"There Seems to Be Something Wrong With Our Bloody Ships Today"

That quote comes from VADM David Beatty, the Commander of the First Battlecruiser Squadron, at the Battle of Jutland, fought 100 years ago today.

There were 250 ships in both fleets, making the battle probably the largest surface gunfight up to that time.

The Germans wanted to trap the Royal Navy between a picket line of submarines and the German guns, as well as break out of their base at Wilhelmshaven. The British wanted to engage in a decisive battle, a la Trafalgar.

Neither side got what they wanted. There's been much discussion, since then, about the crappiness of British communications (an insistence on using flags with the smoke from the ships and the guns) and the crappiness of British gun shells and powder, compared to that of the Germans. Armor plating was more aimed at stopping flat-shooting projectiles, not the plunging fire of longer ranges (one reason why two of Beatty's battlecruisers blew up).

The British had a German code book and were able to get their ships in place before the Germans established a submarine picket. Despite greater losses, the Royal Navy turned back the Kriegsmarine. The Germans realized that in any subsequent fight, it was likely that the Germans would run out of ships first.

So, barring some local operations and actions against the Russian Navy in the Baltic, the German fleet acted as a fleet-in-being for the rest of the war.

Would Have Hated to Have Been in Charge of Valve Maintenance on That Boat

Photos from the interior of a Great War German Submarine.

Given the cramped conditions and small crews, it's a safe bet that most of the maintenance of the boats was done by sandcrabs between cruises.

(Sort of like what happens with the little crappy ships that the Navy is buying today.)

And Then There Was One

Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of World War I, died on Thursday in a nursing home in Western Australia. He was 110.

There is one known veteran left alive: Florence Green. She was in the Women's RAF.

A Rifleman Went to War

I picked up a copy of "A Rifleman Went to War" from inter-library loan.

The author, Herbert McBride, was an interesting fellow. He clearly was eager to go to war, somewhere, as he wrote that he tried to get into the Boer War and the intervention into Mexico, both without success. When World War I broke out he had to have been in his early 40s, yet he went to Canada and enlisted. He fought in France until he was medically discharged in 1917 for what appeared to be a combination of battle wounds and shell shock.

Two decades or so before the war, he was living and working in Colorado to get over a case of tuberculosis. Working as a cowboy and for a coal company, he became acquainted with some of the famous gunfighters of the Old West:

From these men I learned many things, the most important of which was the point which they all insisted was absolutely vital: the ability to control one's own nerves and passions--in other works, never to get excited.

(pg. 5)

If you want a cold, unsentimental yet proud look at life in the trenches, then the book is well worth reading.

If you have ever seen the somewhat execrable movie "Enemy at the Gates", you might recall a scene where Vasilii Zaitsev is talking about the unnatural actions of a German sniper in not relocating after reach shot. McBride machine-gunned a German sniper who didn't move after firing; he saw where a litter party was shot down and was able to triangulate back to a likely firing point.

McBride believed that the problems that occurred with the Ross rifle were due to substandard ammunition that was made in the rush to ramp up production for the war. He hinted at a manufacturer on the Hudson River, "National something or other", which unless he was referring to the Watervliet arsenal, I have no clue as to who he meant.

Update: National Conduit and Cable Co., Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.

ASW Weapons; Part I

At the turn of the 20th Century, a new development was coming into the naval scene: Steam turbines. Until then, the fastest screw-driven (ships are driven by screws, boat and airplanes use propellers) ships might approach 20 knots by the use of triple-expansion steam engines. Those engines used large pistons and crankshafts.

At the close of the 19th century, the Royal Navy unveiled a very fast boat named the Turbinia at the Fleet Review which was put on for Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. Turbinia was the first successful craft driven by a steam turbine. Turbinia could reach nearly 35 knots, making her almost twice as fast as any other craft afloat.

During the era when the steam turbine was being developed, torpedoes were being developed. The first craft to carry torpedoes were light, fast boats. Somewhat larger ships, almost as fast, but more heavily armed, were developed to protect large capital ships from the threat of the torpedo boats; these ships were known as "torpedo boat destroyers." Torpedo boats would be used in wars through the Second World War. Torpedoes were also launched from larger surface ships, the Japanese "Long Lance" was the best in the world and was an extremely effective weapon. Torpedoes came into their most renown use as an antiship weapon launched from submarines, for they could be fired from periscope depth, giving the submarine the greatest possible concealment.

However, there was, at first no weapon specifically designed to fight a submarine. Gunfire was ineffective against a submerged submarine; shooting at the periscope was akin to trying to hit a broomstick at 500 yards with a rifle. And so, the first practical ASW weapon was developed: The depth charge.

The first depth charges were little more than cans filled with explosives. In a day when most buildings were heated with coal-fired furnaces, the furnaces had to be routinely cleaned of its ashes, which were put into large steel cans, or "ash cans." The depth charges were about the same size; they became known as "ash cans."
The early depth charges ones had 50lbs of explosive; by the end of World War I, they had up to 600lbs. The technique was simple: Go to where the submarine was and roll the charges off the stern of the ship. The depth charges had a delay timer, often set by depth, to prevent blowing the stern out of the water. If the skipper had an idea which way the submarine was heading, he could try to "lead" the submarine.

In order to get a wider pattern, the Y gun was developed. The Y gun threw two depth charges, one to either side of the ship.

The K gun threw one depth charge:


In the event that a submarine attacked the escort, the drill was to charge directly at the submarine at high speed (steam turbines, remember), which presented a narrow target for the sub to shoot at. If the sub was on the surface or had its periscope up, the bow guns of the destroyer would shoot at it to force the submarine below the surface. The subs of the day ran on diesels while on the surface and on batteries when submerged. The subs had to run slowly on batteries in order to conserve power, so if the destroyer could get to where the submarine was last seen (the "datum") very quickly, the destroyer would lay down a pattern of depth charges. If the submarine submerged too slowly the destroyer would ram it.

Depth charges killed in two ways. One was by concussion, which you have no doubt seen in any number of old war movies. But if the depth charge was close enough, the sub would be shattered. When an underwater charge detonates, it blows a circular bubble in the water as wide as water pressure will allow. The bubble then collapses to its center and bounces back out; this cycle repeats until it runs out of energy. But if as the bubble expands it touches a solid object, like a submarine, the bubble will collapse onto that object and blow the living shit out of it.

But there were serious drawbacks to the use of depth charges.

(To be continued)