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I have added a Forum area to http://www.navalstrategy.org. I have not actually opened any Groups or Forums besides one to solicit the requests for the creation of specific forums.
 
Guests to the forums will only be allowed to read the content. Members will have the ability to of course add content and participate.
 
I will also be looking for anyone interested in being a moderator/admin on the forums if they prove to be popular.
 
If you have a specific Forum topic area that you would like to see created please let me know.
 
 
 
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Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

Well, the Mahan list has been moved to it’s new domain
 
http://www.navalstrategy.org.
 
The email address to send messages to is: mahan@navalstrategy.org
 
Emails sent to the Mahan ListServ are configured to populate the archive on the site and to be searchable!
 
Over the coming weeks I will be seeding the website with the archive of messages that were sent to the old list. It is a daunting task and while partially automated it will still take some time to accomplish.
 
At it’s peak the List would see +2,000 messages/year. We have not seen any kind of traffic like that these past few years since cracking down on the off-topic political posts.
 
The listserv messages from the years 1997 through 2008 will be held in individual archives by year. On a going forward basis new messages to the List will be archived by Month/Year.
 
Let’s see if the ability to search the archives and revisit past topics will rekindle some interest in discussing topics pertaining to Naval Strategy.
 
Additionally, I am looking at adding a Forum to the site. If you have ideas for content or if you would like to see about having another list hosted pertaining to some other aspect of NavalStrategy let me know and we’ll see if we can accommodate it.
 
 
 
***********************************************************
 Visit the Mahan Naval History Discussion List WebSite at:
  http://www.navalstrategy.org
  for info on Subscribing/Unsubscribing and Digest and
  Links to other Sites of Naval Interest
***********************************************************

Posted via email from mahan’s posterous

I attended the talk, given by Dana Wagner, last night on Admiral Rickover and
the Destruction of USS MAINE. For the record, Hansen, Price, Wagner and
Duncan (the scientists and historians that worked on Rickover’s book) dispute
the assumptions and findings of the AME study which is the basis of the NAVAL
HISTORY article. In particular, the “Rickover team” is convinced that a mine
could NOT have caused the reserve six-inch magazine to explode. Both sets of
technical experts examined the same photographic and documentary evidence,
including the bottom plates bent inward and back (mentioned by Bill and
Brooks). Yet, they have come to very different conclusions.

I understand that not everyone in the AME study agrees with the official
conclusions. I was given a verbal summary of this contrary view (which agrees
with the Rickover team). It was difficult for me to follow, but suffice it to
say that the technical evidence is more thorough than what we have seen in
print. There will be a conference on the Destruction of the MAINE in the D.C.
area in April. Hopefully, the papers will be published and understanding on
this issue will be advanced.

>>The article in NAVAL HISTORY states that the Rickover investigation
said that the *inrush of water flooding into the ship* caused the inward
deformation. Not the same thing at all, and the inrush of water would
likely have a much lower load applied to the hull plating than the
shock effect.<< My recollection is that the *inrush of water* is part of the Hansen-Price Study's explanation for the inward deformation of the bottom plates, which is generally stated as caused by *the dynamic effects of the sinking subsequent to the explosion.* I'll check my copy at the office on Monday. BTW, REMEMBERING THE MAINE by Peggy and Harold Samuels does indeed provide deeper analysis/speculation on who could have planted the mine and how than anyone else in print. Mark Hayes Naval Historical Center Early History Branch Washington, D.C.

This is getting a bit far from shore, but the list owner goes along with
it. I don’t know what sizes of coal were used aboard ship, but I remember
watching steam locomotives being fired. The coal appeared to be lumps
averaging about 6 inches across, much the same sort as we burned in open
fires in England. One of the stoker’s tasks was to reach in with an iron
tool and break up the partially-burned lumps and clinker. When automatic
stokers appeared on locomotives in America, the screw of the stoker broke
up the lumps into smaller ones that were delivered onto a firing platform,
from which they were shot into the appropriate locations of the grate by
blasts of steam.

When I was 7 and 8, I lived in a house (#7, Longton Ave, Upper Sydenham)
that had a glass conservatory across its entire back, in which a fomer
resident had grown orchids. That had been heated in the past by a
coal-fired boiler plant, fed by coal along an underground passage that led
to a coal hatch (cast iron manhole cover) out near the street. Naturally,
that establishment became the engine and boiler rooms of the ship in which
we made imaginary voyages.

John Forester 408-734-9426
forester@johnforester.com 726 Madrone Ave
http://www.johnforester.com Sunnyvale, CA 94086-3041

>
>What no manual system can handle … simply … are ships’
> *individual* actions, once action is joined … if control is
> lost of the formation. The only Guadalcanal battle the Japanese
> really lost control in was the First Battle of Guadalcanal.
> Even in Esperance, they withdrew in formation. Even with our
> superior radio communications, we lost control much more readily.
> Superior training and discipline characterized the Japanese
> performance.
>
I sure won’t quibble with the proposition that the IJN was better prepared
for night engagements and kept better order than we did. However, as I
understand it, one of the reasons that Mikawa retired at Savo was that he
believed it would take over an hour to reform his cruisers. I’m not sure
whether he was being overly tidy or his formation had become scattered. It
may be that nobody knows. Chuck Haberlin from the Navy Yard went with the
Ballard people to Guadalcanal. He told me that all of the wrecks they found
were considerably distant from where they “should” have been according to
the records. It may be that a night surface action is a bad time for record
keeping.
Eric Bergerud, 531 Kains Ave, Albany CA 94706, 510-525-0930

In NAVAL ACTION, I’ve got basically a longrange low probability die
roll for radar, and a higher probability but shorter range die roll
for (Japanese) visual sighting. The ranges were much shorter at
night, of course, especially for initial contact, unless radar was
able to make contact out at sea, away from landform interference.

With closure at 8,000 yds (48 knots) per 5 minute turn, things happen
… quickly.

What no manual system can handle … simply … are ships’
*individual* actions, once action is joined … if control is
lost of the formation. The only Guadalcanal battle the Japanese
really lost control in was the First Battle of Guadalcanal.
Even in Esperance, they withdrew in formation. Even with our
superior radio communications, we lost control much more readily.
Superior training and discipline characterized the Japanese
performance.

There is also the question of mistaken recognition and friendly fire.

There are so many variables in “realistic” night combat, they
would require their own rulebook.

Probably the best American night-time performance, for its time of
the war, was Empress Augusta Bay (off Bougainville in Nov43) …
at least talking about cruiser actions. Our destroyers were
already starting to win consistently.

Note also in that battle how the comparatively long ranges and
wily American formation maneuvering threw off the salvoes of
Japanese “Long Lance” torpedoes, much as at Java Sea in early 1942.
Of course, travelling with “31 Knot Burke” — high speed — would
also lessen the chance of getting hit.

Lou Coatney, www.wiu.edu/users/mslrc/

(WWI – This is also going to the Mahan list.) An interesting question
was raised, in light of the claim that the LUSITANIA second explosion
was due to the ignition of coal dust knocked into the air of the bunkers
by the single German torpedo – if a shell hits an *empty* coal bunker,
is there a chance of an explosion? My suggestion:

A shell hitting a mostly-empty coal bunker might not set off an coal
dust explosion if the buker was not open. The shell explosion itself
would possibly consume all the available oxygen in the confined
space…. but the new question is does the blast or fragments from
the shell then rupture or pierce the bulkheads of the bunker, which
would make that moot.

Also, there might well be only a critical range of dust size and amount
suspended that is actually explosive – a mining engineer might
tackle that one….

Relative to this, Bill Schleihauf posted the following

> Just a quickie, as it’s rather off-topic, but I just want to correct
> something I posted yesterday. Now that I’ve *finished* reading the
> article “What Really Sank the MAINE” by Thomas B. Allen in the Naval
> Institute’s “Naval History” magazine (April 1998 issue), the conclusions
> are that based _solely on the physcial evidence + modern computer
> modelling_ it is deemed likely that a *mine* sank the battleship,
> instead of a fire in the coal bunker. The article states that a coal
> fire certainly *could* have setoff the magazine, but the position of
> one piece of plating (basically twisted the wrong way) suggests that
> it was an external explosion (ie a mine) which was the cause.
> The article is very thorough and laden with math and engineering-
> way beyond my ken! Certainly well worth reading for those interested,
> and it does not, IMHO, end the controversy. The article does NOT get
> into a discussion of *how* a mine could have been laid, etc… a very
> important point. It should certainly be read in conjunction with the
> Rickover book “How the Battleship MAINE was Destroyed”, which goes into
> this in detail.
>
> Bill Schleihauf
> Pierrefonds, Quebec
> CANADA
> william@cae.ca

This is as Bill says off topic for WWI list, other than in the prequel
effect of the rise of the US to world power status, but since he
mentioned
it….
This evening I too read the NAVAL HISTORY article Bill S. cited, while
sitting in a medical waiting room (I have a dreadfully painful
ear infection….) Having done some of engineering work (finite
element modeling of strucutres) of the type described in the article, i
was able to
reasonably follow it – but they seem to have totally mis-stated
something I
*think* I remember from Rickover’s book. I’ll have to dig that out and
look at it again, but:

Part of the underside of the hull of the MAINE was bent UP INTO the
ship, vice down. The original investigation after the raising of the
ship, considered that proof positive that a mine, external to the ship,
was involved.

What I thought i remembered of the Rickover investigation, concluded
that the *accidental* explosion of the magazine did blow the bottom of
the ship downwards, but that the *shock wave* of the blast *rebounded*
off the harbor floor, back up to the ship, and *this* loading bent the
hull
plates in question back inwards.

The article in NAVAL HISTORY states that the Rickover investigation
said that the *inrush of water flooding into the ship* caused the inward
deformation. Not the same thing at all, and the inrush of water would
likely have a much lower load applied to the hull plating than the
shock effect.

Unfortunately, like all too many other of my books, my Rickover HOW
THE BATTLESHIP MAINE WAS DESTROYED is buried at the moment, so I can’t
look it up. But if my memory is correct, the new investigation may
have
been flawed by assuming the wrong loading mechanism in modeling this.

Nonetheless, this effect is real. A slightly related effect is noted in
various editions of THE EFFECT OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS, various years – one
will
often find the paradoxical efect of broken off trees or poles or masts
bent
TOWARDS the blast, rather than away. In essence, the blast load breaks
the structures and tilts them outward from the blast – but there is a
reaction wind back toward the center of the explosion a few seconds
later,
as the overpressure has blown so much gas outwards that the area where
the
blast occured has now become rarified, so that air tries to rush back
in, to
equalize pressure. Thus, there is a reverse, lower magnitude, counter
wind that can flip the broken structures back the other way. This is
somewhat related i suppose to the NAVAL HISTORY article’s version of the
Rickover conclusion – which again, is not what I thought I
remembered….

I am going to post this to the Mahan naval history list, and prefer
followups there, since it is off-topic for the WWI list.

-Brooks

Thanks to Brooks Rowlett, Bill Schleihauf, Peter Skelton, David Snyder,
and all the rest who took time to answer my question regarding the
adoption of fuel-oil by the German Navy in World War I. From the
responses posted to the list, it apparent that many British and German
capital ships had dual-fuel boilers which were able to burn both coal
and fuel-oil, and in succeeding classes coal bunkerage was reduced in
favor of fuel-oil bunkerage and that Germany continued to utilize
coal-fired warships due to the fact that she lacked adequate fuel
resources to construct and deploy a fuel-oil based battle fleet. Again,
my thanks to all.

Now, on to another question. I’m still reading _Sea Power: A Naval
History_ by E.B. Potter and Chester Nimitz. The following is found on
page 656:

By this time the task of reinforcing Singapore had been
completed and an ABDA striking force had been formed of
vessels released from convoy duty. In it initially were the
United States cruisers Houston and Marblehead and four
American destroyers, the Dutch light cruisers De Ruyter and
Tromp, and three Dutch destroyers. Command was given to
Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman. These vessels escaped
damage in the attack on Surabaya [an air attack launched
by carriers Soryu and Hiryu on 2/3/1942], but next morning
as Doorman led them forth to attack a Japanese force
reported reassembling at Balikpapan, they were discovered
by Japanese planes. In a prolonged attack in Madoera Strait,
the Houston received a hit that put her after turret out of
commission for the rest of the campaign, while the Marblehead
was so badly battered that she had to return to the United
States.

I’ve checked Samuel Eliot Morison’s _The Two-Ocean War_, Richard
Spector’s _Eagle Against the Sun: The American War Against Japan_, and
John Costello’s _The Pacific War: 1941-1945_ to try and determine
Marblehead’s ultimate fate with no success. I would like to know whether
Marblehead was overhauled and rejoined the war at a later date, was
she transferred to other duties such as training, or did the Navy have
her broken up and her crew sent to new construction? Also, where was
she sent for repairs? Morison and Spector indicate that she returned
stateside, while Costello states that she was routed to Ceylon.
Thanks in advance, Ed.

Edward Wittenberg
ewitten507@aol.com