It always aggravates/amuses/annoys me to read technical journals where claims are made that are not true. Not only not true but well known to be not true within the community concerned.

The latest example of ignorance of this sort that I have come accross (it dates from 2006, so not that recent, except to me) is in this article in  Undersea Warfare, The Official Magazine of the US Submarine Force (maybe it should be considered for publication of the week on Have I Got News For You). There it is asserted that the sinking of the Belgrano by Conqueror in 1982 was the first torpedo fired in anger against a warship since 1945. The problem with this is that Pakistan Navy Daphné-class submarine Hangor, on 9 December 1971, fired three torpedoes (probably French L5's) at the ships of the Indian Navy's 14th Frigate Squadron sinking the Khukri (a type 14 frigate).

The further significance of the Hangor/14th Frigate Squadron incident is that it is the first, and so far only, known use in anger of homing torpedoes post WW2.

Midway Article in Spring 2015 issue of Naval War College Review

There is an interesting paper on Nagumo's intelligence estimates at Midway by Antony Tully and Lu Yu and its impact on the battle. It can be found here: Midway Paper

Guerre de Course

Introduction

In a recent post on the History Stack Exchange a question was asked which may be paraphrased as

Why were cruisers (in the pre-missile age) used for anything other than commerce raiding.

I provided an answer there where I used the term Guerre de Course and added after its first use the parenthetical suggestion that the reader should Google the term. Now along comes someone with sufficient privilege to edit my post and removes my parenthetical remark and makes Guerre de Course itself into a link to the Wikipedia page on Commerce Raiding. What I take exception to is that if I wanted to provide a link I would have done so, Why did I not do so? Because I want to encourage readers to do at least some of the work themselves, and learn to do research, after all it is not difficult in the age of the interwebs. Well I am disinclined to remove the edit, but the affair has prompted me to write something anout the topic here, and if I like what I write perhaps to publish it elsewhere.

Definition and Etymology

I expect that most readers know that Guerre de Course is a French term meaning a naval war or campaign against merchant shipping or trade. Now Wikipedia and other sources rather than give a proper etymology of the expression just tell us that it is translated literally as  "war of race" or something equivalent and uninformative.

Now what I observe is that a better translation would be "war of the corsairs". Where corsair is a term meaning pirate or a pirate ship (often specifically a Barbary Pirate). This of course now explains the meaning of the term Guerre de Course = War of Piracy which is descriptive of the actual practice (with only a modicum of hyperbole as pre-20th Century it was often conducted with/by Privateers - you may note that on that link a privateer is also described as a corsair).

We might also note in passing that the word Course is derived from the Latin cursus which among its other meanings has run rather than chase. Which reminds me of the Byzantine warship type: Dromon (from Greek for running). While the ships used by the Barbary Pirates may not them selves have been descended from the Dromon at least the Latinate term to describe them may well be. Doing an image search however does indicate a possible evolutionary connection between the galleys used by the Barbary pirates and the dromon.

Reconstruction of an early 10thcentury Byzantine bireme dromon,
based on the Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise.

Illustration of a galley running before the wind, found in The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole, published in 1890 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

More to Follow ... ?

Portsmouth Naval Dockyard from the Spinnaker Tower

Portsmouth Naval Dockyard from the Spinnaker Tower, November 2014

It is difficult to identify everything in the picture (and I'm not sure I have all of the Type 45's in frame), But what I could identify by eye included 4 Type 45's, Ark Royal, Bristol, some Type 23's (don't recall the number, it may have been only one), and possibly some others (virtually impossible to see is a ship with a red hull and buff funnel between Bristol and one of the Type 45's, presumably Endurance).

In addition there is Warrior in the foreground, Victory without most of its' masts etc, the Mary Rose Museum in the middle ground, and the Type 45 Systems Integration Facility on top of Portsdown Hill in the far background.

Draft of Cruiser Battle Damage Paper Available

The draft of my paper on modelling the survival probability of ships subject to battle damage has been posted here.

The blurp on the posting site is:

Modelling the Ability of Warships to Survive Battle Damage

This is the sequel to the earlier paper on battle damage survival modelling. In this paper I focus on WW2 cruisers hit by torpedoes, and extends the data set from RN cruisers (as used in the earlier paper) to cruisers of all of the major naval combatant powers: UK, US, Japan and Italy. 

The results for cruisers are better (in a technical sense) than those in the earlier paper, and probably as good as they are going to get using the present methodology.

More Info: This is an early draft, I have not yet decided where to send it.

Publication Date: Jul 2014

Research Interests: 

Statistics, Operations Research, Naval Warfare, Naval History, Combat Modelling,and 2 more

Warrior from the Hard 2014-07-05

Photographed while waiting to collect my daughter from her shift in Boathouse #7. Taken on my mobile, which together with the unfavourable lighting at 18:00 explains the poor quality

Barry Parker's: The Physics of War; from arrows to atoms

While browsing on Amazon for something completely different (a layman’s guide to sonar signal processing to be precise) I came across the book in the title for this post. Looking at the "Look Inside" I noticed a section on American Civil War submarine, which I immediately scrolled down to. This comprised about 1 page of text which I found appallingly vague, inaccurate or banal. To be specific:

I will start with the first paragraph:
“The first submarines also saw action during the Civil War. Actually, the first submarine had been built many years before the war, in 1776 in England. It was a one-man , hand-cranked machine. And the American inventor Robert Fulton had constructed a submarine for the French navy.”

First sentence: The earliest recorded submarine was built by Corneilius Drebble for the Royal Navy in the1620’s to a design of 1559 by William Bourne. Allegedly, capable of staying submerged for 3 hours and was rowed from Westminster to Greenwich and back. Also James I is alleged to have been on-board for a test dive.

The first attempted use of a submarine in combat was with David Bushnell’s, an American "Patriot", Turtle. Allegedly used in 1776 to attack HMS Eagle, Lord Howes flagship, in New York harbour. This attack failed due to inability to attach the charge for disputed reasons. This event appears to be what Parker has garbled in the second sentence of the paragraph. The last sentence of the paragraph appears to be the only one with any resemblance to received history, and it was named Nautilus.

Second Paragraph:
More or less accurate, what is being referred to here are not true submarines being semi submersibles requiring the smoke stack and a low casing always above the water. They were not necessarily all called David, their generic name was Davids after the first of their type, records are sketchy so we do not know what they were actually named if at all.

Third Paragraph:
Hunley, Hunley Hunley …. Not Hurley (one typo is excusable, but please not repeated three times)

Summary
What we have here is basically poor research and possibly poor proof reading, and since this is one tiny section how can we have any confidence in the story being told in the rest of the work.

References:
If you are seeking references:
1. Google for “history of the submarine” and/or “Drebble”, “Bushnell”, “Fulton”, “David class torpedo boats”, “Hunley” etc.
2. Wikipedia has good pages on all of this.
3. My own talk on the history of underwater warfare for the BAE Systems internal Torpedo Engineering Course... but most of you will never have access to that :(

Post Script:
Having now read somewhat more of this work (2004-07-26) it seems that the historical parts are poorly researched, full of errors and half truths, but the physics is generally OK. For what that is worth.