Manning the Guns (Again!)

Part One

By William R. Trotter

This article is the first part of a serial feature on the on the latest, surprising, trends in 21st Century naval warfare...

When President Teddy Roosevelt coined his memorable phrase "The Big Stick", he was referring not solely to the mighty size and numbers of the U.S. Navy, he was using a specific metaphor that all his turn-of-the-century listeners instinctively understood: the great size, power, and reach of the battleships' turret guns. They were, and for half-a-century remained, the puissant voice of a World Power's wrath. Their broadsides evoked the thunder of Jove; their boiling muzzle-flashes epitomized "power projection" like blazing thunderbolts; there were few important harbors in the world that Roosevelt's Great White Fleet could not either blockade to impotence, or devastated physically with their main weapons.

Dreadnoughts (I'm loosely referring to major warships launched between 1890 and 1945), were fearfully expensive to build; they quickly became status symbols for the handful of nations rich enough to construct and maintain them. The implied message: If you're not able to launch ships like these, better not mess with us, our political agendas, or our merchant fleets. The argument seemed irrefutable and the one rather decrepit maritime power that tried to challenge the US Navy - the moribund Spanish "Empire", which had been in gradual decline since the days of Elizabeth I - had its fleet virtually annihilated for that rash decision.

Ironically, although it was the financially stressful "naval race" between Great Britain and Imperial Germany that contributed to the causes of the Great War, the high seas' fleets of both major opponents were something of a muscle-bound asset; they were SO expensive to build and maintain that neither opponent could ever afford to rebuild what it already had in 1914; and so powerful that a lost engagement would materially influence that rest of the conflict. Hence the nations controlling them were very reluctant to send them to sea in show-down strength, given the primitive means at their disposal for reconnaissance, and the importance of getting in the first salvoes, the initial hour of combat could be critical, and the odds of getting that advantage probably fifty-fifty. Admiral Jellico, First Lord of the Admiralty, husbanded his capital ships very close to their home bases, for as he often and truthfully said: "I am the only man in Great Britain who could lose this war in a single day".

The Kaiser's admirals felt exactly the same, and only once, during the entire bloody conflict, did both grand fleets come out to wage full-scale battle, and the result, Jutland, while costly in lives and ships, was broken off before any clear victor could emerge. The German ships proved harder to sink (more survivable) but the British enjoyed superior gunnery and inflicted gruesome damage on several major units that, even if they didn't sink, blow up, or loose steerage-way and run aground, were as effectively out-of-the-war as if they had been sunk. By the time those Jutland-damaged units were restored to fully operational status, the British had added more major warships, so the numerical odds against the Imperial German Navy were even greater and two years of sitting idly at anchor had rotted the morale of their once highly-motivated crews.

Surface engagements with gunfire were common in the first two years of the Pacific War, at least they were after the Marines landed on Guadalcanal, and at first the Japanese held all the high cards, thanks to the far better training in night tactics, the best optical sights in the world, and their ace-in-the-hole, the lethal "Long Lance" torpedo, capable of accuracy at much longer range than its US equivalent and packing a warhead half-again as powerful. Even if American torpedo attacks managed to launch within good range and actually strike enemy ships, more than 60% of their warheads failed to explode! The detonator problems were soon rectified, but as airpower gradually became a greater danger than conventional surface armament, each side beefed up its warships with as many light-medium caliber rapid-fire guns as they could carry, and many of the larger destroyers even had half their torpedo mounts removed to create space for a few more anti-aircraft gun tubs. They would soon need every AA gun they could carry…

The frightening advent of the kamikaze once again caused a profound reassessment of naval gunnery practice. The only currently mounted US guns powerful enough to obliterate a kamikaze during its approach were the 5-inch d/p (dual purpose) turret mounts aimed en masse by radar-assisted centralized fire-control systems and firing shells equipped with proximity fuses (which exploded automatically when their internal radar sensed a target was within effective range). But once the kamikazes penetrated the outer ring of five-inch barrages, they could only be stopped by massive torrents of 40- and 20-mm cannon, While these ubiquitous weapons could indeed throw up an almost impenetrable wall-of-lead, their hits had the effect of "chewing-up" the attacking planes rather than blasting to bits (a lucky hit on a bomb warhead always notwithstanding). By the time a kamikaze had gone into its final dive, its terminal velocity was so great that no matter how many pieces-parts the light AA guns ripped from its wings, tail, and even its engine, as long as the fuselage and bomb load remained intact, the basic laws of inertia might allow it to follow its final course even if the pilot was dead at the stick, and strike its intended target with enormous destructive force.

By the end of the war, the Navy was about to deploy its deadliest AA gun yet, the radar directed, automatic, twin-barreled 3"/50 cal. Its projectiles could destroy so much of an aircraft that any debris continuing toward the ship would amount to little more than drifting metallic confetti - still dangerous to exposed crewmen, of course, but in no way capable of inflicting more than the most superficial damage to their vessels. Those were sleek, powerful, sexy-looking guns, but so far as my research has been able to ascertain, they never fired a single time at a hostile aircraft during the more-than-a-decade they were in service. By which time the Navy had declared them obsolete (although some remain in service today with small foreign navies who think they're just dandy for engaging fast attack craft).