Standby for Shotline

lier, including a captured enemy collier.² The first battle­ship to get the coaling-at-sea system was the Illinois (BB-7). The system was tested at sea in 1904. The trial board and the commanding officer strongly recommended its removal because of the space taken up by the transfer- at-sea gear and the difficulties in rigging the system on the battleship.

Meanwhile, the Imperial Russian Navy was fretting about how it was going to sail its Baltic Fleet 18,000 miles to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. There was a lack of Russian coaling stations along the route. The Russians contracted with Miller to outfit ten of their warships with his coaling-at-sea system, and they chartered 60 merchant colliers to accompany the fleet to the Pacific.

Over the next decade, Miller redesigned his system to put all the gear on the collier except for a portable sliding padeye on the battleship. Trials were conducted in 1913 with the battleship South Carolina (BB-26) towing the collier Cyclops with a 300-foot tensioned highline rigged between the fantail of the battleship and the forecastle of the collier. This system demonstrated an excellent 80- tons-per-hour transfer rate.³

Despite the success of the demonstration, coaling-at-sea gear, because of the Illinois's experience, had acquired a bad name among battleship officers. The Navy finally stopped further engineering development in 1914 when coaling-at-sea became a less critical operational require­ment as fuel oil became available for ships’ boilers.

The Navy’s first operational UnRep system was a jury- rigged fuel oil hose method used to replenish four-stack destroyers in transit to Europe at the beginning of World War I. Thirty-four destroyers were refueled alongside the oiler Maumee (AO-2) in the North Atlantic between April and July 1917. The alongside refueling method was con­ceived by Maumee personnel whose executive officer/en- gineering officer was Lieutenant Chester Nimitz.⁴ In the late 1930s, at the request of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William Leahy, the same technique was success­fully tested to refuel aircraft carriers. These tests were conducted by Task Force 7 during the winter of 1938-39 under the command of an officer very familiar with the technique, Rear Admiral Nimitz. The method became known as the close-in-rig (ship separation of 40 to 60 feet) and was the Navy’s standard refueling method throughout World War II. Close-in-rig is still an authorized method of refueling.

UnRep was limited to refueling operations until the last year of World War II. In December 1944, anticipating that Iwo Jima and Okinawa would be heavily defended, Admi­ral Raymond Spruance directed his Fifth Fleet staff to de­velop a rearming-at-sea capability for the fast carriers of Task Force 58 so they could stay on station and fight as long as needed. His staff, under Captain Burton Biggs, jury-rigged the Burton method (which is still an authorized method) in just a few weeks using available winches and booms on aircraft carriers and on merchant ships that acted in those days as fleet ammunition ships.⁵ The chief of staff for Task Force 58 fast carriers during the Iwo Jima and Okinawa operations was Commodore Arleigh Burke. Though appreciating the obvious tactical improvement provided by rearming and refueling, Commodore Burke was also mindful of the price paid in terms of the many hours spent by the task force steaming to the UnRep group and in the time spent alongside the UnRep ships. These were hours in which his ships were out of combat. Later, when he became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), he would remember those experiences and take action ^t0 drastically improve UnRep.⁶

When the Korean Conflict started in June 1950, the only active Pacific Fleet ammunition ship was in Port Chi­cago, California, and she was not loaded for carrier com bat operations. It took two months to get the first ammuru tion ship on the line off Korea. During this time, the carriers had to return to port to be rearmed.⁷ Throughou the remaining three years of the Korean Conflict, the NaV) reactivated the World War II merchant ships and jury-^rl§ techniques to support Task Force 77. The carriers and their escorts were replenished near the bombline every f°^ days. This high-tempo mobile logistic support brought UnRep into perspective as a system vital to the Navy be cause it makes a few combatant ships the equal of many- Except for crew endurance limitations, ships supported by UnRep can remain on station to patrol or fight for an un limited amount of time.

The Korean Conflict also highlighted the serious limita­tions of the World War II jury-rig transfer methods and the inefficiencies and safety hazards of using merchant ship^s for rearming aircraft carriers. UnRep during Korea '^vaS basically a daytime, fair-weather system. It required ten hours for an aircraft carrier to come alongside an oiler f°^r fuel, breakaway and come alongside an ammunition ship for ordnance, and breakaway and come alongside a stores ship for provisions.⁸

When Admiral Arleigh Burke became CNO in 195 ’ UnRep still had not changed from the methods that con strained him during combat operations in World War H- November 1957, Admiral Burke initiated a major ih¹ provement program for UnRep. The CNO announced thu he was not merely proposing building new UnRep ship^s- He wanted a new UnRep concept, one that would rep^re sent a technological breakthrough to minimize the tim^e combatants spent in UnRep and one that would be ope^ra tional day or night in fair weather or foul.⁹         ,

The technological breakthrough was actually achieve through the efforts of Admiral Burke’s own staff. '^v/|C‘- Admiral Ralph Wilson (Op-04) and his officers worke^ with the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Central Technical Oft¹¹’¹" to develop the concept of the fast combat support ship (AOE). This large, high-speed UnRep ship was desig^ne to carry and transfer simultaneously fuel, food, and ^a|¹¹ munition. Combatant ships coming alongside this mu product UnRep ship could get everything they needed ¹ only one stop instead of having to come alongside thr^ea single-product ships. With this concept, the time to unde way replenish an aircraft carrier was reduced from hours to three. The AOE was given the speed to stay '^V1 and be protected by the carrier task force, thus allo'^vin- the combatant ships to come alongside the AOE for ^re plenishment anytime the enemy and operational comm¹ ments permitted. The proposed plan in 1957 was to but

an AOE for every Forrestal (CVA-59)-class aircraft car­rier in operation.

Rear Admiral Ralph James, Chief of the Bureau of Ships, assigned Commander Wayne Hoof as the AOE ship design coordinator and the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard as the designer and builder for the first AOE. Together, they did a superb job in carrying the AOE concept to comple­tion. Although more ships were planned, cost considera­tions were cited later as the reason for limiting construc­tion to only four AOEs. Fortunately, the design and Planned construction of a second generation of AOEs is now under way. It is a tribute to the original ship designers that the new AOEs will be very similar to the USS Sacra­mento (AOE-1), the first of the class. Unfortunately, be­cause of costs, the new AOE is being reduced in size and UnRep capability.

The concept of a multiproduct UnRep ship operating with a carrier task force and providing one-stop UnRep is considered the most significant advancement in the long history of underway replenishment. Although the benefits of this concept appear so obvious today, the concept prob­ably would never have been implemented except for the efforts of this particular CNO. Admiral Burke understood through his own experience that the Navy needed an UnRep system for combat operations in which enemy action dictates when and where the fleet commander re­plenishes his combatants.

The AOE, without a high-performance, all-weather cargo transfer system, would simply be a large, fast, ex­pensive cargo ship. The operational concept of the AOE Was to limit the time combatant ships would be alongside to the time required to fuel. Ammunition and stores not transferred during fueling would be flown to the combat­ants by the two versatile H-46 helicopters carried by the AOE. The alongside transfer system for the AOE was de­veloped in 1959-61 for the Bureau of Ships by a small group of engineers attached to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard. The new rigs, now called standard tensioned replenishment alongside methods (STREAMs), use a hy-

It required enough rigging to resemble something out of a Spiderman cartoon, but Spencer Miller’s sliding padeye coaling-at-sea system was a proven success. In only one hour, the battleship South Carolina took on 83 tons of coal in 52 loads from the collier Cyclops.

draulic ram tensioner to keep a highline taut between the ships at all times (up to a 300-foot ship separation) no matter how the two ships roll. Loads are hauled across with a trolley running along the tensioned highline. A slid­ing block raises the highline and the load on the UnRep ship. A sliding padeye lowers the highline and the load on the combatant ship. Loads as large as the largest, heaviest missiles and aircraft engines now in service and planned can be transferred. Transfer rates of two-minutes-per-load are regularly sustained.

During their research into development of an all­weather high-performance transfer rig, the UnRep engi­neers at San Francisco discovered descriptions of the Spencer Miller, Esq., coaling-at-sea system at the Univer­sity of California Library in the 1899 to 1914 Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Compared to the jury-rigs still being used by the Navy, the innovative methods that Miller had developed and tested at sea at the turn of the century looked like a technological breakthrough. Essentially, today’s STREAM system is a modem version of Miller’s early engineering designs. The problems and solutions involved in rapidly and safely hauling coal bags between ships under way in 1902 or pallets of ammunition today have proven to be remarkably similar. Western navies and the Soviet Navy have since copied the U. S. STREAM tensioned highline system.

The Soviet Navy got into technical trouble with their first generation of specially designed UnRep ships, the Boris Chilikin class, which came into service in 1971. The Soviets must have assumed they were installing a copy of the latest U. S. STREAM system in these ships. What they actually copied was an experimental, one-of-a-kind transfer rig that a U. S. Navy contractor had assembled at his plant in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Rockville, Maryland. Operational tests of this one-of-a-kind rig were clearly visible from public streets around the plant. The experimental rig proved to be unsafe as well as impractical and was never installed on U. S. Navy UnRep ships, only on Soviet UnRep ships. The Soviets turned the job of de­signing and building their next generation of UnRep ships over to Finland. The Finns were able to more accurately copy the real U. S. STREAM system in the Soviets’ Dubna class, which came into service in 1974.

Another mobile logistic concept developed at the same time as the AOE was the combat stores ship. The original 1957 proposal was to convert four Essex (CVA-9)-class carriers to a mobile base for the new carrier-on-deck (COD) logistic plane that would carry loads up to the size of jet engines. COD aircraft as well as helicopters would operate from the converted carriers to move priority fleet freight out to the task force ships. Converting the carriers would require each ship to be manned with about 1,000 men. It was soon decided to build combat stores ships

(AFSs) instead, each manned with about 400 men and outfitted with ten alongside STREAM transfer rigs and two logistics helicopters. The COD plane would operate from the attack carrier.

Many of the aging Essex-class aircraft carriers were eventually modified for the antisubmarine warfare (ASW) role. They became ASW support aircraft carriers (CVSs). A new design, multiproduct UnRep ship, the replenish­ment oiler (AOR), was developed in the mid-1960s to support CVS task forces. The AOR was intended to oper­ate as a one-stop UnRep ship similar to the AOE. How­ever, the AOR speed was limited to two-thirds of the AOE, based on cost-effectiveness studies. In addition, the AOR was given only a small fraction of the ammunition capacity of the AOE, based only on the expected missile expenditures by the CVS escorts.

Seven AORs were built, but not all to support CVS task forces; some were built as low-cost substitutes for AOEs. The real differences between the two types of ships was not fully appreciated until the remote Indian Ocean opera­tions, which commenced in late 1979, proved the need to sail an AOE with each battle group. The reason for assum­ing the AOR might be able to perform the AOE mission goes back to the Vietnam War. During the latter half of the war, the first AOR deployed and was used on Yankee Station as an AOE because the attack carriers insisted on only one stop for fuel, ammunition, and stores. The slower speed of the AORs was not a problem on Yankee Station since the carriers were not going anywhere, and Subic Bay was nearby. However, the fact that the AOR had only a small fraction of the ammunition stowage an half the ammunition transfer capability of an AOE was a problem because each carrier was taking up to 600 tons per replenishment.

The USS Wichita (AOR-1), during her first deployment in 1969, devised jury-rig methods for AORs that temp⁰' rarily increased their ammunition-carrying and transfer capability. From the aircraft carrier’s perspective, it °f^ton seemed as though the AOR was performing like an AOE- But on the AOR, there were safety problems; large quanta ties of ammunition would be stacked loosely on the weather decks, and starboard transfer rigs were crosse over to the portside in order to double the number of am munition rigs to the carrier. Since Vietnam, there have been proposals to upgrade AOR ammunition capability- implementation has been limited to installing facilities f°^r two helicopters in the AORs.

When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became CNO in 1970> the size of the U. S. fleet was rapidly shrinking, and fun°^s for new ships were seriously limited. Seven of the Navy s fleet oilers needed replacement, but they could be replac^e° only by sacrificing the building of combatant ships, whi° were also badly needed. In order to build more combatan ships instead of fleet oilers, Admiral Zumwalt proposed t° copy the Soviet method of using merchant tankers to re fuel combatant ships.¹⁰            .

In 1971, the Soviets were just beginning to show thei^f flag around the world. They were refueling their cruised and destroyers with a World War II jury-rig developed by the British consisting of towing a hose astern of the m^er chant tanker. The Soviets did this because they had n° UnRep ships. Ironically, at the same time the Unite States was considering the Soviet system, the Soviets wer^e putting a priority effort on replacing their merchant tan ers with built-for-purpose UnRep ships.

A CNO project was established to test Admiral Zum wait’s idea. The test ship was the merchant tanker SS Ern^cl Elizabeth. The project concluded that cruisers and de stroyers could be refueled by an astern fueling rig from t ^e Erna Elizabeth. Much more time was required for refu^e

^lng because the merchant tanker could refuel only one combatant at a time using a single hose. (The fleet oiler could refuel two combatants at a time using two hoses to each ship.) It was also demonstrated that an aircraft carrier could receive fuel from the Erna Elizabeth by using two hose rigs the carrier has installed for fueling her escorts. In terms of alongside time, a normal three-hour carrier re­fueling from an UnRep ship using five fueling hoses Would take more than seven hours alongside a merchant tanker with only two hoses.¹¹

The Zumwalt plan became highly political when it gath­ered strong support from maritime unions, which made it clear they wanted the plan extended beyond just fueling- at-sea by merchant tankers. There was great concern by some Navy people that the Zumwalt plan could get out of control and eventually cause all underway replenishment to be turned over to the low-bid contractor, thereby possi­bly reducing the Navy’s UnRep capability to something like the jury-rig days of World War II. This concern was heightened by several technical papers published on the subject. The papers stressed the great reduction in con­struction and operating costs for merchant ships compared to expensive Navy UnRep ships, but they ignored the criti­cal value of minimizing the time a fleet commander must spend conducting UnRep during wartime.¹²

The original Zumwalt plan was considerably modu­lated, but it still caused major changes in the way Navy conducts UnRep today. For example, military crews have been replaced with smaller civil service crews in 13 of the fleet oilers, four stores ships, and one ammunition ship. The civil service crews perform their jobs in a loyal and professional manner. In addition, merchant tankers under contract, instead of fleet oilers, are being used to haul fuel from refineries to a position near the battle group. In an emergency, they can transfer fuel to combatant ships by jury-rigs. The Merchant Marine conducts this mission ef­ficiently in remote areas of the Indian Ocean.

Whether by good planning or by good luck, a doctrine for U. S. Navy underway replenishment is finally evolv­ing 28 years after Admiral Burke initiated a high-perfor­mance UnRep system and 13 years after Admiral Zumwalt proposed turning fueling-at-sea operations over to the Merchant Marine.

This doctrine recognizes three levels of UnRep support: at the high end are military-manned, multiproduct, high- capability AOEs; in the middle level are civil service- manned or military-manned, single-product, less capable UnRep ships (oilers, ammunition ships, and stores ships); and at the low end are contract-operated merchant ships with only wartime emergency UnRep capability.¹³

The doctrine supports the following mobile logistic sup­port force composition. An AOE operates with each battle group. Supporting each AOE is a fleet oiler, an ammuni­tion ship, and a stores ship. These single-product ships keep the multiproduct AOE topped off with fuel, ammuni­tion, and stores. The single-product ships can also replen­ish combatant ships, and therefore they provide a vital casualty mode backup to the AOE. Merchant tankers haul fuel from friendly bases out to a safe rendezvous point near the battle group. Breakbulk cargo ships, in limited numbers, do the same with ammunition and stores. At the rendezvous point, the single-product UnRep ships unload the merchant ships while underway using the UnRep ship transfer rigs. The number of merchant ships required de­pends on the distance of battle groups from friendly bases and the tempo of battle group operations.

This doctrine will serve the Navy well into the future for any scenario involving aircraft carriers. It is a truly cost- effective compromise that ensures high-performance un­derway replenishment in combat situations as demanded by Admiral Burke. It also supports Admiral Zumwalt’s low-cost theory to effectively use merchant ships and re­duce military manpower for underway replenishment.

'Nathan Miller, The U. S. Navy: An Illustrated History (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1977), p. 215.

"Spencer Miller, Esq., “Coaling Vessels At Sea,” Vol. VII, 1899 Transactions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, p. 1.

"Spencer Miller, Esq., “Refueling Warships At Sea,” Vol. XXII, 1914 Transac­tions of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, p. 157.

“Chester W. Nimitz, “The Navy's Secret Weapon,” Petroleum Today Snrina 1961, p. 9.

"Meeting on 16 September 1952 between the author and Rear Admiral Burton B. Biggs, Commander, Service Squadron Three.

"Correspondence 30 October 1981, from Arleigh Burke to the author.

"James A. Field, Jr., History of United States Naval Operations—Korea (Washing­ton D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 79.

"Marvin O. Miller, "Mobile Logistic Support for Aircraft Carriers,” American Society of Naval Engineers Journal, August 1977, p. 53.

“Second CNO Mobile Logistics Support Conference, Washington, D.C., 4-7 No­vember 1957.

^l0Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., ''High-Low,” Proceedings. April 1976, p. 50.

¹ 'Billy Phillips, Report to the CNO on 14 April 1972, Navy/MarAd Project Charger Log I.

'"Kathy Robinson, “Using Commercial Tankers and Containerships for Navy Un­derway Replenishment,” American Society of Naval Engineers Journal, April

1. p. 34.

'"Honorable George A. Sawyer, Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Shipbuilding and Logistics), Interview with Thomas W. Lippntan, Los Angeles Times 1 September

1981.

Mr. Miller is the manager of the Underway Replenishment Department at the Naval Ship Weapon Systems Engineering Station, Port Hueneme, California. His career in underway replenishment began in 1952 at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. He transferred to Port Hueneme in 1964. Mr. Miller is a graduate of the University of Michigan in naval architec­ture and marine engineering, and he is the recipient of the Navy’s Distin­guished Civilian Service Award for his contributions to improving underway replenishments.