Diplomacy & Crisis News

Charlie Gao

Datalinks,

The OSNOD datalink is generally considered to be linked to the fifth generation Su-57/PAK FA fighter project.

Here's What You Need to Remember: Raduga and APD-518 were “first generation” datalinks mostly used for the MiG-31 interceptors, with the Raduga being larger and more powerful.

On the twenty-first century battlefield, datalinks are some of the most important features of any military vehicle. Ideally, datalinks are able to transfer and forward lots of data, are resistant to jamming, and are easily integrated into existing aircraft. As a result, as part of air force modernization, Russia is in the process of developing and fielding the next generation объединенная система навигации и обмена данными (OSNOD) datalink.

In Western media, the OSNOD datalink is generally considered to be linked to the fifth generation Su-57/PAK FA fighter project. But the project has been running for a long time, to replace the earlier Raduga (Rainbow), APD-518, and TKS-2 and TKS-2M datalinks. Raduga and APD-518 were “first generation” datalinks mostly used for the MiG-31 interceptors, with the Raduga being larger and more powerful. TKS-2 and TKS-2M datalinks were fitted standard to Su-27S and later Sukhoi fighters, though they were also retrofitted to MiG-31s in later variants to replace the APD-518 datalink.

OSNOD improves on previous generation datalinks in almost every aspect, doubling the amount of bits per message while also increasing jam resistance and probability of intercept. But it also promises to integrate with naval and land systems (hence the объединенная integrated in the name). This would make OSNOD into a close equivalent to Link-16 for NATO, which is widely integrated across most major naval and air services.

OSNOD is planned to be a standard, leading feature for the Su-57, and underwent testing in 2019. There are also plans to fit it to drones. OSNOD is also being retrofitted to earlier Sukhois, though the rate and extent to which this is happening is unclear. It is confirmed that OSNOD will be fitted to Su-30SMs, but whether it will be part of the fit of recently delivered Su-35s and MiG-35s, or put into Su-27SM3s is unclear. There are also standalone terminals for ground and sea usage, but information about the integration of OSNOD onto them is scarce.

If OSNOD reaches full capability similar to Link-16, it could significantly increase the potency of Russia’s military by granting it cooperative engagement capabilities (CECs). Many Russian systems are limited in range not by the power of the engines or boosters on the weapon itself, but rather by the ability for sensors to acquire and lock onto targets. Linking S-400s to AWACS or fighters could allow them to stretch their legs further, engaging targets near the full kinematic range of the missile, rather than being limited by what ground-based radars can acquire and track.

However, such capabilities are hard to develop. It took years for the US Navy to start mastering cooperative engagement, and the adoption and deployment of OSNOD is only the first step in developing a true cooperative engagement capability. But there are some Russian and Soviet systems, primarily based on ground control intercept that were limited implementation of a cooperative engagement capability. So true Russian CEC may be closer than some analysts think.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national security issues.

Image: Flickr.

Robert Farley

World War II,

While the attacks definitely made an impression, they did not offer the Navy a long-term strategic role for its battlefleet.

Here's What You Need to Remember: In mid-1945 the U.S. Navy (USN) had an unusual, and unexpected, problem.

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In mid-1945 the U.S. Navy (USN) had an unusual, and unexpected, problem.

With the naval war well in hand, the USN had plenty of battleships and little use for them. Had the United States eventually invaded Japan, these battleships would have offered gunfire support to amphibious assaults and to coastal movements, as they had since the beginning of the island-hopping campaign. But with the remnants of the Imperial Japanese Navy uninterested in a fight and the invasion still well in the future, they represented excess capability.

Noting the extent of the destruction caused by the U.S. Army Air Force’s B-29s, the USN decided that it could use the battleship in a similar fashion: to wreak destruction upon what was left of Japan’s industrial base. With luck, shore bombardment would draw out the last dregs of the IJN, or at least lure the kamikazes away from the valuable, vulnerable aircraft carriers. Accordingly, the U.S. Navy decided to use its battleships directly against Japanese cities, in a series of raids that were terrifying in their destruction.

Civilian:

As long as ships have carried artillery they have bombarded shore facilities, notwithstanding the dictum, attributed to Nelson by Jackie Fisher, that “no sailor could ever be such a born ass as to attack forts with ships.” But such attacks have generally sought tactical objectives. More general “strategic” attacks became a concern for countries as the size and power of shipborne artillery increased, but the risks associated with bombarding a city from a ship normally dissuaded admirals from committing their warships to such operations. Even so, the possibility of Royal Navy attacks against Italian cities in World War I helped make Italian entry on the side of the Entente a foregone conclusion, and worries about the effect of a naval bombardment on Istanbul drove the Turkish response to the Dardanelles campaign. 

Bombarding a city, even with a battleship, had obvious hazards. A battleship firing its heavy guns is distinctly non-stealthy, even by the low standards of the 1940s. This meant that enemy assets would have no difficulty locating the offending warship. Air attacks, small coastal submarines, torpedo boats, mines, and coastal artillery could all threaten to give a battleship a bad day; Norwegian land-based torpedoes had sunk a German cruiser during the 1940 invasion, and coastal weapons had damaged U.S. and other ships at various occasions. A presumably well-motivated Japanese military might still try to inflict serious damage on the largest ships in Allied service.

That said, numerous Japanese military and industrial facilities were located in coastal areas, with easy access to ports and to water. Although the combination of the B-29 bombing campaign, the USN submarine campaign, and the USAAF’s aerial mining campaign had inflicted dreadful damage on Japanese industry, some facilities remained only lightly affected. Consequently, the Navy saw an opportunity to inflict damage, as well as a chance to make the case that it could incur strategic effects on the same scale as the Air Force. Moreover, the Japanese were so weak that direct attacks with battleships seemed like an acceptable risk.

The Raids

The first raid targeted the Kamaishi ironworks in northern Honshu. Three fast battleships and two heavy cruisers inflicted heavy damage on the facilities, although the extent of the damage was not clear until after the end of the war. The battleships alone fired 802 shells, commencing from a range of 27 km and moving inward across the course of the bombardment. The next morning, another group of three fast battleships attacked steel factories and ironworks in Hokkaido. That group, including Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, fired 860 shells, inflicting serious damage on the factories and on the surrounding towns. Beyond the range of B-29s, these areas had not yet been affected by U.S. strategic attacks.

The attacks incurred no Japanese response and seemed to have inflicted some damage, so Admiral William Halsey decided to continue them. On July 18 five U.S. battleships, accompanied by the British battleship King George V, hammered the city of Hitachi, just north of Tokyo. The B-29s of the USAAF followed up the attack with their own raid that night, producing utter devastation. On July 29, three American battleships and King George V hit Hamamatsu, causing significant industrial and infrastructure damage. Three U.S. battleships hit Kamaishi again on August 9, landing 803 16” shells on what was left of the ironworks.

Wrap

Further raids were planned, but the Japanese surrender suspended additional operations. Postwar assessments suggested that the raids had a serious effect on the industrial capacity of the facilities in question, but that the general economic collapse of Japan would have proceeded in any case. Surveys of the victims of the bombardment indicated that survivors found the battleships more terrifying than the B-29s. Some 1,700 Japanese civilians were killed during the raids.

While the attacks definitely made an impression, they did not offer the Navy a long-term strategic role for its battlefleet. The raids succeeded because Japan was almost completely prostrate in a military sense and because it was husbanding all of its remaining forces for the anticipated U.S. invasion. Against a better-resourced foe, even the battleships would have found themselves exceedingly vulnerable to air and submarine attack. Thus, the raids could not offer a plausible logic for retaining large numbers of battleships. Still, there is a certain irony in the fact that the Pacific War began with Japanese aircraft sinking five American battleships at Pearl Harbor and two British battleships off Malaya, and ended with Japan incapable of attacking battleships bombarding its own cities. 

Dr. Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to TNI, teaches at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of the Battleship Book and can be found at @drfarls. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government

This article first appeared last year.

Image: Flickr.

Kyle Mizokami

U.S. Navy,

The Nimitz-class carriers have participated in nearly every crisis and conflict the United States has been involved in over the past forty-two years.

Here's What You Need to Remember: The Nimitz-class carriers are a monumental achievement—an enormous, highly complex and yet highly successful ship design. The ships will carry on the Nimitz name through the 2050s, with the entire class serving a whopping eighty consecutive years. That sort of performance—and longevity—is only possible with a highly professional, competent Navy and shipbuilding team.

The most successful U.S. Navy carriers of the postwar era all belong to a class named in honor of World War II’s most successful admiral, Chester W. Nimitz. The class’s lead ship, commissioned in 1975, bears the fleet admiral’s name. The Nimitz-class aircraft carriers were, at the time, the largest warships ever constructed. Although superseded by the new Ford class, the ten Nimitz carriers will continue to form the bulk of the Navy’s carrier force for the next twenty to thirty years. Many project a half a century or more.

The story of the Nimitz carriers goes back to the mid-1960s. The U.S. Navy was in the process of spreading nuclear propulsion across the fleet, from submarines to cruisers, and had just commissioned the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Enterprise, in 1961. As older carriers were retired, the Navy had to decide whether to switch over to nuclear power for future ships. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was ultimately convinced to proceed with nuclear power on the grounds that nuclear carriers had lower operating costs over their service lifetimes. He ordered the construction of three nuclear-powered carriers.

The result was the Nimitz class. Its first ship was laid down on June 22, 1968. The ship built on the Navy’s prior experience with both conventionally powered supercarriers and the Enterprise. The Nimitz retained the layout of previous carriers, with an angled flight deck, island superstructure and four steam-powered catapults that could launch four planes a minute. At 1,092 feet she was just twenty-four feet longer than the older Kitty Hawk, but nearly nineteen thousand tons heavier. More than five thousand personnel are assigned to Nimitz carriers at sea, with three thousand manning the ship and another two thousand in the air wing and other positions.

Lower operating costs were not the only benefits of nuclear power. Although nuclear-powered carriers have a maximum official speed of thirty-plus knots, their true speed is suspected to be considerably faster. Nimitz and her sister ships can accelerate and decelerate more quickly than a conventional ship, and can cruise indefinitely. Like Enterprise, it is nuclear powered, but it also streamlined the number of reactors from eight to two. Its two Westinghouse A4W reactors can collectively generate 190 megawatts of power, enough to power 47,500 American homes. Finally, nuclear propulsion reduces a carrier battle group’s need for fuel.

Of course, the real strength of a carrier is in its air wing. The Carrier Air Wings of the Cold War were larger than today’s. During the 1980s, a typical carrier air wing consisted of two squadrons of twelve F-14 Tomcat air-superiority fighters, two squadrons of twelve F/A-18 Hornet multi-role fighters, one squadron of ten A-6 Intruder attack bombers, one squadron of 4-6 E-2 Hawkeye airborne early-warning and control planes, ten S-3A Viking antisubmarine planes, one squadron of four EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes and a squadron of six SH-3 antisubmarine helicopters. With slight variations per carrier and per cruise, the average Nimitz-class carrier of the Cold War carried between eighty-five and ninety aircraft.

Today the carrier air wing looks quite different. The venerable F-14 Tomcat aged out and was replaced by the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The A-6 Intruder was retired without a replacement when the A-12 Avenger carrier stealth bomber was canceled in 1991. The S-3A Viking was retired in the 2000s, and the EA-6B Prowler was replaced by the EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft. This resulted in a smaller carrier air wing of approximately sixty planes without dedicated fleet air defense, long range strike and antisubmarine warfare platforms.

The Nimitz-class carriers have participated in nearly every crisis and conflict the United States has been involved in over the past forty-two years. Nimitz was involved in the failed attempt to rescue U.S. embassy personnel from Tehran in 1980, and a year later, two F-14s from Nimitz shot down two Su-22 Fitters of the Libyan Air Force during the Gulf of Sidra incident in 1981. During the Cold War, Nimitz-class carriers conducted numerous exercises with regional allies, such as NATO and Japan, designed to counter the Soviet Union in wartime.

During Operation Desert Storm, the Nimitz-class carrier Theodore Roosevelt participated in air operations against Iraq. In 1999, Theodore Roosevelt again participated in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. After 9/11, Carl Vinson and Theodore Roosevelt participated in the first air strikes against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Since then, virtually all Nimitz-class carriers supported air operations over Afghanistan and both the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq.

Over a thirty-year period ten Nimitz carriers were built. The last, George H. W. Bush, incorporated the latest technology, including a bulbous bow to improve hull efficiency, a new, smaller, modernized island design, upgraded aircraft launch and recovery equipment, and improved aviation fuel storage and handling.

The Nimitz-class carriers are a monumental achievement—an enormous, highly complex and yet highly successful ship design. The ships will carry on the Nimitz name through the 2050s, with the entire class serving a whopping eighty consecutive years. That sort of performance—and longevity—is only possible with a highly professional, competent Navy and shipbuilding team.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Kyle Mizokami

Russian Army, Europe

Russian infantry has some advantages over their American counterparts.

Here's What You Need To Remember: American and Russian infantry would never fight alone. Both would fight as part of an integrated team with armor, mortars, heavy artillery, air support, and electronic warfare all contributing to win the battle. Still, in a matchup between American and Russian infantry forces American forces have a decisive advantage in firepower. Let’s hope the two sides never do meet.

The United States and Russia field two of the most powerful armies in the world. Heavily mechanized and salted with combat veterans, the U.S. Army and Russian Ground Forces have spent the better part of the last fifteen years not only chasing guerrillas from Afghanistan to Syria, but also fighting conventional-style wars in Iraq and Georgia. Now, as tensions between the NATO and Russia place U.S. and Russian ground pounders in the same country (Syria) or just across the border from one another (the Baltics), the question is: in a head to head matchup, which side would prevail?

The backbone of U.S. Army infantry is the infantry squad. In light infantry—including air assault, airborne and mountain units—a squad consists of nine soldiers that further divide into a squad leader and two fire teams. Each fire team of four soldiers consists of a fire team leader, rifleman, grenadier, and an automatic rifleman equipped with two M4 carbines, an M4 carbine equipped with the M320 underbarrel grenade launcher and the M249 squad automatic weapon. Individual soldiers will carry single-shot AT-4 light antitank weapons as issued.

In mechanized infantry units, the nine-man squad consists of the two- or three-man Stryker interim combat vehicle or M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle crew, plus six soldiers that dismount to fight on foot. A mechanized infantry squad can put fewer soldiers on the ground, but it also has the benefit of vastly increased mobility and firepower in the form of the Bradley’s 25mm M242 Bushmaster autocannon, TOW antitank missiles, and 7.62mm coaxial machine gun. Strykers are currently armed with M2 .50 caliber machine guns but Europe-based units are receiving a new turret upgrade that includes a 30mm cannon or Javelin antitank missile. The mechanized dismount team also has its own M4 carbines, a M320 grenade launcher, one M249 squad automatic weapon and a Javelin shoulder-fired medium range antitank missile, capable of defeating the heaviest Russian armor at ranges of up to 2,187 yards.

Mechanized infantry platoons consist of three mechanized squads without additional firepower, although a Stryker platoon will have a weapons squad with two M240B machine guns. Each platoon has four M2s or four Strykers. Light infantry platoons consist of three infantry squads and add additional firepower via a weapons squad. The weapons squad is made up by a squad leader and nine soldiers armed with two M240B machine guns and two Javelin antitank missiles, and allows the platoon commander, typically a lieutenant, to parcel out this firepower to the squads that will likely need it the most. A new addition to the weapons squad is the 84mm M3 “Carl Gustav” recoilless rifle, versatile antipersonnel, antifortification, and antiarmor weapons system first introduced in 1946. The result: an infantry platoon with two antipersonnel and two antiarmor weapons, and a fifth weapon that can function as both.

The Russian fields motor rifle (mechanized) squads and light infantry equivalent squads in the airborne forces. A typical Russian motor rifle squad will consist of a BMP-2/3 infantry fighting vehicle or BTR-82A wheeled armored personnel carrier, a three man crew, and a seven man dismount team armed with AK-74M assault rifles, two PKM machine guns and a RPG-16 short range antitank weapon. The GP-30 grenade launcher, the Russian equivalent of the M320, is fitted to some AK-74Ms. The PKP “Pecheneg” will eventually replace the PKM but for now the Russian army has plenty of the older weapons.

The Russian motor rifle squad is nearly identical to the U.S. Army mechanized infantry squad except it does not have a medium range antitank guided missile launcher in the same category as the Javelin. Just like in American squads, single shot, disposable RPG-18 light antitank weapons are issued as needed.

Russian airborne infantry squads are similar to motor rifle squads, built around a BMD-3, BMD-4, BTR-D airborne armored vehicles. Airborne squads are smaller owing to the smaller personnel carrying capacity of BMD and BTR-D vehicles. Despite having fewer troops, Russian airborne forces are much more mobile than their American counterparts. The BMD-3, which has a 30mm autocannon and BMD-4, which has a 30mm autocannon and 100mm cannon, are both armed with the Konkurs antitank missile system.

At the platoon level, Russian motor rifle forces add no additional firepower except for a single designated marksman armed with a SVD rifle, nor does it add additional vehicles. A motor rifle or airborne platoon of three squads consists of three vehicles plus dismounts.

Russian infantry have some advantages over their American counterparts. Three vehicle platoons means the Russian Ground Forces, man for man and vehicle for vehicle, can field twenty five percent more platoons than the U.S. Army. Theoretically this gives a commander more tactical options on the battlefield. Russian airborne forces, owing to their mechanization, have much greater tactical mobility than foot-mobile American paratroopers. Moscow’s parachutists can also airdrop farther from their objectives, making their way to them in their vehicles, helping keep vulnerable air transports loaded with soldiers at a distance from lethal enemy air defenses.

Still, U.S. Army infantry have a decisive edge over their Russian counterparts. One reason is organizational resiliency: if a Russian platoon loses a vehicle, it loses one third of its combat power. If an American platoon loses a vehicle, it only loses a quarter of its firepower. A Russian platoon that loses two vehicles is reduced to a single vehicle.

U.S. mechanized vehicles are also superior to their Russian counterparts. While both the Bradley and the BMP can carry seven soldiers, mount a 25 to 30mm autocannon and are armed with antitank missiles, the Bradley is better armored, has a digital battle management system, and carries twice as many antitank missiles ready to fire. The BMP is inferior in all respects. The American Stryker and Russian BTR-82A wheeled armored vehicles, on the other hand are roughly the same. Both are set to receive updates, the Stryker with a 30mm autocannon or Javelin turret and the BTR-82A a turret with a 57mm gun.

Dismounted firepower is where U.S. forces truly shine. Against armored threats, an American platoon can bring three Javelin missiles, a M3 recoilless rifle, and numerous AT4 short-range antitank rockets to bear against enemy armor, engaging enemies at ranges of up to 2,000 yards. Their Russian comrades-in-arms could bring only unguided RPG-16 and RPG-18 rockets against enemies at a maximum effective range of about 300 yards. Against infantry, American forces bring six light and two medium machine guns and a M3 recoilless rifle to bear, versus three medium machine guns and a SVD designated marksman rifle for the Russians.

American and Russian infantry would never fight alone. Both would fight as part of an integrated team with armor, mortars, heavy artillery, air support, and electronic warfare all contributing to win the battle. Still, in a matchup between American and Russian infantry forces American forces have a decisive advantage in firepower. Let’s hope the two sides never do meet.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami. This article first appeared in December 2017. 

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Trevor Filseth

Stimulus Check,

More than four months since the first checks were mailed out, the IRS has continued sending out payments from the third stimulus bill.

More than four months since the first checks were mailed out, the IRS has continued sending out payments from the third stimulus bill. This week, more than two million additional payments were made, including a large number of “plus-up” payments to previous stimulus recipients – bringing the total number of stimulus payments up to around 170 million.

The tax collection agency announced on Wednesday that it had sent an additional 900,000 payments to Americans who had already received a stimulus check, but for which the amount was inaccurate. Because the first stimulus checks were sent in March, and 2020 taxes were not filed until May, many Americans have reported changed circumstances which allowed them to qualify for more stimulus money, necessitating the “plus-up” checks.

For this reason, Americans who filed their taxes in mid-May or later could expect to receive additional payments, depending on their circumstances. For instance, Americans who lost income during the pandemic, putting them below the $75,000 per year cutoff for individuals, can expect to receive a check. Americans who had a child during the pandemic – reported on a family’s 2020 taxes, but not its 2019 ones – can expect to receive an additional $1,400 payment, the amount set aside for dependents.

The remaining 1.3 million new payments are destined for Americans whose information was not in the IRS database before they filed their 2020 tax returns – and therefore never received a stimulus check in March in the first place.

The IRS has been uniquely well-suited to administer the stimulus program. Because it is already accustomed to sending out tax refunds, the process of making payments is routine, and it already receives information on Americans’ incomes during the normal course of its work.

One drawback of using the tax collection agency to make payments, however, has been that the poorest Americans, who do not usually pay any taxes, are often difficult to reach. This is unfortunate because the poorest Americans have the most to gain from stimulus payments, and the payments often do the most good in their hands. This problem is shared between the third round of stimulus checks and the newly-distributed advance Child Tax Credit payments, which are also being administered by the IRS.

The extra workload has also burdened the IRS, which as of early July still needed to process an estimated 35 million tax returns from the most recent filing deadline.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest.

Trevor Filseth

Stimulus Check,

While the stimulus checks nationwide are coming to an end, one state, California, has recently begun to send out its own payments to all qualifying state residents.

Over the past two weeks, substantial media attention has been paid to the Biden administration’s newest quasi-stimulus program: a series of six payments to low- and middle-income American families, running from July until December,

Most (although not all) of the March 2021 stimulus checks have now been sent out and spent. The IRS announced on Wednesday that an additional 2.2 million payments, including so-called “plus-ups”, had been sent out over the previous weeks. It has been estimated that 90 percent of qualifying Americans have received their stimulus payments by now, and roughly $400 billion of the $450 billion set aside for the payments has been sent out.

However, while the stimulus checks nationwide are coming to an end, one state, California, has recently begun to send out its own payments to all qualifying state residents. The state budget is closely tied to gains and losses in the stock market, and the stock market’s success during the pandemic left the state with a multibillion-dollar surplus. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has estimated the surplus at $75 billion; other groups have lowered the estimate to $40 billion, depending on how it is measured. 

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to a budget deal with the state legislature. The most consequential part of the deal for many Californians is the section concerning the stimulus payment; all Californians making between $30,000 and $75,000 per year, regardless of immigration status, will receive an extra $600 payment. Parents of dependents under the age of 18 will receive an additional $500 per child.

The checks are slated to be sent out in September, according to the Sacramento Bee. An earlier round of equivalent checks targeted Californians making $30,000 per year or less; they will not receive a second payment.

Newsom has trumpeted the projected benefits of the stimulus measure, citing early estimates of its positive impact. The governor has not mentioned publicly that the stimulus payment is legally required by a quirk in California state law, which states that a budget surplus above a certain limit must be returned to the state’s residents.

In addition to the stimulus payment, California’s new budget includes funding to a number of other discretionary issues. The state government in Sacramento has also created a $5.2 billion fund to assist struggling low-income renters and landlords; the fund is intended to cover back rent accrued during the pandemic, as well as future rent. An additional $2 billion has been provided for similar relief for unpaid utility bills. $4 billion has been set aside for small business grants.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for The National Interest. He lives in California.

Charlie Gao

F-14 Tomcat, Middle East

The F-14A is a true interceptor with the speed, power and long-range missiles to strike at range then fly away before the enemy has a chance to lock on.

Here's What You Need to Know: The Iranian upgrades, if anything, have produced an equivalent to the AIM-54C, the American update to the AIM-54 which featured digital electronics, improved low altitude capability, and improved jamming rejection.

Iran’s F-14A Tomcats are an anomaly in the region. While most other air forces in the region field multirole or air superiority fighter, the F-14A is a true interceptor with the speed, power and long-range missiles to strike at range then fly away before the enemy has a chance to lock on. This is, of course, enabled by the AIM-54A Phoenix long-range air-to-air missiles it carries. But Iran’s stockpile of these missiles is rapidly dwindling. Air-to-air missiles often have a short shelf life, missiles that have “expired” can fail to guide on targets or fail to produce enough thrust to reach them.

Iran has tried to remedy this in the past in a variety of ways, including strapping surface to air missiles onto their F-14s. But in 2018 they began production of their own version of the Phoenix, called the Fakour-90. The missile appears to be practically dimensionally identical to the AIM-54, but Iran claims improvement over the original models in several aspects.

However, missile technology has advanced significantly since the Phoenix. While the Phoenix was retired from service without a true replacement in the 2000s, the AIM-120D AMRAAM which entered service in the 2010s reaches out to nearly the same range.

But in a head to head confrontation, which missile would come out on top? Do the Iranian upgrades make the Phoenix relevant in modern air-to-air warfare?

The answer is no. The Iranian upgrades, if anything, have produced an equivalent to the AIM-54C, the American update to the AIM-54 which featured digital electronics, improved low altitude capability, and improved jamming rejection. But even then, the AIM-54C was a bulky heavy missile that wouldn’t perform well against an aware target with energy to maneuver.

The launch platform matters as well. Even though the missile’s seeker might be upgraded, for the majority of the flight the missile is still being guided by the radar of the F-14. While Iran is said to have upgraded the radars of its F-14 with indigenous variants, it’s unlikely that the performance of these radars matches the latest generation of American radars.

Comparatively, Iranian fighters would likely be facing either F-15s or F/A-18E/Fs of the U.S. Navy or US Air Force, most of which have been upgraded with cutting edge AESA radars with tracking and guidance capabilities far beyond what older generation radars could offer. The AIM-120D is also designed with cooperative, networked warfare in mind, as it can receive midcourse guidance from other aircraft, not just the host fighter. It also features an INS/GPS navigation system onboard compared to the INS only AIM-54.

The seeker is also similarly improved, featuring a wider scanning area and better jamming rejection. While the AIM-120D doesn’t have an AESA radar, the technology in its seeker is likely far better than that of the Fakour-90.

Contemporary warfare has often been described as a battle for information. The AIM-120D is built for the new mode of networked warfare, and the Fakour-90 isn’t. While it’s unsure whether networked warfare will work in practice as electronic warfare may significantly degrade or disrupt networking capability, the AIM-120D also is built to perform better in that environment. Iran’s upgrade is a great missile for the last war it fought. It’s not a good missile for the next war it may fight.

Charlie Gao studied political and computer science at Grinnell College and is a frequent commentator on defense and national-security issues.

This article first appeared in September 2019.

Image: Flickr.

Warfare History Network

World War I, Europe

These ships helped hunt down surfaced subs. This is how they did it.

Here's What You Need to Remember: A prodigious ship-building program was hastily implemented at the start of World War I, but because of heavy demands on the country’s steel industry for destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, the only material left available for submarine chasers was wood. Small, privately owned shipyards soon received contracts to build wooden submarine chasers. The design approved by the Navy Department called for a sturdy vessel with an overall length of 110 feet, a displacement of 85 tons, and a maximum speed of 18 knots.

When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, the nation’s Navy was shockingly short of combat ships—particularly the submarine chasers that would be vital to combating the German U-boat menace. A prodigious ship-building program was hastily implemented, but because of heavy demands on the country’s steel industry for destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, the only material left available for submarine chasers was wood. Small, privately owned shipyards soon received contracts to build wooden submarine chasers. The design approved by the Navy Department called for a sturdy vessel with an overall length of 110 feet, a displacement of 85 tons, and a maximum speed of 18 knots.

The new subchasers, nicknamed 110s in honor of their length, were originally armed with two 3-inch cannons and a couple of machine guns. The objective was to provide heavy firepower against enemy submarines running on the surface. In practice, however, the original design proved faulty. Whenever a U-boat was sighted, it would immediately submerge, leaving the chasers vulnerable to an underwater attack. Subsequently, a Y-shaped depth charge thrower was substituted for one of the ship’s 3-inch guns. Prior to the development of the Y-gun, depth charges were simply dropped off the stern of a subchaser. The ship then would race away at top speed, putting as much distance as possible between it and the underwater blast. Occasionally, the depth charge would explode prematurely, shaking up the subchaser much more than the submarine. The Y-gun was a marked improvement over the drop-and-run method of fighting U-boats. It permitted two depth charges to be shot from a ship at the same time. Both canisters would plunge into the sea at a safe distance from the attacking vessel, thereby lessening the danger to surface ships.

The Wooden Warships Soon Prove Their Worth

As the Navy’s new submarine chasers began to come onto line, they were formed into units of three ships each. The small wooden vessels were looked upon with disdain by sailors on steel warships, who dubbed the new chaser force the “splinter fleet.” It would not take long, however, for the sub chasers to prove their worth—to enemies as well as friends.

In late May 1918, four units of Submarine Chaser Detachment Two, equipped with hydrophones, radios, and Y-guns, sailed for Europe. Crossing the ocean in the small ships was a battle in itself. Atlantic gales and high seas often caused the vessels’ wooden seams to open and flooded their engine rooms. Clothing and bed sheets were used to plug the leaks, and disabled chasers had to be towed. Upon arrival in Queenstown, Ireland, the submarine chasers were immediately put to work escorting convoys and dashing after sighted U-boats. In his memoirs, Cary Johnston, a radio operator aboard SC-129, recalled a few of the problems encountered while serving with the splinter fleet. “After a few weeks of the same rations—bully beef and hardtack—the very thought of the next meal turned one’s stomach,” he recalled. “Then there was the continuous heaving and rolling of the ship. Even a light breeze tossed us about. But, as if that was not enough, the windblown ocean salt spray—combined with the engine exhaust gasses—kept the crew in a constant state of nausea.”

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Conditions "Ideal for Hunting U-Boats"

In the mid June of 1918, Submarine Chaser Detachment Two, under the command of Captain Charles P. Nelson, sailed from the British Isles toward the Adriatic Sea. Throughout the war, the Adriatic had been a hornet’s nest of activity for German and Austrian submarine forces. U-boat sorties were routinely dispatched from Cattaro, Pola, and Durrazo through the Otranto Strait to prey on Allied shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. In early 1916, an attempt was made to stop such attacks. A so-called barrage, or net barrier, was stretched across the 40-mile strait. The barrage was maintained by 120 net trawlers and 30 motor launches, each armed with depth charges to be dropped on any U-boat that became trapped in the nets. Stopping the submarines as they attempted to run through the barrage, however, was like trying to stamp out an ant colony one ant at a time, and in the spring of 1917 an Austrian sortie managed to sink 14 of the trawlers and drive off the rest. Subsequently, the barrage was left untended at night, leaving the strait unguarded. Allied shipping losses soon increased alarmingly.

As Nelson’s fleet approached Gibraltar, a British aircraft reported sighting two German submarines lying in wait for the Allied convoy. The warplane managed to chase off one of the U-boats, and SC-129 pursued the other for several miles before losing contact. Despite the scare, the submarine chasers safely entered the Adriatic Sea and anchored in the harbor at Corfu Island. Charles Scott, a civilian engineer for the General Electric Company who made the journey aboard SC-129, described the situation when the chasers arrived on the scene. “Conditions in the Adriatic were ideal for hunting U-boats,” he said. “The sea was very deep, with depths ranging from 2,500 to 3,600 feet. Commercial traffic was light, and the sound man had only a small amount of extra noise to contend with.”

Occasional Breaks in the Monotony

German U-boats usually waited for bad weather to attempt to sneak through the mine barrier into the Mediterranean. But even under the worst atmospheric conditions, the submarines were often detected. Cary Johnston remembered: “While on barrage duty, we were continually in sound contact with U-boats—especially when they attempted to traverse the Otranto Strait at night. Upon leaving their base, the enemy subs would run on the surface at top speed, and could be heard for more than an hour before they reached the nets. The difference between the sound of a U-boat’s engine and its batteries, was so distinctive that it was comparatively easy to tell when a submarine submerged and switched to its battery motors. But the Germans knew approximately where our ships were located, and invariably dived before they reached the barrage.”

Searching the Adriatic for enemy U-boats was a monotonous job, but there were occasional breaks in the dreary routine. One morning at the Mediterranean entrance to the Adriatic, an enemy submarine was reported caught in the nets. A nearby trawler dropped depth charges, then backed away to check the results. Suddenly the ship’s hydrophone operator heard a heavy object brush against the sound detector. Moments later, a dripping-wet German sailor climbed over the side of the trawler. The man had evidently been blown clear of the U-boat by the force of the exploding depth charge, and had saved himself by grapping the hydrophone cable and pulling himself to the surface.

On another morning, SC-129 was patrolling the barrage when she picked up the sound of a submerged U-boat at a distance of 200 yards. The American vessel laid out a pattern of depth charges to cover all possible escape routes by the sub, then cut her own engine and listened. After a 20-minute wait, the Americans picked up a squeaking sound—the sub’s propellers had been bent. More depth charges were dropped, and subsequent sounds indicated that the Germans were attempting to repair their craft. Then there was dead silence, followed by a series of 25 pistol shots. The U-boat crew, realizing that they could not escape, had decided to take their own lives.

Preparing for the Land Attack Against Bulgaria

In the late summer of 1918, the Allies planned a land attack against Bulgaria. It was considered essential to the campaign that the port of Durazzo be destroyed. On September 28, Captain Kelly prepared his subchasers to screen and protect an Allied task force during its bombardment of Durazzo. The mission’s objective was to destroy enemy shipping, warehouses, and dock facilities. Beside’s Nelson’s flotilla, the Allied fleet consisted of the Italian armored cruisers San Giorgio, Pisa, and San Marco, British cruisers Lowestoft, Dartmouth, and Weymouth, and several destroyers and torpedo boats. According to intelligence reports, two enemy destroyers, a torpedo boat, and a few submarines were sheltered in Durazzo Harbor.

Just before dawn on October 1, Submarine Chaser Detachment Two hurriedly sailed from Corfu Island to Brindisi. The rest of the day was spent stacking ammunition, cleaning guns, and writing letters home. The next day before dawn, 11 of the detachment’s subchasers steamed out of Brindisi, passed through the barrage, and entered the Adriatic. The bombardment fleet followed some distance behind.

At 10 am, as the enemy coastline and harbor came into few, Nelson ordered all ships to general quarters. Mattresses were quickly rigged as splinter mats around the bridge and charthouse to protect against flying wooden fragments, and sand was scattered across the decks to prevent the gun crews from slipping on blood. Johnston recalled the Allied approach: “We headed into the bay—then made a high-speed circle in an effort to lure enemy warships out from the harbor. Meanwhile, Austrian coastal batteries were busy shooting at us. It seemed as if we were being used for target practice. Although their shells were high and off the mark, the missiles flew overhead with a wicked shriek and a menacing ricochet when they hit the water. I was so frightened that I had difficulty remembering the radio code.”

The SC-129 Takes Damage

Columns of black smoke soon appeared on the horizon, as the Allied cruiser force approached the enemy coast. At 8,000 yards, the warships turned parallel to Durazzo and began shelling the harbor’s docks and warehouses. Several salvos from San Giorgio crashed into a large transport and quickly sent it to the bottom. Meanwhile, Nelson ordered his subchasers to take their assigned positions to screen the cruisers’ flanks and block the southern and northen ends of the bay. At the same time, Allied aircraft began dropping bombs on enemy buildings and military facilities in the harbor.

Determined not to be left out of the action, four Italian torpedo boats raced headlong across the habor, sending torpedoes crashing into a floating drydock and flooding a German submarine that was under repair. Johnston caught sight of another enemy submarine porpoising—alternately surfacing and diving—as it headed for the cruisers. Before SC-129 had time to react, the U-boat launched a torpedo that crashed into Weymouth’s stern, exploding the cruiser’s depth charges and blowing off completely the aft section of the ship.

“The submarine immediately submerged, and we raced to attack,” Johnston remembered. “Our depth charges were set at 50 feet. The Y-guns fired three salvos at ten-second intervals. Over the noise of the exploding cans, I heard an excited yell from Ensign Jacoby, ‘We got him!’ A large field of black oil rapidly surrounded our ship and volumes of air began bubbling to the surface. We had sunk the U-boat, but our chaser also sustained damage. The depth charge explosions had severely shaken the ship, and the gasoline feed to one engine was ruptured. I had been standing in the radio room during the action, and the first blasts slammed me against the transmitter. The wireless telephone went dead, and everything not nailed down littered the deck.”

The Allied Fleet vs. Austrian Coastal Guns

The other ships in the unit had also been busy. SC-128 and SC-215 sighted the periscope of another enemy submarine and opened fire. One shot struck home and a column of water shot six feet into the air. Depth charges finished the job, and a large amount of oil and debris bubbled to the surface. SC-130 exploded one enemy mine with gunfire and successfully warned away the cruisers from other mines.

For several hours the Austrian coastal guns dueled with the Allied fleet. As SC-128 patrolled the northern approaches of Durazzo, her lookouts spotted a Red Cross hospital ship, Baron Call, attempting to leave the harbor. The chaser was about to let the ship pass undisturbed when a sailor spotted the wake of a German U-boat following close behind the Red Cross vessel. SC-128 sank the submarine with depth charges, and Baron Call proceeded safely along the coast toward Pola.

As the battle drew to a close, Johnston described the crew’s overall mood: “By late afternoon, the fun was over and we headed back to Corfu,” he wrote. “Our crew was happy as a gang of kids on a picnic. And, after all, most of us were only in our early twenties.”

A Strategic Success

In his subsequent report of the battle, Captain Nelson stated: “The operation was a strategic success. The combined attack of our ships and aircraft silenced the Austrian shore batteries, destroyed ammunition dumps, docks, and warehouses, and crippled the enemy’s use of Durazzo as a military base for some time to come. All ships moored in the harbor were either sunk or badly damaged. There were no casualties to our personnel or chasers involved in the action.…I feel that the performance of the submarine chasers shows that they can be of immeasurable value with the main fleet in any contemplated actions—especially those that necessitate operations in shoal water.”

Ironically, the day before the attack on Durazzo, Bulgaria surrendered to the Allies, and two weeks later Austria capitulated. German submarines were left stranded in the Adriatic without a friendly port. Their only choice was to surrender or try to make it back to Germany. Half a dozen U-boats managed to slip through the Otranto Barrage and into the Mediterranean. American subchasers met them at Gibraltar and sank two of the subs. It was the closing action in the subchasers’ short but brilliant career.

Originally Published in 2018.

This article by A. B. Feuer originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

U.S. Military,

Vulnerability to enemy attacks killed the idea.

Here's What You Need To Remember: Dirigibles kept getting “shot down” during fleet exercises. If the Macon was close enough to spot an enemy ship, she was also vulnerable to attack.

It is sometimes difficult to understand just how immature aviation was in the 1920s and 1930s. Everything about flying was new. Planes sported two sets of canvas-covered wings, had limited navigational ability, and had significantly less ocean-going range than a traditional destroyer. After their debut in World War I, planes held promise as instruments of war, but air tactics were still being refined and the planes themselves were unreliable, evolving, and still unproven. They may have been safe enough to carry mail, but not paying passengers—to say nothing of soldiers. The Air Force did not even have its own branch of the service until 1947.

Nevertheless, after World War I there was a strong feeling among certain members of the United States military that rigid-framed airships, or dirigibles, had a great deal of potential as instruments of war. Anything seemed possible during the quickly changing period of aviation. Between 1923 and 1933, the U.S. Navy’s Lighter Than Air (LTA) program produced four such dirigibles. At the time, they were the largest, most expensive aircraft ever built and were spectacular to behold. And though the dirigible seems in retrospect like something of a white elephant, for its time the LTA program was daring, imaginative, and highly innovative.

The Dirigible Craze

Dirigibles seemed poised to surpass trains and ocean liners as a better, faster form of transportation, especially across the Atlantic Ocean. The American military had seen the tactical success the Germans achieved using blimps during the Great War, and it acquired what would become the Los Angeles (ZR-3) as war reparations from Germany for study and experimentation. The public was also intrigued by the behemoths. They were especially captivated by the German Graf Zeppelin, which carried passengers from Europe to the United States, Brazil, and Japan long before commercial aviation was a going enterprise. Indeed, the 1930s saw a craze in America for all things dirigible. Airship designs became an integral part of Art Deco style and could be found on plates, pins, postmarks, and neckties. Newspapers lavished detailed coverage on each transcontinental crossing as if it were an Apollo program moon shot, and miniature Graf Zeppelin children’s toys, fashioned out of tin, were wildly popular.

The Navy’s dirigible program produced the USS Shenandoah in 1923, the USS Los Angeles in 1924, the USS Akron in 1930, and the USS Macon in 1933. The Macon, at 785 feet long, was literally the queen of the skies. To put her size into perspective, the Macon was three times longer than a Boeing 747, 971/2 feet shorter than the Titanic, more than 15 stories tall, and four times the length of modern-day Goodyear blimps. She even edged out Germany’s Graf Zeppelin in terms of size. Like the Saturn V rocket, Navy dirigibles were the high-tech aircraft of their day. The Macon, the last of the Navy’s dirigibles, was built at a cost of $2.5 million by the Goodyear-Zeppelin Company of Akron, Ohio, a joint venture between the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company and the Zeppelin Company of Germany.

The Macon: a New Class of Airship

The Macon pushed the envelope in every conceivable way. She weighed more than 200 tons, carried a complement of 83 officers and crew over a range of 7,000 miles, and could stay aloft for more than three days. Fully outfitted with a galley, three dining messes, sick bay, smoking room, and separate sleeping quarters for officers and enlisted men, the Macon was a self-contained world in the sky. She was kept aloft by nonflammable but very expensive helium gas. Her 12 helium cells were made from gelatin latex and were suspended from a complex internal skeletal structure made of a German-invented alloy called Duralumin 17-SRT. Composed of aluminum, copper, magnesium, and manganese, Duralumin was designed to be both durable and lightweight, the carbon fiber of its time.

Because of her clean lines and overpowering size, the Macon was one of the most beautiful airships ever designed. She was powered by eight German-made Maybach VL-II, 12 cylinder engines, each of which generated 560 horsepower at 1,600 rpm. The Maybachs drove an external, triple-bladed propeller that enabled the ship to reach speeds up to 75.6 knots (about 80 miles per hour), a bit faster than her sister ship, the USS Akron, which could only do 69 knots, and her props could swivel up and down as well as in reverse. At top speed, she could cross the entire United States in 37 hours.

Being a lighter-than air-ship, weight was everything for the Macon. She was actually 8,000 pounds lighter than Akron, but keeping her trim while airborne involved a complicated ballet involving fuel, water ballast, helium gas, outside temperature, and altitude, not to mention barometric and wind conditions. To compensate for the decrease in weight that naturally came from fuel consumption, the Macon recycled her engine exhaust through condenser units designed to capture water vapor necessary to maintain the ship’s trim.

The Macon had two control cars, one near the bow where the officers managed the rudder and elevator controls; monitored the altimeter, air speed, and rise-and-fall indicator; and issued commands to the eight engine rooms. A second control car located in the lower stabilizing fin at the ship’s tail was a backup in case anything happened to the primary command car. The Macon also sported a spy car or “angel basket,” which was lowered from the ship’s bottom on 3,000 feet of cable to spy on the enemy below while the dirigible stayed hidden in the clouds. The spy car sported a tail fin and rudder pedals to provide a margin of control, and could be used as a raft to retrieve downed pilots. The spy car was the bane of whoever rode in it. It was difficult to control, open to the elements, and virtually guaranteed even its most hardened occupant a severe case of airsickness. The Macon carried her own defensive armament in the form of machine-gun installations in the airship’s bow, aft, and topside that could be used to defend the airship from attacking aircraft in any direction.

“Parasite Fighters”

One of the Macon’s most appealing features was her ability to launch and retrieve airplanes in mid-flight. She carried five Curtiss F9C-2 Sparrowhawk fighter planes in a hangar inside her belly. The Sparrowhawks, which were known as “parasitic fighters,” hung from a rail system inside the airship and were guided from their hangar’s four respective corners to a T-shaped opening in the Macon’s belly located slightly aft of the control car. A fifth Sparrowhawk could be accommodated in the center of the hangar, but was rarely carried. When ready to be deployed, the Sparrowhawks were transferred to a crane with a harness-like trapeze attachment that lowered the aircraft through the opening without their wheels ever touching the ship. With the aircraft hanging outside but still attached to the airship via a trapeze, an electric-ignition line would be lowered to the pilot, who would connect it to his aircraft and start the engine.

Sparrowhawk pilots turned over their engines outside the airship as a safety precaution to avoid a catastrophic explosion from occurring inside the dirigible. Once the engine was running, the pilot pulled a lever outside the cockpit near the top left wing and released the plane from the trapeze to fly off under its own power.

The Macon was not just a catch-and release-program, however; she also retrieved her aircraft in mid-flight. The Macon’s Sparrowhawk pilots would fly behind and underneath the airship, guided by two signal men visible from the T-shaped opening who helped them close the gap in the sometimes turbulent slipstream. Carefully maneuvering his throttle at near stall speed, a Sparrowhawk pilot inched his way upward beneath the giant dirigible until the skyhook latched into place on the trapeze catch mechanism. Then the pilot would cut the engine and the plane would be winched back on board. Another trapeze was located near the tail of the Macon, where a Sparrowhawk could “perch” while waiting its turn to come aboard. No wonder the pilots of this elite group were called “the men on the flying trapeze.” They even adopted a special insignia that depicted two trapeze artists poised to catch one another in mid-air (a fat one signifying the dirigible and a skinny one signifying a Sparrowhawk).

Because every pound on a dirigible counted, the protocol was to wait until the mother ship was airborne and then fly the aircraft on board. Neither the Akron nor the Macon took off with her full complement of fighters on board. In this way, the ship was spared lifting an additional 14,000 pounds that could make a real difference if there was no wind.

Questionable Utility in Modern War

 

Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and Captain Garland Fulton were the Navy’s two most influential LTA evangelists. Both believed passionately in the strategic value of the rigid-frame airship and its ability to serve as the eyes of the fleet. The Macon and the other dirigibles were used as scouting ships to reconnoiter a larger area of ocean in search of the enemy and provide useful intelligence. They could do this faster and more cheaply than a typical destroyer, and great promise was seen in the Macon’s ability to warn the Navy of an approaching enemy in the days before radar existed. Meanwhile, the Macon’s complement of Sparrowhawks provided protection for the dirigible against enemy ships and aircraft. Although they provided some supplemental scouting, the Sparrowhawks were not the primary scouting vehicles—that was the dirigibles’ role.

The main problem with this approach was that the dirigibles kept getting “shot down” during fleet exercises. If the Macon was close enough to spot an enemy ship, she was also vulnerable to attack. Nevertheless, during 1934 fleet exercises in the Caribbean, the Macon’s performance was judged successful enough that she was ordered west to participate in Pacific Fleet war games, although some Navy higher-ups, including Admiral William H. Standley, chief of Naval Operations, still strongly questioned her usefulness.

Wiley’s Proof of Concept

Over time, it became obvious that airships were vulnerable to carrier-based planes as well anti-aircraft fire from surface ships. As a result, by 1934 the Macon was struggling to find an effective role while an increasingly heated debate raged inside the Navy and the federal government over the long-term effectiveness of rigid-frame airships. To the LTA program’s credit, a good deal of flexibility, innovation, and learning was applied toward maximizing the Macon’s strategic effectiveness. As a result, Macon’s commanding officer, Lt. Cmdr. Herbert V. Wiley, came to believe that the Macon had to evolve from a long-range scouting vehicle to a floating platform, or aircraft carrier, with the Sparrowhawks taking over as the principal scouts. Wiley felt that the Sparrowhawks could significantly extend the dirigible’s range and more quickly cover a broader area while the dirigible remained safely hidden in the clouds.

By July 1934, Wiley was ready to prove his point and decided on an audacious move to secretly find and rendezvous at sea with the USS Houston, which was carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his secretary of the Navy, Claude A. Swanson, from Central America to Hawaii. Wiley successfully located his “prey” despite the ship’s position being top secret and sent out two Sparrowhawks to drop packages for the president containing mail and newspapers onto the ship’s deck. The pilots missed their target—probably just as well, considering that FDR was situated somewhere directly below—and the packages had to be fished out of the ocean. But the president was suitably impressed to be located 1,500 miles out to sea, and it seemed for a time that the Macon’s stock was rising. Wiley’s superiors were less impressed, accusing him of “misapplied initiative” and threatening him with court martial for his reckless actions.

The LTA Program Crashes

The LTA program faced greater problems than one eager commander’s desire to prove the strategic effectiveness of his command. The first dirigible, the USS Shenandoah, broke up spectacularly over the Ohio Valley in 1925, killing 14 crew members. Eight years later, on April 4, 1933, the USS Akron ran into severe weather off the New Jersey coast and sank tail-first into the Atlantic Ocean. Wiley, who was an officer on board at the time, was one of only three crewmen to survive the crash; 73 others died, including Admiral Moffett, the father of naval aviation, and two other crewmen from a Navy J-3 blimp which had joined the search for survivors.

The Macon remained a familiar sight inside her massive hangar at Moffett Air Field in Sunnyvale, California, a few miles from the Stanford University campus. On February 11, 1935, she left the air field to reconnoiter with the Pacific Fleet in southern California. Eager to get under way, Macon’s engineers had not yet completed reinforcing her vertical tail fin and supporting structure, which had been damaged on a previous mission over Texas.

The next afternoon, off the coast of Big Sur, the ship ran into a powerful gust of wind, which triggered a structural failure causing the top stabilizing fin to sheer free, sending metal shards into her three rear gas cells and dropping the Macon tail-first into the Pacific. It was a virtual reprise of the Akron’s fate. Once again, Wiley’s luck held out. Only two of his 83 crewmen died in the slow-motion crash—Radioman 1st Class Ernest Dailey, who jumped out of the ship 100 feet above the ocean, and Filipino mess steward Florentino Edquiba, who refused to abandon ship because he could not swim. Survivors were picked up by the USS Richmond and USS Concord within an hour.

The third spectacular crash in 10 years marked an end to the LTA program of building rigid airships. President Roosevelt appointed a private commission to look into the mishaps, and although the commission, chaired by Stanford engineering professor William F. Durand, recommended that the program be continued, neither the Navy nor the government had the stomach to construct any more rigid-body airships. The Navy continued building blimps and semi-rigids until 1962, but the giant dirigibles were doomed because of uncertain strategic benefits, a mixed track record of effectiveness, and radically changing technology—not to mention a Congress that was hard-pressed to justify spending more money on accident-prone aircraft during the Depression. By May 1935, the dirigibles—beautiful as they had been to look at—were an obsolete branch of America’s aviation tree.

This article first appeared on the Warfare History Network.

This first appeared earlier and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Warfare History Network

Security,

The MG 42, possibly the best machine gun ever created, originated as a replacement for the German Army’s standard machine gun, the MG 34, which first came into service in 1936.

Key Point: The MG 42 fired a 7.92mm round. With a muzzle velocity of 2,480 feet per second the MG 42’s effective range was nearly 1,100 yards.

In 1943, the U.S. Army attemped to copy the MG 42. The design, called the T24 machine gun, was hampered by the introduction of provisions for it to fire the U.S. .30-06 cartridge. The gun’s performance was disappointing, and the project was abandoned.

The MG 42, possibly the best machine gun ever created, originated as a replacement for the German Army’s standard machine gun, the MG 34, which first came into service in 1936. Designed by Louis Stange of the Rheinmetall-Borsig AG (referred to simply as Rheinmetall) located at Sommerda, the MG 34, at the start of World War II, was the Third Reich’s preferred general purpose machine gun (GPMG) and was intended to replace the heterogeneous collection of automatic infantry weapons then in service as befitted the new German “one-gun-fits-all” philosophy.

The MG 34, using a 7.92mm round, turned out to be a fine GPMG, meeting all the specifications laid down over the previous decade. Crewed by two or three soldiers, the gun weighed 24.3 pounds; its tripod weighed an additional 52 pounds. Air cooled and recoil operated, it had a cyclic rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute, mandating that the barrel be changed after every 250 rounds. By changing its mounting and fire mechanism, the operator could radically transform its function. With its standard bipod it was a light machine gun, ideal for infantry assaults; mounted on its tripod it served as a sustained fire medium machine gun spewing bullets to a range of 3,829 yards. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany manufactured over 354,000 of this proven and effective weapon.

For all its qualities as a first-rate GPMC and popularity with its users, the MG 34 did have its problems. In their enthusiasm to make the weapon the finest machine gun possible, the designers had gone over the top by producing a gun that demanded a high-quality finish, the use of scarce raw materials, and higher precision manufacturing than was really needed. Consequently, the manufacturing process was quite time consuming and expensive, so much so that demand due to combat losses and the expansion of the German armed forces could never keep pace with the demands for new production during the war, even after several new manufacturing centers including the main one run by Mauser AG-Werke were established. A simpler, easier to produce GPMG appeared to be the only solution.

The MG 42’s Design Improvements

The MG 42 fired a 7.92mm round. With a muzzle velocity of 2,480 feet per second the MG 42’s effective range was nearly 1,100 yards. The gun used a 50-round flexible metal belt feed, or, alternatively, a 75-round snail drum magazine. A full 50-round belt of ammo would be depleted in a 21/2-second burst; the 75 round drum in 31/2 seconds. To permit longer fire bursts, MG 42 crews normally linked together several 50 round belts. Ammunition boxes (weighing 22 pounds each) held five separate belts totaling 250 rounds per box. A good crew could shoot 250 rounds in 12½ seconds of continuous fire, or 20-30 seconds by firing quick bursts.

As good as the MG 42 was, there were still complaints about its performance. First, unlike the MG 34, it could not fire single shots. Another complaint that arose due to the high rate of fire was that during prolonged firing the gun tended to veer away from the target due to the vibration and even push its operator backward. Once the gun was set on its tripod these problems vanished, and the MG 42 became the perfect sustained fire support weapon.

What’s more, the tremendous rate of fire coming from the MG 42 was considered by some to be a waste of ammunition. To counter that argument, others said that since a soldier, in the Germans’ experience, only fired at an enemy he could see and time (only seconds) was fleeting, the more bullets directed at the enemy the greater chance for a kill.

During the war a number of companies produced the MG 42, although never in the numbers needed to keep up with the ever increasing demand. These included Gustloff-Werke in Suhl, Mauser AG-Werke in Borsigwald, Steyr in Vienna, Grossfuss in Dobeln, and Maget in Among them, 129 MG 42s were made each day from 1942 through 1945. More than 400,000 units were produced (17,915 in 1942,116,725 in 1943, 211,806 in 1944, and 61,877 in 1945).

Machine Gun Doctrine

Of course, even the best weapon has to be used appropriately for its battlefield capabilities to be fully realized. Fortunately for the Germans, and unfortunately for their opponents during World War II, the German Army formulated an effective machine gun doctrine and tactics.

Unlike their American, British, Commonwealth, and Soviet adversaries, the Germans in World War II employed machine guns as their major infantry support weapons. The Allies used automatic weapons to support rifle-armed infantry. The German Army reversed the process, using infantry to support machine guns in combat. As a result, the standard German Army infantry company of 150 men in 1944 contained 15 MG 42s needing only 30 to 50 men to crew the lot. By contrast, only two light machine guns were assigned to each American foot company.

Generally, German machine gun doctrine, both for defense and attack, stressed five basic points: surprise, fire and movement, coordination of firepower,  conservation of ammunition, and alternate positions. In defense, the MG 42 was usually employed with its tripod to act as a heavy machine gun. When German troops were surprised by an enemy attack, the weapon was often removed from the tripod and used as a light machine gun to counterattack the enemy assault.

Acting as a heavy automatic weapon, the MG 42 was usually sited in concealed ground and manned by two gunners under the direction of a section leader. Reverse slopes were the preferred covered positions. The guns were only placed in their final fire position at the last moment before combat began. In attack and defense, MG 42s were set up in areas where they could lay down enfilade and crossfire against any advancing enemy.

During offensive operations, MG 42s acting as heavy machine guns covered the deployment of friendly infantry from echeloned positions sited on commanding terrain. In preparing for the attack of friendly forces, the MG 42, firing from behind the friendly troops, aimed to smother enemy centers of resistance and deliver fire against opposing counterattacks. As advancing German soldiers moved forward, the supporting machine guns, acting as heavy weapons, followed from position to position in their wake.

Attack and Defense

In either attack or defense, the German rifleman’s prime responsibility was to support the squad-operated machine gun. When the MG 42 crew moved, the riflemen covered them with fire. When the MG 42 set up, the riflemen dug foxholes for the machine gun crew while watching for the approach of enemy forces. When the MG 42 opened fire, several riflemen were detailed to carry ammunition to the gun. Since the MG 42 was light enough to be operated and carried by one man, the bearer could keep pace with advancing comrades. Its ability to be set up and in action in a matter of seconds made the MG 42 invaluable in the attack.

On the defensive, MG 42s were shifted back and forth between different positions to confuse the enemy. The Germans called this tactic Stelungswechsel (change of position) and was a vital part of their overall machine gun doctrine. Three firing pits for the gun were usually dug at various places along the front line: one to cover the expected avenue of an enemy advance; another on the left or right flank to support a neighboring squad; and yet another—called the Schweige MG (ambush position)—about 50 yards behind the main German line. These tactics made the Germans, as one American officer during the early stages of the Normandy Campaign stated, “masters at making one man appear to be a whole squad by moving rapidly from one concealed position to another.”

The MG42’s Lasting Legacy

In 1943, the U.S. Army attemped to copy the MG 42. The design, called the T24 machine gun, was hampered by the introduction of provisions for it to fire the U.S. .30-06 cartridge. The gun’s performance was disappointing, and the project was abandoned.

Whether called the “linoleum ripper” by Soviet soldiers, the “Spandau” by the British, “Hitler’s zipper” by the Americans, or Hitlersage (“Hitler’s saw”) or “Bonesaw” by its German users, the MG 42 machine gun proved its combat worth on every European battlefield. Its ominous and terrifying “ripping cloth report” announced to all the presence of the best machine gun available.

Originally Published April 22, 2014

This article by Arnold Blumberg originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.

Image: Wikimedia.

Warfare History Network

History, Europe

The Me-262 was well ahead of its time.

Key Point: The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. That March 18, 1945, raid on Berlin included more than 1,220 Allied bombers and scores of North American P-51 Mustang fighters contending with heavy German flak and tangling with fast-flying German Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighters employing air-to-air rockets operationally for the first time.

A Twelve-Thousand-Foot Jump

It was the last great air battle of the European war, one that would be a final, deadly encounter for many American flyers and nearly so for Oberleutnant Gunther Wegmann, commander of Jagdgeschwader 7’s 9th Squadron of Me-262 jets. Wegmann led his squadron in a loose formation toward the incoming bombers. He and his two wingmen fired their R4M rockets into one tight formation of some 60 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from a distance of 3,000 feet. The scores of rockets created devastation, with bits of aircraft, smoke, and flame erupting from the formation of bombers.

The squadron then scattered for the homeward flight. That was when Wegmann spotted another formation of enemy bombers and swung around to take a pass at them with his MK 108 “machine cannons.” He swooped in from astern and came within 600 yards of one bomber before opening up with a staccato of fire that ripped away the cowling from one of the target’s engines.

Wegmann was jubilant and started to transmit his victory to home base when a stream of enemy fire struck his jet, splattering his canopy, tossing instruments from their panels, and studding his plane with bullet holes. Worse yet, his right leg was numb. Reaching down, he discovered a large hole just below his knee. But he felt no pain at that point as his plane streaked along at 18,000 feet above war-torn Germany.

He desperately pushed his shot-up jet downward, and at 12,000 feet he saw flames leaping from his starboard engine. That quickly ruled out a crash landing that would turn his plane into a giant fireball. He decided to push the control stick forward, disconnected his seat straps, removed the retaining bolt from the plane’s canopy, and was sucked from the cockpit at 250 miles per hour. Wegmann bounced off the plane’s tail and fell free. He counted five long seconds before pulling the release cord of his parachute and drifted downward toward the town of Wittenberge 60 miles northwest of Berlin. He brushed the tops of pine trees and managed, just barely, to land in a small meadow.

“German pilot!” he shouted loudly as an elderly woman made her way to him. Wegmann’s luck held. The woman was a nurse who quickly bound his thigh above his right knee and applied a tourniquet. Within four hours he had been rushed to a hospital where his leg was amputated.

Others were not so fortunate that day, including five American fighter pilots who failed to return home. Sixteen Allied bombers were hit by flak and either crashed on their approaches to Berlin or managed to make emergency landings behind the advancing Soviet lines east of the German capital. Another 25 Allied bombers were destroyed with the loss of only two German jets. The pilots acquitted themselves well that day against overwhelming odds, yet the effort of the German jet fighters was to prove too little too late in the face of relentless Allied assault from the air, land, and sea with their overwhelming war matériel and seemingly endless supply of manpower.

“It was Like Being a God”

The Me-262 did have a significant influence on the later stages of the war. It was the world’s first operational turbojet fighter, and it simply outclassed any plane flying at the time. It reportedly could reach speeds of 540 miles per hour with a cruising speed of 460 miles per hour and a range of some 650 miles. The Me 262 had a ceiling of 38,000 feet, and it could climb at 3,940 feet per minute with its two Junkers Jumo engines, which produced 1,980 pounds of thrust apiece. In its standard configuration, the single-seat jet was armed with four 30mm MK-108 cannons and the plane could be modified to carry 1,000 pounds of bombs.

It was the development of the feared R4M rockets that sealed the fate of many Allied flyers over Germany when facing the Me-262. “The rockets gave us extra punch,” said Me-262 pilot Leutnant Klaus Neumann. “Fire the rockets, do the damage, weaken the tight formation integrity of the bombers, and then pick off the crippled stragglers,” he said.

“It was like being a god in a way,” added Neumann, who had seen combat in piston-driven Messerschmitt Me-109s and Focke Wulf FW-190s over Russia. The jet was “fast, had great firepower,” and gave one a lot of confidence when pitted against a well-armed enemy aircraft, he said. The 55mm R4M rockets contained a high explosive shell filled with Hexogen and were mounted under the wings on specially designed wooden racks with 24 rockets typically attached to each jet.

Initially, there were problems because the rockets often failed to fire. Reports of the problem reached Generalleutnant Adolf Galland, head of the Luftwaffe’s jet arm. An electrician was promptly called in. The electrician quickly identified a problem with the copper electrical triggering connectors. From that point forward, the connectors were reinforced with silver or nickel, and the difficulty was resolved.

Each of the Me-262’s four MK-108 30mm cannons could pump out more than 650 rounds per minute. The specially produced MK cannon was considered a masterpiece of weapons engineering because of its stopping power, compact size, and ease of manufacture. German engineers noted that it could knock down enemy bombers with a minimum expenditure of ammunition while staying beyond the range of enemy counterfire.

The newly developed Jumo 004 engines presented challenges, occasionally pulling in debris after an enemy plane had burst apart, damaging the compressor, and causing a flame out. Flying on one engine, the Me-262 could not easily take evasive action or even outrun an Allied P-51 Mustang, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, or the De Havilland DH.98 Mosquito. In that situation, the Me-262 pilot had to reach a friendly base as quickly as possible. Galland was particularly disgruntled with the jet power plants. Germany’s war economy lacked many of the needed specialty metals for the jet engines that, on average, lasted less than 12.5 hours before needing to be changed out. That problem became far worse toward the end of the war as nickel and chromium supplies petered out. Many of the newly unpacked engines at that point did not even make it through the onboard testing process before failing and needing to be replaced.

The Nazi engineers knew that the engine’s compressor had to be brought up to speed before the ignition of the turbojet. They resorted to a small two-stroke gasoline engine located behind the engine nozzle, while many postwar jets came to rely on a high-torque electric motor or airflow from a small starter turbine engine.

The Me-262’s starter engine relied on an electric start, with a pull-cord starter with a handle serving as backup. One can only image the frustration of a Luftwaffle mechanic needing, on occasion, to tug on a lawnmower-type pull cord to get the state-of-the-art jet engine fired up. The jet came with armored front glass and an armored seat back but lacked an ejection seat. The pilot was to pop the canopy, gently roll the plane over, and slide out or remain horizontal and let the plane’s speed suck him out as Wegmann elected to do late in the war.

First Flight of the Jet Fighter

The Me-262 first took flight on March 25, 1942, when test pilot Fritz Wendel achieved a test flight speed of 541 miles per hour, almost 100 miles per hour above the speed of the Mosquito or anything the Americans could field. The smooth, shark-shaped plane was surrounded by controversy almost from the start, with Hitler insisting that it be used as a fast bomber. Designer Willi Messerschmitt, Galland, and others gave some lip service to Hitler’s request, largely moving forward with their initial plans for a fighter while planning to have the Arado 232 fill the role of a future jet bomber. Hitler’s constant meddling, though, pulled precious time and resources from fighter development to produce a modified Me-262 bomber. Some 232s were also developed as reconnaissance planes and others as night fighters.

Galland remained critical of using the 262 as a bomber, a role it was not designed to play. He remained firmly convinced that the fighter jet could have been put into combat “at least a year and a half earlier” without Hitler’s interference, “and built in large enough numbers so that it could have changed the air war.”

That time estimate is perhaps exaggerated, and Galland did not say it could have changed the outcome, but rather more likely the course of the war, perhaps causing the Allies to reconsider daytime bombing over Germany.

The two-seat night fighter variants proved surprisingly successful, again despite Hitler’s initial misgivings. With a radar operator in the back, the pilot could zero in on the bombers. Oberleutnant Kurt Welter, who had two years’ experience as a night fighter in FW-190s and Me-109s, proved to be the best of the night fighter aces. Using recent analysis, Welter appears to have made 20 confirmed kills, including a large number of Mosquitos, with his Me-262, making him the highest scoring German jet fighter pilot.

The Me-262 in Combat

The first Me-262 fighters were delivered to Luftwaffe field units in April 1944, with the first encounter recorded on July 26 when one of the German jets fired at a British Mosquito, which disappeared trailing smoke but managed to land safely in Italy. On August 8, a unit scored a confirmed kill over a Mosquito. Interestingly, the Allies had received reports of the Me-262 from both the resistance and via the Office of Strategic Services. “The rumors of a super fast German plane were being taken seriously,” wrote Lt. Gen. James H. Doolittle, who had led the daring early war bomber raid on Tokyo and later joined the U.S. Eighth Air Force in Europe. “There were just too many corroborating reports from different sources not to take notice, but many of the pilots almost refused to believe [them],” he wrote.

Doolittle recalls one bomber pilot who was stunned at the quickness and severity of an Me-262 attack. One explosive shell, most likely from a MK-108 cannon, entered through the bomber’s bomb bay, killing one and injuring four other airmen. Fortunately, the plane was returning from its bombing run, otherwise the shell could have struck the bombs on board and the resulting explosion could have destroyed several additional aircraft flying in the tight box formation. The young American pilot was in complete shock, recalled Doolittle. “I knew he was never going to be an effective leader again,” he wrote. The Americans realized something had to be done to prevent a severe morale problem.

Countering the German Jet

Additional reconnaissance flights were immediately ordered, and soon the jet airfields were being bombed. This became an ongoing process; one that forced the use of bases ever-closer to the heart of Germany in the face of Allied advances. Eventually, the Germans even resorted to using parts of the autobahn for landing strips and nearby wooded areas to conceal the parked jets from marauding and opportunistic American P-51 Mustang pilots.

The Allies knew the fast-moving jets were exceptionally vulnerable during landing and takeoff, so the patrolling of the jet airfields paid handsome dividends. The Germans used the airfields as improvised “flak traps,” attempting to lure Allied fighters in where the deadly 88mm and other flak guns—along with covering piston-driven FW-190s and Me-109s—could take a substantial combined toll on unwary Allied pilots who ventured too close.

Galland admitted after the war that the bombing of the factories did not prove overly effective, but the bombing of the petroleum facilities and railways did have a significant effect. “What harmed us the most was the killing of our pilots in combat,” wrote Galland. “Planes can be rebuilt, but men cannot be made.”

The development of drop tanks and the eventual positioning of P-51s on the European mainland gave the fighters more air time over Germany. It was the unleashing of the Mustangs from escort duty with the Allied bombers that made a significant difference. In 1944, the fighter pilots were often given the green light to go in before the bombers and destroy anything that moved, especially the jets rising to meet the slow-moving bombers.

“We had the numbers, we had the best pilots, best aircraft and we were in a sort of blood lust to whack those guys the best and hardest way we could,” said 2nd Lieutenant Francis S. Gabreski, the leading American fighter ace in Europe.

The Allies had a few other tricks up their sleeves, too. One of these was nitrous oxide injection, similar to the Germans’ own GM-1 fuel injection system, which gave them a quick burst of speed to close and fire on the jets. They also found that a tight box formation of four P-51s could reportedly prevent a jet from evading them, especially when the American fighters had the advantage of altitude and position. In that situation, a “jet-propelled plane can be destroyed on every encounter,” according to a report filed in late 1944 by Colonel Irwin Dregne, commander of the 357th Fighter Group.

Operation Bodenplatte: Striking Back at the Allies

While this method of winning through attrition proved effective for the Allies, the Germans had a few surprises, too. Operation Bodenplatte, for example, called for a first strike against all the Allied fighter fields on the continent that the jets and other Luftwaffe planes could reach. Generalmajor Dietrich Pelz believed that if the German planes could destroy half the Allied fighters on the ground and destroy the airfields in the process, then the jets would be able to handle the remainder of the Allied fighters.

Pelz noted the plan was never fully put to the test because of the lack of Nazi planes at that point in the war. The daring operation, however, that took place on January 1, 1945, did result in the destruction of more than 285 Allied planes, including some 145 fighters, with another 180 aircraft damaged and 185 personnel killed, according to recent research.

How Many Me-262s Saw Combat?

More than 1,400 Me-262s were built, but only 50 were approved for combat, according to Galland. Of those 50, there were never more than 25 operational at any given time, he said. It is no secret that continuing engine problems, shortages of fuel, and Allied bombing and strafing of airfields and manufacturing facilities took a toll on the number of available jets.

Some reports indicate that there had been more than 180 Me-262s, including those modified as bombers, but reliable German documentation was problematic at best in the final months of the war. The same thing also holds true for proper documentation on the number of victories achieved by the jet pilots, which may have totaled more than 500 before the war’s end.

The Me-262 was well ahead of its time. If the Nazis had had greater access to refined metals for the jet engines, more fuel reserves, and more time, then things might have played out somewhat differently toward the end of the war. The fact remains that the ground-breaking jet truly set the course for the future of aviation history.

This article by Phil Zimmer originally appeared on Warfare History Network.

Image: Flickr.

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