Warship Wednesday, May 22 The Mighty Miss
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, May 22
Mississippi as a brand new battleship in WWI complete with lattice masts and disruptive anti-U boat camouflage
Here we see the New Mexico class battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41) in about 1918. The Mighty Miss had a career much longer than most other WWI-era battleships and gave good service for over forty years.
Laid down just a few months after the start of WWI in Europe, she was commissioned 18 December 1917 some eight months after the entry of the US into the Great War. Built as a oil-fired ship (most other warships of the era were coal burners), her WWI career was spent largely in US waters, a fleet in being along the US East Coast should the High Seas Fleet of Kaiser Wilhelm ever make a sortie to New York. In 1931 she was overhauled and modernized, spending almost all of the time period from 1919-1941 in the Pacific.
(Notice the much lower masts and more streamlined look. She was one of the most modern battleships of WWI, but sadly was pushing obsolescence by 1940)
She would have been at Pearl Harbor more than likely alongside her sisters New Mexico and Idaho, but all three ships were sent to the Atlantic in June 1941 to help enforce the neutrality patrol against Nazi U-Boats. Once the Japanese struck in the Pacific however, Mississippi and her sisters were sent racing back to the Pacific. For the first several months of the war she protected convoys up and down the West Coast as California braced for invasion. In 1943 she helped protect the landings in the Aleutian Islands. After conducting shore bombardments in Peleiu, Makin Island, Kwajalein, and others, she found herself in the last Battleship vs Battleship action– the Battle of Suriago Strait. There, Mississippi herself fired the final salvo in history by a battleship against other warships– contributing to the sinking of Japanese battleship Yamashiro.
(Again with the camouflage. During WWII her armament of anti-aircraft guns steadily increased)
More shore bombardments in the Philippines and Okinawa took place before she witnessed the surrender of Japan in Tokyo Bay, winning a total of eight battle stars. In 1946, while most of the rest of the pre-1938 US battleships were laid up and/or scrapped, Mississippi was reclassified from BB-41 to AG-128 (auxiliary, gunnery training/guided missile ship) and spent the next decade as a platform for development of surface to air and surface to surface missiles. For this her rear turrets were removed to give a platform of missile launchers. Without her, the RIM-2 Terrier and Petrel missiles would never have been adopted.
Mississippi firing Terrier missiles in 1955. This hybrid missile/gun arrangement was a wet-dream for battleship advocates for the next fifty years. When the Iowa class were eventually recommissioned in the early 1980s, they were given 16 harpoon anti-ship missiles and 32 Tomahawk cruise missiles in place of a few of the 5-inch twin mounts, but never a large SAM complement as envisioned earlier.
Stricken in 1956, at the time she was the last pre-WWII battleship in active service with the US Navy. Of the 12 WWII era US dreadnoughts, only three of the Iowa class were on active duty when Mississippi was decommissioned. The other 9 much newer North Carolina, SoDak, Alaska, and Iowa-class battleships and battle cruisers all being laid up in red lead row as members of the mothball fleet. Within a few years all of these except the Iowas would be pulled from mothballs and sent either to live the rest of their lives as museum ships, or broken up.
Mississippi herself was scrapped without ceremony at the end of 1956, just shy of her 40th birthday. Today knick knacks of the ship sail beneath the sea with the modern Virgina-class submarine USS Mississippi, after being carried for a while by a large nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser of the same name while her bell and silver set are on display in her home state.
Specs
Displacement: 32,000 long tons (32,500 t)
Length: 624 ft (190 m)
Beam: 97.4 ft (29.7 m)
Draft: 30 ft (9.1 m)
Speed: 21 kn (24 mph; 39 km/h)
Complement: 55 officers, 1,026 enlisted
Armament: (1917)
12 × 14 in (360 mm) guns,
14 × 5 in (130 mm)/51 cal guns
4 × 3 in (76 mm) guns, and
2 × 21 in (530 mm) torpedo tubes
Armor:
Belt: 8–13.5 in (203–343 mm)
Barbettes: 13 in (330 mm)
Turret face: 18 in (457 mm)
Turret sides: 9–10 in (229–254 mm)
Turret top: 5 in (127 mm)
Turret rear 9 in (229 mm)
Conning tower: 11.5 in (292 mm)
Decks: 3.5 in (89 mm)
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
They Finally Did it……
ATLANTIC OCEAN (May 14, 2013) An X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System (UCAS) demonstrator launches from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77). George H.W. Bush is the first aircraft carrier to successfully catapult launch an unmanned aircraft from its flight deck. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Timothy Walter/Released)
Sunken USCGC Mohawk To Get Underwater Photo Gallery
Past Warship Wednesday subject Mohawk will be getting a diver-viewable photo gallery installed.
“In May, Austrian photographer Andreas Franke plans to hang a series of photographs on Mohawk Veterans Memorial Reef, thus creating a temporary art exhibit only accessible to divers. Helping on the project will be the Lee County Division of Marine Sciences and Joe Weatherby, founder of Reefmakers LLC, a Key West-based company that specializes in sinking ships as artificial reefs.
On July 2, 2012, county scientists and Reefmakers scuttled the 165-foot World War II Coast Guard cutter Mohawk 30 miles off Redfish Pass.”
The News Press also has a great interactive graphic of the Mohawk herself.
Huntington Ingalls Wants to Make a LPD Arsenal Ship to Knock out Ballistic Missiles
Using the basic LPD 17 hull designed for the U.S. Navy’s San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ships — all of which are built by HII — the BMD ship incorporates an Aegis-type phased array radar atop the superstructure. The aft deck, devoid of much of the topside structure of the LPD 17, is ringed by 18 16-cell vertical launch system launchers, for a total of 288 missile cells.
Like the existing Mark 41 and Mark 57 VLS launchers in the fleet, the ship’s VLS would presumably be able to launch a variety of weapons, including SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 Standard missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and other weapons. Forward on the ship, HII placed a fairly large rail gun mount, a system now under development by the Navy. The model features 57mm guns in mounts similar to those on the Littoral Combat Ships and Coast Guard National Security Cutters, but not the Mk 46 30mm mounts fitted to LPD 17s.
Warship Wednesday, May 1 The Michigan Wolverine
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, May 1
Here we see the US Navy’s first iron warship, the gunboat USS Michigan as she appeared around 1905. In the image above, she was already sixty years young.
In 1841 Congress authorized the construction of a side-wheel steam man-of-war for use on the Upper Lakes, to match the British naval strength in those waters. This craft, launched in 1843 was the made using iron as a substitute since in the Lake Erie region at the time quality shipbuilding timber was at a premium.
In the 1860s, she carried a standard dark scheme until the 1890s when she was repainted white
From a 1940s USNI article:
“Practically nothing was known at that time in this country about designing an iron ship, or the technique of fabricating the unfamiliar material. Nor were other than the most primitive construction facilities available at Erie. As a result, the lines adopted for the Michigan were those of the sailing ship of the period, and the frame was designed to afford the requisite structural strength without recourse to the strength available in the hull plating, providing a hull so strong that, despite years of abuse, it is structurally sound today. [100 years later]
I-beams being unknown at the time, the ribs were made from T-bars, and the longitudinals were built-up box structures about 12 inches by 24 inches in cross-section. In all there were five longitudinals, the keel being the only one projecting beyond the skin of the ship. Three of the longitudinals ran the full length of the ship and two were beneath the machinery spaces. The hull plates were all shaped by hand, and the rivet holes were punched by the same means.
The hull material was wrought iron made by the charcoal process in Pittsburgh and carted to Erie. The purity of this material is attested by the fact that the metal is still in excellent condition…The original two-cylinder direct-acting condensing engine, which develops 170 horsepower, still remains in the ship. It has a bedplate that is a cast iron slab 22 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2 inches thick which carries the two 36-inch by 8-feet cylinders. The engine is secured to 14-inch timbers that are inclined at an angle of 22 ½ degrees. Transporting the heavy bedplate 130 miles from Pittsburgh over the roads of that day must have presented a problem to the teamsters.”
When commissioned she was a steamer whose giant paddle-wheel turned enough to give her a speed of 8-knots with an auxiliary sail rig. Planned with twelve 32-pound carronades and two Paixham 8-inch pivot guns, she was to be the most heavily armed craft on the Great Lakes. This brought a protest from Great Britain and instead she was completed with a single (1) 18-pounder.
The Michigan steamed the Great Lakes for 68-years conducting patrols that included intercepting would be crooks, revolutionaries and assassins in the Timber Rebellion, the Beaver-Macinack War, Civil War draft riots in Detroit and Buffalo, the Fenian Raids, the Niagra Raids and the Philo Parsons Affair. She was up-armed during the Civil War with a 30-pounder Parrott rifle, five 20-pounder Parrott rifles, six 24-pounder smoothbores, and two 12-pounder boat howitzers– mainly due to the potential of British intervention in the Civil War, but she did not have to fire a shot in anger. After the war ended her armament was changed to 6 3-pounders, which were more than sufficient for her freshwater duties.
In 1905 the familiar ship was stripped of her name, the Michigan moniker going to a new battleship, and dubbed USS Wolverine (IX-31). In 1912 she stricken from the active Navy List and transferred (still armed) to the Pennsylvania Naval Militia. These naval reservists used her for another 11 years before her engineering plant, then more than 70-years old, gave out. She was kept by the City of Erie, PA as a floating museum and gathering place until her poor condition won over and by the 1940s she was a derelict, settled on the harbor bottom. In January, 1943, the ship was left nameless through transference of its name to an aircraft carrier.
In 1949 she was scrapped, her keel some 107 years old. Of that time she spent 68 years on active duty and another 11 as a reserve training ship. She was the only armed US Navy ship to regularly patrol the Great Lakes.
Today her foremast remains in Fairport Harbor, Ohio, made into a flagpole and erected in 1950. Her cutaway iron prow, showing impressive construction techniques, is at the Erie Maritime Museum and her anchor is on public display at a park
Specs:
Displacement: 685 tons
Length: 163 ft (50 m)
Beam: 27 ft (8.2 m)
Draft: 9 ft (2.7 m)
Propulsion: 2 × 330 ihp (250 kW) steam engines
Speed: 10.5 kn (12.1 mph; 19.4 km/h)
Capacity: 115 tons of coal
Complement: 88 officers and men
Armament:
As Michigan:
Original: 1 × 18-pounder
American Civil War: 1 × 30-pounder Parrott rifle, 5 × 20-pounder Parrott rifles, 6 × 24-pounder smoothbores, 2 × 12-pounder boat howitzers
As Wolverine: 6 × 3-pounders (47 mm (1.9 in)), 2 one-pounder rapid fire
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO) They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
Navy Enters the Laser Age With Shooting Down of UAV
http://www.firearmstalk.com/entries/Navy-Enters-the-Laser-Age-With-Shooting-Down-of-UAV.html
Back in 2007, the US Navy started looking at high-energy lasers for use as an active weapon. The most promising of these, the Laser Weapons System (LaWS) has already downed target aircraft and is on the way to the fleet.
(The LaWS prototype aboard the USS Dewey in 2012)
The LaWS uses series of six commercially available 5.4-kW fiber lasers focused through a frequency doubling crystal. This active laser system can fire a very tight 32kW beam at line of sight ranges than can travel in excess of 10-miles on a clear day. The typical commercially availible red laser pointer is about 1 milliwatts and is advertised to be able to damage your retinas if you stare into it. This laser is 32-kW, which means that it is 32,000,000-times more powerful than the thing you chase your cat around the house with. It costs some $32-million to develop, which may seem like a lot but when compared to such high-tech weapons as the multi-billion dollar F-35, it’s a comparative bargain.
How effective is it?
In a recent test aboard the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Dewey last summer the LaWS prototype downed a BQM-147A target UAV drone. This weapon, when fielded will be able to shoot down slow moving aircraft, such as UAVs and helicopters, as well as be able to engage small boats and possibly even targets ashore. Its beam does not have to destroy the target if not required. It can simply damage it, blind its sensors, or in the place of a small boat, kill its engine and leave it dead in the water.
Warning shots
If just a small portion of the laser energy is used, rather than a full power blast, an intense and visible beam can be projected to significant ranges to provide a clear and unmistakable warning that a potential target is about to be zapped unless an immediate change in their behavior is observed. This feature could also be used as a laser dazzler, a sort of less-lethal weapon, to disorient and warn away the crew of an aircraft or ship. In short the LaWS could be used to ‘flash’ an approaching unidentified craft at long distances, in the hope that a little bit of eye irritation could result in saving lives on both sides. While the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons bans weapons designed to cause permanent blindness, the use of the LaWS in this sense could be examined if it could be turned down enough to not cause permanent damage.
A test video of the LaWS in action, shooting down a remotely piloted UAV drone. Pretty dramatic footage. From the Navy’s website: “120804-N-ZZ999-001 SAN DIEGO, Calif. (Jul. 30, 2012) the Laser Weapon System (LaWS) temporarily installed aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey (DDG 105) (shown here conducting an operational test) in San Diego, Calif., is a technology demonstrator built by the Naval Sea Systems Command from commercial fiber solid state lasers, utilizing combination methods developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. LaWS can be directed onto targets from the radar track obtained from a MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon system or other targeting source. The Office of Naval Research’s Solid State Laser (SSL) portfolio includes LaWS development and upgrades providing a quick reaction capability for the fleet with an affordable SSL weapon prototype. This capability provides Navy ships a method for Sailors to easily defeat small boat threats and aerial targets without using bullets. (U.S. Navy video by Office of Naval Research/ Released)”
Smoke one UAV
Costs $1 per shot
According to the Navy, the LaWS can fire a full-power burst that costs less than $1 per session. By comparison a SM-2MR surface to air missile, the Navy’s standard plane and missile killer for the past thirty years, costs about $400,000 a pop. Even smaller close in point defense type missiles such as the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) can run over $700K apiece. Further, whereas the number of missiles, shells, and bullets carried by a ship is always finite, as long as the ship’s engineering department can produce power, the LaWS can be fired.
This beast is the old 1989-era Sea Lite Beam Director, the Navy’s first active high-energy laser. Well, the USN has now figured out how to shrink this down to package that is more pallet-sized than supersized.
How will it look when it is adopted?
LaWS will deploy on the Persian Gulf next year on the USS Ponce. The Ponce is a nearly 50-year old former amphibious warfare ship that had been converted to an Afloat Forward Staging Base inthe Persian Gulf. An experimental Ord-Alt’ed CIWS on the Ponce is expected to carry the system sometime after October 2013.
The current US Navy’s Phalanx MK15 Close In Weapons System (CIWS) fires a high-speed computer controlled radar guided 20mm Gatling gun at over 4500-rounds per minute. It’s expected that the Navy will add the LaWS laser to this already cutting-edge gun after 2016.
(The red ‘can’ on the side of the CIWS is the LaWS laser…coming to the fleet at least in experimental form as early as this year)
The Navy is intending to add this system to the more than 250 CIWS Phalanx mounts found through the fleet. These devices are the familiar R2D2-looking systems that marry a small radar, fire-control system, and 20mm Vulcan cannon to track targets out to 10 miles away and destroy them once they are within 2.2-miles with accurate gunfire. The addition of the LaWS laser to this will allow the CIWS to engage threats first with the laser then with the 20mm Vulcan if needed.
This combined laser/gun mount, after testing and acceptance will be known as the CIWS Mk 15 Mod 41 with production and fielding in the fleet by 2017.
Times, it seems, they are a changing.
North Korea says what?
Warship Wednesday, April 24 Surcouf!
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, April 24
Here we see one of that most peculiar types of ships– the cruiser submarine. These big gun submersibles were seen as the most logical extension of the commerce raider after World War One. During the Great War, gun-armed auxiliary cruisers with long ranges circled the globe. These ships, like the Mowe and the Wolf took dozens of prizes while submarines on all sides took hundreds– but had short legs. So, after 1919, the thinking was that you could take a large submarine with an extended cruising range, add a few large guns and some extra equipment, and bingo: the cruiser submarine. This particular example is the French Surcouf.
Named after Robert Surcouf, the Napoleonic French pirate (err….make that privateer, let’s be PC here!), this huge sub was built to be a swashbuckler. The namesake privateer and his brother Nicolas between 1789 and 1808 captured over 40 British and Portuguese prizes while flying the French flag alongside his own banner. Napoleon even offered him a Captain’s rank in the French Navy and command of a pair of new frigates, but Surcouf couldn’t take the pay cut.
Statue of Surcouf in Saint-Malo by Alfred Caravanniez, built in 1903. Swashbuckler complete with cutlass…
The submarine that carried the name of this often forgotten sea dog was ordered December 1927, after the Washington Naval Treaty placed a limit on cruisers. Skirting the treaty by adding cruiser-sized guns to a submarine, the London Naval Treaty of 1931 limited both the overall displacement of and the size of guns carried by submarines moving forward, making Surcouf the only submarine of her class. Over 361-feet long and 4400-tons when at a full load submerged, she carried an impressive armament of 12 torpedo tubes and two 8-inch (203mm) naval guns.
a side view of the 8-inch guns on the submarine. Note the muzzle tampinions.
The guns, 203mm/50 Modèle 1924 weapons just like the kind mounted on the Duquesne and Suffren classes of heavy cruisers as main battery, were the among the largest ever placed aboard a submarine. (The top prize goes to the three WWI-era British Royal Navy M Class submarines fitted with a deck-mounted 30.48-cm (12-in) gun taken from battleship stores. These subs were all out of service by 1932). On Surcouf, two guns were mounted in a sealed turret ahead of the conning tower. Fitted with mechanically actuated tampions to allow quick diving, these guns could open fire 2.5 minutes after surfacing and fire approximately 3 rounds per minute. Maximum elevation of 30 degrees limited maximum range to 21 nmi/39 km with a 270-pound shell. Of course only 60 rounds were carried for these great guns (hey, it’s a submarine!) but these 8-inchers were pretty amazing.
The rear of the conning tower held the cutest little seaplane. This is similar to the Dry Deck Shelter (DDS) used by the US Navy since 1982 at least in overall concept anyway.
To help spot for the guns a small 2500-pound Besson MB.411 seaplane, specifically made just for the sub, was carried. This plane could putter at around 100 kts for two hours, allowing its pilot and on board observer to correct the artillery of the sub. For seizing prizes at sea during commerce raiding missions, the Surcouf had space for 60 prisoners and held a 15-foot motor whaleboat in a sealed welldeck. While not specified, its conceivable that the large submarine with extra space could have been used for commando type missions. The French boat is almost a dead ringer in size to the USS Argonaut, the submarine used to carry 120 of Carlson’s Marine Raiders to hit Makin Island in 1942.
Alas, for all her potential, this huge and well armed submersible never had a combat career. Commissioned in May 1934 on the eve of WWII, she suffered from mechanical issues. She narrowly escaped capture in France in 1940 by limping away to England where she became part of General de Gaulle’s tiny Free French Navy. Her only service was in escorting an occasional Atlantic Convoy and in seizing (liberating?) the Vichy French colony of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in 1941 without a shot. During this operation Surcouf served as flagship for Admiral Muselier and his three small gunboats, which combined were less than half the warship that the submarine was.
From World at War :
“Christmas Eve, 1941
The predawn blackness over the frigid waters of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence is broken by the flash of signal lamps, “Execute the mission ordered.”. A Free French task force slips past the undefended entrance to the harbor of Saint Pierre. A lookout reports no signs of life on shore. His Captain replies, “They sleep and dream of us for Christmas.”. The mail boat to Miquelon approaches and is ordered to turned about and follow along side. It complies. A fishing dory emerges from the mist and passes the flotilla unmolested. The corvettes near the snow covered coal wharf. A solitary figure, an ancient Breton fisherman, spies the Cross of Lorraine and races down the Quai de Ronciere. The click clack of the old man’s sabots on the icy pavement and his bilingual curses, “Petain, le sacre bleu cochon, le old goat!” can be heard across the whole of the island. Sailors on the first of the ships to brush the dock toss him the bowline. As he secures it to the bollard the man exclaims again, “Vive de Gaulle, at last I can say it. Vive de Gaulle!”.
Free French sailors and marines in full battle dress race from their ships. By now a crowd of bleary eyed Saint Pierrais has gathered to cheer them on with shouts of Vive de Gaulle!, Vive Muselier! Homemade banners, Tricolors emblazoned with Croix de Lorraine, flutter in the chill North Atlantic breeze. The assault force, intent on seizing the town’s key administrative centers; the town hall, post office, telegraph station and radio transmitter, seems oblivious to their welcome. They meet no resistance. The island’s 11 gendarmes surrender their Vichy supplied machine guns and offer to assist in rounding up the usual suspects. Not a shot is fired nor a drop of blood spilled.
The operation is over in half an hour.”
When the Japanese came into the war, it was thought that Surcouf could live up to her name sinking Nippon Maru’s in the Pacific but she disappeared in route.
It is thought she was sunk on or about February 18. 1942 after a collision near Panama. Her wreck is thought to lie more than 3000-feet deep and has never been found. She was announced lost April 18, 1942 and stricken from the French Naval List the next year.
The plaque to the submarine’s honor at Cherbourg, her original WWII home port. It lists the names of the 130 officers and men whose fate to this day lie somewhere on this lost warship.
Specs
Displacement: 3,250 long tons (3,300 t) (surfaced)
4,304 long tons (4,373 t) (submerged)
2,880 long tons (2,930 t) (dead)
Length: 110 m (361 ft)
Beam: 9 m (29 ft 6 in)
Draft: 7.25 m (23 ft 9 in)
Installed power: 7,600 hp (5,700 kW) (surfaced)
3,400 hp (2,500 kW) (submerged)
Propulsion: 2 × Sulzer diesel engines (surfaced)
2 × electric motors (submerged)
2 × screws
Speed: 18.5 knots (34.3 km/h; 21.3 mph) (surfaced)
10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph) (submerged)
Range: Surfaced:
18,500 km (10,000 nmi; 11,500 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph)
12,600 km (6,800 nmi; 7,800 mi) at 13.5 kn (25.0 km/h; 15.5 mph)
Submerged:
130 km (70 nmi; 81 mi) at 4.5 kn (8.3 km/h; 5.2 mph)
110 km (59 nmi; 68 mi) at 5 kn (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph)
Endurance: 90 days
Test depth: 80 m (260 ft)
Boats & landing
craft carried: 1 × motorboat in watertight deck well
Capacity: 280 long tons (280 t)
Complement: 8 officers and 110 men
Armament: 2 × 203 mm (8 in) guns (1×2)
2 × 37 mm (1.46 in) anti-aircraft guns (2×1)
4 × 13.2 mm (0.52 in) anti-aircraft machine guns (2×2)
8 × 550 mm (22 in) torpedo tubes (14 torpedoes)
4 × 400 mm (16 in) torpedo tubes (8 torpedoes)
Aircraft carried: 1 × Besson MB.411 floatplane
If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO)
They are possibly one of the best sources of naval lore http://www.warship.org/naval.htm
The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.
Nearing their 50th Anniversary, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.
I’m a member, so should you be!
The Oerlikon Cannon: The legendary 20mm Kamikaze killer
You are a 19-year old US sailor in the Pacific in 1944 and you hear the characteristic drone of an approaching radial engine fighter aircraft cuts through the thick heat of the salt air. You look up and see the red ‘meatball’ markings on the wings and your heart sinks as you realize it’s one of ‘theirs’ and, more importantly, it’s a racing strait towards you at over 300-miles per hour. Luckily, you have a mother-freaking gorgeous 20mm Oerlikon pressed against your shoulders and the most advanced gun sight of its day to help make sure the kamikaze doesn’t run right down your throat
Back in 1918, German arms engineer Reinhold Becker came up with a 20x80mm round that fired using primer ignition blowback in a very large machine gun to fire at 300-rounds per minute. This gun was to be used to help sweep the sky of the Western Front of those pesky thousands of American, British, and French biplanes in the last year of World War 1. Too bad for Becker, (not to mention the Kaiser) the guns were never made in enough numbers to affect the war and his design was shelved.
In 1934 the Swiss based company of Oerlikon Contraves (Oerlikon being the name of the town the factory was located in and contra-aves being Latin for “against birds”) dusted off Becker’s design and super-sized it to be able to better shoot down the more modern fighters of the 1930s.
This gun, typically just referred to as the 20mm Oerlikon, became perhaps one of the most effective AAA (antiaircraft artillery) cannons of World War 2.
Read the rest in my column at GUNS.com
Warship Wednesday, April 17, Bring your Red Cap
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week.
- Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, April 17
Here we see that most ignored class of naval warship, the humble minesweeper. This particular one had more of a history that others. With a war coming in 1941, the US Navy designed and ordered built a huge class of auxiliary minesweepers to help keep the harbors, coasts, and sea lanes clear from those infernal devices. Dubbed the YMS-1 (Yard Mine Sweeper) class, they were simple 136-foot long boats with twin GM disels, sweep gear, and a 3″ gun for those special moments. A 32-man crew of bluejackets would man the rails. In all some 481 of these boats would be ordered from 1941-45 from 35 different yacht makers around the country. Eighty YMS minesweepers were ordered from US yards for transfer under lend-lease to the UK as the BYMS-class minesweeper, and one of these is the subject of this article.
The simple wooden hulled ship was ordered in 1941 from Ballard Marine Railway Co., Inc., Seattle, WA. Commissioned as HM J-826 in February 1943, she served in the Royal Navy. Renamed HM BYMS-2026 in 1944, she finished the war in the Med before being decommissioned in 1946 and laid up at Malta. Struck from the Royal Navy Register 10 June 1947, she was returned to U.S. custody 1 August 1947. The US Navy disarmed her and removed her sweeping and communication gear then sold her to a British businessman the same year. I mean Uncle Sam already had hundreds of these wooden boats, why bring back another one?
Her sistership, USS YMS-328, one of the few YMS ships still around was bought after the war by a fellow named John Wayne who is considered to be something of a classic actor or sorts. Rechristened the Wild Goose, she still plies the California coastline.
The businessman named her Calypso and after use as a ferry in the Malta area, leased her to a former French Naval officer named Jacques-Yves Cousteau for one British pound per year in 1950. Over the next 47 years Cousteau made several improvements to the minesweeper including changing the accommodations to include 27 in Captain’s Quarters, Six Staterooms & Crew Quarters, adding Photo & Science Labs, an underwater observation chamber, a small helicopter landing pad (on a 136 foot ship!), a Yumbo 3-ton hydraulic crane, and waterscooter and minisub storage holds.
Calypso
After decades of wandering the world’s oceans in Cousteau’s real life aquatic, Calypso was sunk in a January 1996 accident in Singapore where she lay on the harbor floor for 8 days before being raised and salvaged. Sadly she has not sailed under her own power since then.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 and for the past 16 years the Calypso has been in turns neglected and then restored, then neglected again while legal battles over which group owned the ship ensued. Currently it is owned by the Equipe Cousteau Association who is raising money for a restoration and conversion to a museum ship.
The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed. – Jacques Cousteau
original plans, YMS class sweepers
Specs:
Displacement 270 t.
Length 136′
Beam 24′ 6″
Draft 8′
Speed 15 kts.
Complement 32
Armament: One 3″/50 dual purpose gun mount, two 20mm mounts and two depth charge projectors (removed in 1947) (Post 1950- Spearguns and swagger)
Propulsion: (as designed) Two 800bhp General Motors 8-268A diesel engines, Snow and Knobstedt single reduction gear, two shafts.
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