From Wed Dec 10 20:39:48 1997
>X-Sender: msmall@roanoke.infi.net
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>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 22:39:03 -0500
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>From: Marc James Small
>Subject: LTA and HTA
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>At 02:13 PM 12/11/97 cst, Peter Sinfield wrote:
> >While those “in the know” might consider it tedious, can I ask – on
> >behalf of us who don’t have an in-depth knowledge of (presumably) USN
> >terminology and acronyms – that abbreviations such as ZR, HTA and LTA
> >are at least explained the first time they are used? It’s most
> >frustrating to read what appears to be an interesting thread, but not
> >fully understand what is being said!
>
>
>Sorry! “HTA” is ‘heavier-than-air’ and “LTA” is ‘lighter-than-air’: these
>are both still current acronyms. The Navy’s rigid dirigible airships were
>given abbreviations to fit them into the Fleet’s schemata for bluewater
>boats, “ZR” was ‘Zeppelin Rigid’, “ZRS” was ‘Zeppelin Rigid Scouting’,
>”ZRN” was ‘Zeppelin Rigid Training’ and a ZRCV for ‘Zeppelin Rigid Aircraft
>Carrier’ was proposed by Burgess for the follow-ons to the AKRON and MACON.
>
>ZR-1 was the US-built SHENANDOAH, a craft seen by both my (then very young)
>parents on her last flight. I’ll get a gutburger next spring at the
>MacDonald’s near her crash site on Interstate 77 in Ohio; she wrecked in
>’25.
>
>ZR-2 was the British R-38, never named, as she exploded before the USN took
>her over. Politics and poor handling caused her demise.
>
>ZR-3 was the German-built LOS ANGELES, one of the two most successful
>airships of all time. She was scrapped in ’38 at Lakehurst.
>
>ZR-4 was the Goodyear-Zeppelin AKRON, which carried four scouting aircraft
>in her belly. She crashed off New Jersey in ’33.
>
>ZR-5 was AKRON’s sister ship, MACON, which carried five aircraft. She
>crashed off of California in ’35, the only rigid airship to meet her end
>in the Pacific.
>
>With all the crashes, it isn’t hard to see why the Fleet rather ignored LTA!
>
>Marc
>
>
>msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
>Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!

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From Wed Dec 10 18:16:31 1997
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 20:15:29 -0500
>From: “Mark J.Perry” >X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.02 [en] (Win95; I)
>To: consim-l@net.uni-c.dk
>CC: MAHAN-L
>Subject: Re: RIMPAC
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>As Terry said earlier, it doesn’t make sense to take 5,000 people out of the
>training loop too early. As for paper exercises, the same thing tends to
>apply. If you take out the centerpiece, it tough to exercise the plan.
>Remember, wargames in the military are less about winning and losing and more
>about training.
>
>Mark Perry
>
>Tracy Johnson wrote:
>
> > > >> the CV Independence was “sunk,” by a Chilean sub, > >
> > This brings into remembrance the old wargame story about how U.S.
> > Navy officials would “not allow” carriers to get sunk in wargames.
> > Although I’m not sure whether this applied to paper exercises only or did
> > it also include fleet maneuvers?
> >
> > Tracy Johnson
> > Computer Associates International Inc.
> > Manufacturing Knowledge (MK) Group
> > – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
> > Minister of Propaganda, Justin Thyme Productions
> > tjohnson@adnetsol.com
> > “Trust No One”
> > “Semper Pollus”
> > ADC-2239-5531

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From Wed Dec 10 15:41:38 1997
>X-Sender: msmall@roanoke.infi.net
>X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.3 (32)
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 17:40:45 -0500
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>From: Marc James Small
>Subject: “Combat Damage”
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>At 04:48 PM 12/10/97 -0500, Eric Bergerund wrote:
> >No doubt wiser heads can fill in this one better than I, but US CVs were
> >most certainly sunk in fleet exercises of the 1930’s. The lessons that the
> >USN drew was that a carrier engagement would be chaotic, fast and very
> >violent for carriers. Not a bad description of 1942 I’d say. The admirals
> >didn’t get it all right prior to Pearl Harbor, but I think they earned their
> >supper during the 1930’s.
>
>
>Well, there was a significant bias in the way damage was assessed in the
>1930’s. BB’s were almost never sunk or even significantly damaged.
>Submarines were sunk with ease. CV’s were blown away by a single shell or
>torpedo. ZR’s just fell out of the sky.
>
>The results were good in one regard, and bad in others:
>
>– Battleship fans were convinced their ships remained invulnerable, a
>feeling not really disposed of until Leyte Gulf
>– HTA advocates were made to feel like distant cousins from an unsavory
>branch of the family, but were allowed to remain at the table and were
>ignored sufficiently to allow them to develop both some >senior admirals
>(King and Halsey, among others) and some fine doctrine which >proved itself
>at Coral Sea, Midway, and on a few occasions thereafter
>– LTA was never given a fair trial
>– Submarines were discounted as unimportant, a factor which did not
>encourage young hard-chargers to volunteer and which did not >cause a fair
>test of the torpedo’s faults. Both of these resulted in a hard time for
>the Silent Service when the strike on Pearl Harbor left our subs as the
>only effective force available in quantity. (Fortunately, the IJN had
>reached the same conclusions, and never gave its submarines >the emphasis
>it should have.)
>
>The lessons of the 1930’s exercizes, fortunately, were not to damn the USN
>into losing the War, as, ultimately, they caused the IJN to lose. But, I
>still wish we’d had a squadron of ZRS’s based at Pearl and patrolling out a
>couple of thousand miles in early December, 1941. It would have been the
>swan song for lighter-than-air, but, how sweet a song it would have been!
>
>Marc
>
>
>msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315
>Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!

Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

From Wed Dec 10 16:29:37 1997
>From: Brooks Rowlett
>Subject: Re: RIMPAC
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 18:03:32 -0500 (EST)
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>I can tell you that as a participant in the Global War Game series at the
>Naval War College, I saw US carriers sunk. This included essentially
>manually scored, computer-tracked games; fully computer-scored games; and
>seminar games.
>
>There is a bit of a misconception in this story, but also a consideable
>basis in fact. In an exercise at sea, time , energy, fuel, and the
>inherent danger of operatin on the high seas all are in play. It is
>vitally important that all these resources or danger exposures not be
>wasted; to do otherwise would be shorting the taxpayers their money. thus
>even if an umpire in a naval exercize assess a kill, the loss is not
>’extracted’; rather the ships go through a damage control exercize and
>then continue to play on as if nothing had happened. More recently it
>appears that short – term removal in long-term exercizes has been
>implemented as we saw in the RIMPAC show on Discovery Channel, where ‘
>sunk’ vessels would be out of the tactical picture for six hours, then
>perhaps re-enter the scene as “reinforcements”.
>
>IN the SEACON 89 game at the Naval War College (SEACON was a game series
>designed to take engineers and scientists out of the lab and expose them
>to fleet operations, a larger version of what I did on a small scale when
>I was running training wargames at work) I participated as a player in the
>RED Air Defence Cell. We watched as our comrades in the Strike Cell
>planned and executed a massive attack that destroyed one of three BLUE
>carrier battlegroups to the last ship (we also allocated them a cet of
>fighters out of our assets for strike escort, but these were operated uner
>the strike command so we didn’t really get to play that out).
>
>BLUE knew absolutley that they had suffered a disaster. But this was on
>the second day of a five day game. It would have been a waste to send
>these thirty or so BLUE players home early. So when they arrived for the
>third day, they were told that (a) Effective jamming and a cover and
>deception plan had prevented about half the RED missiles from being
>launched, (b) those missile were restored for game purposes to RED’s
>inventory; (c) Nonetheless half the escorts of this Battle Group were
>sunk, more were damaged, and the carrier was crippled but afloat – and
>their new task was to rescue it and the surviving BG escorts. This new
>task was also a real situation that might be faced, and more to the point
>it klept the people in play and still learning about potential real
>operational problems.
>
>So, yes, the BLUE umpires ‘refloated’ a carrier that had been sunk, but it
>was definitely out of commission, conributed only minimally to future
>operations, and the players didn;t go out thinking tha carriers were
>unsinkable.
>
>Now on the other hand there does till seem to be a persistent belief that
>submarines are an easily handled problem, and a spirit of denial seems to
>exist. Watchers of the RIMPAC show might note the diesel boat which
>notionally put three torps in INDEPENDENCE about 1/2 through the RIMPAC
>exercize….
>
>BUt yet on the other hand, sub drivers have been known to deny that BLUE
>exercize ASW measures had come anywhere close. A GUPPY captain surfaced
>came up to the connig position on the sail and radioed that the
>dummy-warhead torpedo had missed him, but was told by the observing
>airplane to look behind him….where the tail of the torp was
>sticking out of the GUPPY’s plastic sail structure where it had hit,
>pierced, and stuck….
>
>Brooks A Rowlett

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From Wed Dec 10 14:58:12 1997
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 13:56:22 -0800
>From: Mike Potter
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: Clarification of naval trivia quiz
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>To clarify: Both ships were sea-going warships with significant
>contemporary combat value. I didn’t have the river gunboat USS =Panay=
>in mind. Question #3 is inapplicable to =Panay= so if you offer her as
>either ship, you might be outscored!
>
>Until Friday 12/12 midnight GMT (Friday 4pm PST) please post guesses/
>answers to potter4@worldnet.att.net or mike.potter@artecon.com. After
>that send to potter4@worldnet.att.net. I’ll post the answers Monday,
>12/15!
>
>You must answer at least 2 correctly to earn a naval historian salute:
>
>1. Identify the first major surface warship to be sunk in combat from
>damage inflicted by hostile air attack.
>
>2. Identify the first major surface warship to be sunk in a naval action
>in which the victor used aircraft for gunfire spotting.
>
>3. Before they were sunk, what did the victim warships from these
>actions have in common?
>
>–

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From Wed Dec 10 14:48:56 1997
>X-Errors-To:
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 16:48:18 -0500 (EST)
>X-Sender: rickt@pop3.cris.com
>X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>From: rickt@cris.com (Eric Bergerud)
>Subject: Re: RIMPAC
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
> >
> >> >> the CV Independence was “sunk,” by a Chilean sub, > >
> >This brings into remembrance the old wargame story about how U.S.
> >Navy officials would “not allow” carriers to get sunk in wargames.
> >Although I’m not sure whether this applied to paper exercises only or did
> >it also include fleet maneuvers?
> >
> >Tracy Johnson
> >Computer Associates International Inc.
> >Manufacturing Knowledge (MK) Group
> >- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
>No doubt wiser heads can fill in this one better than I, but US CVs were
>most certainly sunk in fleet exercises of the 1930’s. The lessons that the
>USN drew was that a carrier engagement would be chaotic, fast and very
>violent for carriers. Not a bad description of 1942 I’d say. The admirals
>didn’t get it all right prior to Pearl Harbor, but I think they earned their
>supper during the 1930’s.
>Eric Bergerud, 531 Kains Ave, Albany CA 94706, 510-525-0930

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From Wed Dec 10 10:52:53 1997
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 09:51:45 -0800 (PST)
>From: Tracy Johnson
>To: consim-l@net.uni-c.dk
>cc: MAHAN-L
>Subject: Re: RIMPAC
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>
> > >> the CV Independence was “sunk,” by a Chilean sub, >
>This brings into remembrance the old wargame story about how U.S.
>Navy officials would “not allow” carriers to get sunk in wargames.
>Although I’m not sure whether this applied to paper exercises only or did
>it also include fleet maneuvers?
>
>Tracy Johnson
>Computer Associates International Inc.
>Manufacturing Knowledge (MK) Group
>- – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
>Minister of Propaganda, Justin Thyme Productions
>tjohnson@adnetsol.com
>”Trust No One”
>”Semper Pollus”
> ADC-2239-5531

Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

From Wed Dec 10 11:35:43 1997
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 10:35:10 -0800 (PST)
>From: Tracy Johnson
>To: consim-l@net.uni-c.dk
>cc: MAHAN-L
>Subject: Re: Modern carrier conversion: RIMPAC
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>On Wed, 10 Dec 1997, Eric Wignall wrote:
>
> > Now, I’m the last person on this list to follow naval warfare closely
> > (what with so few ships having treads attached to them) but I am
> > curious… Are there ships available that can be easily/quickly
> > converted to carrier use (even in a limited sense)? There were quite a
> > few of these conversions in the 30s and 40s as I recall. Could modern
> > supertankers or container ships be used as carriers?
>
>Well the helicopter carrying Amphibious “Flat Top” ships could do well in
>a pinch. There are almost as many of those as there CVs (I think.) Seems
>they may need catapults installed to do what you’re thinking. There is
>probably a reason why they don’t have them installed, such as: “If there
>are catapults on these things Congress will have to treat them as a
>regular carrier and it will be more difficult to have them approved.” So
>if it happens at all, it would have to be an emergency wartime
>modification.
>
>(Someone correct me if Amphibs have catapults. I’m only assuming they
>don’t.)
>
>cc: Mahan List
>
>Tracy Johnson
>Minister of Propaganda, Justin Thyme Productions
>tjohnson@adnetsol.com
>”Trust No One”
>”Semper Pollus”
> ADC-2239-5531

Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

From Wed Dec 10 10:53:19 1997
>Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 09:51:33 -0800
>From: Mike Potter
>Organization: Artecon, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I)
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: Another naval trivia quiz
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>Until Friday 12/12 midnight GMT (Friday 4pm PST) please post guesses/
>answers to potter4@worldnet.att.net or mike.potter@artecon.com. After
>that post to potter4@worldnet.att.net or to the Mahan list.
>
>You must answer at least 2 correctly to earn a naval historian salute:
>
>1. Identify the first surface warship to be sunk in combat from damage
>inflicted by hostile air attack.
>
>2. Identify the first surface warship to be sunk in a naval action in
>which the victor used aircraft for gunfire spotting.
>
>3. Before they were sunk, what did the victim warships from these
>actions have in common?
>
>”Surface warship” means something larger than a coastal patrol boat and
>other than a submarine.
>
>–

Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

From Mon Dec 08 13:27:20 1997
>From: USNIWest
>Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 15:14:48 EST
>To: mahan@microworks.net
>Subject: LaCroix IJN cruiser book–USNI response
>Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com)
>X-Mailer: Inet_Mail_Out (IMOv11)
>Precendence: bulk
>Sender: mahan-owner@microworks.net
>Reply-To: mahan@microworks.net
>
>
>I’ve seen the recent postings about LaCroix’s IJN book….it IS in at USNI and
>the list price is $75.00 ISBN O-3113. (USNI members receive a 20% discount).
>For those interested they can feel free to contact me directly…..I’m always
>happy to help on any USNI issues.
>
>Recently Mr. Rowlett Posted Mr. Parshall’s comments about the book…I’m most
>interested in the following portion of it…..
>
> > In my hot little hands. Some of you had expressed doubts about the
> > (ahem) veracity of conversations held with USNI customer service
> > personnel — Oh Ye of Little Faith (or many prior bad experiences)!
>
>I’d be interested in seeing what Mr. Parshall had to say about USNI’s (East
>Coast) customer service. I do not want to have anyone thinking we are all
>bad…..:-> I have sent information to several members of this list and have
>been the person to handle their book orders, photo orders, and research
>requests several times. iIm still plugging away here on the West Coast and
>will be happy to be a go between for anyone who doesn’t like dealing with the
>customer service in Annapolis!
>
>Mary Beth Kiss
>
>******************************************************************************
>****************
>Mary Beth Straight Kiss
>U.S. Naval Institute Representative
>3480 Old Cobble Ct. ****Note new street number!
>San Diego, CA 92111
>USNIWest@aol.com or (619) 874-8286
>
>**When Ordering USNI books, photographs, certificates, or memberships, please
>provide the code MK7 on the order form or to the customer service
>representative.
>******************************************************************************
>****************
>
>

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