Thursday, 10 November 2022

Errors in naval history books

I have recently been working on a talk about the Western Approaches Tactical Unit (WATU). The two main books that talk about WATU are references 1 and 2. Both of these contain errors which one would have expected the research for these to have caught.

Examples are calling HMS Prince of Wales, which Gilbert Rodgers, the head of WATU visited while it was fitting out, as a battle cruiser, giving the gun calibre of Spitfire guns a value that never existed. Possibly worse is not mentioning operation Drum Beat as the cause of the second U-boat Happy Time.

 As a result of a question when I was presenting this talk, I had to consult reference 3. Here the author failed to convert between metres per second, knots and mph. Having piqued my curiosity I looked at other parts that i know about (ATTs) and found errors there. Also I am left with a feeling that research for (3) was largely confined to Wikipedia.

All this leaves with the impression that these books are written by "journalists" with no real background interest in naval history. Just as well these books were all borrowed rather than purchased.

References
1. Mark Williams, Captain Gilbert Roberts, and the Anti-U-Boat School, Cassell, 1979
2. Simon Parkin, A Game of Birds and Wolves, Sceptre, 2020
3. Roger Branfill-Cook, Torpedo, Seaforth Publishing, 2014

Tuesday, 4 October 2022

Initial thoughts on ATTs for use against Russia's super torpedo Poseidon/Status-6/Kanyon

Poseidon[1] allegedly has practically unlimited endurance, a maximum speed ~70kts and a maximum operating depth of ~1000m. Some scaling arguments indicate that a maximum speed closer to 55kts may be likely.

I have addressed the speed requirements for ATTs against conventional torpedoes before, a few posts ago [2], which do not apply if the target is Russia's new "super" torpedo.

Presumably an ATT for use against Poseidon will have to be deployed from an aircraft. Now while at high speed Poseidon should be easily detectable and trackable there is no guarantee of being able to deploy the ATT for a near head-on attack. In which case a higher speed will be needed and so the $3/2$ rule may well be appropriate in this case. As the quoted maximum speed and in H.I. Sutton's article  is 70kts the 3/2-rule  puts the ATT maximum speed requirement up at 105kts which will present some interesting engineering challenges.. This may well raise issues about detectability of the target using sonar from the ATT. 

What other options are there for hard-kill counters to Poseidon are depth charges, mines, ...?

Some further thoughts: 
1. What endurance would be required of an ATT for this role? This would be determined by how close to Poseidon's position and track axis the ATT could be deployed. being dropped at ~1000m from the threat and close to the track would require a relatively modest endurance, while being dropped at greater distance might require a prohibitive endurance from a high speed weapon. Maybe a multi-speed  ATT would be useful?
2. What speed profile would Poseidon employ? How long would it operate close to its maximum speed?     Could it be attacked while at a lower speed?
3. Would it be better to attack/eliminate its launch vessel?
4. In the case of an airdropped ATT there would be no restriction on the ATT heading back towards the launch vessel, so if we have a high enough speed and sufficient endurance, tail chases are acceptable.


References:

  1. Sutton, H. I., Russia’s New ‘Poseidon’ Super-Weapon: What You Need To Know, Naval News, 2022
    https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2022/03/russias-new-poseidon-super-weapon-what-you-need-to-know/
  2. Larham, R., Maximum Design Speed of Homing Torpedoes. Naval Wargames and related stuff, Blog.
    https://navalwargames.blogspot.com/2021/09/maximum-design-speed-of-homing-torpedoes.html

Monday, 12 September 2022

HMS Queen Elizabeth nammed after the late Queen, after all!

 In the First Sea Lord's tribute to the late Queen, he admits (2:40 in the twitter video) that the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth was named after her (previous claims seem to have said she did not want a ship named after her, and that the QE was named after QE1 like the previous QE)

https://twitter.com/i/status/1568879644786442241