control any effector and any sensor. We can pick the best sensor available and integrate it. At the same time the Abrams is going to be around for a while. It is still the best tank in the world, and APS can add weight to a tank,” Gen. John Murray, Commander, Army Futures Command, told The National Interest in an interview. 

Kris Osborn is the defense editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.