TinWingThere is also the unfortunate fact that the C130J is a lemon and the RAF are desperate that the A400M will be a much better aircraft, a massive shift from the mid 90’s when most in the RAF wanted an all Herc fleet and the A400M was forced on them for political reasons. Bizarrely, it may work out that the RAF may get the right aircraft for all the wrong reasons.
Splitting the purchase between immediate procurement of the C-130J and the longer term procurment of the A400M always amounted to a gamble. The gamble was that the RAF transport fleet would only see a peacetime level of utilization until the A400M became available. As we all know, the gamble was lost and the RAF can’t support the current tempo of operations with the current transport fleet, pending the inevitably delayed arrival of the A400M.
TinWingThe plane the RAF really wants in Numbers is the C-17 and I have no doubt that if they could they would sacrifice some of the future A-400M’s for some more.
The RAF would also like to order a few C-130Js as attrition replacements.
There are many immediate needs that the Brown government is quite unwilling to even acknowledge, let alone fund.
Nobody could possibly describe to the A400M as an immediate answer to the RAF’s current transport fleet capacity shortfall. From the standpoint of current needs, the A400M is largely irrelevant.
TinWingIt looks like one of the North Korean or Yugoslav mini-subs, especially the former. If memory serves, the displacement was quite high for a mini-sub, i.e. 50% of the displacement of a small coastal sub like a Type 206 (300 tons or so…). This sort of thing is typically used for either infiltration (NKs moving spies in and out of SK), or mining, with the ability to carry a couple of torpedos, or the equivalent load of mines. Quite effective against the right enemy, and potentially a threat, despite limited capabilities!
Nope!
Wrong on all counts.
It is actually the American X-1, on display at Groton, Connecticut.
TinWingA midget submarine with a lovely look, but I don’t know anything about it.
Who can supply some detail information? Thanks!
First question:
Where is it?
It appears to be on display, in a museum setting?
TinWingFrom the specifications, it would appear that the Russians aren’t planning a small nuclear submarine, in a conventional sense, but are thinking in terms of a low powered reactor that would take the place of a fuel cell, closed cycle diesel or Stirling engine for AIP operations.
TinWingThe ommission of the Minor War Vessels from this list is the thing that pegs this article as wildly innaccurate for my money. Probably just behind the Scandinavian navies the RN are masters of MCMW and its importance is manifestly understood – the concept that it would be dispensed with is inconcievable. There is talk of MCMW being roled in with the C3 component of the future escort structure which, given the increased reliance on ROV’s and, in future, autonomous UUV’s, for stand-off MCMW seems entirely feasible.
For my money this all comes down to the C3 decision. If the numbers touted are near accurate, at around 16 hulls, and IF we get the design right and get C3 as a modular 2-3000 ton barebones hull, with extensive aviation support facilities, that has a sufficient propulsion fit to keep up with Fleet operations and sufficient bunkerage for extended deployment then the above is nearly tolerable. Get C3 wrong and it would be disasterous.
With the coming demise of the USN’s LCS program, and this latest report from the UK, the future of MCMW looks rather tenuous. If there is truly an operational requirement for MCM vessels in the near term, it will be in the Persian Gulf, where the situation will either get better, or far worse, long before the C3 becomes a reality. It would make more sense to permanently base a handfull Sandown class minehunters in the Persian Gulf for the next decade, while scrapping the rest, than to make a long term investment in the C3.
TinWingMore gloomy reading in Todays’s Telegraph. Expect either a major row or complete indifference 😡 🙁
It all amounts to 17 major escorts rather than 19. We all have know for quite some time that a total of 25 escorts wasn’t going to remain for long. At this point, it sounds as if C1 is alive and well, but C2 and C3 will be cut altogether – good riddens I say. It also sounds as if LPH(R) and MARS are dead as well, both positive signs. There will be plenty of empty space aboard the CV(F) for an amphibious element and Britain lacks the shipbuilding capacity for the MARS program.
The big shock is that units 7 and 8 of the Type 45 program might just get built after all, and the nuclear submarine program looks like it might receive and additional hull or two.
There is little reason for gloom. The RN is getting its major programs funded, with more units than expected, while other non-essential, non-combatant, and increasingly improbable, programs are getting the cut.
TinWingTHANK YOU Obi Wan!!!!!!! Only person who got the gist of my original question!!!! I just thought it would be neat to imagine Sinano or even Taiho with a mid 50s style rebuild.
Shinano was a clumsy conversion and Taiho was a singleton unit. Both ships were eventually lost due to poor damage control, not to mention generally poor shipbuilding practices.
Unlike the United States, which produced 24 Essex class hulls and 3 Midways, the Japanese lacked a coherent carrier building program – which in turn reflected the shortcomings of Imperial Japan’s limited industrial base, failed economic policies and poor military leadership.
Didnt mean to start a discussion on ww2. But seeing as how I DID open Pandora’s box as it were, consider this: What would the course of ww2, IN THE PACIFIC, have been like if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor? In fact had not attacked ANY US targets at all? Just British and Dutch areas?
Japan was doomed to failure from 1937 onward. The invasion of China speaks volumes about the purposeless aggression of the military regime in Japan. Japan lacked any plausible strategy for outright victory over the Chinese and in the end accomplished little more than a largely unproductive occupation of the Chinese seaboard while tying down massive numbers of Japanese troops along a hugely expansive, bogged down inland front.
At the end of 1941, Japan wasn’t any closer to final victory in China than at the end of the 1937, when Japanese forces had very intentionally attacked the USS Panay. Of course, the United States was in a far different position in 1941 than in 1937, with the largest rearmament program in history, full conscription and a president that was very anxious to go to war to save Britain.
Public support in the United States for war against Japan would have been more limited if Japan hadn’t attacked Pearl Habor and had bypassed the Philipines in its invasion of British and Dutch colonial possessions, but war with the United States, and Japanese defeat, was still inevitable.
TinWingThe maximum capacity of Shinano was to be ~135 aircraft… of which only 45 would be flight-ready. The others were to be made flight-ready as aircraft were lost from the entire force… and, as Tiornu said, she was to act as a forward servicing base.
Midway made it very apparent that carrier battles would not be protracted affairs, but short encounters that would be won or lost in a brief series of maximum effort strikes. “Alpha strikes” were important, not attrition reserves.
As a second line aircraft transport, equivilent in role to the far smaller HMS Unicorn, Shinano might have been marginably survivable, but as a forward deployed carrier with an undersized active airgroup, she would have quickly been lost. Perhaps the Japanese were lucky to have lost Shinano before she was fully manned and fitted out.
TinWingBAMSE always resembled RBS 70 with an additional booster stage, and it is fairly shocking that it has taken this long to get the system deployed – not to mention the hardly unsurprising lack of export sales. There has been a dark cloud over this missile program for years, and only time will tell if there was a significant “technical factor” behind its cancellation, besides the very obvious commercial and political aspects of the failure.
The painfully slow Visby program has done well to survive at all, because despite the low observability facade, this program amounts to little more than a glorified fast attack craft, something that has been very unfashionable since the first Gulf War. The Visby successor program wouldn’t have amounted to more than a modern minelayer with a nonsensical “disaster relief” tasking.
TinWingReally bored right now….so……”What if” ww2 had ended differently for Japan……..could Shinano have been modernized with an angle deck?
1. The Second World War could never have “ended differently for Japan.” Victory against Japan was always a certainty for the United States. After America’s overwhelming response to the partially failed Pearl Habor attack, the Japanese leadership knew that defeat was inevitable.
2. The Shinano was a poorly executed carrier conversion of an almost useless Yamato-class battleship hull. Shinano was never intended to be a first line carrier, but only a sort of auxilary carrier that would act as a second line support ship for the true fleet carriers. Shinano’s speed was lacking, and despite a massive displacement that would only be exceeded with the coming of the Forrestals, this ship was probably inferior in terms of anti-aircraft armament and aviation facilities to even the smaller Essex class.
The longevity and success of the contemporary Midway class could never have been matched by the Shinano conversion.
TinWingThe Americans used the same strop system as well for a long time, have a look at a picture of the F8 launching off a carrier.
The A-4 was apparently the last type to use this system.
TinWingOriginally the strop was lost, but later on, they installed a strop recovery system, allowing the strop to be reused. It was, perhaps, a tad wasteful originally, but it worked.
Perhaps that explains the long projection off the bow typically known as a “briddle catcher.”
I do have to wonder how many times you could reuse this type of cable?
I’ve seen pictures of a tremendous number of strops being stored near the elevators on Clemenceau/Foch. At the time, I assumed that the sheer number of these cables indicated only a single use?
TinWingThanks for your help everybody!
So what happened to the Type 1030 STIR, did that get cancelled in the 80s’ aswell?
I assume that the VLS active radar homing sea dart was studied when it became apparent that Horizon was going down the pan.:confused:
Britain’s withdrawal from CNGF/Horizon should not be confused with its continuing participation in PAAMS. Horizon was only the platform and PAAMS was the system. The future of PAAMS was never in very much real doubt and it seems very improbable that any serious thought was given to a Sea Dart derivative of any kind after the UK dropped out of CNGF/Horizon.
TinWingThanks for your help everybody!
So what happened to the Type 1030 STIR, did that get cancelled in the 80s’ aswell?
I assume that the VLS active radar homing sea dart was studied when it became apparent that Horizon was going down the pan.:confused:
Britain’s withdrawal from CNGF/Horizon should not be confused with its continuing participation in PAAMS. Horizon was only the platform and PAAMS was the system. The future of PAAMS was never in very much real doubt and it seems very improbable that any serious thought was given to a Sea Dart derivative of any kind after the UK dropped out of CNGF/Horizon.
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