Date: Thu, 07 Aug 1997 09:22:20 -0700
>From: TMOliver
>Reply-To: swrctmo@iAmerica.net
>Organization: Kestrel/SWRC/Oliver
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>To: Warren Bruhn
>CC: mahan@microwrks.com
>Subject: Re: “monitor”
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
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>Resent-Date: Thu, 7 Aug 97 07:19:06 EST
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>
>Warren Bruhn wrote:
> >
> > Mention on the consim list of the US Marine’s disappointment over the lack
> > of guns on US Navy ships reminds me on one of my favorite ship ideas,
> > inspired by Ian Buxton’s book, “Big Gun Monitors”.
> >
> >From one who has read and enjoyed to book (and noted that the old
>monitors mission-satisfaction level was less than orgasmic), when ideas
>transcend reality, they become fantasy….
>
>Though well thought out and developed in great detail, your “modern
>monitor” would be a striking but cumbersome and unhandy vessel of vast
>expense for which no realistic mission exists or might exist.
>
>Monitors (in the WWI British application) were developed to provide
>”cheap” (lesser cost/risk ratio) and/or rapidly available heavy
>artillery to attack coastal defenses and installations, little more than
>powered barges upon which to transport artillery barrels.
>
>The development of a/c capable of effective weapons delivery made
>monitors “inoperable” except within an air superiority envelope, vastly
>and overwhelmingly increasing the “vulnerability” factor which must be
>considered in the naval ship-development equation. Their limited
>employment and lack of further development in the WWII era provides
>fitting (and damning) evidence of naval leadership’s estimate of their
>real value.
>
>The diminution of fixed coastal defenses has removed a substantial
>factor from the “need” side of any equation utilized to evalue the
>development of monitor-type vessels.
>
>Even the most “gung ho” of Marines would be unlikely, even foolish, and
>certainly hastily retired for suggesting an “across the beach”
>amphibious operation against a coast defended by well led, mobile troops
>equipped with modern weapons, unless
>number/efficiency/morale/CCC/weapons had been substantially reduced by
>air attack carried out on a continuing basis for some period of time, a
>task far beyond the capability or the “safely deployable” envelope of
>your monitor. Since you have to have air anyway, the monitor becomes a
>only a third rate asset requiring diversion of otherwise needed
>resources to protect and supply for a low priority mission.
>
>My experience leads me to believe that you have vastly underestimated
>the cost to develop, construct, deploy and support monitors, while
>ignoring the existence (and prepaid nature of) a variety of aviation
>assets from attack a/c to CVs to fixed airbases. No, they’re not cheap
>to support/maintain/operate, but they are all ready on hand (and far,far
>more effective than the slow, limited, and no more accurate weapons
>delivery capability of a monitor.
>
>It’s fine to propose “high tech” munitions for the big guns of a
>monitor, but a greater knowledge of the limitations which must be
>applied to those munitions to deal with the breech/barrel pressures and
>other extreme forces inherent result in a big heavy package with
>relatively small destructive contents (fine for attacking concrete or
>armor plate within easy visual range, but “not worth the teats on a boar
>hog” against the vast majority of high priority targets, especially
>mobile ones).
>
>Unfortunately, all the discussion about NGFS and the Marines’ desire for
>same blithely ignores the reality that in any list of potential naval
>activities, NGFS occupies a low-priority position somewhere below
>dumpster maintenance, largely extraneous to projected operations and
>projected to be performed (if ever) as a “collateral” duty by existing
>ship types.
>
>The reasons for such low priority are many, but the most substantial
>among them is the estimation/realization/blinding conclusion that we and
>all our potential allies pooling resources would be ill-equipped to
>venture and unlikely to succeed in an “opposed” amphbious operation
>against any possible enemy other than the occasional local warlord.
>Certainly, even the curent and potentially available resources of NATO
>in the Adriatic would be incapable of landing and maintaining a force
>across a Dalmatian beach against active Serbian Army (or even Croatian
>Army) opposition without accepting politically non-acceptable casualty
>rates.
>
>And a monitor or two wouldn’t alter the equation….
>But a MRLS with a fire control data link mounted on the hull of an oil
>rig service boat, an existing highly developed inshore craft capable of
>high seas transit, would make an interesting, far less grandiose,
>cheaper, of far better cost/risk ratio, much more rapidly
>available/deployable/operable (utilizing on-hand munitions – everybody
>big’s army has such a system) and off-the-shelf components thruout its
>systems) trial horse for those fixated upon “Guns for Gators”, a modern
>manifestation of a WWII vessel type which did come in handy and was cost
>effective, the rocket-launching conversions on a variety of smaller
>amphib hulls culminating in the LSMR and the last version thereof, the
>Carronade.
>
>–
>Far too long for a sig, but personally compelling….
>Having been to see the elephant, contemplated the impermanence of
>existence, gazed upon the Apocalypse, and smelled Death’s rotting
>breath close at hand, I sieze my rewards from the simplest of
>pleasures….
>The gentle rip of surf on sand, the cool, musty bite of a well-brewed
>ale, the briny tang imparted by a fresh oyster, the dark heart of
>carefully aged whisky, the incomparable savor of the first slash of rare
>beef, the aggressive impact of a powerful pinot, Summer’s first real
>tomato, the smoky complex fire of chipotle sauce, the combined reek
>gunpowder and working dogs across an Autumn pasture, the blessed
>combination of green chile and tomatillo, the ectasy of lump or backfin
>crabmeat (from blues), fresh Gulf Snapper or the season’s first inshore
>shrimp, all prepared with Spartan simplicity, the secret glimpse of a
>shadowed nipple within the gap of a loose blouse, the “Scent of a
>Woman”(not the movie, the experience), the astringent bite of
>lime-dosed gin and tonic in a tropical twilight, the lung-filling tingle
>of the first drag on a post-coital Camel, smoked salmon and a good
>Sunday newspaper….among these are found ample joys to counter
>inevitable misfortune and grief. Oliver Sends/OPIMMEDIATE
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