Shoestring Logistics: Lessons from Guadalcanal
(See E. Schuck, pp. 37–41, November 2019)
Commander Schuck wholly omits the key “logistics lesson learned” from the initial Guadalcanal landings: the necessity that large amphibious assault vessels and transports be combat-loaded to permit rapid access to urgently needed supplies.
Early in that operation, attack transports withdrew to nearby Tulagi to combat-load. Their wardrooms soon included a “combat cargo officer”—usually a Marine Corps captain—in the permanent ship’s company.
That is exactly what my combat-loaded USS Monrovia (APA-31) had in the Med and Caribbean during the height of the Cold War, including the Berlin, Cuban, and Dominican Republic crises in 1959–62.
— T. R. Murphy, Life Member
Every Marine Is Not a Rifleman
(See D. Hill, pp. 16–17, November 2019)
As a naval dental officer in 1975, I was the surprise winner (as a noncombat arms naval officer) of the 3rd Marine Division Excellence in Marksmanship award, having won the rifle and the rifle-and-pistol aggregate in the division intramural matches. As a longtime target shooting enthusiast, it pains me somewhat to agree with Sergeant Hill.
Formal target shooting on a manicured range has been the standard for more than 100 years. It still has a place, by emphasizing the integrated act of firing well-aimed shots, and I do believe the old adage “50 misses a minute is not firepower” still holds.
But civilian marksmanship tournaments have developed to include what is called “action shooting”—a sanitized version of “combat shooting.” These disciplines, such as “3-gun,” incorporate movement and introduce tasks and limitations that stress the marksman—although the demand for aimed, accurate fire at several hundred meters remains. Something similar happens today in the Marine Corps, at least judging by YouTube videos.
Today, very few young people grow up hunting and target shooting, and very few kids even have B.B. guns. A police marksmanship instructor tells me that, in the past 20 years, he has seen a marked downturn in the degree of familiarity with guns among many recruits. Even some military veterans have trouble qualifying with the patrol rifle—that is, the M-16, their former service rifle—that we assume should be expected of them, he says. (I am sure that does not include former active-duty Marines!) But it does illustrate the point that more range time may be needed, as well as more variety in the training, than today’s military specialties can allow to make every Marine truly a rifleman.
—Griffin T. Murphey, D.D.S.
I appreciated and agree with much of what Sergeant Hill had to say.
Every Marine cannot be a rifleman and still do their job to the best of their ability. However, in my experience as both an enlisted Marine and Marine officer, there are some exceptions that perhaps prove the rule.
I was with the 1st AmTracs, 3rd Marines, in late 1969 in Cua Viet near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as a corporal AmTrac repairman (2142). That unit, before I joined it and before it was redeployed to Okinawa, was known as “Amgrunts” because adverse tactical circumstances brought its members down from their AmTracs to deploy in rifle units along and above the DMZ. For that (and work with Vietnamese civilians) the unit received the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Presidential Unit Citation. Their training as riflemen during Advanced Infantry Training (AIT) was crucial to the success of these crewmen and mechanics functioning so well as infantrymen.
Personally, a number of times my crew and I functioned as riflemen when attacked by the Vietcong during operations in Northern I Corps. Instantly becoming a rifle platoon became second nature under duress. Certainly, the Corps and the world have changed since the 1960s and 1970s, but there has been and always will unfortunately be the need for specialists to use their rifle training under hostile threat.
Finally, support units and their individual Marines are as important as infantry and individual riflemen. They are an integral part of the Marine Corps whole. That is perhaps Sergeant Hill’s most cogent and important point, and I thank him for it.
—WOI Michael S. Shackley, USMC (Ret.)
Subs Need a Surface Strike Capability for VLS
(See V. Sussman, p. 12, October 2019)
Dr. Sussman misses a better alternative. Consider: A submarine approaches a destroyer, with the choice of firing antiship cruise missiles or torpedoes. A cruise missile launch offers the target significant visible, infrared, and radar signatures when it broaches the surface, endangering the submarine. Torpedoes, on the other hand, make a small acoustic impulse.
Cruise missiles also require a large salvo to ensure sufficient missiles will reach the target. A torpedo may require only two shots for reliability.
The Israeli destroyer Eilat was sunk with three missile hits, but the USS Stark (FFG-31) survived two. In contrast, the Indian destroyer Khukri was sunk by one heavyweight torpedo, the South Korean corvette Cheonan is believed to have been sunk by one, and the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by two. All three sank within 20 minutes of being hit—confirmation of kill that a ship burning from a missile strike doesn’t provide.
When I was executive director at Commander, Submarine Force, Vice Admiral Michael Connor had a simple request—give me a 50 nautical-mile-range torpedo for effective antiship warfare beyond ship antisubmarine defenses. The Navy is now developing the Contender, which will fulfill that requirement. If it’s equipped with a heavyweight warhead like the Mk 48’s, it will be bad news for any surface combatant—or even an aircraft carrier.
—CDR Charles Werchado, USNR (Ret.)
To Understand Russian Submarines, Think outside the Box
(See N. Polmar, pp. 22–24, October 2019; P. Ong, p. 8, November 2019)
The account of Admiral “Sandy” Woodward configuring one of his guided- missile ships as a cruise liner during a fleet exercise in 1982 and embarrassing the USS Coral Sea (CV-43) was reminiscent of a similar activity in the 1960s.
During a fleet exercise off the California coast, the USS Shields (DD-596), a Naval Reserve Force ship with a reserve crew playing the “orange raider,” configured its lights to resemble a commercial ship and “crossed the ‘T’” of the battle group. At the apex, she turned to port and ran the gauntlet of the formation at close to 40 knots, “golfing” ships to both port and starboard. There is a great painting of this action, done in 1966, by the noted naval artist Arthur Beaumont, a print of which now hangs on my wall. Oh, by the way, the carrier pictured in that painting just happens to be the Coral Sea!
I was a quartermaster first class on board the Shields at the time, and the print was a must-have for crew members. It would seem that Admiral Woodward was a student of history.
—LCDR David M. Bradley, USN (Ret.)
The Navy’s Not-So-Great Leap Forward
(See N. Friedman, pp. 90–91, October 2019)
I always appreciate Dr. Friedman’s columns, and his most recent is no exception.
Having served in the Reactor Department of the USS Enterprise (then CVAN-65) for three years—including one year of a refueling overhaul—I have long been curious about the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) propulsion plants, about which information has been extremely difficult to come by.
The Enterprise’s A2W steam plants had a rated propulsive power of 280,000 shaft horsepower (shp), equivalent to about 210 megawatts (MW). Eight 150 MW reactors generate a total reactor thermal power around 1,200 MW. “Big E” was about 50 feet longer at the waterline than the Nimitz class, but narrower in the beam by about 1.5 feet. With 20,000 more shp, the Enterprise easily should have been faster.
Admiral J. L. Holloway wrote in Aircraft Carriers at War that in 1965, the Enterprise reached just over 37 knots in trials after a yard period with a clean bottom and in response to Vice Admiral Hyman Rickover’s “suggestion” to see how fast she could go. It is likely that the reactors were authorized to operate above 100 percent power, which was allowed under certain conditions to increase steam production for some steam catapult launch conditions.
I had the watch in a Big E propulsion plant during a 1968 full-power trial with a clean bottom after a yard period. All propulsion plants were to maintain normal operational conditions and to answer the ordered shaft rpm. I understand she reached 34.5 knots with the two after reactor plants driving the inboard propellers at 100 percent power. Of two reactor plants driving outboard propellers, one was at 90 percent and one (mine) at 80 percent. That would mean that about 259,000 shp yielded 34.5 knots.
Assuming power is proportional to the ship’s speed cubed, 23 percent more power would be needed to get from 34.5 to 37 knots. If so, the ultimate propulsive power Enterprise could deliver was about 328,000 shp, 13 percent more than her rated power. With a finer hull form than the Nimitz, the Enterprise is likely the fastest aircraft carrier built, until perhaps the Gerald R. Ford.
The new carrier is reportedly powered by two A1B reactors 25 percent more powerful than the 550 MW Nimitz-class A4W reactors. If so, the ship’s total reactor power would be around 1,375 MW. Since her waterline dimensions are similar to those of the Nimitz (same beam but 14 feet longer), less than 200 MW should be required to achieve the same speed. But the Gerald R. Ford’s published installed propulsion power is 260 MW, 60 MW more than should be needed. This leads me to conclude that CVN-78 must be propelled by a turboelectric system.
Turboelectric propulsion is not new to the U.S. Navy. It powered several battleships and the aircraft carriers USS Langley (CV-1), Lexington (CV-2), and Saratoga (CV-3), built before World War II. Its main attraction was elimination of troublesome astern turbines and heavy reduction gears. Warships then did not need large electrical power production for such loads as radar and combat information centers. However, the Lexington used her generator capacity for several months in 1929 to provide electric power to Tacoma, Washington, after a drought crippled hydroelectric production.
The main advantage of turboelectric drive and similar plants is flexibility. Turboelectric propulsion plants can operate cross-connected without water shifting problems. Each steam system can be isolated in a single compartment to limit bulkhead penetrations. Electrical power distribution can be run far more easily than steam, and electricity is energy dense and does not require thermal insulation. It seems to be the logical propulsion system for the Gerald R. Ford class.
—CAPT Lash Hansborough, USNR (Ret.)
Rethink Navy Ballistic- Missile Defense
(See L. James, pp. 42–46, October 2019)
Commander James makes a compelling case for the Navy to rethink aspects of how it conceptualizes and employs sea-based ballistic-missile defense (BMD). Part of the existing overstretch (he calls it “writing a check it cannot cash”) results from a legacy issue.
The Navy’s BMD capability is based on Aegis, originally developed as a fleet antiair warfare (AAW) system. BMD capability has therefore been added to a large number of guided-missile cruisers and destroyers (CGs and DDGs) that are highly capable and multirole—but AAW-focused. BMD is just one of their missions, one that sometimes requires the ship to be in places that interfere with its other missions (such as defending a carrier strike group [CSG]).
When it comes to tactical BMD (CSG defense), the missile-defense role for AAW escorts makes perfect sense. It’s just an extension of their wider AAW task. But when it comes to strategic BMD using the SM-3 exoatmospheric interceptor, it may be a different matter. A sea-based element of strategic BMD has several advantages, including both strategic and tactical mobility and operational autonomy. But it’s a redundant (and expensive) capability for a ship doing other things in other places, and the ship’s other capabilities may in turn be redundant when the platform is dedicated to a strategic BMD mission.
It is instructive to compare this situation with sea-based offensive strategic capabilities. Neither the U.S. nor the Royal navies put a few Trident tubes into a multirole attack submarine, and not just because they wouldn’t fit. Ballistic- missile submarines (SSBNs) are dedicated to an offensive role, are deployed accordingly, and carry only those capabilities required for this task and their own protection. There is therefore no tension between the strategic nuclear deterrence task and other roles—because they don’t have other roles.
Were a similar approach to be taken for the defensive strategic task, it might alleviate the dilemma Commander James has identified. A large but relatively austere platform might comprise, in effect, an Aegis Ashore system taken back to sea for strategic BMD. Like an SSBN, its only other capabilities might be a measure of self-protection. And if it needed to deploy in a really high-threat environment, only then would you need to escort it as you would a carrier or a large amphib.
—CAPT Jeremy Stocker, RNR (Ret.), Life Member
Climate Change Is Coming for Annapolis
(See P. Paterson, pp. 62–65, October 2019; H. Lowe, pp. 86–87, and R. Whitten, p. 87, November 2019)
I am not a climate scientist, but I am a student of anthropology and geology. I offer two observations that lead to two questions.
About 35,000 years ago, humans walking across the dry plains of what is now the Yellow Sea populated the islands of Japan, and the Sea of Japan was a lake that drained through the walkable Korean Strait. For about 6,000 years, those areas have been under about 150 meters of seawater. That’s a sea level rise of 500 feet over 29,000 years, all before cars and factories.
At the most recent peak of the Pleistocene ice age, the ice over the American Midwest was, by most accounts 10,000 to 12,000 feet thick. Since then, the Earth has been in a 15,000-year warming trend. All before cars and factories.
Commander Paterson warns us (with meticulous attribution) of the dire nature of a potential 10-foot sea-level rise followed by an additional 20-foot rise, and possibly a total rise of 200 feet over the next one to two centuries (footnote 14), depending on how many ice shelves cleave off. That occurring in two hundred years would be geologic light speed!
Whether the sea eventually rises 10 or 200 feet, is it at all possible that the current changes in our climate—the predictions of which are primarily based on mathematic models and, say, 200 years of spotty human temperature observations—are a result of the same variations in the intensity and timing of heat from the sun that made the Yellow Sea a walking park then melted away ice two miles thick?
And based on his many sources, and realizing that the Earth is old and humans are relatively new in the neighborhood, I wonder what the author has determined the optimal Earth sea level height to be?
(Incidentally, as a poli-sci major, I might actually be okay with the torture chamber that is the lab decks of Rickover Hall being under 10 feet of water!)
—Cory Bouck (USNA Class of 1991)
I read Commander Paterson’s article with dismay. I suggest the good professor read the small book by Dr. Mototaka Nakamura on “the sorry state of climate science” called Confessions of a Climate Scientist: The Global Warming Hypothesis is an Unproven Hypothesis (Amazon Digital Services, 2018).
Nakamura, an MIT-trained climatologist with numerous peer-reviewed works on climate modeling, notes multiple problems with using the models to make climate predictions. In particular, he writes, “Climate forecasting is simply impossible, if only because future changes in solar energy output are unknowable,” before concluding:
The take-home message is (that) all climate simulation models, even those with the best parametric representation scheme for convective motions and clouds, suffer from a very large degree of arbitrariness in the representation of processes that determine the atmospheric water vapor and cloud fields. Since the climate models are tuned arbitrarily . . . there is no reason to trust their predictions/forecasts.
—Lawrence L. King
Asked & Answered
(See T. Kuhlmeier, p. 96, November 2019)
Mr. Kuhlmeier asked the seemingly disparaging question, “Can anyone imagine the Army successfully landing at Tarawa or Inchon?”
Such a comment is likely intended as an argument for Marine specialization in amphibious operations, not specifically as an attack on the Army. But, in either case, it detracts and distracts from the key point of discussion. Simple generalized statements of superiority or inferiority never advance an argument but instead foster emotional responses and arguments rather than measured, scientific evaluation and brainstorming.
If meant as an assertion of Marine superiority, the comment also does not advance such an argument. Since the question specifically mentioned Inchon, where Army units went ashore the second day but Marine units performed the opening assault landings, one must assume the argument for Marine superiority in landing operations is limited to just that opening phase of the operation and ignores any post-landing (or post-first day) operations.
Taking this as the premise, it should be easy enough to examine historical assault landings and find such a correlation. As there have been few assault landings recently, it would seem efficacious to examine World War II landings for evidence.
If we look at all theaters in the war, we find that the Army made the first day assault landing in some 43 cases, while the Marine Corps made the first day assault landing in 21 instances. (Note: I have omitted instances in which both Army and Marine forces participated in the initial assault landing and some tiny or otherwise ancillary landings and raids.) In none of these cases were U.S. forces driven off the beach or otherwise unsuccessful.
It would appear from this examination of first day landing operations that the Army possesses more than twice the institutional experience developed by the Marine Corps in the same time period.
It is a near certainty that such a review will provoke spirited defense, examination, and criticism (and well it should). However, none of them would be focused on the original question at hand. Such generalized disparagements serve no constructive purpose and do not even effectively advance the views of those who make them.
—Larry Reese
Can Sealift Deliver?
(See H. Lynch and J. Eady, pp. 54–57, August 2019; J. Marks and W. Frank, pp. 8–9, September 2019)
Unleash Audacious Leaders
(See M. Ravnitzky, pp. 80–82, September 2019)
My early post-Navy career involved sailing on various Ready Reserve Force (RRF) vessels. My first job was second mate on the SS Cape Borda. She was the first “modern” (younger than me) ship I sailed as either cadet or officer. It was quite an eye-opening experience.
She had been pulled from the Suisun Bay, California, mothball fleet along with her sister ship SS Cape Bover. Both crewed up at Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard 17 August 1990. A 1,500-lb pallet of charts and publications landed on the bridge wing hours before sea trials, after which we spent ten days at Oakland Army Base making various engine room repairs. I only saw the engineers briefly at meals, because their day started at 0600 and ended at 2200. I wouldn’t learn their names until we departed our load port for the voyage to Saudi Arabia.
We loaded Marine Corps equipment in San Pedro and then commenced the “Great Island Hopping Campaign of the Pacific”—we required frequent bunkering. We bunkered offshore of Oahu. Next was Guam, but it didn’t have any fuel available. The ship ran at 20 knots, but we’d break down every other day. We diverted to Kaoshiung, Republic of China, for repairs. It wound up being a 17-day stay. After some HP turbine bearing work we continued to Singapore for more bunkers. After departing Kaohsiung the ship ran well until I disembarked at the end of my assignment.
After several years with other ships, in December 1995 I was offered the chief mate job on the American President Line’s (APL’s) SS Cape Blanco. During my 23 months, the vessel activated only three times: our initial hand over from the Maritime Administration (MarAd); normal five-year drydocking in San Francisco; and a two-day turbo activation. In seven years APL had gone from 23 U.S.-flagged ships to 7, but maintained reduced operating status (ROS) crews on 11 MarAd ships. When we received the Cape Blanco, only one of ten sets of cargo gear was fully operational. By the summer of 1996, every single set of cargo gear was operational. That work was split between the ROS crew and various vendors. Most of the issues were electrical, and Suisun Bay did not have the funding to correct the deficiencies.
Regarding Mr. Ravnitzky’s very good article, the “Liberty” ships were powered by triple-expansion (a.k.a. Skinner) engines, not steam turbines. The Navy required all the turbines industry could produce. Only the later “Victory” ships were steam-turbine powered.
—Steven A. Palmer, Life Member
The Importance of Culture
(See G. Malandrino, pp. 26–31, September 2019)
On behalf of my late great friend and colleague Commander John B. Nichols, III, I would like to thank Commander Malandrino for his tacit tribute to John with several footnotes from On Yankee Station (Naval Institute Press, 1987). “Pirate” departed the pattern in 2004, but he would appreciate “Drano’s” references because John and I hoped the book would serve just that purpose.
Also, the citations from Vice Admiral Jim Stockdale in my book MiG Master (1990) well demonstrate the F-8 Crusader community’s warrior ethos. The Naval Institute Press can take pride in helping keep the flame burning with continued publication of such books. They and so many others are fully in keeping with the Institute’s goal of advancing professional understanding of seapower.
—Barrett Tillman